Outcast

by C. J. Redwine

  And I need to be out in the Wasteland, free of them both, so that I can track down Rachel and Quinn.

  “Do you have a plan yet?” Willow asks as we leave the stairs behind and enter a spacious corridor with white marble floors that sparkle beneath bronze gas lamps. A bank of wide windows to the right lets in the brilliant light of the setting sun.

  Rachel has been missing for three hours now. Three hours is a decent head start in the Wasteland, but I know I can catch up.

  I will catch up.

  “Logan!” Willow shakes her bound hands in front of my face, the iron chain links slapping together harshly. When I meet her eyes, she leans close and says through gritted teeth, “We’re about to walk into that courtroom. What. Is. The. Plan?”

  Panic shoots through my stomach and somehow lands in my chest, where it feels like a vise is slowly crushing me.

  I don’t have a plan. I don’t have a single viable scenario. All I have is desperation and the terrible fear that I’m about to fail everyone I love.

  The soldier leading us stops abruptly and motions to a narrow door situated between two bronze gas lamps. “You two wait in here until it’s time for the trial to start.” His eyes meet mine, and he lowers his voice. “And I certainly hope that in the time since you told me you were ‘working on it,’ you’ve come up with something, because in about two minutes, you’re going to need to explain it to the one person who can make it happen.”

  Without another word, he motions us inside the cramped little box of a room, leaves the pair of Lankenshire soldiers to stand guard outside the door, and locks us in.

  “The one person who can make it happen . . . we must be meeting with Clarissa Vaughn before the trial starts,” I say.

  Clarissa Vaughn—leader of Lankenshire’s triumvirate and quite possibly the most formidable woman I’ve ever met. Enduring the soldier’s frustration at my lack of a plan will be nothing compared to facing her.

  Willow paces the room, scanning the plain white walls and the knotted pine ceiling like she thinks she can find a secret exit that will dump us straight into the Wasteland. I’m scanning the walls too, for all the good it will do me. We need a plan. A real one. And I’ve got no ideas and no more time to figure it out.

  As if she can read my mind, Willow asks, “Still got nothing?”

  I meet her eyes for a second, letting her see the sheer desperation churning through me, and then turn to the door. I have to tell Clarissa something. Maybe if I look at this from a different angle. If I examine ways we can neutralize the beacons to take the teeth out of the trackers’ threats. If I talk to Coleman Pritchard, head of Lankenshire’s security, about methods to defend the city against the Commander . . .

  Who am I kidding? I know nothing about defending a city against an army, and I can’t tell Clarissa how to neutralize the Rowansmark beacons without seeing one for myself, and even then . . . what if I can’t figure it out? What if—

  “Hey!” Willow smacks my shoulder lightly. “Stop disappearing into your head and listen. I know what to do.”

  I blink and stare at her. “You do?”

  “Don’t act so surprised. I just figured the fastest way to get out of here and into the Wasteland is to remove the obstacles in our way. We’ll start with the trackers and then move on to the army—”

  “You want to take out an entire contingent of Rowansmark trackers—”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “—and then go after an army—”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Not the whole army. Just the leader. Cut off the head and the rest of the body just sort of flops around uselessly.”

  “You want the two of us, who are currently weaponless . . .” I pause as she wriggles her wrist at me. The silver wire she took from her braid shimmers. “Fine, you want the two of us who are mostly weaponless, and who are chained up like criminals, to take out a group of Rowansmark trackers. What are we supposed to use against them? We need a bigger weapon than chains and attitude.”

  “That’s a very negative way to look at this.”

  A bigger weapon than chains and attitude.

  I stare at Willow, but I don’t see her. I finally see possibilities. Scenarios.

  Plans.

  The pain in my stomach eases.

  “We can’t kill all of the Rowansmark trackers,” I say.

  “Speak for yourself.” She glares at me.

  “We need to leave a few alive to testify that Lankenshire had nothing to do with our escape in case other trackers come to the city,” I say slowly as a risk-filled plan for how we can break out of prison without endangering either Lankenshire or the Baalboden survivors takes shape inside my head.

