by Ruby Brown
Groggily, Mal nodded and stood. Her head was spinning and every muscle ached, but she was determined not to let them down. Rose nodded at her and they all walked out of the storeroom together, trying to powerwalk but appear natural at the same time. Rose was being especially cautious, pulling the coat that hid her guns tighter around her and avoiding eye contact with everyone. Claire had one arm around Mal’s waist and did her best to help her. Mal felt like a clumsy, drunk toddler attempting to walk for the first time. It didn’t help that she had to keep biting the inside of her cheek so that she didn’t start crying or screaming as waves of pain washed over her.
They managed to get onto the main street, and then Rose casually slipped down a side alley. They all went in after her, and as soon as they were away from prying eyes they started sprinting. Rose took off her coat and threw it to a homeless person who was dressed in torn rags. “You’re welcome!” she shouted as he stared at them in confusion. Mal was doing her best to keep up but she kept stumbling and walking into things, so eventually Dallas just picked her up and carried her. “You’re a lot heavier than I expected,” he grumbled.
“Deal with it,” Mal said, too exhausted to care as she put her head on his shoulder. She heard him chuckle as they turned another corner, going ever deeper into a maze of alleys almost as twisted as Mal’s thoughts.
They emerged onto a series of grimy streets fringed by towering buildings that were patterned with faded graffiti. Rose stopped suddenly and looked around them, listening intently for any signs of life. “Do you think they’re gone?” she asked.
“We’re not prepared to take any chances,” Dallas said quietly. “We need to find somewhere to hide.”
“One of these buildings has to be abandoned,” Thomas suggested, wrapping his arms more securely around Trixie’s waist as she leant heavily on him.
“Good thinking,” Rose said briefly, and started heading towards a building with smashed windows. Thomas’ face lit up at her praise before he started hobbling after her, supporting Trixie the entire time. Carefully, Rose climbed through the gap and landed cat-like on the cold stone floor. Mal made Dallas put her down and then she followed, with Claire close behind. Thomas had to get Dallas’ help hauling Trixie through the window, who was looking around her with wide, glazed eyes and could barely stand. As soon as she was in the room, she scurried to a corner and sat down with her arms wrapped around her knees. Thomas came and sat next to her, talking softly the whole time. Dallas tripped while attempting to go through the window and landed heavily on the floor.
“I’m fine, Claire,” Mal said irritably when Claire stepped towards her. She didn’t care if she sounded rude or ungrateful, she was in a lot of pain and all she wanted to do was sit alone in a cold, dark room and ignore the world. She shook her head in an attempt to snap herself back into focus and said “how did you guys find us?”
“After you disappeared, the entirety of Tenebar was searching for you. When we got the news that you’d stabbed those police officers, great job by the way, we headed to your house and heard the fighting from where we were in the woods. We arrived just in time to rescue Claire, and she guessed where they were taking you,” Rose responded absentmindedly, staring out of the windows. She suddenly hissed in pain and pulled her hand back from the broken glass that had cut her. Scarlet blood dripped from the wound and landed on the floor. “I’m fine,” she said sullenly as Dallas opened his mouth.
“It’s a good thing you found us. We could really use your help fighting Akraansir...” Mal began, but Dallas cut her off with a simple no.
“As soon as it gets dark, we’re taking you back to Tenebar. You were an idiot to run off like that,” Rose said. “Which reminds me...” she said and stepped forward to punch Mal’s arm, hard. “That’s for leaving us.”
“Don’t hurt her!” Claire protested.
“Unless you want to be next, shut up,” Rose threatened.
“You can’t take us back to Tenebar!” Mal said angrily.
“It’s the safest place for you.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Mal fumed. Rose’s eyes sparked at the insult, but she didn’t say anything. “Besides, we’ve come too far to give up now!”
