Night Quest

by Susan Krinard

  Artemis closed her eyes. “Pericles—”

  “They’ll have to kill me, Artemis,” he said. “They won’t let me go, and they can’t keep me in this cell forever.”

  Daniel had said that Pericles’s fate wouldn’t be determined until he returned from helping Garret find Timon, but Artemis had never doubted what he meant. Pericles would die.

  Unless she set him free.

  She backed away from the door and leaned against the opposite wall. A mistake now would not only betray Garret but possibly put other half-blood children in danger.

  Even if she tried to use her empathy now, it had never worked as a simple lie detector. She had to rely on her own judgment. If she surrendered all belief in that judgment and assumed that Pericles was the villain Daniel believed him to be, she would lose the dream she had refused to abandon for so long.

  “There’s something else,” Pericles said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Did you know that they’ve got other Freeblood prisoners here, in another building?”

  Artemis started. “What?”

  “I think it’s a secret from everyone but a few of their leaders. There are five of them, and I was in a cell next to them for a little while, before the humans took me out to question me.”

  “They must have been captured during one of the rogues’ attacks on Delos.”

  “The prisoners say they weren’t part of any attack and were taken because they were mistaken for the ones who are trying to break in. They say that the rogues outside want to kill them, because they’re opposed to what the child-stealers are doing.”

  The story sounded utterly implausible to Artemis. “Opposed? In what way?”

  “The same way we are. Why should we be the only ones?” He took a breath. “Listen to me, Artemis. They’re like these colonists, working against the thieves, but from a different direction. Isn’t that important?”

  A bud of hope formed somewhere beneath Artemis’s ribs. “Have you ever met these Freebloods before?” she asked.

  “I didn’t see their faces,” Pericles said. “Their voices weren’t familiar.”

  “Then why did they confide in you?”

  “I don’t know,” Pericles admitted.

  “What did you tell them about yourself?”

  “Just that I was being held for things I didn’t do.”

  “Did they know how you came to be here and think that you could help them?”

  “I don’t know!” Pericles said, frustration rising in his voice. “They said that when they tried to explain why they were in the area, the leaders here didn’t believe them, just like they don’t believe me. Or you.”

  “Garret’s wife, a Bloodlady, was killed by Freeblood raiders.”

  There was a thump from behind the door as Pericles sat heavily on his cot. “He had an Opir mate?” he asked. “I didn’t know.”

  “I did not know, either, until a very short time ago,” she said. “You can see that he has reasons for mistrusting Freebloods.”

  “But he still helped us,” Pericles said. The cot creaked as he got up again. “Why are the leaders here keeping these prisoners a secret? What if they know these Opiri really are working against the rogues but can’t admit that there are Freebloods who aren’t their enemies?”

  “You are suggesting some kind of conspiracy,” Artemis said. “Daniel, the leader of the colony, has no love for Freebloods, either, but I see no reason to believe that he would deliberately hide evidence that some might be allies.”

  “Then why did you tell him that you’re a Bloodlady? You must not have believed he’d treat you fairly if you told him the truth.”

  She wondered how Pericles had learned what Garret had done. “It was Garret’s decision,” she said. “He did not consult me in advance.”

  “But you aren’t a prisoner, are you?” Pericles asked with uncharacteristic bitterness.

  “You assume too much,” she said. “You still know only what other Freebloods have told you, without objective evidence of any kind.”

  “You want to believe that we can live differently than we always have,” Pericles said. “You’re looking for Freebloods who can see something beyond their own ability to obtain serfs and rise to become Bloodlords. Maybe these prisoners are what you’ve been looking for.

  “Talk to them,” Pericles urged. “Just listen to what they have to say.”

  “I doubt I would be permitted to see them if they are being held in secret,” Artemis said. “But I will do what I can.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  His relief was so obvious that Artemis was glad that she could give him some measure of peace at such a terrible time. But now she had to determine how to gain access to the other prisoners.

  Asking Daniel directly was out of the question, and she wouldn’t expect Garret to intercede for her, which would undoubtedly arouse suspicion.

  Keeping low, she peered out the jail door. The guard, if there had been one, hadn’t returned, but there was a change in the air, an electric tension that didn’t make sense to her until she saw a woman running from one of the barracks, a rifle clutched in her hands.

  Alarm. Fear. The rise of adrenaline in bloodstreams, the instincts of fight or flight.

  She shrank back inside the door until the woman was out of sight and then slipped out. As she worked to hide the damage to the lock, raised voices echoed across the compound, and other figures—male and female, human and Opir—began to spill out into the commons from the surrounding buildings.

  Something was wrong, and Artemis suspected she knew what it was. She was just turning back toward the cabin when Garret walked into view, obviously looking for her. As she raised her hand to catch his attention, a bell began to ring from somewhere along the walls. Colonists armed with rifles and compound bows dashed toward the front gate and ramparts.

