“Hit her on the head and hang up,” I tell Caphian.
A loud crashing noise and a startled yell crackle from the phone, followed by garbled background noise. “Freya!” Wes yells. Then there’s silence; the line’s been disconnected.
Wes drops my phone, his eyes bright with anger—for a second, I’m worried that he’ll catch fire. “They’re torturing her,” he breathes. “We have to get her out of there, Baz. I have to, at least.”
“Hey, I’m in too,” Basil says. “Of course I am.” He hesitates for a second, then says, “You do know what’s gonna happen if we cross the Line, right?”
“I don’t care what happens,” Wes growls. “To us, or to anyone. I can’t let her stay there; you know that.” He swivels his head back around to me. “You have to come too, shifter, since you know the castle.”
“Only if I get something out of it,” I say.
“I knew there’d be a catch to this,” Basil mutters.
I shut off the mind-link again, leaving myself with the requisite peace and quiet to get what I want from the situation. This is the part where I find out if my plan will actually work. “I came here because I want Duke Fenris dead,” I say. “If we’re going to New Fauske to get your sister, we’re going to take care of that, too.”
“Kill Duke Fenris?” Wes says dryly. “And what, start World War Three with his daughter?”
“Not if we kill him with a super-magic jnani sword that curses the whole province.” I allow for a second’s pause. “Ferignis, I think it’s called?”
Both Wes and Basil go visibly tense at the name. “How did you know about that?” Basil asks.
I decide not to give them the actual answer, in case it curbs Wes’s wellspring of familial devotion for his sister. “The jnani are bigger blabbermouths than you’d think,” I say instead.
The two Wardens look at each other for a good long minute. “How are you planning to do this, exactly?” Basil asks carefully.
“If you can get the sword and get us across the Line,” I say, “I’ll buy us an audience with Fenris, no questions asked. Trust me.”
Wes snorts. “The hell we will.”
“Well, that’s my condition,” I say. “If you want to get your sister back, you don’t have a choice.”
The Warden boys have a little bit of a stare-off that ends with Wes giving a relenting nod. “All right. We’ll do it.” Yes yes yes yes yes. I try my best to keep the victory off my face. “We might not be permanently exiled from Boston for crossing the Line if we manage to kill the duke and curse New Fauske while we’re at it. And smuggling out the sword won’t be too hard.”
“It’s the most heavily-guarded hunk of metal in the bunker,” Basil says.
Wes slides a laptop out from under his bed and turns it on. “Not if we’re the ones guarding it.”
He pulls up a sign-up list on his computer for a bunch of different Warden duties, each of them lumped into time slots. I perch myself on the edge of his bed and watch over his shoulder as he scrolls through it. “Okay,” he says. “The one-to-three a.m. shift Saturday morning is open for security office duty and guarding the armory.”
“Wonder why that is,” Basil says. Wes clicks on the open security office slots and types in Westrey Dorsan and Basil Kinscey. Then he clicks into the armory slots and types the names in again, for the exact same hours.
“Does no one check this thing?” I wonder.
“Not closely,” Wes says. He exits out and pulls up another roster, this one listing locations instead of duties under one-week time intervals. It’s a register for Appalachian Line guards.
Wes scrolls down a little, stopping abruptly and pointing to the pair of names next to Norfolk, Connecticut: Naira Mase and Chael Kyrie. “They’re still together, right?”
“Well, they’re spending a week alone in the woods with each other,” Basil points out.
“All right,” Wes says. “We’ll pass through their station, then.”
Someone knocks on Wes’s door; the three of us perk up immediately, and Wes slams shut his laptop. “Come in,” he calls.
A middle-aged woman cracks open the door and sticks her head inside. “What is it, Darya?” Basil asks.
“Your mother wanted me to tell you to get back to your room and finish your homework,” Darya says.
“Tell her I’ll be there in a minute,” Basil sighs. She nods, shutting the door again.
“With all the crap they do all day, you’d think my mom and dad wouldn’t have time for helicopter parenting,” Basil mutters, standing up and stretching.
