Chasing Shadows (Saving Galerance, Book 1) (9 page)

“I’m sorry I doubted you,” he yelled out when he was just a
few feet away on the rocks.

She kept her eyes fixed on her footing beneath her. “You
haven’t just known me for a few years, Mason,” she said, continuing past him.
“No matter how much you want to forget that.”

“Well, what was I supposed to think?” he defended, jogging
up the rocks to catch up with her.

Norabel closed her eyes shut. “That I wasn’t trying to
sabotage you,” she said, her voice cracking in her constricted throat.

“That’s not what I…”

Her eyes flew up to his. “It took you all of two seconds to
decide to leave me there on the side of the road!”

“The Pax were coming; I didn’t have much time to mull the
matter over!”

“Well, why don’t you do some mulling now?”

She tried to hurry forward on the rocks, but Mason grabbed
her arm, pulling her back to him. Her breath caught in her throat as he drew
her even closer so that his forehead was resting against hers.

“I’m sorry, okay?” he breathed out, closing his eyes. “I’m
sorry.”

His hands came up to cup her shoulders, and she was finding
it very hard to breathe. Mason was so close, his scent filled her nose like a
dizzying perfume. Dusty coal and the subtly spicy scent of Snapper.

“I haven’t forgotten,” he whispered, rocking his head back
and forth against hers.

Norabel bit down hard on her lip at his admission, and found
her eyes welling with tears. When Mason lifted his forehead from hers, she
couldn’t stop her arms from reaching up and wrapping around him in a tight hug.

“I forgive you,” she whispered out, speaking almost directly
into the fabric of his shirt.

Mason’s arm wrapped around her waist, and his other hand
came up and cradled the back of her head. “Come on,” he said a moment later,
drawing away. “We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

When the two of them entered into the cave, they found Logan
and Archer with their swords fixed on Ashlin. All three of their packs had been
slung off and discarded on the floor by their feet, and Ashlin’s bow also lay
surrendered on the ground.

“Can I speak now?” Ashlin asked, directing her question to
Mason.

He nodded his head, and then motioned to Logan and Archer
saying, “Lower your swords. Logan, get a fire going.”

Ashlin rested her back against the cave wall and let her
arms fall down to her sides. Once Logan had a small flame flickering in between
a circle of rocks, she began to tell her story.

“It’s hard to find a place to begin,” she started. Then,
finding Norabel in the group of faces around her, she said, “I lied about
getting a transfer to Breccan. And my job isn’t some boring, Pax-enforced
assignment.” She looked down to where her bow lay on the ground and said, “
This
is my job. This is the only thing. My sole purpose. I mean to take down the
Pax, and kill Guardian Amias.”

The whole cave was exceptionally quiet after hearing her declaration.
Not even the chirp of a bug or the drip of water could be heard. For the
longest time no one knew what to say, until Logan finally voiced what they were
all thinking.

“How…how is that possible?” he asked with a shake of his
head. “Not the killing Guardian Amias thing, though equally unfathomable,
but…how is it possible that the Pax hasn’t assigned you a job?”

“Did you fake your death or something?” Archer asked, taking
a step forward, obviously convinced that Ashlin meant him no harm.

“It’s the Pax’s own fault that it doesn’t know about me,”
she replied harshly, Logan’s words having struck a sore subject. She absently
rubbed at a spot on her wrist and closed her eyes. “If they hadn’t sent my
mother to Arkadiak,” she said softly, “then I would have been born and branded
into the system just like everybody else.”

Norabel felt a pang of pity for this girl as she looked at
her face and saw the suffering of a painful memory hidden inside. Losing her
grandfather in a fire was certainly painful, but having your mother sent to
Arkadiak…

Though everyone had heard of Arkadiak, it had always seemed
like another world away; just something to whisper about in the night. It was a
prison up in the clouds, cut inside the rock of the tallest mountain in
Galerance. No one was ever let out or had ever escaped. There were no guards
and no cells and no order. The worst part of it was, every day at noon, wild
beast were dropped inside to both serve as the prisoners’ food, and to decrease
the prisoner population. But these weren’t just any wild beasts; they were The
Torrent, the very creatures that Amias won the war with. Bears, wolves, birds,
and even rodents, these creatures were trained to be vicious and could put
forth a scream so loud it had the power to disable the hearing of any person
within a half mile away. It’s why many people referred to the twelve o’clock
hour as the silent hour, because of what was happening in Arkadiak at that
time.

