She answers. “I was just wondering. If your version of events is true—and I believe it, do not doubt that—then the men who were attacked are lying.”
“Well, yes.” She’s a smart girl, but even I had figured that out a long time ago.
She looks up at me again, and this time the tears are gone. “Why would they lie like that? If they were attacked by Tawtrukkers, why build that whole story around the girl?”
“Well… because Darius wanted a way to destroy me, a way that would also put the people on his side, beg for him to become Semper. Chant for war.”
“Yes, but he must have had another plan to get rid of you. Some other way.” She looks back at the floor. “The girl just provided a better story.”
To be honest, I’m having trouble seeing why we are even talking about this. Darius wanted to get rid of me so he could become Semper. He had his men come in after the attack to get the people on his side—
“Wait a minute,” I blurt out. “You’re saying there wasn’t really any attack at all? But the men—their wounds are real. One of them even was missing a hand. You can’t say they did this to themselves.”
“That’s exactly what I think.”
Boots clomp around the corner again, this time several boots in unison, and when they arrive at the door I expect the announcement that we’re being taken to the gate now. Instead, Baddock stands between two of his hulking thugs. Although he is an entire head shorter, his presence commands them. They would kill each other at his suggestion. His posture is perfectly erect. He stares at me with those unblinking, intense blue eyes. The guard opens the door, allows Baddock through, and locks it behind him. “Go.” The single word from Baddock sends the two guards hastily back down the hall and around the corner.
He saunters around the room, idly pretending to examine the nothing that fills it. We have only the bare table at the wall, and the bed we’re sitting on. He’s just posturing, reveling in the situation. I hold my breath and force calmness over my emotions. He is trying to bait me, and I won’t bite.
“So Dane. Looks like the end for you, eh?” He stops in front of us, his feet spread wide and his pointed boots angled at us, imposing but not tall. He’s a formidable enough presence that it would be stupid to attack him, although it might draw a speedy execution instead of an agonizing and slow death by Radiation.
I watch his smile broaden the longer I delay my answer.
“Looks like,” I say, trying to sound cheery. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how bad I feel.
“You should never have helped her escape. That was just stupid, Dane. Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out? Or did you hope you’d killed me instead of just knocking me unconscious?”
“It wasn’t me. Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to believe me.”
“Of course it wasn’t you. It must have been Curly. Oh, wait, he wasn’t the one who stole my horse. Then it was Clem. No, he was still there in the morning, too. Maybe Jones? Hmm. No, I don’t think so. He’s the one who found me lying on the ground. Maybe you’d better try again.”
“It was the ghost-men.” Mostly I say it just to see his reaction. Not because I think he’ll believe me.
“What? Hah! Ghost men. Bogey monsters snuck in for the sole purpose of freeing that girl. Some freakish demon knocked me out and set her free. You’ll have to do better, Dane.”
I say nothing. I’ve already told him the truth. I’ve nothing more to say.
“I have to hand it to you, though. You really made the whole thing a hell of a lot easier. Pinning the attack on you and the girl… oh, I get chills just thinking of the moment Darius came up with it. It all just fit together so well.”
“Baddock, is there a reason you’re here?” I can’t hide the edge of anger in my voice.
“Hmm? Oh, yes. Of course. To gloat. Why else?" After a pause, he seems to remember something. "Oh, yes, and I can help Freda get out."
For the first time since he yanked the key from my neck, I feel a glimmer of hope.
“Young lady, I assume you are ready to return to your parents? In exchange, they have agreed to support Darius without question. It’s no small thing to them. Or to Darius. So, gather your things—oh, I see you’re in jail and have no things—and we’ll be on our way.”
Freda does not move. I lift her hand and try to let it go, but she simply grips it tighter and slides her body closer to mine. “I’m staying with my husband,” she says. It’s a flat, emotionless voice that comes out.
Surprise jolts him. "What?"
"You heard me."
