Travelers

by K A Riley

  Even though it would help clear our name a bit, Brohn’s probably right. Best not to add, “Oh, by the way, the enemy was made up” to the list.

  Still tripping and stumbling along but somehow managing to keep her balance, All-to-Pot continues to lead us on a weaving course through the last part of the settlement and past more of the peering, wide-eyed residents.

  With all the twists, turns, stops, and starts, it really does take us over an hour to reach the end of the Hyde Park Settlement.

  We’re stopped after we pass the last row of huts by a squadron of boys and girls of various ages, who snap to attention with their swords drawn. In the turrets above them, a group of archers—more girls in white dresses with the upside-down red sword on the front—swings around and trains their arrows on us before All-to-Pot whistles through her fingers, and the platoon of guards stands down.

  Bob’s-yer-Uncle apologizes for the aggressive greeting. “They don’t recognize you is all. Can’t be too careful, eh? Fort Knights swear to keep the peace, but they still send in Raiders from time ta time if we fall behind on rent or there’s some threat we ‘aven’t ‘andled to their ‘igh and mighty satisfaction.”

  All-to-Pot and Bob’s-yer-Uncle draw me, Brohn, Cardyn, and Rain into a small circle in the shadow of the settlement wall. Above our heads, the archers in the turret stay alert behind the coils of razor wire strung in rusted loops around the perimeter of their tower.

  All-to-Pot leans in, talking low like a quarterback who doesn’t want the opposing team to hear our play. “Between ‘ere ‘n the palace ain’t that far. But it’s about the deadliest ‘ain’t that far’ you’re likely ta find. There’s a maze o’ brambles, ‘igh as a house, runnin’ all around the palace. You can’t get through it. Not alive, anyway. Can’t get over it. Can’t go around. Not without the permission of the Royals. Which they won’t give.”

  “A maze sounds fun,” Rain half-squeals.

  “Oh, it is. Booby trapped ta the hilt. They move things around. The traps. The walls and such. Royals used ta dump the bodies of our people right outside this gate. Sometimes, they’d toss ‘em over the wall ta land right over there.” All-to-Pot points to a bare patch of land that’s been cordoned off with sticks of wood hammered into the ground to form a kind of makeshift pen, which I now realize is a graveyard. “It took a bit o’ time, but we finally got the message and stopped tryin’.”

  “And if we make it through?” I ask.

  Bob’s-yer-Uncle looks at me through a clamp-eyed squint before he relaxes his face and offers up a crooked smile. “You all are a tenacious lot, aren’t ya?”

  “Our friend’s life is on the line,” Brohn says. “And the clock is ticking. We’re not about to let a bunch of bushes stand in our way.”

  “There’s checkpoints,” All-to-Pot whispers, “where you’d get killed if you got through the maze. Which you can’t. After that, it’s easy. Just get inside the palace and make your way ta the Audience Chamber. The Fort Knights store the Alternator in a glass case ‘igh up on the ceiling for safe keepin’. It’s protected by a Motion Detector Array and by a squad of Foot Guards. Nasty little naffers, those.”

  She pats her sides and reaches a hand deep under her skirts before withdrawing a crumpled sheet of paper. She unfolds it and presses it against her leg to smooth it out. “It ain’t much. But Ledge’s messenger told me what ya might be up to. It’s a drawing I did of the floorplan.” She taps her finger to her temple. “It’s from memory. It’ll give you a rough idea about where ta go.”

  Rain tells her, “Thanks” and studies the diagram for a second before handing it back to All-to-Pot.

  “Ain’t ya gonna need it?”

  Now it’s Rain’s turn to tap her temple. “I’ve got it up here now. Thanks.”

  Looking skeptical at first and then impressed, All-to-Pot accepts the paper, folds it back up, and slips it into the waist of her skirts.

  Cardyn raises his hand. “Wait. If this alternator thing is suspended from the ceiling, can we even get to it?”

  Fidgeting with his rope belt that keeps coming loose, Bob’s-yer-Uncle leans in. “Not unless you can fly, Mate.”

