Borderlands (7 page)

‘I'm . . .' Lukas looks down, unable to meet my eyes. ‘I can't tell you.'

‘You said you could explain.' Even I'm slightly startled by the coldness in my tone. ‘So explain.'

Lukas opens his mouth, looking nervous. He descends from the log and moves towards me, hands shoved into his pockets. Then he brings his hands out and gestures, uselessly, at the forest ahead. ‘I didn't have a choice. You have to understand, I –'

And that's when we hear the voices.

There's nowhere to hide but the log.

We stuff ourselves into its innards, hearts beating faster than cricket-song. The bottom of the log has deteriorated, and the ground below is sunken like a dimple, so there's just enough space to cram ourselves into sitting positions.

A moment later, they're here. I glimpse their silhouettes through a crack in the log's shell. Hunters. Sharr's hunters. And finally Sharr herself: tall and slender, her face framed by sleek dark hair. She doesn't carry a flame this time – she simply walks in silence, lips drawn together like blades.

We've been so stupid. So arrogant. Splashing through the water, joking around, acting like we were on holiday. We put too much faith in our own cleverness and too little in the abilities of Sharr and the king's hunters. Of course she knew which way we'd travel; where else would we go? Refugees don't run towards the west. They run towards the Valley.

Sharr beckons her companion after her, and I recognise the hunter with the Reptile proclivity. A couple of other shadowy figures follow before the entire group vanishes into the trees. A night breeze crinkles the canopy, and moonlight dances in tiny chinks upon the forest floor.

The forest is silent.

Lukas leans closer to breathe in my ear. ‘Are they gone?'

I've no better idea than Lukas has. But I can't see any hunters through my knothole, and I know we're hidden well inside our log. So long as we don't move . . .

‘We'll have to wait it out,' I whisper.

My only comfort is that our friends are safely cloaked in my illusion. So long as they keep silent – and so long as the hunters don't literally step on them – they're just as well hidden as we are.

Moments turn to minutes, then to longer trails of time. A few rays of moonlight sneak into our log – just enough to catch the shine of Lukas's eyes. I look away. My limbs are stiff, but I don't dare move. For all I know, a hunter could be lurking in the nearby trees.

Lukas's breath is on the back of my neck. I don't know how I feel about it. I tingle at the touch, and part of me secretly longs to draw a little closer. The rest of me wants to recoil. If he doesn't have a good explanation for sneaking off . . .

Finally, I can't stand it any more. I twist about to face him in the dark. ‘Why?' I whisper.

For a moment, Lukas seems to forget how to breathe. Then he exhales. ‘I saw something . . . when I used the eagle's eyes. Something I didn't tell you.'

‘Something bad?'

Lukas hesitates again. ‘Something only I can fix.'

‘So you decided to run away?'

‘I decided to fix it.'

I give my lips a nervous little lick. I can't help but notice that Lukas's breath smells sweet, like apricot syrup, and it's oddly distracting in the close confines of our hiding place. ‘Why didn't you tell the rest of us?'

‘I didn't want you to come. It's too dangerous.'

‘If it's not too dangerous for you, it's not too dangerous for –'

Lukas raises a gentle finger to my lips, cutting me off. ‘Danika, it's to do with my family.'

I want to swipe his hand away and tell him to shove it somewhere the sun won't shine, but I can tell he isn't doing this to be arrogant. He looks gentle, nervous, like it's genuinely paining him to keep these secrets. ‘Tell me,' I say.

‘I can't,' he whispers. ‘Not here, not now. But I'll tell you when it's safe. I promise, Danika – I'll explain everything.'

‘In the morning?'

Lukas's expression shifts a little, but he nods. ‘When it's safe.'

We fall silent for a while, just two nervous bodies squished into the dark. I remember the first time I had to hide inside a log – the night I escaped from Rourton. I'd just shot Lukas's biplane from the sky so he must have been lost in the forest as well.

‘You must have been lonely,' I whisper. ‘Those first few days after we left Rourton.'

Lukas gives a half-hearted smile. ‘I'm used to being lonely. I grew up in a family of royal nutjobs who would've killed me to inherit the throne.'

‘But now you've got us,' I say. ‘You're part of our crew.'

