by Mary Fan
He approached the staircase. Hearing quick footsteps from above, he looked up. Aurelia landed on the level above him, apparently having jumped the last few steps.
“Aurelia!” He wanted to tell her how impressed he’d been by the way she’d taken down the fangbeast, but she continued toward the ground floor without acknowledging his presence. Her expression held a combination of confusion and fear, and he wondered what was troubling her. “Aurelia?”
“Whoa! Flynn!” From the startled look on her face, he might as well have appeared out of thin air. “What are you doing here?”
“Finally got rid of the corpse.” Flynn wondered what could have distracted her so much that she hadn’t even seen him.
“Good for you.” She ran off before he could ask what was bothering her.
Weird. Flynn continued up the staircase, deciding there was no sense in trying to catch up when she didn’t seem to be in the mood to talk.
The denim pants Flynn had been handed before being directed to the showers fit well enough, but the black T-shirt hung off his shoulders like a giant sack. At least it’s not covered in rot.
His old clothes had been incinerated, since there was no redeeming them from the filth that had permeated their fibers. The last remnants of his life as a Secondstringer had been burned to cinders, and that left him with an unexpected sense of regret. The absence of stupid things he used to take for granted—complaining about work with Brax, chatting with him and Kylie on the bus—suddenly felt like a part of him that had been taken away. But all the injustices he’d faced were gone as well, and in his new role as a rebel, he’d rid the world of them for everyone else.
He sat down on his bunk, still toweling his wet hair. The draugr’s stench seemed determined to cling to him, despite the ridiculous amount of time he’d spent scrubbing.
“Hey, new kid.” Tamerlane approached with a second towel and tossed it to Flynn. “You smell like garbage.”
Flynn caught the towel. “You try smelling like roses after tackling a corpse.”
Tamerlane leaned against the post of the bunk bed across from Flynn. “Too bad cleaning spells won’t work on you. What were you thinking, running outside like that?”
Flynn shrugged. “Guess I wasn’t.”
Tamerlane smiled. “Fair enough. I take it Calhoun chewed you out?”
Flynn nodded.
“He does that whenever someone gets cocky.” Tamerlane shifted his weight. “Heroics are commonplace around here. We fight monsters and face off with the Triumvirate every day. I can’t imagine what it must be like for him, doing this kind of thing for twenty years. I’ve only been at it for two, and I’m already worn out. It all seems so glorious until you find yourself battling the pack of bloodwolves the Sentinels sent after you.”
Flynn found it hard to imagine Tamerlane, who looked more like a librarian than a monster slayer, battling anything. He started toweling his hair again, hoping to rub off some of the stink. “How’d you end up here?”
Tamerlane looked away. “I was a student at the University, studying to be a historian. Then the Triumvirate black-bagged my girlfriend for leading a protest against the Triumvirs. I still don’t know what became of her. Knowing the Triumvirate, she’s probably dead. So I fight on her behalf, but it hasn’t been easy, especially with Storm always getting in our way.”
“Oh… uh… sorry to hear that.”
Tamerlane shrugged. “We’ve all got tragedies. Happy people don’t plot revolutions. Hey, did Calhoun tell you that Storm used to be a Riser?”
Flynn stopped toweling. “What?”
“That’s how he knew where to find the Citadel. He helped the Risers conceal it in the first place. Storm used to be Calhoun’s second-in-command.”
Flynn blinked. Apparently, the day’s surprises weren’t over yet. Guess that’s how my mom knew Storm… They were Risers together. “How did Storm and Calhoun end up enemies, then?”
“No one’s entirely sure.” Tamerlane furrowed his brow. “From what I’ve heard, Storm got it in his head that all governments are evil, including the one Calhoun’s hoping to set up to replace the Triumvirs. Also, Storm liked experimenting with powers channeled from the Underworld, and Calhoun wasn’t on board with that. It takes a powerful sort of dark magic to handle draugar.”
“And fangbeasts, I’d imagine.” If it was possible, Storm seemed even more evil than the Triumvirate.