“All right,” Wes says, looking to his friend. “You go back to your room and figure out a way to steal your dad’s keycard so we can get into the armory.” Then he turns to me. “The two of us are gonna spend tomorrow looking at torch-spears. Then we’ll grab the sword and be out of here by the end of the night. Deal?”
“Sounds good.” I give him a genuine smile, feeling quite pleased with myself. One little phone call, and now I’ve got two oblivious Warden boys doing my job for me. I’ll be back in New Fauske with the sword in no time.
This is going to be easier than I thought.
Two Years Ago: Keira
The convoy of carriages clopped to a halt behind a run-down train station five minutes outside the boundaries of New Fauske. It was basically a big wooden platform, a holding pen for all the city’s shifters who’d turned fifteen within the past year. All the lucky new victims of the Sentry trials.
The wait for the train was long and awkward. Most of New Fauske’s shifters had a clique of friends they knew pretty well because they’d spent the last ten years working together—cooking in the castle, cleaning up the streets, renovating Nixan homes—while I’d done nothing but sleep and sometimes eat with the other shifters in the castle. I wound up standing off to the side with my hands in my pockets, leaning against my suitcase. The sun and warmth were nice, at least. There wasn’t a whole lot of sun and warmth inside the city gates, even though it was the middle of July.
Finally the train came out from among the trees; I hadn’t even heard it approach. It slid into the station, smooth and silent as a snake. It was painted blue and white and looked to be newly-minted. Apparently Sentry candidates got first-class accommodations.
Hopefully I’ll be getting two rides out of this thing.
The car doors slid open in tandem, and a mad rush to get inside ensued. I waited until the shoving and stampeding had settled down, valuing an intact body over the first choice of seat, before I left my corner and pushed my way forward into one of the cars, squeezing between two guys twice my size to get through the doors.
Inside the train resembled a fancy airplane cabin, with carpeted floors and tiny windows. Two cushy leather seats waited on either side of the aisle. The car was mostly full—this had to be one of the train’s last stops before Arizona—but I managed to find an empty aisle seat towards the back.
The boy with the window seat helped me to stuff my suitcase into the storage compartment over our heads. “Thanks,” I said, plopping down beside him.
“No problem.” He flashed me a grin and held out his hand. “I’m Delphi.”
“Keira.” I shook the hand and examined the shifter attached to it. He had an elvish-looking face, with dirty-blond hair and dark brown eyes. And his teeth were the whitest I’d ever seen.
“So, you’re a New Fauskian,” he said. “What’s it like in Nixanville?”
“Like living in the Middle Ages,” I said truthfully. “I was the maidservant for a Nixan, actually. Lady Cassatia.” The was sounded weird on my tongue.
“No way—Cassatia Loraveire?” Delphi asked, gaping at me. “The daughter of the duke?”
“Yep.”
“What did you have to do?” he wondered.
“Nothing too bad,” I said with a shrug. “I just had to keep her room clean, wash her clothes, make sure she always looked pretty; that kind of stuff.”
“But didn’t you have to dress her a
nd everything?”
I shrugged again, smirking a little. “Sometimes, but that was easy. Nixan ladies only ever wear skirts and dresses—without layers, of course, because they have to show off to everyone that they’re immune to cold.”
Delphi grinned. “You should see a Sen city,” he told me. The train gave a little jolt forward, and we began to slither away from the station and back into the woods, coasting over the tracks. “A real city, with electricity and cars and no maidservants.”
“New Fauske has electricity,” I protested. Other than running water, electricity was just about the only convenience of the modern world the Nixans had adopted, mostly so they wouldn’t have to use fire anymore. And even then, only a few homes and rooms in the city castle were actually hooked up to the electric grid. “And I lived in Skalten before my eyes turned. My foster parents brought me into Minneapolis all the time.” I leaned back in my seat, feeling the train buzzing silently under my feet. “Where are you from, anyway?”
“Sector Seven,” he replied. “A little Shade camp outside Montreal.”
