Deception

by C. J. Redwine

  Sylph shoots me a look that manages to be both horrified and impressed.

  “I don’t know. It should be slowing.” Nola reaches down and pulls the cloth away from the wound, and we stare in silence at the shallow cut, right across the meat of his calf, and the unending flow of thin, orange-red blood that runs out of him like water.

  “Blood shouldn’t be that thin,” I say quietly, though a glance at Keegan’s white face tells me he’s too far into shock to understand what we’re saying anymore. “And it shouldn’t flow this fast.”

  “Pressing harder isn’t stopping it. We need to cauterize.” Sylph reaches for the torch. “Give me your knife, Rachel.”

  I hand it to her, and she thrusts the blade into the flame until it glows red along the edges.

  “Hold him still,” she says. Nola grabs his shoulders, and I lie across his thighs, pressing down as hard as I can. Sylph bends swiftly and presses the flat side of the blade to the wound.

  His flesh sizzles and burns, filling the air with a sickly sweet smell. I turn my face into the grass at Keegan’s waist and gag. He doesn’t jerk away from the knife. He doesn’t scream. He just lies on the ground trembling, his skin waxy and white.

  I climb off of his thighs and look at the wound. The flesh is seared shut, an angry red welt of puckered skin. The blood no longer leaks out of him like a stream, but I don’t think it matters. His eyes roll back in his head, and his entire body shudders. And then he sighs, a long puff of air that hisses from his lungs before they go still.

  “No!” Nola rips at his tunic, yanking the laces until she has his chest bare. She presses her hands to his heart and pumps up and down. Up and down. Up and down. Leaning forward, she blows air into his mouth, listens for a heartbeat, then starts the process all over again.

  I don’t know how long she tries. Long enough for Keegan’s too-thin blood to soak into the ground like it was never there. Long enough for others to bring two more injured recruits to the wagon.

  Long enough for me to notice the ugly bouquet of purple-black bruises spreading along Keegan’s stomach and chest like flowers crushed beneath someone’s careless heel.

  Sylph finally leans in and gently pulls Nola off Keegan, whispering reassurances as Nola cries against her shoulder.

  I have no reassurances to offer. No condolences. Nothing but the terrible fear gnawing away at my chest as I stare at the fresh bruise circling Sylph’s wrist and wonder if Keegan woke up yesterday morning beneath a bloody X.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  LOGAN

  The day dawns bright and beautiful. Somehow that makes our current situation feel so much worse. I didn’t sleep much after the attack. Just caught a few light naps in between circling the camp, checking on the medical wagon, and worrying about Keegan’s death and what it might mean for the rest of us.

  The list of names I took from Drake in the wee hours of the morning is a leaden weight in my hand. Nineteen names, including Keegan’s. The last time I checked the medical wagon, five of those nineteen were dead. Two of them bled out almost instantly after receiving light wounds in last night’s battle. The other three complained of exhaustion and pain and then eventually bled out through their noses, gums, and eyes.

  Each of them had deep purple bruises all over their bodies.

  Bruises like the ones on Sylph.

  I don’t know what kind of poison causes blood to refuse to clot, but I’m racking my brains to come up with an antidote. A plant. A mineral. Surely something in this neglected wilderness we’re stranded in can cause blood to clot.

  I have to find an antidote before Sylph gets worse. Before any of the remaining fourteen get worse. So far, the ones who died without an injury to speed the process have all been older than fifty. I’m hoping the younger names on the list can fight the effects of the poison for a while longer, but the reality is that I have no idea how much time they have left. And no idea how to help them.

  A few of the older men work quietly to divide up the last of our food rations for breakfast as I pass the supply wagon. We’ll need to hunt today. And we’ll need to bury our dead.

  We also need to leave the meadow behind and push forward. Staying in one place before we’ve reached Lankenshire is suicide.

  I reach the medical wagon and find Sylph asleep on a blanket inside. Rachel sits beside her.

