She divested the man of his uniform with such ease one might’ve suspected corpse-looting was a regular hobby of hers. She grumbled about the fit of the tunic, but when she stepped out in front of Rafe, she looked crisper and more military than the original wearer ever had.
Rafe managed a sickly smile. “Can’t believe… it. You can starch… things… just by touching them.”
“Very funny.” Isabella hauled him up. “On your feet, you worthless Shimmer rohkayan. I had to punch you in the stomach a few times—yes, curl up like that—but you still wouldn’t tell me how to take out those scorched statues. I’m taking you back to Karzov to see if some correctly-applied pressure”—she grinned evilly—“will loosen your tongue.”
“Wonderful,” muttered Rafe, “except Blackstone doesn’t have women in their army.”
“I’m not army, I’m Special Forces,” said Isabella, loftily. “A member of the Secret Fist. Bet you never heard we had women among our ranks, did you?” She wagged a finger at him. “See? That’s how good we are. Come on.” She pushed him forward by the shoulder. “In front of me, so I can see you at all times. Oh yes.” She paused and bound his hands behind his back with her belt. Loose, so he could wriggle out easily, but it would cost him precious moments.
That was the best plan they had, but with the force of Isabella’s personality behind them, they might actually get into that camp and pull it off.
The pressure in Rafe’s chest built up, and so did the corresponding one in his skull. They finally spotted the Blackstone camp, pitched right in front of the pass they had entered through as Ashby Oldmill and Lady Maerilla on their way to Mirados’ party. The lush grassy surface had been churned to mud by wide tires and marching feet. Tents and boxes and trolleys jostled for elbow room. Soldiers worked, cursed, and went to and fro on mysterious errands. Several were at work digging a trench, others wrestled bamboo palisades into place, still more uncoiled barbed wire.
Isabella swaggered up to the gap where the gates should’ve been as if she owned the place, and crooked her finger at the sentry. “You! Come on out and be quick about it. My business won’t wait.”
The sentry gawked at her. By the lack of markings on his uniform, he was a private. Rafe raised his head for a quick look around for Undercommanders and Overcaptains. Isabella promptly put a hand on the back of his head and drove him down to his hands and knees. The muzzle of her rifle was cold under his ear. She planted a boot (stuffed with pieces of her party dress to fit) on his back.
“Who are you?” began the sentry.
“ ‘Firelight washes her face with gold’,” Isabella snapped out.
The sentry stared, befuddled.
“ ‘Firelight washes her—By the Father! Aren’t you cleared for the simplest passcode? What fool put you on duty?” Isabella removed her foot from Rafe’s back, and he resisted the urge to bite her ankle.
She was doing such an astoundingly good job in this role that even he was hard-pressed to believe it was only a pretence.
“Stand aside. I have a prisoner to deliver to Karzov.” Isabella kicked Rafe in the side, hard enough to hurt. Rafe took full advantage of the situation to mewl his unhappiness. It didn’t take away the pressure, but he felt just a bit better whining his misery to the world. “Up, you.” She grabbed his bound wrists and dragged him up. “Go on.” Isabella pushed him onto the iron sheeting that formed a plank across the hurriedly-dug trench.
“B-but,” began the sentry. “Captain-Captain Veruch…”
Isabella flashed him a steely smile. “Take it up with the Shadow, soldier. Want to come along with me? We’ll deliver this man together.”
The sentry turned a brief look of horror at one of the makeshift buildings of canvas and bamboo poles towards the back of the camp.
“No?” Isabella gave a derisive snort. “Hey, don’t even think about it!” she directed at Rafe, who hadn’t been. She jerked his head up by the hair, and whispered, “Lead me to where you think that device is, but for Sel’s sake, don’t make it look obvious!”
As they went past the sentry, Isabella turned her head to stare at the man, who paled and looked at his feet. Isabella flung a laugh over her shoulder and urged Rafe on with her rifle.
The pressure mounted, and Rafe wondered how it would feel if his head exploded like an overripe fruit and if that happenstance would be preferable to his current miserable state. Goaded by Isabella, he shuffled with all speed towards the tent the sentry had nodded towards.
Another soldier, older and tougher, stepped in front of them. Isabella brushed past him and he didn’t quite dare catch her arm. “The Shadow is not here, and the tent is off-limits to everyone.”
“I’m not
everyone.
