by Andra Leigh
Casamir nodded. “I think so.”
“Bout time,” Raiden puffed.
For the next hour the bank of the lake slowly began to rise. It lifted into a cliff, sloping down into the Cityel. As the lake became hidden behind the rocky wall, they tripped and wove across the craggy ground. When the loose stones and rocks underfoot turned into boulders Eliscity heard what Casamir had heard and what Forrest had sensed from miles off; a rush of water. Following the lake’s wall around a bend they found the source of the noise.
Two jets of lake water streamed out of crevices high in the boulder bank, tumbling over the stones in a gush of white and falling into a spring. Boulders framed the spring, forming a bowl, their edges worn smooth from the entrapped movement of the water. Moss and flowers, vivid against the dull Cityel backdrop, sprung up around the water in colourful dots and patches.
“Millem Falls,” Jinx exhaled.
They were so close now. This would be where Laleita – and with any luck the Triplets – would wait for them while they covered the final stretch to the Clinic.
“How does it not overflow?” Raiden grunted as he squinted into the pool.
“It might loop back to the lake underneath somehow.”
“Or feed back to the Mythenra Ranges.”
“Or simply drain into the land,” Laleita mused.
“We don’t stop,” Jinx ordered, crouching to fill his tankard in the spring.
Raiden made a disgruntled sound, but retrieved his pack from the ground and slung it back over his shoulder. Laleita moved toward Casamir, resting her head on his broad chest. Eliscity turned away to give them a moment. The Triplets were reassembling themselves, adjusting each other’s packs. Eliscity opened her mouth to order them to stay, but Jinx beat her to it.
“You three, here with Laleita. No arguments. Everyone else, let’s push off. We still have a day or two to the Clinic.” Jinx was already walking away from the high boulder wall and the falls rushing from its face.
Eliscity, Raiden and Casamir said their goodbyes and followed Jinx. Laleita was the only one showing worry on her face, squeezing Eliscity’s hand as she passed before returning her attention to Casamir. The Triplets weren’t happy about being left behind but didn’t do anything more than whine at the order and look put out. Deep lines of focus were grooved on both Casamir and Raiden’s faces’. Eliscity wondered if the same focus was showing on her own face.
“Happy?” Jinx muttered as she drew level with him.
“Thank you,” her voice caught in her throat. As she walked away from Millem Falls she realised she was scared. Catching Jinx’s eye she saw he was serious, his mouth pulled into a tight line. He’s nervous, she thought with a start. Although Casamir and Raiden were older, there was no denying he had seniority within the Family and felt responsible for them. Even if it had been her reckless idea that had brought them this far, he would lead them to the end.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Returned Reigness
• Acanthea •
Approaching the worn iron bars that crossed in front of Drae, Acanthea saw the man didn’t look remotely angry at having been locked up for the last day. Boredom, however, had settled firmly onto his face. He sat against the back wall, his head resting against the rough stone, eyes closed. She could tell he was awake by the way his fingers drummed against his right knee.
Acanthea ignored the robust guard who sprang off his chair at her entrance. The knife he’d been using to pick food out of his teeth clattered to his feet, causing him to do a ridiculous dance to avoid being stabbed. Drae opened his eyes at the sound and made a disgruntled noise when he saw Acanthea.
“I can’t believe you let them arrest me for kidnapping you,” he sighed. Acanthea detected a hint of awe beneath his dull tone, but no anger. She chuckled briefly at how different he and Eliscity were. He was the calm, she was the storm.
“Would you have preferred I said I didn’t know you and left you behind to walk all the way here?” She didn’t bother keeping her voice down, despite the guard.
“No. I would have preferred you told them I was your friend and would be joining you.”
“Oh please, they would have seen straight through that,” Acanthea guffawed. “Everyone knows I’m more likely to have a kidnapper than a friend.”
“I find it endearing that you believe someone would kidnap you willingly and then not want to give you back immediately,” Drae drawled. Climbing to his feet he met her at the bars of his cell.
“I take it you didn’t notice the lack of surprise on the guard’s face when my supposed kidnapper walked me up to him to return me, then?” Acanthea said, gesturing for the heavy set guard to come over.
“Oah,” Drae exhaled after a moment of thinking.
“Open the cell,” she directed at the guard.
The thick man’s forehead creased into a frown as he bumbled up to the bars looking uncertain.
“Gentle Reigness?” he queried, his small eyes darting nervously around.
Drae looked just as confused as the guard. “You’re actually going to let me out?”
“Only because you’ve proven to be slightly more amusing than I thought you would be. And if I leave you in here any longer someone may decide to have you hanged for your crimes.”
Drae muttered something under his breath she couldn’t quite hear but assumed was a string of curse words. The guard, clearly debating her sanity, shuffled his weight between his feet in an awkward dance.
“Oh, give me that.” Acanthea snatched the keys from the dumbfounded guard’s grasp and sorted through them, trying a few before finding one that turned smoothly in the cell lock. The door swung open on its hinges.
“Come on.”
Digging a purse filled with coins out of her dress, Acanthea tossed it and the keys to the guard. “The kidnapper tried to escape so you executed him and had a groundsman – not Lysom – deal with the body,” she instructed firmly.
