CHAPTER 16

The Secret Keepers

Sefia found the next crew before they’d even turned in Obiyagi and the other prisoners. The impressors were in Gorman, fleeing south from the cold with five boys in tow.

When he heard the news, Archer swept her into his arms and kissed her, teasing her bottom lip with his teeth. After waiting for him for so long, she still ached at his touch.

They turned north again, with weeks of riding ahead. The days shortened. Fog settled in the dales, and dew blanketed the fields at dawn. Nights grew chill as rain swept over the Heartland. During rest stops on the road, Sefia and Archer would find each other—sneaking kisses behind the carts, fingers roving along waists and exposed collarbones—until Griegi came in search of apples for his campfire cobbler or Kaito came to ask when they’d get a move on, and they’d spring apart again, breathless.

In the evenings, Frey and the boys began to spar—Kaito’s idea, to sharpen them up. Everyone fought everyone, and unless one of them was fighting Archer, you didn’t know who’d come out on top.

Only Kaito, if he was lucky, could best Archer.

One time the Gormani boy wrenched Archer’s arms behind his back and wrestled him into the dirt. “Gotcha!”

Watching from the sidelines, Sefia saw Archer’s eyes glaze over. He struggled—not like the fighter she’d come to know but like an animal in a steel trap. He flailed. He spat. He clawed and gasped. Surprised, Kaito backed off immediately, but instead of standing, Archer curled up on his side. He couldn’t seem to breathe. It was like something had shattered inside him that couldn’t be pieced back together.

Sefia rushed to him, drew his hand gently to his neck, where the worry stone now hung from a leather cord. He hadn’t had an attack like this in weeks, not since their battle with Obiyagi. “You’re not back there,” she whispered, smoothing his hair away from his forehead. “You’re safe.”

I’m safe, he mouthed. But he couldn’t seem to find his voice.

When he was calm enough, Kaito helped him to his feet. “I’m sorry, brother. I didn’t know.”

They embraced swiftly, all arms and chests. “It happens to all of us,” Archer murmured.

After that, Sefia didn’t watch the fights. It was like Archer and the others were addicted to violence, the thrill of it maybe, no matter how much it hurt them.

When the skirmishes were over, Archer would come find her, wherever she was, alone with the Book. He’d be scraped and bruised, with skin peeling from his knuckles, and he’d explain how everyone was coming along. He’d tell her how Frey could hold her own against boys twice her size. How if Griegi got a hold on you he wouldn’t let go. How one time Versil wouldn’t stop dancing, laughing, around the ring until he let his guard down and Scarza hit him so hard it knocked his smile askew.

Archer was happy—happier than she’d seen him since the Current of Faith.

Sometimes they’d pass the rest of the watch together—Sefia leaning into him while she read, his fingers trailing gently through her hair. Sometimes he didn’t appear until she was walking back in the rain, and he’d catch her and kiss her in the downpour, water coursing down their faces, making their mouths slick and their fingers stray.

Sometimes his lips tasted of blood.

Later, when Archer returned to the tent he shared with Kaito and Sefia retreated to hers and Frey’s, Frey would be waiting up for her, whittling wooden utensils for Griegi or sharpening her switchblade, and she’d eagerly demand details.

“It took almost a year to get Aljan to talk to me,” she said once, flipping her blade from one hand to the other. “It’d better not take that long for him to kiss me.”

“I waited sixteen years for my first kiss,” Sefia said, settling into her cot.

Frey twirled her knife in one hand before snapping it closed again. “I waited fourteen.”

“Who was it?”

“Render.” The boy who’d given her up to the impressors. The boy she’d killed.

“Oh.”

“This was his switchblade,” Frey said. “I took it back from the impressors the night you found us.”

Sefia turned onto her side, watching the other girl in the darkness. “Do you think he would’ve wanted you to have it?”

“I hated him, and I loved him, and I killed him.” She slipped the knife beneath her pillow before she crawled under the blanket. “I don’t keep it for him. I keep it for me.”

Sefia reached over the side of her cot, where the green feather lay with her other personal items. As she caressed the vane, she remembered the night Archer had given it to her. The way its colors flashed. The shapes his fingers made in the starlight. How close they’d been without even touching.

So much had changed since then.

Archer still talked to her often about the impressors, the Book, her parents, but he had stopped telling her about the boys he’d killed. He had stopped telling her about his nightmares, if he still had them.

“It’s done,” he’d say. Or, “It’s over. And there’s so much else to look forward to now.”

In fact, the more he fought, the less he shared, and the happier he seemed, like fighting was a tide that washed away his past, his grief, his guilt.

Until the tide came in again.

As Archer spent more time sparring with the others, Sefia spent more time with the Book. She combed the pages for information about her parents—their lives before the Guard, their inductions, their Apprenticeships. She even watched them fall in love: from their first confrontation in the Library over the skull, through all their clandestine meetings in the greenhouse, to their first kiss under the frosted glass.

She learned so much about Illumination from reading about them, gleaning tricks for the Sight and Manipulation she never would have discovered on her own.

