by Brondos, Pam
“Thanks for the encouraging words.” She stepped back when he released the long pole affixed to the wagon brake. The wagon rolled forward.
Soris and Andris ran out of the trees and sprinted for the wagon. Andris grabbed the edge and pulled himself onto the bed. Soris veered off and stopped in front of Nat.
“We moved them farther in so no one can see you from the road. She’s already at work. You’re certain you don’t want me to stay?”
“Soris, get in now,” Andris barked from atop the rolling wagon. Soris’ eyes shifted from Nat to him.
“Go, I’ll see you soon.” She reached out and touched the rough fabric of his tunic.
“See you soon.” His eyes lingered on hers, then he pulled away and ran for the wagon, leaving her standing alone in the middle of the road.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Annin knelt in front of Rever. The collar of his tunic was open, and she pressed her fingers against the pale skin above his collarbone. Her other hand dangled at her side. The outline of her closed Nala eye dwarfed that of her human eye.
Minutes passed. Nat eased away from Annin and edged between two trees. The spot didn’t provide a view of the treetops, but she could easily see the forest, Annin, and the road. She took a long look at the dead bodies hidden under a cluster of bushes covered in red berries, and her stomach lurched again. She rocked on the balls of her feet, wanting to catch up with Soris and leave the bodies far behind. The forest felt lonely.
More time passed. Annin hadn’t moved. Nat wondered if Mervin and the others had reached the bend, and she thought of Soris. He’d said it wouldn’t be easy; none of this was easy.
Annin’s hand twitched. Nat glanced through the branches, checking the road and the forest behind her again before moving closer to Annin. Her companion opened her eyes and sat back on her heels. A look of exhaustion settled over her face. Nat handed Annin a water gourd. She swallowed without taking her eyes off Rever. She took another drink and water trickled down her chin.
“How did it go?”
“How did it go?” Annin eyed Nat. “It was fantastic.” Her words were laced with sarcasm. She slapped the cap on the gourd. “Imagine taking all the bits of color in a picture and rearranging each one so the picture looks totally different. Sound easy?”
“No.” Nat blew out a sharp breath.
“Right answer, Natalie. Now go somewhere else, you’re meddling with my focus. I’m not done.” Annin waved her hand.
“You’re planning on adding a few chapters?” Nat fidgeted with her crossbow. Her anxiousness was overtaking the nausea caused by being around the dead bodies. Annin’s expression soured even more. “It’s just taking you longer than I thought, and we may not catch up with Mervin.”
“You try to do an implant on someone who’s knocked out. It’s ten times harder than when they’re just dreaming.” Annin glanced at the bodies near the berry-laden bush. “If you’re in a rush, remove their uniforms now so we don’t have to do it later.”
“You want me to strip the dead soldiers?” Nat felt her stomach do another flip.
“No, I want you to remove their uniforms. Leave the undergarments.” Annin closed her eyes. “Now be quiet so I can finish this.”
Nat wrung her hands. She eyed the boots sticking out from beneath the bushes and walked as quietly as she could to the bodies. Removing the boots was simple, but when she ran her fingers over the thick blue vest buttoned around Willem’s chest, her mouth filled with bile. She let her fingers do the work and tried not to look at their faces as each garment came off. Finally, she sat back on a bed of dried pine needles and stared at the pile of blue uniforms at her side.
“Two are plenty.” Nat flinched, surprised by Annin’s voice. Annin took a long drink of water and wiped the sweat rolling down the side of her face. “We don’t need his.” She gestured toward Rever. She grabbed a set of blue garments and stuffed it in her satchel. Nat did the same, her fingers poking through the bloodied cut on Willem’s uniform. She tucked the fabric farther into her bag, then lifted the strap over her shoulder.
The soldiers’ legs stuck out from the bush at crooked angles. Dirt and bits of dried leaves clung to their long undergarments. Rever, fully uniformed, looked out of place next to his stripped companions. Nat broke a few branches and dropped them over their bare feet, feeling they deserved something more than to lie naked in the forest.
“Feel nothing for them, Natalie,” Annin said as if reading her mind. “They’d have tortured and killed any one of us without another thought.” She shouldered her bag and ran into the woods.
