Defiance (29 page)

Owls hoot mournfully in the tree tops. The whispery rustle of an evening breeze slides across leaves. And the occasional animal pads quietly across the moss-covered ground.

I’m reassured. If the animals feel safe, I’m safe too.

Best Case Scenario: I make good progress and don’t run into anyone.

Worst Case Scenarios 1–3: I stumble onto a gang of highwaymen as I cut across their favored trails; I lose my footing in the dark and injure my rib further, making speed difficult; or I cross paths with the tracker.

The answer to each is caution, but too much caution on my part may cost Rachel her life. Hoping to strike a balance between good sense and quick progress, I pick up my pace and strain to hear any change in the cadence of the forest around me as I enter highwaymen territory, my hand on the hilt of my sword.

T
he stew tastes like ashes in my mouth, but I chew with dogged determination. It takes everything I have to force myself to swallow when I’d rather gag, but I do it.

Revenge takes energy.

Melkin doesn’t eat. Instead, he sits hunched forward like a giant praying mantis, digging the tip of his knife in the sand, while he watches the rest of us in brooding silence.

The package rests beside me on the ground, a lifeless reminder of everything I’ve lost. What could be worth such bloodshed? Such single-minded greed from both Rowansmark and the Commander?

Setting aside my stew bowl, I reach for it.

“Don’t open it.”

I meet Melkin’s dark stare in silence, my fingers still tugging at the bindings holding the thick paper in place.

“
Don’t
.”

I unknot the bindings and rip the paper off. Beneath the paper, a heavy black cloth is rolled up like a log. Laying it in my lap, I carefully unroll the cloth until I see what rests at its center.

A slim wand of smoke-gray metal with a hole at one end, like a flute but with only three raised finger pads along its length, gleams dully beneath the flickering light of the single torch that Melkin has allowed us.

“What is this?” I look up, first at Quinn, who shows no inclination to answer me, and then at Willow.

Her brown eyes are alive with excitement as she leans forward and says, “It’s tech from Rowansmark. See the three finger pads?”

I nod, and Melkin shifts closer to me, his eyes on the wand.

“There are symbols on each pad.”

I run my finger across the circles and discover a different raised design on each. “What do they mean?”

“Willow.” Quinn’s voice is gentle, but his sister darts a quick glance at Melkin and subsides.

I can’t read the subtext of their communication, and I don’t want to. I just want to understand what I’m holding so I can see the Commander’s endgame and thwart it.

I need Logan. He’d know how to figure this out. How to get the information from them and make a plan.

And I need Logan because he’d understand that something inside me is broken. Something I have no idea how to mend. He’d understand, and if he didn’t know how to fix it, he’d dedicate himself to learning how.

I need him, but he needs me more. He needs me calm. Focused. He needs me to get the information, make the plan, and rescue him. I’m not going to let him down.

Turning to Quinn, I speak in a voice as hard as the packed dirt beneath us. “I need to know what they mean. You told me men are looking for this. Clearly my father didn’t want them to have it, or he would’ve just returned it. The leader of my city is looking for it too.”

“Rachel, that’s enough.” Melkin’s voice is low and furious.

I ignore him.

“If you don’t tell me everything I need to know, people may die. I might die. And you said yourself, you didn’t want my father’s …” Death? Sacrifice? I can’t put his loss into words. There aren’t any terrible enough to convey how empty I am without him. My hand creeps up to clutch the leather pouch I wear around my neck, and Quinn’s eyes are sympathetic.

I hate him for it.

“You said Dad was a hero.” I throw the words at him. “You said he died saving you.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not asking you to die. I’m not asking you to risk anything but the truth. You can be a hero if you just tell me the truth.”

“Your father didn’t want you to use that.” He looks at the wand.

“You have no idea what my father wanted.”

He looks wounded, and the fury inside me lashes out. I grab the wand and wave it in his face. “What does this do? Tell me!”

“Stop!” Willow shoves herself between us. “Leave him alone.”

“Then you tell me.”

She darts a glance at her brother. “We’ve already done more than we feel comfortable doing, but we owed Jared.”

