Firewalker

by Josephine Angelini

  Lily now understood why Chenoa and her two acolytes, Hakan and Keme, had been so important to Lillian, and why Lillian had sent out her army to get those three scientists back. They were the ones who knew how to build the bombs. They might have also known where they were hidden, too.

  And it was Lily’s fault they got away. If Lily had just stayed out of it, Lillian could have found the bombs, gotten rid of them, and ended the conflict between the cities and the Outlanders. Thousands of braves wouldn’t have died in that battle, and the war would have been over months ago.

  “Lily?” She twisted around to see Tristan half in and half out of the tent. “Are you okay?”

  “Just tired,” she lied, smiling up at him. “What’s up?”

  Tristan glanced behind him nervously before entering the tent and perching on his knees next to Lily. “We have to go kinda soon,” he said. “That Mary woman was furious when she found out you were still here. Rowan’s still trying to calm her down.” He reached out and touched her shoulder gently, his eyes soft with worry. “Are you really okay? You look pale.”

  Lily patted his hand and went to stand. She lost her balance and tipped into his arms. “Ah—no, I guess not,” she mumbled, her depth perception telescoping in and out. She felt Tristan’s arms tighten around her, and a rush of tenderness coming from him. He wanted to kiss her.

  “Tristan? We need to move,” Rowan said as he entered the tent. He saw Lily in Tristan’s arms and froze.

  I’m having trouble with my balance, Rowan, and Tristan caught me. Nothing happened.

  Lily could easily read what Rowan was feeling. He was broadcasting it to her loud and clear. He wasn’t jealous—not exactly. He knew that Lily couldn’t lie to him in mindspeak and that he didn’t have a reason to be jealous. Nothing had happened between her and Tristan. He just really didn’t like seeing Lily in Tristan’s arms. It bothered him on a gut level that no amount of rational explanation could ease.

  “Change out of that slip,” Rowan said curtly as he dropped a pair of boots and a bundle of wearhyde clothes at Lily’s feet. “And remember to recast a face glamour when you leave the tent.”

  Rowan spun and left them. Lily rubbed her aching head and sighed. “Great. The only thing worse than having a pissed-off boyfriend is having a telepathic pissed-off boyfriend—’cause you know just how pissed off he is.”

  “Sorry,” Tristan said, but Lily could tell he wasn’t sorry at all. He was grinning from ear to ear. “Do you need help changing?”

  “No,” Lily said emphatically.

  “You’re still shaky, and it’s not like I haven’t seen you naked,” Tristan said with a flirty smile.

  “Out,” Lily said, turning him by the shoulders and pushing him through the tent flap. She couldn’t help but laugh with him. It had been a long time since he’d acted so playfully with her. He hadn’t been his lighthearted self since Lily had come back, and she wondered what had revived his old spirit.

  Once Tristan was gone, Lily managed to get into her bartered clothes even though her hands were shaking. She needed salt badly, and as she left the tent—glamour intact—she immediately sought out Rowan. When she touched his mind she felt tension, but it had nothing to do with Tristan or her. There was a fight brewing. Lily heard raised voices and tried to run in their direction, but all she could manage was a stiff jog at best. Everything ached and her head pounded with every step.

  Lily rounded the bend in the tracks and came upon the main group at just the wrong time. Mary turned on her.

  “Who are you, really?” she asked, her voice low and dangerous. She pointed to the cauldron of water-purifying potion. “Your mechanics tell us that this one cauldron could clean enough water for an entire year of use. Do you expect us to believe you’re more powerful than the Salem Witch herself?”

  Lily’s eyes sought out her coven desperately. Each of them was surrounded by the largest and strongest boys and girls the tunnel had to offer. Two of the teen boys had grabbed Una by the arms. Lily could feel how much her friend loathed being touched without permission, and a protective instinct kicked up inside her. How dare they touch her mechanics?

