46.1 km from flash curtain
I TEAR MY hood back the moment we reach the trees. It’s thin cloth, but I suck in air like I was suffocating. Dram lifts his hood, and I can see the storm in his eyes.
“Go ahead,” I murmur. “Tell me we’ll be fine. We handled King before, we will again.” Dram releases a shaky breath and drags a hand through his hair.
Moments pass. He doesn’t offer me any false assurances.
“He doesn’t know the provinces,” Dram says finally. “Congress might’ve supplied him with tech, but he won’t know how the free Conjies move, or what our camps look like.”
He’s right. Free Conjies use their abilities to blend with nature. Not even Dram and I would’ve found them on our own. They aren’t usually seen unless they want to be seen.
“He’s not a free Conjie,” Dram adds. This, more than anything, assures me. Conjurors born free—beyond the bonds of Alara—are raised attuned to the elements and develop abilities beyond those of their counterparts in the protected city.
“Conjuring ability won’t matter,” I say. “If he gets close enough, he can use tech.”
“Then we don’t let him get close.”
We lift our hoods back over our heads and blend into the night.
* * *
I sit beside the fire, my knife within reach. Newel posted extra Conjies to stand watch, and I’ve stayed up with them, feeding logs into the fire.
“Let him come,” they say, with a sort of nervous anticipation.
They don’t understand King. It makes me think of when Meg found us hunting flash vultures and tried to assure us they were “just birds.” King is just a man, a Conjie, but he is also something feral, with the hunger of a flash vulture.
Dram, Bade, Aisla, and Roran surround me—in ways not meant to seem obvious. Dram must’ve told them some of the story, about cages and dusters and a place called Sanctuary.
Fear can be helpful, Graham would say. Keeps us from staying in one place too long. Sometimes it nudges us in the right direction.
I sit sketching, putting an idea to paper. The more details I add, the more I convince myself it’s real.
“What are you drawing?” Aisla asks, looking over my shoulder.
“Working on a theory,” I say, shifting so she can see the map I’ve sketched. “This is Cordon Five—” I point to one edge of the paper. “This is where the Barrier Range was before the Congress blew it up, and these are the places where I think the tunnels are. If they didn’t all collapse.”
“What’s so important about tunnel six?” she asks, skimming her finger over the place I’ve filled in with the most detail.
Roran lifts his head. He doesn’t look at us, but I watched his shoulders tense when I mentioned Cordon Five. I haven’t shared this with him—not even with Dram. I didn’t acknowledge the idea to myself at first, either, but it kept circling my thoughts, fighting past my shock and grief.
“It’s where my friends are, if they’re still alive.”
“Why do you think that?” Aisla asks.
“Water.” I speak the word like a prayer, a hopeful belief, too fragile to throw out carelessly. Like the shell on display in the lodge at Outpost Five—small and chipped, yet powerful enough to make us believe in a place we’d never seen.
It’s like the word is a summons. First Dram, then Bade and even Roran lean in to see what I’ve drawn. I feel suddenly like Dad, having to explain equations I haven’t finished solving.
“The Sky,” Dram murmurs, his gaze skipping over the sketch, reading it like a caver. Suddenly his eyes widen, and I know the moment he latches onto my idea. Blue eyes meet mine over the tops of heads.
“What do you think?” I ask.
“If Owen or Roland survived, then it’s possible. If the cavern held.”
“Somebody translate their caver’s code,” Bade grumbles.
“Survival,” I answer. “With Roran gone, the first thing they would’ve gone after was a water source. There’s nothing in the cordon, so they would’ve had to go back in the direction of Outpost Five—but just as far as the rubble of the Barrier Range. Specifically, tunnel six.”
“How do you know?” Bade asks.
“Most cave water isn’t safe to drink—the bacteria will make you sick. But down six is a pool of blue water, a secret memorial cavern that every caver knows how to find—the Sky.”
“Wouldn’t Roran have seen them?”
