Deception

by C. J. Redwine

  It’s equally clear that Willow is prepared to outstare her for as long as it takes.

  Clarissa finally lowers her hand and says, “Portia, I thank you for your suggestion, but I’d like to offer an additional opinion on the matter if I may.”

  Portia nods, and I get the feeling that Clarissa’s question was mostly a show of politeness. I doubt anyone in Lankenshire says no to her very often.

  “It seems to me that we are discussing taking action based on fear, instead of stepping back to look at the bigger picture. I don’t believe placating a murderer by imprisoning an innocent man is the kind of careful, just approach Lankenshire is known for,” she says.

  “I appreciate your thoughts, Clarissa,” Portia says. “But we can’t let Logan McEntire and the others remain within our city when we know there’s a killer on the loose among them. We owe our people a safe, stable environment. We owe these people nothing.”

  “They are people in need, Portia.” Clarissa’s voice is as hard as the floor beneath us. “The humanity in us requires that we take steps to help them if at all possible.”

  “But—”

  “Besides”—Clarissa lowers her voice and steps toward me—“we need that device.”

  “In exchange for my freedom, and for offering my people shelter, I’ll build a replica of the Rowansmark device, along with a power booster so that any attempt to override your controls will be thwarted.”

  The triumvirate exchange a look I can’t decipher, and put their heads together to discuss my offer too quietly for me to hear.

  Finally, Clarissa meets my gaze. “You’re absolutely sure your power booster defeats any override attempts?”

  “I am.”

  “Who else knows you can build this?”

  “Just my inner circle of friends and advisors.”

  Portia says quietly, “If Rowansmark found out—”

  “They won’t.” Clarissa’s voice is crisp, though she speaks softly. “We keep the knowledge contained to the three of us and Logan’s inner circle. If we give him a workspace in the council building itself, we should be able to keep this a secret from our Rowansmark keepers.”

  Time feels like it’s slowing down while my heart is speeding up. Willow raises her bow again, and Frankie reaches for his sword while Rachel swears and tries to get out of bed.

  My hand grips my sword hilt as I ask, “What do you mean, your Rowansmark keepers? If you’re in bed with Rowansmark, we’re leaving. Now.”

  “We aren’t in bed with them by choice. None of the city-states are.” Maxwell’s words are forceful, but there’s fear in his eyes.

  Clarissa straightens her back. “You aren’t the first to bring us news of Rowansmark’s ability to call and control the tanniyn.” It sounds like she says “ta-neen.”

  “The tanniyn?” Rachel asks. “Do you mean the Cursed One?”

  “Such a silly name,” Portia says. “Tanniyn is a Hebrew word that means dragon or serpent. Because the creatures who roam the Wasteland are both dragon and serpent, our early scholars felt it an appropriate classification for the beast. I believe most, if not all, of the other city-states agreed with our scholars and use that classification as well.”

  “We didn’t,” Rachel says. “But then, keeping his people undereducated and superstitious sounds like something the Commander would do.”

  “We called it the Cursed One because that’s the term Jared used,” Quinn says. “In our village, we just called it the beast.”

  I look at Clarissa. “Who told you about Rowansmark’s ability to call and control the Cursed . . . the tanniyn?”

  “Rowansmark itself.” Her mouth is grim. “They showed up here a month ago. Gave us a very convincing demonstration. Overrode the sonar signal all the leaders use to keep the beast at bay.” She taps the thick silver chain she wears around her neck. “Then they explained to us that they were now our watchdogs. They would keep the tanniyn from attacking as long as we paid a hefty protection fee each year. They left some trackers behind as their eyes and ears. If it looks like we’re considering rebellion against Rowansmark, the trackers will call the tanniyn and destroy us all.”

  “Not if I build you a device that can overpower theirs.” I hold out my hand. “I will give you tech capable of freeing you from Rowansmark’s tyranny in exchange for an alliance with my people. With me.”

