by Brian Farrey
I looked to Kolo. Misty eyes shone against his somber face. “What do you mean?”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure if Kolo had heard me. He seemed lost in thought. Then he blinked and a smile parted his lips. “Forgive me. Just some musings from an old, old man. We should get back to camp.”
He pushed himself up to standing, crying out in pain as he did. When I went to help, he held up a hand to decline. “My bones aren’t getting any younger,” he said. I felt bad. Every move seemed to cause him pain. I suspected we’d be making more iceclover tincture soon to remedy that.
The sun was nearly down when we returned to camp. We joined the others for the evening meal, Maloch grousing for the millionth time about how terrible the food tasted. As everyone retired for the evening, I helped Kolo back to his tent. We found Warras waiting at Kolo’s door, a folded sheet of parchment in his taloned hand.
“You need to see this,” he told Kolo.
Kolo flashed a quick, cautious look at me before taking the parchment.
“Thank you, Jaxter,” he said with a slight head bow. “I trust you can find your way back to your tent?”
Kolo and Warras entered the tent, leaving me to speculate on the parchment. A message from the Dowager? It seemed most likely. Once they’d disappeared inside, I crouched down and scuttled around to the back of the tent.
Lying on my belly, I gently slid my head under the tent’s wall. Hidden by Kolo’s cot, I could see Kolo, Warras, and the woman Surral at the table, their backs to me. I strained to hear their hushed tones.
“My team and I went to the village Orand as you instructed,” Warras was saying, “looking for a message from the Dowager. We watched the Provincial Guard post this just hours ago.”
Kolo held the parchment up to the lantern light. “‘By the High Laird’s decree . . . All Sarosan fugitives have until the end of the week to turn themselves in to the Provincial Guard. If every Sarosan is not accounted for, the Palatinate will release the bloodreavers.’”
A chill the size of a frozen silvernib slid down my spine. Bloodreavers. A fable left over from the Great Uprisings. Horrible monsters that had allegedly been used to hunt people down. Once they had the scent of your blood, they never gave up on finding you. Never. Legend said the first Palatinate Lordcourt had them all turned to stone five hundred years ago. This couldn’t be real.
Although . . . I thought back to when Callie, Talian, and I encountered the rogue mage Xerrus in an Onyx Fortress at Splitscar Gorge. Supposedly, Mannis Soranna had ordered those dark citadels destroyed after the Uprisings. It was hard to believe we’d found one, because talk of the fortresses had only ever been a story.
But the Onyx Fortresses had proven to be more than legend. Maybe the bloodreavers were real too.
Surral threw her arms up in frustration. “With most of our people locked up in Umbramore Tower, they’ve got easy access to the blood of the relatives for everyone in this camp. If bloodreavers get a whiff of that, they’ll find us in no time.”
Kolo stiffened, his back going rigid as it often did when the pain in his arms became unbearable. “I need to think. We’ll discuss this in the morning. Leave me.”
Warras clicked his beak in protest. “Kolo, we don’t have time—”
“Leave me.” Kolo’s voice was gentle but insistent. Warras and Surral bowed and exited the tent. I scrambled to extract my head and duck into the shadows as Warras and Surral stormed by.
“We can’t wait for Kolo to make up his mind,” Warras muttered, the red feathers on his head twitching with anger. “The Dowager must be persuaded to act more quickly. Meet me at my tent in two hours, once Kolo is asleep. We’ll send our own message to Her Royal Highness.”
“What sort of message?” Surral asked.
Warras pulled open his vest, revealing a large, gleaming knife inside. “The Grimjinx boy’s little finger should do.”
10
Escape
“Any heist you can run away from is a good one.”
—Shadra Grimjinx, master forger of Urik Province
Something not a lot of people know about me: I like my little fingers. And what I like best about them is where they are: on my hands.
I thought about going straight to Kolo and telling him what Warras was planning. But as much as I admired Kolo, I didn’t know him very well. For all I knew, he might agree with Warras. There was only one sure way out of this that allowed me to keep my digits: run.