Drae gave the confused guard a sympathetic clap on the shoulder as he left the cell and followed Acanthea out of the dungeon.
“You could have avoided paying him off if you hadn’t had me arrested in the first place,” Drae said, as they hurried up the stairs toward the south-western wing.
“You have got to get over that. You believe I lack subtlety. I believe that I have no need to hide my actions if I can pay to have a different story told –”
They moved swiftly down a dank stone passage, turning left when they reached a fork.
“ – Not only does it give the people telling the story a fattened wallet, but it tells me which storytellers I can trust to not rat me out to the Reigner. They’re here because they’re paid to protect him. I bribe them as a way to ensure that protection reaches to me and perhaps even slips from the Reigner. They’re not normally as dumbstruck as that imbecile though. What?” she snapped, seeing a strange look cross Drae’s face.
“You’re cleverer than I thought you were,” he admitted, shrugging.
Acanthea hid a grin as they left the dim corridor and entered the bright, bustling cookhouse without warning. She led the way across the large space, knowing the cooks wouldn’t bother them. She’d been coming down to the cookhouse to raid the pantry of strawberries and baking since she was little. They’d learnt they didn’t need to stop their dicing and kneading despite her presence.
“But…” Drae whispered, ducking his head away from a cook who stirred and swore at the same time, standing over a bubbling pot of gravy. “What if someone asked the groundsmen where they buried me?”
“They won’t,” she whispered back. Passing a basket of fresh bread she grabbed two rolls and shoved one into Drae’s hands.
“Why not?”
Acanthea ushered him out of the cookhouse and into the string of hallways meant for the maids to get around. “Because you’re not important enough for them to follow up on, Drae.”
Drae tore a chunk of bread off with his teeth, looking put out.
“What
’s your father said to you so far?”
“Nothing. He hasn’t summoned for me yet.”
“What? You’ve been missing for weeks, months!”
“Please. He’s gone longer without seeing me before. And I’m talking about the times when I lived here.”
“He’s your father.”
“No, he’s the Reigner. I’m sure he knows why I left. He’s waiting for me to broach it, I’m sure. He doesn’t think I pose enough of a threat to believe he needs to broach it himself. Either that or he’s just waiting for his moment to kill and bury me next to Cathrainra. Anyway, there’s a celebratory feast for my return tonight, so no doubt I’ll see him there. Would you hurry up.”
“Where are we going?”
“The Reigner has a study in the eastern tower which I’m pretty certain has a secret door into his private quarters. I figure, if there’s information on the Clinic to be found, it would be in there. Maybe if we can find some scrolls or files on it we might have an idea on how to put a stop to the Clinic completely. Take it to the Realm.”
“So we’re going to go find the door?”
“Yes. Well no. Not yet. There’s too much chance we’d open that door and find the Reigner standing on the other side. We’re going to hide you in my quarters until the feast.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
…But Don’t Come Back
• Eliscity •
‘Look back, but don’t come back.’
She had come back.
The Clinic gleamed in front of them, absent of the flames Eliscity half expected to see licking the walls. Evil lived in those curved walls. It laughed at them. It made people their favourite toy then threw them away when the toy stopped playing their game.
Bile was creeping up Eliscity’s throat at the prospect of entering the evil walls willingly. What had she been thinking? She couldn’t go back in there. Not even kicking and screaming. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that that was the difference. She wouldn’t be kicking and screaming, under someone else’s control. She would be in control the entire time. She could do this. It wasn’t going to end with her strapped into a stone bed or metal cuffs.
Eliscity lay on her stomach wedged between Casamir and Jinx. Raiden was on Jinx’s other side. They had hidden their packs in a cluster of boulders a half mile back, hoping it would be distinctive enough to find on the return journey. But not before Eliscity had stuffed her pockets full with the only weapons she would be carrying. It would be up to Eliscity to get into the bank while the other three ensured her path was clear. As nervous as she was about everything coming down to her, she was glad no one else had this particular burden to shoulder. As it had been her plan she felt it was only right that she were the one to carry it out.
From their vantage point on the small rolling dune they could see the Clinic sprawling across the next quarter mile of the barren Cityel. Arching tunnels connected the dome shaped sections of the complex, all coloured a similar golden brown as its sandy backdrop. Each dome was a different size. The closest one was small at only twenty metres in diameter. The sun was dipping below the Mythenra Ranges, throwing shadows over the curves of the Clinic. The sky was settling in for the night.
Would this be their last sunset?
Would she see the next sunrise?
Eliscity shifted off her elbow, gave it a careful shake and tucked it back under her body. She repeated the action on the other arm. It did very little for the numbness creeping through her from leaning on them for so long. Rather than changing her position, she settled for flexing her fingers beneath her in an attempt to coax her circulation into behaving itself.
The sand was cooling around them. It was almost time.
As the final slither of sun sank below the highest peak of the distant Mythenra Ranges, Casamir and Raiden rose without a sound and crept over the edge of the dune, dipped as low as their bodies would allow. Jinx glanced over, waiting on her to decide when she was ready. With a small nod in his direction they both left the wave of sand they’d used as a piece of furniture for the last hour and slid down toward the Clinic.
