Renegade (17 page)

I know we don’t have long before we have to get completely away from the city as well but that only adds to my unease as I pace quickly along the path. Eventually I return to the house,
slowly walking along the trail of blood until, finally, I see the crumpled, drenched remnants of a daisy in the centre of the largest puddle.

Crouching, I pluck the tiny flower from the ground and wipe as much of the blood away as I can. The petals are now a dyed pink, the centre a bristling shade of orange.

That is all it takes for me to know they are all right. For whatever reason, they had to leave quickly, and I can imagine Jela’s cool head taking control as they thought about how to
safely let us know where they were going.

The second daisy is close to the wall at the edge of the path. I have already walked past it a few times but now I am looking for it, the bright white of the petals are practically glowing in
the late-morning sun.

The trail leads on and on, at first towards the towers and then looping around the field where Faith captured the Kingsmen, until we are on the side furthest from the house in which we hid.
Initially the daisies are dropped on the ground but then their placement becomes more creative. On the porch of a ramshackle house, four flowers have been fixed together and tied around a broken
banister. A little further, a filthy broken bottle is lying in the gutter, where it has been for years. Inside is a single fresh daisy.

Eventually, we reach another battered row of houses similar to the one we left. Sitting on a broken window ledge is my soft tortoise, a crown of daisies on its head.

The house behind is a pile of rubble but there is a wooden board towards the centre that a person wouldn’t look at twice if passing. It is only on closer examination that it seems out of
place. The rest of the debris is brick, concrete and tile and, as we pull the cover away, it reveals a concrete staircase sloping downwards.

My bare feet hardly make a sound as I pad towards the bottom step where there is another door. Imrin waits at the top, leaving the cover off to give us some light as I knock.

There is no answer, so I thump a second time and hiss: ‘It’s Silver.’

This time, there is a small scrabbling until the door opens a fraction. I am about to say something, when the tip of a sword presses into my hip through the gap.

‘It’s me,’ I add, before realising how different I look. The light is dim, my silver hair is still covered by the polish and I’m dressed like everyone else in the city.
‘Imrin’s here,’ I add, pointing towards the hatch above.

Momentarily, I think that I’ve got it wrong – that I’ve walked into a trap – but then the door creaks open and I feel a pair of arms around me.

‘Are you all right?’ I ask Jela, hugging her into me.

‘We didn’t know if you’d be back,’ she replies quietly, before letting me go and leading me into the room.

Imrin re-covers the stairs with the board and then joins us in what looks like a basement. Overhead, a dim light bulb illuminates an area that isn’t quite as unkempt as the house in which
we were previously hidden. Someone has been here relatively recently. In the corner is a bed, where Hart is rolled on his side, apparently sleeping. The mattress is bare but he has a blanket over
him and I can see the slow rise and fall of his chest. Around the rest of the room, there is also a sink, small stove and three cupboards along the walls. Except for the furnishings, the room is
empty. Whoever was here before has cleared out.

‘What happened?’ I ask.

Faith closes the door behind us and sits with her back pressed against it. The floor is the only place to sit and, even though it is cold and hard, it still feels good not to be walking in bare
feet.

‘Everything was fine after you left,’ Jela says quietly as she sits next to me on the ground. There is no need to whisper but I assume she is trying to let Hart sleep. ‘Faith
went out and picked a few berries that hadn’t gone off and one of her traps had caught a squirrel.’ She nods behind at the stove, which has a pan of water on top and I can smell the
meat boiling inside. ‘We were waiting for you but then we heard this siren from the centre. We thought you had been caught and we all went outside to see if there was anything obvious going
on. We were on the main path but you can only just see the four towers from there. It was confusing, so we thought the best thing was to wait inside.’

Pietra is next to Jela, hugging a blanket around herself. ‘It’s my fault,’ she says.

‘It’s not,’ Jela replies, resting a hand on the other girl’s knee.

I spot my bag in the corner and tell Jela to wait for a moment as I find the clothes I had been wearing originally and cross back to where everyone else is sitting.

