by Jo Zebedee
He zoomed in on the woman, scanning over her, the mother of his child. What had it asked of her to carry Baelan? He caught the gleam of her ankshar in the lights. She was truly of the tribes, which meant she must hate him, as all her people did. Had she been glad to carry the baby created to bring him down? Or had she felt tainted? Had she even had a choice? Nothing in her stance gave any indication, except the hand she kept on Baelan’s shoulders. Regardless how she felt about Kare, she obviously loved the boy.
He watched, silent and useless, Simone’s soft breathing his only distraction, as his children came to the middle point of the skywalk. They’d be at the palace soon. Still, they didn’t falter. His ears drummed with the force of his fear and he didn’t know which was stronger, his fear for them, or his pride.
***
Kerra took everything in, a tight line of clarity that pulled on more than just her knowledge, but that of the Roamer fighters who might be able to see a way past the soldiers, the planners who assessed where she was and what might be available to her. It didn’t like what it saw – too many soldiers, and she wasn’t practiced enough in what she needed to do. She kept walking forwards, the distance to the palace growing smaller.
“Kerra?” Baelan’s hand tightened on hers. She glared at him. He was why she was at the palace, caught and in danger.
“The moat,” he breathed.
She kept her eyes forwards, not even glancing at the parapet. The moat wasn’t a possibility. The jump alone could kill them. She felt the first touch of her grandmother’s presence. It would only get stronger.
Baelan squeezed her hand again, insistent, and he might be right; the jump could be better than facing the Empress. She squeezed his hand back.
“One,” he said, under his breath.
“Two,” she mouthed. She sped up a little, pulling away from the guards.
“Three!” they said together.
They ran to the side of the skywalk, darting between two of the guards. One grabbed her t-shirt and tugged her back, but she put her head down and the momentum pulled her free.
She jumped onto the parapet and, without thinking or looking down, leapt at the same time as Baelan, their twin yells breaking the air as they soared high over the gardens.
***
Kare swore. “They jumped!” He turned to Simone. “Gods, it’s at least thirty feet down!”
Simone lifted her scope and leaned forwards. “They’re over the moat.”
She was right. He couldn’t see the moat from here – anywhere with that clear a view of the palace would have been pulled down long ago – but he could imagine its thin ribbon of dark water threading the grounds.
“It will make no difference.” He took in the soldiers along the parapet, the urgency in their movements. “The grounds will be searched; they’ll be picked up.” He shook his head, partly in admiration. “They don’t lack courage.”
“Indeed.” She gave a sly smile. “They carry more than just a name.”
He ducked his head, embarrassed; any courage he had was hard-earned through self-preservation. There was no way he’d have jumped at twelve. Hell, he’d struggle to do it now.
“We need to find them. Before the Empress.” He cursed: his operatives in the palace had key roles in the assault; he couldn’t risk their cover. At best, he had a squad at his disposal. The Empress had an army. He scrambled to his feet, wanting to run to the gardens and start looking himself, but stopped. Light from the palace spilled over the gardens. Many, many lights. The search was underway.
***
Kerra sank under the water, her chest narrowing at the cold. Baelan’s hand pulled from her, his fingers flailing. Her breath left her, forced out by the shock of hitting the surface and barreling under. She kicked at weeds that tried to wrap around her legs, and fought for the surface. Her lungs burned, needing air. She kicked harder – she should be near the surface.
She broke through, spitting water. Baelan was nowhere to be seen. She swept her hands under the water but couldn’t feel him. She didn’t even know if he could swim; he’d been brought up in the desert, after all.
She ducked her head under. She shook with cold – at this time of the night, the ice-replenished water stayed near freezing – and scrabbled her hands. She came up for air and would have shouted for him but didn’t dare give a sign of where she was. The soldiers would be here in a minute and she could still feel her grandmother in the distance. She’d be looking, too, and she’d find them for sure.
Baelan; I need to get Baelan. She couldn’t leave him – he was her brother. They’d jumped together; they needed to stay together. She took a frantic breath and ducked her head under again, and saw something pale in the water. Surging forwards, she snagged it and pulled it to the surface. Baelan broke free of the water, propelling himself up for a huge gasp, and then sank under again. She grabbed him with both hands and pushed him towards the bank. He managed to grab the grass overhanging the moat, and she pushed him until he slithered up the side. It took ages, he kept slipping back down, and she could hear yells from the skywalk, but finally he reached the bank. Lights swept over the garden and she was able to work out that they’d emerged well beyond the skywalk. Good. They had time.
Baelan grabbed her wrist and pulled her out easily. They crouched, shaking, on the bank. A light swept towards them. She grabbed his hand, pulling him towards the waterfall and the wild garden. There’d be more cover there.
“We have to get away from the palace,” gasped Baelan as they ran. “Can’t you feel her?”
She could. Growing more insistent, angry at being taken by surprise, at not locating them easily. They’d been lucky that the moat had carried them so far. She remembered why her father had left the mesh – he’d been worried it would bring the Empress to him. She didn’t dare use the power when she was here. She ducked as a light swept close to them. “Where to?”
