Glass Sword (9 page)

“Try not to splash,” Kilorn adds, before wading into the surf. Goose bumps rise on his skin, reacting to the cold autumn ocean, but he barely feels it. I certainly do, and by the time the water reaches my waist my teeth are chattering. With one last glance toward the dock, I dive below a wave, letting it chill me to the bone.

Kilorn cuts through the water effortlessly, swimming like a frog, making almost no noise at all. I try to mimic his movements, following
close to his side as we swim farther out. Something about the water heightens my electrical sense, making it easier to feel the piping running out from the shore. I could trace it with a hand if I wanted, noting the path of electricity from the docks, through the water, and into Barracks 1. Eventually Kilorn turns toward it, angling us on a diagonal to the shore, and then parallel. His advance is masterful, with the stolen boats at anchor to hide our approach. Once or twice he touches my arm beneath the waves, communicating with a slight pressure. Stop, go, slow, fast, all of it while he stays fixed on the dock ahead. Luckily, the freighter ship is unloading, drawing the attention of any soldiers who might spot our heads bobbing through the water. More crates, all white, stamped with the green triangle.
More clothes?

No
, I realize as a crate topples, cracking open. Guns spill across the dock. Rifles, pistols, ammunition, probably a dozen in one crate alone. They gleam in the sunlight, newly made. Another gift for the Scarlet Guard, another twist of even deeper roots I never knew existed.

The knowledge makes me swim faster, pushing me past Kilorn even when my muscles ache. I duck under the dock, safe at last from any eyes above, and he follows, keeping pace just behind me.

“It’s right below us.” His whispers echo oddly, reverberating off the metal dock above and the water all around. “I can just feel it with my toes.”

I almost laugh at the sight of Kilorn stretching, his brow set in concentration as he tries to brush a foot against the hidden bunker of Barracks 1. “Something funny?” he grumbles.

“You’re so useful,” I reply with a mischievous smirk. It feels good to be with him like this, sharing a secret goal again. Although this time we’re breaking into a military bunker, not someone’s half-locked house.

“Here,” he finally says, before his head disappears below the water.
He bobs back up again, arms wide to keep himself afloat. “The edge.”

Now comes the hard part. The plunge through suffocating, drowning darkness.

Kilorn reads the fear on my face plainly. “Just hold on to my leg, that’s all you have to do.”

I can barely nod. “Right.”
The moon pool is on the bottom of the bunker, only twenty-five feet down.
“It’s nothing at all,” Farley had said.
Well, it certainly looks like something
, I think, peering at the black water below me. “Kilorn, Maven will be
so
disappointed if the ocean kills me before he can.”

To anyone else, the joke would be in poor taste. But Kilorn chuckles lowly, his grin bright against the water. “Well, as much as I’d like to annoy the king,” he sighs, “let’s try and avoid drowning, shall we?”

With a wink, he dives, end over end, and I grab hold.

The salt stings my eyes, but it’s not so dark as I thought it would be. Sunlight angles through the water, breaking up the shadow cast by the dock above. And Kilorn moves us quickly, pulling us down along the side of the barracks. The water-bent sunlight dapples his bare back, spotting him like a sea creature. I focus mainly on kicking when I can and not getting caught on anything.
This is not twenty-five
feet,
my mind grumbles when the twinge of oxygen deprivation sets in.

I exhale slowly, letting the bubbles rise past my face, up to the surface. Kilorn’s own breath streams past, the only testament to his strain. When he finds the bottom edge, I feel his muscles tense, and his legs kick along, powering us both beneath the hidden bunker. Dimly, I wonder if the moon pool has a door, and if it’ll be closed. What a joke that would be.

Before I know what’s happening, Kilorn bursts up and through something, hauling me with him. Stuffy but blissful air hits my face
and I gulp it down in deep, greedy gasps.

Already sitting on the edge of the pool, his legs dangling in the water, Kilorn grins at me. “You wouldn’t last a morning unknotting nets,” he says with a shake of the head. “That was barely a bath compared to what Old Cully used to make me do.”

“You really know how to cut me deep,” I reply dryly, hoisting myself up and into the Colonel’s chambers.

The compartment is cold, lit by low lights, and offensively well organized. Old equipment is pushed neatly against the right wall, gathering dust, while a desk runs the length of the left. Stacks of files and papers crowd the surface in neat rows, dominating the space. At first I don’t even see a bed, but it’s there, a narrow bunk that rolls out from beneath the desk. Clearly the Colonel doesn’t sleep much.

Kilorn was always a slave to his curiosity, and now is no different. He drips his way over to the desk, ready to explore.

