by Lizzy Ford
Aveline tugged the necklace from her shirt that was given to her by Mohammed, the scientist in the basement who cared for the great trees that generated electricity. The stone was dark, indicating Tiana was not located in the apartment.
How long had she been gone?
She snatched her weapons off the trunk and raced out of Tiana’s room, down the elevator, and back into the dark, snowy streets. Aveline sucked in cold air that burned her lungs. She started to run in the direction of the inner city and then stopped. Her hand went to the necklace around her neck.
Mohammed had a deformity, one he had been unwilling to admit to when she asked him about it. It allowed him to create the necklaces he had made for Tiana and Tiana’s dead twin. When Aveline and Tiana were close, the necklaces came alive and grew bright. When they were apart, they were dark. Although, in prison, the light had been faint, not gone entirely, as it was now.
What kind of magic did Mohammed possess, and was it possible for him to make the necklace stronger? Or at least tell her how far away Tiana was, if the light at the pendant’s center went out?
Tiana had not had too much of a head start, only a few hours. After a split second of debate, Aveline returned to the pyramid and raced to the nearest stairwell leading beneath it, to the part of the pyramid reserved for slaves and the day-to-day duties needed to keep the privileged elite living comfortably.
She hurried through the maze of hallways until she reached the section she sought. Slowing, Aveline’s hair lifted at the power of the electricity radiating off the massive metal trees behind the doors ahead of her. She entered the large bay without knocking. The living quarters for the scientist and his slave were off to the side, and she strode through the area designated as a control center to the door leading into the private quarters.
Their door was locked. She pounded on it and waited. Unable to stand still without fidgeting, she shrugged her shoulders, paced, counted to five and then pounded on the door harder.
It opened, and the small scientist peered up at her. “Is the power off?” he asked.
“I need to talk to you about this.” She held up the pendant.
“Aveline?” The handsome young man who appeared behind Mohammed stood close to Rocky’s height and possessed dark hair, currently ruffled, and handsome features that made her temporarily forget her purpose.
“Hi, Jose,” she breathed.
“Are you well?” he asked quickly.
“What is wrong with the power?” Mohammed asked and pushed past her. Dressed in a nightgown, he hurried to the consoles where Jose had told her they could control the electricity.
“Nothing,” she said, blinking out of the trance she went into whenever she crossed paths with Jose.
“I came to see you and heard you were in prison,” Jose said.
Her cheeks grew warm. “Long story,” she mumbled. “But I’m back at my duty position now.” Embarrassed Jose knew her personal business, she spun and went to Mohammed. “I need to know more about this pendant.”
The elderly man blinked rapidly as he looked from the necklace to her face. “This is Tiana Hanover’s?” he asked.
“Yes. The necklaces you gave me to give to her. She gave me one,” Aveline rushed on. “How far away does she have to be for the light to be completely out?”
He appeared pensive.
“How far?” Jose repeated. “You mean … she’s not here?”
Aveline was torn about what to tell them. She needed answers, but she was not about to endanger their lives by revealing information for which Tiana’s father might burn someone.
“She would have to be outside the city,” Mohammed replied.
It was not outside the range of possibilities for Tiana to be so far, but that left Aveline with a second problem. Tiana would not know how to leave the city in the first place, or learn how to navigate it on her own in a few hours. She had to have help, which meant, someone who was going to help her stay ahead of Aveline, if she did not react fast.
“I have to go,” she said and started away. “I have to find her.”
“That is all?” Mohammed called after her.
“Wait!” Jose said and caught up to her. “Tiana Hanover cannot leave the city. Her father forbids both his heirs from leaving simultaneously. Which means … did someone take her?”
Aveline ignored him with effort.
“Aveline, do you need help?” he asked quietly. “Is that why you came?”
Aveline stopped in her tracks. Help. As if an assassin, who worked in isolation, ever truly needed anyone else! She bristled, about to correct his assumption, when Mohammed spoke.
“Do you want me to make it stronger?”
“What?” she asked, facing him. “You can do that?”
“No.”
Jose shook his head at his mentor. “He means yes. He can do that. It’s forbidden for him to reveal his deformity, but he can make it stronger.”
“Yes,” Mohammed agreed. “Is she in danger?”
“Not if I reach her first,” Aveline replied.
“I can make it stronger.” He held out his hand and approached her.
Aveline whipped the necklace off and handed it to him. “Can you make it track her?” she asked.
He wrapped his hand around the pendant and closed his eyes. Light flared around his hand.
“I doubt it,” Jose answered for him. “His gift is energy. Electricity. There are some very detailed principals I will not bore you with, but the pendants contain particles that recognize each other, which is why they light up. It is a form of electricity.”
Aveline did not have time to comprehend what exactly that meant.
The light faded from Mohammed’s hand, and he uncurled his fingers to reveal the pendant again. She plucked it out of his palm, uncertain she wanted to touch live electricity. The metal was warm but appeared otherwise normal.
“When you are within five miles of her, it will light up,” Mohammed said. “But this is as strong as I can make it.”