Tamerlane nodded. “Everyone’s always said controlling fangbeasts is impossible, but Storm’s powers must have grown since the last time we encountered him. Anyway, he and Calhoun had a falling out, and he went off and formed the Defiants.”
“Why would he be after me?”
“Either he needs you and your ability for something, or he just doesn’t want Calhoun to win, and with you around, we stand a chance of taking on the Triumvirate.”
“No pressure,” Flynn muttered sarcastically. “How did Storm even know about me?”
“You burned a picture of him using a Nether Candle, right before the office exploded. That’s what Williams told me, anyway.”
Confused, Flynn gave Tamerlane a questioning look.
“Nether Candles are used to contact spirits of the dead,” Tamerlane explained. “Looks like a bunch of skulls stacked on top of each other. If you use one to burn a picture of someone living, their spirit gets ripped out of their body and trapped in the room until the candle burns out.”
Flynn recalled how he had flung the picture of Storm into the candle right before Everett’s office had blown up. He must have accidentally summoned the man. Damn. If he hadn’t been messing around with magic he didn’t understand, Storm would never have known he existed, and the Defiants wouldn’t have attacked. Once again, his screw-ups had led to disaster, and a heavy sense of disappointment in himself settled in his stomach.
“Brooks!” A woman with several thin black braids tied together in a ponytail entered the dormitory. “Calhoun’s called everyone in for a meeting in the assembly room. Time to go after Storm.”
“Good.” Tamerlane walked briskly toward the woman.
Flynn stood, aiming to follow.
The woman held up her hand. “Not you, Untouchable One. Your job is to stay inside and not get caught.”
“But—”
“Let’s get one thing straight, boy.” The woman’s sharp dark-brown eyes met Flynn’s. “You may be special, but that doesn’t make you the hero. You’re a secret weapon, and that means we keep you hidden away until we need you. Now, I know that sounds harsh, but it’s how things are. And what you did this evening was incredibly stupid. Don’t ever do anything like that again. Are we clear?”
“Fine.” Flynn huffed. “Who are you, anyway?”
“Fiona Nossiter. I’m one of Calhoun’s deputies. I answer to him, and you answer to me. Understand?” She turned to Tamerlane. “Let’s go.”
Flynn wanted to protest, but after all the lectures he’d received, he knew any arguments would be useless. Besides, he’d already made enough mistakes in the past day. He sat back down on the bunk and watched sullenly as the others left.
The initial thrill of learning he was the Untouchable One had faded, leaving Flynn with a tense feeling in its place. Everyone acted as though so much depended on him. Even if they wanted him to stay hidden for now, eventually they’d expect him to play some pivotal role in the revolution. What if he couldn’t do it? What could he really do, anyway, other than walk through magic fires and tackle undead giants? He didn’t possess any superhuman abilities. Quite the opposite, in fact, since being Untouchable meant he couldn’t use magic either.
He almost wished he weren’t Untouchable because that way, his mistakes wouldn’t have consequences beyond himself, and his fall wouldn’t bring the entire Rising down with him. But then again, this meant he had a chance to make a difference for once. No one else could do wha
t he could. So whatever challenges came his way, he had to come through. There’d be no backup if he failed.
With nothing left of his past, the only way he had to go was forward. With that in mind, Flynn closed his eyes, wondering what the next day would bring.
Chapter 11
Storm Trackers
Aurelia normally wasn’t one to dwell, but though hours had passed, she still couldn’t stop obsessing over what she’d seen outside the Citadel. Her stomach tightened.
The sound of Calhoun’s voice calling the Risers to attention brought her mind back to the present. She glanced around the assembly room. Twenty-six of us. Wow, Calhoun really means business this time.
Calhoun stepped onto the platform at the front. “We have an important task before us and a unique opportunity to achieve it. I know many of you are tired, but it’s now or never.”
Aurelia leaned forward in her seat, already jittery with excitement. Who’s tired?