Nat glanced at the bodies one last time and sprinted away.
“So what happened to them? What’d you implant in Rever’s head?” Nat asked when she caught up to Annin.
“They found a merchant wagon filled with wine near the ruins of the Emissary House. The merchant bribed them with a few bottles, and they got drunk and started for a leisurely ride back to Rustbrook. A band of duozi working with the merchant ambushed them, killed the two soldiers, and beat Rever until they thought he was dead, then made off with two of their uniforms. They’ll guess the duozi took off west toward the swamps. Don’t look so skeptical. He’ll believe it. There are enough elements of truth for it to stick. From what I garnered from his dreams, Rever hates duozi. I have no doubt the implant will work.” She jumped over a log.
“You’re the expert.” Nat peered through the branches above them as they ran. The sun filtered through the still treetops. She felt uneasy. Too much time had passed since Soris and the others had left them behind. They moved swiftly through the forest. The worry that Annin had taken too long pushed Nat to run faster, and her feet flew over the ground. A flash of brown road showed through the trees. She slowed her pace as the bend in the road came into view. It was empty.
“The wagon’s not here.” A tight knot formed in her stomach.
“What a surprise.” Annin plopped on the ground and shrugged off the bag.
“Get up, we need to go look.” Nat grabbed her arm, ignoring the weary expression on Annin’s face.
“They’re gone, Natalie. Here, have a drink.” She lifted the water gourd in Nat’s direction. “Don’t look so shocked. Andris wasn’t going to wait for us. He just said he would so Soris wouldn’t fly off and do something stupid. I imagine the conversation when Andris broke the news that they were heading on to complete the mission without us didn’t go over so well. He’ll probably win Soris over by telling him how much safer you’ll be back at Gennes’ camp, waiting.” Annin rolled her eyes.
“What?” Nat felt every muscle in her body tense. “Why would he want to leave us behind? He needs us.” She looked at the empty road, aghast.
“You don’t mix emotions with a mission, Natalie. Andris is too seasoned a soldier not to recognize the risk in keeping you two together. Sit down.” She patted the ground next to her. Nat slid down and stared at the empty road beyond the trees in front of her. “Soris is in love with you.” Annin shifted her weight and leaned her head against the wide trunk.
“Love, no. He’s not in love with me,” she said, feeling her cheeks flush.
“All of us can see it, even that crazy Hermit. I’m not sure why you can’t. Funny how the object of one’s affection can be so blind, or distracted in your case. You’ve been so consumed with protecting him, saving him from being a duozi, you haven’t noticed how he watches you and jumps to help you, listens intently to your every word. He sees your dreams, Natalie.”
“What does his seeing my dreams have to do with anything?” she asked, feeling unnerved by the intense look on Annin’s face.
“He didn’t tell you?” Annin nodded in surprise. “Interesting. Well, he must have had his reasons, so it’s not for me to explain.” She shrugged.
Nat tossed her water gourd to the ground. “Would you stop toying—”
“I don’t know exactly how you feel about him, but that doesn’t matter.” Annin cut her off. “It’s obvious you like him.
That’s enough to worry Andris. He told me we needed to keep you two apart, that Soris might act rashly if you were in danger and could foul up the mission.”
“Staying to guard you was a ruse then?” Nat narrowed her eyes.
“I can’t say I really needed you, and you did not help my concentration,” she added with emphasis. She stood and brushed the pine needles from the back of her tunic, then looked down at Nat. “The question now is what are you going to do?”
Nat took a deep breath, struggling to control her anger. She stood and faced Annin. “I didn’t become a Sister, leave my home, and fight the Nala just so I could retreat to Gennes’ camp.” Her voice reverberated around them. “I didn’t hold a dead duozi girl in my arms or watch Soris lose control in the Nala den to let the chance of hurting Mudug slip away. If Andris thinks so little of his brother and of me, that’s his problem, and he can just suck it up. I am going to Rustbrook.”
A smile crept over Annin’s face. “I knew there was a reason I put up with you.” She shouldered her bag and extended her hand to Nat. “Wesdrono Street it is then.”
“Wesdrono Street?” She grasped Annin’s hand and gave her a suspicious look, thinking of Mervin’s comment before he left with the others.