“And you aren’t done paying your debt.”

“Rachel!” Melkin’s voice is harsh, but I keep staring at Quinn and Willow.

“How am I supposed to keep this safe if I don’t understand it?”

Melkin makes a choked noise at the back of his throat, but I don’t break eye contact with Willow. She’s going to tell me. I can see it.

“Wrap it up and hide it,” she says.

“Not if I don’t know what it does.” I lean past her to look Quinn in the face. “If you don’t tell me, if I don’t understand, I could trust the wrong person. Are you really okay with that?”

“Are you really planning to simply keep it safe?” he asks. I look in his eyes and realize he
knows
. He knows I’m going to use it. Knows I’m capable of it.

My chin rises. “If by keeping it safe, you mean not letting it fall into the wrong hands, then yes. I am.”

“Jared didn’t want you to use it. He wanted it given to Logan McEntire to be destroyed.”

“Logan is in Baalboden’s dungeon. To get him out, I’m supposed to give this”—I gesture toward the wand—“to our leader.”

“You can’t!” Willow says, and reaches as if she’ll take the wand from me.

I hold the wand out of reach, and stare her down. “Then tell me what it does. I have nothing left to lose. Tell me what this does, or I’ll start pushing buttons and figure it out myself.”

She looks at Quinn.

“It’s her decision,” he says quietly. Something in the weight of his words makes me feel like he thinks the consequences will be more than I can bear.

He’s wrong.

Willow slowly lowers her hands. “Fine. The finger pads create individual sound waves on a frequency humans can’t hear.”

“What good is that?”

“Humans can’t hear it. But the Cursed One can.”

I immediately slide my fingers away from the circles.

“You mean this—”

“Is a device designed to call and control the Cursed One.”

A vicious sense of power blooms inside me. I cradle the device to my chest and feel unstoppable.

I
’ve been on the move for at least two hours now, maybe three, and the burst of energy I felt after sleeping is long gone. So is the small dose of pain medicine I took. I can’t afford to stop for rest yet, despite the pain and exhaustion, so I force myself to catalogue the foliage I pass and come up with its scientific name. Mind over matter. Reason over pain.

The darkness obscures all but the smell and the most obvious of shapes, which adds an extra challenge that keeps me thinking of something other than the fire in my ribcage and my fear for Rachel.

I’m passing through a patch of pines. Sharp scent. Knobby branches. Widely spaced thin needles. Shortleaf pine.
Pinus echinata
.

What will I do if after I find her, Melkin still tries to carry out his assignment?

The low-pitched call of a great horned owl echoes from somewhere to my left.
Bubo virginianus.

How can I look Eloise in the eye if I have to kill her husband?

The moss beneath my boots grows in spongy clusters that spring back easily after I lift my foot.
Bryum argenteum
.

Logic could work. Melkin might listen to me. Understand the only way to rescue his wife is to take up arms against his leader.

He might not.

I have to come to terms with the idea of either killing him or finding a way to leave him behind in the Wasteland so Rachel and I can get to Baalboden before him.

Sliding silently through a few loosely spaced pines, I brush up against a wide, glossy leaf adorning a tree whose thick spread of branches blocks my view for a moment.
Magnolia grandiflora.

The low hooting of the owl suddenly subsides as I skirt the tree and nearly run into a man standing on the other side. The fact that his back is to me saves my life.

He hears my footfalls and turns, his weapon drawn, and I drop to my knees, grab the dagger in my boot, and thrust it up as his momentum drives his abdomen onto my blade.

Before he has a chance to do more than hiss out a breath, I lunge to my feet, grab his head with both hands, and wrench it to the side. His neck grinds and pops, his body goes slack, and I lower him as quietly as possible to the forest floor.

It isn’t quiet enough. If anyone else is nearby, they’ll have heard something. Even if they didn’t, the sudden lack of bird or animal cries around us creates an alarm just as deafening as if he’d called out to the rest of his battalion.

And it is a battalion. I can just make out the burnished dragon scale adorning the front right pocket of his uniform. He’s Rowansmark military.