“I’m talking about finding Storm.” Calhoun narrowed his eyes. “He and his crew of brainwashed unfortunates may have goldlighted away, but as everyone knows, nothing is absolute, not even magic. Now that our own perimeter is once again secure, we can track Storm’s supernatural breadcrumbs back to his hideout.”
Aurelia fidgeted. All of Storm’s followers are under his spell, probably the same type of evil abracadabra he uses to raise draugar. None of them even know what they’re doing. She wished Calhoun would hurry up and get to the part where he told everyone to head out.
“We have less than two days before those breadcrumbs fade.” Calhoun reached into the pocket of his khaki pants.
Aurelia edged forward in her seat, trying to get a better look at the thingamabob he pulled out: a clear crystal mounted on a dark wooden handle. Thin, angular etchings ran down the handle’s sides. She recognized the symbols as belonging to some ancient order of magic but didn’t know enough to interpret them.
Calhoun held the device up. “Activate.” Blue light shot up the etchings and illuminated the crystal. “I would have called you all a lot sooner if these didn’t require hours of sitting in starlight before they could be used. For those of you who don’t know, even though goldlighting instantaneously transports a person, that person’s essence trails behind. This crystal will glow gray in the presence of Storm’s essence. Once we find his trail, we can follow it to his hideaway.”
Tamerlane, who sat beside Aurelia, gave her a light nudge. “We just finished making those things three days ago. Good timing, don’t you think?”
“Since when have you been working on those things?” Aurelia whispered back. I’ve never seen one before.
“Since our last run-in with Storm, four months ago.”
Whoa. There must be some complicated magic going on there.
Calhoun, who had just finished giving a brief explanation of how the device worked, deactivated the device and put it back in his pocket. “Any questions?” He shifted his gaze. “Ah, Nossiter. Of course.”
Nossiter lowered the arm she’d raised, her expression as stern as ever. “Is it really necessary that we go after Storm? He may have disrupted a few of our missions, but the Defiants draw Triumvirate attention away from us. Perhaps it’s better to let him remain loose and deal with him next time he attacks us.”
Calhoun nodded. “Fair point. However, it’s not only Storm we’re after. The same night the Untouchable One was discovered, Storm came into possession of the first White Triumvir’s Memory Orb.”
A twitter ran through the crowd. Aurelia wondered what had them so excited. The First White Triumvir, who had defeated the Lord alongside Salvator and Moreau, had kicked the bucket about fifty years ago. “What’s so special about some dead guy’s memories?”
Calhoun faced her. “The Orb contains the Triumvirate’s darkest secret.”
“And what’s that?” Can’t be much worse than the ones we already know.
Calhoun gave her a slight smile. “You’ll find out, along with everyone else in the country, when the time is right. Once the people learn what the state has been hiding all these years, they will rise to storm the Palace of Concord with us.”
“But why can’t you just tell us?”
“Who would believe me?” Calhoun spread his hands. “If I came out and said it, the Triumvirate would be quick to paint me as a madman spewing nonsense. Memory Orbs, on the other hand, can only contain the truth. It’s proof, and people hate being proven wrong. I want no one to have any doubt in their minds when they learn what the Triumvirate’s been keeping from them.”
Aurelia bit back the urge to press on with her questions. Calhoun was a secretive guy, so when he refused to talk about something, no amount of pestering would change his mind. The only thing she’d accomplish by pressing on was to annoy everyone, which she didn’t really care about. But she didn’t want Calhoun to think of her as a pest.
“What are we waiting for anyway?”
Aurelia turned to see who had spoken: a middle-aged woman with dark, tight curls hugging her head. Aurelia couldn’t recall her name. She was one of those Risers with an actual life who only turned up once every few weeks when she could get away from it.
Curly Head stood. “We have the Untouchable One now. Why don’t we go ahead with the Palace invasion? The people are tired of being trampled on. I hear it every day—on the streets, in people’s homes. What are we waiting for? Norms and Enchanters alike are coming to our side, and they want action. They’ll come when we call.”
