Defiance (20 page)

I’m taking my own bag with me. The Commander instructed two of his guards to accompany me home so I could pack, and neither of them batted an eye when I headed into a side street off Center Square. If they wondered why I kept a bag hidden in the bushes near a mercantile, they never asked. Instead, they kept one hand on me and one on their weapons at all times. I’m betting they thought I might try to escape.

I would have, if I didn’t have to reclaim the missing package so I can ransom Logan’s life. Not that the Commander is the kind of man who’ll keep his word to me once he holds the package in his hands.

Which is fine. I’m no longer the kind of girl who’ll keep my word to him, either.

Shelving the need to plan a way to free Logan without giving the Commander what he wants, I study my travel companion while pretending to watch the guards unchain the gate.

Melkin is tall, about Logan’s height, though he doesn’t have Logan’s muscle. Instead, his frame is all bones and angles, his skin stretched painfully thin. With deep-set dark eyes, a nose resembling a cloak hook, and a sparse coating of mud-brown hair hanging down his back, he resembles a starving hawk.

He clutches his cloak with long, skinny fingers and darts a glance at me. “Hope you know what you’re doing. I don’t figure on having to rescue you every time I turn around.”

I simply stare at him. I don’t know him. Dad kept me, and the fact that he’d trained me, separate from the others who ran courier or tracking missions for Baalboden. I don’t know Melkin, but that doesn’t stop the rage inside of me from begging to lash out at him. He works for the Commander. That’s justification enough.

Whatever he sees on my face causes him to blink twice, tighten his hold on his cloak, and look away as the massive stone gate swings open with a high-pitched groan.

Four guards line up on either side of the gate, ready to let us out and remain behind to stand watch throughout the day in case there are those who want in. Melkin places a hand on my shoulder and presses me forward.

I snatch his hand, crush his fingers in mine, and spin until his arm is pinned behind his back.

“Don’t. Touch. Me.”

He doesn’t respond, but when I release his hand, he watches me closely and follows me down the gritty cobblestone road past the guards, beneath the steel arch with the Commander’s talon-and-double-slash insignia burned into the center of its smooth surface, and leave the city behind.

The road leads away from the Wall through the scorched ground that makes up Baalboden’s perimeter and ends at the charred remains of the highwaymen’s wagons. We walk it in silence until we reach the point where the road ends and the wild tangle of the Wasteland begins. Stopping, we open our packs and pull out our weapons.

Melkin straps a double-bladed leather glove to his right hand, and the six-inch blades of silver protruding from both his index and ring knuckles sparkle beneath the hesitant touch of the early morning sun. I recognize the glove as one of Logan’s inventions, and it tells me plenty about Melkin.

He likes his prey close and thinks the abnormally long range of his arms will be advantage enough to keep him safe. When he straps a sword around his waist, I acknowledge that he must be proficient with his left hand as well. He takes out a thick walking stick and extends it to its full length. The black metallic surface swallows stray rays of sunlight whole.

He sees me staring and mutters, “It was a gift.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it at any of the weapons vendors in the city.”

“Because it isn’t from this city. Now, you got any weapons, or am I going to be responsible for keeping the both of us alive on this trip?”

I unclasp my own bag. Minutes later, the bow and arrows are strapped across the outside of my pack, where I can easily reach back and grasp them; my knife rests against my hip; and my Switch is in my hand.

“Where are we heading?” he asks.

“Somewhere in the vicinity of Rowansmark.”

“Care to be more specific?”

“No.”

He shrugs, and we pause for a moment, listening, but the Wasteland offers nothing beyond the sound of birds chirping over their morning meals. Which doesn’t mean there aren’t highwaymen lying in wait, but at least we don’t have to worry about fending off the Cursed One at the moment.

Melkin steps off the cobblestones and slides into the dark tangle of trees, vines, and undergrowth waiting for us. I follow on his heels, my Switch ready in case of trouble.

The smell hits me first. Wet moss, crisp leaves, and the soft, musky scent of tree bark. If I close my eyes, I can imagine I’m standing next to Dad, listening to the deep, reassuring rumble of his voice quietly instruct me how to listen. How to walk without leaving an obvious trail. And how to survive anything the world throws my way.

