‘What’s the king playing at?’ says Teddy.
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. The building must be some sort of outpost – a base for their hunters, maybe? I suppose the wastelands are a safe place to put a building, if you’re worried about defending it.’
‘That’s true,’ says Maisy. ‘An enemy army could never sneak across the plains. Even if they weren’t killed by the wasteland’s dangers, the people in that fortress would see them coming a mile off.’
‘There’s another train line, further that way,’ Clementine says, pointing. ‘There must be a fork where the line splits, somewhere up here in the mountains.’
I follow her gaze. In the distance, far to our west, another train line stretches away south to meet the wastelands’ horizon. That must be the major line, for richie travellers to return from Gunning to their homes in the south. But first their train – or maybe just a few carriages – can detour to this mysterious building, this fortress in the middle of the wastelands. Perhaps they even keep a second engine up there, waiting in secret to pull those carriages down to the fortress.
‘Maybe it’s for deliveries,’ I say. ‘To take supplies to that building. Food and stuff.’
We stare at the building for a while, but no one adds any new ideas. The entire situation makes no sense – and by this point, I’m almost past caring. My head aches, my feet are sore and I just want to find a safe place to collapse. The others must feel the same, because almost simultaneously we turn away from the lookout and head back into the trees.
There are no handy caves to shelter in tonight, but I spot an overgrown ditch nearby. Yesterday’s fires didn’t spread this far, so the ditch is well protected by branches and undergrowth. When we crawl underneath and drape ourselves in our sleeping sacks, it’s almost like we have a ceiling.
There’s no hope of a campfire tonight. We’re too cramped in this tiny ditch; we’d probably set our sleeping sacks alight, or melt all the snow from our roof. Besides, we’ve only got one match left and it seems suicidal to waste it. So we share around food that doesn’t need cooking: biscuits, fruit and leftover porridge. The porridge has congealed into a sort of glue, so I try rolling it between my palms to restore a little heat.
‘Trying to start a street-ball match, Danika?’ says Clementine.
I look down at my porridge, which I’ve unwittingly rolled into a gluggy ball. ‘Something like that,’ I say, and pop the ball into my mouth. It’s not five-star cuisine, but at least it’s edible.
‘I used to like street-ball,’ says Teddy, looking wistful. ‘I could win twenty silvers in a good night’s betting on a game.’
I snort. ‘Is that why you ran off from Rourton? Unpaid gambling debts?’
Teddy shakes his head. ‘Nah, not exactly.’
There’s a pause as we wait for more details. I suddenly remember Radnor’s words to Teddy in the sewer. ‘You begged me for a spot to save you from a manhunt, Nort . . .’
‘Well, go on then,’ says Clementine. ‘Tell us why you joined the crew. I think we’re a bit past secrecy at this point.’
Teddy shrugs. ‘Well, before we left Rourton, I got into a bit of trouble. So I tracked down Radnor for help – he owed me a favour, you see, and there was word on the streets he was putting a crew together. So I joined up.’ He grins. ‘And the rest is history, right?’
‘Yeah, but what sort of trouble were you in?’ I say. ‘Must’ve been pretty serious to scare the great Teddy Nort himself into running out of Rourton. It’s not like you’d never been in trouble before.’
‘This was a different sort of trouble,’ says Teddy. ‘It wasn’t the guards that were after me. I was hiding out in this richie’s cupboard, waiting for night so I could steal his antique brooch collection –’
Clementine rolls her eyes. ‘Of course you were.’
‘– and I accidentally overheard some confidential stuff in the next room,’ says Teddy. ‘The richie caught me, and I only just managed to get away. But I reckon what I heard was pretty valuable, because he set half the private detectives in Rourton after me.
‘He even offered a secret reward and roped a bunch of scumbags into hunting me down. I’ve escaped the guards loads of times, no problem. But half my allies were ready to turn me in – that’s how good the reward was. I had to get out of town.’
