by Cait Ashwood
Something akin to a blush spread across his cheeks. “Well, technically I’m banned from the Institute’s record rooms, so...” he rubbed the heel of his hand along the side of his neck and gave a shrug.
Normally she’d tease him about dodging the rules, but the words died on the tip of her tongue. “Right.” The air between them grew awkward, something she’d never experienced with him before. “I’m just going to get to work, then.” She ducked past him into the record room, ignoring the sensation of his eyes boring into her back until she finally heard his footsteps receding down the hall.
Brana took a deep breath and let it out in a controlled fashion, slowly gathering her materials and feeling like she’d dodged an arrow. Once she calmed down, the plans began to flow. She’d take her First Rites next moon, whether Lily returned or not. It would help the other girls see her as someone responsible. The biggest issue she was going to have to overcome was their dislike of her. Ideas came and went, but in the end, Brana decided that her tactics had to play to her own strengths, not necessarily how her mother would do things.
Her strengths were listening and observation. She hated senseless chit-chat, but if she played her cards right, she wouldn’t have to engage them that way. All she had to do was listen to them, to their complaints, and figure out what she could do to ease them. It didn’t have to be anything big. It could be as simple as getting a stain out of a robe, or anything, really. It would mean more work for her, but over time her actions would win them over, even if her personality didn’t.
She’d sat on the stone bench for hours before finally stretching and rolling up the parchments as her stomach growled something fierce. I guess I missed dinner. It was time well spent, and she was happy with her plan. As the last one in the room, she carefully extinguished all the lamps and the candles in the chandelier. Satisfied, she shut the heavy doors to the room and put the bar in place.
“So, are you going to keep pretending you’re fine or are you going to tell me what happened?”
Brana jumped out of her skin, dropping all her parchments.
Jasper, for once, didn’t move to help her. He was leaning against the wall a few feet down the hall, arms crossed over his chest and a scowl on his face.
She’d rarely seen him angry, and never at her. As a diversion, she bent down, picking up the parchments one by one and tucking them back under her arm.
He was still staring at her, eyebrows furrowed, when she rose.
“I probably shouldn’t say anything until the official announcement.” She moved to walk past him but he shifted, blocking the hallway.
“Is this about Lily?”
Brana blinked. She spent a fair bit of time worrying about Lily, but hadn’t thought of her in hours.
“It’s not.” Jasper sighed, shaking his head. “Come on Ana, when have you ever not been able to talk to me?”
People spoke about hearts breaking all the time, but she’d never realized the pain was a physical one as well. That was the only explanation for the shattering sensation in her chest, one that seemed to traverse her entire body and made her throat tighten up so she could scarcely breathe. She straightened her back, her instinct to never show weakness kicking in. She stared him straight in the eye. “Since now.”
This time when she went to move past him, he let her.
Don’t cry yet. Don’t cry yet. Brana kept the mantra up all the way to her private quarters. She closed the door behind her, threw the bar, put her parchments on her desk, and did a quick visual check in case he’d decided to phase here ahead of her. Only when she was positive she was alone did she let the tears come, sobbing into a pillow to muffle the sound. The darkness didn’t judge her for her weakness and in time offered her a respite from the concerns of the living, taking her off into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“It doesn’t make any sense!” Rowan slammed his fist down on the table.
And that’s about the fifth time you’ve said that. Jasper shifted in his seat, not paying attention to the tirade in front of him. He should be wracking his brains, trying to identify Zaddicus’ target. Instead, the scene with Brana from last night kept itself on an endless loop in his head, distracting him and keeping him in a foul temper. She never hid anything from him. Personal issues aside, the fact that she knew something worth hiding unsettled him more than he cared to admit.
“Jasper?”
Huh? Hey, when did Hound get here? He cleared his throat, trying to act like he’d been paying attention the whole time. “Yeah?”
Zeche narrowed his eyes at him. “Hound asked if you’d heard anything around the Tower. People tend not to take the youth as seriously and have looser lips around them.”