I ache for him, a sharp, sudden longing that reminds me that missing him is how I started this entire nightmare. I draw in another breath, savor it against my tongue, and let myself feel a tiny sliver of raw hope. Maybe Dad is with the package. Maybe, by searching for it, I’ll find him too. Maybe if I find him, he’ll know how to make everything right again.

“You coming? Or you planning on sniffing trees all day?”

I ignore Melkin and start walking. The Wasteland is a strange mix of overgrown forests, bogs, and fields and the ruins of the sky-climbing cities destroyed or abandoned over five decades ago when the Cursed One was first released.

“Mind the thorns,” Melkin says quietly, swinging his walking stick in the direction of a patch of pretty green undergrowth adorned with needle-sharp thorns.

I skirt the plants and use my Switch to swipe hanging vines out of my way as I walk. Melkin stops to listen, and I halt as well, though my ears don’t pick up anything beyond the usual whisper of bug wings and breeze that mark the forested area of the Wasteland closest to Baalboden.

“Hear that?” he asks in a voice designed to carry no more than a few feet.

I listen harder and finally catch it—a faint
shush
of sound that could be an animal foraging for food, or could be the slide of a boot against the branch of a tree. I release the Switch’s blade with a muted snick, and catch Melkin’s slight frown as my walking stick becomes a weapon.

I don’t hear the sound again, but I don’t make the mistake of assuming a threat doesn’t exist. Clutching my Switch closer, I rest my other hand on my knife sheath.

We walk as silently as possible, but don’t hear sounds of pursuit again. I see the moment Melkin decides it was nothing but an animal. His shoulders drop, and the hand curled inside his bladed glove relaxes.

I don’t sheath the Switch’s blade, though. Better to be ready to deal violently with others than to be caught off guard.

Rowansmark is an eight-day journey southwest. Ten if the weather is foul or we have to go around a gang of highwaymen. I pace our progress by the familiar markers we pass—the lightning-struck oak, the creek with the stepping-stone bridge, and the swaying once-white cottage almost completely covered by kudzu. We’re making good time, in part due to Melkin’s pace. His long legs eat up the terrain, but I have no trouble keeping up. Fear for Logan’s life demands nothing less. And the anger I feel toward the Commander refuses to let me rest.

I’m going to retrace Dad’s route to his Rowansmark safe house and find the package. Once I find it, I’ll figure out a way to secure Logan’s safety while making the Commander pay for what he’s done.

A tiny inner voice whispers that if I find Dad with the package, I won’t have to figure it out alone. I tamp down the buoyant sense of hope that wants to blossom within me. The tracking device on my arm is silent, the wires cold. I have no reason yet to hope for anything.

The sun melts lazily across the sky, turning the forest we walk though into a damp, humid jungle. It’s too early in the spring for mosquitoes, but beetles and gnats swarm the trees, and I keep my cloak on despite the warmth.

Twice more, we hear a rustle of sound behind us, but when Melkin circles back, he finds nothing. As we’re sharing the Wasteland with a host of wild animals, hearing noises isn’t unusual. Still, the lessons I learned about the Commander’s lack of honor are carved into me with deep, crimson letters, and I’m not reassured.

When the sun reaches the middle of the sky, Melkin drops to a crouch against the thick trunk of an ancient oak, opens his pack, and offers me a flask of water and a hunk of oat bread. I take them and find my own trunk to rest against, keeping him well within my sights while I listen closely for sounds of human pursuit.

We eat in silence until Melkin looks up, wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his faded blue tunic, and says, “Your daddy taught you well.”

I stare at him. “How do you know he’s the one who taught me?”

“The Commander told me. I didn’t fancy on taking a helpless little girl across the Wasteland with me, but you know how to move quietly. You keep your head up, eyes open. Looks like you know what to do with that stick you carry too.”

I look away.

“Sure are a quiet one, aren’t you?” he asks, and caps his flask of water. “Always thought of you as a girl with spunk and guts. Never realized you were afraid to open your mouth.”

The bitterness festering in me bubbles up.

“How much spunk and guts does it take to chatter nonstop about nothing of importance?” I stand and stow my flask in my bag. “I have bigger things on my mind than discussing my skills. If you want conversation, choose a better topic.”