  “How is she?” I ask quietly. Three others injured in last night’s attack are sleeping in the wagon bed as well. The medical supplies have been stacked against the back wall or shoved under side benches to make room.

  Rachel meets my gaze, and I shiver at the bleakness in her eyes. “She’s tired. And her stomach hurts.” Her voice is like an empty room swept clean of any sign of life.

  Something hot and thick burns in my throat, choking off my air. Sylph is going to die if I can’t figure out a way to fix this.

  “Where’s Smithson?” Rachel asks, and her pale fingers gently trace a pattern against Sylph’s hand. “He should be here.”

  “I sent one of the recruits to call him to the medical wagon. He was on guard duty all night, and I didn’t realize she was already . . .” My words fade as Sylph moans and opens her eyes.

  “Rachel?”

  “I’m here,” Rachel says, and reaches up to comb stray curls from Sylph’s forehead.

  “I think I’m sick,” she says.

  Rachel makes a tiny choked noise. I step forward, and fumble for something to say that will comfort Sylph without lying to her. I can’t think of anything.

  “Yes, you’re sick.” I can hardly hold her gaze—this girl with a heart big enough to take in a sharp-tongued, independent girl and an orphaned, outcast boy. This girl who deserves so much better than to bleed to death in the middle of nowhere.

  She lifts the neckline of her tunic and stares at herself. Then she lowers the neckline and swallows audibly. “I’m sick like Keegan was sick, aren’t I? Was he marked, too?”

  I nod, and work hard to get my lips to form words that will give her hope. Comfort. Something. But words won’t come. Maybe they don’t exist. Not for this.

  “Smithson?” she asks, and her voice is already threaded through with exhaustion.

  “He’s on his way,” Rachel says just as Smithson pulls the flap aside and climbs into the wagon. He takes one look at Sylph and nearly shoves me to the ground in his effort to reach her side.

  “What’s wrong with her?” he asks, his hands hovering over her bruised arms and sweat-slicked face as if he just needs to find where the sickness started so he can fix it.

  “Are you sick too?” she asks, her fingers trembling as she reaches for him.

  He shakes his head and catches her fingers in his hand. “I’m fine. Shh.” He brushes her palm against his lips. “I’m fine. Let’s worry about helping you get better.”

  Rachel’s shoulders bow as if an impossible weight has just landed on them, and she curls toward her knees.

  “I’m not going to get better,” Sylph says softly, and tears trace a glistening path down her cheeks.

  “Of course you are.” Smithson looks at Rachel. “Tell her, Rachel. Tell her she’s going to get better.”

  Rachel shivers and slowly lowers herself to the wagon bed until she’s lying pressed against Sylph’s side.

  Smithson looks at me, his expression frantic. “She’s going to get better.”

  I make myself meet his gaze. “I think she’s been poisoned.”

  “By whom?” The veins on his neck bulge.

  “By the same man who marked your door. Five of the nineteen who were in marked rooms died last night. Their symptoms started out just like hers.” My voice shakes, and I wonder if he can hear the regret I don’t know how to say. If he knows the guilt I feel for failing to protect them. “Do you have bruises too?”

  He shakes his head and looks from me to Sylph, whose eyes are closed again. “How much time does she have?” He chokes on the words. “How much?”

  “I don’t know. The others eventuall
y bled . . .” I don’t want to finish the sentence. Don’t want to paint an image in his head of Sylph bleeding out while we all hover in helpless anguish by her side.

  “If it’s poison, there has to be an antidote.” His agony is a palpable force, barely contained by the flimsy walls of the wagon. I can hardly stand beneath the heat of his stare. “Find the antidote, Logan. Please.”

  The pressure of feeling responsible for outwitting the Commander, catching a killer, and safely delivering my people to Lankenshire doubles as his words sink in and take root.

  Find the antidote. How? I don’t even know what kind of poison was used, much less where to begin looking for an antidote. But I can’t tell him that. I can’t rip his last shred of hope away from him.

  “I’ll try,” I say, and put as much confidence into the words as I can muster. It isn’t much, and I know he hears it, but he nods and turns back to Sylph.

