Wordless

by Adrianne Strickland

  “No,” I wheezed with tear-filled eyes. “Not that I give a rat’s ass what you think … it’s just … ” I waved around at the three of them and the suspended lake, but I couldn’t finish.

  Khaya glanced at the others. “He’s exhausted,” she said, as if apologizing on my behalf. “You wouldn’t believe what he’s been through. You certainly haven’t been through anything like it, Tu, so give him a break.”

  To my surprise, Pavati burst out laughing, too. “Gods, it is funny—you guys bickering like little boys. At least Tavin has the sense to laugh.”

  Both Khaya and Tu looked peeved that Pavati seemed to understand me. It was probably the only common ground the two of them shared, which made me laugh even harder.

  Until a loud burbling noise overhead silenced me.

  We all looked up. The top of our bubble was jiggling. Then a big piece broke away, forming smaller bubbles that flew up through the murky lake to the distant sky. The walls quivered.

  “Oh,” Khaya said with her usual calmness. “There’s Luft now.”

  “I guess they saw us jump into the lake, so it wouldn’t exactly take a tracking device or even much brainpower to guess where we are,” Tu grumbled.

  “What’s Luft doing?” I asked. My laughter might never have existed.

  “Sucking up our air,” Pavati said. Unlike the rest of us, she sounded almost cheerful about it. “And once that’s gone … ” She made a dropping motion with her hands.

  The bubble shuddered violently, as if the endless tons of dark, cold water were struggling to break through and devour us.

  seventeen

  I had the urge to run but nowhere to go. We were trapped, and our reverse fishbowl was about to shatter and let a lake’s worth of water inside. And I didn’t think I could run anyway. I was still sitting on the slick rocks after my fit of laughter, and wasn’t sure if I could even stand up, never mind sprint.

  “Don’t look so scared, hero-boy,” Tu said, smirking down at me. “We’ll go earthworm on them. Got my back, Pavati? It’ll be more complicated with the lake overhead, since we don’t want a vacuum to draw the water in—”

  I wished he would shut up and do whatever he was going to do, because our bubble was shrinking fast. Fortunately, Pavati seemed to feel the same.

  “I know what to do,” she interrupted, already moving to one of the glasslike walls. It rippled where she slid her hands against it. The ripples grew bigger as she started whispering in a language I’d never heard, then twisted when they hit the water’s ceiling—turning it into an upside-down whirlpool that drilled a narrow hole skyward.

  Tu’s Words, spoken in what sounded like Chinese, bored a tunnel into the ground, tossing rocks like sand to clear a space. The entrance widened, sloping into the pitch-dark earth. It made a deep gasping noise, sucking air from the hole overhead and into its depths as if it were a giant mouth with a straw. Tu had been right—if Pavati hadn’t made an opening in the water to draw air down from the sky, the negative pressure would have flushed the lake into the tunnel like a giant toilet. And even if she’d managed to keep the water out, we wouldn’t have had anything to breathe.

  “Quick,” Pavati said, “before they realize what we’re doing and Luft starts playing tug-of-war with our air.”

  Khaya was already slipping into the tunnel with the backpack. I dragged myself upright, sliding in mud and lake slime before stumbling into the underground passage. I tripped halfway down the slope and tumbled the rest of the way to level ground. At least I’d achieved forward momentum.

  Khaya clicked on the flashlight as Pavati and Tu came dashing inside, the tunnel filling in behind them as they ran. They stopped short of us, as did the folding wall of earth. The ground beneath me continued to rumble for a few seconds.

  “The lake just came down,” Pavati reported.

  “Whew,” Tu said, stepping over me like I was a rock and dusting off his hands.

  Khaya made a move for me, but Pavati was there first, helping me up with strong arms.

  “He can walk, right?” Tu asked without addressing me. “We need to get out from under the lake so I can poke some air holes for us.” He pointed at the dirt ceiling of the tunnel. “And we don’t want to give Luft the chance to poke them first. So the faster we move, the better.”

  Tu and I were actually in agreement. But I could only do so much when my body wasn’t cooperating.