I darted across the camp, stopping only to nod at the guard who stood outside the tent I shared with Maloch. Once inside, I lit a lantern and started throwing everything I could into my pack.
Lying on his cot and half-asleep, Maloch moaned. “What are you doing?”
“We’re leaving,” I said, soft enough so the guard wouldn’t hear. “Now.”
He sat up, suddenly interested. “What about the link? You said we could find out what happened to my da if we . . .” He must have noticed the blind panic on my face, because he went from looking very tired to looking very concerned. I stopped as he clamped his meaty hand down on my shoulder.
“Jaxter,” he said gruffly, “they’ve decided to kill us. Haven’t they? You can tell me.”
“Yes,” I lied. “They’ll be here in two hours. Everyone’s in bed by now. If we’re careful, we can slip past the sentries and—”
Maloch knelt and pulled a rumpled blanket from under his cot. Spreading it out, he revealed a collection of breads, cheeses, knives, forks, and other assorted items.
“I’ve been hoarding supplies,” he said, gathering everything up and stuffing it in his pack. “I, uh, only got enough for myself. I always thought if I escaped, I’d leave you behind. But if we ration it, we should have enough to make it to the nearest town.”
“You’re all heart, Maloch,” I said, extinguishing the lantern. “Let’s go.”
With a dull knife, Maloch slit a hole in the back wall large enough for us to escape. With our meager supplies, we dodged behind and around tents, inching toward the edge of the camp. All the while, I kept an eye out for Reena and Holm. These past few days, we could hardly go anywhere without those two watching us from afar. With each step, I half expected them to be waiting, blowguns in hand.
The moons, brilliant and full, shone down through the leafless trees. A thick blanket of new, fluffy snow glittered in the moonlight, giving the forest a dull white hue.
I whispered, “Right, the sentry checks on us every thirty minutes. We’ve got that much of a head start.”
Maloch’s eyes probed the black forest. “Any idea where to go?”
“We should head for the village of Orand.” I pointed my thumb to several sets of footprints to our right. “It must be close. Warras just returned from there.”
Maloch led the way while I cast nervous looks over my shoulder, wondering when our head start would run out. We trudged on silently.
The trees grew thicker the farther we went, and the moonlight became scarce. The growing darkness meant I spent almost as much time tripping and picking myself up as I did running. Possibly even more time.
When we hit a patch of bright moonlight, I looked down and realized we’d strayed from the path Warras and his team had laid. The footprints headed off to the right, curving around the large clearing we’d avoided on our way to the cliff face. Maloch was headed straight through the clearing.
“Stop!” I said, looking around. “The path is this way.”
Maloch refused to stop. “This is faster. Look, we meet up with the path just ahead. It’s more direct.”
Then why had the Sarosans gone the long way . . . ?
“Maloch, freeze!”
He did as told, his leg suspended in mid-stomp. I ran up behind him and studied the smooth snow on the clearing. It seemed a little too smooth. I picked up three rocks. I tossed the first one just ahead of us. Nothing. I tossed the second rock farther. Still nothing.
When the third rock struck the ground just past the second, a large section of
snow suddenly dropped away, revealing a square hole. A metallic twang rang out. An iron door with criss-cross bars dropped down from the trees above and slammed down over the hole. Looking down, we saw a cage buried deep in the ground. If Maloch had taken one more step, he would have fallen in.
Maloch stared at me with wide eyes, and I pointed to the Sarosans’ trail. “That’s what Kolo meant when he said this area was secure. They set these traps the last time they hid here. That’s why they walked around.”
“Right,” he said, taking a step back. “Good eye. Let’s . . . let’s be careful.”
We returned to the Sarosan trail and continued. Minutes passed into hours and I knew that, by now, the Sarosans were looking for us. But that wasn’t even the worst of our problems.
My stomach began to cramp, my head ached, and when I stood perfectly still, my knees quivered. Both my feet suddenly felt like bricks. I would have complained to Maloch that I couldn’t keep up, but I noticed he’d slowed down too.
“You feel it too, right?” I asked. “Sick.”
