The Essence

by Kimberly Derting

  she aimed to collect it.”

  “So why did you think Her Majesty was in danger on the train? Wasn’t that the safest place for her to be?” This time it was Zafir asking.

  “Look here.” He reached into the back of his waistband and pulled out a scroll of worn parchment. He bent down on the floor and rolled it out, smoothing it with his gnarled hands. “She left this behind. Wasn’t hard to figure out it was a map.”

  Zafir and I leaned down, and my eyes widened. He was right, of course; it was most definitely a map. And despite the fact that it wasn’t written in Englaise, or any of the other Ludanian languages, it also wasn’t hard to tell what it was a map of: the train line. More specifically, the train line I had been on.

  “See?” Florence said, tracing one filthy finger along the tracks, stopping to tap the spot where two jagged red slash marks crisscrossed them, marking an X. It was just past the train depot where Florence had intercepted us. “This is where it would’a happened, I figure.”

  I turned to Zafir. Maybe Florence was right. Maybe someone had been sent to kill me.

  Zafir continued to glare at the map. “And did she say who’d set the price on the queen’s head?”

  “Didn’t have’ta. After news of the bombings in the city, everyone knew that Jonas Meyers or Mayer, or whatever his name is . . .” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a dirty blade, setting it in the center of the map. “Everyone knows he’s out to get the queen. You’re just lucky Jeremiah and I convinced that conductor to move along without you, Your Majesty. Otherwise you’d’a lost your head.”

  brooklynn

  Brook shivered, clutching her jacket tighter as she scooted nearer the fire, wishing she’d dressed warmer. Wishing that she’d been more prepared. Instead, not only was she unprepared for the weather, but she had no idea what she was doing. She’d never led a search party before. For all she knew, she was leading her soldiers into some sort of trap.

  After that first fruitless hour, Brook had made the tough decision to break her soldiers into three separate groups. She hoped that by splitting up, they might increase their odds of locating Charlie.

  She’d sent one group, a traveling party made up of ten of her best riders, back to the palace, with news of what had happened at the depot. It was entirely possible that Charlie had decided to head south, too, and that Brook’s riders would intercept the queen on her journey home. Maybe the message to Max would be entirely unnecessary, and her riders would simply become escorts to Her Majesty.

  The second group of ten had been ordered to remain in town, to keep searching. They’d already scoured buildings and questioned everyone they’d come in contact with, never revealing why it was so important that they find the “missing girl” for whom they searched. But they’d come up empty.

  The men she’d left behind were to continue hunting, moving outside of town and combing every inch of the Scablands if necessary. Turn every home and shop inside out for signs of their lost queen. For this, Brook had sent ten of her most resilient and well-trained men and women. Survivors. Those whose instincts and skills matched the treacherous lands they’d be searching.

  She would keep moving north, the most likely place Charlie was headed. Charlie was nothing if not predictable. Tenacious. She’d made a commitment, and she had a goal in mind, and nothing—not even a little hiccup like losing an entire army to back her up—would stop her.

  Brook just hoped that wherever Charlie was, Zafir was as well.

  She cupped her hands around her mouth and blew into them, trying to dethaw her frozen fingers.

  “You shouldn’t be so stubborn. This will warm you,” Sebastian promised, sitting beside her and handing her a dented, silver flask.

  Across from the fire, Aron nodded. “He’s right, you know?” His lips curled, the promise of a smile. “I mean that you’re stubborn, of course.”

  “I don’t see you drinking any of it,” she shot back to Aron, lifting her hand to ward away the flask. She knew Sebastian was worried, they all were, but she needed some space. Needed to think. “No thanks. That’s what the fire’s for.”

  Aron reached for another log and threw it on the already blazing campfire. The red coals beneath the flames flickered, and wayward sparks shot into the chilled air, turning black and then drifting away with the smoke.