“No, you and your so-called friend went on a wild goose chase fuelled with ignorant dreams to try and achieve something that no one with a shred of sanity would even think possible. You say that I’m stupid for trying to bring you back to a fortress hidden by spells where you can be surrounded and protected by the magic of others, but you’re the one who decided to place your life and magic in the hands of a girl that works for our worst enemy and killed your brother! You ran off with no explanation, and you even dragged Trixie into it! Look at her!”
Mal refused to do as she was told. Honestly, she didn’t want to see what Trixie looked like at that very moment, didn’t want to face up to reality and the hurt her actions had caused. “I didn’t mean for Trixie to come with us! I told her to stay at Tenebar and she didn’t listen to me.”
“And why did you tell her to stay at Tenebar?” Rose demanded.
“Because it was safe...” Mal half-shouted, and then trailed off into silence as she realised what she had said.
“Exactly. Tenebar will protect you.” Rose turned away as if the conversation was over, but Mal wasn’t done.
“That was before I knew about Cass!”
“What the bloody hell was Cass doing down there, by the way?” Thomas asked. “She tried to kill Dallas, I saw it.” Dallas nodded at him, and then looked at Mal with the same question written in his sparkling blue eyes. Mal took a deep breath in an attempt to control her temper, and told the group everything that had happened. Her voice faded into an impenetrable silence that suffocated everyone in the room with its weight. No one dared to speak, partly because they were still trying to process what had been said and also because they were terrified they’d say the wrong thing. Anxious glances were exchanged. Dallas reached behind him to try and get his battle axe, but his hand closed on empty air. He seemed so lost without it.
“I don’t understand...” Rose said softly.
“My point is, Tenebar isn’t safe anymore,” Mal said firmly. “Please just let us get my parents back, and then I’ll go wherever you want. But I need to make sure they’re safe.”
“They’re with Akraansir. Of course they’re not safe,” Rose said angrily. “And it would be suicide to go after them.”
“Mal...your parents have been gone for a while now. They’re probably dead. It’s not worth the risk,” Thomas said gently.
Claire piped up “I don’t think they’d be dead. Akraansir is ruthless, sure, but he’s also smart. He knows that Mal’s parents are the only bargaining chip he has.”
“See?” Mal said loudly. “Claire knows Akraansir better than any of us and if she says that my parents are alive, we should trust her.”
“No,” Dallas said firmly.
“Can everyone stop being so bloody pessimistic?” Mal shouted.
“Realistic,” Dallas corrected her. Mal glared at him.
“I think we should try,” Thomas said quietly from his corner.
Mal turned to him quickly, jumping on the last piece of hope she had like a starving predator on a chunk of meat. “Really?”
Nervously, he nodded. His skin was paler then Mal had ever seen it, and Trixie took hold of one of his shaking hands to try and steady him, but his eyes were flashing like a silver blade as he addressed his sister in a voice bubbling with hot anger. “You know what it’s like to lose your parents. We both do. Or have you forgotten?”
“I would never forget,” Rose hissed like an angry cat.
“Yet you’d willingly put Mal through the same thing. If there was even a chance you could have saved them, you would have taken it in an instant. Now we have a chance to save Mal, and you refuse, choosing instead to stubbornly act on dead orders.”
“I’m a soldier. It’s what I was trained to do,” Rose said harshly, but there was a lilt at
the end of her voice that showed she was pleading with them for understanding, to forgive her for any hurt she might have caused. “Besides, I refuse to let any of you get killed. Taking stupid risks was what took our parents away from us.”
“This isn’t a stupid risk. You’re forgetting who we’ve got with us. Have some faith,” Thomas said firmly, and then uttered some words in a language Mal didn’t understand. It sounded like leaves and twigs crunching underfoot and the low rumble of thunder. Rose’s eyes flashed and then she turned away so the others couldn’t see the emotions dance across her face. “Okay, let’s do it,” she said grimly.
“But...” Dallas said, confused, and Rose whirled around to face him. Her hands were clenched at her sides and she couldn’t quite match his gaze.
“No arguments,” she said stiffly.