  She turns to look at Maxwell and Portia for a long moment. I’m not sure how to interpret their expressions, but Clarissa doesn’t share my difficulty. She turns to face me and takes my hand.

  “We are allies.” Her grip is firm. “We will give you a workspace in the council building under the guise of allowing you to borrow our library to research the city-states north of us. That should help keep the trackers from becoming suspicious. Make a list of supplies you need and meet us there in one hour. Elim can show you where it is.”

  Without another word, Maxwell, Clarissa, and Portia turn and leave the room. The second they reach the hall, Willow says, “Close the door. We don’t need an audience for what I’m about to tell you.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  LOGAN

  “I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?” Willow asks as Adam shuts the door behind the Lankenshire triumvirate.

  “The good news,” I say, and hope she knows better than to admit that I gave her the task of hiding the device in the Wasteland. It’s not that I don’t trust everyone in the room. It’s that the fewer people who know about it, the less likely it is that Rowansmark trackers can torture my people and discover the truth.

  “I caught the tracker who was on the field when the fires were set. Or at least a tracker who looked just like him.”

  “Where?” I ask, as Rachel, Quinn, Frankie, and Adam lean forward, their eyes riveted on Willow.

  “About forty yards into the eastern Wasteland. He must have thought any chance of being caught was gone now that we were inside the city wall.” She shrugs. “He thought wrong.”

  “What were you doing out in the Wasteland?” Quinn asks, his voice just as raw and raspy as Rachel’s.

  “Hunting.” Her eyes gleam. “And I found what I was looking for.”

  With the tracker in custody, perhaps I can get some answers of my own. Not that a tracker will give me information of his own volition. I’ll have to get my hands dirty, maybe do a few things that until a month ago I’d have sworn I’d never do, but I will have answers. Whoever is masquerading as a loyal Baalboden survivor is going to be caught and punished.

  “What’s the bad news?” I ask, and Willow purses her lips like she’s just sucked on a lemon.

  “He didn’t survive.”

  “What didn’t he survive?” Frankie frowns at her.

  She shrugs. “Me. He found it necessary to try to kill me after I’d already defeated him. I defended myself, and now he’s dead.”

  I swallow the harsh tang of disappointment, and force myself to say, “It’s okay. At least you removed that threat. Now we just have to figure out which of our people knows about my past and—”

  “Oh, I don’t think we’re looking for one of your people.” Willow’s dark eyes find mine, and something feral lies in their depths. “The tracker had a wristmark on his right arm. It looked identical to the ones everyone in camp wears.”

  “Rowansmark trackers don’t have wristmarks,” Rachel says.

  “Well, this one did.” Willow fists her hands on her hips as if daring us to call her a liar.

  I feel sick. Unsteady. My blood roars through me, and I have to grab the end of Rachel’s bed to hold myself upright as the final pieces fall into place.

  “No wonder we couldn’t find the traitor in our camp. He had a wristmark. He’d studied Baalboden. He knew just enough to masquerade as one of us, and we never questioned it because he looked the part.” I can’t stand still. Not when so much fury fuels me. Right under my nose this entire time. A tracker. Sneaking into my tent and leaving messages. Slitting throats. Poisoning us a
nd then watching us burn. I stalk across the room and wheel back around to see the rage that burns in me reflected on every face I see.

  “I know you said to leave the last message in the middle of the road, but it’s a clue. After seeing the wristmark on that tracker, I figured we needed all the clues we could get,” Willow says as she thrusts a piece of parchment at me.

  It hasn’t survived the night very well. It’s stained with damp, and the ink is smudged in several places. I wish I could go back and reverse my decision to leave it where it lay, but wishing won’t solve the problem.

  “Spread it out,” I say, and pull the small table beside Rachel’s bed over to me. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Willow lays the parchment on the table’s surface and secures two opposing corners by placing a mug on one and a jar of salve on the other. I peer at the words scrawled across the page and try to force it all to make sense.

  Traitors d erve to ie. You h ve b n dged.