“The desert.”
The desert had lizards and snakes. And clutterbacks. She hated the desert. She hated Belaudii. She wanted to be back on Syllte. A yell carried through the air, not that far away – the searchers were coming. She groped through the darkness and found Baelan’s hand. He was right, they couldn’t stay here.
“Come on,” she said. If anyone could find a way out of the gardens, it was a kid who’d spent half her childhood crawling through them. If she could get them out, maybe a desert child could take them even further. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Phelps fell to his knees before the Empress, at the foot of the great staircase. The entrance hall was silent around him. “My Lady, I have the children.”
She smiled and he inhaled, ready. Heat spread from his stomach, and he put his head back, his breath coming in quick gasps. This was what he waited for, why he obeyed. He stirred under her touch, growing hard. Later, alone, he’d come back to this moment, replay it while he still had the lingering sense of her. For now, he drank the power in, glad to be its focus. How had he survived without it for a decade? Barely; like a withered stump, deprived of what it needed to live. He’d crawled through those ten years. Only the knowledge that one day he’d free his mistress and feel her reward again had kept him focused.
“Sir!” The urgency in the soldier’s voice made him get to his feet and turn. The heat vanished, leaving only a memory to tantalise. He strode forwards, pushing past soldiers at the doorway and onto the skywalk, fighting rising panic: the children weren’t in sight.“Where are they?” he demanded.
His captain turned and saluted. “Sir. They jumped.”
Hell and damnation. He shouldered his way to the parapet and looked down, relaxing when he didn’t see two sprawled bodies. His Lady’s legacy was not lost; the thought of telling her such a thing sent cold fear through him. He squinted against the darkness. The moat looked still but flowed fast; the children could surface anywhere along the channel. He turned to the soldiers, ready to give the order to begin a search, but caught Shanisa’s eyes.
&
nbsp; She held her hands out, pleading, he knew, to give the boy a chance. A few extra minutes to get a head start. Phelps swallowed the lump in his throat. Baelan reminded him of himself: trapped and helpless and angered by it. He remembered the boy on his naming ceremony, how proud he’d been that Phelps had chosen him, how straight he’d stood when Taluthna had placed his ankhar. Remembered, too, the trembling wreck the Empress had reduced the child to. He set his shoulders, wanting with all that remained of his will to stand with Shanisa and claim tribal sanctuary for the boy.
A bolt, white and angry, made his back arch in sharp agony. His Lady knew his thoughts; she always did. She held him, reminding him of his place and how little his will mattered. Pain ran through his head, pinning his spine, along his arms and legs. His hands clawed, his muscles cramped, but he fought against crying out in front of his men. He turned from Shanisa, putting the thought of her soft eyes from his mind, and pointed at the captain.
“Find the children,” he said, every word wrenched through gritted teeth. “And when you do, bring them to me.”
The pain eased. Soft footsteps sounded and he turned to face his Lady, standing at the entrance to the palace. He bowed his head. He had no right to stand against her. Pain pounded through him, so it was only force of will keeping him on his feet.
His men left the skywalk to join the search in the gardens. The parapet was empty of all but his Lady, her personal guard and the watching tribes-people.
The Empress let him go. He slumped to the ground, grasping for the last touch of her, trying to hold it as a drowning man might hold the rope to safety. Pain, yes, but it was preferable to the nothing that waited. The stone was hard under his cheek. She walked to him and stopped, the tip of her boot just inches from him.
“Never again,” she said. “Or it ends. Understand me, Taran?”
He nodded, scraping his cheek along the ground. “My Lady,” he whispered.
“You may stand.”
He forced himself to his feet and stood to attention, shoulders back, hands clasped to stop them shaking.
“Find the children,” said the Empress. “Or you will face me for your failure.”
He nodded, throat dry. He knew the price of failure – he’d seen too many others pay it.
“Come.” The Empress beckoned to Shanisa and her brothers, who followed her into the palace. As they left, Shanisa looked back once and her eyes showed no censure, only pity.
***
Kerra ducked through an arch, into the wild garden’s tangle of roots and weeds and hidden corners planted against the outside wall of the palace.
“Where to?” Baelan, beside her, asked.
She didn’t know for sure. It had been years since she had managed to get away from her minders and make it out of the palace, squeezing through a gap in the brickwork. She’d been about five, at most, and the trouble it had brought onto her – her mother in a panic, her father gravely telling her why, even if she hated it, she must stay with her guards – had scared her enough to stop another attempt.
Even so, she hadn’t told anyone how she’d escaped. She’d refused to, holding firm against her mother’s demands, her dad’s reasoning, and the whispered confidences of her nurse trying to wrestle out the information. In a life as full of constraint as hers, the secret had been a precious thing, one she’d hugged to herself: that somewhere in the wild part of the garden, there was a way out. She’d never used it again, but the knowledge of it had been hers and hers alone.
She paused, casting her mind back. Tall grasses had closed over her as she’d run – that was how she’d lost her security team. This part of the garden was different from any other. It was truly wild, full of animals making use of an area so filled with life on the dry planet. Ground squirrels and nerados, the desert mice, inhabited it, drawn to the water that seeped, artfully, down a narrow rill from the moat.