Mal was as puzzled as Dallas was at this sudden change of heart, but she wasn’t going to argue. Feeling sick with relief, she leant against the wall and sunk down, closing her eyes and letting the cool breeze wash over her. She was aware of Claire coming to sit next to her, and although she shifted her position slightly so their arms didn’t brush together she didn’t protest. The exhaustion crashed over her in thundering waves, scrambling her thoughts until she could barely breathe, and at the source of it all was a deep, throbbing pain that never left her alone.
Chapter 33
As time stretched on painfully slowly, the sky darkened and became a black abyss, peppered with stars that shone like diamonds. Even as the night cloaked the town, Rose refused to move and snapped at Mal to stay still and wait. Impatient and annoyed, yet unwilling to argue in case Rose changed her mind altogether, sat in a corner and stared out the window, counting the stars as they appeared. Claire hovered around the edges of the group, an outcast, the concern for the people around her plain on her face, but every time she dared to step closer Rose glared at her. It was clear that although her knowledge was valued and they all knew that without her they had almost no chance of navigating Akraansir’s domain, they didn’t trust her. A part of Mal told her to protect her friend, but every time she opened her mouth to speak in Claire’s defence, Felix’s face flashed in front of her eyes and she was shunted back into a painful silence.
Rose was probably the most restless of them all. Dallas kept calling her over to him so they could mutter quietly together and use sticks to draw plans into the dirt, but she kept jumping up and pacing the room, sometimes practising her fighting in the centre of it. Mal tracked her movements with curious eyes. It looked kind of ridiculous to see Rose flailing around in the middle of the room, viciously punching the air, but she had such a fierce determination in her eyes that no one dared question her, except maybe Dallas who kept asking her to come back in a gentle yet mildly exasperated tone.
Thomas and Trixie stayed away from it all, talking quietly with Thomas’ arm protectively over her shoulders. Trixie was slowly recovering. Every now and then they’d hear her quietly laughing at something, and Thomas would grin at her, proud that he’d been able to make her happy. She was still shaking, and her eyes never stopped moving, but at least she was alive. The real question was: would she survive the trip to Akraansir? How many of them would be alive when the night ended? The unspoken query hung heavily in the air but was stubbornly ignored by all of them. Voicing it would make it real. So they kept the doubts at arm’s length as best they could and overlooked the way their hands shook and their hearts pounded.
Rose took one final glance out of the shattered window, and finally declared that they should start moving. Full of pent-up energy, Mal leapt to her feet. Claire appeared out of nowhere to stand at her side, blazing with a quietly confident fire. The others were less enthusiastic as they brushed the dirt from their clothes. Rose looked at each of them in turn, as if memorising their faces, and then turned to the window and climbed out. The others followed her and then remained crouched in the shadows at the side of the building for a second, scanning their surroundings anxiously.
As Mal’s feet hit the pavement, her mind spun. She was unable to supress her shivering as the cold air crashed into her and raised goose bumps on her exposed skin. In the blazing sunshine, the abandoned alleyways had been unsettling enough, but when it was shrouded in shadow it was twice as strange. The bright, bold graffiti had faded away into greys and blacks and became strange shapes that warped the walls with their hidden messages. Instantly, Mal felt like throwing herself back into the room behind her and staying within its four walls until daybreak, but she forced herself to push those desires to one side.
After doing a quick headcount, as if it was possible for one of them to sink into the pavement after leaving the building, Rose fixed her eyes on Claire, who nodded and started moving through the darkness, leading them deeper into the labyrinth. Rose followed her, slinking like a fox through the shadows. Dallas hovered around her and Mal like a bodyguard, continuously adjusting his shirt to try and get rid of the terrible gap where his axe should be. Without its comforting weight between his shoulder blades, he felt hollow, and it didn’t help that they were going up against the villain he had heard terrifying tales about since he was a child. Trixie and Thomas kept close together at the back of the group, keeping enough distance between them and the others so that they couldn’t hear what they were muttering. The wind caught the gentle sounds of their voices and sent it spiralling so that it echoed slightly too loudly in the wasteland they were in, but no one had the heart to tell them to be quiet.