  “The first sentence is obviously ‘Traitors deserve to die.’ Not quite sure about the end of the second sentence, though.” Adam taps the parchment lightly.

  “Traitors deserve to die. You”—I draw my finger in a line beneath the other words and go for the obvious—“have been . . . what? You have been—”

  “Judged?” Adam asks.

  “Sounds like the same pile of self-righteous idiocy he’s been saying all along.” Willow waves her hands in the air with more drama than I realized she possessed. “Your debt is unpaid! Traitors deserve to die! You’ve been judged!” She looks at me. “Wait until we catch him. Then I’ll show him what it’s like to be judged.”

  “Judge and be judged.” Rachel’s voice shakes as she struggles to sit up.

  A finger of ice slides over my skin. I’ve heard those words before. Where? When?

  “What are you saying?” Adam asks her.

  “The killer. When he had me during the fires. He said . . .” Her fingernails scratch lightly at the bandage on her arm. I reach across the bed and take her hand in mine.

  “He isn’t going to hurt you again,” I say.

  “He is if he gets the chance,” Willow says.

  “Does it ever occur to you not to say whatever comes into your head?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “Tell me I’m lying.”

  Lying. The killer’s been lying to me all along. Maybe instead of concentrating on trying to find him by what we know of his past, we need to focus on what actions he took to make his lie seem like the truth to me.

  I rub my thumb across Rachel’s knuckles and say, “The killer needed us to trust him. Accept him. The best liars use as much truth as possible. He’d have a convincing story. One that could explain away anything we might find worrisome.”

  “He’d make sure his actions gained your trust as well,” Quinn says from across the room. “He’d confide in you. Fight for you. Maybe make it seem like he’d risked his life for you, because who would believe the person determined to destroy you would be willing to die for you?”

  “Maybe he’d find a way to have an alibi during the murders—or something we’d believe to be an alibi—to deflect suspicion,” Adam says.

  “Judge and be judged.” My blood hammers through my veins, and my breathing scrapes my lungs in harsh bursts. I remember where I’ve heard that phrase before.

  “Logan?” Rachel leans forward. “Are you okay?”

  “He said it was something his father used to say.” I look at her, but I’m not seeing her. I’m seeing the boy who fought better than he should’ve been able to fight and explained it away with a convincing story about his former occupation. I’m seeing the boy who argued that it was morally wrong to give the Rowansmark device to any other city-state.

  I’m seeing the boy who looked me in the eye as we stood in the tunnel beneath the Commander’s compound and told me he wouldn’t rest until the man he held responsible for his father’s death was punished. I’d assumed he meant the Commander.

  Now I realize he meant me.

  “It’s Ian,” I say, and Rachel’s face goes white. “He told me he could fight because he’d been apprenticed to the Brute Squad, but that was a lie. He also said his father was loyal to the Commander and that it cost him his life. I think he was telling the truth about his father dying. Everything Ian’s done . . . this was personal to him. If James Rowan punished Marcus for his treachery, and Marcus didn’t survive his pain atonement, that would be enough to push his son over the edge.” I don’t say that this makes Ian my brother. I don’t have to. I can see the horrified realization on everyone’s face.

  Ian, with his easy charm and his courage against Carrington. Ian, with his false loyalty and his dedication to no cause but his own desperate need for revenge.

  Ian, with his knife to Donny’s throat. With his syringe full of poison in Sylph’s room. With his hands on Rachel.

  “I’m going to kill him.” I let go of Rachel’s hand and stand. “I’m going to find him and kill him.” My eyes meet Willow’s dark, feral gaze. “And I’m going to make it hurt.”

  She smiles. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  RACHEL

  “You can’t go without a plan,” I say, but what I mean is they can’t go without me.

  “I have a plan: Kill Ian,” Logan says. In his voice I hear the furious need to avenge Donny, Sylph, Thom, and the others who died under his watch because of his brother.

  Because of Ian.