Maloch pointed to our left. The horizon glowed red and purple, heralding the rising sun. With just a bit more light, it became easier to see our surroundings. The trees were growing thinner, and a rocky embankment had sprung up along our right.
“It’s morning,” he said. “We always feel awful in the morning. Ever since we were taken by the Sarosans.”
“Yeah. Why is that?”
Maloch snorted. “You tell me. You’re the one who studies nature.”
I pulled out the wineskin containing the only water we had and took a swig. “It’s because we’re dehydrated. Think about it. The pain always goes away once we drink at First Rise.” I offered him the water. “Drink up.”
But half an hour later, the throbbing in my head was worse than ever. Why hadn’t drinking worked this time?
We continued on the trail provided by Warras as it dipped south. Each step became harder and harder until I needed to help myself along by gripping each bush and boulder we passed. A stinging pain had set up shop directly behind my right eye. I clenched my teeth to ward off the headache.
“Can we maybe rest a minute?” I asked, rubbing my temples. “Just to catch—”
Maloch made a slashing motion across his throat and shoved me up against a tree.
“We’re being followed!” he said.
He pointed behind us to where a distant pair of figures was stepping out from behind a grove of whistlebirch. Maloch scowled. “It’s those two naff-nuts from the Sarosan camp.”
I assumed he meant Reena and Holm. They’d probably noticed we were gone before the rest of the Sarosans. And Reena was so eager to prove herself, she probably hadn’t told anyone that she and Holm were after us. She wanted the glory of capturing us for herself. Which meant we weren’t in too much danger. As long as they were far away—
Shhkk! Something whizzed past my ear. A thin wooden needle with a small feather on the back buried itself in the trunk of the tree we’d hidden behind. Just inches from my face.
“Make that naff-nuts with blowguns!” I said.
We ran helter-skelter, darts whizzing by, each only narrowly missing. Maloch expertly dodged back and forth, faking one direction while diving in the opposite. My strategy was far less graceful. It involved gripping my belt and pouches, whimpering, and keeping my head low.
As we ran, the trees, bushes, and boulders gave way to a wide, snow-covered clearing, stretching long from side to side for as far as I could see.
“I don’t like the look of this,” I said, remembering the traps near the Sarosan camp.
“We don’t have a choice. Keep going.” Maloch stumbled across the clearing toward the thicket of trees on the far side. It was the only place to hide.
Reluctantly, I followed, taking slower, more cautious steps. About halfway across the clearing, I heard a small cracking sound with each footfall. I paused, then took another step. Another crack, this one louder.
Looking down, I saw dark fissures under my feet, as though I’d opened up the earth simply by walking on it.
“Um, Maloch . . . ,” I said, freezing to the spot.
“Jaxter,” Maloch spun around, “we don’t have time for this.”
He stomped his foot. And the earth shattered.
Because it wasn’t earth. We were standing on a frozen river. Cracks like black lightning shot out all around us. Great chunks of ice submerged into rushing water. Maloch and I fell to our knees, each clinging desperately to separate ice floes that now moved swiftly downstream, bits breaking away every time they crashed into another floe.
“There they are!”
Reena’s voice sounded from the riverbank we’d just come from. I turned to see her and Holm, blowguns in hand. They stepped from the woods and raised the reeds to their lips.
Maloch was on his feet. Nimbly, he jumped from floe to floe, leapfrogging his way over the racing water until landing safely on the far bank. He walked along the river, motioning for me to follow.
“Jump, Jaxter!”
More and more chunks of ice disappeared into the water, making the slippery path across even harder to navigate. I stayed on all fours, gripping the ice with the knowledge that if I tried to follow Maloch, I’d end up drowning in the increasingly violent river.
Shhhk! A wooden blowgun dart stuck out in the ice, a hair’s width from my little finger.
These people were obsessed with my little fingers!
With no choice, I sprang to my feet and tried to hopscotch toward the far bank.
I deftly traversed two floes. The third splintered the instant I landed. Acting quickly, I blindly threw myself forward as the third floe disintegrated and sank. I fell face-first onto a sheet of ice that wobbled under my weight. Wearily, I stood and tried to spot a path to the far side.