The whole group was on edge for the entire trip, anxiously peering round corners and squinting to try and see through the blackness. Tension began to grow between Rose and Claire as they fought a silent battle over who was leading the group. Claire felt that she needed to prove to everyone that they could trust her, and since she knew the most about Akraansir, surely she should be giving the orders. But these people were her family, and Claire was a traitor who had dared to hurt Mal, and she was a trained warrior who had fought and planned many battles, so obviously Rose should be in charge. Unfortunately for Rose, Claire was the only one who knew where they were going, so she had to resign herself to walking a few steps behind her and glaring at her back. Claire seemed very pleased with that. Everyone kept turning around to check that everyone was still there and moving.
Claire led them through the city to an abandoned tunnel, carefully hidden behind a strategically placed curtain of vines and leaves that spilled down from the ground above it. Claire paused at the yawning mouth of the tunnel, staring at the intricate patterns the vines made as they wrapped around each other. She stayed still and silent for a few seconds, her eyes glassy and dull. Mal glanced at Rose, half-expecting her to tell Claire to hurry up, but she was doing exactly the same thing. Claire broke the silence by taking a deep breath in, and then pushed the vines away and walked into the tunnel determinedly, as if she refused to give herself any more time to question her choices.
Walking through the tunnel was probably the worst part of the journey for Mal. It was a lot longer than she expected, and as the darkness engulfed her she had to fight against the creature in her chest, the one that clawed at her ribs and tore the breath from her lungs in a desperate attempt to get her to move faster. She became more and more desperate as the soft glowing light glimmering in the twilight grew bigger, shining with the promise of safety. She almost ripped Claire’s head off when she threw out her arm, stopping the group in their tracks only a few metres from the end of the tunnel. She turned around to face them, her sombre expression adding to the gloom around them. “There are guards out there,” she warned them quietly. “I need you all to stay here while I take care of them. I won’t be too long.”
“No way,” Rose hissed.
Even in the obscurity, Claire’s highly exaggerated eye roll was obvious. “They know me. If I go in alone, they won’t be as suspicious and I can keep them talking long enough to get in close. If we all went barging in there, they’d immediately sound the alarms and we’d all be screwed. Just l
et me do this.”
Even though she was furious at handing over the control to someone like Claire, the strategist in Rose couldn’t help but see the logic in her plan. She couldn’t manage anything other than a curt nod, and Claire took it as permission to dart through the tunnel. Just before she disappeared, Mal saw a flash of blinding silver in her hand, glowing like the moon. Then there came the footsteps, soft and hesitant, and a low murmur of voices that was suddenly broken by a high-pitched scream. Mal clapped her hands over her ears and winced as it reverberated around the cramped space. It was so raw and real and painful that it made her heart ache and her stomach churn. She closed her eyes and begged for it to end, but when it did it was unnaturally sudden, like stopping a song right in the middle.
They saw Claire standing at the end of the tunnel. She raised one hand and beckoned them forwards. Silhouetted against the light, she looked like an angel welcoming them to heaven. Ironically, it was exactly the opposite. When no one moved, Claire gestured again, more urgently, and this time they jolted into action and moved forwards. Mal didn’t know what she was expecting when she left the tunnel, but it certainly wasn’t the small wooden room they stepped into. Claire moved to one side to let them pass, but Mal didn’t fail to notice her tense shoulders and the way she strategically outstretched her arms to hide what was behind her. Mal caught a glimpse of blood-stained floors, a mangled body lying in pieces, before Claire moved and blocked her view again. She was desperate not to let them see what she had done.
Mal looked at her for a second, but then turned to follow Dallas through a narrow stone passageway. Her shoulders grazed the rough walls as she walked, and small bits of rubble fell to settle on her like confetti and prick at her skin. Most of the light was blocked by Dallas in front of her, so Mal kept her eyes on her feet and focused on not tripping over. As she neared the end of the passageway, she took a deep breath and forced herself to look up, scared of what she would see but refusing to give in to the fear.