Oh. Their surface scouts had nothing. There weren’t even any tainted men on the surface, as far as they could tell, much less ones phasing around and causing mischief. If they existed, they stuck to uninhabited areas. Their only other lead was that somehow the Tower had been infiltrated. With as many eyes as they had here, all trained to check their surroundings at all times, that was impossible, and they knew it. Brana’s comment nagged at him, pulling at his mind. Since now. “No, I haven’t heard anything worth following up on.”
The three men in the room stared at him with varying stages of suspicion. All were highly trained in interrogation, so it wasn’t surprising they knew he was holding something back. He sighed, letting his gaze rest on Hound. “Brana was off the other night. I don’t know what it was about, but it’s not like her to keep secrets from me.”
Hound’s expression cleared immediately. “As nothing in this room leaves the premises, I can trust that you all will keep this to yourselves.” Hound glanced pointedly at Zeche, who made an X over his heart with a little grin. Hound rolled his eyes. “Audrey is stepping down as First Lily, as soon as Brana is ready to take over.”
Rowan made a disapproving noise. “Of course she is. The minute it looks like it’s getting rough--”
“I wouldn’t finish that sentence if I were you.” Hound positively loomed over the boy, who looked like he very much wanted to continue bashing his mother.
She would have told me that, though. There’s nothing to be hidden there; it’ll be public knowledge soon enough. Instead of easing his mind, if anything he was more disturbed than before.
Zeche reigned Rowan in and Hound prowled across the room, taking a seat next to Jasper. “I do want you to keep an eye on her, Jasper. She’s much too quiet since Audrey spoke to her.”
Jasper shrugged. “She’s always been quiet.”
Hound shook his head slightly, like he was being careful not to telegraph his movements. “Not like this.”
“She made it pretty clear she’s not going to tell me anything.” He hadn’t meant to let the bitterness seep into his voice, but it dripped off every word.
A wry smile tugged at Hound’s lips. “She’s like her mother, internalizing everything. Tell her what you know, and she’ll open up.”
Jasper shrugged, his shoulders feeling tight. I don’t want to pry information out of her like a target. I want her to want to tell me. It was a small but vital distinction. Brana was going to need a lot of support in the days to come, but Jasper had never had to force her to accept his help before. Was that even the right thing to do, here?
“Hound, you said you had a report for us?” Zeche’s voice rose above the quiet level he’d been using with Rowan, and both Trackers turned to regard him.
“If you want to call it a report. More of the same. No tainted Seekers, no phasing from untagged jumpers. Ranks are scanned daily by Ace and myself.”
More of nothing. This is bullshit. That Stryker kid didn’t just materialize out of nowhere, and we know where they’re hiding. “We need people on the inside.”
Zeche crossed his arms over his chest. “And just how do you propose to do that?”
Jasper shrugged. “We have half-breeds of our own, male and female, though I suspect the men will be the better choi
ce in this case. Send them to join his ranks. They know how to resist possession.”
Hound sighed next to him and he glanced over. Everyone knew Hound had been the first Seeker to be tainted, and he hated any prejudice against non-pure members. “That may be our only option at this point.”
Well shit. For him to come out and admit it... this doesn’t look good. They honestly had zero other leads, but Zaddicus wasn’t hiding in an underground lair somewhere twiddling his thumbs, that was for sure.
“Few of them are of age yet, Seeker.” Zeche didn’t seem to have anything against the plan from his expression, but the glint in his eye made it clear he was up to something.
“But most of their mothers were his captives. If it means stopping him, they’ll get over it.”
Zeche shrugged with his good shoulder. “Stopping him from what? What evidence do we have of a threat?”
Hound growled in the back of his throat and ran a hand through his hair.
“It’s not common knowledge at the Tower that he has Lily. If we put the right spin on it...” The words tasted foul on Jasper’s tongue, but also held the spark of potential.