Surprise twists to anger as he hisses at her, "With me, you could be very powerful. Darius marches north to reclaim the world in the name of God, but I will stay to rule Southshaw in the name of Baddock. You can be First Wife again. With a man this time, instead of a boy." He aggressively ignores my presence, focusing all his attention on her.
I want so badly to rip out his heart. But I can't let Freda turn him down. She could live. She could return to her parents. She could—
"No." Her simple answer drops on Baddock with finality. This time, he shows no surprise, and his anger melts away.
"No? All right. Suit yourself. The offer expires in exactly three seconds... two... one... no? Well, enjoy the afterlife."
He takes a deep breath and shakes his head in mock sadness. "It's a pity. You see, Dane, her parents make trouble. They don’t agree that our Lord, speaking to Darius, has illuminated our path to eternal salvation. That path runs through Tawtrukk, and it’s time Tawtrukk came under Southshaw rule and all the dirty mutants are killed.”
He pauses to let that last bit worm its way under my skin. And it’s working. Oh, it’s working.
“Including your lovergirl.”
“She’s already dead,” I snarl, perhaps more to calm myself down than anything else.
“No matter. If she is, that’s one fewer Darius will have to kill. Though I was hoping he'd bring her back so I could make full use of her before slitting her throat and watching her foul blood seep into the soil.” He says this with a blithe nonchalance, but he also takes a few steps backwards, wisely putting distance between us. I feel Freda tense her hand around mine in warning.
“So tell me, teacher,” I say, changing my tone to match his. It’s as if we’re having a delightful, meaningless after-dinner chat in a cozy parlor. “Who did attack your men? They seemed fine when I left them, riding your horse. And their wounds looked so grievous in the square.”
“Ah, but you've already figured out there was no attack.” He glances around, but clearly no one can intercept our words. “The injuries were superficial at worst. Some were old, already healed; we simply reopened them to look dreadful.” He gives a big, mock shiver and then grins with an evil pleasure. “Effective, wasn’t it?”
“Certainly was. So Tawtrukk never attacked anyone?”
“Of course not. Any fool with half a brain could deduce that.”
“Then they’re not ready for this war. You’ll slice through them. It’ll be a massacre.”
“Now you’ve got it. For a little boy, you can impress at times.”
I am seething inside, churning with heat and a nearly uncontrollable eagerness to leap from my seat and tear his head off his body. But I sit still. I know if I attack him, at best I’ll hurt him a little before he crushes me. Then the guards would be upon us.
“But,” Freda says softly, “what were you going to do without the girl?”
“What are you talking about?” Baddock gives her a glare as if she’s just a stupid girl and she should mind her business and shut up.
“Without the girl, you had no good hammer with which to hit Dane. How were you—how was your master, I mean, going to get rid of this new Semper?”
Baddock snorts derision at us both. “The same way we got rid of the previous Semper. Men have to eat. Some poisons have no taste or smell. It's not difficult. On Wednesday, just slip a little into the ceremonial Friday wine. By Saturda
y morning it's all over. And you can be two days' ride away when he dies.”
Poison. My skin tingles all over and every hair on my body stands up. It takes a moment to sink in, what he's saying. But it sinks in, and the true horror of what he's revealing, here in this cell where no one can hear, after I've been convicted and no one will believe me, drips over me like icy water.
Now it’s all I can do to hold myself back. But execution would be the end. Exile is an unknown. I will survive the wasteland, will find a way back into Southshaw, will come here and cut his heart out of his chest while he screams in pain.
He suddenly turns on his heel, heads to the door and bangs on it hard. "Sorry. I've enjoyed our chat, but it's time to go. I've got a war to plan and dissidents to lock up. Dane, say hello to your father for me." He smiles sweetly at Freda. "Enjoy dying with your husband."
The guard appears at the door, unlocks it, and swings it in.
As he locks it again, he says to us, “Get ready. They’ll come for you in fifteen minutes.”
