Travelers

by K A Riley

  Brohn unclenches his raised fist, and the boy he’s holding plops to the ground in a convoluted heap of limbs. “Try me.”

  “I don’t need to. I’m guessing your friends here aren’t quite so indestructible.” She glances at her guards and then up to the archers in the turrets of hammered-together slats of wood. With swords drawn and arrows cocked all around us, there’s no mistaking the threat. If we try anything, if we so much as blink in a way that threatens or offends her royal majesty, Brohn will be the only one of us to survive.

  Harah smiles into our moment of silent understanding. “Am I right again?”

  Brohn freezes, his eyes locked onto Harah’s in a silent battle of wills.

  Finally, his shoulders slump, and he takes a step back to stand between me and Cardyn.

  Harah twirls one of her braids around in her fingers. “I thought so.”

  Damn. I hate being the weak link.

  “You okay?” Brohn asks me through the corner of his mouth.

  I check my hand before wiping the blood off. “I’m okay. It’ll heal. Someday, you’ve got to teach me how you do that indestructible skin trick, though.”

  Harah signals for her archers to stand down and then turns to walk back up the stage stairs with her three Attendants-in-Waiting. Stuck on the stage behind the extended arms of the two knights, Rain has her fists balled and her jaw clenched, ready for a fight we all know can’t happen.

  30

  Marbles

  Squire scurries over to a long wooden table under an awning where a dozen or so members of Harah’s royal court are sitting in the shade. They lean aside as she gathers up a wide-mouthed metal jug covered in painted golden and purple flowers and runs back to Harah, cradling it in her arms.

  After hopping up to the stage and offering a polite bow, Squire puts the jug on the wooden table and steps around Harah to stand in the background with Page and Steward.

  Harah reaches into the fur-lined pocket of her red robe and holds up two marbles—one green, the other red—for the crowd to see. Like a really bad stage magician, she makes a grand but pointless series of swooping motions with her arms. The sleeves of her robe flap and rustle in dramatic fashion before settling down as she lets the two marbles slip from her closed hand into the jug where they clank and roll against its insides and bottom.

  “What the frack is she doing?” Cardyn asks out of the side of his mouth.

  “I think I get it,” Brohn says in the middle of a slow nod. “I know this riddle. I don’t know the answer to it, but I know the riddle.” He grips my hand in his. “You know it, too.”

  “I do?”

  “In the Valta. There was a kid who played games like this all the time…”

  “Gregor?”

  “Yes! That was it. He told us all those riddles when we were Juvens.”

  I tell him I don’t remember, which makes Brohn scoff. “Aren’t you supposed to be Miss Memory?”

  Instead of telling him about the piercing headaches I’ve been getting, I muster up a half-laugh and remind him that Rain is the real brains in our Conspiracy.

  Brohn squeezes my hand. “Let’s hope her brains are enough.”

  Up on the stage, giving Rain a smile and a little snort of condescension, Harah spreads her arms wide in triumph. It’s a gesture that’s part invitation, part challenge, and part dare. “Reach into the vessel. If you select the green marble, I’ll set you and your friends free. But if you select the red marble, you’ll be executed. Slowly. And one at a time, so you can watch each other die.”

  “Well,” Cardyn sighs, his hand on my shoulder, “she’s got a fifty-fifty shot. Just in case, it was nice knowing her.”

  “It’s way worse than fifty-fifty,” I say through a panicked whisper. Thanks to my connection with Render, who is quietly perched on the very top beam of one of the crudely-constructed wooden turrets on the roof, I’m able to see better than anyone in this courtyard. Which is how I know Harah has cheated. “She palmed the green marble.”

  “Palmed?”

  “She hid it. It’s in her pocket. Harah just dropped two red marbles into that jar,” I say under my breath to Cardyn. “No matter which marble Rain picks, she’ll lose, and we’ll get killed.”

  Next to me, Brohn looks shocked and asks what we’re going to do.

  When I don’t have an answer, he stomps up to the front of the stage and whispers something to Rain before Harah’s guards have a chance to shoo him back.

