“He shouldn’t be hard to spot.” Okane sounded unnerved too.
“He’s not much of a looker, is he?” Cherry snorted. “Don’t worry. He’s a big softie. Unless you refuse the candy. If he offers you something, just accept it. You can chuck the stuff when he looks the other way.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Here.” Cherry grabbed the reins of two unmanned horses and presented them to the Sweepers. “You can take these. Don’t worry, they’re good for beginners.”
Laura looked from her to the horse, perplexed. Well, she supposed, if she was going to be forced into this, it was nice to have someone acting nicely about it. Best keep Cherry in a good mood.
“I’ve never ridden a horse before,” Laura confessed. “How do I get on?”
Cherry boosted them onto the horses. Luckily the animals were patient and very used to this, so Laura settled easily. Okane looked ill in his own saddle. Cherry swung effortlessly onto her own black steed and trotted to the front.
“Everybody ready to go? Grim, did you go through the checklist?”
“Three times,” he replied.
“Good. Let’s head out.”
The horses cantered one after another in unruly single file. Laura panicked at the idea of making her horse move, but to her relief it matched the others’ pace without persuasion. They left the cable car station behind, setting a swift pace to the Sixth Quarter wall. Gaggles of soldiers watched as they passed, but only when they reached the door did someone interfere with their progress. The door loomed half as high as the Sweeper shop, made of wood with decorative iron reinforcement. A small building lurked to the left, and from here stepped a pair of soldiers.
“Halt!” one called, and the horses slowed.
“Good morning.” Cherry tipped her hat and beamed at the soldier.
“Where are you off to?” the soldier asked, ignoring her greeting entirely.
“The wilds. We made arrangements for passage already. You should have the paperwork.”
Wait. So this outing was city-approved? Either Juliana worked fast, or this was part of a much more sophisticated setup than Laura had expected.
The soldier held her arm out to the side, and her younger assistant scrambled to hand over a clipboard. She flipped through the pages and found what she was looking for.
“Four leaving, to return here within the month. Passports have been validated already.”
“So, are we cleared?”
The soldier scowled at her tone but made another gesture. The door opened for them. Cherry’s horse pawed the ground and lurched forward as if impatient to reach open air, and the rest followed more sedately. Laura craned her head to look around as they entered the doorway. She had always expected something big and interesting for the outer gates, but this proved plain, dark, and disappointing. Hoofbeats echoed along the walls for almost five minutes before they emerged outside of the city, which also disappointed.
For a long stretch around the city, Amicae tended agricultural fields. The buildings and crops retained the feel of the city, if greener, but far beyond Laura glimpsed the mountains dark blue on the horizon, and her spirits rose. Cherry set them on a route along a path worn by agriculture workers.
“Okay!” she called behind her. “We’ll keep on until about two o’clock, and then we can break for food. Any breaks before then will be fast, understand? We don’t have much time to get to our destination.”
Laura sucked in enough determination to ask, “Where is our destination?”
“Not marked on any map, so you can’t judge by it. A few days out,” Cherry replied.
Fantastic. That gave her so much information.
The sun beat down heavily as they continued their trek. It wasn’t the sweltering glare of summer, but close enough to it that Laura unbuttoned her coat as they left the shelter of agriculture. Here they entered the untamed flatland separating Amicae from the forests and hilly areas closer to the mountains, and wind rolled in from the ocean. The path became little more than a deer trail, the land sloped upward, and then they entered the trees. Most of the foliage had fallen, leaving twisted branches above their heads, but some of the plants retained their greenery and appeared lush as they would be in summer. A trail had been tramped down by travelers before, and they wound along it to ascend the hills.
As two o’clock rolled by they found a wide cleared space on their path, ringed by trees with a small circle of rocks encasing the blackened remains of a campfire. Wordlessly the Rangers dismounted. Laura struggled to do the same, going through the motions slowly to make sure she got it right.