  “You can walk, right?” Pavati said with a wink, drawing my arm over her shoulder and wrapping one of hers around my waist. “I could give you a piggyback ride if it came down to it … though your arm feels like a log, so you’re probably heavy enough to crush me. Wouldn’t the two of us be a sight then?” She laughed.

  Pavati walked smoothly under my weight, warm and slender and solid. She even smelled good. I was ungainly and shaking, smeared in lake-bottom sludge, and my clothes were tattered and filthy even after all the dunkings underwater. Not to mention I could smell myself, and it wasn’t good. I hadn’t seen a bar of soap in several days of constant, sweaty trekking. At least, unlike Khaya, she was tall enough that her nose wasn’t level with my armpit.

  Tu scowled at us as we passed him and moved down the tunnel. I didn’t even glance his way, because Khaya was standing nearby and I didn’t want either of them to see my blush in the beam of the flashlight.

  “Can’t you just heal him?” I heard Tu ask Khaya. His motive was clear; my comfort had nothing to do with it.

  “Not unless you’re planning on carrying him,” Khaya said. “Accelerated healing would drop him into unconsciousness at his current level of exhaustion. He needs time—and a place—to recover.”

  I knew I needed a break. But I still wanted to deny it, both for Drey’s sake and for my own injured pride.

  “I’m fine,” I said. My discomfort, physical and otherwise, was audible even in those two words.

  “We’ll be far enough away in a few minutes,” Pavati murmured. “Finding people underground is a heck of a lot harder than you might think, even within a short radius. Then we can rest.”

  It was kind that she said “we.” She didn’t look like she needed rest.

  We covered ground fairly quickly, especially with Pavati half-carrying me. Tu muttered Words behind us, closing the sections of tunnel we’d come through and opening another before us. I had no idea which direction we were going, or how deep underground we were. Tu somehow knew. After more muttering and brushing his hand along the dirt wall, our tunnel began to slope upward.

  It was harder going for me, but I was encouraged by the fact that we were getting closer to fresh air. What we’d taken below ground with us was already getting stuffy and musty.

  Tu stopped and spoke a few sharp syllables.

  The walls of the tunnel expanded at the sound of his voice, the dirt churning and grinding as if turned over by an invisible plow. Once everything quit shifting dizzily around us, we were standing in the center of an earthen room with walls as smooth as clay and several tunnels branching off. Khaya set down the backpack and shined the flashlight around. The

  tunnels led to adjoining rooms, making an area about the size of a small house.

  “This is nothing,” Pavati said. “A basic bunker. You should see some of the underground fortresses this guy can make.”

  I had no doubt she was right, but I wondered if she’d said it to banish the scowl from Tu’s face. His smug smile was especially visible now that several beams of silvery light dropped down on us, speckling the ceiling like stars and bringing fresh air.

  It was hard to tell, but it looked like it might be dusk up above—the usual time Khaya and I would be getting up. Whatever time it was, I was ready to collapse. I couldn’t deny it anymore. I lumbered away from Pavati toward the backpack, falling on my knees next to Khaya. I could barely unzip the zipper and rifle through the wet contents of the bag in search of the water bo
ttle, my clumsy fingers getting in the way more than anything. I hoped drowning hadn’t given me brain damage and impaired my motor skills.

  “Have anything in there I can stuff in my mouth?” Tu asked, looking down at me like he would a rat infiltrating his food supplies.

  I took a drink. “Aside from the gun, you mean?” My voice sounded so innocent that it took him a second to process what I’d said.

  Khaya nudged me in the ribs with her knee, probably harder than she’d intended. But it gave me a good excuse to lie down.

  “Bullets are made of lead and copper, which I could blow into dust before impact,” Tu said, giving me a dark look. “You’re pushing it, ass wipe.”

  I doubted he could spit out a Word faster than a bullet could hit, but I was too tired to test the theory. “You may have the latest fashions in the Athenaeum, but your insults are definitely secondhand,” I mumbled, stretching out on the ground with the pack under my head, ready to pass out right there. A featherbed and pillow couldn’t have felt more appealing. “And we aren’t exactly loaded with food. You didn’t bring anything?”

