““A button?”
I laughed as Kazi described the full-cheeked blustering quarterlord howling at the end of an alley like his nose had been cut off.
“Why risk so much just to steal a useless button?” I asked.
Her smile faded, her gaze serene, her fingers moving across her palm as if she still held the prized button in her grasp. “It wasn’t useless,” she answered. “Sometimes you have to remind yourself that you’re not powerless. That you have some measure of control. That maybe your skills aren’t good just for filling your own stomach, but also for making others consider theirs. If a thief could steal a button straight off his belly in the middle of the day, how much more might they take from him in the dark corners of the night?” She chewed on the corner of her lip, her eyes narrowing. “I know he didn’t sleep well that evening, and that gave me the sweetest sleep ever. Sometimes you need to own one whole day. Maybe that’s what makes you brave enough to face another.”
I was still trying to understand her world, what she had been through, and the resolve it had taken for her stay alive. “Brave? You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.” I looked sideways at her. “Of course, the most scheming too.”
She squeezed the seed from the date she was nibbling and threw it at me, hitting me directly on the chin.
I rubbed the spot. “A schemer with good aim?”
“Says the Grand Schemer himself, but I’ll take the compliment,” she said and looked ahead again, her shoulders swaying gently with each of Mije’s hoof falls. She was silent for a long while before she asked, “Will you tell them I was a thief?”
My family. I knew that was what she meant, but I sidetracked the question.
“Was? You still are a thief. I count my fingers every night before I go to sleep. But let’s not make them call you Ten.”
“Jase.”
I sighed. Truth between Kazi and me was one thing, but with my family, it was another. I’d have to talk them down from a furious ledge before I told them anything. I knew they would listen, but it would be hard for them to go from seething to open arms with just a few words. Not when their home had been invaded and their prized investment—and their Patrei—had been stolen from them by someone they thought they trusted. “Yes, I will tell them. Whenever you’re ready. Though it might be a good idea to dispense one truth at a time. Slowly.”
She grinned. “Agreed. I suppose we don’t need to hit them with everything at once.”
“Of course, you realize once you tell Lydia and Nash, they’ll want you to teach them everything you know.”
“We’ll stick to juggling and coins behind ears for now. Shadows are a bit harder to master.”
“Don’t forget the silent signals,” I reminded her. “They would love using those at the dinner table.”
She smiled. “Already on my list of priorities.”
Even before she was on her own, she had told me she and her mother had developed a silent language between them to survive the streets of Venda, because there were often risky moments when they had to remain silent. I had a few subtle gestures for my crew, but I was surprised at how many signals she and her mother had. A flick of the fingers meant smile, a tucked chin, watch, be ready, a rigid hand, do not move.
I told her stories about my childhood too, the trouble us older children would get into. She laughed, both appalled and amused. I told her about one hot summer when we were particularly bored. Our antics involved ropes, pulleys, and snatching hats from unsuspecting people passing below us on the boardwalk as we stalked them from high up in the tembris trees.
“A thief in training? No wonder that shopkeeper called you one of the untamable Ballenger brood.”
I shrugged. “We gave the hats back, but got a scolding from our mother. She said if we put half as much work into our studies as we did our pranks, we’d all be geniuses. But when she thought we weren’t looking, we saw her shoot our father an approving nod. They both thought we were quite clever.”
“Yes,” Kazi conceded. “Clever as little foxes stealing eggs from the henhouse.”
 |
The forest had grown thicker, and the peculiar chirps of striped squirrels sounded overhead, disturbed by our presence. We fell into silence, and my thoughts drifted back to Beaufort, as they frequently did. Kazi and I had discussed him together many times, but we’d come to no conclusions.
Dominion over the kingdoms.
But how?
Yes, Beaufort was developing powerful weapons, but he had no army to use them. He came to Tor’s Watch empty-handed, rags on his back, and his hat in hand. He and his group were a pitiful sight. Even if he was working with one of the leagues and he armed every one of them with the launchers he had developed, he still couldn’t bring down an entire kingdom, much less all of them.
Was Beaufort delusional? Trying to speak his lost dreams of power into truth? If so, Kardos and the rest all had to be as mad as he was. But Sentinel Valley was no delusion. The mass graves were sickeningly real. Maybe it took madmen to concoct such schemes.
“Do you think this is Ogres Teeth?” Kazi asked.
We passed a row of broken columns rising up in the middle of the forest, their purpose long lost to the world, but they looked like they might be the ruins Sven had described to us. There were so many vestiges of another time in this forest, I pulled out the map and checked it again to be sure.
“Yes,” I answered. “This is it.”
You asked me why an open world frightens me, Jase? Because it gives me nowhere to hide.
According to the map, we were headed into another one of those open worlds soon. I think it bothered me more than it did her. I was used to solving problems, fixing them one way or another, and this one I couldn’t fix. I couldn’t undo the past and take away what had been done. Her fear weighed on me. I had already studied the map, trying to find any way around it, but there was none.
We turned on a switchback, and the mountains and forest ended abruptly. We found ourselves on a high trail, looking out at an endless plain that was a strange deep red. In the distant north the harsh land of Infernaterr shimmered like a silver sea lapping at its shores.
“Whoa, Mije.” Kazi stopped and stared at the vast emptiness. It was our third time having to cross an empty landscape that offered no shelter.
I watched her eyes skim the miles, her chest rising in quicker breaths. “You don’t have to be afraid of Zane anymore, Kazi. He’s in the family’s
custody. They won’t let him go.”