  Smiling, Cardyn throws his arm around my shoulders and gives me a little shake. “It just so happens…”

  21

  Maze

  “So,” All-to-Pot says, her voice stretched out as long and sharp as her smile, “you can fly, can ya?”

  “No,” I blush. “Not exactly.”

  “Well, whatever ya can do, best be sure ta do it quick and good. Anything less, and the Fort Knights’ll turn all of yer best bits into bangers an’ mash.”

  Hand on his heart, Brohn bows like we’ve seen other people do here and thanks our two guides for their help.

  His chest hair glistening and matted with sweat under his partially opened robe, Bob’s-yer-Uncle returns the bow.

  All-to-Pot assures us the guided tour and the advice were no problem. “The real problem’s yet to come.”

  She gives a signal to the guards to open the gate and shuttles us past the two towering, iron-ribbed doors and of out of the Hyde Park Settlement.

  “I wish you luck,” she calls to us through cupped hands. “I really do. If you make it back, we’ll ‘ave tea.”

  We all wave to her, and Cardyn turns to me as we continue on our way. “Tea sounds great. But why’d she have to say, ‘if’?”

  Behind us, the huge doors, reinforced with steel plating and cross sections of iron welded into giant crosses, crash closed.

  “They’re nuts,” Cardyn says, flicking his thumb back toward the park. “But I like them. That place is safe at least. We should’ve stayed there.”

  “If we stay there,” Brohn grumbles, striding forward, “Terk dies.”

  Overhead, with the sun still making its uphill climb, Render glides across the sky toward Buckingham Palace, soaring through the air until he’s a distant black speck against the streaky reds and purples of the late-morning haze.

  According to Rain, the space from Knightsbridge Corner to Buckingham Palace should only be about half a mile, but I’ve got a weird feeling.

  After we’ve walked for about five more minutes, I figure out why.

  Passing the doorless, windowless, and overall barebones remains of a line of stripped-down cars, we round a bend in the broken road and run smack into a solid wall of vegetation.

  Cardyn stares up at it. “I guess we made it to the maze.”

  “It’s got to be fifteen…twenty feet high,” Brohn says, staring up at the imposing hedge.

  “This way,” Rain orders, tugging on Brohn’s sleeve. “There’s an opening over there in the wall.”

  Sure enough, a perfectly formed circle has been cut into the five-foot thick hedge to form a tidy, inviting doorway.

  A shiver dances its way down the back of my neck. In our experience, most places that look like they’re welcoming you inside turn out to be the places you wish you’d ignored.

  “There’s going to be a Minotaur in the middle of this thing,” Cardyn mumbles. “You know…that giant monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull? He’s going to eat us. I just know it.”

  “There’s no such thing as a Minotaur,” Rain promises.

  “But what if there is?” Cardyn whines. “What if all the radiation and the plagues around here turned a regular bull into a super savage mutant or something? Maybe it has the head of a bull but the body of…I don’t know…a meaner, angrier bull?”

  I smack Cardyn’s shoulder. “That’s just a bull, Dummy.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “If you two are finished…” Brohn says, ducking down and crouching through the entryway.

  We follow Brohn and walk for less than a minute before we run into a dead end. We backtrack and try again, only to hit a second dead end. And then another.

  Brohn puts both hands on the dark wall of twisted branches and braided vines in front of us. “It’s too dense to get through.”

  �
�Can you tap into Render?” Cardyn asks me. “Maybe he can help guide us.”

  I direct Cardyn’s attention to the ceiling. “It’s covered. He can’t see from up there any better than we can from in here.”

  “I can guide us,” Rain says. She presses her fingertips to her temple and winces. “I think.”

  Through the pinprick openings in the top of the hedge maze, the reddish sky does its best to beam sunshine into this claustrophobic gloom. The thin beams of light that manage to make it inside fill the interior of the maze with thin columns of light and offer up an eye-straining, dark-to-bright strobe effect as we walk on.

  Brohn reminds Rain that we need to hurry. “Terk’s time is running out. Fast.”

  “Don’t forget about Kress’s mom,” Cardyn adds through a teasing smirk.

