He charged forward and managed to get off a quick left—right before another thunderous blow to the head set him reeling. Only a step, then the older boy seized his arm with both hands and twisted, and somewhere within a voice whispered that there were advantages to having long arms in a hand-to-hand fight like this, and Dizzier’s voice called him Shorty, and a third voice shouted for the others to shut up and focus . . .
Focus!
Pain shot up into his shoulder and neck, and he found himself on the ground, gazing blearily up into Cade’s furious face. Grunting, Cade seized the front of his jacket. He scrambled to gain mastery of his feet and propelled himself up with the strength of his legs. The top of his head connected with something hard—there was a wet crack and a cry of pain—and Cade flung him backward.
He slammed into a wheelbarrow with a force that snapped his neck forward and bashed all the air from his lungs. Old boards creaked and groaned, and the wheelbarrow collapsed, tumbling him head over heels. He landed, flat on his stomach, in a pile of earth and rocks and shattered wood.
A foot pressed into his back, keeping him from rising.
But there was no fight left in him.
Only pain and anger and humiliation so strong it was sickening.
“This is our home.” Cade ground out between his teeth. His voice was thick and slurred with pain—from the sound of it, Ky had broken his nose—but there was a fire and passion in every word that could not fail to sway the runners. “We will not abandon it. Follow me, and I will see that we live in safety and security once more. Here, where we belong. Paddy, organize raiding parties—five strong each—all armed. Open up three of the main passages. If any supplies remain in the city, we’ll find them. It’s time we stopped hiding.”
The pressure lifted from Ky’s back, and he gasped in a mouthful of air but did not try to rise. Feet shuffled past as the runners left their tools behind and filed back toward the cavern. Silence fell and still he lay, mouth clogged with dirt and sickness and blood. At last, his ears pricked to the release of a heavy breath, hesitant footsteps, then the rustle of clothing as someone knelt beside his head. He didn’t bother opening his eyes. No need to see who it was. He knew well enough.
Paddy sighed. “Oi, laddy-boyo, I don’t know but what it wouldn’t have been better if you hadn’t returned.”
Bile rose in his throat as he pushed to his hands and knees, but he did not look up. He couldn’t. The room swayed too much to lift his head. He forced his swollen lips to give voice to the suspicion that had been growing in his mind since Cade first appeared. “It was you, wasn’t it? You told him to come.”
Paddy’s silence was answer enough.
When Ky finally peeled his eyes open, Paddy was gone.
Two days passed before Ky summoned the courage to drag himself back to digging in the tunnel. He worked alone at the top of the mound, torches in brackets on the walls, breath hissing through his teeth with each painful shovel load that he cast behind. He dug and dug and dug, hardly knowing why he bothered anymore.
Working for the sake of working.
Working because there was nothing else to do.
The runners had jumped at Cade’s plan with even greater zeal than they had his. Each day the raiding parties streamed back into the cavern, more often with wounds than with food and always with tales of run-ins and near escapes from Nikuto’s men.
And still he dug, frustration seeping from his body with each drop of sweat.
Over and over, he reminded himself that he hadn’t done any of this because he wanted to be in charge—right? He’d never cared about that sort of thing. It just grated that the runners could so easily turn their backs on him. Maybe Paddy was right. Maybe it would have been better to have stayed in the desert with Birdie and Hawkness to fight against the dark soldiers.
Maybe there he could have accomplished something.
Aside from alienating his friends and failing to save them from certain death—he’d managed to accomplish that without even trying. Way to go, Shorty.
Halfway through his second day of digging, he sensed movement behind him. The stinging taste of fear flooded his throat. He couldn’t take another beating from Cade . . . not yet. He tensed for the attack, but no attack came. Just the scrape-thunk of another shovel biting into the dirt. He spun around, shovel clenched in both hands like a club, only to snag his ankle on a loose rock and land on his backside with his shovel across his lap, staring into the wide eyes of a small, round-faced boy.
