Siege of Shadows

by Sarah Raughley

  “They’re just beyond those trees,” Lucas said. “Wonder how they’ll react.”

  The cacophony of voices grew louder, but it wasn’t until we made it through the forest that I could see them: a small camp of people packing Sect equipment into small trucks and vans, or sitting on logs smoking food by a campfire. They were lined up all around the circumference of a beautiful lake, its obsidian surface rippling gently under the slightest caress of wind. A few feet away from us was a metal ball snuggled between the protruding roots of a tree—the same as the one we’d used in the Sahara. If I squinted, I could probably find more of them lined up around the perimeter. This is how they lived, these nomads, day to day, trying to escape the wrath of phantoms as they lived among them.

  “Welcome to Black Lagoon, girls.” Lucas whistled as we entered the camp space, drawing all eyes to us. It was inevitable; they recognized us right away. I saw one person reach for his gun, but Lucas waved a hand to stop him. “ ’S all right. They’re not here about what we do. They’re only looking for a ride into town.” He gave me a friendly pat on the back. “They’re Effigies in transit. Fell from the sky just as we were getting attacked by a particularly vicious group o’ phantoms, didn’t they?” He smirked. “Four falling stars.”

  “What do you mean attacked?” A large man who’d been standing with his back to us by the lake turned around, his long brown coat sweeping the rocky earth. His thin, pink lips almost disappeared inside his thick hickory beard, which had annexed the bottom half of his face. His eyes peeked out from behind some rather familiar flat black hair—familiar because it was the same as Derrek’s. The boy jogged up to him, flinching a bit when the man patted his head. “Derrek, what happened?”

  “Dad, our tech malfunctioned. We would’ve been dead if it weren’t for those girls.” He gestured toward the four of us as we carefully entered the camp. “That one with the bushy hair protected me.”

  That one with the bushy hair must have meant me. The man’s eyes traced a line from my face to the blood dripping down my arm.

  “She needs to be stitched. Abril, help patch her up.”

  Abril clearly didn’t want to. But even though she shot me a withering look, she didn’t protest. With a bitter scowl, she strode over to one of the vans nearby, gesturing me to follow with a curt wave of her hand. There was a first aid kit over by some coolers. Sitting on one of the coolers, she swept off her jacket, revealing her thin, bony form, and picked up the first aid kit, rummaging around until she found some disinfectant and a needle.

  “You’ll be gentle, right?” I smiled. She didn’t. This was gonna hurt.

  As Abril went to work, Chae Rin passed James’s unconscious body to a couple of men, who set him down rather roughly by a log. I tried not to look at Abril’s needle as it pierced my arm, stitching my flesh together with the exact amount of finesse I expected from someone who didn’t even bother to flinch at my whimpers. Wincing, I watched the busy men and women instead as they packed loaded weapons and APDs into vans already weighed down with cargo.

  Vans. “Sir,” I called, jolting a bit once I felt the tip of the needle in my flesh.

  “Jin,” he corrected. “My name is Jin. And thank you for saving my son.”

  “You’re welcome.” I looked at the other girls, who nodded. “We really need help. We were actually flying overhead in a helicopter when we got attacked and crashed here.”

  “By accident,” said Lucas as he stopped over by Abril and took a beer out of one of the coolers. “That shot wasn’t mine, by the way. That was all her.” Abril rolled her eyes.

  “That’s all right, but we need to get out of these mountains. We also need a car. Or a van?” Grunting from the pain of Abril’s handiwork, I not-so-subtly hinted at one of the several that were camped around the lagoon, most of them old and rickety vintage models.

  “They’re going to fight to Saul, Dad,” Derrek said. “You know, the terrorist?”

  “Saul.” As he stroked his bushy chin, I had no idea how his fingers didn’t just get caught in the wilderness of his beard. Walking away from his son, he sat on a nearby log and stretched out his towering frame. “He’s been moving in networks like these.”

  “Saul has? He’s really been—ow!” My arm gave a violent twitch as I cried out. Abril didn’t care.

  Belle’s eyes narrowed as she walked past me, approaching Jin. “How do you know this?”