Lukas doesn't respond. After a couple of minutes, his fingers nudge their way into my own cupped palm. I accept his hand and squeeze gently, reassured by the warmth of living flesh against my own. His breath brushes against my cheek, a lullaby of warmth and apricot syrup.

‘Better than the last night I spent in a log,' I think. Then, too late, I realise I've whispered the thought aloud.

‘Oh?' Lukas says. ‘Is it the decor that's improved, or the room service?'

‘Teddy's rubbing off on you.'

‘Is that such a bad thing?'

I tighten my grip on his hand. ‘No,' I say. ‘No, not really. Lukas, I –'

There is a crunch in the undergrowth. We lean together, hearts hammering, as an unseen figure stomps through the foliage. I can't twist my neck far enough to search for a knothole on that side of the log, so my ears are all I have to go by.

Somehow, hearing an enemy is even worse than seeing one. It could be a man or a woman. It could be a wild animal or a hunter. It could be a figure with a gun, or a Flame proclivity, or some other terrible weapon pointed at our hiding place. I don't know. I can't see. In another second our entire world could be in flame, our bodies burning, and I wouldn't even know death was coming.

All I know is that those footsteps
crunch, crunch, crunch
. . . and their maker moves without fear. Every step is loud. Unafraid. Whatever is making that noise, it knows it's the predator, here. Not the prey.

I squeeze my eyes shut and concentrate on the feel of Lukas's hand. It's warm and moist, dampened by sweat. I run my thumb back up across his wrist and settle on his pulse point. It takes me a moment to find it, but then it's there – the thrum of heartbeat beneath skin. I force myself to calm down. We're alive. This rhythm inside Lukas's wrist is proof of that much. So long as I can feel his pulse, I know we're still alive.

The footsteps fade. A minute passes, two minutes, and finally they're gone. The world is silent. I keep still for another minute, finger pressed so hard into Lukas's wrist that it's probably hurting him. I know it's selfish, but right now I barely care. All that matters is that we are alive.

We don't speak after that – not for a long while, anyway. I release Lukas's hand and turn back to face the log. This isn't the time for long conversations. This isn't the time for anything. I yearn to stretch out my legs, to twist my torso, but it's too risky. If I punch through a wall of the log, or even crack off a slab of bark . . .

So I sit, stiff and sore, my limbs tingling.
Pins and needles
. My left leg bends at an unnatural angle beneath me, so it's the first to prickle and numb. My right arm isn't much better, as it's pinned against the wood. I'm in a narrower part of the log than Lukas, so I can't move my hands as easily as he does. I sense his quiet movements behind me – the stretches as he flexes each limb – and fight a stab of envy.

‘You all right?' he whispers.

I swallow. ‘Fine.'

Lukas must hear the discomfort in my voice, because he stops his own stretching to survey me. He detects the hunch in my shoulders, the twist in my limbs. ‘You can't move?'

‘Not a lot,' I admit. ‘But I'm fine.'

After a while, Lukas shifts his weight and places a hand on my shoulder. I tense up, but then he begins to rub. He kneads my shoulder gently, squeezing through my coat.

‘Where'd you learn to do that?' I say.

‘We used to get cramped in the biplane cockpits,' Lukas says. ‘Not a lot of space to move, and sometimes we'd be in the air for hours. Our instructors taught us this so we could help our friends when we landed.'

I fight a sudden urge to recoil. I know why a royal biplane pilot would be in the air for hours – to bomb the northern cities. Suddenly, I don't want a bar of this massage. It feels like something toxic: a way to reduce the pain of killers while their victims burn.

And Lukas used the word ‘friend'. I've never heard him call his fellow biplane pilots his friends before. Suddenly I imagine him living in the airbase, learning to fly, training alongside a dozen other teenagers. Did they take classes together? Eat dinner together? Drop bombs together?

‘I'm fine,' I tell him stiffly. ‘Please stop.'

Lukas stops. There is silence.

I twist away from him and lean back against the log. I know I'm being unfair, that Lukas never dropped a bomb on a city. He risked everything to escape from that life.