‘This stuff is really uncomfortable,’ I explain, unzipping the skirt stolen from the gym.

Jela smiles thinly as I drop the alien clothes to the floor and begin to change. ‘When we went back into the house, they were waiting for us,’ she says.

‘The two Kingsmen? How did they get free?’

Pietra sniffles. ‘When Faith went to check her traps, I gave them some water. The quieter one said he had lost all feeling in his arm. He was really apologetic, saying he knew I had no
reason to trust him but that if I could loosen his ties, it would make a big difference. He looked as if he was in a lot of pain and I thought it couldn’t do any harm. I undid the knots and
then tied them again – but I guess I didn’t do a very good job.’

There are tears streaming down her cheeks in a flurry of silent sobs and nothing we can tell her will make it any better. The truth is that the Kingsmen saw her as the weak link – voting
to keep them alive was something they saw as a flaw in her personality, not the act of humanity it actually was. They couldn’t target Hart as he was the biggest person left – and
holding the sword – while Jela had voted to kill them. Faith would have probably made the knots tighter, so they picked on Pietra, using her compassion against her.

‘What happened?’ I ask.

‘Hart went in first,’ Jela replies. ‘By the time the rest of us had gone back through the gap, one of the Kingsmen had Hart around the neck. They didn’t have any weapons
but the one holding Hart said he would snap Hart’s neck if we didn’t throw our knives on the ground.’

‘But you got away?’ My question has an obvious answer but it’s still surprising how resourceful we have become as a group.

Jela glances towards Faith, who still has her back to the door. She is watching us, listening, her face unmoving. ‘The three of us dropped our knives and started to move towards the wall
like they said but he pointed at Faith and told her to stop. He made her walk to him and then . . .’

The bulb above is a murky yellow colour and only really offers light in the centre of the room. The edges are still largely in shade and as I squint through the gloom, I can see the mark on
Faith’s face, a gash under her cheekbone and swelling around her eye socket.

‘Did he . . . ?’

Jela nods and I find it hard not to contain my rage. The Kingsmen were fully grown men and, although Faith is sixteen, she is only the height and build of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old.

‘I’m not sure I even remember it clearly,’ Jela says, her voice dropping away until it is almost nothing. ‘At first he punched her across the face. He didn’t hold
back, it was all of his weight and there was this wet slapping sound. I can still hear it.’

‘And then?’

‘He had Faith on the ground. We were trying to be quiet because we knew it would only get worse if we were screaming and could attract more attention.’ She shuffles closer to Pietra,
perhaps subconsciously. ‘He had a knee on her chest so she couldn’t move and then he looked at us and smiled, asking if we were going to have fun watching. I looked at Hart and his face
was purple and red. He was trying to fight the other one off, but the Kingsman’s grip was really tight. It looked like he was going to choke. Then I glanced back to Faith and the Kingsman had
flopped on top of her. At first I didn’t know what was going on, but then I saw the blood squirting from his neck. I didn’t see what happened.’

I sneak a look towards Faith, who is still watching and listening, but she says nothing.

‘I saw it,’ Pietra says. ‘It was just a flash. The Kingsman was looking at us but Faith must have had a second knife. The moment he looked back at her, he was dead.’

Jela nods. ‘The other Kingsman must have loosened his grip because Hart made this roaring-type sound and threw him off. Hart still had the sword in his belt and the Kingsman didn’t
even have time to move.’

I nod, playing the scene in my mind and remembering the state of the bodies. They got what they deserved.

‘Did you like the trail?’ Jela adds with a weak smile, twirling a daisy between her fingers.

I pull myself up, ignoring the aches shooting through my back and legs and enjoying the protection of my normal shoes. ‘It was beautiful,’ I say, leaning over and pushing a leftover
daisy into her hair.

‘Are you going to be all right for a few minutes?’ I ask, looking at Imrin.

He nods, so I walk across to Faith. ‘Fancy a walk?’ I ask. She shakes her head but I reach down and offer her my hand anyway. ‘Come on.’

