by Emily Colin
Eva surveys the two tunnels. Then she takes a deep breath and holds it, letting it out in stages as if she’s sampling the air. “That one,” she says, pointing to the tunnel on the left.
“How do you know?”
She shrugs, looking discomfited. “I can’t explain it. It just smells as if fewer people have used it lately. And the scents it does hold are strong, as if the same people have gone there over and over, with a specific purpose in mind.”
“I don’t understand how you’re picking all that up,” I say, perplexed and annoyed. I’m her mentor; how is it she can read a scent trail better than I can?
Eva shrugs again, meeting my eyes with a defiant expression. “I can’t explain it, and don’t ask me to. I’m just telling you what I smell.”
“Fine,” I say curtly. “The tunnel on the left it is. The worst that can happen is we retrace our steps. Or we go the wrong way and end up getting our heads sliced off.”
“We won’t have to retrace a thing,” Eva mutters, affronted. She steps ahead of me, leading the way down the left-hand tunnel.
The tunnel narrows further, and soon it’s only wide enough for us to walk single-file. I wish I were in front—this is my mission, and I am the senior bellator—but it’s too late. Instead I follow Eva into the ever-darkening gloom. The wall torches are fewer and further apart here, and my eyes adjust to the darkness. I suppose we could use the solar-powered flashlights we have brought with us, but I have no idea whether there will be any light at all in the tunnels that stretch beyond the Commonwealth, and it seems wiser to save them until we have no choice.
We walk forever down the virtueless tunnel, Eva’s shape one of a hundred shifting shadows, the only sounds the crunch of our footsteps, the rasp of our breath, and the endless, mind-numbing drip of water. Finally the tunnel opens up again and we are once more able to stand side by side, in an area lit by three torches. I have to blink several times before I realize we’re facing a wooden door set into the stone wall of the tunnel as Kilían had promised it would be.
I look at Eva, and she at me. And then she raises her hand and knocks.
21
Eva
A voice comes, harsh with the clear ring of authority. “Who goes?”
Ari draws himself up, straightening to his full six feet. One of his hands reaches over his shoulder, resting on the hilt of the blade along his spine. The other finds mine, fingers pressing hard, and even in the musty dark I can’t suppress the feeling that spreads through me—as if my blood has alchemized into the frivolous bubbly drink people used to mark celebrations before the Fall, the one they called Champagne. I squeeze back, and I’m rewarded with one of his rare smiles. He gestures to my own blade, and lets me go.
“Ari Westergaard and Eva Marteinn,” he says as my fingers close around the hilt. Immediately, to my shame, I feel better. Just as the small children in the Nursery have their worn stuffed creatures for comfort, passed down from one generation to the next to discourage greed and attachment to material things, so I have my sverd. It may be cold comfort, but it is comfort all the same. “Of the Bellatorum Lucis. We seek safe passage.”
The voice behind the door speaks again, skeptical now. “Bellatorum Lucis. You bring danger into our midst. Why should we let you pass?”
I step forward, past Ari. He touches my arm in warning, but I ignore him. “We have information,” I say, lifting my chin. “Let us through.”
The man laughs, a sound of true surprise. “Does she speak for you, Ari Westergaard?”
Next to me, Ari has come to full alert. I can feel the tension rolling off him in waves, feel his muscles coil. But his voice is calm as still water as it always is, as it was trained to be, when he says, “She does.”
“Interesting,” the man says. “We have heard of you, Eva Marteinn. The first female warrior to stand with the Bellatorum. We’ve been waiting, biding our time. That you should approach us is a gift. But you, Westergaard—you are a risk. State your purpose.”
“We seek a trade,” Ari says in the formal language of the man behind the door, the speech of the scholars. “Our information for safe passage through the tunnels. Eva stands with the Bellatorum, and I stand with her. I mean no harm.”
“Really,” the man says, amused. “And yet you come to us armed, Ari Westergaard. Don’t bother to lie. I can smell the oil on your blade.”