“Don’t touch anything,” I hiss at him while I wring out my sleeves and pant legs. “Get one drop on those papers and he’ll know someone was in here.”

He nods, pulling his hand back. “You should see this,” he says, his tone sharp.

I step to his side in an instant, fearing the worst. “What?”

Careful, he points a finger at the only thing decorating the walls of the compartment. A photograph, warped by age and damp, but the faces are still visible. Four figures, all blond, posing with stern but open expressions. The Colonel is there, barely recognizable without his bloody eye, one arm around a tall, well-boned woman, and his hand on a young girl’s shoulder. Both the woman and the girl wear dirt-stained clothes, farmers by the look of it, but the gold chains at their necks say differently. Silently, I remove the gold chain from my pocket,
comparing the metal so fine it could be thread to the necklaces in the picture. But for the mismatched key dangling from the end, they are identical. Gently, Kilorn takes the key from my hand, puzzling over what it could mean.

The third figure explains it all. A teenager with a long, golden braid, she stands shoulder to shoulder with the Colonel and wears a smirk of satisfaction. She looks so young, so different without her short hair and scars.
Farley.

“She’s his daughter,” Kilorn says aloud, too shocked for much else.

I resist the urge to touch the photograph, to make sure it’s real. The way he treated her back in the infirmary, it can’t possibly be true. But he called her Diana. He knew her real name.
And they had the necklaces, one from a sister, one from a wife.

“C’mon,” I murmur, pulling him away from the picture. “It’s nothing to bother with now.”

“Why didn’t she say anything?” In his voice, I hear a little bit of the betrayal I’ve felt for days.

“I don’t know.”

I keep hold of him, moving us both toward the compartment door.
Left down the stairs, right at the landing, left again.

The door swings open on oiled hinges, revealing an empty passage quite like the ones on the mersive. Sparse and clean, with metal walls and piping above us. Electricity bleeds overhead, pumping through a wired network of veins. It’s coming from the shore, feeding the lights and other machinery.

Like Farley said, there’s no one down here. No one to stop us. I suppose, as the Colonel’s daughter, she would know firsthand. Quiet as cats, we follow her instructions, mindful of every single step. I’m reminded of the cells beneath the Hall of the Sun, where Julian and
I incapacitated a squadron of black-masked Sentinels to free Kilorn, Farley, and the doomed Walsh. It seems so far away, yet that was only days ago.
A week. Just one week.

I shudder to think where I’ll be in seven more days.

At last we come to a shorter passage, a dead end with three doors on the left, three doors on the right, and just as many observation windows set in between. The glass of each is dark, but for the window on the end. It flickers slightly, casting harsh white light through the pane. A fist collides with the glass and I flinch, expecting it to crack beneath Cal’s knuckles. But the window holds firm, echoing dully with every
boom boom
of his fists, showing nothing more than smears of silver blood.

No doubt he hears me coming, and thinks I’m one of
them.

When I step in front of the window, he freezes mid-motion, one clenched and bleeding fist poised to strike. His flame-maker bracelet slides down his thick wrist, still spinning from his momentum. That’s a comfort, at least. They didn’t know enough to take away his greatest weapon. But then why is he still imprisoned at all? Couldn’t he just melt the window and be done with it?

For a single, blazing moment, our eyes meet through the glass, and I think our combined stare might shatter it. Thick, silver blood drips from where he struck his hand, mixing with already-dried stains. He’s been at this for a while, beating himself bloody in an attempt to get out—or burn off a little bit of his rage.

“It’s locked,” he says, his voice muffled behind the glass.

“Couldn’t tell,” I reply, smirking.

Next to me, Kilorn holds up the key.

Cal starts, as if noticing Kilorn for the first time. He smiles, grateful, but Kilorn doesn’t return the gesture. He won’t even meet his eyes.

From somewhere down the hall, I hear shouting. Footsteps. They echo strangely in the bunker but grow closer with every heartbeat. Coming for us.

“They know we’re here,” Kilorn hisses, looking back. Quickly, he jams the key in the lock and turns it. It doesn’t budge and I throw my shoulder against the door, slamming into cold, unforgiving iron.

Kilorn forces the key again, twisting. This time I’m close enough to hear the mechanism click. The door swings inward as the first soldier rounds the corner, but my thoughts are only of Cal.

It seems princes make me blind.

The invisible curtain drops the moment Kilorn shoves me into the cell. It’s a familiar sensation but I can’t place it. I’ve felt it before, I know I have, but where? I don’t have time to wonder. Cal surges past me, a strangled yell erupting from his lips, his long arms outstretched. Not to me, or the window. To the door as it yanks shut.

The click of the lock echoes inside my skull, again and again and again.