“Really?” I looked at him from the corners of my eyes. “Can you speak French, then?”
“Oui.”
“Cass tried teaching me French once, but I was hopeless.” I closed my eyes for a second, smiling at the memory. “Like, really hopeless. I think I’m doomed to be monolingual.”
Delphi shook his head. “That’s amazing. You got language lessons from the heir to the Western Province.”
The train pulled out of Nal Ferris, the state forest New Fauske was nestled in, and we emerged from the trees into relative civilization. As Delphi and I watched out the window, a pair of women came down the aisle with a cart and began to pass out bagged lunches. I sifted bracingly through mine’s contents: a turkey sandwich, an apple, a juice box, a bag of chips. Not too bad.
“Damn it.” Delphi held up his apple and made a face. “I hate green apples.”
I hated green apples too, but I was feeling strangely charitable, so I offered him my own sweet-looking red one. “Wanna trade?”
“I’d love to.” We swapped apples, and I sunk my teeth into the green one, scrunching up my nose against the bitterness.
The two of us ate in silence for a while. The sandwich was okay, just cold and a bit dry. Delphi gobbled up his in about two bites, which either meant that he was really hungry or a typical teenage boy. Probably both.
“What’re you staring at?” he asked eventually.
I turned away quickly; I hadn’t realized I’d been staring at all. “Just…your eyes,” I lied. “I’ve never seen a shifter with eyes that dark.”
He snorted. “Yeah, well, if they were any darker I’d be a faedra.”
I choked on my sandwich. Faedras were shifters whose eyes had turned black, the color associated with evil and Wardens and forsaking Nixa. If one was found, their foster parents were supposed to throw them out into the woods to die. “Shit. I guess you’re right.”
“My parents brought me to a priestess after my eyes turned, just to make sure.” Delphi raised his eyebrows at me. “I like your eyes, though. Silver—that’s pretty rare.”
“Not for a shifter.”
“Well, the Senex will think it’s rare. They’ll love you.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Rare is good. Exotic, or something. Senex love that kind of stuff.”
The corner of my mouth twitched. “I don’t understand them.”
“Well, you’ll have to if you want to be a Sentry. You can’t just hang out in New Fauske all the time with the Nixans. You have to be able to blend in with normal people.”
“I have plenty of time to worry about that,” I said. Assuming I survived the trials, of course.
“I can help you,” Delphi offered. “I’ll give you Sen-world lessons.” He tapped the compartment over our heads. “I’ve got nine different Sen books in my suitcase, plus a cell phone. I can teach you tons with just that.”
I really, really should have just said “no.” I needed to spend the next two months training and trying to survive, not hanging out with some Canadian shifter boy whose head I could very well need to chop off one day. But his almost-faedra eyes and ultra-white smile were making my heart beat inexplicably fast, wiping every last morsel of logical reasoning from my mind. And I’d never been very good at saying “no” to something I wanted.
“Sounds good,” I told him instead. “You think we could start now?”
1 October: Cassatia
At the toll of the eleven o’clock castle bells, I tear off my sheets and slide out of bed. Rhody, curled into a ball on the pillow beside mine, wakes with a start at the sudden movement and yips at me.
“Shh,” I warn him, drawing up my bed skirt and feeling around underneath it for my flashlight. I keep all my forbidden relics from Keira hidden under my bed—my secret stash of Sen snacks, a set of Harry Potter books, Keira’s watch—where I never have to worry about their discovery. Phoebe’s the only one who ever goes sifting around my room, and I’ve told her multiple times not to clean under my bed.
My hand closes around the flashlight; I wiggle it out and click it on, filling the moonlit room with its artificial beam of light. Rhody leaps down from my bed and follows me to the door.
“Go back to sleep,” I tell him. He plops down stubbornly at my feet, blocking the door.
I roll my eyes. “Fine. But you have to stay quiet, all right?” I clamp my fingers together above his head in the gesture I taught him for quiet. He blinks.