  Brook worried about that too, the fire. It made them an easy target, pinpointing their location in the yawning blackness that engulfed them. Pointing them out to rogue outlaws who might chance by. But they’d had to stop. They’d ridden hard, her band of thirty-odd soldiers. Well, thirty-odd soldiers plus Sebastian who tended the horses, and Aron who was practically useless. They’d stayed as close as they could to the rail lines, following the tracks as far as possible, until even the moon overhead couldn’t provide enough light to let them find their way.

  Finally, when they’d realized they couldn’t keep going, Brook had ordered the fire, and she’d set up watch shifts, taking the first one herself and giving some of her soldiers a chance to sleep.

  They were well into the second watch now, and as far as she could tell, neither Sebastian nor Aron had slept yet either.

  “You should turn in,” she said vaguely to the both of them. She turned, looking into Sebastian’s dark eyes, which reflected the fire’s light, and spoke again. “I need you refreshed in the morning. Don’t make me order you.”

  He opened his mouth, as if to argue, but then closed it again when he caught her determined expression. There was no point disputing a command. He leaned closer, and reached for her hand, squeezing it reassuringly. “The same could be said of you, Commander. You need to sleep.”

  Hadn’t Aron said the exact same thing just the night before? Why did it sound so much more sincere coming from Sebastian, Brook wondered. Why, when he spoke, didn’t it sound like he was laughing at her? Taunting her?

  He pressed the flask into her hand. “Just in case,” he said, and then she watched as he gathered his jacket tighter against the chill and went off toward the camp they’d set up just outside the perimeter of the fire, using as many blankets as they’d been able to scavenge from the merchants near the train depot before leaving town. Another reason they’d have to sleep in shifts.

  “’Night, Sebastian,” she called after him, and he lifted his hand in a wave, not looking back.

  “What about me?” Aron asked when it was just the two of them. Somehow he made even that simple statement feel like a joke. “Don’t you want me to be refreshed?”

  Brook pinched the bridge of her nose. “Not unless you’ve learned to wield a mean sword or shoot like an expert marksman over the past few months. Otherwise, you can water the horses for Sebastian.” She peeked up at him, over the top of the fire. “You know, like a stable hand.”

  Aron laughed then, and Brook caught a glimpse of his scars, captured in the flickering light cast from the flames.

  At first, right after Charlie had taken the throne, those same scars had been impossible to miss, a daily reminder of what Aron had done for Brooklynn, of how he’d refused to give Queen Sabara the information she’d wanted. Even when she’d tortured him for it. Of course, he hadn’t realized it had been Brook he’d been protecting; he hadn’t realized that it was she who’d been part of the underground movement Sabara was so desperate to locate. All he’d known was that he had no intention of turning on one of his friends. . . . Traitor or not.

  And, for that, Brook had been grateful.

  That gratitude had faded, however, as days stretched into weeks, and weeks into months. Aron’s scars had blanched, blending into his skin until they were practically imperceptible, unless you knew the right places to look for them. Brook had allowed herself to forget what he’d gone through, allowed herself to believe that nothing had changed between them because of it. In her eyes, they were the same Brook and Aron they’d always been.

  But that wasn’t the case, she was reminded as she stared at the tiny white fractures marring his otherwi
se perfect complexion.

  Nothing was the same anymore.

  “You don’t know. I could be the best marksman in Ludania. You wouldn’t want to waste a skill like that on horse duty, would you?”

  “It wouldn’t exactly be wasted, we need the horses as badly as we need another gunman, maybe more. In fact . . .” She shivered, clutching herself tightly, her teeth just starting to chatter. “Until we find Charlie, that’s all that matters.”

  She hadn’t realized how loud she’d been speaking until several sets of eyes turned in her direction.

  Aron got up and made his way to her side of the fire, lifting both hands in mock surrender. “Fine, I give. I’ll be a stable boy, or whatever you need me to be.” He settled down beside her, dropping one arm around her shoulder and pulling her close to him.

  Despite herself, she found herself leaning into him. He was warmer than he should be, considering the temperature, and she felt like a moth, drawn to that kind of heat.