  “We move around.” Jin’s voice was a low grumble, the kind you listened to in the subways before it slid to the back of your subconscious as white noise. “You hear things. If you’re paying attention.”

  “Oh, yeah?” said Chae Rin. “And what have you heard?”

  “Trafficking rings being attacked.” Jin propped his elbows up on his knees and leaned over, resting his chin on intertwined fingers. “Around Europe, mostly. Though I heard of some attacks in Northern Africa. Lots of high-powered weapons being stolen. And people.”

  “People?” Lake wiped the sweat from the mountain trek off her forehead. “Stolen people?”

  “Or maybe they left on their own.” Jin’s haunting gaze was on her, bottomless and black as the lagoon. “Not too long ago, I heard of an empty camp in the forests of Romania. We’d dealt with the people there before—turf war. You can’t escape that kind of conflict when stepping into another gang’s territory. But if what they say is true, it’s not something we’d have to worry about again. The camp was torched. No bodies. Just footsteps and ashes . . . and ghosts.”

  “Come on, you don’t actually believe that, do you?” Lucas laughed, but he couldn’t hide his shiver even from underneath his heavy mountain jacket.

  “He appeared with the wind and left no trace when he was gone,” Jin said. “That’s what I heard.”

  “Yeah.” I looked at the other girls, my expression grim. “We know someone like that.”

  “So what?” Chae Rin folded her arms. “In the middle of attacking trafficking gangs, he took a bit of time off to kill a Canadian politician? Well, he’s been busy.”

  “The only camps I’ve heard of being attacked were those who move high-powered weapons, like ourselves. These weapons aren’t just from the Sect, either. Some are military-grade, new models.” Jin looked at me when he added, “And luckily for us, there are even some newer weapons that would be a danger to you Effigies.”

  My body tensed, but he shook his head. “Some of that is for sale and some of that is for our own protection. If we need to fight Saul, we’re prepared. But knowing what he can do, I’m not sure even we’d win if he ever strode into our camp like he did all the others.”

  “Are you sure he’s really doing all that?” Lake gripped the straps of her knapsack.

  “I’ve been doing this long enough to know there’s a grain of truth in every story out here.” Jin lowered his arms, letting his hands dangle in the space between his thighs. “We do what we do and stay under the radar. But if even we can’t stay out of Saul’s way . . .” He looked at his son. “If you say you can stop him, then do it. I’ll do what I can to help.” He nodded to a group of men lugging silver cases to the vehicles. “Unload one of the smaller vans—we can spare one.”

  “Thanks, but even if we can get to where we need to go, we can still be tracked by the Sect,” Chae Rin reminded us. “As long as they can track our cylithium.”

  “Wait.” Lucas almost dropped the beer in his hand. “The Sect can track you?”

  He wasn’t the only one staring at us. It was a good thing Abril had just finished stitching me and bandaging up my throbbing arm, because I could sense our time here running out.

  Jin was already on his feet. “You should have told us from the beginning. Everyone, finishing loading. We’re heading farther west.”

  “Well,” Lake started, twisting quickly to avoid the bodies rushing by her, “it’s not like the Sect cares about illegal activity out here.”

  “They’ll care about it if it has to do with their stolen shit, miss.” Lucas nodded to Abr
il, who got up from the cooler and joined the rest, though not without giving us one last glare.

  “Stolen . . .” The light bulb went off. “Inoculation!” Rubbing my sore arm, I stood from the ground. “Jin, you said you guys have weapons that could be used against us Effigies. What about an inoculation device?”

  Chae Rin narrowed her eyes. “Are you crazy?”

  “If our powers go dead, they may not be able to track us.”

  “You may be right,” Belle said.

  Jin ordered his people to unload some of the silver cases, and after some frenzied checking, they managed to find a case with five long black tubes lined up on the inside. They were a little smaller than the one I’d used against Saul. That one had been disguised as a pen, but it was too bulky; these were streamlined and sleek. It fit into my palm when I picked it up, and if I ignored the little silver pump at the top, I might have thought it was a pen shooting out ink instead of Effigy poison or whatever it was that jammed our powers.