Calhoun’s expression hardened. “That’s what others have thought in the past. Remember the Eagle Rebellion? Or the Raleigh Protests? How about the April Riots three years ago? They all thought the same thing: ‘they’ll come when we call.’ But there’s a wide gap between disgruntlement and revolutionary fervor. If the people don’t make that leap, we will join that list as merely the Capital Rising—yet another unsuccessful insurrection stomped out by the almighty government.”
Aurelia nodded in agreement. She recalled all too well what had happened to those last three attempts to overthrow the Triumvirate. The participants in the April Riots had been killed to the last person, shot down in the street battle or executed afterward.
Calhoun sighed. “I tried to warn them each time, but they wouldn’t listen. The Rising will be different. We won’t be a localized faction. We’ll stand united against the tyrants whose abuses we have endured for too long. The time is near, so near I’m sure you can all taste it, but don’t let fever go to your brains. We need something to rally the people—a sign, if you will, something so powerful, it will make them say ‘enough.’ Then, and only then, can we count on them to join us outside the gates of the Palace.”
Makes sense. Aurelia was glad Calhoun was so levelheaded. She’d often asked the same question as Curly Head. Why not now? While she was perfectly willing to go down in the name of the cause if she had to, she didn’t want to fight for the sake of fighting. She wanted to win.
Curly Head dropped her gaze and sat back down.
“I understand your impatience.” An odd look crossed Calhoun’s pale eyes. “Trust me. However long you’ve been waiting for change, I’ve been waiting even longer. Twenty years is longer than some of you”—he nodded at Aurelia—“have even been alive, and you’re wondering what I’ve been doing with that time. I’ve been spreading the word, that’s what, showing the complacent just how wrong their government can be and righting whatever small injustices I can. All building up to the final moment. The Orb’s secret is the sign we need. That’s why we must track Storm to his hideout and retrieve it. Now, we have a little more than one hour before the essence-detecting devices are ready to be used. I suggest you spend that time loading up on stimulants. It’s going to be a long night.”
As soon as Calhoun dismissed the Risers, with the instruction to meet back in the assembly room in forty minutes, Aurelia zoomed into the Citadel’s kitc
hen. Though she had plenty of energy, she didn’t want to risk grogginess hitting her in the middle of a mission, especially one so important. If they succeeded in finding Storm and getting that Memory Orb, the world would change sooner than she’d thought.
She caught a glimpse of the field outside as she passed a ground-floor window. Her mind flashed back to the Defiants’ attack. It seemed no mission was important enough to keep her brain from obsessing over what she’d seen. She still wasn’t sure what it meant, but she had to find out.
Light attracted monsters. It was a bit of a paradox, since they hated the sun, but a single glow in the darkness drew their attention and made them attack. Because Aurelia couldn’t risk them coming for her, she made her way through the dark forest outside the Citadel without a light source. Hardly any moonlight spilled through the treetops, and the blue glow from the essence-detector crystal, which Nossiter held, barely illuminated the ground in front of her.
Why did Calhoun assign me to that old grump? He knows we hate each other. At least Team Member Number Three was Tamerlane, who walked beside Aurelia, wand in hand. Meanwhile, Nossiter swept the detector crystal in front of her as she advanced. Each step seemed thunderously loud compared to Aurelia’s. Aurelia bit back the urge to lecture the woman about it. Her voice would certainly carry farther than Nossiter’s rustling noises.
Monsters weren’t a problem for her, but overconfidence was a ticket to death. While she’d yet to lose a fight against one, she’d seen enough skilled fighters go down to know that she could never, never take her skills for granted. A moment of weakness or a split second of misfortune was all it took to end a life.
She stopped and took a moment to survey her surroundings. Nothing but dark trees. Her eyes couldn’t tell her much, but she trusted her other senses to make up for their shortcomings, and they told her that nothing would jump out just yet. She glanced back in case anything followed her. The Citadel’s silver perimeter was still vaguely visible, but other than that, she didn’t find anything.