The Refuge Song (11 page)

I couldn't move. When I strained my eyes to the right, I could see a face next to mine. It was hard to make out through the viscous fluid. Hair floated over half the face. Then the liquid shifted, and the hair drifted to the side. It was Elsa.

I shouted. Piper's hand on my arm brought me back to the room.
When I looked down, my hands were shaking, the paper that they clutched fluttering like the wings of a moth.

“What did you see?” Zoe said.

I stood, moving slowly against the weight of the news that held me down.

“They're going to tank them all,” I said. “Sealing the town was only the beginning. They're going to tank everyone in New Hobart.”

“This isn't about New Hobart,” said Piper. “Concentrate on Elsewhere. And the Ark.”

“I can't,” I said. “I could feel it. I could see Elsa, underwater.”

Piper spoke gently. “You must have known it would come to that, ever since they captured the town. They were never going to just release them.”

He was right. The gradual tanking of those who turned themselves in to the refuges was never going to be enough for Zach. The city was already a prison. Soon it would be a ghost town, like the submerged city in the sea beyond the Sunken Shores.

“I know you're worried about your friends there,” Piper said. “But we can't free New Hobart. That would mean open war—a war that we can't win. The only way we can help Elsa and the others is by finding the Ark, or finding Elsewhere. So you need to concentrate. This is bigger than New Hobart.”

“New Hobart,” Xander echoed.

We all turned. I hadn't heard Xander cross the room to stand behind me.

“The soldiers are searching,” he said.

“In New Hobart?” I said.

“New Hobart,” he said again, but it was impossible to know whether it was a confirmation, or just an echo.

“Don't worry,” Piper said. “They were looking for Cass. They didn't find her—she got out.”

I remembered the posters that had been nailed up all over the town, with my face and Kip's sketched on them.

“No,” said Xander. He spoke impatiently, as though we were children, or simpletons. He looked straight at me. “You're not what they're looking for.”

I felt my cheeks flush. “You're right. It wasn't me—or not only me. The Confessor was looking for Kip, most of all.” At the time, I'd failed to realize this—and it had blinded me to Kip's real identity. “But it's finished now. They can't hurt him anymore.”

“It's not finished,” said Xander. He paused, still looking at me, his head cocked to one side. For a few seconds he said nothing. I wanted to grab him, to squeeze the words from him like the last drops of juice from a lemon. He turned back to gaze out the window. “Maze of bones,” he said quietly, and then would say no more.

Ω

That afternoon, while Piper sat with Xander, and Sally packed, Zoe took me outside to practice fighting. She was letting me do more drills with the dagger now, though it felt like she stopped me every few seconds to tell me what I was doing wrong.
Keep your eye on my blade, not yours. Faster. Watch your wrist—block a strike like that and you'll break it. Get on the higher ground—see how it slopes there. You don't want to find yourself fighting uphill.

I could never match Zoe, her blade darting like a lizard's tongue, but the dagger that Piper had given me was beginning to feel like my own, rather than a borrowed weapon. I was used to its weight now, and the angle where its hilt met the blade. Knew how tight to grip the handle to block a strike, and how to loosen my wrist when I wanted to swipe at my opponent.

I saw a movement at the window of the house. It was Xander, his mouth slack on one side, his eyes unfocused. He was gazing right at where we stood, but whatever he was seeing it wasn't us.

Zoe took advantage of my distraction, coming at me faster so that I was driven a few steps back down the slope.

“Concentrate,” she said. “You yielded the higher ground again.”

I nodded, testing my dagger's weight in my hand before circling her again.

The blast came, scorching my sight with flames.

It only lasted a moment, but Zoe slipped past my guard. The tip of her dagger came to rest, very gently, on my chest.

“If that happens in a fight, you're a dead woman.” She stepped back, blade lowered.

“It was the blast,” I said. I didn't know how to explain to her that when the blast visions came, we were all dead, in a world turned to cinders. “I think it's being around Xander,” I said, glancing back at the window. “It sets the visions off even more than usual.”

“So concentrate harder,” she said.

I raised my blade, and we circled each other once more. She lunged, and I blocked. I swept my blade at her shoulder, and she darted backward. Then the blast came again, an aftershock, a flash of whiteness that hit me like a seizure. My knife dropped to the ground.