He stands as well, irritation on his face, and drives the bottom quarter of his ebony walking stick into the forest floor. I imagine I can feel the ground beneath me tremble with the force of it.

“Nobody appreciates a woman with vinegar in her soul.”

I slide my pack into place and stalk toward him, a distant roaring filling my ears as the anger inside me locks on to a handy target.

“Vinegar in my soul?” I’m closing in on him, and his hand tightens within the bladed glove he wears. “Is that what they call betrayal these days?”

My voice is louder than it should be, but I can’t seem to find the air I need to calm down. “You stand there and pass judgment on me like you’ve earned the right. What have you lost?” I’m yelling, my fist raised as if I’ll hit him. “What have you lost, Melkin?”

I need to hurt him. To lash out and hope that if he bleeds, it will somehow erase the specter of Oliver’s blood washing me with crimson.

“Almost everything,” he says, and pulls his walking stick free of the ground, raising both hands as if to show me he means me no harm. “I’ve lost almost everything.”

I don’t know what to say to this. I can’t tell if he’s lying. Before I can study his eyes to see if he understands the sense of overwhelming loss howling within me, the ground beneath us rumbles slightly, and something that sounds like thunder, muted and distant, comes closer.

I meet Melkin’s eyes and we leap into motion. Shoving my Switch into the strap sewn on the side of my pack for this purpose, I grab the nearest low-hanging tree branch and start climbing. Melkin lunges for the tree as well, wrapping his long arms and legs around the trunk and shimmying up its length until he finds a branch thick enough to support him.

The rumble becomes a roar, and the ground below us begins to crack.

I’m one quarter of the way up the tree. The crack runs directly below me.

“Jump!” Melkin yells.

Frantically, I scan the branches around me until I find one that reaches into the heart of the tree beside it and is thick enough to support my weight. I scramble along its length and leap for the next tree. My feet skid along the branch as I land, and I start running, grabbing branches for balance, swinging my body into the upper reaches of the tree, and then leaping for the next. Melkin is tree-leaping as well, though I’m too focused on my own survival to worry about him now.

I’ve put seven trees between me and my starting point when the roar becomes a deafening bellow, the ground we stood upon just a moment ago dissolves into nothing, and the Cursed One explodes out of the ground.

I
freeze. I’m about seventeen yards from the monstrous beast slithering its way into the open. I don’t think it’s enough. At the very least, I need to move higher, but I can’t without alerting it to my exact location.

The Cursed One coils its body along the ground and pulls itself from the hole it created. Up close, it looks like a giant wingless dragon covered in thick interlocking black scales with a tail the length of two grown men lying end to end and a ridge of webbed spikes running along its back. Thick yellow claws protrude from its muscled limbs.

Our weapons are useless. Swords break against its scales, arrows glance off, and the only area of weakness seems to be its sightless milky yellow eyes, but to get close enough to stab the eye is to court a fiery death from its mouth.

Besides, stabbing it in the eye is pointless. Nothing dies from losing an eye.

The only escape is to stay off its radar. It tracks by sound and smell, and when it stops and swings its head slowly side to side, huffing smoky little breaths, I don’t dare move a muscle. I’m grateful I don’t have the food in my pack. It would only add to my human scent and make me a bigger target.

Melkin isn’t as fortunate. I slant my eyes to the side and see him clinging to the upper branches of the tree beside mine, but his pack is nowhere to be seen. I guess he had the presence of mind to drop it.

The Cursed One puffs its breath out, and small flames jet through its nostrils, scorching the earth in front of it. The burned dirt seems to infuriate it, and it shakes its head, puffing increasingly large flames from its snout.

If we’re quiet, absolutely silent, it will leave. I focus on breathing in and out with slow precision, though my lungs scream at me to drag air in as quickly as possible so I can flee or fight.

I won’t have to do either, though. I just have to be still.

Suddenly, it jerks its head up and points its sightless eyes straight at me.

My stomach lurches, and as I glance around for a way out, I catch sight of Melkin’s pack hanging on a branch several feet below me. I didn’t realize he’d climbed up behind me before switching trees, dropping his pack along the way. I’m about to pay the price.