by Janice Hardy
Papa had. Grandpapa had. Were they Baseeri?
Danello took my hand, ran his thumb across my knuckles. “Why don’t you like Onderaan?”
“He’s an enchanter.” It just popped out.
“And that’s bad?”
“No.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“I know. I’m not sure what to do.” I had to fix this somehow. Convince Onderaan to let them stay, even if he threw me out. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Well,” Danello said, pushing a curl behind my ear, “I think the first thing we should do is get some sleep. Then we can talk to Onderaan and tell him sometimes your mouth gets away from you. He’s bound to need help here, and we can offer it. Maybe that’s worth something.”
“Maybe. No one in the Duke’s army knows who we are. They wouldn’t connect us with the Underground.”
He smiled, but there was worry there too. For his brothers, for his father, for me. “See? Planning already. You’ll have it all figured out by morning.”
For his sake I had to prove I was worth keeping around by showing Onderaan how we could help him.
“Thanks.” I hugged him, feeling better than I had since I got there. “I’m okay, really. You were right before, it’s been a long day. A long week.”
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
“You don’t have to go so soon.”
He grinned. “Okay.”
I snuggled back into him, warm and safe. It felt good to just be.
Much sooner than I’d have liked, someone knocked softly on the door. Danello grumbled but got up and answered it.
“Everything okay in there?”
Aylin. I should have known.
They spoke in whispers for a minute; then Danello left and Aylin slipped inside. He had obviously told her what had happened, which suited me fine. I wasn’t in the mood to think about it again.
“I don’t know about you,” she said, flopping on the other bed, “but I’m exhausted. I don’t think I can even think straight anymore. I probably can’t even talk without tripping over my own tongue.”
Subtle she was not. But it was sweet of her, telling me in her own way it was okay to have lost my mind.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” I said. “And I’m sorry I got you arrested.”
She rolled over and faced me. “It wasn’t your fault. I knew we could get caught when I agreed to be sneaky with you.”
“Still.”
“Pfft.” She flicked a hand my way. “What are friends for? I mean, really, if you can’t count on your best friend to go to jail with you, what good are they?”
I smiled. “You do have a point.”
“I am wise beyond my years.”
“This is also true.” I slipped off my sandals and crawled into bed. By the time I reached over to turn down the lamp, she was already asleep. I left it on, the pale glow comforting. I’d be able to see anyone who might sneak into the room. I’d noticed the door didn’t have a lock. I hadn’t checked the main hall door though. We might be locked in even now.
Worry about that in the morning.
I had enough to worry about tonight.
Noises woke me later that night. Thuds, muffled cries, worried words. I was on my feet before my eyes were fully open. Aylin was still asleep. She hadn’t even taken off her shoes.
“Aylin, wake up.” I pressed my ear against the door. Quiet.
Doors slammed, but it didn’t sound like it was in the hall. Aylin mumbled and rolled over. I left the door and stepped onto her bed, then listened against the wall.
“Aylin!”
“Mmmm?”
“Get Danello.” I slipped out the door, tiptoeing to the entrance to the main room. I cracked the door.
“…waiting for us,” a man was saying. “I don’t know how.”
A scoff. “A jailbreak alerted half the city,” a woman said.
Our jailbreak? She thought we were responsible for whatever had happened?
“Oh come on, Siekte,” said Jeatar. “The jail was nowhere near the League.”
“You don’t think breaking out political prisoners would have alerted them? Put all the Duke’s soldiers on guard?”
“Quiet, both of you,” Onderaan said, sounding tired. “How bad is she hurt?”
Hurt? I pulled the door open a little farther and peeked out. Six people stood in the room, three I hadn’t seen before, wearing Baseeri uniforms that were probably from Neeme’s stash of stolen ones. Another woman lay on the couch, hurt badly from the look of it. A man was on the floor, just as injured.
A door opened and Danello came up behind me. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“I think a plan went bad. Something about the Healers’ League.”