CHAPTER 15
Although I've visited the defensive outposts along the southern passes, I’ve never been to the exile gate. The wall along the south was made from huge chunks of stone and steel and something called concrete, all salvaged from the ruins of the monstrous buildings along the lake's shore. It runs in stretches along the mountain, blocking the entrances to the valley where natural barriers leave gaps. Where roads had been, the first arrivers used the remaining war supplies to blast them down the mountainside or cover them with avalanches.
The Wall itself stands ten feet high. In the early days, those who reached it after walking hundreds of miles through the Radiation were felled by the original guards' arrows. If they made it to the foot of the wall, they were too weak and sick to scale it.
Today, the wall still stands, nearly unnecessary. The war-scorched wasteland on the other side of the mountains wiped out all the other people centuries ago. Our guards along the southern Wall spend more time tending their flocks and gardens than they do watching.
The exile gate is farther north. A stretch of the wall was built to span a small pass at the end of Leave Lake. Not because anything ever ventured in from the desolate wilderness on the other side, but because Southshaw needed a way to lock out those who were exiled so they couldn’t come back.
The process of exile starts in the town center, at the chapel’s front door. The Semper pronounces the sentence. Loved ones say their final goodbyes and are allowed to give the condemned small mementos to carry with them. In a compassionate twist of tradition, Southshawans stay away from the exile procession unless they are family of the condemned.
When Darius sentenced us, the streets were empty. He said a few words, then disappeared into the chapel to plan his war. Only seven others attended our departure: The four guards who have been our escort to the gate, Freda’s mother and father, and my mother. I expected Baddock to show up and gloat some more—even expected him to come and push us through the gate himself. But he did not.
Two dead hours on horseback and a few steps through the gate have put us here, in a narrow valley between high, jagged peaks. The wall towers thick behind us, the exile gate shut and barred. We hold hands and stand close, wondering what kinds of terrors await us over the hours to come before we die.
In my left hand is a satchel my mother handed to the guard at the church. After we were through and the gate was shut, he climbed a ladder and dropped the satchel down to me. Freda’s parents were so stricken and unprepared that they gave her nothing but kisses and tears at their final goodbye. My mother gave me only the satchel.
“I’m so thirsty,” Freda says, startling me a voice that quietly clashes with the angry landscape. “I keep thinking I hear a stream nearby, but…”
Her thought does not need to be finished. It might not be a stream at all. Or it could run thick with poisons. Or be surrounded by deadly wild animals eager for fresh meat. Or—
“I think it’s this way.” She starts off to her right, along the wall, pulling me along with her.
Southshaw's lush meadows, towering redwoods, and thick blackberry brambles lie far behind us in the valley. As we climbed from Leave Lake into the mountains, the ground got rockier, the soil dryer. Trees spread farther apart, stooped and gnarled. Grass all but disappeared. Occasional weeds struggled thirstily toward sunlight.
On this side of the wall, it’s even worse. Clumps of trees huddle together like conspirators in little knots, distrustful and defensive. The gravelly, dusty ground rises ahead of us into hard, barren granite flats farther up. On either side, the ground slopes slowly for a few hundred yards and then knifes skyward in impassable, razor sharp cliffs.
We walk wearily, feeling the sun burn down on us even as it sinks westward. Our feet crunch and slip with each step. A hundred yards away, a patch of scrawny trees loiter in a loose line, extending away from the wall. Where trees line up in a place like this, there's water.
We walk a little faster, our thirst gripping us from our rough throats to our aching legs. Poor Freda, daughter of a tailor. She's never faced such hardship. She’s probably never even ridden a horse for two hours.
We stumble upon it suddenly. The stubby trees seemed farther away when we started. At their feet, a tiny stream, about the width of my hand, trickles from the hill straight down to the wall. Freda drops to her knees and scoops water in both hands, ignoring the possibilities of Radiation and poisons. I don't stop her.
She drinks deeply for a few minutes, then sits back on her heels. “It will do,” she says softly.