Next to me I feel Ari start, a twitch of his muscles stilled and concealed as quickly as it began. He sets his feet, the way he always does before a match, finding his balance. I hear him draw a deep breath, there in the dark. “Speak of the wolf,” he says, “and he will come.”
Silence falls, and in it, Ari’s hand finds mine again. His fingers are rough with grime from the rock walls, gritty with crumbled dirt. For an instant, I see us as if from above—a boy and a girl, clad in black, gripping each other for strength, as if our touch will serve to protect us more than the razor-sharp, gleaming blades strapped to our backs. Trained as hawks to throw into the faces of our enemies, talons slashing and beaks sinking deep. To cleave through a circle without mercy, when discussion has done its best and been found wanting.
The man behind the door speaks, his voice as toneless as our own. “A wolf does not bite a wolf.”
And then the door swings wide.
22
Ari
As the door creaks open, I yank my hand free of Eva’s. Our presence here is disadvantage enough without handing this man the ammunition he needs to destroy us.
He is nondescript, the kind of man I could pass on the street a thousand times without taking notice. His hair is short and light brown, his features even. He wears dark pants and a gray shirt. Even his build is average—two or three inches shorter than I am, his shoulders neither narrow nor broad. When his eyes travel over us, though, he smiles—mirthless, anticipatory. His teeth gleam in the dim light.
“Well met, Ari Westergaard,” he says. “Let justice be done, even should the world perish.”
I extend my hand to him, curl my fingers against his palm the way Kilían showed me, feel his index finger hook over mine in response. “Let justice be done, even should the sky fall.”
Beside me, Eva is motionless and silent—the stillness of a predator, determining whether to strike. I hear her breathing, deep and slow, the way the Bellatorum taught us to center ourselves before battle.
She is my weapon, I realize, as I am hers.
She is my weakness.
“We seek passage,” I say for the last time. “Do you grant it, or no?”
The man’s smile fades, his thin lips flattening into inscrutability. He lifts his hand, wipes it clean against the gray cotton of his shirt. And then he steps away from the door, allowing us entry.
“Welcome, Wolf’s Brother,” he says. “And you, Eva Marteinn.”
The scholar’s chamber is a small cavern carved of rock, lined with books that face spine-out from built-in shelves—volumes written before the Fall, perhaps, guarded from unclean fingers and prying eyes. I think, stupidly, that keeping paper copies of precious artifacts down here, where the moisture level is so high, is asking for trouble—but then I notice a small device humming away in the corner, the same kind we keep in the weapons room to protect our blades, designed to suck water from the air. There is a tall ladder that leans up against one of the shelves, a high-backed chair, and a wooden desk. Otherwise, the room is empty.
The man stands aside, gesturing at a door set in the back wall, between shelves. “There,” he says.
I know time is of the essence, that we cannot linger here, but curiosity gets the better of me. “What are these books? Why aren’t they in the library with the others?”
He gives me a beatific smile. “That knowledge is not for you, Ari Westergaard, blade or no blade.”
“If you won’t answer his question, maybe you’ll answer mine,” Eva says, an edge to her voice. “You said you were waiting for me. What were you waiting for?”
The man’s sm
ile doesn’t change, but a sense of menace emanates from him at her words. “Ask me again when you return, assuming you do so. Ask then, and you may receive your answer.”
“What is that supposed to mean—” Eva begins, but I step in front of her, blocking her view.
“Don’t bother. He won’t tell us anything, unless you plan to torture it out of him. We have to go.”
Brow creased in annoyance, she gives a curt nod. We pass through the door, leaving the man, his infuriating smile, his mysterious books, and his worrisome intentions behind.