But all I can think of is my family. They died in the smoke and flame of a biplane's bomb, while alchemical spells filled the wreckage with stars. And in those hours afterwards, while I sobbed in the husk of my home, triumphant pilots were massaging the stiffness from each other's shoulders . . .

This time, the conversation really does end for good. I can't bring myself to speak, and Lukas seems too uncertain to break the silence. So we just sit there, awkward and stiff and sore.

Sometimes I hear movement in the foliage, but I can't tell whether it's a hunter or an animal. Perhaps it's too dark to scout properly. I hope so. I haven't heard any shouts or screams, so I guess my friends must still be hidden. So long as my illusion holds, they should be safe.

I don't know how I slip into sleep, but I do. One minute I'm weary and aching and feeling oddly ashamed of myself. The next minute I'm dreaming that I'm running through a forest of clouds and stars and signal flares. They burst around me in patterns of gold, scattering unnatural light through the air. I trail my hands out sideways as I run, brushing my palms through the sparks, and they nibble like tiny insects at the skin of my fingers.

Then the air smells like apricot syrup and the wind whirls around me, and everything sinks into darkness until I stand alone in a field of utter ­blackness . . .

I wake.

The log is empty.

Lukas is gone.

For a few minutes, I just sit there. It's lighter outside now – not quite dawn – and every breeze sends shadows dancing through the leaves. I clamber out of the log, too shocked to care about the throb in my limbs.

‘Lukas?' I hiss. ‘Lukas, where are you?'

Nothing. The area is deserted. I whip my head around for any sign of a trail, but I know nothing about tracking – how would I even start? I see broken branches and trampled flowers, but those could be from my own footsteps last night, or hunters prowling in the dark. They sprawl in all directions, more of a mishmash than a trail, and I realise how Sharr must have felt upon spotting our tangled foxary tracks in the Knife.

Lukas could have been gone for hours. I'll never find him on my own.

I hurry back the way we came last night, recognising the cluster of trees where I hid before revealing myself to Lukas. Then I begin to run. I almost don't care about secrecy at this point; there's no sound of human life or movement nearby, and I can't afford to waste a second. Not if Lukas is using that second to slip further away from our crew.

Liar
. He promised to tell me the truth in the morning – not to sneak off while I was sleeping. But as I plough across the island – ducking under branches and scrambling over logs – I realise Lukas never actually used those words. He said he'd tell me the truth ‘when it was safe'. Maybe he thinks we won't be safe until he's dealt with the problem. And if things go wrong . . . Lukas might get himself killed before we even know why he's left us.

Before I know why he left me.

I give myself a mental slap. This isn't about me and Lukas, and it isn't about our relationship – or lack thereof. Our kiss in the tower was just a kiss: a moment of panic between two people who thought they were about to be executed. Clearly it didn't mean anything to Lukas, so why should it mean anything to me? I've spent my life looking after myself, and I'll be damned if I'll start moping after a liar.

I burst into the clearing where our crew made camp. I expect to see them lying there, still asleep, coiled beneath our sleeping sacks. And I'm right about the sacks – or one of them, at least. It lies where I left it, crumpled in a bed of rocks and flowers. But a crimson stain is drying across its surface, and it looks half-knotted, as if someone threw it aside in terror.

My crew is gone.

I suck down a breath. It tastes hot and sharp inside my throat, more like a knife-blade than oxygen. This can't be happening. They were supposed to be safe here, hidden by my illusion. The hunters shouldn't have been able to see them. Not unless someone woke and stepped outside the magnets . . .

The magnets! It takes a moment to spot them, buried in a sea of wildflowers, but they're still here – those priceless discs I use to trap illusions. One lies a little out of place, kicked aside in the commotion. Too late, I realise how my illusion was broken. All it would take is a single hunter to knock the magnet with his boot, thinking it a stone in the dark. He would turn, startled by the clatter. His gaze would fall upon my sleeping friends: visible and vulnerable. And then . . .

I gather the magnets, cold and heavy in my hands. The packs are gone, so I've got nowhere to store them. I settle for filling my coat's inner pockets. The magnets feel like rocks, dragging me down, but they're too precious to lose. More than once they've meant the difference between life and death.