  “I know,” Rain snaps. “I’m trying.” Darting her head side to side, she points toward the path on our left. “This way.”

  “She’s not my mom,” I huff at Cardyn as we stride along.

  He’s in the middle of an apology when a line of silver-tipped spears shoots out from the ground right under us.

  They barely miss impaling me and Cardyn, although one of the spears does nick my leg as it blasts through the material of my black dress and lodges itself in the dense vegetation forming the roof of the maze.

  The four of us freeze, too startled for a second to process how close we just came to the end of our travels.

  “Everyone okay?” Brohn asks through a shaky voice.

  We all nod, and Rain suggests we keep going. “Still fast. Only maybe more carefully?”

  Now, Rain’s moving quick but steady, with her head pivoting and with me, Brohn, and Cardyn in a brisk jog behind her.

  “Not this way,” she calls out. “It’ll get us to the end, but there’s an alternative.”

  “If it’s right,” Cardyn asks as he takes two big steps down the path, “how come we can’t just take it?”

  “Because,” Rain says, pointing to a line of nearly invisible, ankle and waist-level filaments running across the path. “It’s trip-wired. My guess is, if we go that way, we’ll die.”

  “We should definitely take that alternative you mentioned,” Cardyn says with a hearty head nod.

  After two more left turns, a double-back, and then a curving stretch along the hardpacked dirt path, I reach out and tug on Brohn’s sleeve. “We’re being watched.”

  He skids to a stop, kicking up a cloud of dust from the beaten-down path. “Watched?”

  “And followed.”

  Rain and Cardyn also stop in their tracks. Cardyn whips his head around so fast I think it might spin clean off his neck. “Who? Where?”

  “Over there,” I say, pointing off to the side at the dense thicket of vegetation. The forest of twisted vines, thick around as a jungle snake, curls around and stretches ahead of us.

  “Hawkers,” Rain says flatly. “The ones we heard about. It’s got to be.” When we don’t say anything in return, she sighs. “They must be some kind of bounty hunters. Highwaymen. We were told they might be after us.”

  “How can they even know we’re here?” Cardyn asks, gnawing at the skin around his thumbnail.

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. But that girl we gave our provisions to did. Ledge, too. Rain might be right. Someone is in here with us. It could be them.”

  “If you’re trying to scare me,” Cardyn says, “it’s not going to work.”

  “I’m not trying to scare you. And yes, it is.”

  Scanning the dusky paths behind and in front of us and the dark dead ends to either side, something occurs to me. “Why do I feel like we just stepped into a trap?”

  “Because—” growls the tall, armored, machine-like figure who clomps out from around the corner ahead of us.

  “You did,” his equally massive partner finishes from behind us.

  22

  Knight Fight

  Dressed in full, head-to-toe body armor—one of them completely silver, the other entirely red—the two hulking knights look like something that stepped out of a jousting tournament for giants.

  Even with their voices muffled by their visors, I can tell that, like nearly everyone we’ve come across in this city so far, they can’t be any older than us. But they’re plenty big. Bigger than Brohn. Bigger than Terk, even.

  The top of the maze must be over ten feet high, and I figure the knights could reach up and grab the vine-y ceiling without even having to jump.

  Each of the knights brandishes a shield the size of a bistro tabletop and wields a sword that makes Ledge’s giant blade look like a butter knife.

  Positioned on either side of us and blocking the only paths in or out of this section of the maze, the knights stare at us through the light-spackled space, unmoving and with their eyes deeply shaded behind the slits in their visors.

  Without a warning or a wind-up, the silver knight in front of us slashes his tree-sized sword in a swooping, lightning fast arc at Brohn’s head. We know from our recent terrifying experience back in Kensington Palace that Brohn is just as sword-proof as he is bullet-proof. But he still has enough sense to duck.

  I don’t think I could even lift the knight’s sword, but he swings it easily with one hand. The blade streaks through the shadowy, light-dappled darkness over Brohn’s head and slashes a long, jagged gash in the branches, brambles, and vines of the maze wall.

