Chasing the Valley (24 page)

‘Follow my knife,' repeats Maisy. ‘Yes, that could be a reference to the Knife as a passage east.'

‘It'd explain the
frozen night
line too,' Teddy says. ‘That's why the song reckons you should cross the mountains near Midnight Crest – it's what you use to find the Knife.'

I force myself to rise. It's not as painful as I was expecting; a day of rest and decent food has done my body good. There's still a slight throbbing in the back of my skull, but I think I can cope with that. At least I'm not likely to collapse as soon as we step outside.

Maisy collects a fistful of smouldering twigs to transport our fire, then stamps out the remaining embers. We scatter the burnt twigs and cover them with snow.

‘Don't want to leave an obvious trail,' says Teddy. ‘Not if we can help it, anyway.'

Outside, the mountainside is almost unrecognisable. Half the trees have burned away, and the undergrowth is ash. Maisy has to extinguish her fire twigs because the spiral of smoke is too obvious in this barren landscape.

Burnt sticks crunch beneath our boots as we struggle through the snow and ruined forest towards the crag. The air still stinks of smoke, which meshes oddly with the cold tang of the winter wind. I suck on another orange as I walk.

By the time we reach the crag's peak, the light is just beginning to fade. It's a decent observation point: a rocky chunk that juts out from the mountain like a wart. We stumble towards its edge, then drop to our knees. This is nothing compared to the mountains' major peaks, but it still feels dizzyingly high. I almost don't trust myself to get any closer – in my current state, I'll probably topple over the edge.

‘Look,' whispers Maisy.

I follow her finger. Down below, to our left, a seam of shadow stretches away between the mountains. ‘Is that the Knife?'

She nods. ‘I think so. That bit where it twists, near the end, is supposed to resemble a knife's handle.'

‘We're going now, then?'

Clementine gives me a quick look, then shakes her head. ‘It's too late. I think we should find a spot to camp tonight, and look for a route down there tomorrow.'

I want to agree with her, to succumb to the temptation to sleep again. But I've already cost us enough time today. We have to make up for lost time. If the hunters are scouring these mountains for us . . . 

‘I reckon we should keep moving,' says Teddy. ‘The sooner we get into the Knife, the better.' He turns to face us, but then frowns, as though something behind us has caught his attention. ‘Hey, look over there.'

I turn quickly, afraid that we're under attack. But he's pointing to the landscape in general, not any immediate danger nearby. I scan the horizon, trying to figure out what's drawn his attention. There are no more mountains to our south; our current slope just falls down into flat plains. Empty land.

‘What is it?' I say.

Teddy frowns. ‘Do you reckon that's the wastelands?'

I don't know much about the wastelands, except what I've heard in folklore and ghost stories. They are vast and empty, covering a great swathe of Taladia between the Central Mountains and the southern cities. Down in the far south there are magnificent cities full of richies and the palace of King Morrigan himself. These wastelands, just like the mountains, separate the south from places like Rourton.

‘That's why we have to turn east,' Maisy whispers. ‘
Follow my knife
. If we kept heading south from here we'd hit the wastelands.'

The rest of us nod, a little awestruck. There's a good reason we don't dare cross the wastelands. Years ago, the land was blasted to bits in weapons tests – the soil is toxic and the landscape is dotted with landmines and unexploded bombs. Not just normal bombs, either. They're the first experimental alchemy bombs, from when people were just learning to imbue their weapons with magic. If you trip the wrong wire, or stumble across the wrong patch of rocks . . .

‘Does it matter?' says Clementine. ‘We're going the other way.'

Teddy glances back towards the Knife, then turns his head to face the wastelands. He frowns again, as though trying to figure out what bothers him about the scene.

‘If the wastelands are so empty,' he says, ‘then why'd they build a train line between Gunning and . . . 
that
?'

He points to a murky shape in the distance. It's too far away to make out any details, but if I strain my eyes I can imagine it's some kind of fortress. A city wall, perhaps, or a stone tower. It's just sitting there, alone, in the middle of the empty wastelands.