“Better than nothing,” she said and pulled it on over her head. “You both must swear not to speak of this to anyone!”
“We all have secrets,” Mohammed said. “If I may ask, where do you go?”
“It doesn’t concern you.”
“Maybe we can help,” Jose said.
She hesitated.
“Fetch the battery-operated torches,” Mohammed directed him. “She will need them.”
Jose returned to their private quarters.
“I’m going east,” Aveline replied.
Mohammed’s eyes lit up. “Aaaaaahhhh. Perfect!” He strode towards the door of his quarters. “Jose! Pack the batteries and conductors! You have a delivery to make!”
“Wait, what?” Aveline asked. “He can’t come with me!”
“You will need a guide. To the east are the enemies of the city,” Mohammed said. “Jose is the only city dweller who can walk into their villages and not be harmed. If you take him, they will grant you safe passage.”
Aveline’s second refusal died on her lips. “How?” she asked instead.
“We share a common concern.” Mohammed held up a square box.
Aveline frowned.
“Electricity!” he said with a sigh. “Jose takes them to the Diné monthly, and we are several days overdue with this month’s delivery.”
Her mind was racing. She knew exactly where Tiana was headed. If the Hanover girl had help, there was always a chance Aveline would not catch up to her in time, before she reached her destination.
“I don’t care about the boxes,” she said. “You’re telling me Jose can get us into the Diné camp?”
“He can. And he knows the fastest way there, too.”
“I have food,” Jose said and held up a meal bar. “I can be ready in thirty minutes.”
As much as Aveline wanted to believe she would find the Hanover girl by dawn and return her to the city, she had a feeling the situation was not going to work out the way she wanted
it to. Jose’s addition to her party, and his knowledge of the fastest route to the camp where Tiana believed Arthur was being held, would be of use.
“I will be back for you in thirty minutes,” she said reluctantly.
He smiled, and heat flared within her.
She turned away before he could see her blush. Aveline left the bay housing the electrical center and glanced down at the pendant. At its center was a very faint light. Tiana was within five miles of the city.
She bolted and sprinted through the basements and up the stairs to the ground floor then out of the pyramid completely. She ran at full speed out of the Outer City and past the smelly fish market into the Inner City. She dared not enter the village of an enemy alone, even if Jose’s guaranteed them safe passage. She could think of only one person she trusted to take on a village of Natives and ran straight to Rocky’s.
Her Devil’s blood was rising, stoked by her anger and worry. She could think of nothing worse than Tiana alone, freezing, and vulnerable somewhere outside the city.
Chapter Eighteen
Tiana had never seen a sunrise unobstructed by buildings or the boards that used to block the window in her former room. She stood on a flat boulder squatting near the edge of the forest and watched the sun crest the horizon. The snowstorm had cleared late last night, though the morning felt colder than the night had. The remaining clouds hovered near the horizon, reflecting pastel pinks, yellows, and blues as the sun hefted itself into the sky.
The winter air numbed the tip of her nose and her ears, but nothing penetrated the cloak her brother had gifted her. Beneath it, she was as warm as her cheeks were not.
Of everything that surprised her most about the world outside the city, it was the relative silence she found most striking. She had grown up with the sounds of the city outside her window without ever realizing just how noisy the city was. Here, on the snow-coated plains, with no one else in sight, she experienced a sense of peace she had never known before. The sun rose in revered silence, as if the rest of the world stood still to watch alongside her.
Tiana squinted, and tears stung her eyes. She lifted a hand to shield them from the brilliant, pale yellow sun but dared not miss any part of her first sunrise. With a smile stretching her stiff, cold cheeks, she could think of nothing more magical than this moment.
“We need to continue,” Warner said from below her. “Are you rested enough to travel?”
“Yes!” she replied cheerfully.
“Come on down.”
Tiana crouched and made her way down the boulder. She pulled her hood over her head instinctively, despite knowing Warner had already seen her deformity. Exhilarated by the first night outside her room, which was spent trudging through snow, Tiana had not slept at all during the two hours Warner allocated for them to rest. Her mind was on her surroundings, on the sky, the forest, Arthur, the snow … there was too much to see for her to sleep!
“Here. I will have to hunt in the forest tonight, but this will keep us going today.” Warner handed her food wrapped in a soft cloth.
She accepted it and glanced up at him then back. “Are you well?” she asked. “You look pale.”
“I’ve not yet recovered,” he admitted. “Exposure has peculiar effects on one’s body. It makes you less capable of handling the extremes a second time.” Dressed in the dark scarlet of the Guild and wearing a cloak, he appeared sickly with dark rings under his eyes.
Tiana unfastened her cloak and twirled it off with a shiver. “You can wear mine. Yours is not as thick,” she offered.
Warner straightened, and his jaw clenched. “I am here to protect you, not the other way around.”
“But if you are too cold to do so, does it not make sense to take my cloak?”