  “If I’m so powerful, then maybe you should think twice before you threaten my coven,” she replied through gritted teeth. Mary recoiled, and Lily felt her smoke willstone flare with agitation. It wanted to be used, and it started sucking heat from every nearby torch and barrel fire in anticipation. A witch wind stirred, moaning down the tunnels, hot and dry, and Lily wondered briefly if her willstones were alive in their own right. She heard Rowan’s voice in her head, cutting through her anger and her throbbing headache.

  Lily. We don’t want to hurt these people. They’re frightened, and that’s why they’re hostile. Please, calm down.

  Lily met Rowan’s eyes and nodded. She took a deep breath and the witch wind died. Mary stared at her, jaw dropped and eyes so wide they looked nearly all white.

  “Let my mechanics go. We don’t want a fight and neither do you,” Lily said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  Mary looked over her shoulder and nodded once. Una yanked her arms free and shoved the kids who’d held her. Rowan, Tristan, Breakfast, and Una joined Lily, standing behind her in a semicircle. Lily felt calm now that they were near. She looked at Mary and sighed, planting her hands on her hips.

  “I gave you serum and water purifier to help you,” Lily said.

  “Just to help us out of the goodness of your heart?” Mary repeated doubtfully. “You don’t want anything in return from us or from our men on the ranches? No riots? No votes for your favorite councilman?”

  “Take our gifts, use them—or be a fool and throw them all away,” Lily said tiredly, not entirely understanding the complicated politics of how the poor were exploited in this world. “As long as you keep your mouth shut about where you got them, I don’t care what you do.”

  Lily saw something in Mary’s eyes change. She realized Lily was only trying to help, and she hated her all the more for it. “Get out,” Mary said hollowly.

  “Just show us the way,” Lily retorted.

  Riley separated himself from the crowd quickly and led Lily’s coven away, closely followed by his munchkin entourage. From the look on his face as he hurried them down the tracks, he seemed as relieved to get out of that situation as Lily’s coven did.

  “She’s thankful, really, even if she didn’t say it, sir,” Riley said nervously to Rowan. “Mary’s just got this way about her, you know? Not so helpful when dealing with a lady witch, but it’s dead useful when we’re bargaining with other groups.”

  “It’s alright, Riley, I understand,” Rowan replied. “Charity from witches isn’t something my people trust, either. It usually ends up costing more than it’s worth.”

  “I thought you were an Outlander. It’s the way you stand,” Riley said, narrowing his eyes and trying to peer through Rowan’s glamour. Rowan smiled, confident that Riley couldn’t pierce his glamour unless he allowed it. Riley gave up and turned to Breakfast. “You’re an Outlander, too, aren’t you? What tribe are you from?”

  Breakfast looked momentarily baffled and changed the subject. Lily felt Rowan’s fingers brush her wrist in that gentle mechanic’s touch.

  You need salt badly, Lily. And you haven’t eaten anything substantial in days.

  I know. I’ve got a raging headache.

  “Stop,” Rowan called to the group, even though they hadn’t traveled more than a few hundred feet from the main group.

  He swung his pack off his back and pulled out the jar of olives. Lily sat down on the tracks, too tired to care how dirty they were. She ate the last of the olives and drank the brine while her coven watched anxiously. It helped, but it was still a long way from satisfying her.

  Got any more, Rowan?

  Rowan turned to Breakfast, and Lily could tell they were conversing in mindspeak. Lily looked hazily at her coven and realized that at some point they’d all earned one another’s trust enough to become stone k
in. Her claimed had claimed each other.

  “I love you guys,” she blurted out. She sounded drunk.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Riley asked, backing away fearfully. “She’s not going to blow up, is she? ’Cause I’ve heard the strongest witches do that when they croak.”

  “Of course I’m not going to blow up,” Lily said, laughing. She leaned back too far, lost her balance, and slid off the rail and onto the gravel of the track.

  Rowan helped her back up and lifted one of Lily’s wrists to his mouth. He licked her damp skin, tasting her. A muscle in his jaw jumped and he looked at Tristan, sharing mindspeak. They looked worried.