“Syd?” Ky released the breath he’d sucked in. “What’re you doing here?” He figured it best not to mention how close he’d come to bashing the boy’s skull in.
Syd just blinked and went back to shoveling, pale blond hair falling over his eyes as he worked. He moved slowly, methodically, without any enthusiasm or vigor. Without any emotion at all. It was like watching a statue come to life.
For some reason, the boy’s silence irked Ky. He brushed himself off and stomped back to the top of the mound. “You know Cade doesn’t want you here, right? Better run on back to the cavern with the rest of his lackeys. That’s where Paddy is, isn’t it?”
No reply.
Ky heaved a sigh and dug in again. Maybe this was Paddy’s attempt at an apology—he didn’t have the guts to stand up to Cade, so he sent his little brother to help instead. Didn’t really matter in the end. If the boy was determined to help, he wasn’t about to stop him.
It didn’t take long to get a good rhythm going. He chunked dirt behind, and Syd shunted it to the sides of the tunnel. Less effective than carting it back to the cavern, but what else could a fellow do with only two pairs of hands?
A giggle brought him up sharp, balancing a load in the shovel.
Make that three pairs of hands.
He couldn’t imagine a less Syd-like sound. A second later, Meli threw her arms around his waist, dumping his shovel load over his feet. She grinned up at him, nose wrinkling beneath twinkling eyes, and then launched into work, carting rocks away.
Ky gave a wry smile. It wasn’t the help he’d hoped for, but it was enough. He slammed his shovel back into the mound and fell to his knees as the earth gave way beneath the tool. His frantic grasp just kept the shovel from sliding out of reach through the two-foot-wide opening that appeared between the roof of the tunnel and the pile of rubble beneath. Beyond, all was blackness.
He calmed his thundering heart. It could be nothing . . . it probably was nothing. Still, he reached an impatient hand back to gesture for light. “Syd! Torch . . . I need a torch.”
The boy could move surprisingly fast when the situation demanded. Within seconds, Syd pressed the rough handle of a torch into his hand, and Ky thrust it into the opening, drawing his shovel out at the same time. The flames darted at the earth above and on either side. Ky inched forward, pressed flat, feet and elbows propelling him forward, every bit of him painfully aware of the nearness of a ceiling that had already collapsed once.
Another shove with his toes, and both the torch and his arm extended over a drop. From this angle, it was hard to see anything. The light was too close, too blinding. He released his fingers and the torch fell, and in its flaming wake, he saw the walls and roof of a tunnel extending as far as he could see.
Then the light snuffed out.
But it couldn’t erase what he had seen: Hope—uncertain, that was true—but hope nonetheless. As he wriggled back out of the hole, a hand gripped his elbow and helped him rise. He looked down into Syd’s pale face, which looked more pale and round and anxious than ever in the merciless light of the torches on the walls, and he read the question in his eyes. Some folks thought Syd was stupid because he moved so slow and didn’t speak. Dizzier had always beat up on him because of it. But there was no mistaking the intelligence behind that concerned expression.
“I saw it—the end of the cave-in.” Ky grinned at the boy. “We mad
e it through.” He chuckled at the sheer impossibility of it. Then his gaze fell on the hole he had just crawled through, and he grew serious again. “Now look, it’s not the end yet, not by a longshot, so you can’t go telling anybody. We need to know where it goes first.”
Both Syd and Meli nodded, solemn as karnoth birds. Such strange little confidants. Ky swiped a dirt encrusted hand across his dirt encrusted forehead. “Right, well then, we need to fetch a rope and extra torches, and then we’ve got some exploring to do.”
Meli’s chin thudded against Ky’s shoulder as he loped toward the cavern with her on his back. Wispy strands of her hair clung to his neck. Poor girl was completely tuckered out, and he couldn’t blame her. After two days of exploring, even his legs trembled with weariness, and his clothes were so drenched with mud and sweat, he couldn’t keep his teeth from chattering with the cold.
Syd clumped along at his heels, weighed down by an armload of tools. The boy was stronger than he looked and plenty useful. Maybe Paddy had done him a good turn after all.