  Rachel lies still beside her friend, staring at Sylph’s face as if she can hold back the poison by the force of her gaze. I leave the wagon without saying another word.

  Quinn waits for me outside, his dark eyes shadowed. “What happened?” He gestures toward the row of bodies lined up under a long sheet of canvas. “We didn’t sustain this many serious injuries last night.”

  I press my fingertips to my eyes as the beginning of a headache throbs against my skull. “Those people were all in marked rooms yesterday morning. They all appear to have been poisoned.”

  “Does anyone else have symptoms?”

  I nod. I don’t know how many of the other names on my list are already bruising. Already bleeding from the inside out, though they don’t know it yet. I don’t know which of them will die next. Lee Ann Blair? Heather Palmquist? Paul Lusk?

  “What are the symptoms? Logan!” Quinn snaps, and I open my eyes. “What are the symptoms? If we know what kind of poison we’re dealing with, we might be able to save them.”

  “Exhaustion. Abdominal pain. Unexplained bruising. And eventually, they bleed—”

  “Through the eyes, nose, and mouth?” he asks.

  “Or even faster if they’ve been cut. The blood is too thin and won’t clot.” I look at the list in my hand. Scott Godsey. Hanna Burkes. Lila Toshiko. I know these people. I care about them. I can’t just let them die.

  “Castor seeds,” Quinn says, and the tone of finality in his voice raises the hairs on the back of my neck.

  “Castor seeds?”

  “The seeds of the castor plant are poisonous. If you swallow them unbroken, you have a chance. But if someone crushes the seeds, mixes it with a liquid, and injects it into your bloodstream, you die.”

  I shake my head. “No. There has to be something. The blood just needs to clot. We have to find a plant. A seed. Something around here has to help.”

  He wraps a hand around my shoulder and squeezes. “There is no antidote, Logan.”

  “There must be—”

  “Castor seed poison doesn’t cause the blood to thin. It causes it to clot. Inside all of their bodies, their blood is clotting, blocking their veins, growing bigger. Injuring their organs. Breaking down the tissue. Their bodies throw so much effort into clotting that the blood in their extremities grows thin and can’t clot at all. That’s when they start bleeding out.”

  I stare at him in horror, my heart thundering in my ears.

  “You can’t give them something to clot the blood without killing them faster. And you can’t give them something to thin the blood without causing hemorrhages from their mouth, nose, and eyes.”

  I can’t speak. Can barely breathe. I throw off his arm.

  “I’m sorry, Logan.”

  “Maybe you’re wrong,” I say, because he has to be. He has to be.

  “I’m not.”

  “Maybe you are. Who made you an expert in poisons, anyway? You could be wrong.”

  His expression looks carved in stone. “Willow and I are both experts in the many, many ways a person can be killed. Our father saw to that.”

  “It can’t be castor seeds. It can’t . . . Sylph is sick, Quinn. She’s in there”—I gesture toward the medical wagon—“with bruises all over her body, and I have to save her. I can’t let Rachel lose anyone else. Do you hear me? I have to save her!” My voice is raw and desperate, and already the bitterness of grief is spilling into me, because I look at Quinn’s face, and I know.

  I can’t save her.

  I can’t save any of them.

  And they’re all dead because the Commander wanted power. Because Jared gave us the device. Because we brought it back to Baalboden instead of returning it to Rowansmark.

  Because of me.

  Did I really think I could lead these people and prove my worthiness to them? The dregs of my belief taste like ashes on the back of my tongue as the soft sound of Smithson calling Sylph’s name in broken tones pierces the morning air.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  LOGAN

  The lazy hum of bumblebees fills the air as I climb through patches of spring grass sprinkled with wildflowers on my way to the lip of land above the river. The camp at my back is a whirlwind of activity as some pack canvas, blankets, and torches back into the supply wagon while others work with Nola and Drake to reconfigure those riding in the other wagons so we can accommodate the newly sick among us.