  “I didn’t know they’d made more of these,” Lake whispered, peering over my shoulder as I studied it against my palm. “Maybe because of Saul?”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” Chae Rin didn’t sound convinced. “Put that back. Hey, we’re taking this. Anyone got a problem?”

  If they did, I doubted anyone wanted to fight her over it.

  “You can take the van at the far end of the line.” Stopping next to Derrek, Jin pointed toward the rusty-looking old one at the curvature of the restful lagoon. “You’ll have to head north to get into town. Lucas will give you a map.”

  “Thanks,” said Belle. “We’ll take our friend and drop him off there.”

  Naomi had still given us a mission. Find the secret volume. Maybe find out the truth about Saul while we were at it. With the counter running down, we’d have to move quickly.

  “Girls.” Jin stopped us just as we began toward the van. “Saul’s hand reaches far. Not even we here in the mountains are safe.”

  Nobody in Jin’s group stopped moving and loading long enough to say so, but their uneasy gazes told me as much.

  “We’re all counting on you.” He gripped the shoulders of his son. “All of us.”

  That was the burden Effigies couldn’t escape. But we weren’t running away. We nodded our silent promise before setting off.

  25

  NATALYA STOOD BY THE FOOT of the bed watching as the old man rushed his wheelchair back and forth in his cubicle-like bedroom carrying handfuls of clothes and shoving them into one of several suitcases. I’d slipped into this memory comparatively easily this time, maybe because Natalya was still reeling from her previous banishment. I knew it wouldn’t last long. I could sense her will getting stronger. But Baldric had told only her the way to the secret volume. Whatever I needed to see here, I’d need to see it fast.

  Actually, when Naomi had said his name, I hadn’t been expecting the gray hair and small eyes sinking into a bed of wrinkled skin. A black bowler hat obscured most of his head, but his large white mustache covered his lips as it drooped down like a fishtail from his large, bulbous nose—a nose that twitched every time he sneezed from the dust in his room. Natalya was stealthily covering hers, and I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t feel much of anything in this memory, not even my own body. But I could see the particles of dust as they caught the light trickling past the curtains. That was the only distinguishing aspect of this bare-bones space. Besides a bed, a chair, and a table, Baldric hadn’t done much to decorate. Who knew how long he’d even spent here.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Natalya said as Baldric beat his hand against her long legs so she would move out of his way. His wheelchair arm brushed against her skinny jeans on his way to the table. “You don’t have to run away. I can go back to Prague and try again.”

  “You said you had to leave the Little Room quickly because you were followed.” His voice was low and raspy, his proper British accent mangled by barely concealed panic. “Followed by Sect.”

  “Not followed.” Natalya picked up a book that had fallen off the bed. “I bumped into Aidan Rhys.”

  Rhys. Like the dream I’d had in Marrakesh. My heart sped up, but I knew the consequences if I couldn’t calm myself here. Natalya’s will was growing. Whatever I heard, I’d have to deal with it if I was going to make it out of this memory in one piece.

  “Followed.” He snatched the book out of her hands. “By the Sect.”

  Natalya shook her head incredulously. “Aidan is my friend—”

  “He is no friend of yours. He’s the son of Director Prince, and believe me, he’s had loyalty beaten into him, the poor boy. It’s in his bones now.”

  “He was there with a few others visiting.”

  “Visiting? Just happened to be there at the same time, did he? You fool.” The cantankerous man looked like he could throw the book at her, but he dropped it into a suitcase. “He is Sect. Probably an Informer, sent by the Sect to watch you. Which means they’re already onto you. They’re already onto me.” A shadow of fear passed over his face as he considered the implications. “If what I suspect about the Sect is true, then I need to leave. Now. And we must leave the volume where it is. It would be too dangerous to go back there now. You would only lead the Sect right to it.”

  “The thirteenth volume.” Natalya narrowed her eyes. “You said that it contained secrets not even the Sect knew. Secrets about us.”

  “Among many things. It doesn’t matter. We keep the volume where it is. But to truly keep those secrets out of the Sect’s hands, I need to disappear. Mr. Boones!”