  “We’ll find her,” he promised, leaning his chin against the top of her head, his voice growing distant and thoughtful. “If it’s the last thing we do, we’ll find her.”

  xii

  There had to be some sort of mistake.

  I repeated those same words to myself over and over again, long after we’d left the confined walls of the rank cottage and Florence had taken us to his main house, a place only somewhat larger, but vastly cleaner and more homelike. It had real floors, real wooden walls, and smelled far less like manure than the other building had.

  But no matter how hard I tried to deny it, I’d seen the map with my own two eyes, and even though no one else had been able to read the scribblings in that unfamiliar language, I had. I knew what it said. I knew that whoever had written the notes had inside information, dates and times of each of my stops. Information that only someone from the palace could have known. Information that had been meant to be secret.

  Someone had betrayed me.

  Florence sat with his elbows on a table made from unfinished lumber. The candle that flickered in front of him was casting strange shadows over his sharp features and making the thin wisps of his hair look like smog rising from his scalp. “Get Her Majesty some soup,” he snapped at the woman who’d quietly slipped into the room. She kept her head down, her gaze lowered, in the same way we were once required to do when someone of higher status was speaking in our presence. During Sabara’s rule.

  I watched the woman for a moment, wondering how she’d come to be here, in this place, with someone like Florence. Was she a criminal, or had she been born out here, in the Scablands, never to leave once she was old enough to make her own decision? I wondered if she could possibly be his wife, although she seemed too young by half.

  “It’s okay. Really, I’m fine,” I said, but Florence waved away my refusal.

  “Soup!” Spittle sprayed from his lips, but he wasn’t talking to me, his gaze was directed solely on her. “Now!”

  She scurried to pull a misshapen bowl from a shelf that hung beside the open hearth, and she wound the stained apron she wore around her hand as she reached for the ladle inside the pot. I didn’t know what kind of soup it was, but as soon as she stirred the simmering liquid, the savory aroma filled the room and my stomach growled in response.

  Florence shot me a knowing look. “She’s not much ta look at, but the girl can cook.”

  She kept her head bowed as she set the bowl before me. “What’s your name?” I asked her quietly.

  Florence bit off a chunk of seeded brown bread. “Doesn’t have one.”

  I jerked in response to his words. “What?”

  “She doesn’t have a name. Doesn’t need one,” he clarified, as if the explanation made perfect sense. He picked up his own bowl and slurped his soup from the edge of it.

  I glanced around, realizing there were no spoons. “Of course she needs a name. Everyone does.”

  He glanced at me, over the rim of his bowl, which was still poised at his lips. He looked perplexed, confused by my inability to comprehend. “Out here, it’s just us. Her, me, and my boy.” He flicked his gaze toward Jeremiah, standing silently near the door, just as he’d done in the cottage.

  “Jeremiah? Is he . . . is he your son?”

  Florence nodded, his eyebrows raised. “Little light in the brains department, but he’s strong, and tougher’n most soldiers. And ain’t no one more willing to break a sweat.”

  I looked at the woman, at her limp brown hair and her calloused hands, and wondered who she was. She wasn’t old enough to be Jeremiah’s mother. I wondered if she was Florence’s daughter, and the thought made my fingers squeeze into fists beneath the table. How could someone go her entire life without so much as a name? How did a woman, any citizen of the realm of Ludania—Scablander or not—end up here, living with a man who treated her no better than

  a pet?

  “Avonlea,” I whispered to no one, my teeth clenched.

  “What did you say?” Florence asked, holding his bowl halfway to the table, soup dribbling from the corner of his mouth.

  “Her name. It’s Avonlea.”

  “Are you sure, Your Majesty?” Zafir asked as Florence set his bowl all the way down now and wiped his chin on his sleeve.