The stories all sounded bad, but she couldn’t imagine how
horrible it really was inside.

“What happened to your mom?” Norabel asked gently, suddenly
feeling bad for having accused her of being their enemy.

“She died in Arkadiak,” she admitted, turning her face to
the floor and pressing her thumb harder into her wrist. “But not before she
gave birth to me.”

“She was pregnant when they sent her inside?” Norabel asked,
half whispering the words, for they came as such a shock.

Ashlin’s shoulders slumped, and she took her hand away from
her wrist as she admitted, “They knew she was, and they didn’t care. They sent
her in anyway because she had disobeyed the Pax. Said us both dying was the
price she had to pay for her transgressions.”

“How did you make it out?” Mason asked, keeping his voice
stiff.

“I don’t exactly know,” she said, tensing her shoulders. “A
small crack in the mountainside, I guess. Or maybe she threw me up when The
Torrent were sent inside. All I know is that one day I was found crying inside
the branches of an ash tree near the dungeon’s entrance. It’s why the man who
found me called me Ashlin.”

Her eyes shifted up to the cave ceiling as she continued. “His
wife had Jotham’s Disease and couldn’t have kids, so they took me in. They
pieced together where I had come from, and they made sure to never let anyone
else know I existed. They were the only two people I ever had contact with
until…until they died a few years ago.”

“Ashlin, I’m sorry,” Archer said, taking a final step
towards her. He reached out for her arm and held it just above the elbow.

“It’s fine,” she said, trying to wave it off. “I’ve been too
busy to even think about it.”

“Busy doing what?” Logan asked.

“Trying to take down the Pax,” she said, anger flashing
through her eyes. “For the past few years, I had tried to do it from Noor
Summit, but then I realized that Breccan was the better place to start. And
that’s the truth about why I’m here. That’s why I couldn’t tell you where I
came from.”

The cave was quiet once more as everybody seemed to
deliberate what they were just told. Though Ashlin’s story seemed extraordinary
and incredibly unlikely, Norabel found herself instantly believing it. If
Ashlin really was trying to trick them, she figured she would have come up with
a more believable story. And, she couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. Maybe
she had rushed too soon to the conclusion that Ashlin was a Pax spy because she
was feeling a little jealous.

Walking over to where she stood, Norabel extended her hand,
saying, “I’m sorry I accused you. And, I know it’s not up to me, but, for what
it’s worth, I…I want you to stay.”

Ashlin looked down to her pale hand and then grasped it
firmly, so strongly, in fact, that it almost hurt. “Thank you,” she said,
staring back at Norabel with sincerity.

Mason went over to Ashlin’s discarded bow and picked it up. “Here,”
he said, extending it out for her to take back. “You shouldn’t have lied to us,
but I can forgive that.” He waited for her to grab it before turning around and
announcing, “We should hurry to the drop-off point. Malachy will wonder where
we are.”

As the guys made for the cave entrance, Norabel chose to
stay back and walk with Ashlin.

“Thank you for telling them,” she said. “You could have kept
quiet and left me there, but you didn’t. I know it must have been a hard thing
to do.”

Ashlin shrugged. “I didn’t want to be the reason you left
the team. And I knew I would have to tell you guys eventually.”

She started to walk faster to try and catch up with the
guys, but Norabel hurried forward a little ways, saying, “And I want you to
know there’s no hard feelings.”

“Sorry?” she asked, glancing back at her and then ahead to
where the boys were.

“About becoming the Shadow,” Norabel clarified. “It really
is a relief not to be the one everyone is relying on to get the job done. To be
honest, my stomach was always twisting into knots every time the guys asked
me.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry anymore,” she said, walking
faster and glancing back over her shoulder as she spoke. “I’ve got things
covered.”