  Three more people on my list have symptoms. Word has spread that those dying from bruises and bleeding gums were all marked. Everywhere I go, people watch me. Whispering. Wondering what I will do to keep them safe. Wondering how I can force our group to travel with so many sick and so many more destined to fall prey to the symptoms.

  The soil beneath me gives a little as I walk. Bending down, I press my fingers into its cool, dark depths. Gusts of air rise from the river and roll over the edge of the meadow. The water smells like a musty, dirt-floored basement with leaky walls. The ground around me is covered in a light film of residual moisture.

  We can bury our dead here. The damp soil will make for easy digging. Plus, the profusion of flowers makes this spot pretty, and that means something. We might be barely clinging to survival. We might be running low on hope and optimism. But we can still give our dead the dignity of a proper burial.

  The thought that we might have more dead to bury when we set up camp this evening makes me ache down to my bones. But beneath the regret and the guilt, a steady flame of anger burns within me.

  When I catch the man who did this, I’m going to punish him in ways that will be remembered long after his body has turned to dust. No one in the beleaguered group at my back will doubt that I fought for them. That I was worthy of the trust they placed in me.

  Dusting the soil off of my fingers, I stand and continue on toward the drop-off above the river. The highwaymen won’t get a burial. We can’t afford the time or energy to dig a grave for twenty-three men who wanted nothing more than to murder us and steal everything we own.

  I’ve already sent Quinn, Thom, and Frankie to scope out the forest for the highwaymen’s belongings. With no city-state nearby and no known highwaymen camps to resupply them, I’m positive they weren’t just wandering around with nothing but weapons and the shirts on their backs. We could use some fresh supplies.

  I reach the edge of the meadow and gaze into the river below. The water is a murky green, nearly the same color as the cypress needles that cover many of the trees in the surrounding forest. The morning sun ricochets off of the rippling current, igniting tiny shards of brilliance that make my headache worse.

  I raise my face, staring north at the line where the thick green forest meets the clear blue sky. The sky is the same color as Rachel’s eyes. I can’t bear to look at it. If I do, I’ll have to remember how small she looked huddled next to her best friend, willing her not to die.

  A movement along the river bank catches my eye, and I stare as Willow surfaces, flips her braid out of her face, and tugs a long cylinder made of silver wire out of the water. The cylinder is easily the length of a wagon bed
and is full of fish.

  It’s a fish trap, and an expertly crafted one at that. And it isn’t ours. Which means either the highwaymen dropped it in the river yesterday, intending to use the catch today, or another group of people live near here.

  A Tree Village, maybe? I hope so. Of all the possibilities, they’re the only ones who aren’t likely to try to rob us or kill us on sight.

  Willow is struggling to haul the trap up the slippery riverbank. I start looking around for the path she used to get down to the water. In a moment, I see it—a narrow trail is carved into the side of the bluff, paved with flat stones that line up end to end.

  Man-made. Just like the trap. If these fish belong to anyone but the dead highwaymen, their owner could return at any time. I doubt we’d get a warm reception as we lunched on a pile of stolen fish.

  Not that I’m about to return them to the water. Not with so many people needing to be fed.

  I carefully navigate my way down the path, sliding uncomfortably close to the edge a few times as my boots hit a stone slick with damp. The ground is spongy and strewn with rocks. Thick river birch trees line the bank, their branches arching out over the water. The current moves quickly, and I give Willow credit for being a strong swimmer. Most people who stepped foot in this water would wash up on the shore hundreds of yards downstream before they ever knew what hit them.

  Which is unfortunate, because I need to get my people across this river.

  Approaching Willow, I see the fish trap is about three yards long, and a generous assortment of carp, perch, and trout flop around inside, their gills heaving. I knew Willow was a formidable girl, but being able to drag a full fish trap through a swift-moving current just raised formidable to a whole new level.

  I’m grateful she’s on my side.

  “Nice,” I say as I bend down to lift one side of the trap. It’s ridiculously heavy. I grunt with the effort.

  “Watch yourself,” she says. “Might be easier just to roll it.”