The builders of the wall did their work well. It's the same materials as in the south but smoother than the natural granite surrounding us. The stream dribbles its way through the dust to a small hole bored through a gigantic hunk of mountain rock. Even two hundred years of trickling water has not carved it wide enough even for a small cat to pass through.
“Dane. Drink.” Freda's watching me. I don't know if she could see my hope failing as I stared at the wall and thought about what lies on the other side. I nod and kneel next to her. The water is warm but refreshing.
When I look up again, the land seems less stark. We could build a small shelter off to the side. The trees seem less imposing, less bitter. They're just trying to survive, like we are.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it,” Freda says, "how just a sip of clean water can change things.”
We smile at each other, the first time since... I block out those thoughts and focus on now. Is this what my mother meant when she said we would learn new things beyond the wall? That we might actually survive here? What had my father had discovered?
Don’t think of survival, Dane. Everyone knows that exile is death. It’s been true for hundreds of years. We might survive. But for how long? And to what end? We will never be welcomed back into Southshaw. We're exiles.
“What’s in the bag?” Freda slips it from my hand and walks a few yards away. She peers inside and pokes around. “A little food, and—thank goodness!—some reasonable clothes.” She tips the bag upside down, tumbling its contents onto the dirt.
I'd forgotten how ridiculous we both look, still wearing my parents’ fancy wedding clothes. Freda’s dark green dress might provide camouflage in a forest, but we are not in a forest and we do not need camouflage. It is elegant and has held up well, but it’s flimsy, and she might freeze at night. My own outfit is similarly useless. Even though it's mid June, the nights will be cold.
“These are yours, I think. They look bigger.” Freda tosses a bundle of cloth at me, tied tidily with a bit of twine. As I unbundle the clothes, she mumbles the inventory. “A thick blanket. A flint. A small knife. A cloth filled with nuts and dried meat. And—“ her voice rises in a question—“an envelope?”
I come to stand over her and ask to see it. She hands it up to me and then walks off a little way with her own twine-bound bundle. It must be a note my mother scribbled to me before the guards took us away. A final goodbye, an explan
ation, a statement of regret. For my father’s murder. For marrying Darius. For not rescuing us from... this.
Forget it. I don't want her words, even if they might explain everything. The envelope dangles lifeless from my fingers, and I want to throw it down and stomp it into the earth, grind it to tatters on the gravel. Then scatter the remnants into the stream so they can float through the tunnel back into Southshaw.
Yes, that sounds very satisfying. Without hesitation I cast it down hard and raise my foot. I wish she's packed decent boots so I could stomp it good and hard. Instead, I have only these stupid house shoes.
“Wait!” Freda thumps me hard on the shoulder, knocking me back so I stagger and splash into the stream before I can right myself.
She bends and retrieves the envelope. “Did you even look at it?" She waves it at me with a scowl. "It’s not yours to destroy.”
I try to read what's written on it, but she's waving it around so much I can't see anything.
“Don’t you see? This is addressed to me.” She's chiding me, but I can't really see why it might be important. It's from my mother.
I saunter back to her side and nod reluctant agreement, watch over her shoulder as she tears it open to pull out the note. To our surprise, however, inside sits another envelope, folded in half. Freda uncreases it, and together we examine the word scribbled quickly on the front.
FOBRASSE
“I don’t even know how to pronounce that,” I mumble.
“Who is Fobrasse? And why did Judith give this to me?” She sighs in frustration, like maybe she'd like to crush it and throw it in the stream. “Dane, what is this about?”
“I don’t know,” I say, being as helpful as I can. “Maybe she stuck the wrong thing in here. She was in a hurry, after all.”
“Are you sure you’re Judith’s son? She’s not that careless, Dane.” Freda’s tone implies that she thinks I am that careless, and I’m about to protest when she goes on. “She did this for a reason, and we need to figure it out. Think. What did she tell us in those final few minutes together?”
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