Norabel scrunched her forehead in confusion, watching Ashlin
jog ahead to leave her behind. She had been trying to apologize and reconcile
with her, but Ashlin seemed almost annoyed by it. Shaking her head, she tried
to erase those thoughts from her mind. She had already thought the worst about
Ashlin, and it wouldn’t help to continue on that same course. She was probably just
the kind of girl that didn’t like talking about her feelings. That was why she
seemed so blunt.

For the next few days, the Breccan Harbinger team was busier
than they ever had been, choosing to pull off a job for four consecutive nights
in a row. Norabel had voiced her concerns about drawing too much attention to
themselves, but Ashlin had quieted those fears, saying that she had gotten away
with a lot worse in Noor Summit.

However, on the fourth night, as they were waiting for a
cart to leave the borders of Breccan, they heard the sound of horses and men
coming from the opposite direction. Staying hidden in the trees, they watched
as six carts came down the road, with a line of bowmen on horses flanking each
side. No one on the team knew what to do other than to let them pass right on
into Breccan. There were too many guards, and even if they did steal what was
inside the baskets, they would have no way of knowing to whom the items
originally belonged to.

The next day, just before Norabel left work for lunch, there
was a knock on the window to her workplace. After what happened the night
before, she wasn’t surprised that someone on the team would try to contact her
about meeting up after work; but, turning to see who it could be, she
was
surprised to find Logan and his girl Aleta waiting for her outside the window.

“Aleta!” Norabel exclaimed, rushing over to greet her. “It’s
been a while since I’ve seen you!”

She smiled pleasantly and reached out to take her hands in
greeting.

“Hey, what about me?” Logan complained, pretending to be
hurt. “Haven’t you missed seeing this dashing face?”

“Hello Logan, how are you?” she asked, spinning on the balls
of her feet to give him her attention.

“Very well, thank you,” he said ceremoniously, taking a
short bow. “And who could not be well when accompanied by such a fine young
lady?”

Aleta smiled and waved off his comment. “Logan’s always
saying things like that to make me blush.”

“I only speak the truth!” he defended. “But you do look cute
when you blush,” he added, planting a quick kiss on her cheek before pulling
away.

“So, how have you been?” Norabel asked Aleta, leaning on the
window seal and practically standing on her toes like an excited child.

“Good, thank you. Really good. I’ve actually been busier
than usual. We’ve been ordered to make a lot more dresses with the summer
festival coming up in a few days’ time.”

“That’s right,” Norabel said. “That’s at the end of this
week. I had almost forgotten.”

“I know it sounds strange,” Aleta continued, leaning closer
to her as if about to speak a secret. “But I’m actually happy about the added
work. Even though I don’t get paid any extra, it feels good at the end of the day
to be able to look back and see how much I’ve done.”

“Don’t let my brother hear you talk like that,” Logan
commented, throwing his arm around her. “He thinks anyone admitting their
happiness means they’ve submitted to The Pax.”

“He just needs to find a girl is all,” Aleta commented.
“He’ll start changing his tune then.” She turned to Norabel, adding, “Guys always
seem to forget about all their talk of glory and honor when there’s a pretty
face to look at.”

Norabel tweaked her mouth, saying, “I’m not sure Mason is
one of those guys.”

“Hey, my brother’s a man, just like the rest of us lowly
males,” Logan remarked. “Speaking of which, he wants us to meet at our place
today after work.”

Turning to Aleta, she asked, “Are you going to be there?”

“Oh, no,” she shook her head. “I’m not really part of the
team.”

“You don’t want to meet our charming new addition?” Logan
asked dryly. “Maybe you girls could all try on dresses afterwards.”

Aleta shot him a playful glare and lightly bumped his arm. “
I’ve
got work to do. But you’re more than welcome to play dress-up if you like.” She
then turned to Norabel, saying, “I’ll see you at the summer festival.”

“Sure,” Norabel said, waving goodbye to her as she strolled
down the street, leaving Logan behind.

“I should probably run to catch her,” he remarked, leaning against
the side of the building as he studied Aleta’s retreating form.

“You don’t want her getting away,” Norabel agreed.

“No, I wouldn’t want that.” Slapping his hand against the
wood of the building, he gave Norabel a quick goodbye before running after
Aleta and wrapping her up in a swirling hug from behind.