‘Why didn’t I hear about this?’ I say. ‘If this richie was offering a reward, I would’ve thought he’d plaster it all over Rourton.’
Teddy shakes his head. ‘Didn’t want his bosses to find out the information had been compromised, I reckon. Wanted to hunt me down secretly and get rid of me, without anyone finding out what happened.’
‘Must have been some pretty serious information,’ I say, impressed. ‘What was he up to – assassinating his political rivals or something?’
‘Nah, nothing interesting like that,’ says Teddy. ‘Just some boring trade talk. They kept yabbering on about something called Curiefer – I didn’t understand half of it, to be honest . . .’
Maisy sits up. ‘Did you just say Curiefer? That’s what they’re trading?’
Teddy nods.
‘Oh no.’ Maisy pushes her fingers against her lips. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘Huh?’
‘Curiefer is a liquid metal from the far north. It’s very rare and dangerous to extract – people have been trying to mine it for centuries. Someone must have found a decent source, and now they’re exporting it south . . .’
‘Why? What’s it good for?’
Maisy hesitates. ‘It’s the only known substance that can deactivate magnets.’
‘What?’
‘Curiefer burns easily; it’s flammable at the best of times. But if you expose it to a big enough crash . . .’ She trails off. ‘It explodes on impact, and the radiation scrambles nearby magnets. It wipes them clean, turns them back into normal iron. If King Morrigan has found a source of Curiefer, he could erase any magnetic field.’
She pauses. ‘Any magnetic field.’
There is a moment of silence as her meaning sinks in. Taladia is already at war with other countries in multiple directions. Our king hasn’t yet invaded the land beyond the Magnetic Valley, because it’s too risky to move his magical weaponry through the gap. But if this mineral gives him the power to erase the magnets’ strength . . .
‘The Valley,’ I whisper. ‘He’s going to destroy the Valley.’
‘That’s why he built a train line over the mountains,’ says Teddy, paling. ‘That must’ve been what we saw at the back of the cargo carriage, behind all that mesh. Big vats of this Curiefer stuff coming down from the north. They’d truck it down the main trade road to Gunning, I reckon, but the road over the mountains’d be too unreliable. Snowstorms, rock falls . . .’
Maisy nods. ‘Curiefer is volatile – they’d need to move it carefully.’
‘Exactly,’ Teddy says. ‘No wonder they extended the train line! The king pretends the train line’s just a treat for richie passengers, so no one guesses what he’s up to, but –’
‘But the train line has a fork,’ I say, ‘so they can uncouple the cargo carriage for a detour to that building in the wastelands. But it’s not just food supplies they’re delivering, it’s –’
‘Curiefer,’ Teddy breathes. ‘Blimey, no wonder that richie wanted to hunt me down in Rourton. I stumbled across the secret of the century.’
There is a long pause.
‘But if the king’s armies break across the Magnetic Valley,’ says Clementine, ‘it’ll mean another war, won’t it? There will be more forced recruitments – we don’t have enough soldiers to invade the lands beyond the Valley.’
‘They’ll conscript younger kids,’ I say. ‘They already take us when we turn eighteen. If they want more soldiers, they’ll have to lower the age barrier . . .’
‘Nowhere will be
safe,’ says Maisy quietly. ‘There will be nowhere left to give people hope. Nowhere for refugee crews to run to.’
No one responds. I try to imagine a world without the Magnetic Valley. That place is a dream for so many young scruffers: a gateway to the lands beyond, a place where the king’s bombs cannot fall. And now he is going to destroy it. There will be nowhere left beyond his power. There will be no more hope. And we will have made this terrible journey for nothing.
‘But Curiefer only works if there’s a big enough boom, right?’ Teddy says. ‘It’s not enough just to set it on fire – there’s gotta be a serious impact to make it blow up?’
Maisy nods.
‘So how’s the king gonna do it? It’s not like he can just use alchemy – not in the Valley’s magnetic field.’