He and Aylin crowded around me and looked out.
Siekte was pressing a folded cloth against the injured woman’s stomach. The cloth was already dark with blood. Not good. She ignored the man on the floor. Onderaan didn’t, though. He knelt and slapped him across the face.
“How did you know we were coming?”
The man groaned.
“Answer me!”
Aylin pulled away from the door. “Um, I’m thinking his uniform might be real.”
If so, then he might be able to tell me where Tali and the others were.
“Traitor,” the soldier said.
“You’re killing innocents and I’m the traitor?” Onderaan slapped him again. “Did someone tell you we were coming?”
“Why is everyone in the hall?”
We spun around. Neeme stood behind us in a nightdress, rubbing her eyes, her hair a tousled mess.
“Someone got hurt,” Aylin said.
Neeme’s eyes opened wide. She shoved past us and ran inside, dropping to her knees by the woman. Siekte tried to keep her back but failed.
I stepped forward, but Danello grabbed my arm.
“We should stay in our rooms.”
“I have to know what’s going on.” I ventured out, Danello and Aylin behind me. We stood off to the side, but Jeatar spotted us. He frowned and tipped his head toward the door. I shook mine.
Neeme sobbed, then sucked in a sharp breath. She looked around wildly, first to the door, then the room. Her gaze fell on me. Jeatar swore.
“Help her, please,” she asked me. “Heal her like you did me.”
THIRTEEN
All eyes turned toward me. Onderaan’s narrowed. “You’re a Healer?”
“No,” I said, just as Jeatar said, “It’s complicated.”
Neeme sniffled, dragging her sleeve across her nose. “I’m sorry, Jeatar, I had to,” she told him, then turned to Onderaan. “She healed me. A street pack broke my leg and she somehow gave it to one of them.”
Onderaan wasn’t looking at me anymore. He turned on Jeatar and was inches away from him before I could take a breath.
“You brought the Shifter here and didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t have time.”
“You had time to tell Neeme to keep quiet about it.”
Jeatar winced. “Because I knew you’d react this way. I was planning to tell you.”
“When?”
“What about Ellis?” Neeme shouted above both of them. “She’s dying.”
Onderaan gave Jeatar one last angry look and turned away. “What can you do?” he asked me.
“Without a Healer and some pynvium, nothing.”
“What about the shifting I’ve been hearing so much about? Can’t you shift into that man?” He pointed at the soldier I needed to tell me where Tali was. The man was unconscious now, his uniform dark with blood.
“It’ll kill him.”
“He’s dying anyway.”
My guts said Onderaan didn’t plan on letting him live even if he wasn’t dying.
“We need to question him,” I said.
“He’s not waking up.”
He would if I healed him. Not fully, but enough so he could talk, tell me where Tali was and how to get i
nside. I could hold his pain that long.
And then give it back?
It was Tali’s voice. She’d hate me for it, but he was a Baseeri soldier. He was one of the people hurting her. Save Neeme’s friend, kill the soldier, save Tali and the others. I’d make that trade. I’d made worse ones for less.
I walked over. “I could—”
Ellis started choking, blood bubbling up on her lips.
“Help her!”
“Shift it now!”
“Nya, you don’t have to—”
“Quiet, Jeatar.”
I grabbed Ellis’s hand and drew. Pain poured into me, sharp and hot. My chest burned, my lungs felt filled with sand. I dropped away, gasping.
Danello moved to one side of me. Aylin hurried to the other. They helped me stand and eased me over to the dying soldier.
“Soon as he’s awake, ask him…about Tali,” I said through clenched teeth.
Danello caught on a breath faster than Aylin. He shook his head, but her mouth dropped open. “Nya, you can’t,” she said. “This is bad enough as it is.”
“Ask him.”
“You’ll hate yourself if you do this.”
I’d hate myself more if I let another chance to find Tali pass me by. I reached out a shaking hand and wrapped it around his arm. Felt my way in. Similar wounds, but lower, piercing the liver, stomach. I stopped the bleeding, eased the shock. Fresh pain cut though me, and I slumped against Danello.