I start to gather the sleeping sack, but my hands come away sticky. Feeling the blood on my skin makes me tremble. Not because I'm afraid of blood – scruffers don't last long if they're squeamish. But it might belong to Teddy or Clementine or Maisy. They might be bleeding even now, somewhere out there in the wilderness. They might be . . .

Don't think it
. I drop the sack and try to wipe the blood from my hand. It won't shift and I find myself rubbing my hand into a bed of wildflowers, staining their petals as red as my skin. I scrunch my eyes to hold back tears. This is my fault. I left my crew without a guard. I snuck off after Lukas, instead of alerting anyone. What was I thinking – that I alone could convince him to return? That I was the only one who'd be affected by his leaving, by his lies, by his theft? My arrogance makes my stomach turn, and I scrub my hand so hard against the foliage that my palm begins to burn.

There are two possibilities. One: my friends escaped, wounded, with the hunters in pursuit. Or two . . . they're already prisoners. I suck a nervous breath and try to clamp down on my panic. There's a chance they're still free. They could be on the run, terrified and lost.

Either way, they need me.

And so I run. I leave the sleeping sack behind, a bloody token of our passage left to rot among the flowers. I tear through the trees, following the splatters of blood that litter the forest floor. I don't need any special tracking skills to follow this trail. Not when bloody fingerprints smear the trees, and red drips stain the undergrowth.

Unbidden, my brain conjures up images of last night. The dark, the terror, the chase. My friends stumbling through these same trees, doubled over, bleeding from guts or chests or shoulders . . .

The trail heads sideways, across the width of this island. It's a skinny line of land, and soon enough I reach the shore. It's steep and high: a jump into the slosh below. The island on the opposite bank is much heftier than this one. It bristles with forest, thick enough to lose yourself in. If my friends are on the run, that's where they would have headed. Somewhere with nooks and crannies, with shadows and caves. Somewhere to hide.

I take a deep breath, cursing the pre-dawn chill. Then I jump. Liquid hits me, sharp as a blade, and I can't hold back a gasp. The magnets are heavy in my pockets, dragging me down like anchors. Then my head is underwater and I flail, kicking upwards to regain my breath.

By the time I reach the other side, my limbs ache. I've done a lot of walking over the last few weeks, but for all my fitness my body's not accustomed to swimming. I feel like a jellyfish wobbling against the current. I stumble forward several metres and collapse into the undergrowth.

I fight to regain my breath. My chest rises and falls, heaving like mad. I count off the seconds in my head. Two minutes. That's all I can allow myself. If I lie here without a time limit, I might never find the strength to rise.

‘Four,' I murmur. ‘Three. Two. One . . .'

I force myself up with a grunt, before the rest of my brain has a chance to protest. I stagger backwards dizzily, crunch several unfortunate flowers into smears, and grab a tree trunk to steady myself. The world swims sideways, but I grit my teeth and force it to steady itself. I don't have time for this. My friends don't have time for this.

Where's the blood trail? It must be nearby. Somewhere, anywhere . . .

Panicking, I stagger into the trees. Apart from my breath, the only sounds are the breeze and a distant chatter of birds. The birds remind me of Lukas, and something curls into a tight little knot in my stomach. He's out here too. Alone. But I can't look for him yet – not when he left voluntarily, and my crew could be in danger. Not with that blood on the sleeping sack . . .

I force myself to stop. There's no point stumbling around if I can't find any clues. I need to refocus. What would a tracker do? I take a deep breath and taste a tang of moisture on the air. The scent of wood and rotting leaves. The sound of rustling in the canopy, the sight of tiny white flowers in the undergrowth. My friends haven't come this way. The wilderness is too clean, too perfect. No sign of blood, no sign of trampling.

A nervous breath escapes my lips. Am I heading in the wrong direction? No matter which way I turn, everything is mottled brown and green.

‘Come on, Danika,' I whisper. ‘You can do this.'

I pick a direction at random. I keep a close eye on the undergrowth, searching for signs of another human's passing. A tiny part of my brain keeps mocking me, reminding me that I could be moving away from my friends – but what am I supposed to do? I don't have a handy smuggler song to guide me . . . not any more.