23
Eva
The tunnels that lead to the Outside are dark, the only illumination emanating from our flashlights, and silent, except for the crunch of our boots and the steady drip of water. I track our footsteps, calculating time and distance the way Ari has taught me. We’ve gone a quarter of a mile when the tunnel opens into a large, high-ceilinged cavern. I snap my fingers, letting the sound echo, and sweep my flashlight across the room to confirm what both of us already know. There are three tunnels branching out from the other side: Two leading deeper into the labyrinth under the mountain, the other upward, toward fresh air and the Outside.
“That man was disturbing,” I say, starting across the cavern, to the closest tunnel. “I don’t trust him at all.”
Ari shines his flashlight into the tunnel beside mine, looking for the chalked outline of the wolf’s face Kilían promised would mark the way to the Outside. “You think?”
“What do you think those books are doing down there?” I say, backing out of my tunnel. “And what does he want from me?”
Ari snorts. “Honestly, Eva, if we pull this off and our worst problem is dealing with that bastard of a scholar, I think we can count ourselves lucky. There it is,” he adds, shifting so I can see the sketched outline of a wolf chalked onto the tunnel wall. “This way.”
We creep through three tunnels, each one damper and darker than the next. Two are wide enough that we can walk side by side; the third is so narrow that I have to press my arms against my body to wriggle through. Thirty minutes later, we come to a fork in our path. I aim my flashlight into the tunnel on my left, and see nothing—but when I shine it into the one on my right, the beam picks out the faint outline of a wolf’s face.
This tunnel is like all the others—water seeping down the pockmarked walls, the damp crunch of gravel beneath my feet—but it narrows at the end, and I can make out a hint of light. One hand resting on the hilt of my dagur, the other tight around the rubberized grip of the flashlight, I move cautiously forward.
Ari follows me, the beam of his flashlight tracing mine, then skirting upward, washing over the ceiling of the tunnel. “This one’s different,” he whispers, coming to stand next to me.
I nod, realize he probably can’t see me very well, and try again, pitching my voice as low as his. “Yes. It feels more open, somehow. I think—I think maybe this is it.”
“Yeah, me too,” he says. “I—”
Whatever he is about to say is interrupted by a noise that sends my heart rocketing into my throat—the rattle of metal from the other end of the tunnel. Ari’s body stiffens, and then he is gone, his flashlight dimmed, his shape melding into the shadows that flank the wall. I do the same, flattening myself on the opposite side of the tunnel, listening for all I am worth.
There are no footsteps or voices, nothing to signal the presence of other human beings—let alone a horde of barbarian Outsiders. A current of air moves past me, and I inhale, sampling it as I have been taught. I smell pine needles and crushed bracken, wet leaves and the musty, close confines of the tunnel—but no scent of unwashed bodies or roasted meat.
The air gusts again, and with it comes the rattling noise—a grate, I realize with relief, vibrating with the force of the wind. I open my mouth to tell Ari this, and jump as his hand closes on my shoulder. “Easy,” he whispers. “It’s just me.”
“Don’t do that,” I hiss into his ear, and feel him laugh silently. “You can let go now,” I say, unnerved.
Instead, he spins me toward him and ducks his head, his lips slanting over mine. He tastes like the mint leaves from the garden behind the Bellatorum’s quarters—and a taste that is simply Ari, a burnt-sugar heat. His mouth is soft but insistent, urging me forward, and my body gravitates toward his, a moon toward its planet, a plant toward the sun.
Then he pulls away and lets his hand drop. To my surprise I feel his absence keenly, as if something essential has been stolen from me. I stare up at him, trying to gather the wherewithal to speak—but he beats me to it.
“Luck,” he says simply, and flicks his flashlight on again, leading the way toward the Outside.
24
Ari
We are met by a pair of scouts halfway down the path that leads away from the tunnel. It would have been easy to avoid them—we can hear them long before they appear in our line of sight—but since we’re trying to act in good faith, we merely hide in the trees long enough to be assured of their identity.