But it was time for him to do another.
Ky slowed as he entered the cavern and made for the central fire ring where Cade and Paddy sat side by side on a pair of crates. Gloom darkened the snippets of conversation he overheard as he picked his way through runners lounging on bedrolls or huddled in clumps tending weapons. Most of the raiding parties had returned, and from the look of things, it had been a poor harvest.
“Curse that Nikuto!”
A group of five burst through one of the re-opened tunnels and brushed past on their way to dump a meagre offering into the supply barrels—two loaves of hardtack and a small sack of beans.
“Doesn’t matter where we go, his men are there first. How is that even possible?”
Their frustration sparked a twinge of satisfaction in Ky. It was petty, and he knew it, but it sure would be nice if the others began to realize that Cade wasn’t the only one with answers . . . and even when he had answers, they weren’t always right. He hefted Meli’s sleeping form higher on his back, motioned for Syd to hang back, and halted behind Cade and Paddy.
“. . . an’ that makes another four taken sick today and three more wounded on raids,” Paddy muttered. Something inside Ky churned at the sight of Paddy in Dizzier’s place as Cade’s right hand man. Just another wrong thing in a world where everything had gone wrong. “Slack an’ her party haven’t come back yet, but the supplies are all but gone. Nikuto has bled the city dry, and we’ll be lucky to send out three full teams tomorrow. Look, I know how you must feel, but shouldn’t we—”
“We’ll manage.” Cade slapped his palms against his knees and shoved to his feet. His voice was clipped and harder than steel, but there was a raw edge to it that Ky hadn’t heard before. “We always have.”
The older boy strode off toward the supply barrels, and Paddy slumped with his head in his hands. He didn’t even look up when Ky sidled into Cade’s seat and perched on the edge of the crate.
“Oi, Paddy.” The words came out in a whisper scarce louder than the silence that followed. Meli still clung to his neck, and the heat of her forehead against his skin mingled with the damp sweat of his run through the tunnels made him a little dizzy. “I need your help.”
“I don’t know how much clearer I can be, friend.” Paddy lifted his red-rimmed eyes. “I can’t help you go against Cade. Not now—especially not now.”
His voice rose at the end, and Ky could feel the focus of the other runners shifting to them.
“Listen . . . listen . . . there’s a way through the tunnel. I just need your help—the calculations, the map—to figure out if it can get us beyond the watch-posts.”
Paddy started to rise, but Ky caught him by the arm.
“You have to help. Please.”
“Still here, Ky?” Cade appeared beside Paddy, arms folded over his chest. Anger glinted in eyes that were swollen and masked with dark purple, and his nose had a new twist in it. But somehow his injuries only served to make him look dangerous, not weak. “Thought you’d have run off by now.”
“Believe it or not, I’m just trying to help.”
“Did it ever occur to you that we don’t need your help?” Cade’s voice took on the deadly quiet tone that Ky had grown to fear far more than he had ever feared Dizzier’s blustering. “You know we wouldn’t be in this mess if you and Dizzier hadn’t muffed your last run.”
“No.” Ky pushed to his feet, gripping Meli tight against his back. Somehow, she was still asleep. “We wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t insisted on stealing from the dark soldiers. Your raid got Rab slain, Dizzier captured, and almost killed Aliyah!” He was venturing into dangerous waters now, and he knew it, but somehow he couldn’t turn back. “Now you want us to wait around until the white fever takes us all?”
Cade seized him by the front of his jacket and shoved him back a step. His knees knocked into the crate behind, and he hugged Meli’s legs against his sides to keep her from falling. It was only Cade’s grip that kept him from losing his balance. White showed in Cade’s wide eyes, stark against the surrounding bruising, and for the first time, Ky realized that the older boy was afraid. “Don’t talk to me of dying.”
By now, a crowd of runners had gathered around. Ky could feel them pressing in on all sides, eager for the prospect of another fight, and he would give it to them. He couldn’t lose face before Cade again, not if he ever hoped to bring the runners around to his way of seeing things. This wasn’t how or where he’d hoped to do it, but it had to be done.
Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders. “I challenge you to face me in the Ring.”
“What?” Cade released him.
An echo of the question rippled through the gathered runners. Instead of answering, Ky side-stepped the crate and gently eased Meli from his back onto an abandoned bedroll. She mumbled something in her sleep and curled into a ball, but did not wake.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he stood and turned, hands knotted behind his back. “I challenge you to the Ring. Tomorrow. Will you face me?”
For a moment, Cade just stood there, and Ky couldn’t help thinking that a fellow’s time would have been better spent trying to decipher Langorian than reading the expression on his face. Then he nodded sharply and spoke without turning his head. “Paddy, fetch him a weapon. Why wait until tomorrow? We’ll settle this. Now.”
“Shure, shure. Would you like the Ring set up too?”
“No need. This won’t take long.”
At Cade’s barked order, the runners scurried out of the way, clearing a circle and giving him room to draw his sword and launch into a series of experimental swings. There was no denying the power and control behind each movement. Despite his illness, Cade’s skills certainly hadn’t deteriorated since Ky had been gone. His, on the other hand, were more than rusty. He hadn’t picked up a sword since the battle outside of Bryllhyn.
His fingers ached to unleash his sling and “settle” the matter in his own way. Cade wouldn’t look half so fierce and intimidating when a slingstone knocked him onto his backside and left him drooling in the dust.
“You’re insane, laddy-boyo. I hope you know what you’re doing.” Paddy pressed the hilt of a harvested sword into Ky’s outstretched hand and clapped him on the shoulder. Just like old times. His voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s Aliyah, Ky. She’s been taken sick. Bad.”
Ky’s heart sank at the news, and with it, his anger toward Cade.
“You get it, don’t you?” Paddy’s brows pinched together. “Why I can’t go against him. He’s counting on me.”
“Sure, I get it.”
Somewhat.
But it wasn’t going to stop him from doing what he had to do. Hefting the sword, he moved into the circle, forcing a spring into steps that felt weighted down by bog mud. He didn’t wait for the attack—that was something the old Ky would have done�
�no, he charged in from the right with a battle cry. If he was going to have any chance at winning this fight, it could only come from throwing all of Cade’s expectations to the winds, and that meant fighting in ways he never had before.
Cade easily knocked his first stroke aside, but Ky kept at it, hammering away with all the speed and force he could muster. He beat past the older boy’s guard and opened a cut on his shoulder, and for just a second, there was a flicker of surprise in Cade’s eyes, a hint of hesitation in his guard, and the slightest misstep in his footwork.
Then it was gone.
The tip of Cade’s sword slipped Ky’s defenses and nicked his shoulder. The Saari jacket was thick, and the hide absorbed most of the blow, but blood still trailed down his arm. The barest hint of a smile twisted Cade’s lips, and he transformed into the “whirling dervish of death.” Or so Paddy called it—Cade’s favorite attack form. It was the sort of thing that was fun to joke about until a fellow faced it in battle. Then it was just plain terrifying.
Ky deflected a thrust and hammered the pommel of his sword against Cade’s extended thigh, summoning a curse from the older boy’s lips. A minute later a similar blow left a hitch in his stride.
Shoulder for shoulder.
Thigh for thigh.
Payback.
He staggered under the realization. Cade was imitating his moves, countering each landing blow with an exact copy two or three or four strokes later, all the while attacking with a speed and force and precision that left Ky reeling.
Everything about this fight felt wrong. Cade was holding back. His borrowed sword was too clunky. Compared to the perfect balance of Artair’s sword, it felt like a misshapen cudgel. His head pounded with each throbbing beat of his heart. They were both fighting more or less injured, but Ky had spent the past several days pushing his body past the limits as he scoured the tunnels for a way of escape. Exhaustion clung to him like a cloud, fogging his mind, dulling his reactions, slowing his thoughts.
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