And Teddy is right about the train line. I hadn't noticed it in the shadows, but it re-emerges from behind a cluster of crags to our west, pylons glinting in the evening light. It runs straight down out of the mountains, across the wasteland towards the unknown building. The line falls back down to ground level as it crosses the wastes; clearly, this building is its destination.

‘What's the king playing at?' says Teddy.

I shake my head. ‘I don't know. The building must be some sort of outpost – a base for their hunters, maybe? I suppose the wastelands are a safe place to put a building, if you're worried about defending it.'

‘That's true,' says Maisy. ‘An enemy army could never sneak across the plains. Even if they weren't killed by the wasteland's dangers, the people in that fortress would see them coming a mile off.'

‘There's another train line, further that way,' Clementine says, pointing. ‘There must be a fork where the line splits, somewhere up here in the mountains.'

I follow her gaze. In the distance, far to our west, another train line stretches away south to meet the wastelands' horizon. That must be the major line, for richie travellers to return from Gunning to their homes in the south. But first their train – or maybe just a few carriages – can detour to this mysterious building, this fortress in the middle of the wastelands. Perhaps they even keep a second engine up there, waiting in secret to pull those carriages down to the fortress.

‘Maybe it's for deliveries,' I say. ‘To take supplies to that building. Food and stuff.'

We stare at the building for a while, but no one adds any new ideas. The entire situation makes no sense – and by this point, I'm almost past caring. My head aches, my feet are sore and I just want to find a safe place to collapse. The others must feel the same, because almost simultaneously we turn away from the lookout and head back into the trees.

There are no handy caves to shelter in tonight, but I spot an overgrown ditch nearby. Yesterday's fires didn't spread this far, so the ditch is well protected by branches and undergrowth. When we crawl underneath and drape ourselves in our sleeping sacks, it's almost like we have a ceiling.

There's no hope of a campfire tonight. We're too cramped in this tiny ditch; we'd probably set our sleeping sacks alight, or melt all the snow from our roof. Besides, we've only got one match left and it seems suicidal to waste it. So we share around food that doesn't need cooking: biscuits, fruit and leftover porridge. The porridge has congealed into a sort of glue, so I try rolling it between my palms to restore a little heat.

‘Trying to start a street-ball match, Danika?' says Clementine.

I look down at my porridge, which I've unwittingly rolled into a gluggy ball. ‘Something like that,' I say, and pop the ball into my mouth. It's not five-star cuisine, but at least it's edible.

‘I used to like street-ball,' says Teddy, looking wistful. ‘I could win twenty silvers in a good night's betting on a game.'

I snort. ‘Is that why you ran off from Rourton? Unpaid gambling debts?'

Teddy shakes his head. ‘Nah, not exactly.'

There's a pause as we wait for more details. I suddenly remember Radnor's words to Teddy in the sewer.
‘You begged me for a spot to save you from a manhunt, Nort . . .'

‘Well, go on then,' says Clementine. ‘Tell us why you joined the crew. I think we're a bit past secrecy at this point.'

Teddy shrugs. ‘Well, before we left Rourton, I got into a bit of trouble. So I tracked down Radnor for help – he owed me a favour, you see, and there was word on the streets he was putting a crew together. So I joined up.' He grins. ‘And the rest is history, right?'

‘Yeah, but what sort of trouble were you in?' I say. ‘Must've been pretty serious to scare the great Teddy Nort himself into running out of Rourton. It's not like you'd never been in trouble before.'

‘This was a different sort of trouble,' says Teddy. ‘It wasn't the guards that were after me. I was hiding out in this richie's cupboard, waiting for night so I could steal his antique brooch collection –'

Clementine rolls her eyes. ‘Of course you were.'

‘– and I accidentally overheard some confidential stuff in the next room,' says Teddy. ‘The richie caught me, and I only just managed to get away. But I reckon what I heard was pretty valuable, because he set half the private detectives in Rourton after me.

‘He even offered a secret reward and roped a bunch of scumbags into hunting me down. I've escaped the guards loads of times, no problem. But half my allies were ready to turn me in – that's how good the reward was. I had to get out of town.'