Whoever they might be, it’s immediately clear to me who they are not—members of the Commonwealth come to drag us back to face our fate. Their clothes are like nothing I’ve ever seen—green-and-yellow camouflage designed to blend with the leaves and shifting shadows. The woman’s skin is a burnished brown, and her eyes slant upward at the corners. No one in the Commonwealth looks like that—as if they’ve absorbed the light of the sun into themselves. Stunned, I have to force myself not to stare.
As for the man, he has a headful of tangled blond hair and an untrimmed beard. Both of them have weapons holstered at their hips that I recognize from vids of before the Fall: Guns, outlawed in the Commonwealth as barbaric implements of murder whose usage requires little courage and less skill.
Having assessed their weapons, I do a quick physical inventory. The man appears to be in his mid-twenties, the woman a little younger. He stands taller than I do, about six-foot-three, with a stocky build. The thick camouflage pants and loose green shirt he’s wearing make it hard for me to tell much more.
His companion looks like the more dangerous of the two. Her shirt is conspicuously lacking in sleeves—it looks like she ripped them off deliberately—and her pants only cover her to the knee. Every inch of her I can see—which is far more than would ever be allowed in the Commonwealth—is muscular and toned. She moves more quietly than the man, scanning the forest as she goes. Of course, she doesn’t spot me and Eva, but that is only to be expected.
Barbarians, I think reflexively, but the word holds little bite. There is intelligence in their eyes and a clear sense of teamwork in the way they move together. Here are only two; we were taught to believe they moved in hordes, mindlessly seeking their targets.
Drawing a deep breath, I step out into the sunlight, gesturing for Eva to stay put. I’m pretty sure these two are just an advance team, but their weapons make me uneasy. I’ve never seen a gun in person, don’t know enough about their mechanics to counter an assault. My first impression is that I’m fast and skilled enough to disarm the two of them, but I’d rather not put both of us in the line of fire.
I step hard on the leaves, making enough noise so the scouts will hear me and turn around. When they do, I stand still, hands out at my sides. “Hello,” I say.
The woman’s hand drops to her holster. “Identify yourself.”
“My name is Ari Westergaard. I mean you no harm.”
The man places a hand on her bare arm, a casual gesture indicative of familiarity and an intent to soothe. It’s a mistake; I could use both of them as leverage against each other and have them on the ground in an instant. I relax infinitesimally—if they’d make this kind of rookie mistake, how well trained can they be?
“It’s all right, Zoya,” the man says. “This is the one Ronan told us to expect.”
“I know,” the woman named Zoya replies, an edge to her voice. “But still—how do we know he doesn’t have an army of those creepy Commonwealth fighters with him?”
“Come on, Zoya. You don’t think we would’ve noticed an army making their way through the woods?”
Zoya snorts. “Did you bring an army with you?” she asks me.
I have to refrain from smirking at the irony. Here we are, expecting them to be the advance party of a horde of barbarians; and here they are, anticipating that I’ve got a full military force at my back. “If by that you mean the Bellatorum, then the answer is no,” I say, endeavoring to sound genial. “I did bring a friend, though. Eva, come out where they can see you.”
There’s rustling, and then Eva steps out from behind a tree and takes her place at my side. She doesn’t say a word, just eyes the scouts warily.
“That’s it?” Zoya says.
I shift my weight, my left hand brushing my throwing knife. “Yes. Just the two of us.”
“Ronan said you’d be alone.”
“I don’t know who Ronan is. And the two of us are a package deal. Take us or leave us. It’s up to you.” I don’t bother saying the rest—that we can go with them or we can go through them. I haven’t come this far to be turned back by a pair of Outsiders who don’t like my choice of companion.
“You’ll meet Ronan soon enough,” the man says. “Zoya, stop giving them a hard time.”
“That’s my job,” the woman says, without the slightest bit of humor.
The man sighs. “Why don’t we introduce ourselves? I’m Adrien, and that even-tempered, trusting soul is Zoya.”