“Cordon Five is clouded with flashfall—it’s one of the things that make it a good place to hide. If they were sheltering underground from flashbursts, I can see how they might’ve lost each other. They wouldn’t have spent more than a day searching for Roran—” I glance at him. “I’m sorry, but Owen wouldn’t have let them. He knew you could survive, and he would’ve had to think about keeping the others alive.”
“Owen?” Bade asks. “He’s a Subpar?”
“Yes, a Third Ray caver, and a scout. He would’ve been the one to lead them.”
“You’re assuming they could dig their way down through rock and rubble to this cavern?”
“They could,” Dram says.
“They had full caving gear,” I add. “Oxinators, rations, medkits … If they survived the flashburst—and if the cavern held—there’s a good chance they’re alive.”
“It’s been two months,” Aisla murmurs. “If they ran out of rations…”
“Tunnel gulls,” Dram and I say at the same time.
“It’s how the forfeit survived,” he says. “Subpars who were sentenced down tunnel four for noncompliance weren’t supplied with rations.”
“There’s more,” I say softly. “This cavern, it’s…”
Sacred doesn’t seem like the right word. I’m not sure I can put the Sky into words.
“It’s like a talisman,” Dram says. “If a place could be a talisman.”
Bade studies us for a long moment. Finally he nods. “Then you have to go after them. Somehow.”
I lift my gaze to the young boy standing so still. Too still, like the wrong word might make him shatter. “I don’t want to give you false hope, Roran. I could be wrong about all of this.”
“My mom would’ve stayed,” he says, his voice thick with emotion.
“I know.” Maybe this is why I didn’t share my thoughts earlier—because he’s right. It’s possible Mere would’ve died searching the cordon before she gave up trying to find her son. Her mother’s instinct is stronger than her survival instinct. My eyes fill with tears. I drop my gaze, but too late. Roran runs off.
“Let him grieve her,” Bade says. “We don’t have any real reason to believe she’s alive. That any of them are.”
“Just a fragile hope,” I murmur.
“No such thing,” Aisla says. I meet her green eyes, which are filled with some emotion I can’t interpret. “Dram said the Sky is a talisman. I’d say that’s pretty powerful.”
* * *
The screams sound inhuman.
I jolt upright, still caught in the foggy remnants of a restless sleep. It’s dark; the fire has died. I listen for the sound that woke me. Was it a vulture? It sounded like a man. A man in pain. The ground shifts beneath me, and I shove my sleeve up and use the glow of my Radband to see it. At first, I don’t understand how the pine needles and dirt seem to be melting. Then, suddenly, I do. King.
“Orion!” Dram’s voice, but garbled, like he’s drown—
I sink. Mud surrounds me, sucks me deeper. I scream, and it fills my mouth. I struggle to lift my arms above my head. It’s like lifting my caving gear. Mud oozes into my ears, my eyes. I thrash but barely move.
How like King, to kill us horribly rather than trading us for freedom.
All at once, the mud evaporates. I flop forward onto a carpet of grass, coughing, spitting mud. My arms weigh a thousand pounds, but I drag them across my eyes so I can see. Roran crouches at my side, his hands still pressed to the ground. He grits his teeth, and the mud pushes back.
“Stay down!” he shouts.
He saved us. I can’t speak. Dram drags himself across the ground to my side. He holds his pistol out to Roran, who grasps it and conjures away the mud without looking. We scan the darkness for our attackers.
King laughs, the sound lifting from the trees a few meters away. Dram levels his gun at the shadows.
“Ah, how I’ve missed you, Orion,” King says. I stand, shaking, mute, caked in mud. My lungs ache. Part of me is still drowning. “The Congress promoted me,” he says.
“You’re still wearing their collar,” I mutter.
They leap from the trees like wolves, all three of them at once. A wall of clashing matter collides as free Conjies rush to meet them. Energy pulses around us, exchanges of matter so rapid it makes my head spin. A scent on the air, verdant, like grass pulled up from the roots. Then fire, smoke, and electricity in the air like lightning.
Gunshots rip across the night, the sounds reverberating over the mountains. Birds scatter from the trees, children cry. Men shout, and I can’t tell if they are ours or theirs.