‘How about cannons?’ Clementine suggests. ‘He could set up the cannons further back from the Valley’s entrance, and shoot the Curiefer in from a distance. The impact would come when it hit the ground, and then –’
Maisy shakes her head. ‘A cannon would set off the Curiefer as soon as you fired it. You’d need a way to launch it that saves its impact until the end. Something that builds up speed slowly until –’
Teddy slams a fist into his opposite palm. ‘Ka-boom!’
We all fall silent.
‘That building in the wastelands,’ says Teddy. ‘I reckon it’s some kind of secret military base. Good spot to hide it, really – out in the wastelands, where no one ever goes. It’s gotta be where they’re stashing the Curiefer. And that fork in the train line’s there to deliver it . . .’
‘So what?’ says Clementine.
Teddy sits up. His eyes are hard now, glinting beneath the snowy roof of our hideout. ‘So I reckon that’s their weakness. If someone took out that place – blew it up, or burned it down, or something – that’d be a pretty massive blow to the king.’
A prickle runs across my skin. I know what he’s angling at now. I know who he means by ‘someone’. But it’s ridiculous. We’re just a bunch of teenagers. We’ve only survived this long because of luck, and not all of us have made it. A memory flashes hot across my mind: screaming, blood in the water, Radnor’s body slipping from my grasp . . .
‘Stop it, Teddy,’ says Clementine. ‘Don’t even think about it. We’ve come so far already to reach the Valley. We just have to turn east through the Knife and –’
‘If we don’t do something, soon there won’t be a Valley!’
‘But it’s not up to us to –’
There is a shout outside. Clementine falls silent. We all stare at each other, suddenly afraid.
‘This way!’ calls a distant voice. It’s distorted by the wind, and muffled through our roof of snowy branches, but there’s no mistaking the tone. ‘Hurry up. I want to find those brats before the night is over.’
I swallow. The others look nauseated. We all recognise that voice, and what its presence here means. Sharr Morrigan is on the mountainside.
We keep silent for several minutes, straining our ears for any hint of movement outside. It’s hard to separate natural noises – whipping wind, or snow clumps falling from overladen branches – from what might be a human footstep. But there is something strange in the wind: a howl that doesn’t seem entirely natural.
Teddy suddenly pales.
I bend close and breathe in his ear: ‘What is it?’
He looks at me. ‘Borrash.’
It takes me a second to recognise the name. Borrash was our last surviving foxary, the one that Lukas sold to a farmer outside of Gunning. How could he be here, in the snow and ice of the mountains? Then I realise. The hunters have brought him here. Sharr Morrigan must have bought him from the farmer – or taken him forcibly, more likely – and she is using the beast to track us down.
Teddy closes his eyes and concentrates. I know he has a connection to the creature, but can they truly sense one another at such a distance? This isn’t the time to ask. I keep quiet and try not to distract Teddy from his work. He grinds his teeth together and clenches his eyes so tightly that it looks painful.
I glance at the twins. They look just as lost as I am. We’re out of our depth, with no real knowledge of the power Teddy wields through his Beast proclivity. Teddy lets out a low growl. I’m not sure whether the noise is his own, or whether he’s somehow channelling the emotions of the foxary itself. I remember how Lukas screeched like a hawk when he borrowed the bird’s eyes – perhaps Teddy has made a connection with Borrash. It doesn’t sound like a happy reunion.
Teddy’s eyes fly open. He looks shaken. ‘Sharr’s got a whole crew of foxaries.’
‘What?’
‘She’s got four of them, Danika. They’re on our scent trail right now – they’re going to find us! We’ve got to move!’
We pack up the sleeping sacks as quickly and quietly as possible. Then we clamber out of the ditch and dash through the foliage into the twilight. My neck itches so intensely now that I have to keep reaching back to scratch it, even in the midst of this terror. My proclivity is clearly on the way, but at this rate I won’t live long enough to use it.