Zoe threw down her own blade.

“There's no point practicing if you're like this,” she said.

“I'm trying,” I said. “You don't know what it's like, having the visions.”

She followed my gaze to the window. “I'm trying to help you. Do you want to end up like him?”

I picked up my dagger again, and she did the same. We sparred until it was almost dark, but Zoe was quieter, not correcting me as often, or pushing me as hard. There was no point. We both knew that the greatest threat to me couldn't be fought with blades.

chapter 12

It was too dangerous to sail through the sunken city by night, so we left just before dawn, bags loaded with all the food that we could carry. Sally didn't even look back as she closed the door behind her. She was concentrating on calming Xander, who had begun to whimper as we led him from the house, and would only walk if Sally held his hand and coaxed him forward.

It took us a long time to reach the boat. There was a path, of sorts, zigzagging down the face of the cliff, but over the years it had half crumbled with disuse. In the end, Piper had to carry Sally, though she grumbled and insisted she could manage by herself if we weren't hurrying her. Zoe and I, between us, helped Xander. He refused to look down at where the narrow path was shedding its edge beneath our feet, and clamped his eyes shut, his limbs stiff. Stones clattered from the path as we walked, and the sea was so far below us that I couldn't hear them land. The sun had risen by the time we reached the boat, tucked into a
cave above the high-tide line. The boat hadn't been used for years, and when we carried it to the water a family of mice scuttled from a nest in the sail. Piper checked the hull before we set off, running his hand over the flaking planks and testing the ropes, stiffened into the loops where they'd been curled.

The boat was bigger than either of the dinghies that Kip and I had used, and had two small sails, rather than one. Sally and Xander sat in the stern. Xander had calmed now, gazing over the boat's side at the quiet sea. Once Piper and Zoe had rowed us through the rocks close to the peninsula, Piper handled the sails deftly, shouting his orders to me while Zoe took the tiller. We had to go carefully, to avoid the wreckage of the submerged city that punctured the dark water for miles. The tide was high, and only the tallest buildings emerged. The others lay in wait just below the surface. We passed so close to one of the towers that I could see pieces of our reflection in the broken glass that still clung to the rusted frame. I saw the fear on my own face, pale in the mirrored dawn.

Only when we were out of the clutches of the Sunken Shore, and we were making good speed, did I notice Zoe. She was standing in silence at the back of the boat, clutching the tiller so tightly that her knuckles stood out white on her dark hands.

“You OK?” I asked. I didn't dare to mention her sea dreams. The memory of her furious reaction was a splinter lodged in me, too sharp to touch.

“I don't like being at sea,” she said, and turned away from me to watch the wake of churned water behind us.

For the daylight hours, we stayed out of sight of the shore, only creeping closer once the sun had set. The wind was kind to us, and we moved fast. Zoe remained silent, but Xander made up for it with his periodic babbling. At one point, in the late afternoon, he began
screaming about fire and muttering about the maze of bones. It kindled the flames in my own head, and I found myself on the floor of the boat with my head in my hands, the blast tearing at the walls of my sight, and the boat's unsteadiness only shaking my mind further. Until the vision passed, Piper put his hand on my back and I tried to concentrate on that single patch of warmth, the one steady thing in the rocking world.

Sally kept a lookout for patrol ships. I couldn't think of the Council's black fleet without a shudder, remembering the sight of them massed near the island. The moon was at its highest when Piper dropped the sails, and he and I rowed the boat close to shore to land on a rocky beach, the pebbles noisy underfoot as we dragged the boat up to the long grass where we could conceal it.

I took the first lookout shift, and even after Piper relieved me I could barely sleep. There was little cover from the drizzle, and I was lying between Zoe and Xander. All night, his dreams of fire jostled in my mind with Zoe's dreams of the sea. When we rose at dawn, and began the walk inland, I strode ahead, keen to get away from both of them.

We could only move at Sally's pace, and when she flagged, Piper and Zoe took turns to carry her. I watched her clinging to Piper's back and noted how patiently his right arm hoisted her when she kept slipping down to the left, where there was no arm to support her. I saw his blade-scarred hand holding her leg, and thought I'd never seen his touch so gentle.