“Take a walk around and make whatever stop you need,” said Cherry, digging through her saddlebags. “I’ve got some food for you afterward. It’s not fancy city cuisine, but it’s not too bad.”
“You don’t mind us going out of sight?” said Laura.
“I trust you not to try petting any wild animals.” Cherry sent her a mock glare. “I don’t need to tell you that, do I? City slickers know that much?”
“I might live in a city, but I do have common sense,” said Laura.
Cherry laughed.
Laura wandered into the trees, perplexed. She walked until the camp was out of sight before deciding that was far enough. She reached for her belt, but paused. A hole yawned in the ground ahead, big enough that she could probably fit in if she wanted to. A ring of raised dirt surrounded the edge, dry and undisturbed. Baffled, she stepped closer. Was that some makeshift toilet to go along with the campsite?
“Cherry?” she called. “I—Uh, I have some common sense, but I don’t really know anything about giant holes out here. Did a Ranger dig this?”
No response. Maybe the camp had fallen out of earshot, too. She squinted at the hole again, trying to guess its purpose. Far too big to be a toilet, and besides, it sloped into the ground. A hiding place? Shelter for the night? She made to take another step and found herself hesitating. She stooped instead, thinking to check how far it went. Darkness met her eyes. It had no far wall. A tunnel, then.
This isn’t normal, she thought, unease rising.
“Don’t get any closer.”
The sudden, close voice made her jump. She clapped a hand over her chest and tried to get her heartbeat under control as Grim blinked at her.
“Oh, god. I didn’t hear you at all.”
“That’s a knuckerhole,” said Grim. “Don’t go anywhere within ten feet of them.”
Now that he’d delivered his warning, he had no further interest in being here. He turned and walked back toward the camp. Laura rushed after him, almost tripping over a tree root in the process.
“Hang on a second! A what? What’s a knucker?”
“A dragon,” said Grim.
“But dragons don’t exist,” said Laura. “Do they?”
“The professor seemed to think they did,” said Grim. “We took him out here last year to study them.”
Laura gave him a sidelong look. “I feel like proof of dragons would’ve been published by now.”
“Knuckers are ugly things. They don’t match the image most people have of dragons.”
“Then what are they?”
“Rangers call them wyrms. Very large, very long reptiles with vestigal wings. They burrow in a wide and complicated network of tunnels, and hunt by surprising prey wandering too close to their knuckerholes.”
Laura shuddered. “That sounds nasty. Are there a lot out here?”
“You never know,” Grim mused. “There’s no way to know how many holes a single one digs, or even if the digger is still alive. We avoid the holes as much as possible, or find some way to plug them up.”
“Another thing to add to my list of nightmares,” Laura grumbled. “Thanks for keeping me out of it.”
He looked at her as if confused. “You asked for information. I provided the information.”
Laura didn’t know how to respond to that. She simply stared at his pale, pale face and thought, How in hell do
I know you? Grim didn’t linger, though. He walked on back to the camp. When Laura returned afterward, she found the Rangers in deep discussions, and Okane rubbing anxiously at his arms.
“A knucker?” he demanded when he saw her. “- - - saw a knucker?”
“Technically it was just a hole,” Laura defended. “It was nice to know not to walk into it, though.”
He sighed, exasperated. “We haven’t even been here one day, and - - -’ve already had a near-death experience.”
“On the bright side, we know they don’t want us dead,” said Laura. “Though to be honest, I’m not sure what they want from us. They’re part of Theron’s plan, right? If it’s supposed to be so illegal and dangerous, why are they treating this like an everyday outing? They didn’t care where I went just now.”
“There’s nowhere to run at this point,” Okane pointed out. “They’d catch - - - before - - - got back to Amicae, and otherwise - - -’d get - - -rself killed by the wilds itself.”
“Still.” Laura leaned to the side to get a better look at the Rangers; Cherry was drawing a complicated symbol on one of the nearby trees. “This feels sort of off. Actually … Am I crazy, or have we met Grim before?”