Rowan spoke up, sounding thoughtful. “That could work. If we make it appear that Zaddicus intentionally kidnapped her, instead of it being this Stryker kid’s luckiest accident ever--”
Hound finished. “Then we gain their full approval to send qualified volunteers into his stronghold.”
Zeche nodded slowly. “No member of the Order will feel safe outside the Tower’s walls, which means decreased production.”
“They can’t stand to see the people suffer. And with the preliminary explorations from the Ravens, we should be able to phase at least part-way in.” Jasper bit his lower lip, hoping to hell the spies had been accurate with their depth charts. The slightest miscalculation could result in high casualties on their end. Most of the entrance to the compound appeared to be old, disused tunnels leading to nowhere. They had to move slowly and carefully, but if half-breeds were going in, they’d have a freedom of movement that the Ravens lacked, being untainted.
Rowan crossed his arms over his chest. “I wish you had some half-breed Trackers. Sure would come in handy.”
Jasper glanced at Hound. There was one half-breed that had shown a bit of the ability, but the decision had ultimately been made to keep him ignorant of it. There was a lot of prejudice against half-breeds, and the idea that someone would have access to all the jump patterns of every Seeker in service and could be more easily turned against them was unsettling to many of the men currently in service. Trackers knew too much, and could do too much, to risk them falling into enemy hands. Even Hound had reluctantly voted against training him.
“If only,” Hound grumbled.
Guess he’s not bringing it up, then. Jasper doubted they’d get him trained to any extent in time, anyway. They were all itching to get Lily back, but if this plan worked, they might recover her within a few weeks at most. It all depended on what they found in Zaddicus’ new underground hell hole.
“I can’t shake the feeling that we’re missing something.” Zeche stroked his Van Dyke, staring off into space. They all had that feeling, that niggling at the back of their mind that they were overlooking some detail along the line, but even with four heads together, they couldn’t come up with anything else to check or cross-reference and verify. They had nothing, and it was infuriating.
“Guess it’s time to bring this up to the top, then.” Hound’s chair scraped loudly across the floor as he rose to his feet. He stretched, gave a nod to Zeche, and headed for the door.
Jasper rose as well, surprised to find Hound leaning into him as he passed.
“Don’t forget about her.
He stared at the man long after he left. How exactly am I supposed to help her if she won’t let me in?
Chapter Twenty-Six
Zaddicus watched his men at drill, arms crossed over his chest. They were in fine form with Vex and Stryker putting them through their paces. There were better fighters than his children down there, but they were few and far between. His army was nearly five hundred strong, mostly defectors or exiles from Paxia, the main Dweller city. They all had reasons to hate the Order and that’s what counted, what motivated them.
Forcing men to follow him through the taint had been his undoing last time. Now, they’d complete the mission whether he lived or died. Their loyalty was to the cause, not him, and that gave them strength and fervor that his first army lacked.
Vex’s sharp voice rose from the practice floor as she struck one man in the gut with the butt of her pommel. “You think you can fight off a granny with that over-sized pig sticker?” She proceeded to beat him into the ground until he threw his blade to the side in surrender. “Guard before you attack, you idiot.” She tossed the blade back at him before continuing down the line.
Today. We’ll go today. He’d been waiting for a good time to mount his attack. He’d been almost ready to issue the orders when Stryker brought that Surfacer girl down here, and that had derailed all his plans. Was she a plant? Did she truly wish to serve them, as Stryker claimed? She was a wild card he couldn’t trust and, worse than that, she might have Stryker’s ear. He’d had to keep his heirs out of his plans much more than he’d wished to maintain absolute secrecy. Weeks ago, he’d ordered his main commanders to keep the army and beasts ready at all times. Zaddicus wanted them prepared to launch on a moment’s notice, and that moment, he’d finally decided, was today.