The soldier stirred.
“Where are the Takers being kept?” Danello asked. “The ones deciding whether or not to serve the Duke?”
The soldier looked around, confused and scared. “What?”
“The Takers. Where are they?”
The soldier glared at Onderaan. “Traitor.”
I tightened my grip and pushed just a little of his pain back. He screamed. I took a deep breath and gathered the pain in the hollow space between my heart and guts, held it there as best I could.
Aylin grabbed my hands. “Nya, stop. There’s ugly and then there’s just plain wrong.” She locked her gaze on mine. “I can live with ugly if we get our people back, but I’m not letting you do wrong. Might as well turn yourself in to the Duke if you start that.”
Horror twisted the soldier’s features and he rolled away from me. Saints, what was I doing? Onderaan put his foot on his chest and shoved him down.
“Answer the girl or she’ll put it all back.”
What? No, I couldn’t do that—it would kill him. Aylin stepped away, her arms tightly folded across her chest. She kept shaking her head, a plea in her eyes to stop, like she actually thought I’d do it. But hadn’t I already done it? I looked at the soldier. If I didn’t shift, I’d die. If I did shift, he’d die.
The soldier spat at Onderaan. Onderaan knelt and grabbed him by the throat.
“How did you know?” he asked, low and threatening. Not the question I needed to know.
The soldier glared, his eyes tearing at the corners. Movement flickered below me. His arm moved up toward Onderaan’s heart, a small knife gripped in his hand.
“Ahh!” the soldier cried out as Siekte’s blade sank into his chest. The knife fell away. The soldier slumped, dying.
Saints, no!
I grabbed his arm and pushed as fast as I could. Pain slid away from me, then—nothing. It crashed against a wall of death and splashed back. I gasped while the pain washed over me.
“Nya, are you okay?” Danello brushed sweaty curls off my forehead.
“No,” I whispered. Pain swirled around my chest, making it hard to breathe. I never should have healed him. I was just as bad as the Undying, hurting to get what I wanted.
Danello tucked his arm around me and helped me to the other couch. Neeme and her friend sat across from us, arms around each other, but quiet. An odd mix of gratitude and fear on their faces.
“I’ll be okay.” A lie. I had a few days before my blood thickened and my body shut down.
“We need to get Nya to a Healer,” Danello said.
“Or find her another Baseeri she doesn’t like,” Siekte muttered. Aylin frowned, but I deserved the barb.
“No one goes anywhere until I understand what happened tonight.” No question about Onderaan’s feelings. Anger. At me, at Jeatar, at the soldier. “You first,” he told the three Baseeri standing by the wall. They looked at Ellis. She started to get to her feet but failed. She sat up straighter instead.
“We hit the League’s storage rooms as planned,” she began, voice solid even though she was pale. “Got in with no trouble, found the pynvium vault just where our contact said it would be. Kilvet started picking the lock.” She paused. “That’s when soldiers burst in. Six, seven, I’m not sure. We made it out only because we set the trip lines like you trained us to. The first few soldiers never saw them, went down hard, and caused the rest to stumble. We were almost back to the villa when we were ambushed, about three blocks away, right after we turned onto the street. We killed four, we subdued him”—she indicated the dead man on the floor—“and thought he might know something, so we brought him here.”
“There are bodies in the street?”
She winced. “Yes, sir.”
Onderaan swore and turned to the three still in uniform. “Go clean it up before someone sees them. And get their gate seals while you’re at it.”
“Yes, sir.” They left as one, darting up the stairs in single file.
“That vault shouldn’t have been so well guarded,” Onderaan said. “The League has minimum staff, hardly any pynvium at all now. Could we have a spy?”
Siekte looked at me.
“They’re not spies,” Jeatar said.
“They conveniently show up just when we’re stealing the pynvium?” She huffed. “And we have no idea who—or what—they are?”
