~ Indebted ~
“LUKE!” I screamed, looking around.
He lunged for the gun on the ground, seemingly unharmed. Roman, on the other hand, was holding his arm, which bent back at the elbow where Luke had broken it. He kicked the gun when he saw Luke going for it. Even with the torture I saw in his face, Roman went after it too. They both reached for the gun and grabbed onto it at the same time. Yanking and grunting, they fought for control.
My ankle throbbed when I tried to go help Luke, but still, I dragged myself halfway across the room before the gun went off again. The bright flash forced me to close my eyes. I hardly heard it this time, because my ears were still mostly deaf from before. When I looked up, Luke was lying flat on his back, holding his side with a bloody hand. “LUKE!” I screamed, running toward them.
Roman was struggling to cock it back again with his good arm. My course set for Luke veered to Roman. I stomped on his broken arm repeatedly and took the gun from him as he howled in pain.
Once I had it, I picked my foot up to focus on pulling the top of the gun back. It was a lot harder than I’d expected. It clicked back and into place as Roman stood up and ran for the door. I aimed and fired chaotically. He disappeared into the hallway.
Luke took off after him with his hand still on his wounded side.
“Luke, no,” I called after him. “You need a doctor.”
He ignored me and kept going.
I struggled to cock back the gun again, and then hurried after them. Running on my ankle was excruciating, but I had to help Luke. “Luke!” I shouted in the hallway, seeing him turn to the left up ahead. “Take this gun!”
He was trailing blood behind him.
“Errr,” I grunted. The one time I really wanted to be able to run, I couldn’t.
By the time I turned after them, Roman was turning right. “Luke!” I called out again. He ignored me and turned right too.
Not being able to shoot at Roman was maddening. I’d never shot a gun in my life before that, so I knew I had as much chance of hitting Luke as I did him.
When I turned right, I watched them disappear up a long stairway with short stone steps, the same one Luke and I used to get to Rose in the boiler room.
As I got closer, I saw Luke’s headmaster standing frozen close to the top, eyes fixed on Luke. He opened his mouth to speak as Roman shoved him out of the way so he could run past. With no handrail to grab onto, gravity threatened to hurl him to his death.
Luke caught him halfway to the first fatal blow, where his skull would have undoubtedly been bashed in. Luke set his headmaster down hastily and began up the stairs again. He was slowing down, leaning forward enough that he used the hand not holding his injury to help carry his weight up the stairs.
“Why did you have to help me?” his headmaster asked breathlessly. “Knight! Get back here.” Luke kept going, though.
“Fayre,” the headmaster said darkly when he saw me. “What’s going on?”
“Roman framed Knight.” I hurried past him, my ankle hurting a hundred times worse in the merciless climb.
“You come back here!”
It crossed my mind that Ripper and Hanghard should have been there to save their headmaster when I slammed into something hard at the top of the stairs, something that I couldn’t see. And then a giant greasy man appeared. He reached out to grab my shirt before I fell back. Crooked, brown teeth snarled at me as he said, “I’ve been looking for you.”
“And I’ve got the other one,” an equally monstrous man with dreadlocks and clear blue eyes said, walking up behind him with Luke thrown over his shoulder.
“Luke!” I screamed, fighting to get away.
“Shut up, witch,” the man holding onto my suit said as he lifted me over his shoulder, too.
Luke was shivering and pale now, his eyes fluttering open enough to see me and whisper, “Kristine.”
“Let him go or I’ll shoot,” I said, pointing the gun at Luke’s captor’s face. He only laughed and nodded to the man holding me.
I felt myself being bounced up on his shoulder and then sliding back down in front of him. I did my best to hold onto the gun, but with my balance gone and everything happening so fast, the man who had dropped me took it away easily. He put one hand around my neck and the other on top of my head. “I’m gonna break your neck in two,” he said menacingly.
“No, Hanghard...” I could hear his master still trying to catch his breath as he hurried up the stairs. “...Armstrong...Get me Armstrong instead...”
Hanghard glared at me and growled as he let me go, pushing me back enough that I had to grab the wall beside me not to fall. Then he ran away with Roman’s gun.
“We’re still taking care of Knight, aye?” the man I presumed to be Ripper asked.
“No...” His Headmaster took a deep breath. “I owe him a great debt now. You must get him to the hospital wing immediately.”
Ripper looked almost as livid as Hanghard had as he turned away and walked stiffly down the hall.
“You will come with me, Fayre,” Tobias said.
“I’m going with Luke,” I said as I walked after Ripper.
“You would do well to remember that I hold his life in my hands.”
I stopped in my tracks. I felt the same frustration and stiffness Ripper had shown as I turned around.
The Cinder headmaster went down the hallway in the opposite direction as the other three. I followed because I had to. Two turns later, he stopped beside a tiny shelf with a small black vase sitting on it and picked it up. He pressed a button underneath and I heard a robotic voice say, “Headmaster Tobias Veziamo, password.”