That afternoon, as Norabel was about to leave for Mason and
Logan’s house, she noticed that her co-worker Wren had not come out of her
work-station yet. She had been exceptionally distant ever since her mother had
grown ill, and every time Norabel had tried to ask her about it, she would
simply answer that everything was being done for her, yet nothing was changing.

Deciding that it wouldn’t matter if she was a few minutes
late to their Harbinger meeting, Norabel ventured back inside the workhouse and
knocked on Wren’s door. When no one answered, she timidly opened it a crack and
peeked inside. She found Wren in the center of the room, hunched over her
potter’s wheel with her face buried in her hands. She couldn’t tell if she was
crying, but tears or not, she was clearly distressed.

“What’s the matter?” Norabel asked gently, rushing over to
her and placing a hand on her shoulder.

Wren lifted her hands from her face, revealing puffy red
eyes and a harried expression.

“Has your mother’s condition changed?” Norabel asked.

She shook her head no.

“Then please, tell me what’s bothering you.” She lightly rubbed
her shoulder, trying to comfort her.

Wren’s body convulsed as she took in a deep gasp of air.
“I’ve…” she started. She took in another swallow of breath and sniffed to clear
her nose. “I’ve been red flagged!”

“What?” Norabel whispered in disbelief. “But why…why would
they do that? You haven’t done anything wrong!”

“It’s all the late night trips to my mother’s! The official
at the north-eastern checkpoint must have thought…” the words choked in her
mouth, and she shook her head.

“But surely they don’t suspect you of plotting against
them!”

“They can suspect anyone they want to,” she replied
dismally.

“Can’t the doctor vouch for you?” Norabel insisted. “Can’t
he explain that the reason you’ve been travelling in the night is so you can
visit your sick mother?”

“There’s no point.” Wren stared down at her lap, curling her
fingers into her palm. “I’ve been red-flagged. They won’t take that mark off my
name for at least a month.”

“But…” Norabel stuttered, wanting to still fight it even
though she knew Wren was right. A red-flag was a serious matter. Anyone
red-flagged had their Amias Gift taken away, had their house raided more
frequently, and was only allowed to pass once to and from the checkpoint
between their home and work. Since Wren lived in a different sector than her
mother, it meant that she wouldn’t be able to visit her anymore.

She wished she could tell Wren about the different methods
she learned in order to avoid the Pax checkpoints at night. She needed to be
able to move quickly through the village in order to get to the woods as a
Harbinger, and had become an expert at slipping past the checkpoints in the
shadows when the man inside was distracted. However, even though Wren was her
friend, she knew she couldn’t tell her about the skills she learned as a
Harbinger. Even if she did, Wren wouldn’t be able to apply them herself.

“Do you have any way of getting word to your mother?”
Norabel finally asked.

“I was able to tell her neighbor what happened. He promised
to pass the message on to her.” Wren looked up and, noticing the look of concern
etched on Norabel’s features, added, “Please don’t worry about us. You’re
young; you shouldn’t be weighed down by my troubles as well as yours. Go on
outside and have fun. Please, try and forget about this.”

Though Norabel knew that she wouldn’t be able to forget even
if she tried, she nodded and reluctantly left the grieving woman alone.

When she arrived at Mason and Logan’s home a few minutes
later, everyone else was already there. Mason, Ashlin, and Archer were gathered
around the rectangular wooden table in the center of the kitchen, hunched over
a map of Galerance. Logan was behind them, kneeling in front of the hearth. He
had a basket and a coarse hand broom, and was sweeping up the ashes from the
fireplace.

“Logan, do you think you could wait to do that?” Mason asked,
turning back to his brother and eying the small, black cloud of soot he was
kicking up. “This is kind of important.”

Logan craned his neck to look up at the table and wiped his
sleeve across his forehead. “Certainly, brother, I would like nothing better.
Unfortunately, kitchen hearths don’t just clean themselves. And if I don’t do
this now, then we can’t make a fire later. And if we can’t make a fire later,
then we can’t have dinner, and with no dinner, how can you expect to take down
the Pax?” He turned back to the hearth, adding, “You don’t think Amias took
over the kingdom on an empty stomach, do you?”

