CHAPTER 4

Boys with Scars

As Archer and Sefia started toward the group, the others stepped aside for them, revealing four kneeling prisoners, heads bowed.

“Want to pick your mai-dens fair? Check the co-lor of their hair,” one of the boys began in a singsong voice, pricking each of the impressors with the tip of a dagger. “Gol-den yel-low, not yet there. Brown and dry, be-yond com-pare.”

It was a children’s rhyme, for children’s games.

But they were not children, and this was no game.

“My mother told me to pick the very best one and you are—”

“What are you doing?” Sefia interrupted.

The corners of Archer’s lips quirked upward with a sort of dark humor. He knew. And he didn’t know if he wanted them to stop.

The boy with the dagger paused. He was tall and dark, with a feral expression accentuated by the white patches at the corners of his mouth and eyebrows. It was like his complexion had flaked off in places, leaving cloud-white skin behind. “It,” he finished, leveling the blade at the impressor closest to him.

At the edge of the circle, the green-eyed boy hefted his curved sword. “Sorry, sorcerer,” he said with a shrug. “I’m going first.” Before Sefia could stop him, he stepped forward.

For a second, Archer wanted to cheer with the others. He wanted to see the prisoner’s head part from his body, wanted to hear it strike the ground, wanted to see it roll.

But he didn’t want to be the boy who wanted these things.

He wanted to be the boy who deserved to stand next to the girl beside him.

As the gleaming blade came down, Archer pulled his own sword, deflecting the other boy’s weapon into the gravel. Pebbles sprang into the air and came rattling down again like rain.

The boy glared up at him through a fringe of dark curls. He was shorter than Archer, but no less dangerous—wary and bristling like a cornered animal.

This wasn’t his partner from the battle. This was a feral creature deprived of its basic needs. A creature Archer too easily recognized in himself.

His palms tingled. He could picture their next moves—countering, thrusting, slashing, drawing blood. It’d be a brutal fight. Satisfying.

At the thought, his arm dropped.

The other boy straightened. “We owe you our thanks, friend, but if you knew what they did to us, you wouldn’t be protecting them.”

Archer bit back a reply. He’d been cursed and berated, prodded and beaten. He’d been made to think he had no other choice but kill or die. Turned into a murderer. An animal. With his free hand, he jerked his collar down, showing the others the blistered scar at his throat.

The boy’s eyes widened. “Or maybe you do.” He looked to Sefia, as if searching her for the same scar, before turning back to Archer. “What’s your name, friend? Where’d you come from?”

“Archer. From Oxscini.”

“I’m Kaito. Kemura. From the north.” The boy reached for Archer’s arm, almost touching the two brands visible beneath the fold of his sleeve. “How many did you—”

Archer’s kills flashed through his mind—battered, disfigured, impaled, all of them surprised.

“Too many,” he murmured.

The thought flashed across his mind before he could stop it: And not enough.

“How about one more?” Kaito waved him toward the impressors. As if on command, the other boys backed away. “You deserve it.”

Archer’s fingers tightened on his sword. He deserved a lot of things for what he’d done. Did he deserve this, for what had been done to him?

The nearest impressor blinked up at him through eyelashes encrusted with blood.

Watery eyes, like Hatchet’s.

It would be easy. It would be right.

“Archer,” Sefia whispered.

The name brought him back. His name, not boy or bootlicker. He wasn’t back there anymore. He didn’t have to kill, didn’t have to be what they’d made him.

He shook his head.

“Suit yourself,” Kaito said, attacking again.

And again, Archer turned the blow aside.

The other boys roared in protest.

Kaito snarled. “I like you, Archer, but do that again and you won’t like me.”

Archer sheathed his sword. He’d fought too many other boys, killed too many, in the past two years. He’d never do it again. “This won’t change what they did to you,” he said.

“But it’ll be fun.”

He thought of the way the violence had washed over him like a sudden storm, riotous, inescapable, before retreating again, leaving him dry and thirsting for more. “It’ll be temporary,” he said.

“Fun’s always temporary.”

“What about when it’s over?”

“Over?” Kaito’s eyes flashed, green as glass. “It’ll never be over.”

“I don’t want to believe that,” Archer said softly. “For you, or for me.”