  “You can’t do that,” I plead to Brohn. His skin may be unusually dense, but we know from experience that he can feel pain and that there are still plenty of frankly unthinkable ways for an enemy to hurt him, either directly or through us. Besides, I still haven’t figured out the cat-scratch problem. “Listen. This girl is on a hair-trigger as it is. We can’t just accuse her of cheating.”

  “We don’t have to,” Brohn says.

  Giving a grateful nod and a low thumb’s up to Brohn, Rain steps forward and plunges her hand elbow-deep into the narrow opening of the dented steel jar. She withdraws one marble, careful to conceal it in her hand. Rotating around for everyone in the courtyard to get a glimpse of her raised and firmly closed fist, Rain…pops the marble into her mouth and swallows it down with a throat-bulging gulp.

  Her stunt is greeted with open-mouthed gasps and a sea of confused faces.

  Near to tears, Cardyn shouts out to Rain to ask what the frack she’s doing, but she cuts him off as she addresses Harah and the crowd.

  “If you look in the vase, you’ll see the red marble. Which means, of course, that the marble I just selected and swallowed was the green one. Which means—"

  “You have to let us go!” Cardyn cheers to Harah through a mocking, cheek-stretching smile.

  Harah doesn’t look too pleased, and in my head, I’m already composing the last words I’ll say to Brohn and to the rest of my friends before we get our heads chopped off by these royal lunatics.

  Being clever tends to result in one of two things: freedom or death.

  And I don’t see Harah suddenly taking pity on us and escorting us safely to the palace exit.

  Rain’s Emergent abilities give her the power to visualize decisions in her mind’s eye. That works great for playing chess, finding our way through an unfamiliar city, or navigating through a hedge maze or a royal palace.

  But what do you do when you’re faced with an irrational enemy?

  I can’t speak for the others, but to my startled surprise, the deep trenches gouging their way through Harah’s forehead smooth out, and her “I’m going to kill you all” scowl twitches its way up into a radiantly pretty smile.

  She’s clearly impressed with Rain, but at the moment, she hasn’t taken her eyes off of Brohn.

  Up on the parapet, three kids with long, golden trumpets pressed to their lips blast a pulse-pounding song of triumph into the air.

  With her arms spread wide, Harah invites everyone to the Court of the Royals for “the Feast of Forgiveness.”

  “Our intruders have become our guests,” she calls to the crowd. “Forgiveness is a hallmark of royalty.” The crowd mumbles its half-hearted approval. “Given time, who knows? Our guests may even become our friends.”

  Harah smiles broadly, looking angelic and radiantly beautiful when she says this.

  I wince at the pain in my side. At least the bleeding seems to have stopped. It may just be a flesh wound, but it’s also a reminder of what this girl and her minions are capable of.

  From somewhere overhead, Render belts out a clacking series of coughing kraas!

  Don’t worry. I answer. I don’t trust her either.

  31

  Dinner

  “My legs are tired,” Cardyn complains as we follow Harah and her entourage into the palace.

  Rain fires him a scorching stare. “Poor baby.”

  “We have been on the move a lot,” I say, coming to Cardyn’s defense.

  Rain snaps me a dirty look, but Brohn says he agrees with me and
Cardyn. “We’ve gone from the airport, through the Hyde Park Settlement, nearly got killed in that maze, then dragged around the palace grounds, put on trial…”

  “Yeah,” Rain says through a heavy exhalation. “But it’s for Terk.”

  Cardyn hangs his head a little. From somewhere overhead, Render kraas! but when I look up to see where he is, he’s already gone.

  Glancing back down from the weirdly reddish-gray, early afternoon sky, I ask Rain, “How much time left?”

  She shakes her head, and I can tell she’s trying not to cry. “Eight hours. Maybe seven.”

  Up ahead, Harah’s Attendants-in-Waiting push open the double doors to reveal an impossibly long dining room with a full feast laid out down the middle of a bus-length table of polished oak with what must be thirty or forty chairs all around it.