She blew out a disbelieving huff. “You so sure? Gunner seemed willing enough to trade him away the last time I saw him.”
“I promise you, Gunner won’t let him go.” I wished I could tell her it was because of what Zane had done over a decade ago to her and her mother, but that wasn’t why he would hold him. Zane had a connection to the labor hunters that had descended on Hell’s Mouth and stolen me and other citizens away, and for that Gunner would never let him leave Tor’s Watch—at least not alive.
I watched her focus on the horizon, on some tiny point in the distance, probably imagining a busy town full of shadows and dark corners and how only a flat landscape lay in the way of her getting there. Her chin lifted. “I’m not that powerless six-year-old anymore, Jase. I’m not afraid of Zane. I guarantee, he’s the one who’s afraid of me now. He’s the one looking over his shoulder, waiting for a door to open and for me to walk through it. He’s the one who’s afraid to sleep at night.”
I had no doubt of that. I’d seen his expression when he saw her that last night in Tor’s Watch—when he saw her looking at him. Her eyes had glowed with a primal hunger, with the ferocity of a Candok bear that
couldn’t be stopped. And yet I’d felt her heart pound beneath my arm when I pulled her close at night and a wide-open sky pressed down on us.
“But I’ve seen you—”
“Still struggling to sleep out here in the open? I know.” Her expression darkened, her brows pulling together, as if she was perplexed by this too. She sighed. “I can’t quite shake it. For now, I suppose, it’s a part of who I am. My mind reasons that there’s nothing to be afraid of, but something inside me I can’t control reacts differently.” I heard the confusion in her voice. She turned and looked at me. “I’m not sure how long it will take to convince my heart to stop racing every time I’m confronted with no place to hide. Maybe a lifetime. Are you up for that?”
“That’s a lot of riddles.” “I still have a few in me.”
I did too. Like how many of my brothers would it take to hold me back from Zane when we got home again? How would he ever answer my questions with my hands around his throat? He stole Kazi’s mother. He left a six-year-old child to die on the streets of Venda. My pulse raced hot thinking about him, but I knew Zane wasn’t mine to finish. I had only cultivated a few months’ worth of hatred for him. Kazi had eleven years. Her anger trumped mine by a long shot.
Zane would be left for Kazi. After she got her answers.
|
We made our way down to the plain quickly, the soil so red it looked like it was drenched with ripe cherries—or blood. Every part of this continent held new surprises. The landscapes we had passed through had been both breathtaking and tedious, and sometimes jarring. The most jarring was Stone Canyon, which Sven had marked clearly on the map. Go around if you’d rather. Most do. It’s a sight you won’t forget soon, but it is the shortest route. Kazi and I had opted for the shortest route, but every nerve I possessed prickled as we traveled through it. Tigone and Mije both stamped in protest. Even they could see the stones weren’t just stones, and wind whistled eerily through the canyon like a stream of voices.
Sven said legend claimed that one of the stars of the devastation had sent molten rock spraying like a fountain. Ancient peoples were caught midstep as they ran to get away. Huddled crowds were grown together as one rock, forever anchored to the cliffs that rose above them. Distinct, horror-stricken faces sometimes emerged from the mass. There was no erasing this part of history. Faces frozen in time lined our path, and they were a grim reminder of how quickly the world of the Ancients had changed. Maybe how quickly all of our worlds could change.
In comparison, the red plain we traveled across now seemed almost tranquil, and if it took a few dozen riddles to get Kazi through it, or more Ballenger legends, I was ready. I wondered sometimes if, as we rode in silence, she was busy composing her next riddle. She never seemed to lack for one when I asked. I, on the other hand, didn’t have a knack for composing them and had struggled mightily with the single one I had given her. But that one seemed sufficient for her. She asked for it over and over again.
Say it again, Jase.
But you already know the answer.
But it’s an answer I will never grow tired of.
And maybe I never tired of telling it to her. I fingered the red ribbon tied to my saddle. What is it for, Kazi? Not since that first time I had seen her staring at my bare chest had I seen her face flush warm. Tell me. But in my gut, I think I had already known, and if gifts like that ribbon meant trouble, it was the kind that I wanted.
Kazi cleared her throat to gain my attention. “All right, here you go,
Patrei,” she said. “Listen up. I won’t repeat myself.” Composing. Just as I thought.
“I have two arms but not a bone, I can’t be hurt with knife or stone. I have a head but lack a face,
I don’t need eyes to match your pace. I’m shifty, a thief, a trick of the eyes, My robes are made of mystery and lies.
I am short, I am thin, I am monstrous and tall, But when midnight comes, I am nothing at all.”
“Let me think.” This time I wasn’t stalling for a kiss. I was stumped. Arms with no bones? A head but no face? I was mulling it over when something else caught my attention.
We both halted our horses and looked into the sky. “Valsprey,” Kazi whispered, almost as a question.
We’d seen it at the same time. A white speck in a blinding blue sky flying toward us, its massive wings gliding through the air, majestic and unearthly all at once. A wild bird? It seemed unlikely that it was a trained messenger bird, considering our location. It rapidly got closer, flying low enough that I could see the black slash of feathers above its eyes. It was a wondrous sight out here in the middle of nowhere, and it commanded our gazes. Then, suddenly, it violently catapulted backward as if hit by something. A spray of feathers exploded in the air, and it spun out of control, plummeting to the earth.
“Down!” I yelled, leaping and pulling Kazi to the ground with me. Someone had shot it out of the sky.
We weren’t alone.