For a moment it seemed like Kaito would fight him. Would fight anyone or anything for no other reason than that he needed to fight. But then he stepped back, licking his lips. “You saved us, friend, so we owe you this favor,” he muttered. “You want responsibility for these bonesuckers? Take it. But don’t make me regret giving it to you.”

“You won’t,” Sefia said.

He rubbed the scar on his cheek. “All right.” He nodded at the others, and they hauled up the impressors, marching them, not without a little roughness, toward the crates.

As Kaito turned to join them, Archer caught him by the elbow. “Thank you,” he said.

“I don’t want your thanks.” The boy tossed his dark curls out of his eyes. “I want your word that whatever you do with the impressors, it’ll be as good as if they were dead.”

With a glance at Sefia, Archer nodded.

“Good.” In a sudden turn of mood, Kaito slapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, let me introduce you to the others.”

•   •   •

At Sefia’s urging, Archer and the others smothered the fires, loaded the carts with the prisoners and supplies, and abandoned the dead. With some of the impressors still out there, they couldn’t risk staying.

Astride their stolen horses, they sneaked off into the night.

Now that he no longer had a fight to look forward to, Archer’s exhaustion returned. His limbs were leaden. His eyes kept closing. And though he hadn’t ridden a horse in over two years, he kept nodding off in the saddle, only to jerk himself awake again, away from his dreams.

He tried to listen for sounds of pursuit, but there was only the gentle lull of hoofbeats, the water, and the whispering of the boys. They were curious about Sefia—who she was, where she got her powers.

She told them little: She and Archer were being hunted by Serakeen’s trackers; she’d inherited her powers from her parents. Half-truths, meant to protect them.

Neither she nor Archer mentioned the Book, or the Guard, or her parents’ involvement with the impressors.

Archer watched her ride ahead, leading the others through the water. She would have helped them even if she hadn’t felt guilty about Lon and Mareah. That was who she was.

When she’d found him, he’d been nothing—not a person, barely an animal. He’d had to rebuild himself to become Archer: the boy with no past and a bright future with the girl who’d saved him.

But now that he remembered what he’d done, all the ways he’d done it, he couldn’t just be Archer. Or the nameless animal from his memories. Or the boy he’d been before that—the lighthouse keeper who’d never been in a fight in his life.

All he knew was, whoever he was now, he didn’t deserve her.

They didn’t stop until they were miles from the impressors’ camp, where they groomed the horses and put them up for the night. Archer posted sentries. They laid out their bedrolls and blankets. But no one seemed to want to sleep.

Instead, they sat under the stars and talked. They spoke for hours, sharing stories of their kills, mutilations, and captures, the names of their hometowns and of the families who thought they were dead—and whenever they began to tire, they shook themselves awake again and reached for another story.

It was like they needed stories more than they needed sleep or water or air. Like stories would bring them back from wherever they’d had to go these past months—these years—to survive.

At first Archer marveled at how much they remembered. But the more he listened, the more he understood: It was because of Kaito. Kaito was their leader, the one who’d kept them whispering to each other when they were shackled in the night, kept them repeating their names so they wouldn’t forget. He’d kept them together even as they were forced to hurt each other in training.

He was a born leader, a better brother-in-arms than anyone could’ve asked for. If Archer had had a friend like Kaito, maybe he would have come through his captivity less broken. If he’d had a friend like Kaito, maybe he still wouldn’t have so far to go.

The next time the conversation subsided, Archer cleared his throat and leaned forward. Beside him, Sefia sat up a little straighter. He could feel her arm pressing against his own, like a reminder—I’m with you.

“I—” Archer began. “The first boy I—”

But he kept hearing Hatchet’s voice and the explosion of the bullet, kept picturing the spray of blood and brain matter, kept feeling it strike his cheeks, hot and wet.

Panic skittered through his veins. His pulse quickened. He couldn’t breathe. He could barely see.

Grasping in his pocket for the worry stone, he clasped it so tight its facets dug into his skin. I’m not back there anymore, he told himself. I’m safe.

Slowly, the refrain brought him back. His body echoed. His blood slowed. I’m safe. I’m safe.

But he couldn’t tell them what he’d done. If he did, if he brought all the things he did in his nightmares out into the light, where he couldn’t look away, it made them real. It made him the monster he already feared he was.