” Isabella turned, put herself between Rafe and the soldier. Over the guard’s shoulder, Rafe saw movement on the far side of the camp. Mud-brown-suited figures melted to the side as a man in crisp dark-red strode towards them. A Commander, by the uniform, someone used to wielding authority and not easily swayed by Isabella’s imperious manner.
“Fine, I’ll play nicely. Here, catch.” Isabella threw her rifle towards the soldier, who flinched back.
Rafe, cowering behind Isabella like a suitably wretched prisoner, dove into the tent.
And hit a wall.
Ka exploded into his vision, a whirlwind of white with separate strands of color writhing within it. They twisted away from him when he reached out to them, and the currents of white buffeted him from all sides, holding him immobile between them. The pressure was gone from inside his head and chest; now it pressed in on all sides of his body, threatening him with sure and total collapse.
Rafe gritted his teeth, made mental hooks, and threw them out like fishing lines to snag the colors. Green, yellow, and orange wriggled on the hooks, and tried to squirm free. There was no time to figure out what did what, so Rafe grabbed the whole mess and tore it apart.
The ring of light cracked, ka escaping from it in hot waves that singed past Rafe’s eyebrows. Squinting in the sudden dimness, Rafe started forward to the device at the center of the ring. A concoction of wire and quartz chips, delicate ka tendrils laced all over it, stood on a tripod of thick sturdy legs.
He didn’t know how it did what it did, but he could destroy it with both his fist and his mind. Rafe swung back his arm.
“Rafe—don’t!”
Rafe whirled and stared right into Bryony’s huge dark eyes and pale face. A blush of a bruise touched her cheekbone, her hair was sliding out of its hairnet, and she stood very still in dressing gown and bare feet.
Karzov held a gun to her temple. “Sorry, dear chap. Pretty as your sister is, the device is far more important to the Protector. Step away from there.”
Rafe let his hand drop. “Bryony. I thought…” He’d assumed Wil and Leo and Roland had her taken away. He’d never dreamed Blackstone had her.
“They came for me in the night,” said Bryony through stiff lips. She darted a sidelong glance at Karzov. “They’ve treated me well, considering. They’re more interested in
you
,
though. I’m the hostage to ensure your cooperation.”
He’d done it again. He’d been the cause of Bryony’s delegitimization, and now her kidnapping.
Bryony, I’m sorry.
Karzov wagged a finger at Rafe. “Boy. You’re unpredictable. You show up at the darndest times. I needed leverage. And here you are, and wasn’t I right?” Karzov beamed like a boy at a successful prank. “Now where is your minder? I heard her outside, along with some thumps. It would be too much to hope that for once she’d have lost.”
A twitch of shadow pinched at Rafe’s attention. He stepped straight into Isabella’s blow. “Isabella, don’t! She’s my sis—” He caught the iron bar on his thigh. His leg buckled.
Isabella wordlessly pushed him to the side, and went for the device again.
“Ah-ah!” Karzov raised his index finger.
Cold seeped into the tent, musty-smelling, old, malevolent. Krin prowled the perimeter. Pain flared up Rafe’s leg, multiplied tenfold. Cold arms lowered him into the dirt, cold voices whispered to him of sleep…
“May your soul be devoured, Karzov!” Isabella threw herself beside Rafe, pale and fierce.
“You can’t imagine how many times I’ve heard that, my dear. It does get old,” Karzov murmured from what seemed like a long way away. Rafe’s eyelids fluttered. Sleep, yes it would be so good, if only Isabella would stop shaking him.
“Do go away, Izzy,” he muttered. Peace snaked through his veins and coiled around his muscles and organs.
Isabella hissed out her frustration. Methodically, clinically, she tugged up at Rafe’s head and pinched his nose so that his mouth dropped open. Then she bent and put her mouth over his in a hard passionless kiss.
Prickles ran all over his skin. The peace within him shriveled and shrank back, and so did he, knocking his head against a rock. Isabella put her hand to the back of his head and shoved him close. She was silver and shining and sharp, and smelled of wine, minty chocolate, and the mustiness of caves. The blackness curled up smaller and evaporated, ripped out of his body.
Isabella let his head go abruptly, and Rafe’s skull struck rock again. “Ow!” The fog in his brain vanished. His mind, with newfound clarity, informed him that he’d almost succumbed to an insidious krin assault.
Isabella rocked back on her heels, mouth twisted, as if she’d tasted bile.
His breath wasn’t that bad, was it?