‘Why didn't I hear about this?' I say. ‘If this richie was offering a reward, I would've thought he'd plaster it all over Rourton.'

Teddy shakes his head. ‘Didn't want his bosses to find out the information had been compromised, I reckon. Wanted to hunt me down secretly and get rid of me, without anyone finding out what happened.'

‘Must have been some pretty serious information,' I say, impressed. ‘What was he up to – assassinating his political rivals or something?'

‘Nah, nothing interesting like that,' says Teddy. ‘Just some boring trade talk. They kept yabbering on about something called Curiefer – I didn't understand half of it, to be honest . . .'

Maisy sits up. ‘Did you just say Curiefer? That's what they're trading?'

Teddy nods.

‘Oh no.' Maisy pushes her fingers against her lips. ‘I can't believe it.'

‘Huh?'

‘Curiefer is a liquid metal from the far north. It's very rare and dangerous to extract – people have been trying to mine it for centuries. Someone must have found a decent source, and now they're exporting it south . . .'

‘Why? What's it good for?'

Maisy hesitates. ‘It's the only known substance that can deactivate magnets.'

‘What?'

‘Curiefer burns easily; it's flammable at the best of times. But if you expose it to a big enough crash . . .' She trails off. ‘It explodes on impact, and the radiation scrambles nearby magnets. It wipes them clean, turns them back into normal iron. If King Morrigan has found a source of Curiefer, he could erase any magnetic field.'

She pauses. ‘
Any
magnetic field.'

There is a moment of silence as her meaning sinks in. Taladia is already at war with other countries in multiple directions. Our king hasn't yet invaded the land beyond the Magnetic Valley, because it's too risky to move his magical weaponry through the gap. But if this mineral gives him the power to erase the magnets' strength . . .

‘The Valley,' I whisper. ‘He's going to destroy the Valley.'

‘That's why he built a train line over the mountains,' says Teddy, paling. ‘That must've been what we saw at the back of the cargo carriage, behind all that mesh. Big vats of this Curiefer stuff coming down from the north. They'd truck it down the main trade road to Gunning, I reckon, but the road over the mountains'd be too unreliable. Snowstorms, rock falls . . .'

Maisy nods. ‘Curiefer is volatile – they'd need to move it carefully.'

‘Exactly,' Teddy says. ‘No wonder they extended the train line! The king pretends the train line's just a treat for richie passengers, so no one guesses what he's up to, but –'

‘But the train line has a fork,' I say, ‘so they can uncouple the cargo carriage for a detour to that building in the wastelands. But it's not just food supplies they're delivering, it's –'

‘Curiefer,' Teddy breathes. ‘Blimey, no wonder that richie wanted to hunt me down in Rourton. I stumbled across the secret of the century.'

There is a long pause.

‘But if the king's armies break across the Magnetic Valley,' says Clementine, ‘it'll mean another war, won't it? There will be more forced recruitments – we don't have enough soldiers to invade the lands beyond the Valley.'

‘They'll conscript younger kids,' I say. ‘They already take us when we turn eighteen. If they want more soldiers, they'll have to lower the age barrier . . .'

‘Nowhere will be safe,' says Maisy quietly. ‘There will be nowhere left to give people hope. Nowhere for refugee crews to run to.'

No one responds. I try to imagine a world without the Magnetic Valley. That place is a dream for so many young scruffers: a gateway to the lands beyond, a place where the king's bombs cannot fall. And now he is going to destroy it. There will be nowhere left beyond his power. There will be no more hope. And we will have made this terrible journey for nothing.

‘But Curiefer only works if there's a big enough boom, right?' Teddy says. ‘It's not enough just to set it on fire – there's gotta be a serious impact to make it blow up?'

Maisy nods.

‘So how's the king gonna do it? It's not like he can just use alchemy – not in the Valley's magnetic field.'

‘How about cannons?' Clementine suggests. ‘He could set up the cannons further back from the Valley's entrance, and shoot the Curiefer in from a distance. The impact would come when it hit the ground, and then –'