  The boy who saved me from the Cursed One so he could gain my trust. So he could forge an alliance with me behind Logan’s back. So he could try to use me to get his hands on the device.

  Nobody uses me and gets away with it.

  “I’m coming too,” I say, and push the blanket off myself with my left arm.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Logan says.

  “Logan, he killed Sylph. I’m going with you.” I give him a don’t-bother-arguing look and grasp the little table beside the bed so I can stand without falling.

  “You’re in no condition to go anywhere,” Quinn says, and I glare at him.

  “Neither are you, but that isn’t stopping you, is it?” I ask as Quinn sits on the side of his bed, pulling on his boots with shaky fingers.

  Logan mutters something under his breath, and Willow says, “You’re both insane. Get back in bed.”

  Quinn meets her eyes. “No.”

  Willow shakes her head and looks away.

  “Neither of you should come with us. You’ve been injured, and you’re still weak. You don’t even have a weapon in case he tries to hurt you,” Logan says.

  I pull a pair of pants on under the loose tunic I’m wearing. “So give me a knife, and let’s go.”

  “You are so predictable,” Logan says. “How are you going to use a weapon? Your right arm is injured.”

  “Nothing wrong with my left.”

  “You can barely stand.”

  “Which will make my facade of weakness even more convincing,” I say. “You aren’t going to stop me. If you leave me behind, I’ll follow you anyway.”

  Logan closes his eyes for a moment, and then says, “You can come because I don’t see any other option. But Willow and I are the ones who will capture him.”

  “And me,” Adam says.

  “And me. For Thom. For all of us.” Fury and grief breathe power into Frankie’s words.

  “That’s fine. I’ll be your backup plan,” I say.

  “He knows you’re weak from your injuries. He’ll exploit that if he has the chance,” Logan says.

  “I certainly hope he tries.”

  “I refuse to bring either of you if you aren’t protected by more than your instincts.”

  “Where are the weapons?” Quinn asks.

  “Are you planning to carry one?”

  He shakes his head. “Rachel needs one. I can find her something easily concealed. Seems to me you, Willow, and Adam need to check this floor. Ask around. See if anyone knows where Ian is before
we rush through the city looking like a mob ready to burn someone at the stake. Wouldn’t hurt to have a few more people with us when we find him.”

  Logan nods and points to the right. “Our cache of weaponry is four doors down. We’ll canvas this floor, get some help, and return for you in just a few minutes. Be ready.”

  Quinn leaves to find a weapon for me, and I bite my lip as agony radiates along my arm while I try to button my pants. The pain still feels sharp and real, but I try not to let it comfort me.

  My teeth scrape against a swollen nub on the inside of my mouth, and I remember Ian crushing my lips against my teeth as he said, “Shh.”

  I’ll show him what happens to someone who shushes me.

  By the time Quinn returns, I’ve managed to untangle most of my hair and am hunting for my boots. My hair smells like lemongrass, and so does my skin. Clearly, somebody washed me while I was unconscious. I sincerely hope that somebody wasn’t Logan.

  My body flushes with heat at the thought, and I shake it away. I have a killer to destroy. I can think about romance later.

  My head feels heavy and off-kilter, and every breath I take burns against my lungs as if the smoke I inhaled still lives deep inside me.

  “Which one do you want?” Quinn asks.

  I look up as he tosses a silvery metal vest, as thin as a layer of silk, onto the cot beside me and holds out his hands. On the left, a small dagger with a double-edged blade barely fills his entire hand. On the right he holds the knife I’ve carried since the day we discovered the cache of weapons in the Commander’s compound.

  I stare at the blades and my mouth goes dry.

  Guilty.

  Melkin’s tormented gaze mocks me as his blood pours over my hands. I start shoving it away, but stop before I can seal up the cracks in the silence that still crouches inside of me. I don’t want to go back to feeling disconnected from myself. I’m a long way from better, but to refuse to face this now would be to unravel the tiny bit of healing I’ve managed to find.