  The group heard a shout coming down the tunnel and picked up their heads. A cluster of lookout teens were running down the tracks, waving their arms overhead.

  “City guards,” the lookouts shouted. “It’s a raid!”

  “They’re rounding up the older boys to ship out to the ranches. We’ve got to hide,” Riley said. Rowan picked Lily up in his arms and they all started running down the tracks, back toward the main group. “Whatever you do,” Riley added anxiously, “don’t kill anyone. We’ll all lose our citizenship if a guard dies in the tunnels, and outside the walls we’re as good as Woven chow.”

  They darted through the people scrambling in the tent city and jumped over a small barricade, ducking down behind it to hide. Riley doused the torches around them and told everyone to stay still.

  Rowan passed Lily to Tristan and made a move to jump back out into the panicked crowd.

  “No, they’ll catch you!” Riley said, grabbing him.

  “I have to get Lily salt,” Rowan said, easing his arm out of Riley’s grip. “As soon as you see your chance to run, you take it, you hear me? I’ll find you.”

  “How?” Una asked. “What if we get blocked by all this?” She gestured to the fact that they were underground, and with enough soil between them it would be impossible to mindspeak.

  “I can track anything. Especially my witch,” he said, and launched himself over the barricade. Lily made a small noise of protest as she watched him go and peered over the barricade, but in moments he was lost in the swirl of running bodies.

  The rest of the group kept their heads down until most of the commotion had passed, and after minutes that seemed to drag on like hours, Riley finally decided it was time to move. Lily reached out for Rowan, but she was too weak and he was too far away for her to feel anything more than the energy of his willstone. She could tell he was still alive and uninjured, but mindspeak was already impossible. Lily leaned against Tristan as they crouched low, ducking behind what little cover they could find, and headed back toward the tunnel that led them away from the main group. They were no more than a few paces away when Riley stiffened and stopped.

  Guards were marching down the tunnel, escorting captured boys to their new life on one of the ranches. Lily caught a glimpse of the captured boys’ desperate expressions and shuddered. A memory of the barn with its smell of blood and filth loomed up in her mind, hellish and overpowering.

  “In here,” Riley whispered. He ran to the wall and started prying at what seemed to be nothing. On closer inspection, Lily could make out the bare outline of a service door. “Let me in,” he said, kicking at the blocked door.

  It opened long enough to allow Lily’s group to get inside, and then slammed shut behind them. Among the few pale ovals of scared faces that peered out of the near dark, Lily could just make out Pip and Mary.

  “How many did they get?” Riley asked Mary.

  “I saw seven taken,” she answered. Mary looked at Lily, a hint of compassion softening her eyes. “One of them was your man. Rowan.”

  Lily pushed herself up and stood straight, sheer panic giving her the strength. “Which way did they go?” she asked.

  “You can’t help him now,” Mary said sadly. “He’ll be shipped out to a ranch like the rest of our boys.”

  “Over my dead body,” Lily said, turning and pulling on the door.

  Images of the filthy barn and the bestial men who ran it clamored in her head and the thought of Rowan being among them was unbearable. She wouldn’t let it happen. She’d send fire roaring down the tunnels, charring every guard to cinders if she had to, but there was no way she was going to allow Rowan to set foot in one of those death camps. Hands reached out and tried to pull her back, but Lily wrenched free of them.

  “You can’t! Lady Witch, please,” Riley begged. “You’ll get us all thrown out of the city. We’ll die out there with the Woven.”

  Lily stopped struggling to pull away and looked back at the pleading faces behind her. She couldn’t kill the guards and doom these people.

  “The Woven,” she said, stumbling across a thought. “Everyone’s afraid of the Woven.” She turned to her coven and saw perplexed expressions, and then widened her regard to include everyone. “Don’t worry. I won’t kill anyone, but will you all help me? Maybe I can get our boys back. Did anyone see which way they went?”

  “I did,” Mary said, stepping forward. “This plan of yours better be good.”

  Little Pip ran point as they crept out of their hiding place. “S’all clear,” he lisped around his missing two front baby teeth.