  Garret saw Artemis and jogged toward her. “Where have you been?” he asked, gripping her arms. His concern swept over her, possessive and a little afraid. “When I woke up, and you weren’t there...”

  “I wanted to walk a little,” she said, her body responding almost instantly to his touch and his scent and the vivid memory of their lovemaking. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  “I know you can take care of yourself,” he said. “But I don’t like to think I did something to scare you away.”

  “What you did,” she said, “was anything but frightening. But I...” She hesitated, faced by an unpalatable decision. “I was too inclined to continue, and I knew you needed your rest.”

  “You thought I wasn’t up to it?” he asked, drawing his fingers over her cheeks and lips. “You look much better. I hope I had something to do with that.”

  A part of her reveled in the desire in his voice and mind, the slightly rough texture of his fingertips, the way his body so clearly reacted to her presence. She wanted to run back to the cabin and begin all over again.

  But the bell was still ringing, and neither one of them could ignore what it must portend. She covered his hand with hers and clasped his fingers.

  “What has happened?” she asked.

  A little of the brightness left Garret’s eyes, and his emotions darkened. “A Freeblood attack,” he said. “Daniel knew another one would be coming soon. There’s not much chance that the rogues can break in, but everyone who can fight is taking up defensive positions.”

  “Does Daniel know why these rogues continue to attack when they have so little chance of succeeding?” she asked, thinking of what Pericles had told her.

  “We didn’t discuss it,” Garret said with a frown. “But whatever they want, they have to be reminded that they’re the ones who suffer most in these attacks. If enough of them die, they may give up.”

  Artemis looked away. “I’m sorry,” Garret said, clearly meaning i
t, “But they’re as much a threat to you as to anyone else here.” He cupped her chin. “You’re not expected to fight, but I have to help the colonists. If you want to do something, you can stay with the children and the noncombatants who are looking after them. I’ll be on the stockade.”

  He kissed her, hard and fast, and then was gone. Artemis felt cold inside, as if his kiss had pulled all the warmth out of her body. Letting him fight alone felt utterly wrong to her, and she knew it wasn’t impossible that he could be hurt.

  But the odds were small, and the colony didn’t appear to be in any serious danger.

  There was still another way she might make a difference.

  Coming to a decision, she began to search. Pericles had said that the prisoners were hidden, so it didn’t seem likely that they would be in the obvious place.

  In the chaos of the colonists’ response to the rogues’ attack, no one seemed to notice that she was heading away from the battle. Nevertheless, she walked briskly and with a show of purpose until she was among the storage buildings and more extensive gardens close to the northern wall, where the compound abutted the river and the fortified bridge. A handful of soldiers were patrolling the parapet there, but their attention was focused outward.

  Artemis moved among the buildings, listening and scenting the air. If Daniel meant to hide the prisoners from the Opiri colonists, he would have needed to muffle smell as well as sound.

  In the end, she found that only one of the buildings was guarded. A single apparently human soldier paced back and forth in front of the door, his attention clearly focused on the sounds of the battle he hadn’t been permitted to join.

  Unless the structure contained some treasure of greater worth than the children of Delos, Artemis thought, it must hold the secret prisoners.

  Now she had another choice to make, and a dangerous one. Under the circumstances, she couldn’t imagine that the guard would simply let a stranger in to see captives she should not even know existed. But if she forced her way in...

  Artemis almost turned back. But a powerful feeling of something very like compulsion sent her running between the doused torches, creeping in the shadows and using all her survival skills to reach the side of the building, just out of the guard’s sight. She waited until her breathing was steady again and then inched forward until she was only a few feet away from the soldier.

  She struck the human with carefully measured strength, caught him as he began to fall and laid him out on the ground. A set of keys hung on his belt. She found the right one, opened the lock and carried the guard inside the building, laying him down gently.

  She knew at once that Pericles had been correct: there were five Opiri here, each one in a separate cell.

  “Who are you?” a male voice asked. The others shifted and murmured.

  Of course they would know by her scent that she was not their usual guard, Artemis thought. She hesitated again, wondering how to begin.

  “You are one of us,” the voice said. It held a vibrant, commanding note that suggested an Opir of age and experience, reminiscent of a Bloodlord or Bloodmaster rather than a typical Freeblood.

  It was also eerily familiar.

  “I spoke to Pericles,” she said, bypassing unnecessary explanations. “He conveyed to me what you had claimed about your opposition to the rogues who are stealing half-blood children.”

  There was a measure of silence as the speaker absorbed her words. “What Pericles told you is correct,” he said. “But who are you?”

  “Someone who also opposes the rogues,” she said.

  “But you are not human.”

  “I am Opir,” she said.

  “Not from this colony.”

  Artemis approached the speaker’s cell. “How do you know?” she asked.

  “You are the Opir who arrived with the human, are you not?”

  Realizing she had already revealed too much, Artemis saw no reason to lie. “Yes,” she said.

  “And you trust Pericles?”

  “I did not know that he was an accused child-stealer.”