She pushed forwards, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, and there, behind a fallen tree, the wild grass grew as tall as she remembered. She ran to it, jumping the tree, and Baelan followed.
A voice sounded, from behind her, loud and commanding. “Check through the arch!”
“Down!” she said. Baelan dove to the ground beside her, and they lay flat. The grass closed over them, just as she remembered.
A light swept back and forth, making each blade sharp and defined. She barely dared to breathe. Baelan tensed, and she knew he must be fighting the urge to get up and tackle the soldier, to hold on to his temper and good sense.
Footsteps came closer. The light swept around again. Another set of footsteps joined the first.
“It’s a mess in here,” said one of the soldiers, his voice gravelly. “We need to send in a full squad.”
“I’ll order it.” The commander, this time, she thought.
Their footsteps drew away. Silence fell, but she lay, unmoving, imagining one of them inside the arch, waiting to see if anything moved. A small squeak took her attention and a mouse forced its way through the grass.
“Let’s go,” she whispered. If the wildlife was moving, it must be okay. She hoped. “But stay down.”
They slithered through the grass, snake-like. It remained closed over them and she hoped it was enough to mask their movements. At last they reached the wall, and she felt along its brickwork, rustic to complement the garden and rough under her touch. She ran her fingers along, tingling in fear.
Her hand sank into a space between two bricks. She pulled the grass in front, tugging it out in tufts. A glance over her shoulder showed only the tips of grass and the sky above. If anyone was watching, they’d be on her before she could react.
“There,” she said.
“Let’s see.” Baelan pulled a strand of grass out of the way. “You’re joking.”
“What?” Had the gap been filled?
“We’ll never fit.”
She squeezed a breath. It hadn’t been tight in her memory, but she’d been five then. She joined Baelan and saw that he was right, there was no way he’d get his wiry form through, let alone her, a year older and a little heavier. She drew back, cold with the realisation that she didn’t have any other answers.
“But, look,” he said. He tugged at one of the bricks adjacent. “The cement has loosened.” He pulled a chunk of it out, crumbling it to the ground, and then another. He grinned at her. “We can take out a few more bricks.”
They’d be lucky not to bring the wall down on themselves. She didn’t voice it, though, but scrabbled at the brickwork. Her nails bent back, but she didn’t care. She pulled and pulled, her skin raw, and another of the bricks came away. Baelan, too, was making progress.
The wall creaked. Rubble fell, showering her hand. Baelan, ignoring it, freed another brick.
“In there. Spread out, do a full search.” The commander’s voice carried to them. “I don’t want to have to go back over ground like this.”
It had to be now. They didn’t dare pull out any more bricks – the sound would carry. Baelan’s eyes met hers. He nodded. He lay flat and wriggled forwards, into the gap. His body vanished, and then his legs. A small scraping followed by an oof warned her it was tight.
Footsteps crunched closer. The mouse scampered along the wall, camouflaging itself with the grass. She wished she could.
She got down, face flat. She didn’t think of the wall giving way. She didn’t think of being too big, or getting stuck until someone grabbed her ankles and pulled her out. She scraped along the ground, dust in her nose. The weight of the wall pressed above her. She wriggled, and the bricks creaked.
“You’re nearly there.” Baelan’s voice, close by. “Keep going.”
She did. Her shirt caught. Her hair got tangled in the brickwork, but she wrenched forwards. She had no room to move. She had to turn her head to keep going forwards. Panic was all around, that she’d get stuck here and no one would be able to get her out. Her breath seemed to go nowhere – it was a struggle to take each one.
Baelan’s wrists se
ized hers, encircling them. He pulled, giving her something to purchase on.
“Harder,” she hissed.
He gave a yank and she slid forwards, face scraping along the rock. She bit back a yell, but broke through and scrambled to her feet, stifling a cough.
Baelan was filthy, only his eyes and teeth visible in the darkness. She must look as bad. She found herself doubling over in a laugh, fist in her mouth to muffle it. They’d done it. They were free.
Her smile fell away. Free of the palace, only.
“What now?” she asked.
Baelan rolled his shoulders. “Now I get to show you the secrets of my city.” He stayed in the shadow of the wall and made his way along.
“This way,” he said, taking her down a narrow alley, and then another. “We need to get to the tribal area.”
“Why?” That would take them deeper into the city.
“Just trust me.” He led her down another street, skirting the back of the tribal area, and around the side of a house and into a yard. A creeper, one of the native plants, hardy to the heat and tough, covered much of the opposite wall. He pushed it to the side, revealing a steep passageway. Stairs led down, into darkness.
“I know a way out.” He grinned, looking smug. “It takes us right into the desert. They’ll never find us.”
He stepped into the darkness. She paused, but the palace was only a couple of streets away – soon the search would spill out onto these streets and she’d be found.
She stepped up to the passageway. Baelan was waiting for her, almost out of sight. She took a last glance around and drew in a quick breath. She had no choice but to trust him again. She climbed down the stairs, hoping this plan was a lot better than his last one.