I nudge him aside and tease open the door, wincing as it creaks. I’m always nervous when I sneak out, but tonight is different. I’ve never gotten in trouble for roaming the castle before, but I’ve also never crossed all the way over to where the Sentry ward is.
I am leaving for Svalbard tomorrow, and I haven’t seen Keira in almost two weeks. There haven’t been any emergency patrols sent out to the Shade camps recently—I checked—and even the longest supply patrols don’t last more than a week. I have no idea where she is, and I can’t leave New Fauske without at least trying to find out what happened to her.
The only place left I can think to look in is Caphian’s office, tucked away somewhere in the Sentry ward. He always knows where all his Sentries are, at least the ones in this sector—he must keep some kind of records.
I lead Rhody on tiptoe down the Hall of Lords, where massive ice sculptures stud the walls at even intervals, each one a model of one of the past dukes of the Western Province. The first sculpture is of Avasol Loraveire, my long-dead ancestor who first claimed the continent for the Nixans in the fifteen-hundreds, and the last is of my father, proud and regal with a snarling hunting dog at his side.
I’ve always thought the castle looks its most beautiful at night. No shifter servants running around, no Nixans twice my age bowing as I walk by—just me and Rhody and the moon. And dogs and celestial objects couldn’t care less if I stand straight or keep my chin up or walk like a lady.
We reach a corridor that spans the width of the castle, with silver railings over which the entrance hall can be seen thirty feet below—my father’s throne, the doors to the healers’ infirmary and the infidel prisoners’ cell, and four Sentry guards, two standing at each entrance to the castle. They shouldn’t be able to see me as long as I stay underneath the railing, and quiet; I click off my flashlight and pick up Rhody, just to be safe, slinking forward with my head ducked down. Rhody gnaws at my arm and struggles with all his twenty-seven pounds of might, but I don’t let him down until I’ve turned into the hall leading to the Sentry ward, reliably out of the sight of the Sentry door guards.
“You walk too loud,” I hiss to him. “Phoebe needs to cut off your claws.” He wags his tail in reply.
The entrance to the Sentry ward is guarded by sculptures of two Katyri wolves, their wings spread and teeth bared. In the dark, with the beam of my flashlight glinting off their icy pelts, they look almost alive, ready to spring into action to protect their wa
rd from trespassers. I take a breath to steel myself.
You’ve come this far, Cass, I think. You can’t wimp out now.
I step past the ice wolves with Rhody, leaving them to watch my back.
It’s warmer inside the ward thanks to the dozens of little heating vents implanted in its walls. Giant arched windows above my head let in the moonlight, bathing everything in silver. I can see decently enough without the flashlight now, but I leave it on anyway.
Small beds framed with white wood protrude from the walls, some made up, some with sheets disturbed, some holding sleeping Sentries. I flash my beam around the beds a little, on the off-chance that I find Keira sound asleep in one of them. I don’t, which is both relieving and not.
Some Sentries are awake, typing on forbidden phones or messing around with their friends. A young-looking couple are making out under one of the windows, inconsiderately loud. The awake Sentries notice me, of course; they stare when I shine my beam on them, some quickly hiding their twenty-first century technology, and one girl stands to give me a flustered curtsy. “What can I do for you, my lady?”
“I’m looking for Caphian’s office,” I tell her, knowing she won’t ask questions.
“It’s down the hall and to the left, my lady,” she says, indicating with an outstretched arm. “But I don’t think he’s in there now.”
“That’s all right,” I say, relieved. “Thank you.”
“I can go with you if you want,” she offers.
I shake my head. “You don’t need to.” I pat my leg to draw Rhody back to my side—he’d gone off to investigate one of the Sentry beds—and follow the girl’s directions to the office.
I find it at the end of the left branch off the hall, just as she’d promised. It’s small, but well-kept. A large window takes up most of one wall, framed by a pair of heavy blue curtains. A desk circled by golden candleholders is backed up against the far wall, and a small stone altar stands opposite the window, a miniature version of the one in the castle’s prayer room. Beside the altar is a bookshelf, with books and files and folders stacked up in it.
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