“I know who and what they are, and they aren’t spies,” Jeatar said.
Neeme nodded. “She saved me and Ellis. She can’t be bad.”
“She could have done that to gain our trust,” Siekte said. I’d argue it, but nothing I said would change her opinion of me. Especially when she was partially right.
“She didn’t,” Neeme said. “She didn’t even know who I was when the pack attacked me.”
“Unless she hired them.”
Jeatar snorted. “You can’t be serious. A raid went bad—it happens. There might not even be a spy.”
“You.” Onderaan pointed to me. “In my office, now. Alone,” he added when both Siekte and Jeatar stepped forward.
Siekte gaped at him like he’d asked her to stab him. “Sir, she might shift into you.”
He turned to me. “Are you a threat?”
“Not unless you try to kill me.”
For a heartbeat I saw his lip twitch into a smile. “Fair enough.”
With Danello’s help I got to my feet. The pain was better now, trapped where I could manage it, but it wouldn’t stay trapped. I walked into Onderaan’s office and sank onto one of the chairs. He shut the door and took his place behind the desk, but he didn’t sit. For a long minute he just stared at me, his shoulders growing tenser with every breath. I couldn’t help but notice he had very broad shoulders.
“How dare you accuse me of not caring when you could have infiltrated the camps on your own.” He spoke low, but there was fury in his voice. “You judge me and what I’m trying to do, yet you have the nerve to hide that you’re a Taker.”
My already sore guts squirmed. “I’m a Shifter. There’s nothing I can do but get caught by the Duke.”
“So could any Taker I sent in there.”
“It’s not the same.”
He scoffed. “Of course not—it’s your bait on the hook, not theirs.”
“I can’t sense pynvium.”
His anger faltered. Not a lot, but hopefully enough to fix this mess and convince him to let us stay.
“So you’re right,” I continued. “I can pass any test they’d give me to prove I was a Taker—but as soon as th
ey asked me to push pain into pynvium, I’d be exposed.”
“You could still get in.”
This time I scoffed. “And do what? Take on an entire army from the inside? Don’t you think I’d do it if it would save my sister? Save Danello’s brothers? No.” I shook my head. “I’m not sacrificing my head to win my heart. There’s too much at stake and I need to plan it right this time.”
Onderaan sat, his gaze locked onto mine. Not as much anger in it; some confusion maybe. I wasn’t sure exactly what he was feeling, but it looked like a lot of things all at once.
“So you’d be willing to infiltrate the camps if you could pass as a regular Taker?”
“I’d be there now if I could do that.”
Onderaan leaned back in his chair. He studied me, tapping a knuckle against his lips. I knew that look. He had a plan brewing.
“I’ve been working on something,” he said cautiously, as if he still wasn’t sure he could trust me. “It was for a more immediate problem, but it might be just what we need to get you inside those camps.”
“How?”
He pulled a chain from around his neck. A small key dangled on it. “I don’t know how it was in Geveg, but here pynvium has been scarce for over a year,” he said, opening one of the drawers in his desk. He pulled out an iron box and unlocked it. “I’ve been able to smuggle out bits here and there, stockpile it, but those sources dried up months ago. There hasn’t been any pynvium available in the whole city since.”
How did these people survive without pynvium? “Unless you’re the Duke or one of his Undying, right?”
“Exactly. Without it, I wasn’t able to finish this.” He set a bracelet with three rings attached to it with fine chains on the desk.
My guts quivered and I wanted to run as fast as I could. I couldn’t see the carvings, but I knew they were there. “That’s glyphed pynvium.”
“How did you—” He gaped, then held the thing out to me. “It’s on the inside, see?”
I didn’t want to see. I pressed into the chair, trying to stay as far away as possible. “Put that away, please.”
“What’s wrong?”
“That thing! Can’t you feel it?”
“No, nothing.” He put it back in the box. “I thought you couldn’t sense pynvium.”