I’m in deeper trouble than I thought. So are Rachel and Melkin. Being hunted by Rowansmark trackers is dangerous enough. Being hunted by an entire Rowansmark battalion turns the odds against us so completely, I feel staggered at the thought of trying to plan our way out of it. Whatever is in the package, James Rowan will clearly stop at nothing to get it back.

I pull my dagger free of the soldier, wipe it clean on his pants, and slide it back into its sheath. No highwayman would be stupid enough to attack a military encampment’s night guard. I’ve just announced my presence to the entire battalion.

Best Case Scenario: I make good time, masking my trail by using the trees, and create a significant lead time before this man’s body is discovered at watch change.

Worst Case Scenario: I bring the entire Rowansmark military down around our heads before I’ve even had a chance to deal with Melkin or the tracker.

I lean down and measure the dead man’s foot. Slightly bigger than mine, but it will do. Tugging his boots off ignites an unending stream of agony through my chest, but I don’t have time for pain medicine now. Several minutes pass while I switch our boots and wipe the ground around him so no one can see what I’ve just done.

It takes everything I have to walk away without limping and giving myself away to every half-decent tracker stationed with the battalion. I wander a bit, brushing away my tracks, until I find what I’m looking for: the edge of the military encampment.

Now my boot marks won’t stand out. With any luck, no one will even bother to look for me so close to the heart of the battalion. And if they did, all they’d find is the curious footprint of a Rowansmark man who stretched up to his tiptoes for a moment in the middle of the forest floor.

It’s going to hurt like hell. I grab a twig from the ground and wedge it in between my teeth so I can bite down against the pain without making a sound. Then I look at the low-hanging branch skimming the air a foot above me, gather myself, and leap.

“W
e’re bringing that back to Baalboden.”

Melkin hasn’t moved from his original seat by the fire’s remains, though Quinn and Willow left a while ago to weave branches, vines, and moss together into a treetop cradle they can sleep in for the night. I’ve been sitting by the torchlight examining the symbols on the wand, trying to figure out what they mean.

“Yes. We are.” Though I’m not about to willingly hand the Commander a weapon capable of destroying everything in our world.

“I have to give it to the Commander. Alone. I have to do that, Rachel. For Eloise.” His voice sounds desperate and dark, but where once I felt compassion, now I feel nothing.

“No.” I lay the device in its cloth and begin carefully rolling it back up.

“For Eloise.”

“Not even Eloise is worth giving the Commander the power to obliterate anyone who stands up to him.”

He curses and crawls toward me. I jerk the device toward my chest and slide my knife free.

“What about Logan? What about rescuing him? He’s all you have left!”

I hear the accusation beneath his words. He thought we were the same. Willing to do anything, no matter how unthinkable, if it would save us from loss. The Commander thought we were the same too.

They’re both wrong.

“Eloise and Logan are dead unless we destroy the Commander.”

“No.” He shakes his head, fury leaping into his eyes.

I’ll see his fury and double it. “Yes! Get your head out of the sand, Melkin. You work for a treacherous monster who never keeps his word. Never. The second he has what he wants from you, he’ll kill you. He’ll probably kill Eloise in front of you first, just because he
can
. And then you’ll have done nothing with your life but hand the worst man in the world the power to rule it.”

“Stop it!” He screams at me, spit flying from his mouth, his hand curled around his knife as if he needs a target.

“I won’t stop. Not until he’s dead. And now I have the means to do it.” I push the cloth-wrapped device into the inner pocket of my cloak. “Either you go along with my plan, or you get out of my way. I don’t care which you choose.”

He drives his knife into the ground at his feet, and looks at me with the kind of loathing that once would have made my skin crawl. Now, his opinion of me means just as little as his foolish desire to sacrifice the rest of the world for one more moment with his doomed wife.

My father did not die in vain. I’m going to make sure of it.

God help Melkin if he tries to stop me.

I
tree-leap as quietly as possible. Taking my time. Edging along the branches and biting on my twig hard as I use my knees to cushion each landing.