  They followed Mary through the maze of branching tunnels while Lily tried to think how she was going to do this. They neared the Ranch Four stop on the subway and Mary called a halt. They could all hear voices and marching boots ahead.

  “It’s right up there,” Mary told them. “The next stop is the staging place for most of the city guards’ raids.”

  Lily nodded, finally understanding why the tunnel people didn’t use it. She felt Breakfast brushing up against her mind.

  So, what’s the plan, boss?

  I’m trying to think, Breakfast.

  You don’t have a plan?

  Lily shot him a frown and he looked at Una. They seemed to share a few exchanges in mindspeak that ended in Una giving Breakfast a nasty look and Lily an encouraging one.

  Rowan? Are you there?

  Yes, Lily. I’m sorry I got captured, but I had to stop short of killing anyone to get away. The guards are trying to goad me into it, though. They want a fight. They’re actually hoping that one of them will get killed so they can “clean out” this whole tunnel.

  Rowan transmitted a memory flash of one of the guards getting in his face, acting tough and bullying Rowan and the biggest of the captured teens. Lily felt Rowan getting punched in the gut and cringed.

  I’m coming, Rowan.

  “I need fire, but not too much,” Lily told Riley as they passed a torch. “It can’t be too bright. Everyone needs to keep out of direct light, okay?”

  Riley grabbed the torch and Lily could see her coven starting to understand.

  “Can you cast a glamour that big?” Tristan asked. He switched to mindspeak. Are you strong enough?

  I’d better be.

  “I want you to run down the tunnel toward the guards. I’m going to make you all look like Woven, okay?” she told them. They looked back at her, frightened. “I need you to be brave,” she told them.

  Pip stood up straighter. “I’m brave,” he said defiantly.

  “Woven never go belowground,” Mary said, shaking her head.

  “So this should really scare the hell out of them, shouldn’t it?” Lily said, hoping she sounded more sure than she felt.

  Mary looked uncertain, but nodded her assent anyway. “If the guards don’t go for it, you all scramble,” she told her people.

  Lily turned away and shut her eyes, concentrating on gathering energy from the torch. She was so depleted she didn’t know if she’d be able to transmute the heat. Luckily glamours required little energy, or Lily knew she wouldn’t be able to do this at all. She concentrated on making each individual in the group look like a different kind of Woven. Her imagination failed her, so she delved into her nightmares instead. They never seemed to run out of strange concoctions of tentacles and pincers, armor and
scales.

  Lily heard a gasp of surprise coming from Mary and knew that her trick was working. At least for now. When Lily opened her eyes she had to look away. Staring at her nightmares-made-real was too unsettling.

  “We’ve got to really sell this, or it won’t work,” Breakfast said, turning to Riley.

  Riley looked down at the younger kids and gave them an order. “You three pretend you’re monkey Woven. I want you to make a lot of noise.” The kids were silent and staring, too shaken from the reality of Lily’s glamour to move. “Snap out of it!” Riley commanded. “Keep it together, you lot, or we’re sunk.”

  Lily felt a wave of nausea. “I can’t hold this forever,” she told them.

  “We’re going,” Tristan said.

  “Everybody start making noises,” Una said encouragingly, and then started moaning like a zombie. The kids followed her cue and started hooting like monkeys.

  Rowan. It’s a glamour. We’re trying to scare off the guards.

  I’ll try to keep the captured boys from running, but I don’t know if I can.

  Lily stayed next to the torch while the rest of them started running down the tunnel, clanging on pipes as they went and shrieking at the top of their lungs. She heard a huge commotion of screams and scrambling footfalls. Tristan’s mind brushed up against hers.

  It’s working! They’re running away! Wait …

  Lily heard gunshots.

  “No!” she shouted.

  She ran down the tunnel, abandoning the torch. When she rounded the bend, she saw the captured tunnel boys fleeing in every direction. Most of the guards had taken off in the opposite direction down the tracks, but a few had remained and they were firing wildly at what they believed to be Woven.