Alexandria (20 page)

As dawn breaks, Jack and Lia push forward. They ran through the night and they run still, holding hands so tightly their knuckles have turned white. At streams they stop and fill the waterskin, and along the way they pluck berries and a few less desirable things to chew on as they flee through the dense underbrush.

Jack looks behind for any sign of the Nezra, or anything else that might be stalking them, for the forests are teeming with carnivores. It’s clear as far as he can see and they carry on. They follow the map and keep the coast to their right hand side, and as they make more ground their panic and fear turn slowly into exultation.

A rough, dizzying climb takes them to a high tableland that overlooks the coastal cliffs far to the south and north, a landscape so prehistoric and majestic that for a moment they forget their worries and gape like mystified newborns at the wild, unknown frontier. Sun-dappled mesas recede off into the luminescent haze, rolling and cresting, the product of untold aeons of the earth’s churning. The cliffs drop off sheer down into the yawning ocean, which spills out so far and wide that Jack and Lia feel at once minuscule and enormous, like tiny sprites standing on the shoulder of some ancient god.

They come together, and if one could amplify this sight to the finest grain it would be impossible to perceive which of them moved first to embrace the other.

“Jack, we made it!”

As they cling to each other, the years they spent in exile fall away and they pick up easily, despite all that has passed, and even though she is a new Lia, and he knows that he is a new Jack, it is as though they were never separated. The moment lingers and the elixirs of the wild seep into their worn souls and they feel something dry and brittle begin to crack open.

As they part, Jack looks along the northern coast and off in the faraway he sees the smoke of the Temple.

“We have to keep moving,” he says, “they’ll know we’re gone by now.”

Down the hill they run, into the emerald green hollow, dots of red and purple wildflowers blooming around them. A few unnatural shapes jut from the earth at odd angles, vestigial remnants of a world they never knew. They stay clear of open spaces when they can, using the ivy-covered slabs of old stone as cover in case any mounted searchers rise over the plateau behind them. Jack peers through a few intact windows at the decomposing scrap metal arranged inside—a dreary tableau of loss and ruin, home now to things that slither and crawl.

A stream runs through the fold of the valley, a mossy boulevard of burbling water and glossy stones, and he guides Lia down to its thin bank.

“Here, take off your boots.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Let’s walk upstream awhile and cross over, maybe we can cover our scent. They’ll have the wolves after us and we can’t move fast enough to outrun ‘em.”

Lia needs no further motivation—she sits on the bank and pulls off her stiff leather boots and steps into the bracing stream. She sinks into the mud. The soft putty feels good between her tired toes and the cool water washes over her feet. Jack walks a false trail off the other side of the stream then shuffles backwards and splashes in behind Lia and they trek along against the lazy current. The foliage thickens as they move inland and the bows of green-leafed oak trees sway languidly above them, shading them from the midday sun and giving cover from the high ground.

Jack clambers up a low, rocky waterfall and Lia scales up behind him. They step carefully around collected limbs and branches and slosh through deepening water, rising almost to their knees. Jack looks hungrily at the slippery trout that mingle around the stream and dart and scatter as their footsteps plunk down in the mud. He makes futile snatches at a couple of them and they slip lithely from his fingertips and race away.

His movements are slowing. They need rest. Neither of them has slept since the night before and exhaustion is setting in.

When the coast is gone from view they leave the stream and sit wiping the mud off their feet with fallen leaves, then lie back on the sloping bank and let the sun dry them, feeling like they could pass right out and sleep the whole day through. They tie their boots on and hike through the woods until they find an outcropping of boulders.

Jack grabs a thick branch and sweeps away a corner, looking for snake holes and other things that might intrude upon them. He’d rather make more distance but his thoughts aren’t clear and their pace has slowed to a crawl. They scatter nettles and dry leaves, then nestle back in the enclave and pull more branches up around them. It’s not much, but it is enough, and as they sink into the matting and curl together, sleep steals them quick.

Halis sits atop his horse at the edge of the summit that borders the Temple’s lush gardens, looking out over the senescent valley with the straight-backed posture of regal austerity. He grins with slow malice. His face is a mask of lopsided disfigurement. Six other riders await their orders next to him, called to find the runaways. The wolfmongrels snarl and gnash against their leathery leads, flicking their golden brown eyes around with icy cleverness, and the mounted wranglers struggle to hold them back.

Keslin walks down the line and inspects each member of the search brigade—seven mongrels, seven horsemen. They wear looks of hard-set resolution. Keslin’s own visage is grim from the further revelations that first light had brought. The rope dangling over the edge of the bluffs, the sooted handprints along the Temple’s outer walls—and the perplexity of Braylon’s body found with no boots or weapons has seemingly explained itself—the prisoners in the keep can at least be exonerated of murder.

Keslin steps to the front of the brigade and addresses them. “Kill the boy, return the girl. Separate if you lose the scent. Do not return until you’ve found them.” He gives a nod and they set forth, hauling off after the snapping wolfmongrels.

The grounds are largely empty save for them. Most stay inside, behind barred doors, lest there be any more outsiders conducting spywork in the forest. He hobbles back toward the Temple, silver blood coursing through his veins. Arana and Ezbeth wait under the portico in the center of the enormous entryway, watching keenly as the horsemen and wolfmongrels descend from view.