“What?” I ask the heavy, stale air. But the only answer I need is Kilorn’s face, staring at me from the other side of the glass. The key hangs from one clenched fist, and his face curls into something between a scowl and a sob.

I’m sorry
, he mouths, and the first Lakelander soldier appears through the window. More follow, flanking the Colonel. His satisfied smirk matches the one his daughter wore in the photograph, and I begin to understand what just happened. The Colonel even has the audacity to laugh.

Cal hurls himself at the door in vain, driving his shoulder against solid iron. He swears through the pain, cursing Kilorn, me, this place, himself. I barely hear him over Julian’s voice in my head.

Anyone can betray anyone
.

Without thought, I call for the lightning. My sparks will free me and turn the Colonel’s laughter into screams.

But they don’t come. There’s nothing. Bleak nothing.

Like in the cells, like the arena.

“Silent Stone,” Cal says, leaning heavily against the door. He points with one bloody fist to back corners of the floor and ceiling. “They have Silent Stone.”

To make you weak. To make you like
them.

Now it’s my turn to pound my fists against the window, punching at Kilorn’s head. But I hit glass, not flesh, and hear only the cracking of my own knuckles instead of his stupid skull. Despite the wall between us, he flinches.

He can barely look at me. He shivers when the Colonel puts one hand on his shoulder, whispering into his ear. Kilorn can only watch as I scream, an indecipherable roar of frustration, and my blood joins Cal’s on the glass.

Red running through silver, joining into something darker.

T
he legs of the
metal chair scrape against the floor, the only sound in the square cell. I leave the other chair where it lies, upended and battered after being thrown against the wall. Cal did quite a number on the cell before I got here, hurling both chairs and a now dented table. There’s a single chink in the wall, just below the window, where the corner of the table hit home. But throwing furniture is no use to me. Instead of wasting my energy, I conserve it, and take a seat in the center of the room. Cal paces back and forth before the window, more animal than man. Every inch of him yearns for fire.

Kilorn is long gone, having left with his new friend the Colonel.

And I am revealed for exactly what I am—a particularly stupid fish, constantly moving from hook to hook, never learning my lesson. But next to the Hall of the Sun, Archeon, and the Bowl of Bones, this might as well be a vacation, and the Colonel is nothing compared to the queen or a line of executioners.

“You should sit,” I tell Cal, finally growing tired of his vengeful intensity. “Unless you plan on wearing your way through the floor?”

He scowls, annoyed, but stops moving all the same. Instead of pulling up a chair, he leans against the wall in a childish act of defiance. “I’m starting to think you like prisons,” he says, idly knocking his knuckles against the wall. “And that you have the worst taste in men.”

That stings more than I’d like it to. Yes, I cared for Maven, cared for him far more than I want to admit, and Kilorn is my closest friend. They are betrayers both.

“You’re not too good at choosing friends either,” I fire back, but it glances off him harmlessly. “And I don’t have”—the words jumble, coming out wrong and stilted—“
any
taste in men. This has nothing to do with that.”

“Nothing.” He chuckles, almost amused. “Who were the last two people to lock us in a cell?” When I don’t reply, shamed, he presses on. “Admit it, you’ve got a hard time keeping your heart and your head separated.”

I stand so fast the chair falls backward, clanging against the floor. “Don’t act like you didn’t love Maven. Like you didn’t let
your
heart make decisions where he was concerned.”

“He is my brother! Of course I was blind to him! Of course I didn’t think he would kill our—our father.” His voice breaks at the memory, letting me glimpse the ragged and broken child beneath the facade of a warrior. “I made mistakes because of him. And,” he adds quietly, “I made mistakes because of
you
.”

So did I.
The worst was when I put my hand in his, letting him pull me from my bedroom, into a dance and a downward spiral. I let the Guard kill innocents for Cal, to keep him from going to war. To keep him close to me.

My selfishness had a horrible cost.

“We can’t do that anymore. Make mistakes for each other,” I
whisper, skirting around what I really mean. What I’ve been trying to tell myself for days now. Cal is not a path I should choose or want. Cal is simply a weapon, something for me to use—or something for others to use against me. I must prepare for both.

After a long moment, he nods. I get the feeling he sees me in the same way.

The damp of the barracks sets in, joining the cold still deep in my bones. Normally I would shiver, but I’m getting used to this feeling. I suppose I should get used to being alone too.

Not in the world, but in here. In my heart.

Part of me wants to laugh at our predicament. Again, I am side by side with Cal in a cell, waiting for whatever fate has in store for us. But this time, my fear is tempered by anger. It won’t be Maven coming to gloat, but the Colonel, and for that I’m terribly thankful. Maven’s taunts are not ones I ever want to suffer again. Even the thought of him hurts.