“You didn’t think I was actually going to obey Andris’ order, did you?” Annin’s Nala eye flashed in the filtered sunlight. She squeezed Nat’s hand. “Mervin and Matilda have always had my back. Now all of us have yours.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The last wagon in the convoy rumbled onto the wooden slat bridge. The wheels made a slapping noise as they rolled over the planks. Nat and Annin dropped from behind the trunk on the back of the wagon into the thick grass. They ducked under the bridge supports and hid among the long reeds. The wagon pulled onto the road on the other side of the swollen creek. Nat let out a breath, finally relaxing.
“I thought we were done for back there with the wool merchant.” She stretched her aching arms and looked through the slats above her. Crimson streaks crossed the darkening sky.
“So did I.” Annin unwrapped the bandage that covered her Nala eye. “He kept looking at me.” She leaned back against the sloping ground. “‘Join the convoy, we’ll blend in,’” Annin mimicked Nat’s voice. “Insanity.”
“It worked.” Nat kicked off a boot. A large pebble rolled from its mouth. “Other than getting thrown off the wool merchant’s wagon after he caught us hiding behind his bales, it worked perfectly. What did he call me? A ruff belly what?”
Annin laughed. “A ruff belly filer. It’s this amphibian that clings to the side of fish or turtle shells. It wasn’t meant as a compliment.”
“I got that.” Nat stuck her foot back into her boot and watched the water rush beneath the bridge. “Change now?” she asked. Annin nodded. She unhooked the filthy cloak she’d filched from a merchant’s wagon and pulled Willem’s uniform from her bag. She hitched the soldier’s blue pants over her leggings and shoved her tunic into the gaping waist.
“This is huge.” The uniform hung from Annin’s shoulders and covered the tips of her fingers. “I look like I’ve been swallowed by a Nala.”
Nat grabbed the shoulder seams and pulled the loose fabric behind Annin’s neck. She untied her hair and twisted the hair tie around the ball of fabric. A blue notch stuck out between Annin’s shoulder blades, but the uniform no longer sagged in the front.
“Throw the cape over your shoulders,” Nat said as she shoved bandages in the soldier’s boots to fill the empty space around her feet. The floppy guard’s cap fell over her eyes. She tilted it back and tucked her hair under the wide band. Another carriage approached. “Ready?”
Annin nodded and slipped her bag under her soldier’s cape. Nat considered the misshapen lumps bulging from Annin’s disguise and hoped night would come soon to blur the lines of the ill-fitting uniforms.
The carriage rumbled over the bridge. They sneaked out from underneath the support beams, crawled onto the wooden planks of the bridge, then sprinted behind the wagon, using its bulky mass for cover. Nat felt like she was running in clown boots. Annin crossed the bridge with a splayed gait. Rows of towering trees greeted them when they reached the opposite bank. They ran silently under the moss-covered branches that twisted toward the darkening sky. Above them, crowning the top of the hill, was the geometric castle. Annin paused under the shadow of a tree.
“It’s been a while,” Annin said to herself as she gazed up at the castle. Nat joined her. She’d never seen Rustbrook from this view. Unlike the congested streets and crammed markets of the south side of the city, the north side of Rustbrook was an expanse of green. A hedge maze bordered by terraced parks spilled down the hill from the castle.
“That’s how we’ll get into the castle, but on the east side.” Annin pointed to a wall above the maze. Her hand dropped. Shadows hid her expression from Nat.
“How do we get to Mervin’s?” Nat asked, wondering what she’d say when she saw Andris. She wasn’t sure which emotion was stronger: her anger toward Andris or her uncertainty about what Annin had said about Soris. She cared deeply for Soris and now knew he felt the same. But she questioned Annin’s notion that Soris felt anything as powerful as love for her.
“Simple enough, unless we run into guards.” Annin said, breaking into her thoughts. Annin took off, leaving Nat feeling uneasy as she chased after her.
The pair ran up the hill past the grand trees. Lights flickered on top of the white stone wall surrounding the city. They paused behind a thick trunk and observed the wall. Guards walked along the top of the barrier. Their figures passed by flickering torch flames. Annin sprinted to the next tree.