  “And how are we going to escape?”

  “I have a plan.” I can’t believe what I’m about to suggest. “It’s stupid and bold and could fail in a hundred ways before we even get fifteen yards.”

  She grins. “You cover stupid. I’ll take care of bold. Now, what’s the plan?”

  “We’re going to get the Commander to break us out of prison.”

  Chapter Two

  LOGAN

  The air inside the little room grows stale while I pace the floor, talking through the details of the riskiest plan I’ve ever conceived and waiting for Clarissa Vaughn to tell me I’m crazy and that I’ve just cost her people their lives.

  When I’ve finished, I meet Clarissa’s gaze. Her expression tells me nothing. Beside her stands a girl who looks like a younger version of her—right down to the proud tilt of her chin and the air of power wrapping around her like she was born to it. Clarissa introduced her as Cassidy when they arrived. Cassidy’s shoulders are ramrod straight beneath her white tunic and dark-green cloak. A black scarf is pinned to the right shoulder of her cloak by a gold medallion with a scale etched onto its surface. Books lie on one side of the scale. A dragon’s head lies on the other. The books weigh more.

  She’s a courier for Lankenshire. An official emissary charged with handling state business with other city-states. For a moment, I imagine that if Rachel had been born in Lankenshire instead of Baalboden, she might’ve been an emissary for a city-state that valued her brains and her skill without worrying about her gender. Or she might be in the army. Or, eventually, in the triumvirate.

  A small part of me wishes that had been her path. The rest of me holds fast to the girl with the fiery hair who defended me when schoolboys caught me scrounging for food in a trash heap, who challenged my ideas and my sparring skills, and who kissed me like I was the air she desperately needed to breathe.

  Clarissa and Cassidy are still watching me in silence, and I clear my throat.

  “That’s it,” I say. “That’s the plan.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Clarissa says. “You want me to send an emissary to the army outside my gates, tell the Commander that you will give him the device in exchange for freeing you from our dungeon, and then have that emissary lead him to the dungeon through the underground tunnels at midnight to break you out of prison.”

  “Yes.” I try to sound like the prospect doesn’t fill me with dread.

  “In the meantime, you’re going to plead guilty at your trial, and you expect me to hand you over to the Rowansmark trackers while somehow still keeping you in our custody until the Commander can come for you.” Clarissa’s eyes narrow as she studies me.

  I resist the urge to break eye contact with her and say, “Yes, let the trackers have control of the dungeon, but keep them from leaving until dawn by telling them you have to sort out last-minute details like . . . I don’t know . . . having me sign a confession to send to the Commander so that he knows to take up his cause against me with James Rowan? Think of something so that when the Commander comes for me—and he will—the Rowansmark trackers won’t suspect that you were involved.”

  “It’s not a bad plan,” Willow says as she leans against the wall closest to the door.

  “It’s a terrible plan,” Cassidy says, her dark eyes flashing. �
��We’re deceiving the people who can press a button and call the tanniyn to destroy us while simultaneously allowing the army who is threatening our city to access our secret tunnel system. What part of that sounds like a good idea to you?”

  “The part where you realize it’s the only plan you’ve got,” Willow shoots back, somehow managing to look menacing despite the chains that bind her wrists.

  “This afternoon, before the trackers attacked you and the army surrounded my city, you told me you could build a replica of Rowansmark’s tech in exchange for me offering asylum to your people.” Clarissa’s voice cuts through the room like a knife, silencing both Cassidy and Willow.

  I hold her gaze. “I did. But I won’t have time now.”

  “You’ll have until midnight,” she says.

  “It’s not just time. I need supplies. Sixteen-gauge braided copper wire, several high-voltage batteries, thin sheets of silver, and a transmitter capable of sending a signal for at least five hundred yards. And I’d need to be able to work without having trackers looking over my shoulder, which will be difficult given the fact that after the trial, I’ll be in their custody.” I meet Clarissa’s gaze. “I’m sorry. I meant to keep my word. The best I can do now is deflect Rowansmark’s suspicion so that they have no reason to call the tanniyn.”