There was now more river than ice between Maloch and me. He was jogging along the bank to keep up with me as the floe carried me faster and faster downstream. Unfortunately, Reena and Holm were also keeping pace.
“Rock!” Maloch shouted.
I followed his pointing finger and saw a large piece of stone sticking out of the river like a starshark fin. Before I could react, my ice floe smashed into the rock, flinging me backward into the river.
The freezing water engulfed me. Every limb went numb. My wobbly legs kicked against the raging current until my head emerged from the river and I could breathe again. I flailed about and managed to wrap my arms around the very rock that had just destroyed my makeshift raft. Feeling drained from my fingers. I wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer.
Across the way, Maloch ran to a fallen tree trunk and tore off a large sheet of bark the size of his chest. Then he ran upstream, away from me.
“Don’t leave me!” My words came out garbled as I swallowed mouthfuls of water. But once Maloch got farther away, he turned, studied the river, then jumped onto a passing floe. He zigzagged across bits of ice, heading for the middle of the river.
Shhk! Shhk! Reena and Holm fired dart after dart at Maloch. He held the chunk of bark up like a shield, deflecting the Sarosan missiles. When Maloch reached a large floe, he got down on all fours and used the bark as a paddle. The floe changed direction, moving closer to me. Maloch tossed the bark aside and held out his arm.
I let go my death grip on the rock, grasping at Maloch’s outstretched hand. With a powerful heave, he pulled me onto the floe. I gasped and panted, barely able to move. Maloch spun around and kicked at the fin stone with both feet. The ice floe responded, floating across the river until we struck the far bank. We hardly had time to scramble onto the safety of the ground before the floe resumed its trek down the river.
I shivered uncontrollably. If Reena and Holm decided to brave the increasingly smaller ice trail across the river, we were done for. There was no way I could run, especially now that the chilly air had started to freeze my soaked clothes. Maloch winced as he pulled himself to his feet. He waved across the surging river at our pursuers.
“It’s been fun,” he said. “Enjoy Umbramore Tower. You’re headed there soon.”
“This is your last chance,” Reena said, hands on her hips. “Come back with us now and you won’t get hurt.”
Maloch laughed. “In case you hadn’t noticed, dolly girl, you can’t hurt us from all the way over there.”
Everything about the way she stood said that Reena believed otherwise. “You’ll change your mind now that it’s morning, Mighty Boy.”
Maloch blew her off, waving his hand at her, then turned to walk into the forest. I stood, staring across at Reena.
“Jaxter, come on,” Maloch said.
Morning? What did the morning have to do with anything? I looked to the horizon nervously. The sky burned red where, any minute now, the sun would pop up.
Reena and Holm stood their ground, like they were waiting for me to work it out. Morning . . . It was when things got light. It was when the day began. It was when the Sarosans drank in honor of First Rise.
My fingers tingled as I wiped the sweat from my brow. Sundown, yesterday, was when the Sarosans had last fed us. I remembered what Kolo said: Not all prisons have locks. Sometimes our prisons are within.
And that’s when I understood. It all added up. The pain. The weak knees. It wasn’t dehydration. How could I have been so stupid?
Maloch shook me. I turned to find him glaring at me. “Are you coming or—?”
“We have to go with them, Maloch,” I whispered, nodding at Reena and Holm, who waited patiently.
Maloch folded his arms. “And why’s that?”
“Because,” I said, looking him right in the eye, “they poisoned us.”
11
The Smell of Blood
“Faith and bronzemerks will buy you a gannyloaf from the breadsmith.”
—Ancient par-Goblin proverb
Maloch shot a look at Reena and Holm, then turned back to me and whispered, “What do you mean, poisoned?”
“It’s how they were making sure we wouldn’t go anywhere,” I said. “They poisoned our evening meal and gave us the antidote every morning in our water. That’s why we felt horrible whenever we woke up, and why they insisted we drink. If we escaped during the night before taking the antidote, we’d get sicker and sicker and slow down until they found us.”