Sefia sat back again. He hated the disappointment etched into her features, hated himself for disappointing her. But he didn’t deserve anything but her disappointment, her judgment, her revulsion. He tried to catch her eye, to tell her he was sorry, but she avoided his gaze.

In the silence, Kaito got to his feet. “Come on,” he said, beckoning to Archer. “I bet the sentries could use a break.”

The sentries had been changed less than an hour before. But now, sensing Archer’s discomfort, Kaito was watching out for him, same as any of the others.

When Archer stood, Sefia suddenly became absorbed with her hair, splitting the ends of each strand apart one by one as if there were nothing more important in that moment.

“Don’t do that!” Frey, sitting next to her, flicked out a spring-loaded blade and extended it handle first. “You’ve got to trim it or it’ll just get worse. Before my mom died, she used to scold me all the time for ruining my hair. Good thing she taught me how to deal with it before she and my dad were gone, because my brothers could not have cared less . . .”

Frey’s voice faded as Archer and Kaito walked into the darkness, where they sent Versil, the boy with the dagger from earlier, and his twin, Aljan, back to the group.

As they began patrolling the clearing with its rocks and willows, so like the one they’d just left, Kaito ran a hand up and down his scarred cheek. “You know, they used to tell us fifteen was a magic number. Fifteen, and we’d go to the Cage. Win there, and it would be over. Win there, and we’d be free.”

“Winners get sent to some place called the Academy.”

“A school?”

Archer shrugged.

“I didn’t believe them, not really.” Kaito fidgeted with his sword, drawing it halfway out of his scabbard and letting it slide back again with a sharp clack. “But I fought harder. I killed everyone I came up against. Because it wasn’t about the freedom, was it? It was about the fighting. And now I am free . . . but when I think of those bonesuckers still out there, all I want is to keep fighting.”

“You mean the ones we ran off tonight?”

Clack, clack. “And the rest. The other crews in Deliene. The ones in Liccaro and Everica and Oxscini . . . even Roku, probably.”

Archer looked up sharply. “How many Delienean crews are there?” he asked.

“Four, including our—including the one we broke up tonight.”

Three crews of impressors still in Deliene. Three crews of impressors still kidnapping boys and turning them into killers. Three chances to fight, to strike back against the Guard. And prove he wasn’t their monster. He was someone else. Someone new. And if he did this, maybe he’d find out who that was.

•   •   •

Later, as Archer returned to the group, he couldn’t stop thinking of it. Three crews left in Deliene.

And Kaito’s words: All I want is to keep fighting.

As he drew near, he heard Frey speaking again: “All these months, they made me . . . They didn’t believe me when I . . .”

Frey, Archer had learned, was a girl. That was why Kaito had thought Sefia might have been a candidate too. At first glance, Frey had had the same straight hips and stubbled jaw as the others, but once she’d donned a blouse and riding skirt she’d found among the impressors’ things, she’d started carrying herself in a way that made it impossible to see her as anything other than the girl she was. In fact, sitting beside Sefia, with their black hair and high cheekbones, they looked remarkably like sisters.

Sefia shifted aside for Archer as he sat down again, but she still didn’t look at him.

“It was last summer,” Frey continued, “and my friends and I were going out swimming. But the impressors caught us before we even made it to the river. We were so afraid. They separated the girls from the boys . . .

“I don’t know what my friend Render thought was going to happen, but when the impressors put me with the other girls and started executing us, he leapt forward. ‘That’s not a girl!’ he shouted. At first they laughed at him, but he kept saying it. ‘That’s not a girl! That’s not a girl!’” She balled her fists.

“Your friend betrayed you?” Sefia asked.

“He killed me. In a different way. In a way that hurt worse than one of their bullets. I’d known him my whole life. I trusted him. I thought he . . . Maybe he wanted to protect me, but he should’ve known . . .” Frey’s gaze turned stony. “After a week, he begged me to kill him. And the next time we trained, I did.”

Again, Archer heard Hatchet’s command, Fight, or he dies. Again, he felt the mist of blood on his lips. In his pocket, he clutched the worry stone to stave off his panic. But this time the refrain was different, and it calmed him immediately.

Three crews.

Keep fighting.

Swallowing, Sefia wrapped her arms around her knees. Guilt suffused her features, and he knew she was thinking of her parents. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry they took you.”

Frey touched her burned throat. Her eyes narrowed to slits. “I wasn’t who they were looking for. None of us were.”