  “I’m not interested in apologies.” She waves her hand through the air, a gesture at once regal and commanding. “I’m interested in results. Your plan might work, but it’s hardly a guarantee of safety for my people or yours.”

  “I realize that. I don’t know how to—”

  “Cassidy, the beacon, please.” Seeing my raised brows, Clarissa says, “I had one removed from one of the western outposts since the trackers are distracted by your presence in the dungeon and by the Commander outside the gate. It isn’t likely to be missed, but I want to put it back in place as quickly as possible.”

  Cassidy pulls a dark-gray metallic box from the inside of her cloak and hands it to Clarissa. The beacon is about two handspans wide and as thick as the sole of my boot. When Clarissa pops the back off, revealing the powerful tech inside, I run my fingers over the intricate silver mechanisms and then examine a transmitter that’s twice as powerful as the one inside the device Willow hid in the Wasteland. I’m surprised—and impressed—at the difference between the two. This piece of tech makes the device look like a harmless toy. I have to wonder why Rowansmark is expending so much effort to recover something so inferior to the tech they now possess.

  Maybe it really is a matter of restoring honor, as Ian claimed.

  Or maybe James Rowan knows the only way he can gain control over the rest of the city-states is by keeping them from copying and then improving on his tech. That would also explain why my father’s pain atonement sentence alone wasn’t enough to rectify the crime of letting tech like this out of Rowansmark hands. I’m guessing from James Rowan’s perspective, Ian’s mission has nothing to do with honor and everything to do with removing a threat to Rowansmark’s plan to subjugate the rest of the city-states.

  “Can you use any of these parts to make something we can use to protect ourselves?” Clarissa asks.

  The transmitter may be more powerful, but unlike the device’s ability to send the creature in any direction, this one has only two frequencies. One to call the beast and one to keep it away. I smile grimly as I realize what this means. I can keep my promise. I can keep Lankenshire safe.

  “I can do better than that.” I tap the transmitter. “This has two active components. One component generates an ultrasonic sound wave, and the other produces an infrasonic wave. The infrasonic—the sound set low enough to cause the ground to rumble if there’s enough power behind the transmitter—calls the tanniyn. If you disable the infrasonic in each of these beacons, the trackers won’t be able to destroy your city unless one of them has the tech skills it takes to rebuild a transmitter and set it to an exact frequency.”

  “And if one of them does know how to fix it?” Clarissa asks.

  I reach inside the beacon and gently disengage the transmitter from its position. “I assume you or one of the other members of the triumvirate has a necklace set to a sonic frequency that repels the beasts, right?”

  Clarissa pulls a flat disk hanging on a thin silver chain from beneath her tunic.

  “Good. Attach it to the transmitter like this.” I show her how to splice the transmitter’s wire on to one inside the tech she wears. “Now it will amplify your ultrasonic emission—the sonic frequency that repels the tanniyn—by at least three hundred percent.”

  She tucks the necklace and the transmitter away, and says, “Do we need to remove the transmitters from every beacon to disable them?”

  I shake my head and show them how to disable the infrasonic component inside the tech.

  Clarissa taps three times on the door and then studies me while Cassidy hides the now-useless beacon inside her cloak again. “You upheld your end of our bargain. I’ll do the same. I will send an emissary to the Commander with the terms of your deal. And your people will be offered asylum within our city as long as they agree to be governed by our laws.”

  “Drake is leader in my place.” Something tight wraps itself around my chest as I realize I’m leaving the rest of the survivors behind, and I might not be coming back. I can’t guarantee that I’ll survive my encounter with the Commander, much less my attempts to rescue Rachel and bring down Rowansmark.

  One of the soldiers guarding the room’s entrance taps once before opening the door. “All clear, ma’am.”

  Clarissa nods but makes no move to leave the room. Instead, she continues to watch me. “What will you do?” she asks. “Once you give the device to the Commander—provided you survive that encounter—what will you do next?”