“Interesting.” Karzov stood closer to Bryony, twisting her arm behind her back, her shoulder dipped awkwardly. “I’ve never seen that trick before. Why bother, though, Isabella? He’s just a lap dog. You can find other lovers.”
“Rafe?” Bryony’s voice and body exquisitely balanced competing strains—fear fighting composure, the pressure of Karzov’s hand pulling her close against her desire to be free from him. She was almost on tiptoes. “Are you all right? Did that monster hurt you?”
Rafe clambered up to his knees. Ka swirled around him in great streams, spiraling into the device from Shimmer’s untainted quartz. Ka like ropes of color, easily grasped.
He could use this.
Yellow swirled around him, and Rafe remembered the pastry sentry on Mirados’ confectionary castle. Yellow for movement, perhaps? He grabbed the yellow, knotted it into a loop, and sent it over the device. He hauled on the rope, and the device flew, plucked out of its stand, and into his hands.
Rafe looked up and smiled at Karzov. “Here,” he said. “Catch.” And he threw.
Karzov moved to intercept the device, pushing Bryony away.
“Back away, everyone!” Rafe grabbed Bryony’s arm and dove towards the back of the tent. Isabella rolled out of the way and ended up half-knelt, half-crouched, teeth slightly bared.
Vibrant green ka bound the rest of the energy to the device. Rafe tore at that green rope, shredded it to pieces. The other colors, red, orange, and yellow being the most dominant, surged out.
The device shattered in a blaze of light.
It took out the tent-pole, at least, and possibly a chunk of the ground, and hopefully Karzov’s face. Canvas fell around them, muffling the cries of alarm from outside.
“Go! Out!” Isabella lifted up canvas and all three squeezed outside. Ka billowed around Rafe in scarves, and he knotted one around his hand and lobbed it in the direction of a digger. The machine exploded in a spray of metal parts. He snatched at another billow, this time hurling it into the middle of the camp. Screams and booms intermingled behind them as they ran under the smoke for the pass. One last updrift of ka took out the gate and sentry tower there.
Good.
That was for Ironheart, and Oakhaven, and those soldiers who’d died in the last war, and Pyotr dead of krin in the dark, and…
Bryony looked at Rafe in pale horror. “Are you doing that?”
And he was instantly ashamed of his delight in the destruction.
“Come on!” called Isabella from the top of a pile of debris. “You can moralize later. Let’s get out of here.”
R
AFE SWEPT HIS HAND
across the pattern he’d scribed in the dirt. The Keys tumbled out of order, their weak lights dying.
Which was fine because they weren’t telling him what he wanted to know in the first place.
He shoved his hands through his hair. Ever since they’d entered the Barrens, the Keys seemed unresponsive, their ka faint and sluggish. Rafe had poked at the intricate knot of ka inside them, but it had yielded no clues, and he was afraid that his inexperienced handling would ruin the Keys altogether. He’d settled for trying to decipher their patterns of lights, but they stubbornly refused to show him anything other than the locations of quartz veins he had no interest in.
“No luck?” Bryony came to crouch beside him.
“Not unless you want to take a tour of the major agri-caves of this region. I can figure out what location each individual Key is coded for, but not how to put them together to find out where the Tower is. Unless”—horror suffused him—“we’re meant to wander from cave to cave, picking up clues.”
“You’ll figure it out.” She extended a mug towards him. Steam curled from the top, along with a pungent herbal scent. “I hear this stuff is good for you.” Her smile quirked. “Pretend it’s spinach, hold your nose, and drink up.”
Rafe grimaced. “Isabella. Where is she now?”
Bryony shrugged an elegant shoulder. Like Rafe, she wore Rocquespur’s borrowed finery, though in her case she’d used the several days’ train journey from Shimmer to alter it to her size. “Scouting. Setting defenses. Hunting dragons with her bare hands. I don’t really know, and I don’t really care.” She shifted against the warm rock and lay back. “It’s comfortable here, with just you. Seems like we haven’t had a moment alone since Shimmer.”
Rafe nodded. The train, which had been so commodious and luxurious on the way to Shimmer, had seemed barely able to hold the three women. They’d all been cordial, but the tension in the air had been as palpable to Rafe as it was baffling. Isabella had been curt to the point of rudeness, Sable had taken on the gracious yet distant manners of a queen, and Bryony had countered it all by being pleasant—with an edge.