By nightfall we were in craggy, open country. Sally couldn't keep walking through the night, and we made camp in a stand of pine trees by a shallow creek. I went to the creek to wash, and when I came back to camp, my hair still wet, I saw Piper crouching near the fire, knife raised behind his head. For a moment I froze, scanning the trees for signs of
an ambush. I couldn't see the others through the pines—only Piper, his eyes fixed on something out of my sight. Then he let the knife fly, and I heard Zoe give a whoop of triumph, and they both laughed. I stepped into the small clearing. A target was carved on a tree trunk, studded now with their knives. Zoe was grinning as she retrieved the knives. Sally and Xander were by the fire, watching the game.

“No need to ask who won, then,” I said.

“Piper's setting the snares tonight,” said Zoe, wiping her knife blade against her trousers. “And taking first watch. He's already lost two rounds in a row. He's throwing so badly you're lucky he didn't hit you on your way back.”

She handed Piper back his daggers. I settled on the ground next to Sally and Xander, and watched Piper and Zoe as they played another round. Zoe went first, standing behind the line that they'd scraped in the earth, while Piper watched from the other side of the clearing. The first time Zoe edged one foot over the line, Piper laughed at her and she denied cheating. The second time she did it, he let fly one of his own knives, skewering her shoelace to the ground so that she couldn't snatch her guilty foot back.

“Try denying that,” he said to her with a smile. She bent to pull the knife free, swearing when her shoelace snapped.

“Pity you can't throw that accurately when you're aiming for the target,” she said, and handed it back to him.

He laughed, and she stepped back behind the line.

I'd laughed too. But even as I watched Piper and Zoe play their target game, my neck was tense. She was laughing now, but I'd seen her slit a man's throat and leave his body in the dust. Piper was rolling his eyes at Zoe's latest throw, but I'd heard him speak of killing a man as casually as I might talk of plucking a pigeon.

Watching Piper and Zoe, I couldn't forget that even their games were made of blades.

Ω

After another day of walking, it was midnight when we crested a large hill, and saw the quarry below us. It was a scar on the hills, a gouge nearly half a mile long, the white clay bright under the moonlight. It started off shallow, a series of clay pits and chalky pools, but in the middle it became a gully, carved more than a hundred yards deep. On the northern side were sharp cliffs, seamed with red stone; on the southern side, whole sections of the wall had given way, slumping down and carrying with them boulders and trees that now lay, half-buried, in the rubble mounds that had engulfed half the pit. A wide, well-kept road passed only a mile to the west, but the quarry itself must have been abandoned for decades—its base was thickly wooded, where the landslides had spared it.

We were able to edge within a few hundred yards of the quarry's mouth, under the cover of trees and ditches, but there was no way to get closer without being exposed. To the east, where one or two Omega shacks were dotted, there were fields stretching close to the quarry's eastern side, but they'd long ago been harvested, so offered us no cover. On the quarry's western edge there was a scattering of trees, but nothing thick enough to conceal our approach.

I stared at the quarry's steep sides. “If the Council's already been here, then we'll be walking straight into a trap.”

“If the Council had already been here, I doubt they'd have left Omega sentries on the lookout,” said Zoe quietly. “Look.”

She pointed west. Piper saw it before I did: the figure perched high in an oak tree, where the woods petered out. The sentry was watching the road to the west, but when he turned periodically to scan the woods
on each side, I could see his profile. He was a dwarf, bow slung across his shoulder.

“It's Crispin,” said Piper. “And he won't be the only sentry. The others?”

“Haven't seen them yet,” Zoe said. “But I'm thinking that hay shouldn't be sitting out, months since the harvest.” She gestured to a small stack of bales in a field to the east of the quarry. “I'd bet there's a watch post under there. That'd give them a view of the whole eastern perimeter.”

“I didn't train my guards to be slack,” Piper said. “They should've spotted us already.”

“Careful,” Sally said to him. “Simon's guards. Not yours anymore.”

“I'm not likely to forget that,” said Piper. But he was already moving off toward the oak, stealthy but quick. We followed as he led from tree to tree. He got to within forty feet of the tall oak before he broke cover, stepping forward loudly.