And with that thought, the old song rises up in my head. I'm faintly annoyed by it, but the tune is too catchy to dislodge, so I let the lyrics guide the timing of my footfalls.

Oh mighty yo,

How the star-shine must go

Chasing those distant deserts of green.

We shall meet with the tree-lands

Then bet with the stream's hands

As star-shine's fair pistol shall gleam . . .

If only we had more verses, instructions on where to head next. How to navigate the bewildering bog of the borderlands, for a start. The line about ‘stream's hands' told us to follow the river, back when we first fled Rourton. ‘Star-shine's fair pistol' referred to a constellation called the Pistol, which pointed us towards the town of Gunning. It all slotted together so neatly.

I feel almost resentful now, which is ridiculous. It's like the song has abandoned us – it brought us this far, then dumped us to fend for ourselves. We've run out of lyrics, and now we're on our own.

Or, more literally,
I'm
on my own.

I tramp onwards, ignoring the throb in my legs. I hit a patch of arching tree roots, forcing me to take higher strides. Soon enough my thighs are burning. I press down on them with my hands, trying to build up momentum.
One, two, one, two . . . Chasing those distant deserts of green . . .

Now that I think about it, that's a very strange lyric. It refers to the Valley, of course – the folk song's ultimate destination. But why would smugglers refer to the Valley as a ‘desert of green'? Were they trying to sound poetic? That doesn't seem likely. The song is a map. It's built to be practical, with clues hidden in every line, and smugglers aren't known for their appreciation of fine art. Not unless there's a buck to be had by sneaking it over the border, anyway. Perhaps there's another meaning in that line, something we've missed . . .

And then I see the blood.

I stop walking. It's like someone's shoved a wire into my heart. My whole body seizes up, and I stare at that smear upon the leaves. My friends came this way. I've found their trail. But if one of them is still bleeding . . .

Stop it
, I tell myself.
Don't think it.
But it's too late. The thought has already entered my head and wrapped its cold fingers around the back of my skull. My friends could be dying.

I break into a run. There's no time to be subtle or to second-guess myself. There's just the thump of my footsteps, the gleam of blood and the shudder of my lungs within my chest. I duck beneath branches and twist to squeeze between trunks. Bark and leaves snare my clothes, scattering as I run.

I'm leaving a more obvious trail than a herd of foxaries, but at this point I don't care. I'd welcome the sight of a hunter; at least I could demand to know what they've done to my friends. It's an illogical thought, of course, and puffed up with enough unwarranted bravado to rival Teddy. In reality, a battle of ‘Danika vs Hunter' would end about as well as a mouse taking on a hawk. But the idea keeps me running.
I will find them. I will find them.

The forest starts to thicken. Trees twist so close together you'd think they were lovers. Branches curl over and around each other, meshing one tree into the next. The undergrowth is a tangle of shrubs and twisting vines.

I clamber about a metre up the side of a tree, then make my way along a road of branches. It seems the forest has turned to felt, as if some invisible hand has woven its foliage into matted fabric. Every breath stinks of damp wood and fungus. I've got no hope of spotting blood splatters among the shadows, but from up here it's easy to follow the trail of broken undergrowth.

I half-stagger, half-crawl, with a close eye on where I place my body weight. All I can think about is my friends. Right at this moment they could be fighting off Sharr, bleeding out in the undergrowth.

Dying.

This time, the thought comes without a fight. I let it sit there, dull and heavy. I blink hard, take a sharp breath and ignore the sting in my throat.

A sudden longing for my crew fills me, wrenching my chest so tight I can barely breathe. I picture their faces as I struggle onward. Teddy: curly hair, freckles, mouth twisting into a grin. Clementine: blonde hair and painted nails, scowling as we plan another dangerous ploy. Maisy, so much like her sister, but with that glimmer of shyness in her downturned eyes. In my mind they stare at me, cold and accusing, while blood pours from their mouths like wine.

You killed us,
they tell me.
You left us without a guard
.

I clamber forward, limbs shaking, and try to block the images from my mind.

By noon, I'm back on the ground and barely staying on my feet. The trees are thinner here, but the whole forest is beginning to feel hazy. My chest heaves and burns with every breath. My legs throb.
Must keep moving. Must keep . . .