  I meet her gaze. “I’m going to Rowansmark.”

  The tiny creases around her eyes deepen. “If voluntarily giving yourself over to the Commander isn’t suicide, heading to Rowansmark certainly is. Why not just go to the other city-states and show them how to disable the beacons?”

  “Because Ian—the tracker who was disguised as one of us—took my . . .” The words to describe what Rachel is to me won’t come. “He took Rachel. And he’s going to kill her if I don’t show up at Rowansmark with the device to ransom her back.”

  “The device you’re supposed to give to the Commander?” Clarissa frowns. “I don’t want him to blame me for a double cross, Logan.”

  “He’ll be dead before he has a chance to blame anyone for anything,” Willow says as the soldier in the hall pokes his head in again.

  “Ma’am, the proceedings are ready to start. Hallway remains clear of trackers.”

  “Thank you, Paul.” Clarissa leans closer to me. “I hope your plan for ransoming Rachel is stronger than your plan for getting out of Lankenshire, because you’re going to need a miracle to survive Rowansmark.”

  “I understand that it’s a trap, but—”

  “Yes, a death trap,” Cassidy says, holding her cloak close. “Clearly you haven’t heard the news that Schoensville and Thorenburg, formerly allies of the Commander, have committed their entire armies to the defense of Rowansmark in anticipation of the Commander and Carrington marching south. The word is that it was either protect Rowansmark or have their cities burned to the ground just like Baalboden and Carrington.”

  “Carrington is gone?” My mouth is dry, my heart racing. How can I possibly ransom Rachel and destroy the tech inside Rowansmark when I’ll have not one but three armies waiting for me there?

  “It is,” Clarissa says, her voice crisp, though her eyes are shadowed.

  “You can’t show up at Rowansmark with just the two of you and expect to win.” Cassidy moves toward the door.

  “I count for at least ten,” Willow says.

  Cassidy rolls her eyes. “Maybe you do, but still. Ten against three armies? You don’t have a chance.”

  She’s right. I close my eyes and play through the scenarios. Any way
I look at it, there are no clear-cut paths. No easy solutions. I promised to find Rachel. I also promised to destroy both the Commander and Ian for the pain they’ve caused so many people. And I can’t imagine finding any peace until the threat of Rowansmark’s tech has been put to rest. Since Ian, Rachel, and the tech will be in the same location, I can’t keep one promise without finding a way to deliver on the others.

  But how can I reach Rachel, kill Ian, and obliterate Rowansmark’s threat all by myself? Especially when Rowansmark is already expecting me? Even if Willow counts for ten, the odds are nearly insurmountable.

  “Logan?” Clarissa’s voice compels me to open my eyes, but I don’t see her. I see the army outside the gates. The city-states up north who don’t realize that they can alter the transmitters in their beacons and break the yoke of Rowansmark’s tyranny. The leaders who might recognize the need to sacrifice now for the sake of lasting peace later.

  Leaders who might not listen to me, but who would listen to the one man who has always held more sway over the other leaders than anyone else: the Commander.

  As long as I can convince him that it’s in our best interests to work together.

  My hand shakes as I raise my fingers to touch the scarred brand on the side of my neck—a brand the Commander burned into my flesh while I was in his dungeon. I can’t think of the man without seeing my mother dying on the streets of Baalboden, flogged for daring to leave her home without a Protector. Oliver bleeding to death in a wagon, killed by his leader’s sword for the crime of being important to Rachel. Jared committing treason because he could find no other way to protect others against the monster who ruled his city.

  The thought of being allied, even temporarily, with the Commander makes me sick. I want to hurt him. I want to light him on fire and watch him burn, but I can’t. Not if I want to keep my promise to stop Rowansmark, deliver justice to Ian, and protect Rachel. An alliance with the enemy of my enemies might feel like walking barefoot over shattered glass, but it’s the only logical course of action. Emotion isn’t going to help me reach my agenda. I can swallow the rage and the bitterness long enough to keep my promises.