  “You’re right. It’s for Terk.” Cardyn rubs his hands together. “But at least now we get to eat!”

  Since the Trials, Cardyn, Rain, and I have been sagging a little. But not Brohn. He seems energized and oddly alert. Sitting next to Harah up at the head of the table, he’s clearly basking in the attention.

  I know what she’s up to, and so does Brohn. He knows what he’s doing: He’s lulling our host into a false sense of security. He’s playing along, waiting for her to let her guard down so we can make our move, find the Alternator, and get back to Kensington Palace alive and intact so we can save Terk.

  Still, every time she puts her slender hand on Brohn’s muscular forearm, a little part of me dies.

  It’s not like I don’t know how much attention Brohn attracts. In the Valta, even though we lived a cooperative and communal lifestyle, he was still the alpha of our Cohort. When it came to romance, the boys and girls competed with each other for attention. No one competed with Brohn. They knew it’d be a lost cause.

  As for me, I never figured I had a chance with him, and it amazes me to this day how far our relationship has come. After all, he’s always had his pick of partners:

  Rain’s smarter than I am. Kella’s prettier. Manthy was more mysterious. And now Harah. Evil, manipulative, holier-than-thou, stunningly beautiful, and all-powerful Harah. She may rule over a demolished city of scavengers and a wanna-be-royal court of teenage lords and ladies. But she’s still the queen bee.

  I’m just a girl who can talk to a bird.

  Over time and with all we’ve been through, Brohn and I have developed our own bond. Okay—so it’s a little off-line right now. I keep trying to reach out with my mind to recapture our budding psychic connection. When that doesn’t work, I try making eye contact, but there’ve got to be a dozen people between us at the table, all jostling, reaching across for food, and leaning forward and backward as they all try to carry on a thousand conversations at once.

  Don’t worry. He’s playing their game. Learning their rules. He knows what’s at stake. He knows how much is on the line. If there’s one person you don’t have to doubt, it’s Brohn.

  This is what I tell myself over and over as Harah giggles behind her hand up at the head of the table.

  He really will do anything for me. For us. Looking down the length of the table, I can’t help but admire him.

  That doesn’t stop me from noticing that he ignores me for most of the meal.

  32

  Trade

  After the meal, Harah dismisses everyone except her three-person entourage of Attendants—Page, Squire, and Steward—and the four big knights.

  I can just make out the knights’ dark, squinty eyes under the shadow of their visors. I can’t see much else of their faces, but something tells me they’re not smiling.

  Cardyn is leaning back in his chair, his hands folded across his stomach, his eyes rolled blissfully back in his head.

  I nudge him when Harah reaches over to intertwine her arm with Brohn’s.

  Cardyn snaps to attention at this unexpected sight before looking back to me for answers I don’t have.

  “There’s been an ever so slight change of plans,” Harah says through her syrupy sweet smile.

  “What change of plans?” Rain asks, steel in her voice.

  “Well, Brohn and I have been talking…”

  At the words “Brohn and I”—when the “I” isn’t me, my heart jumps and then clamps up in my chest like an angry fist.

  “…and we’ve had some thoughts about this…situation we’re in.”

  “What situation is that?” I ask. I’m trying to stay even-keeled and under control, but I know there’s a quiver in my voice. I’m just hoping Harah can’t hear it.

  She pauses and glances over to the four knights, now positioned strategically with one of them behind her, one behind me on one side of the table, and the third and fourth knights standing at attention, their hands hovering over the handle of their swords, directly behind Rain and Cardyn on the other side.

  Harah sighs like whatever she’s about to say represents some kind of terrible psychological burden to her. Like it pains her to have to deliver what’s inevitably going to be bad news. “You broke into my palace—”

  “To save our friend,” I snap.

  “Understood. So we put you on trial with our tests—”

  “Which we passed.”

  “Which you passed,” Harah echoes. “But things have changed. I have something that you want. Now, it seems, you have something I want.”

  Cardyn puts both hands flat on the table. “We were told you don’t barter.”