Mason shook his head and sighed. “Just try and pay attention
down there.”

Logan raised his hand broom in the air and gave it a few
shakes in response. With the sound of his bristles sweeping against the stone,
Mason directed their attention down to the tattered parchment map on the table.

Studying it carefully, Norabel’s eyes were first drawn to
where Breccan stood in the west. To the north stood Noor Summit, to the east,
the capital city of Cashel, and Fairbrooks laid to the south. Several other
points on the map had also been labelled. In the mountains between Cashel and
Noor Summit, a dot was labeled for the dungeons of Arkadiak. On the opposite
side of Cashel, lying to the south west, a small barrier had been drawn to
denote the Forest of Liadrel. The line was drawn in red, for it was illegal to
enter into this forest. Long before the Pax had ever existed, Liadrel had been
labelled a dangerous land of temptations, and all human presence had been
banned from it.

Standing in between each of the four major villages of
Breccan, Noor Summit, Cashel, and Fairbrooks, was the vast Valor Forest.
Several lines went through it, noting the roads and paths that one could take depending
on which village they were travelling to.

“Back when I was in Noor Summit,” Ashlin said, placing her
finger at that point in the mountains, “we tried to develop a way to figure out
where a load came from whenever a caravan should come into the city.”

“Why should it matter where they came from?” Logan asked,
his head popping up over the lip of the table.

“Hey! Do you mind!” Archer exclaimed, shoving Logan a little
further away from him. “You’re dropping soot on my pants!”

“Think of it as perfume,” he said, tossing his broom into
the basket of ashes. “I know how much you love that.”

He stood up with the ashes, about to dump them outside, when
Archer lunged out for him, making him spill some on the floor.

“Ah great!” Logan exclaimed, looking down to the dirty
floor. “Now I’ve gotta clean that up too!”

“That and your shirt,” Archer said with a smirk.

“My shirt?” he asked in confusion, looking down.

At that, Archer scooped a handful of ashes from the basket
and lobbed them right at Logan’s chest.

Before Logan could retaliate, Mason turned to them, saying,
“Will you two stop horsing around?!”

Logan shot Archer a glare but was careful to keep his mouth
shut. He quickly went to the back door and dropped off the ashes, returning a
moment later.

“It mattered where the shipment came from,” Ashlin continued
from before, “because we wanted to know what to expect. Nearly everything
coming from Cashel was meant to win the people’s favor. Shipments from Fairbrooks
were usually food, and, no offense, but everything that came from Breccan was
bad news. You deal in steel and weapons here, and it bulked up the security in
Noor Summit.”

“How could you tell where a shipment came from?” Archer
asked. “Was the village name on cart or something?”

She shook her head. “No. They don’t put the village names on
anything anymore. Now everything is branded with the mark of the Pax. The way
we were able to tell where the shipments came from was a little more creative
than just reading a name off a basket.”

“What? Like seeing how long the two horse-riders’ beards
were?” Archer guessed.

“Archer, how would that possibly work?” Logan asked from
where he was crouched on the floor, sweeping up the stray ashes that had
fallen.

“Well, I don’t know! Maybe if they had a really long beard
or something, she’d know they had been on the road a long time.”

“And what if they already had a beard before they left?”
Logan pointed out.

“The two guys were sharing the same beard?”

“What?”

Archer scrunched his brow at the thought of it. “That’s
kinda gross.”

“Yeah, it didn’t have anything to do with beards,” Ashlin
broke in, hiding a smile. “It was a little more accurate than the length of
male facial hair. I was talking about horse feed. If we stayed to see the
officials unloading the cart, we counted how many bags of empty feed they took
out. The more empty bags, the longer the trip.”

“So what about the caravan last night?” Norabel asked. “Did
you get a look at how many feed bags there were?”

Ashlin looked up from the table, her mouth titling in a
mischievous smile. “Course I did.”

“And?” Archer prompted.

“And, based on the number of horses present, I did the math
and figured that they were probably on the road for around ten days. Now, on
horseback, but travelling in a caravan, that means they could have travelled,
maybe forty miles a day. That would mean, uh…” She stopped and looked to Mason.
“Do you think I could borrow a bowl and something to write with?”