‘This way,’ gasps Clementine.
We head back into the trees, struggling not to trip in ankle-deep snow and foliage. We need a way to disguise our scent, and that means water. A river, a creek, a muddy ditch . . . But everything is frozen solid. We’ve been melting snow to provide fresh water, never bothering to search for streams. Even if there is a water supply nearby, I have no idea where it is.
The downhill slope is marked by even thicker undergrowth. It knots around our ankles; each of us trips at least once, and my cheeks are soon raw from scratches and cold.
The sounds of pursuit draw closer. We must be leaving a perfect scent trail for the foxaries. The air is crisp; the only competing scents are damp wood and snow. There is no time to search for a pond, I realise. Any second, the foxaries and their riders will burst onto the top of this slope and spot us.
We throw ourselves into a grove of scraggly trees. Snow and branches hide us from sight, but it’s no use – the foxaries will charge down here like rabid dogs when they catch our scent. I wipe a clump of sweaty hair from my eyes, and light glints off my mother’s silver bracelet . . . ‘The alchemy charm!’
‘What?’
I grab the silver rose charm from my bracelet. ‘Lukas used this to hide his scent from our foxaries.’
The others’ eyes widen. The twins are surely rich enough to have used a charm like this before, and Teddy has probably stolen a few in his time . . . would he have learned to invoke their spells before he sold them?
There is barely enough room on the rose’s tiny petals to fit our fingertips. I find a speck of cold silver, just enough space for my pinkie. The last thing I see is a trio of frightened faces with closed eyes. Then I shut my own eyelids and focus. I’m hidden . . . We are hidden . . . The foxaries cannot sense us . . .
The air twangs. The rose heats up, painfully hot beneath my fingertip, but I refuse to let go. It feels as though my skin is burning. I can only hope the spell will hold – not just for me, but for all of us. The silence seems to stretch forever. There is no approaching sound, no crunch of paws in the downhill snow.
When I cannot hold my breath any longer I release it in a slow huff. I flutter my eyelids open for half a second to steal a glance at the slope. Nothing. No foxaries in sight. Just silent snow.
The others open their eyes.
‘I reckon we should double back,’ says Teddy. ‘Walk in the places we already left a scent trail. If the foxaries come after us, Sharr might think they’re just picking up an older trail that she’s already searched . . .’
We hurry back up the slope and through the trees. Occasionally I hear a growl in the distance, but we just hurl ourselves into the undergrowth and engage the charm’s alchemy spell until the danger has passed.
Finally, we find ourselves back up at the lookout point. There has been no sign of the foxaries for a while now. I’m starting to hope they’ve found our old trail, back down among the burnt regions of the forest. Perhaps they’re sniffing around our old cave. We stayed there an entire day, so our scent must be strong.
There is a sudden rattle in the sky.
‘Hide!’
We scramble back into the trees as a dozen biplanes roar overhead. They descend, spiralling towards the wastelands beyond the mountains. I venture back onto the rocky edge of our lookout, just in time to see the biplanes disappear below. The dusk is too deep now to make out any details, but I know where the biplanes have landed: inside the walls of that mysterious fortress. Out in the wastelands . . .
Behind me, Maisy gasps.
‘What is it?’ I say.
‘That fortress must be the airbase. I knew the palace had their airbase somewhere near the Central Mountains, but I never thought . . .’
‘That’s where they store their biplanes? The ones that bomb our cities?’
She nods. ‘I can’t believe it’s here. I can’t believe they’re storing the Curiefer in the same place as their biplanes.’ She raises a hand to her lips, stunned. ‘Oh no. That’s how they’re going to do it.’
‘Do what?’
Maisy turns on me, her expression desperate. ‘They need a huge impact to explode the Curiefer. It’s not enough just to burn it; they need it to actually explode. So they’ll load the Curiefer onto biplanes, and then drop it over the Val–’
Chasing the Valley Page 21