Zaddicus waved his hand and an aide appeared. “Give the girl a weeks’ rations and install a bar over her door.” The man nodded and vanished. There was no need to explain who ‘the girl’ was. Stryker had been busy keeping the common men away from his pure-blooded Surfacer prize, despite Zad’s orders that she be his trophy for the time being. Many of them had never seen dark hair or sun-kissed freckles before, and she was a temptation in a package with her proportions.
Thinking of the daughter inevitably made him think of the mother. I can’t harbor her here much longer. Abduct the cub and the mother bear will follow. Audrey already knew how he played, how he operated. While he had a few new tricks up his sleeve that might give her pause, he had no doubts that keeping the daughter here would bring the Surfacers down on them eventually. All the more reason to set out now. Once we seize control of the Dweller Council, we’ll be far from here with a solid power base. Cave-ins had been rigged at strategic locations to be dropped as they left. It would force the Surfacers into hopeless mazes of tunnels and, if they were lucky, give his men weeks to solidify their new position before the idiots finally caught on and found the right path.
Zad turned to the large drum behind him, stroking his fingers along the lizard leather stretched tightly over it. The beast had been a steady one he’d been quite fond of. It had helped him obtain his children, after all. After a moment reminiscing, Zad picked up the mallet nearby and positioned himself behind the drum. He waited for a lull in the training and raised his arm high above his head, bringing it down and smashing against the leather with a thundering boom. He waited five beats and repeated it, then once more.
All eyes turned to the platform as he returned the mallet to its place and approached the balcony. Zad gave any stragglers a few minutes to show up. Three peals summoned every fighting man to the room, and many of the support staff chose to show up, too.
“My people!” Zad surveyed the swelling crowd and waited for the few whispers to die down. “For many years, we have waited. We have hidden, we have trained, we have prepared.” He gazed down into hundreds of pairs of rapt eyes, power twisting deliciously in his gut. “And now, my people, I say to you: we are ready!”
A deafening cheer rose from nearly seven hundred throats, fists pumping into the air and swords thrusting skyward in his honor. Zad drank it all in like a fine wine, a heady feeling taking over him. He took a moment to pick out his heirs from the crowd. Vex looked nearly orgasmic with anticipation. Stryker, on the other hand, stood wit
h his arms crossed over his chest and his face pulled down into a frown.
Zad’s enthusiasm fell slightly, but he still had a crowd to play to. “Too much time have we spent under the authority of women who care nothing for the people they grind beneath their heels. Too long have we gone without a voice. Too long have we gone without our freedom!”
His ears rang from the cries of his people, and it was glorious. These were the outcasts, the shunned, those abandoned to the harshness of the wilds with nothing but the scraps of cloth on their backs to keep them alive. These were the victims, but they were victims no more. They were his and, united under his will, they were an army.
“Commanders! Ready your troops. We move today!” He pumped his fist into the air, glee washing over him as his various commanders took over, issuing commands and creating order out of the chaos. Two people moved toward him out of the masses, his heirs, who belonged rightfully at his side.
Right on schedule, two runners approached with matched sets of gear, one for each of them. His heirs kept their weapons on them at all times as part of maintaining their presence and air of command. Stryker would have no excuse to go back to his rooms now. Lily wouldn’t know what was happening, and the bar was already set and locked with magnetic wards. No matter how much his son might want to return to her, there would be no word of the attack getting out. Perfection.
Stryker wrenched his blade free from the corpse of one of the Paxian guards. His advanced strike force was only supposed to eliminate one watch, but driven by frustration, he’d gotten them to the city ahead of schedule. He wiped the blood off, staring at the face of the man he’d killed. He wasn’t the first, but the first he’d had a chance to reflect on. Poor idiot barely knew how to handle a blade. It’s a miracle he didn’t impale himself on it. Stryker looked out from his perch on the walls and down into the city proper. What kind of leadership keeps their protectors in such an infantile state? Only the best and quietest patrolled the tunnels around Zaddicus’ base. Any one of them was worth at least a dozen of these pretenders.