Okane blinked at her in surprise. “- - - feel it too?”
“I mean, I feel like we’d have mentioned seeing him before. There were a lot of people at Clae’s wake, right? Maybe we crossed paths there?” said Laura, but she doubted it. She’d have remembered someone that distinctive.
Okane shook his head. “I don’t recognize his face. I’m more interested in how he feels.”
“How he what?”
“Do - - - remember when I made - - - hear the word - - - were rejecting?”
Laura had to suppress a shudder at the memory. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard another nonverbal shout.”
“He feels like that. Like ‘- - -’ personified. But also not.” Okane looked perplexed. “It’s almost muted, not directed at anyone, so maybe it’s more accurate to compare it to an active amulet? But not really. It’s more—”
“More what?” Laura encouraged.
Okane wrestled with his words. So quietly she could barely hear, he said, “He feels like an infestation. Inverted. Not a danger, but … like hearing a piano and violin play the same note.”
Laura eyed him shrewdly. “You’re not reacting, though. You don’t even look tense.”
“I’m not content,” he said, “but there’s an even bigger part of me that feels safe. For some reason. It says I’ve encountered this feeling in the past and it didn’t hurt me, so why be anxious? But that goes completely against my other theories of why it’s familiar.” He gave her a hopeless look. “I’m very confused.”
“You and me both,” said Laura.
“Well, now that that’s taken care of—” Cherry strode back to them and held out a hand with food. “Here, something to tide you over until supper. We’ll have something bigger when we stop for the night. Eat up, and we’ll get back on the road.”
Laura found herself with a handful of biscuits and dried fruit. Cherry moved on to Okane, but Grim stepped up after her.
“Here.”
He dropped something into Laura’s palm before going back to his horse. The object was a piece of candy, the wrapper declaring it MARVELOUS MAGNUM’S DELUXE CARAMEL. Laura turned to give Okane a curious look. He gave an exaggerated shrug, but beside him Cherry mimed eating. Ah, she’d mentioned this before: accept the candy or toss it while Grim wasn’t looking. Laura ended up eating it, and it had to be the oldest, stalest piece of caramel she’d ever tasted.
They stopped a few more times that day, so people could stretch their legs or run off into the bushes. Laura grew sore and uncomfortable. She wriggled in a vain attempt to find a better seat, but refused to ask for breaks herself. As the sun began to descend they rode into the smaller mountains, taking an elevated mountain trail. This gave a nice view of Mount Amicum, which loomed high and snowcapped, its crags much more easily viewed here than its shadow from Amicae. It got colder in the mountains, and still colder when the sun set, allowing darkness to fall around them.
With the dark came anxiety. Neither Ranger carried a lamp, so as the world grew dark Laura’s vision suffered; so must the horses’, she thought. Could their leader even see? They weren’t about to walk off a cliff or slide off the path and down the mountainside, were they? Worry bubbled unspoken in her gut, but Cherry led them on at least half an hour after the sun had gone. The horses walked close enough together that when Grim’s steed stopped, Laura’s horse bumped into the back of it. The horses behind did the same, snorting and stamping.
“Are we there?” said Laura.
“Hang on a minute. I’ll check it out,” Cherry called back.
Laura could see indistinctly as the woman dug her heels into the horse’s side and sped up the incline.
“What is she checking?” she wondered aloud.
“The rest house,” Grim replied, his voice smooth and unperturbed. “There’s no reservation policy in the wilds. It works on a first-come basis, but you can be driven out anyway.”
“Driven out?” Okane turned to look at him, eyes flashing briefly in the moonlight.
“Outsiders like to think Rangers have an honor code, but that’s fragmented at best. At times other Rangers are more dangerous than the animals.”
“So she’s looking for other Rangers up there.”
“Yes.”
“And what if she finds some?”
“We strike a deal, drive them out ourselves, or find somewhere else to stop tonight.”