  “Man, does it look like I brought anything?” Tu de-

  manded, gesturing at himself. “We weren’t on a camping trip in those woods; we were on a strike-mission to take you down. I don’t even have a shirt! Gods, to think that I saved you only to put up with this.”

  “No need for a tantrum. Here’s an energy bar.” I fished around behind my head, then gave him a sardonic smile as I threw it at him. “Enjoy. They’re delicious.”

  He bit into it and made a face.

  Pavati snatched it out of his hand. “Don’t eat it if you’re going to complain. Besides, you had a fat lunch right before we were deployed. I saw it.”

  “And now it’s dinnertime!” Tu said.

  “Dinnertime?” Pavati snorted. “Poor baby. These guys probably haven’t eaten a real meal in days.”

  She tossed the bar back to me. It landed on my chest when I made no attempt to catch it, and even then I only raised my head to bite it instead of lifting my arms, scooping it into my mouth with my teeth.

  “S’true,” I said around the mouthful. “Haven’t had much sleep, either, in case you were concerned. So I think I’ll slip into that coma Khaya was offering earlier.”

  I glanced up at Khaya, but she was already kneeling above me, putting a hand on my shoulder. She didn’t wait to ask if I was ready. She started on a string of Words that hit me like a brick, knocking me out cold.

  eighteen

  One second I was staring at Khaya’s upside-down face in the silvery light, and the next I was waking up in dimmer surroundings with a mouth that tasted like something had curled up in there and died. Time must have passed, but I hadn’t moved an inch.

  The others had. Khaya was stretched out on the ground nearby, and I could make out Pavati’s shape leaning against the opposite wall in a seated position, her arms draped over her knees. I didn’t know if she was awake or asleep. Tu was nowhere to be seen—in one of the side rooms, I guessed.

  He proved me right by stepping out of one and blinding me with the flashlight, before I’d barely cleared my throat and rinsed out my mouth with the water bottle. The bottle was almost empty, but I wasn’t too worried with the Word of Water sitting nearby.

  I shielded my eyes with an arm—which surprisingly no longer hurt. For that matter, sitting up hadn’t hurt. I’d been so sore for so long that the absence of pain dragging at my limbs was strange—almost a feeling of its own. I took an experimental deep breath and was pleased to find that my lungs didn’t wheeze or burn anymore.

  But I was hungrier than twelve starving elephants.

  “He’s awake, so what’s the plan?” Tu asked, just as Pavati lifted her head with a yawn.

  “Feeling better?” she asked me. “Gods, Tu, give him a second!”

  “He’s had plenty of seconds,” Tu snapped. “He’s had all night.”

  So the light wasn’t dimmer because it was dusk. It had already been night, and now the sun was rising again. Too much time had passed.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I want to get going too. I need to find this address—”

  “Do you think I care?” Tu said. “There are way more important things for us to do than chauffeur you around.”

  I was afraid he’d say that. And he was right. It wasn’t their job to help me or Drey. But I’d have a hell of a time getting to the Swiss Alps on my own, even now that I was healed and rested. Hunger alone would do me in. I tried not to panic as I wondered how long Drey had left to live.

  By this time, Khaya was sitting up, raking a hand through her wild mane of dark hair. She looked like she needed a shower nearly as badly as I did.

  Tu began pacing in agitation. “You two didn’t want to talk about what the hell we’re going to do while he was sleeping like a baby, but now he’s up. Do you think Swanson isn’t combing the countryside for us? How long do you think we have until they find us?”

  “Calm down,” Pavati said, then shot me a grin. “Sounds like someone could have used a longer nap himself. Did you wake up on the wrong side of the dirt, Tu?”