“How long will it take?” Arana asks, just as Keslin is mounting the grand staircase.

“Not long. They couldn’t have gone far on foot.”

Arana nods disconsolately. “Lock these,” he tells the sentry after Keslin enters the foyer. They swing the towering doors shut with a hollow boom and throw the bars across.

“It’s risky to leave the girl alive,” says Keslin. “She could corrupt the others.”

“She won’t have the chance—she’ll bear for me and she can spend her last nine months in the pit.”

Ezbeth flinches.

“Well…” Keslin grimaces and scratches at his armpit. “About the others… I worry about them.”

“How so?” asks Ezbeth.

“If one can run, so can the rest.”

“I don’t think it should be a problem,” she says. “They’re very well behaved.”

“That’s what we thought about these two. You can’t tame out their instincts entirely. How do you know this isn’t the beginning? What if they’ve sworn some kind of oath?”

“An oath?”

“It’s never happened before,” says Ezbeth.

“It happened last night and it will happen again. It’s a matter of time.”

“Wait, what are you suggesting?” she asks.

“Nothing,” Keslin says earnestly. “Just that it worries me.”

They click judiciously down the central corridor, past the mural of Temple history, each thinking unspoken thoughts. Ezbeth breaks off and makes for the service stairs and Arana catches her elbow.

“What are you going to tell them?” he asks.

“What would you like me to tell them?”

“I don’t care… just don’t say they’ve run away.”

“The girls from Lia’s room already know. At least they know she’s gone.”

“Tell them that we’re holding them.”

“Why?”

“Suspicion.”

“Very well,” she says, and plods heavily up the steps, leaving Keslin and the troubled young King alone in the rear wings of the amphitheatre.

“Any word from our spies?” asks Keslin.

“None,” says Arana. “They seem content to die.”

“Then we will not let them.”

Jack wakes up with a splitting headache in the late afternoon. He nudges Lia and they push their branch-laced shelter aside and collect themselves. He listens attentively to the forest, glancing across the tree line for any motion.

“I think it’s clear.”

Lia sits rubbing her temples. “Can we kill something?
I’m starving.”

Jack gives her a sheepish grin. “Sorry, we have to keep moving.”

She looks at him for a spell, working him with her large brown eyes, then she takes her knife and a rock and moves from tree to tree looking for grub holes. Jack sneaks back to the stream to fetch more water and by the time he returns she has several fat white worms wriggling on her palm.

“Breakfast,” she says, and gives him a couple.

“Thanks. I’ll shoot the next thing we come across.”

They set out, hoping to make as much distance as they can before nightfall. The sun hangs low in the west and they keep it to their right as they set off. They plod through the peaks and troughs of the interior woodland, chipmunks and rabbits lighting off into the brush as they approach. Wherever they settle for the night, Jack figures he can sit still for a while and try to skewer one.

They walk in comfortable silence for a while. Lia’s being has been split asunder for years, and without the presence of her captors she still catches her thoughts trying to follow the same poisoned patterns, so ingrained they’ve become. As they march, her fractured mind slowly reassembles itself, melding from two Lias back into one, and each moment with Jack threads a new suture point.

“Do you think there’s anything left? Of our home?”

“No,” says Jack. He knows what she is thinking because he thought it himself. Part of him wants to make a straight shot back there now, if they could even find their way, just to see it, to be there again. “I don’t think we should go. I think it would only make us sad.”

Lia nods and lets out a shaky breath.

They carry on, each lost in their own contemplations. A few breaks in the canopy provide a clear shot to the coast and Jack looks apprehensively around for any searchers.

“Why… why did you join them?”

Her question catches him off guard. “I don’t really know if I had a choice. I tried not to think about it.”

“It’s okay.”

“I don’t know if it is.”

“Did you ever… did you have to…?”

“No. I never burned people.”

Lia exhales deep relief.

“What about you?” he asks. “What was it like?”

She grimaces. “I wish I could say I hated every moment. Working in the kitchen wasn’t bad—sometimes it was nice. That’s why it was horrible.” Jack gives her a curious look. “After a while, I didn’t mind when they were mean. It was easier to hate them then. The worst times were when they were… normal.”

Jack nods. He thinks back to the empathy Arana showed him in the pit and he shudders.

“I wish we could’ve left with everybody.”

“We never would’ve made it.”

“Do you think they’re okay?”

Jack snaps off a thin twig from a manzanita and plucks the little leaves off and flings them away. “I don’t know,” he says softly.

He knows one who is not okay—Braylon—dead by his own hand. He thinks of Lathan and Jeneth and Phoebe and rest they left behind, and he takes Lia’s hand and they pace along solemnly.

They tread along a scenic crest, where the lichen-covered manors that once enjoyed stunning vistas of the ocean now rot with quiet dignity.

“Can I see the map?” Lia asks, mostly to break the silence. Jack hands her the pack off his shoulder and she digs it out, unrolling it carefully and squinting to read by the evening light. “These look like little mountains,” she says, running her fingers over the inked diagram. “And rivers.” She holds it out flat and orientates the line of the coast along the right, so it matches the natural layout, then focuses on the little star drawn in at the bottom. “How far do you think it is?”