“Loyalty to your master and to your school.”
He placed the vase back on the stand as a piece of the wall below slid back and then to the side. Lights came on in the secret room behind it. Luke’s headmaster led me into a round office room, decorated with antique-looking things. The desk he sat behind was badly stained and scarred. The books and little toys lining the walls were dusty and faded.
“Where did you get all these old things?” I asked curiously, taking a seat in a beaten up green chair.
“All taken from the house I grew up in.”
As the wall slid back in place behind me, it struck me that this headmaster might be a bit more sentimental, at least about his childhood with his parents, than mine. Suddenly, the man before me almost seemed human.
“When can I see Luke? I mean Knight,” I asked.
“The problem is that everyone is hunting you and Knight. If I let you go off alone, the first Cinder that found you would take you prisoner or kill you. I’ve given orders to every student and adult I employ to do either one of these things if they should find you.”
“Then what about Knight?! Won’t the Cinder doctors try to kill him?” I fought very hard to keep from jumping out of that chair.
“Not as long as he’s with Ripper. Any command he gives will be a command from me, and he won’t leave Luke’s side until I say otherwise.”
Cinder Headmaster put an elbow on his desk and rubbed his forehead. “I wish he hadn’t saved me from that fall.”
“Seriously? You would rather have fallen and broken half the bones in your body?”
He turned his powerful stare back on me. “Don’t you understand? Now I owe him a great debt. Whatever he wants, even. I swore I’d have him killed when he beat those guards half to death and got away. Now I can’t. I have to go back on my word, which is something I’ve never done before. My students will no longer respect me as their master.”
This was followed by a long, heavy silence. I didn’t know what to say to this. But I was so, so, so relieved to know he wouldn’t kill Luke.
“Well...maybe you could tell them he’s paid his debt—Tell them he’s suffered or been punished nearly to death and that he begged you for it. Instead of killing him like he wanted, you kept torturing him or something.”
His gray eyebrows bent down halfway to his nose. He was looking at me like I was absolutely insane. And then he cocked his head and smiled, making him look even more human. “Are you suggesting I lie?”
“Well, yeah, if that’s what it takes to keep Knight alive.”
He sat back and continued to smile, but not the happy sort, more of a deranged grin. “I do believe you’re more Cinder than Havener, deep down.”
“I am not,” I said defensively.
“You stood up to me for a Cinder. You got yourself down to the prisoner’s floor. How you did this, I have yet to figure out. You held a gun to Ripper’s head, even though Haveners don’t use them. You’re sitting here trying to help me come up with a manipulative way to get around this situation so that I’ll let your Cinder boyfriend live. And—” He leaned forward to grab my hands and turn them inward. “—you’re wearing one of my suits.” I pulled my hands away and sat back. He was confusing, not the terrifying vulture I was used to.
Maybe the last few weeks had hardened me. But it was survival. Mine and Luke’s. That didn’t make me a Cinder. “Yeah, but I’m still a North Havener at heart.”
The smile dimmed slightly, but he didn’t look angry. “I’ll find a way to explain this to my students, but first you need to explain what you said earlier—about Armstrong framing Knight.”
“Okay,” I told him everything from getting caught in the hallway on my way to find Luke up until this very moment, but I refused to tell him how I got to the underground prison cells. All the while, I couldn’t decide if I was more worried about Luke’s life or mine. He was in the hospital wing with a bullet wound. And his headmaster still hadn’t mentioned sparing my life.
“Hmm...” He leaned back in his chair and stared at the stone ceiling when I was through. “My brother would never have one of his own students killed. Always the weaker twin. If Hanghard catches him, I’ll kill Armstrong myself for making such a fool of me.” The silence that followed was driving me crazy.
I couldn’t wait to know if he planned to kill me any longer. “What about me? Will you have me killed, too? For helping Knight?”
He stared at me lazily. “That depends on him, I suppose. If he survives, the thing he’ll ask me for will probably be your safety. He loves you, I’ve been told, so much so that he would sacrifice his own life to save yours.”
“You mean you’ll kill him if he wants you to let me go?”
“I’ve already explained; I can’t kill him now. He saved me from that fall, forcing me to be forever in his debt. He’s untouchable. You don’t understand Cinder code.”
Not the clearest answer, but it sounded like we were both okay.
Except that Luke’s life was still on the line somewhere upstairs. I felt myself tearing up already. “Couldn’t I use this shadow suit to go see Knight? I need to know how he’s doing.”
“We’ll wait for Hanghard to report back. Then I’ll have him escort you to my brother and explain what’s happened.”
We sat there in that drafty room for a long time. I fought not to cry, because I didn’t want to appear weak to Luke’s headmaster. After everything he said and the way he seemed to tie the two of us together, it felt like anything I did would be a reflection of Luke. I needed his headmaster to continue viewing me more like one of his Cinders.
They weren’t all bad, after all.