  “It’s not the time to be sleeping. It’s time to be planning. I mean, we’re—Gods, Pavati—we’re free.” He sounded both exhilarated and more than a little frightened. But then his tone slipped back into mockery. “So let’s have a powwow, shall we?” He dropped to the ground, cross-legged, and jammed the flashlight into the dirt in front of him so it stood upright like a small lamp. “We don’t have a campfire or a peace pipe or anything, so this’ll have to do.”

  “Go to hell. In a cheap, Chinese-made hand basket.” Pavati wore a sharp smile on her face. I got the inkling, then, that her grins and laughter didn’t always mean she was grinning and laughing on the inside. But I still wasn’t sure what had bothered her so much. She jumped up only to plop down next to Tu, splaying her legs out to either side like she was stretching. She even bent forward to touch her toes, whipping Tu in the face with her braids as she looked up at Khaya. “You have the floor, lady. What’s your plan? As I said, mine didn’t extend much beyond this point.”

  Khaya scooted up next to me, so all four of us sat in a loose circle around the flashlight.

  In a quiet voice, Khaya repeated what she’d already told me, about the Godspeakers’ intention to replace the Words with automatons—Cruithear’s humanlike creations that lacked the ability to reason or disagree and were just empty vessels for power once they were brought to life by Khaya. But she filled in some details I hadn’t yet heard.

  “The City Council wanted to use Words against the world like never before—no more intimidation tactics, no more veiled death threats. Only fire and death.” Khaya wrapped her arms around herself. “Their idea was to start with Europe, to solidify their foundation. They wanted to use these … golems both as Words and as a mindless, fearless army, toppling our strongest neighbors like dominoes: Germany, France, Switzerland, Great Britain. Then they planned to move against America. Certain political factions in all of these countries have already been begging to serve Eden City in a much more open way, in an effort to curry favor. So if the governments fell, the rest of the country would follow. Then Eden City would have the most powerful army in existence—and a much bigger platform from which to take over the rest of world.”

  Tu swallowed as if his throat was dry. “How do you know this when the rest of us don’t?”

  “Cruithear and I couldn’t help learning what the City Council was up to, working so closely with the Godspeakers on the project. They weren’t concerned that we knew so much, because we were barely allowed time with anyone else and we were about to be replaced anyway. I told Pavati what I could, when I could.”

  “So what do you want to do?” Tu asked.

  Khaya sat back, looking mildly surprised. “I’ve done what I needed to do. They can’t bring thes
e automatons to life without me. I … Tavin and I … are going to Switzerland.” She shrugged. “To hide. For good, in my case. I don’t know about him.”

  She didn’t mention Drey or the cure, probably because Tu wouldn’t have cared. Nor did she look at me, even though I was staring at her in astonishment. She still wanted to come with me, even after joining up with two of her own kind … and even knowing that I was planning to go right back to Eden City if I found the cure.

  Tu’s expression mirrored my surprise, but not in a pleasant way. “You just want to hide?” His voice escalated. “But this is earthshaking!”

  “Everything is earthshaking with you,” Pavati muttered.

  “Seriously—a third of the Words have escaped. Now is the time for action! Eden City only has half of the Elements left. Most of the others are still there, but among them, Cruithear is the only Word worth caring about.”

  Tu’s terminology was throwing me. “Remind me who’s still in the Athenaeum?” I asked, struggling to remember all the names and faces that I’d tried so hard to ignore on video screens.

  Tu looked incredulous. “How can you not know? We don’t have time to—”

  Pavati smacked him on the arm. “From now on, Khaya and I field all questions from Tavin. You’re fired.” She turned to me, leaving Tu sputtering. “There are nine Words total. There used to be twelve, but … it’s a long story.”

  I knew the numbers, just not the details. I hadn’t lived under a rock. “I know—”

  “Twelve—just like the Chinese zodiac,” Tu chimed in.

  “Or the Western zodiac,” Pavati said. “But it doesn’t matter, because no one really knows why there were twelve Words. Anyway, four of us are what Tu calls Elements, because he’s obsessed with a more traditional, Eastern way of looking at things. We’re also known as the Tangible Words: Fire, Water, Earth, and Air.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Another four are the Intangibles: Life, Death, Darkness, and Light.”