He gazed at her for a long moment before turning away and beginning to walk. “We need to move more quickly. Once we’re in the forest –”
“The forest!” she squealed. With clumsiness born of excitement, Tiana managed to pull her cloak on without dropping her food as she ran through the knee-high snow after him.
Warner sighed.
Tiana passed him, eyes on the trees marking their destination. She tucked her food away so she had full movement of her body. She slowed only when the snow of the shallow valleys making up the rolling plains grew too deep.
By midmorning, the weather had begun to change from frigid to unusually warm, and snow began to melt around them and turn to sludge. The closer they came to the forest, the faster she moved, until she was running ahead of Warner, intent on seeing her first tree up close.
She reached the tree line and stopped, breathless. Craning her neck back, she followed the brown trunk of the tree as it stretched towards the sky. Pine needles dripped with melting snow and ice, and the scent of wet earth and pine swept over her with the breeze.
“They’re so much larger than I thought!” she said softly in delight when Warner joined her.
He gave her another long look before starting forward into the trees.
“Should we not be going that direction?” She pointed towards the west.
“We will. We need someone to help us negotiate with any unfriendly tribe members we encounter. This close to spring, there’s a lot of feuding over food, since everyone is pretty much out.”
Tiana trailed him, more interested in the towering trees and patterns the melting snow made on the ground than in his explanation. Lost in her wonderment of the real world, she did not notice Warner had stopped until she collided with him. She blinked out of her fascination with the forest and stepped back. Peering around Warner, she gasped and ducked back quickly to tug her hood up over her head.
On the path ahead of him were three Natives, one of whom was carrying a firearm, the likes of which were forbidden in the city.
“It’s safe,” Warner told her over his shoulder. “They are allies. Wait here.” He moved forward.
She peeked out at the forest from beneath the protection of her hood. Warner spoke slowly in the Native tongue, his hands held away from his body to show he was not a threat.
A branch snapped from behind her, and she turned. Two more Natives melted from the forest. Tiana crowded Warner, both excited and uncertain at her first encounter with the peoples who inhabited the great expanses between cities.
A short exchange ensued between Warner and one of the Natives before he lowered his arms and turned to her.
“We are going to one of their outposts,” he explained. “The tracker we want will meet us there.”
As he spoke, one of the Natives darted into the forest, towards the east.
“I have told them the truth of who I am. My family name is too little known to draw attention, but everyone for a thousand miles knows of the Hanover’s. I have told them you are Tiana Burrows, my –”
“Wife?” she asked hopefully.
“Burn me, no!” he said, startled. “My sister.”
Deep within her hood, Tiana’s face grew hotter than the midday sun. “Oh. Of course.”
Warner shook his head. “You do not need to hide your eyes outside the city. Your father burnt anyone who was different, but out here, there are many deformed people.”
She pulled her hood farther forward anyway. “I do not wish to be seen as different,” she objected.
“They already know one of us is, and since you’re hiding, it’s likely you.”
“What? Why do you say that?”
Warner pointed to an area behind her.
She turned, not understanding, and started to face him, when she looked up. Her magic, responding to her excitement, was lifting the branches of the trees around her. Those nearest her pointed straight into the air, while those farthest from her influence had lifted a meter or so. It was not just the trees but the snow as well. Rather than drip downward, the canopy of snow that had gathered above them melted to the side, with rivulets of water traversing empty space until it met a tree trunk and ran down to the ground.
Unaware of what it had been
doing, Tiana reined in her magic. The snow hovering over their heads dropped to the ground, and the tree branches floated back down into place.
None of the Natives appeared horrified by the unusual phenomenon, as those in the city would. They barely glanced at the shifting trees.
If Matilda were here …
Tiana shivered despite the warm day. Thinking of Matilda made her wounds and scars alike ache.
“They may have a medicine man as well at the outpost,” Warner said with a grimace.
She studied his features again. “You are not well, are you?”
“Well enough,” he said shortly. “Let us not keep our hosts waiting.” He began walking, following the Natives ahead of them.
Tiana trailed. This time, she made an effort to remain conscious of when her magic began to act out, so she could suppress it. No matter what Warner said, she did not think it prudent to display her deformities, when her father was likely trying to find her by now.
The Natives led them down another narrow path through the forest and stopped when they reached a small wooden cabin. Warner walked into it without hesitation. Tiana stepped up to the doorway and stopped.
The wooden interior reminded her too much of the room where she had spent seventeen years of her life.
“May I wait outside?” she asked, recoiling from the cozy, warm space.
“If you do not wander off,” Warner said. He sat heavily on a bench running along one wall of the cabin. An elderly woman rose from her place cooking over a fire and sat beside him. To Tiana’s surprise, the cabin had an electric lamp in the far corner to brighten the interior.
Warner’s weary sigh disrupted her curiosity about the electricity available only in the great pyramid in the city.
Tiana almost asked him again what was so painful. The strongest man she knew was struggling, and yet, his stride was sure without any sign of a limp, and his gaze remained sharp, unlike the glazed look Matilda had worn when she was ill.