  “So the humans claim,” the speaker said. “What is your relationship to the human who came with you?”

  Naturally the Freeblood would detect Garret’s scent on her body. “We are searching for a child taken by the rogues,” she said, dodging his question.

  “Then that is why the half-blood commander came to question us.”

  “Did you tell him what you told Pericles?” she asked.

  “We told him and were not believed.” Artemis heard fabric rustle as he moved behind the door. “They will not believe we could be working for a common cause.”

  “And how are you doing this?” she asked. “Are you fighting those who steal innocents? Are you freeing children?”

  “We are still gathering others who share our beliefs,” he said, “convincing them that this wholesale abduction will only lead to another war that may destroy us all.”

  “And that is your sole purpose? To prevent another war?”

  “No. That is, not all of it. We believe that Freebloods need not be rogues, killing each other over humans and accepting either a short, brutish life or a constant struggle to maintain status in the stagnant world of the Citadels. We believe there is another—”

  “Another way,” Artemis interrupted. “You sound very much like someone I used to know.”

  “I do know you,” he said. “I know why you were exiled from Oceanus.”

  “Then everything you say is merely tailored to win my sympathy,” she said. “I cannot help you.” She spun on her heel and headed for the door.

  “Wait!” he called after her. Fingers scraped at the hatch over the aperture cut into his door. “I know you have a gift. Touch my hand.”

  She froze, her heartbeat slamming to a halt. Almost as if drawn by some ancient sorcery, she drifted back to the cell door and opened the hatch.

  The face she saw through the opening was not one she recognized. But when he pushed long, slender fingers through the gap and she touched them, she knew.

  “Kron—” she began.

  “My real name is not known here,” he said. “I go by the name Nomos. The world believes that Kronos is dead, and now I am known as a Freeblood. But if you still believe as I do, you realize that the words I speak are true.”

  Artemis didn’t bother saying it wasn’t possible. It clearly was. Kronos had not died in challenge. He had left Oceanus alive. He had changed his face—with genetic manipulation, or with surgery—and his name. He was in hiding.

  And he was...he must be doing the work he claimed, the same work she had tried to take up in his absence.

  What if they know these Opiri really are working against the rogues but can’t admit that there are Freebloods who aren’t their enemies? Pericles had asked. She’d scoffed at the idea of such a conspiracy. But now?

  “Can you get us out, Artemis?” Kronos asked. “I fear that if you do not, our fate will be the same as that of every other Freeblood prisoner Daniel and his soldiers have ever taken alive.”

  She closed her eyes. The question was no surprise to her. What came as a shock was the depth of feeling she still had for her former master, the sense of obligation and loyalty even his supposed death had not erased. Kronos had been family to her when all her old human connections had vanished along with her humanity.

  “I know you must feel I abandoned you,” he said. “I escaped, leaving you to do the work in Oceanus. I only learned much later that you had been exiled. I spoke to many Freebloods, and heard that you were in the south. I was hoping to find you, Artemis. To have you at my side again.”

  “You were looking for me when you were captured?” she whispered.

  “It was one of my goals,” he said. “As the humans say, ‘in the wrong place at the wrong ti
me.’ But now we can work together to end this madness and lead the most oppressed Opiri from the path of ruination.” He pressed his face close to the aperture. “You are our only hope.”

  Backing away from the door, she wrapped her arms around her chest. Old loyalties and new. They were in direct conflict, and she knew she had no hope of convincing Daniel that these Opiri were speaking the truth. Though she might make Garret believe her, she would only force him to turn against his friend.

  “It is the human, isn’t it?” Kronos asked, sympathy in his voice. “You have some affection for him. Pericles said that he saved your life.”

  “He did.”

  “And yet it is more than that. You were never like my other vassals, Artemis. In so many ways.”

  She banged her fist against the wall. “Rogues are attacking the colony as we speak,” she said. “There is no time—”

  “No time,” he repeated softly. “Help me, Artemis.”

  “And if I do? What will you do?”

  “Go north. Try to discover a way to organize a resistance to this Bloodlord who takes children. I have developed contacts over a wide region, and you know that I can make other Opiri listen to me. That is why they tried to kill me in Oceanus. Let me try, Artemis.”

  He was right, she thought. If anyone could persuade other exiles to turn against the child-stealers, it would be Kronos. He could be instrumental in saving Timon and every other child who had been taken. He could unite Freebloods as she never could, even with her abilities. And in any case, her empathy had proven to be far more a burden than a gift.

  “I will,” she said. She glanced at the guard who, to her great relief, was beginning to move slightly. “This may be your only chance to escape. But you must swear to me, Kronos, that you will not harm any of the people in this colony as you leave it.”

  “If we must fight,” he said, “we will take great care not to do lasting harm to anyone here.”

  Artemis knew she couldn’t ask for more. And since she would be with him and his disciples, she would do everything within her power to make sure that such fighting wouldn’t be necessary.