The Bowl of Bones was dark, empty, a deeper prison than this. Maven stood out sharply, his skin pale, eyes bright, his hands reaching for mine. In the poisoned memory, they flicker between soft fingers and ragged claws. Both want to make me bleed.

I told you to hide your heart once. You should have listened.

They were his last words to me, before he sentenced us to execution. I wish it hadn’t been such good advice.

Slowly, I exhale, hoping to expel the memories with my breath. It doesn’t work.

“So what do we do about this, General Calore?” I ask, gesturing to the four walls holding us prisoner. Now I can see the slight outlines in the corners, the square blocks a bit darker than the rest, fixed right into the panels of the walls.

After a long moment, Cal pulls out of thoughts just as painful as mine. Glad for the distraction, he rights the other chair swiftly, pushing it against a corner. He steps up, almost banging his head on the ceiling, and runs a hand over the Silent Stone. It’s more dangerous to us than anything on this island, more damaging than any weapon.

“By my colors, how did they get this?” he mutters, his fingers trying to find an edge. But the stone lies flush, perfectly embedded. With a sigh, he jumps back down and faces the observation window. “Our best chance is breaking the glass. There’s no getting around these in here.”

“It’s weaker, though,” I say, staring at the Silent Stone. It stares right back. “In the Bowl of Bones, I felt like I was suffocating. This is nowhere near that bad.”

Cal shrugs. “Not as many blocks here. But still enough.”

“Stolen?”

“They have to be. There’s only so much Silent Stone and only the government can use it, for obvious reasons.”

“That’s true . . . in Norta.”

He tilts his head, perplexed. “You think these came from somewhere else?”

“There are smuggled shipments coming in from all over. Piedmont, the Lakelands, other places too. And haven’t you seen any soldiers down here? Their uniforms?”

He shakes his head. “No. Not since that red-eyed bastard marched me in yesterday.”

“They call him the Colonel, and he’s Farley’s father.”

“I’d feel sorry for her, but my family’s infinitely worse.”

I scoff, half-amused. “They’re
Lakelanders
, Cal. Farley, and the
Colonel, and all his soldiers. Which means there’s more where they came from.”

Confusion clouds his face. “That—that can’t be. I’ve seen the battle lines myself; there’s no way through.” He looks at his hands, idly drawing a map in midair. It makes no sense to me, but he knows it intimately. “The lakes are blockaded on both shores; the Choke is out of the question completely. Moving goods and stores is one thing, but not people, not in this magnitude. They’d have to have wings to get across.”

My breath rushes inward, as fast as my realization. The concrete yard, the immense hangar at the end of the base, the wide road leading to nowhere.

Not a road.

A runway.

“I think they do.”

To my surprise, a wide, genuine grin breaks across Cal’s face. He turns to the window, peering out at the empty passage. “Their manners leave a lot to be desired, but the Scarlet Guard are going to cause my brother a lot of headaches.”

And then I’m smiling too. If this is how the Colonel treats his so-called allies, I’d love to see what he does to his enemies.

Dinnertime comes and goes, marked only by a grizzled old Lakelander carrying a tray of food. He motions for both of us to step back and face the far wall, so he can slide the tray through a slit in the door. Neither of us responds, stubbornly standing our ground by the window. After a long standoff, he marches away, eating our dinner with a grin. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I grew up hungry. I can handle a
few hours without a meal. Cal, on the other hand, pales when the food saunters off, his eyes following the plate of gray fish.

“If you wanted to eat, you should’ve told me,” I grumble, taking my seat again. “You’re no use if you’re starving.”

“That’s what they’re supposed to think,” he replies, a bit of a glint in his eye. “I figure I’ll faint after breakfast tomorrow, and see how well their medics take a punch.”

It’s a shaky plan at best, and I wrinkle my nose in distaste.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“No,” I say, sullen.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Hmph.”

The Silent Stone has a strange effect on both of us. In taking away what we rely on most, our abilities, the cell forces us to become someone else. For Cal, that means being smarter, more calculating. He can’t lean on infernos, so he turns to his mind instead. Although, judging by the fainting idea, he’s not the sharpest blade in the armory.

The change in me is not so evident. After all, I lived seventeen years in silence, not knowing what power lingered within me. Now I’m remembering that girl again, the heartless, selfish girl who would do anything to save her own skin. If the Lakelander returns with another tray, he better be ready to feel my hands around his throat and, if we manage to get out of this cell, my lightning in his bones.

“Julian’s alive.” I don’t know where the words come from, but suddenly they’re hanging in the air, fragile as snowflakes.