  Rain drops to a crouch, squeezes her fists, and unleashes a barrage of her darts at the silver knight, but the sharp shafts ping harmlessly off of his shield and his armor.

  We’re in too close for Brohn to use his arbalest. At least for how it’s meant to be used.

  Unslinging it, he ducks down and swings it hard just below the silver knight’s knees. What I figure might be a staggering or even a crippling blow just bounces off, and the silver knight barely budges.

  He answers Brohn’s failed attack with a counterattack of his own, hammering his steel-covered fist down hard on Brohn’s shoulder. It’s a glancing blow, but it knocks Brohn to one knee. The relentless, growling knight takes advantage and swings his sword up with two hands.

  The blade catches Brohn right in the mid-section and sends him flying past me as he goes slamming into Cardyn and knocking his legs out from under him.

  Before I have a chance to see if the boys are okay, from the side, I catch the glimmer of the red knight’s mirror-surfaced sword as it streaks right at me and Rain.

  Shrieking in panic, we leap in a rolling dive to either side as the blade flashes between us.

  When I gather myself and scramble back to my feet, I can see that the sword has left a deep crease as wide as my forearm in the dirt floor of the maze.

  Moving much faster than I would have expected, the red knight drags his sword up out of the ground and whips it around at me in a sweeping, overhead half-circle.

  I leap over the strike, somersaulting to the ground and then I spring to my feet before he can regroup.

  Slapping the heels of my hands together, I snap out my Talons and sprint over to where Brohn and Cardyn are just untangling themselves and scrambling to their feet. My ten deadly blades reflect stray flecks of light in the darkness.

  “I don’t know if these things are going to do much good,” I confess to Brohn under my breath.

  “Don’t be so glum,” Cardyn pants. “Those can-openers of yours are exactly what we need right now.”

  “Maybe Render can help from outside the maze?” Rain suggests as the silver and red knights circle around and inch toward us from either side, their armor clanging in ominous, hollow echoes. “He’s lent you his talents before.”

  I concentrate for a split-second but then shake my head. “I can’t find him.”

  His fists loose but ready, Brohn steps forward to square off against the silver knight. “Then I guess we’re going to have to make it up as we go.”

  Even without Render, I’ve gotten pretty quick, so I think I’d be okay in a normal fight, but Cardyn a
nd Rain could get seriously hurt or killed in a situation like this.

  In a coordinated attack, the two knights swing their broad swords at the same time, one with me in his sights, the other targeting Rain.

  Brohn leaps in front of me and deflects the red knight’s strike, but he winces in pain as the length of polished steel cracks against his forearm.

  He throws out a jab to the red knight’s side, but the knight is unexpectedly quick and manages to lock his giant hand around Brohn’s wrist. That still leaves Brohn’s other hand free, though, and he makes sure his thunderous punch catches the knight right at the jawline where his helmet tapers off into a thinner ridge of steel.

  The blow has the desired effect: The red knight’s helmet goes flying off, leaving the boy’s head exposed.

  He’s younger than I thought, maybe fifteen or so. I don’t know how he managed to get so big so fast, and I can’t even imagine how big he’ll be in a few years.

  I can’t worry about that now, though. He’s perfectly deadly as he is.

  I don’t waste any time. I vault over Brohn and land on the red knight’s back. Reaching around his face, I drag my hand back, aiming to slash long deep gashes across the tendons in his neck.

  The Talons are sharp as broken glass and strong as synth-steel.

  The armor around the boy’s chest and neck deflects most of my attack, but the parts of my blades that get through slice across skin and muscle like a laser-tempered razor blade through an overripe banana.

  Gurgling in pain, the boy thrashes to the side, launching me into the maze wall. I hit the ground hard and wobble to my feet as a wave of dizziness washes over me.

  Disengaging from his attack on Rain and Cardyn, the silver knight lunges over to protect his partner and finish me off.

  His sword strike is deflected in a shower of sparks that blinds me and makes me whip my arm up to protect my eyes.

  When I look up, Cardyn, his back to me, is standing between me and the knight, Manthy’s twin axes spinning in a shimmering blur on either side of him.