  “Not on principle. When the adults died or disappeared, they left a vacuum. We filled it. With no supplies coming in, we did what we had to do. Took what we needed to take. Since the last round of the plague ran its course, no one’s ever offered anything we didn’t already have. Until now.” Harah gives Brohn’s forearm a little squeeze. He smiles and slides his arm out from under her hand…only to sling it affectionately around her shoulders. Obviously to her great delight.

  “Brohn,” I snap. “What are you—?”

  “Brohn,” Harah interrupts, “has come to his senses.”

  “I’d say he’s lost them.”

  “I’m sorry, Kress,” Brohn says, swinging around to face me. “I truly and sincerely am. But Harah’s right. I’m better off here. And you guys are better off alive.”

  “I don’t know what she put in your drink—,” Rain starts to say, but Brohn stops her.

  “She didn’t put anything in my drink, Rain. I promise.” He holds up the full glass of wine in front of him and tilts his plate up to show us that during this whole meal, he hasn’t taken a single bite. “I didn’t trust Harah any more than you did. I’m not about to blindly eat or drink something that’s just been handed to me.”

  I look down at my own empty glass and plate, then at Cardyn’s and Rain’s, and I suddenly feel queasy, although I’m not sure if it’s because our own meals might have been poisoned or because Brohn didn’t think to suggest that possibility to the rest of us.

  “It just makes sense,” he continues. “You can survive. Go back with the Banters. Or, better yet, go back home and not have to struggle and fight all the time for a change.”

  Cardyn crosses his arms and stares across the table at Brohn in a tight-lipped pout. “I thought ‘fighting for a change’ was what we were all about.”

  “He’s right,” I say. “The only freedom we’ve ever found, we’ve found together. We’re not splitting up. Not now. Not ever.” I start to get up, but the knight behind me drops his heavy gloved hand onto my shoulder.

  Brohn turns a pleading eye to Rain. “Out of all of us, you can see the logic of it, right? Do the calculus. That’s your specialty. I can stay here and we all live or else we head back out there and die together.”

  “I’m not sure what’s gotten into you, Brohn,” Rain says, giving me a nod across the table. “But we really need to get it out.”

  With a quick glance at Cardyn for confirmation that he’s on the same page as me and Rain, the three of us leap to our feet in a frenzied, instantaneous
, and coordinated attack.

  Cardyn launches himself feet-first across the table at the knight behind me. He hits the startled knight hard in the chest with the heels of both boots.

  The knight barely budges, but Cardyn bounces off and goes down in a clatter against the table and one of the chairs.

  Rain and I don’t do much better against the other knights.

  They’re bigger and stronger than we are. Plus, they’re armed, and we aren’t.

  It’s an unfair and very quick fight. After getting slung around like a dog’s chew-toy, Cardyn, Rain, and I are slammed back into three seats on the same side of the long table with me in the middle and all of us fuming with futile rage.

  As if to clarify their power over us, three of the knights remain standing behind me, Cardyn, and Rain, their heavy steel hands pressed tight to our shoulders, locking us down into our chairs.

  Next to Harah at the head of the table, Brohn looks terrified, which is unusual but refreshing. At least he hasn’t completely lost his mind.

  It wasn’t that long ago, I remember, that he didn’t just lose his mind, but he lost his entire self to Amani, the shape-shifting Emergent who was brainwashed by Sheridyn and her fellow Hypnagogics into taking his place back in Chicago.

  I catch Brohn’s eye. This feels different.

  He starts to stand, clearly struggling to get his head around what’s happening, but Harah gives him a soothing “shush” like he’s an anxious puppy with strangers at the door.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, turning to me, Cardyn, and Rain, who are both red-faced, squirming, and sweating after our futile bout with the giant knights. “I’ve handled this poorly.”

  “We’ve made an arrangement,” Brohn says. Harah gives him an annoyed, side-eyed glance for interrupting her, but she puts her hand on his forearm and nods for him to go on. “I don’t like it. But it’s what’s best for our Conspiracy. Harah has agreed to set you free as long as I agree to stay here with her and the Royal Fort Knights.”