Cal’s head jerks up, his eyes suddenly bright. The prospect of his uncle still breathing cheers him almost as much as freedom. “Who told you that?”

“The Colonel.”

Now it’s Cal’s turn to “hmph.”

“I think I believe him.” That earns a disparaging glare, but I press on. “The Colonel thinks Julian was part of Maven’s trap, another Silver to betray me. It’s why he doesn’t believe in the list.”

Cal nods, his eyes faraway. “The ones like you.”

“Farley calls them—us—newbloods.”

“Well,” he sighs, “the only thing they’ll be called is dead if you don’t get out of here soon. Maven will hunt them all.”

Blunt but true. “For revenge?”

To my surprise, he shakes his head. “He’s a new king following a murdered father. Not the most stable place to start his reign. The High Houses, Samos and Iral especially, would leap at a chance to weaken him. And the discovery of newbloods, after he publicly denounced you, would certainly do that.”

Though Cal was raised to be a soldier, trained in the barracks of a living war, he was also born to be a king. He might not be so conniving as Maven, but he understands statecraft better than most.

“So every person we save will hurt him, not just on the battlefield, but on the throne.”

He smirks crookedly, leaning his head back against the wall. “You’re throwing ‘we’ around quite a bit.”

“Does that bother you?” I ask, testing the waters. If I can rope Cal into tracking down the newbloods with me, we might actually have a chance of outpacing Maven.

A muscle in his cheek twitches, the only indication of his indecision. He doesn’t get a chance to answer before the now familiar march of boots cuts him off. Cal groans to himself, annoyed at the Colonel’s return. When he starts to rise, my hand shoots out, pushing him back into his seat.

“Don’t stand for him,” I mutter, leaning back in my own chair.

Cal does as he’s told and settles in, arms crossed over his broad chest. Now instead of beating against the window and tossing tables at the walls, he looks stoic, serene, a boulder of flesh waiting to crush whoever comes too close. If only he could. But for the Silent Stone, he would be a blazing inferno, burning hotter and brighter than the sun. And I would be a storm. Instead, we’re reduced to our bones, to two teenagers grumbling in a cage.

I do my best to keep still when the Colonel appears in the window. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of my anger, but when Kilorn appears at his shoulder, his expression cold and stern, my body jolts. Now it’s Cal’s turn to hold me back, his hand a slight pressure on my thigh, keeping me seated.

The Colonel stares for a moment, as if memorizing the sight of the prince and the lightning girl imprisoned. I’m seized by the urge to spit on the bloodstained glass but refrain. Then he turns away from us, gesturing with long, crooked fingers. They twitch once, twice, beckoning for someone to step forward. Or be brought forth.

She fights like a lion, forcing the Colonel’s bodyguards to hold her clean off the ground. Farley’s fist catches one of them in the jaw, sending him sprawling, breaking his grip on her arm. She slams the other into the passage wall, crushing his neck between her elbow and the window of another cell. Her blows are brutal, meant to inflict as much damage as she can, and I can see purple bruises already blooming on her captors. But the bodyguards are careful not to hurt her, doing their best to keep her merely restrained.

Colonel’s orders, I suppose. He’ll give his daughter a cell, but not bruises.

To my dismay, Kilorn doesn’t stand idle. When the guards get her
up against a wall, each one bracing a shoulder and leg, the Colonel gestures to the fish boy. With shaking hands, he pulls out a dull gray box. Syringes gleam within.

I can’t hear her voice through the glass, but it’s easy to read her lips.
No.
Don’t.

“Kilorn, stop it!” The window is suddenly cold and smooth beneath my hand. I beat against it, trying to catch his attention. “Kilorn!”

But he squares his shoulders, turning his back so I can’t see his face. The Colonel does the opposite, staring at me instead of the syringe plunging into his daughter’s neck. Something strange flickers deep in his good eye—regret, maybe? No, this is not a man with doubts. He’ll do whatever he must, to whoever he must.

Kilorn pulls back after doing the deed, the empty syringe sharp in his hand. He waits, watching Farley thrash against her captors. But her movements slow and her eyelids droop as the drugs take hold. Finally she sags against the Lakelander guards, unconscious, and they drag her to the cell across from mine. They lay her down before locking the door, shutting her in just like Cal—just like me.

When her door clangs shut, the lock in mine clicks open.

“Redecorating?” the Colonel says with a sniff, eyeing the dented table as he enters. Kilorn follows, tucking the box of syringes back into his coat, in warning.
For you, if you step out of line.
He avoids my stare, busying himself with the box while the door locks behind them, leaving the two guards to man the passage on the other side.