Laura fingered her horse’s mane as she replayed various wilds-themed films in her head. Highway bandits, train robbers, murderous jailbirds; varying forms of Ranger villains paraded through her head.
“They don’t make a habit of ambushing people, do they?” she asked.
“Usually they do. Not when I’m involved, though.”
“Really?” Okane leaned the other way, trying to get a better look at him.
Grim looked back blankly. “It could be that they’re unnerved by my appearance,” he suggested, and Laura could believe it. The dark made Grim more unearthly, like a ghost come to haunt the party, and his pale horse didn’t help the illusion.
After a while Cherry reappeared. She gestured at them to follow but said nothing. Everyone quieted and let her lead them to the top of the hill. There, nestled between large rocks and trees, Laura saw the shadow of a hulking building. Cherry opened the door, ushering them and the horses inside before barring the door. The room plunged into pitch-blackness. In comparison the outside had been a spotlight. Laura stopped short, hand tightening on her horse’s reins as she listened. Someone stumbled around the perimeter of the room, and lanterns were lit. Cherry carried one to the center while Grim lit another.
“Feel free to unpack,” Cherry announced, hushed. “Horses by the door, people near the back.”
The building was a single room, big enough to be a small church. Beams propped up the ceiling of wooden rafters, discolored by the years, and the chimney hung like a great brick vent over the circle on the ground, supported by brick pillars. The group tied the horses to wooden supports near the door. Laura and Okane helped Grim pull tack off, and a circle of saddles and supplies formed around the brick ring. Cherry started a fire, produced a pot from the supply packs, and concocted some soup. Despite all the movement the air was quiet and tense.
“Are we in trouble?” Laura whispered, and Okane nodded quickly.
“There’s something nearby and it doesn’t like us.”
“You mean, like…?” Like other so-called couriers? Had they arranged to meet with others here?
“Yes.” He glanced uneasily at the windows. “It’s not an animal. It’s people.”
“They may think we’re competition,” Grim grunted, setting another armful of tack on the floor beside them.
“One of the most lucrative, high-risk markets for a Ranger is what’s called a head h
unt,” said Cherry, giving Grim a pat on the back as she passed. “We get a list of the most dangerous animals in the wilds and go out to hunt them down. We have to bring back a specific piece of proof from the downed animal to prove we deserve the pay, but that’s one of the worst parts. Scavengers can ambush you, steal your evidence to steal the paycheck. They’re not above killing other Rangers to do it.”
“So, - - -’re saying these would be scavengers?” said Okane.
“Or maybe they think we’re the scavengers.”
They spoke as if they were the potential victims here, rather than the ones sneaking around. Laura gritted her teeth. She’d had more than enough of this. She dropped the saddle she’d been carrying, planted her hands on her hips, and snapped, “Let’s cut the crap.”
“Laura—” Okane began, but she plowed on.
“The people outside are your coworkers, aren’t they?” She gestured angrily at the windows. “This isn’t about headhunters or escorting professors. You’re working with a man named Theron, aren’t you? He’s having you secretly transport equipment to Amicae, to be delivered to our head Sweeper. This destination you can’t pin on a map, that’s the manufacturing base, isn’t it? I already know the secret. It’s not worth trying to keep us in the dark, and you’re doing a terrible job at acting like this is normal.”
For a long moment, neither Ranger replied. They looked at her, blank-faced and gravely silent. Finally Grim turned to face Cherry and said, “Where did you say you got these two?”
“Don’t look at me!” said Cherry. “Amicae’s head Sweeper sent them with me.”
“Do I know too much, now?” Laura raged, but mortification and fear crawled up her throat. What if she did know too much? What if they decided to shoot her and ditch her body out here in the wilds? “I’m obviously not equipped to fight you, but seriously. Let’s all be honest here. This is tiring.”
“I think you’ve got the wrong idea,” said Cherry.
“Oh? So you’re not moonlighting as couriers?”
Grim laid his forehead down on the brick ring and groaned, “They know about couriers.”
The Monstrous Citadel Page 19