The guards were patrolling the outer edges of the Clinic in sporadic bursts. Without a pattern to their patrols it was impossible to tell when the next guard armed with a boltbow would round the rough walls. Eliscity was just thankful the Clinic obviously believed exterior guard towers were an unnecessary extravagance in the middle of the seldom travelled Cityel. They felt safe. A smug grin tugged at the corners of her mouth at the thought of proving them wrong.
Casamir and Raiden had disappeared from sight, but she knew they would be approaching the opposite sides of the closest dome. They would halt any guard making their patrol toward them in their tracks. She and Jinx reached the Clinic together, pressing themselves into its rough outer wall. Unlike the other domes, this one had chimneys piping out of its top and many air vents peppering the walls. It was the incinerator. The place the dead were brought to burn into nothing. Cease to be. It was also the place Cyan had broken the Family out of. Since they’d escaped through this dome, Jinx and Casamir felt certain they could break into it as well.
The vent that was their target sat above their heads, two metres from the base of the wall. Jinx laced his fingers together and boosted her up to it. He held her as still as possible while she worked the grate across it loose. Wrenching it off, she dropped it below her for Jinx to bury from sight once she was in. Heaving herself into the tight vent she crawled forward on her knees, head skimming the top and wondering how Raiden had ever fit through here. She heard Jinx follow her in a few moments later, though couldn’t turn around to see him. She could only carry on forward. The vent wasn’t as clean as she had thought it would be. Black soot coated its surface, tickling her nose and rubbing onto her skin. Was she crawling through the remains of people? Their ashes. Desperate not to start hyperventilating and taste the dead, she held her breath. Luckily the vent was short. Manoeuvring through the hole and out into the larger space, she landed in the centre of the incinerator.
It was a small chamber that narrowed up into a chimney, containing only a bench large enough to carry a body. There was no space to clamber down off the bench and she tried not to focus on how the people lying in this chamber didn’t require any room to stand. The bench itself was the incinerator. A metal and stone pyre. It was on a belt that allowed for it to be pulled out of the chamber to load the dead onto, then it was lit, pushed back in and confined within the small space to burn.
She was taking shallow breaths now. Even though she knew the bench couldn’t light itself, she didn’t like the claustrophobia that was grasping at her. Jinx had followed her through the hole, landing on the bench alongside her. He went for the chamber door without pausing. The belt travelled through it and out to the loading bay at hip height. The door lifted from the base of the belt, sliding up. It only took Jinx a minute to lever it open, sliding it up with a clatter. They both flinched at the noise and waited for the enemy’s approach. When only silence greeted them, they folded themselves out of the incinerator and into the main area of the dome.
Five incinerators, like the one they had just crawled out of, were built into one half of the dome, piping into their own chimneys. The mouth of a tunnel gaped at the other end of the building. The only piece of furniture was a wide, curving wardrobe. There were no seats or desks, nothing to suggest people sat around and played cards here. It was clutter free, only used for its purpose.
Apart from them, the dome was vacant.
Eliscity hurried to a door set between the final incinerator and the tunnel to remedy this. Casamir and Raiden were waiting on the other side.
“Only took one guard out,” Casamir growled. He sounded disappointed there hadn’t been more guards patrolling the dome.
Rather than give another pointless lecture about how they weren’t here to take out as many guards as possible, she busied herself by dusting the soot of the incinerator off her.
Raiden moved over to the tu
nnel to keep watch while Jinx opened one of the panels to the wardrobe.
“Perfect,” he muttered into the piece of furniture. Extricating himself from it she saw he was holding a single crimson doctors coat. He was looking at her. “It couldn’t hurt your chances at getting past guards.”
She scrunched up her nose at the stiff fabric. She didn’t want it touching her skin. But she was forced to admit it was better than trying to be invisible. The guards were surrounded by people in the coats all day. She also stood the best chance at donning the uniform and slipping through the domes unnoticed out of all of them. Jinx, Casamir and Raiden had been kept in the general population when they’d been here, while she had been restricted from most others. And most importantly, others had been restricted from knowing anything about her. Provided the staff hadn’t been informed about her existence and alerted to her current wanted status, she should be able to blend in. Having spent time with Cyan, she believed this wasn’t going to be an issue. The Clinic staff seemed to only ever hold a single piece of the puzzle to their job. They weren’t told anything outside of their particular puzzle piece. Talking with Cyan she had the impression that only a select few – like himself – were granted permission to go between the Clinic and the cities. The majority had a permanent residence in or near the Clinic somewhere, cut off from the news coming out of the Realm.
While she made her way through the Clinic to locate and destroy the blood bank, the other three would try to find records or papers on the patients. They’d agreed it would be foolish not to try to find them.
Jinx held the coat for her while she threaded her arms through the sleeves.
“What about you?” she muttered.
“We’re capable of not being seen.”
“You are,” she mumbled under her breath. Jinx’s shoulders shook with his silent laugh, shooting a glance at Raiden and Casamir. They definitely did not exude subtlety.