  A few moments later a man younger than he, though not by many years considering the gray tinge of his hair, appeared in the doorframe.

  “Please proceed to bring the car around,” Baldric ordered. “We’re leaving within the hour.”

  “Very well, Mr. Haas.” The man bowed forty-five degrees, his black butler suit crinkling on his way back up, and then left.

  “You promised you’d tell me,” Natalya said. “That’s why I helped you in the first place.”

  “Helped.” Baldric snorted as he rested an artifact on his gray flannel trousers. It looked like a statue.

  “I tried,” Natalya said. “I tried because I wanted to know, and you promised you’d tell me.”

  “However you look at it, the Sect’s secrets aren’t for you to know.”

  “Not for me to know?” I could see Natalya’s fingers curling into fists. “Baldric, by chance, do you know what my number is?”

  Absently, Baldric grabbed another book off of his bed. “Number—”

  “Fourteen. Fourteen years I’ve fought for the Sect. And I will probably die for the Sect. I’ve given everything to them. I let them turn me into a child soldier because they taught me to believe it was the right thing to do. And I tried to trust them. I tried. But then Naomi tells me that the Sect could be corrupt. And I— Listen to me.”

  Natalya stood in front of him, blocking his path. Baldric strained his neck to look up at her, but he matched the power of her stare nonetheless.

  “I deserve to know. I deserve to know if everything I’ve been fighting for has been a lie. I deserve to know what I am. No matter the cost.”

  Baldric cast his gaze to the floor. Silence stretched between them until his mustache twitched again, his lips parting to speak. “And among the shadows,” he said, “you will find them.”

  Natalya narrowed her eyes. “. . . Deoscali? What does this have to do with that foolish cult?”

  “The cult may be foolish, as is anyone who worships the phantoms. However, there’s more to Emilia Farlow’s old teachings than you would expect. The secrets of the shadows . . . and the secrets of the beings who dwell among the shadows.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Baldric rolled his wheelchair back away from her and over to the open door. With a swift movement, he reached for the knob as if to shut the door quickly, but unexpectedly, his hand rested there.

  “Have you heard of Allegory
of the Cave, my dear?”

  Natalya nodded. “Plato. Of course.”

  “Yes, Plato.” Baldric’s fingers tightened around the doorknob. “The unlearned men and women chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads to see the puppeteers behind them. All they can see are the shadows dancing across the cave walls.”

  “The shadows are lies,” said Natalya.

  “But these shadows are all they’ve ever known. How can they know that the shadows have been cast by the puppeteers under the light of a fire burning behind them? How can they not help but think the shadows real?”

  “I don’t take well to riddles.” Natalya scowled. “Tell me plainly.”

  “The Haas family has had to speak in tongues since the day the phantoms appeared.” Baldric let go of the knob. “1865 . . . perhaps the skeletons of those days cannot stay buried forever. The sins of those little girls . . .”

  He must have lost himself in the riddles of his thoughts, because he trailed off for a moment before snapping himself back to reality. “Don’t go there again,” Baldric told her. “And forget what I’ve told you. When the true battle begins, you will not find me.”

  Natalya had just begun to speak again when I felt her hands wrap around my mouth and pull me out of the memory with a violent tug. Baldric’s room ripped away from my sight as I fell into a black void. I should have known she’d take her chance when I least expected it. No matter how hard I struggled, Natalya wasn’t letting me go. We struggled and sank deeper into the ever-expanding darkness. Scenes stretched past my vision as I sank deeper into the depths. Natalya fighting. Natalya speaking to news reporters. Her duties to the Sect. The empty bottles of alcohol around her apartment living room.

  And then I saw Belle. Little Belle. Couldn’t have been more than thirteen, though still lanky for her age. Her legs were bent at odd angles as she crouched near a dirty toilet, barely conscious. She was losing too much blood. It was Natalya who’d found her, but it was all she could do to keep pressure on her bleeding wrists. Her phone was on the ground, the paramedic still trying to speak with her on the other end of the receiver. Natalya, whose tears did the speaking for her.