Bade rushes by, arms swinging, fire launching from his hands. He catches one of the men in the chest, knocking him off his feet. The man yells, and I recognize the sound that woke me. He conjures the flames to water, then lurches up, aiming a weapon unlike any I’ve seen. Something illuminates Bade’s hands, like the ionic marks trackers use, then twin bolts launch toward him. Webs of metal wrap around Bade’s hands. Cirium binders.
“The Congress gave us toys to play with,” the man calls.
I run to Bade’s side, reaching for a weapon. My knife. I left it back beside the fire. It’s somewhere deep beneath the earth, in mud that isn’t mud anymore.
“Rye!” Dram shouts. He throws his pickaxe, and I catch it.
I grasp Bade’s bound hands and shove them against a rock. “Don’t move.” Every metal has its breaking point. Even cirium.
“You can do this?” Bade asks, his eyes wide.
“I’m really good at this.” I focus on the loose links and swing my axe. The metal shatters apart. Bade frees his hands, muttering Conjie words I don’t know. Then he conjures a spear of rock that sails across the clearing into the man’s chest.
“Conjure that to water,” Bade mutters. The man collapses to the ground.
Suddenly, King grabs me from behind, his hands around my throat.
“Stop!” he shouts. “One move—from any of you—and I conjure a branch right through her neck.”
Everyone stills.
“Weapons down.” King slides a glance to Dram.
Dram reluctantly drops his gun, his gaze fastened to King’s hand on my throat.
“The Congress wants the Scout and Berrends. Alive. We’re going to take them, and you’re going to let us.”
“No.”
We all look to see who dares refuse the mad Conjie. Aisla. Bade’s bonded mate. She walks toward King as if he’s not about to spear me with conjured bark. She extends her left arm to Bade, and he grasps her forearm. I stare in shock as he conjures away her skin. A blue Codev glows in its place.
“You can conjure a Codev?” King asks. Even he sounds impressed.
“Ordinance gave me this,” Aisla answers. “Bade just helps me hide it.”
“You see that symbol on her arm?” King’s man calls. “She’s a Vigil! We need to get away—”
“CEASE!” King roars. “I have the power here! I’m not afraid of some Gem.”
“You should be,” Aisla says. She shifts her arm, and the collared man jolts, then drops like a stone.
King’s hand loosens, and I lurch from his grasp. He conjures a rock wall and dives into the trees. Bade and Aisla sprint after him. Dram retrieves his gun and jogs to my side. He pulls me into his arms.
“They’ll have announced our location to the Congress,” Newel calls. “We move. Now!”
Dram and I turn to gather our gear, and Newel stops me with a hand on my arm.
“I haven’t seen Aisla’s Codev since she was a child,” he says. “You must be very special to her.”
“She’s special to a lot of people,” Dram says.
“Yes, but Aisla risked more than her life by revealing herself like that.”
“They’ll come after her?” I ask.
“Not the Congress,” Newel says. “Ordinance.”
“She’s not a Conjuror, then?”
“No. She was sent to hunt us, years ago. We adopted her instead.” He looks at the Conjies hurriedly loading supplies. “I suppose that’s the nature of secrets. Apply enough pressure, and they unravel. Nothing stays hidden indefinitely.”
* * *
Bade and Aisla meet up with us hours later, slinking in from the woods, once more looking like they’re part of it.
“The Congress picked him up before we could get to him,” Bade announces grimly. He conjures away their camouflage, and I see that Aisla’s Codev is again just a smooth patch of skin.
“Thank you,” I tell her. I glance at the other Conjurors, hard at work constructing a new camp, even more concealed than the last. “Did they know about you?”
“Yes. Conjies are good at keeping secrets.”
“What you did to that man … Can all Gems do that?”
“No. Vigils are genetically modified for a specific purpose.”
“King probably told them what you did,” I say. “They know your secret now.”
“Not all of them,” she says softly. “This world is changing.” She looks up toward the flashfall, visible in the distance. “Not even the provinces are safe anymore. The flash curtain, the Congress—it’s all so unpredictable.” She crouches and draws an inverted V in the snow. “Only Vigils bear this mark,” she says. “If you ever see this symbol on a Codev—run.”