Often, while Archer and the others ran drills for the coming battle, she practiced lifting stones, throwing darts, watching decades revolve past her in golden circles while she remained rooted to the spot.

Lon and Mareah had been so powerful.

And now, through the Book, they were teaching her to be powerful too.

The next night, after hours of reading, Sefia hefted the Book in her arms and headed back to her tent. Canvas domes dotted the campsite, leaking light and conversation through the cracks, and she meandered among them, listening idly to discussions to which she didn’t belong.

Except for the watch, Archer and Kaito were the only ones still up and about, prodding the embers of the dwindling campfire and laughing like little kids as sparks flew into the air.

As Sefia passed the twins’ tent, she stopped. Through the flaps, she could just make out Frey and Aljan sitting cross-legged on his cot, their knees nearly touching. Across from them was Scarza, practicing sailors’ knots Keon had taught him. He’d never been across the sea, and wanted to be prepared in case they left Deliene. Versil paced between them, up and down the center of the tent with his restless energy.

“Sounds like a joke, right?” he asked. “How many boys does it take to win an imaginary war?”

“That’s not a joke,” Frey said, plaiting her hair and pinning it up. “It’s a riddle with no answer.”

The tall boy drummed a quick ratatat on one of the tent poles. “My money’s on Archer.”

Outside in the shadows, Sefia went cold. No, it can’t be Archer.

“What about Kaito?” Scarza tightened a knot with his teeth and lifted it to examine his handiwork. He’d missed a half-hitch, but he must have been satisfied because he allowed himself a shadow of a smile.

“Kaito, yeah,” Versil said. “But he’s not the chief. He gave that up the night after we caught Obiyagi at the Rock Eater.”

The rifleman shrugged, the lamplight gleaming on his silver hair. “He kept us alive.”

“Archer’s keeping us alive now.”

“It’s not Archer,” Frey said. “The boy dies in the Red War, remember? Sefia would never let that happen.”

Suddenly the Book felt heavy, as if Sefia were carrying all of Kelanna between her hands, all of destiny, including Archer’s. Not for the first time since the ambush at the Rock Eater, she wondered if she truly was striking back against the Guard, or if she was as much their pawn as one of the impressors.

Versil’s mood darkened abruptly. He clenched and unclenched his fists, his white palms flashing. “This next crew of impressors, they’re the ones who give their boys a second brand, aren’t they? Here.” He pointed to his narrow chest.

Boys. They never called themselves candidates, Sefia had noticed, as if by using the term, they’d be giving the impressors power over them.

“Like everything else they did to us wasn’t enough. Remember the kid of theirs I fought? The kid I . . . he was younger than Mako.”

Scarza nodded once and began undoing his knot with one hand. “I remember.”

“He didn’t stand a chance. He was never going to win against guys as big as you or me. They shouldn’t have taken him.”

“They shouldn’t have taken any of us,” Frey added.

Without warning, Versil struck one of the tent poles with his fist. The canvas shuddered. Sefia jumped, clutching the Book to her fast-beating heart.

“Who does this? Who does something like this?” Each time he spoke, the tall boy hit the pole again. The wood splintered. His knuckles bled.

Sefia shrank back, as if he might see her, who she really was, what her family had done.

Versil was always the happy-go-lucky twin, always the one making jokes. He never let her see this part of him. He was supposed to have been a Historian, Aljan had told her. Their parents had been so proud when he’d gotten his apprenticeship. But after the impressors, he couldn’t focus, couldn’t get his memory to hold on to anything. He’d always be a jester and a storyteller, but he’d never be a Historian now.

The impressors had changed that.

Her parents had changed that.

“Who does this? Who does this?” he demanded. The pole cracked. Tears crept into his voice. “Who’s so sick they—”

“Brother,” Aljan said quietly.

Versil whirled on him, the pale patches of skin above his eyes making them appear wider, wilder. “One boy. They wanted one boy. For some stupid war that’ll never even come.” When he laughed, it came out like a sob. He punched the tent pole again. Something cracked, and he reared back, cursing and cradling his bloodied hand.

Aljan was already there, enfolding his brother in his arms, and for a few moments they stood in the center of the tent, silent except for Versil’s soft crying.

Guiltily, Sefia crept away. She couldn’t watch them anymore, or listen to their questions when she could have answered them all.

My father did this.

My mother did this.

My family did this.

The secret sat inside her like a stone, cold and heavy in her gut.

She knew the frustration, the confusion, the anger, felt them every time she thought of Lon and Mareah, every time Archer avoided her questions with a laugh and a kiss.

She looked for him now, but he was nowhere to be seen. The embers were cold. The camp was dark and empty. And she’d get no answers from Archer anyway, she knew.

Alone in her tent, she turned to the Book. The gilt-edged pages flashed in the moonlight.

She descended through the paragraphs, taking one after another like rungs on a ladder. Goose bumps rose on her arms. A chill trickled between her shoulder blades. When she looked up, she half-expected to see snowflakes come gusting under the tent flaps.

The Book had taken her back to the winter before her parents found Nin on the plains outside Corabel, before they told her to run.

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