Nat followed Annin through the shadows of the trees until they reached the base of the great wall. Annin pressed her ear against the wall as if listening to its inner workings. Nat noticed worn House emblems set into the stone just as Annin placed her fingertips over the wing of an engraved bird. She pushed the wing, and a long slit, as tall as Nat, appeared in the stone wall.
“Give me a hand,” Annin whispered.
Nat placed her palms against the cold stone and strained to move the massive slab. The crack widened into a narrow opening to a dusty passage. Annin removed her bag and tossed it into the dark. It landed with a thud. She squeezed through the opening and Nat followed, catching the loose fabric of the uniform on the edge of the entrance. Annin shoved the stone back in place. The passage fell into darkness. Nat breathed in the stale, dusty air and sneezed.
“A little light,” Annin whispered
Nat rummaged in her bag until her fingers latched onto her orb. Light spilled from the sphere and filled the narrow passage. The walls were covered in a frieze hidden by a thick layer of cobwebs and dust. Nat brushed her hand over it. Birds with long vines clamped in their beaks flew in the sun’s rays. Engravings of crossed swords bordered the bottom of the wall. Her eyes followed the carvings as she brushed away more cobwebs.
“Where are we?”
“Shush!” Annin pressed her finger to her lips and motioned for Nat to follow. Little puffs of dust rose from the floor with each step they took. A few paces in, the passage narrowed, forcing them to turn sideways. Nat’s nose brushed the wall, and long smears of dirt covered her uniform and face. When they reached a split in the passage, Annin knelt down and ran her finger over a loose stone. A fragment toppled into her hand, and an iron key clattered onto the floor. The echo rang down the passage. A satisfied look passed over Annin’s face as she held the key. She rose and beckoned Nat to follow.
They passed under a low opening. Nat’s orb spun ahead of them. Its light cut into the darkness and momentarily illuminated sun and bird carvings covering the walls. They walked silently through the dark passage until they arrived at an oval-shaped intersection. Nat leaned against the wall and took a long breath, trying to overcome her feeling of claustrophobia.
“It’s safe to talk now. The first passage we came through is hidden behind the guards’ quarters. We alwa
ys keep quiet when we pass that way.” Annin brushed dust and cobwebs off a door handle opposite Nat and inserted the key into a large lock.
“Who is ‘we’?” Nat asked, thinking of the carvings.
“Mainly Sisters. Sometimes people who need to leave the castle without being seen. A whole network runs through the castle out to the Representatives’ and Regent Buildings.” She wiggled the key in the lock. “We’ll use the passages to get Emilia out, if we find her.”
Nat looked down the darkened hall and wondered if the woman who’d gone berserk in the Chemist’s lab could remain quiet in such a confined space.
“Andris would never be able to find his way around here.” Annin’s face twisted as she cranked the key to one side. “At least not without me.” She winked at Nat and the lock clicked. The door groaned and swung open.
They entered a small boxy room. Nat’s knee bumped into a row of hinges set into the wall. She rubbed the bruise and wondered if Mervin’s way into Rustbrook was easier than this.
“It’s going to be tight,” Annin said as she dropped to the floor. “Keep quiet and follow me.” She lifted a rectangular hatch cut into the wall. The hinges creaked. Nat cringed, hoping no one could hear it. Annin shoved her bag through the opening and disappeared into the dark hole. Nat’s orb spun in close circles, then zipped after Annin.
Nat got onto her hands and knees and peered into the tiny space. Her orb spun slowly in the dusty tunnel, casting light on the soles of Annin’s boots. She tossed her bag in front of her and inched forward like a worm. Her orb floated slowly between her bag and Annin’s feet. She heard a creak followed by a long scraping sound. Fresh air poured over Nat, and she took long gulping breaths. She watched Annin wiggle out of another opening and quickly followed.
Nat shoved her bag into the open and popped her head out of the passage. Her heartbeat settled as she looked around the odd room. Brass tubes ran up and down the wall and gleamed in the light of her orb. Shiny cups, shaped like half an orange, capped the end of each tube. She stood, brushed dust from her blue tunic, and examined the tubes. A thin brass disc covered each opening.