  “Why not? It’s a good name. It once belonged to a queen of Ludania.” I glanced up at the woman and her eyes lifted to meet mine. They were soft and gray, just a hair away from blue. And for a moment, when I thought she might smile, the skin around them bunched up, crinkling like the gathers of Angelina’s pettiskirts. I said it to her, then, this time with finality. “Avonlea.”

  She stood there for a moment, soaking it in. “Avonlea,” she finally repeated, with a voice that sounded unaccustomed to use, ragged and untried.

  “Thank you for the soup, Avonlea,” I said, and then directed my attention to Florence. “Now tell us everything you know.”

  I was still having a hard time piecing everything together, but I was glad to finally be alone with Zafir.

  After dinner, Florence had shown us to a room he called a bedroom. It was barely bigger than a closet, but we could sleep in it nonetheless.

  On the floor, there were two worn and musty bedrolls that looked as if they’d seen better days. Tired as I was, it didn’t really matter how they smelled. Besides, I’d slept on worse.

  I collapsed wearily, my head falling against the lumpy pillow. Even from all the way in here, I could feel the cold night air seeping in from beneath the door—air that had found its way in from a crack in the base of the front door and was filling the entire house. I pulled the covers closer and rolled onto my side to look at Zafir, who was studying the map.

  “I’ve seen that language before, you know?” I thought of the beautiful script work on Zafir’s sword—Danii, a weapon forged of steel and blood. It was an exact match to the handwriting on the map.

  The corners of Zafir’s eyes crinkled. “I imagined you would recognize it.”

  “Can you read it?”

  He shrugged. “Some. My father tried to teach it to me when I was a boy. He thought tradition was important.”

  “You’ve never told me where your family comes from, Zafir. What’s your heritage?”

  There was a long pause, and then, “They fled from the eastern region during the Carbon wars. The language is Gaullish, but it was the prevailing language of at least a dozen countries in that region at the time.”

  I eased myself into sitting position. “And now? How many of those countries still speak it?”

  “Four. Maybe five. That leaves several million people who could’ve made this map.”

  I chewed on that for moment, and then met his gaze. “Well, somehow that person has found an insider in the palace to work with. We have a traitor in our midst.”

  Zafir looked at me, his expression grim when he nodded. “I suspected as much,” he answered before turning his attention back to the map.

  I wasn’t sure what to make of that. I supposed I’d w
anted Zafir to convince me that everything would be all right. To tell me my suspicions were wrong, because I wanted so badly to be wrong in this instance.

  “I’m sure we’re safe for tonight. You should probably get some rest,” I tried, but I knew it was pointless.

  “I don’t trust him. Not entirely. I’ll feel better once we’re on our way again.”

  He was right, of course. Not that I didn’t trust Florence, necessarily. Of that, I still couldn’t be certain. Yet I didn’t care for him, really. He was vulgar, which made no difference to me one way or the other. I could handle vulgar. It was the way he treated the girl, Avonlea, and his son that made my skin itch with resentment.

  But he’d made arrangements for us to leave at dawn, providing us with horses and men that he assured us we could trust to take us north, to continue on our way to the summit.

  I’d assumed we’d be heading back to the palace, but after hearing Florence out, after the information he’d revealed about a potential assassination attempt, both he and Zafir had come to the conclusion that it made sense for us to keep going, to keep me away until Max cleared things up at home.

  And I desperately hoped that would be soon, because I missed my family. And, most of all, I missed Max.

  “How long will it take us to get there?” I asked.

  “Assuming the other riders don’t slow us down and we ride hard enough, we should make it to the ferry in about two days’ time.”

  I grimaced. “And assuming I’m one of the riders?”

  Zafir smiled, a small, knowing look. “Three days. You can do this; I have faith in you.”

  I did my best to smile back at him, but the idea of three days on horseback made my stomach knot. “At least one of us does.”

  There was a soft knock at the door and Zafir stiffened, his hand moving involuntarily to his sword, which he’d insisted be returned to him. Florence had stopped arguing when he realized the guard wasn’t messing around, that his very life was at risk.