“Crispin,” he shouted up at the platform. “Give the signal—tell Simon he's got visitors.”

The watchman hid his surprise well, turning swiftly and notching an arrow to his bow.

“Stand where you are,” he shouted. From where we stood, looking up, his face was bisected by the bow, one eye squinting tight.

Piper gave him a wave, turning his back to the oak as he marched off toward the quarry's mouth.

“Stand where you are,” called the man again. He drew back the arrow farther, the bowstring quivering. “You're not in charge anymore.”

“If I was,” Piper said, “you'd be whipped for not spotting us earlier.”

Zoe had caught up with Piper now, the two of them striding toward the quarry with the same long gait. She called back to the sentry: “And tell your friend in the hay bale to pick a less flammable spot next time.
If I were a Council soldier with an arrow and matches, he'd be nicely cooked by now.”

Crispin moved quickly, and my body tensed, braced for the whirr of the arrow, a sound that had impaled my dreams ever since the attack on the island. Instead, Crispin dropped the bow and brought both hands to his mouth, the better to amplify his whistle. Three long low notes, repeated—a rough approximation of a barred owl. An answering whistle came from the quarry below.

The path meandered between the clay pits and the mounds of earth, the collapsed walls on the southern side becoming more menacing as we walked deeper into the quarry. The moonlight barely penetrated here, and twice I slipped in the wet clay. The guards emerged one by one from among the pits and rubble heaps, and ran toward us. I recognized the three-armed silhouette of Simon in the lead, an ax in one of his hands. But as he drew close enough for me to see his face, he began to look less like the man I remembered. I could make out no obvious injury from the battle on the island, but something had happened to transform him. In the moonlight his face was gray and puffy. Where he used to move with a soldier's vigor, now he walked with a slow determination, as if against a tide.

Whispering broke out among his guards as they assembled around us. Then they saluted. At first I thought they were saluting Piper, as they used to do on the island. But it wasn't him they were looking at, as they all raised their hands to their foreheads. It was Sally, limping beside me, Xander leaning on her arm. If she noticed the guards' response to her, she didn't acknowledge it.

Simon stopped a few feet from where we stood. The others, six or seven of them, fanned around us. There were no more salutes now. They were all armed; the woman nearest to me had a short sword in
her hand. She was close enough that I could see the dent on the blade, where another sword had left a snarl in the steel's edge.

Simon stepped forward.

“It's just the five of you?” He addressed Piper.

Piper nodded. “We have important information that you'll need.”

“You've come to tell me what to do next?” Simon said.

Sally sighed. “I brought him here, Simon. Hear him out.”

“Does Sally know what you did?” Simon said to Piper. “Does she know about the island?” He was staring at me now. I had become a shorthand for a massacre. A single glance at me was loaded with meaning. Heavy with blood.

“She knows,” said Piper. He didn't break his gaze, and his jaw didn't retreat from its usual jut.

Sally spoke impatiently. “Don't make this into a pissing contest. This fight's going to need us all.”

Simon's gaze was fixed on Piper. There was only a foot or two between them. I'd seen them together many times on the island, and seen them debating heatedly, but never like this. The space between them was stacked with the island's dead. The air was thick with remembered screams, and the sound of arrows in flesh.

“He's a traitor,” muttered one of the men beside Simon.

“Thinks he can walk back in here, after what he did?” added the woman beside him.

We were completely encircled. Zoe stood with her hands on her hips; it looked casual enough, but I knew how quickly she could dispatch death from the knives at her belt. We were outnumbered here, though. I looked at Simon again. For all his exhausted appearance, his arms were still knotted with muscles. The leather-wrapped handle of his ax was stained black, and I remembered the smell of blood that had
filled the island's crater, and knew it wasn't only sweat that darkened the leather.

“I haven't come here to grovel.” Piper was looking at Simon, but he made sure to speak loudly enough for the assembled guards to hear. “I stand by my decision. You've seen what the Council's capable of—they were never going to spare the island, whether or not I handed over Cass and Kip.”

“We paid too great a price for one seer,” said Simon.

“The minute you start thinking of people in terms of price, we've already lost,” I said. “And it wasn't just me. It was Kip, too.”