She doesn’t reply, nor look at me, but she does take my hand and let me pull her up. Outside, I know there will be Kingsmen piling onto the streets, wondering how I escaped, but we should
be safe for a while as we are on the very outskirts of the city.

I lead Faith back onto the main path and then head for the woods we first came through to get here. It is where we both feel more at ease. We are only a short distance in when I spot the perfect
tree which has a thick, sturdy branch that is also low enough for me to reach. My arms still ache from swinging around the lift shaft in the North Tower but I haul myself up and begin climbing.
Faith follows without a word, balancing, jumping and taking risks.

Soon, I am as high as I know I can get and sit with my legs either side of a strong-looking branch. Faith sits astride a bough on the opposite side of me. We both have our backs to the trunk,
facing opposite directions.

‘Did you enjoy that?’ I ask.

‘You’re a pretty good climber,’ she replies softly.

‘I’ve had a lot of practice. How’s the eye?’

‘It works.’

It is the brave response I would have expected from her. ‘Your parents were trying to do the best they could for you. The reward on my head is so big that they wanted to use it to give you
a better life. You can’t blame yourself for that.’

The only noise is the gentle call of a bird somewhere in the distance. I let the silence sit and then add: ‘Do you remember what I told you just before the Kingsmen arrived at your
house?’

There is no reply.

‘Faith?’

‘I remember.’

‘I told you that I trusted you more than anyone and that’s still true. Utterly, completely, brilliantly true. The others may look to me and ask what to do, but I look to you. I look
at the way killing the person in the castle stayed with you all this time. I look at the way that just after everything happened with your parents, you were leading us back to safety – up
trees, across rivers, doing whatever you could to get us away. Even today, there are three people in that basement alive because of you.’

When she replies, Faith’s voice is so quiet that the breeze lifts the words away, leaving me to replay the sounds over in my mind until I can understand what she said. ‘I’m not
sorry I killed him.’

‘You don’t have to be,’ I say after a while. ‘All I need is for you to be with me. I know you’re hurting but if we’re going to get everyone to safety, it has
to be us: me and you. Imrin’s amazing at certain things but he doesn’t have the mental strength or the planning ability you do. They need me and I need you.’

At first I’m not sure I have heard her properly but her reply reverberates around the trees, floating on the wind in and out of my ears. ‘You’re the only family I
have.’

She speaks so sadly that I want to cry for her. She is as much a part of my family as Colt – the sister I never wanted but now I cannot do without.

‘We should go back,’ I say, loosening my grip on the branch and allowing myself to drop to the one below. Faith falls effortlessly, gently brushing herself against the branch below
to steady the descent, before landing perfectly on her feet and standing hands on hips while I gradually make my way down.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask.

‘Yes. Where are we going now?’

‘I’ll tell you all inside. We should probably stay here until it’s dark. I’ve got lots of news.’

Faith giggles slightly, a wondrous sound that makes me smile too. ‘You looked ridiculous in those clothes.’

‘I thought so too.’

We are careful as we walk but the streets on the edge of the city are as empty as they were when we arrived. The train tracks run in the opposite direction and with the number of people who
arrive at the plaza, it is likely that most of the population of Middle England live outside the city itself.

‘It was a nice idea of Jela’s with the daisies,’ I say.

‘We were going to wait there at first but it didn’t feel right. We’d been noisy, plus there were the bodies. We wanted to go but didn’t know how to get a message to you.
That’s when she said she had talked to you about the flowers and that you would understand.’

It is nice to know that the moments I have spent individually with everyone have been as rewarding for them as for me. I remember Jela telling me she wanted to see the fields of daisies in
Martindale. Perhaps that will be possible one day. As the thought of the flowers slides into my head, it dawns on me that I’ve missed something.

‘The first daisy was in a pool of blood outside,’ I say.

‘Was it? She did that.’

‘But they said everything happened inside with the two Kingsmen.’

‘It did.’

‘So why is there a trail of blood outside?’

We have been walking carefully but, as Faith replies, I break into a desperate run. ‘Didn’t they tell you about Hart?’