Such a Daring Endeavor (9 page)

I fight against my captor, wedging my knee upward between his, but I’m not fast enough. He dodges, shoving me back into the arms of the shorter man with the earrings, who twines my arms backward, pulling at my sockets. Gwynn clacks forward and spears purple magic from her tainted hands. Fiery electricity circles my wrists, and I hold back a shriek. I try to writhe, but she’s holding me fast.

Gwynn walks alongside me, her magic a chain between us.

“Gwynn,” I begin.

“Shh.” Her eyes gleam despite the reproach. Then she speaks to the servant over my shoulder. “Release her, Duncan.”

Duncan loosens his grip. And despite Gwynn’s magic tethering me to her, I relax, allowing her to guide me.

She looks older, if possible, than the last time I saw her a few days ago when she had my hands strapped to a table so she could drive a claw into my leg.
That wasn’t her,
I tell myself.
She wouldn’t have told her guard to release me if it was.

She leads me through the door she exited, waiting for Duncan to close the three of us in. Gwynn releases her magical hold on me, and relief instantly seeps into my wrists like ice. Where anyone else would have left the flesh rotted and bloody, a single red line is the only mark.

Duncan takes his place before the door.

An opulent desk is the room’s focal point. A quill and ink bottle stand in the corner—more for decoration than anything else, I suspect. A canopied bed lies within the wall to my right, as though a section was cut from the stone wall just to accommodate it. As I’m beginning to wonder what it is exactly she does at the palace, I rotate.

A control panel like the one in the Station displays several different rooms above a collection of buttons and knobs. One square displays ranks of soldiers; bedrooms in another; dining areas, the extraction grounds outside. A series of small rooms with shackles and metal bars segregating the cells appears in the bottom right, zooming in every now and then on one particular occupant.

Talon.

He’s alive.

Expectation rushes in. “Gwynn,” I say.

“I knew you’d come for him,” she begins. “You can’t possibly think I wouldn’t have
all
the guards keep an eye out for you. He’s dying tomorrow morning, by the way,” Gwynn says, signaling Duncan behind her. He gives a nod and leaves, slamming the door behind him.

My gut twists. Tomorrow morning.

“Please, Gwynn, help me get him out.”

“Sorry, but I can’t do that,” she says, flopping herself on the high-backed chair near the desk. “Do you have any idea what Tyrus would’ve done if he caught you first?”

I scrutinize her against this backdrop of grandeur. I wanted this for her, for her to escape her stepfather’s abuse, for her to find her emotions again, her freedom, her happiness. But not like this, not as nothing more than a puppet held captive by its strings.

Any minute now she’ll drop the charade. She has to.

“What happened, Gwynn? When you left my house that night, where did you go? How did you end up with him?”

“He found me outside a shop in Jienke. An Arcaian was trying to rob me, and apparently Tyrus saw something in me that he liked. He ordered his soldier to stop and let me do whatever I wanted to him in exchange for the humiliation.” Her lips purse in some kind of secret delight.

I blink at her. For someone who went from being nothing more than a moving, emotionless statue to suddenly having full range of passions, it only makes sense for her to latch onto the first person to show interest in her. Too bad that someone happened to be Tyrus Blinnsdale.

I step across the rug toward her, an agonizing curl in my stomach. My voice lands softer than I mean for it to. “You were my best friend. What did Tyrus do to change you like this?”

She coughs out a feeble snort of laughter. “You think Tyrus is behind this? Tears are funny things, Ambry.” The bitterness in her voice swarms straight to my heart. She finally slides her self-righteous glance toward me. “They reveal the truth. And I saw the truth almost the instant I drank mine.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I saw how eager you were to let me go. You never wanted me around. I saw how you looked when Ren kissed me that night—how disgusted you were. And the way you rammed in to get to the gypsy even though you
knew
I wanted her tears. You just barged right in front of me!”

“It wasn’t like that at all! I—”

“I came to you for help! I heard through the way you used to talk to me. Back when I couldn’t feel like you could. You were always annoyed at me.”

“I wasn’t annoyed at
you
! At the spell, Gwynn! At your stepdad, at what he was doing to you. I wanted you to feel what I did. You don’t understand—I didn’t want you to leave, don’t you get that?”

Gwynn holds one hand in the other, sitting far too still for the anger in her tone. “And then it was much clearer when I saw you again. Tyrus told me you couldn’t be trusted. I hoped he was misled about the bounty he placed on you, but there you were with that traitor Haraway. And then you attacked me. And you wonder why I’m angry.”

“Gwynn, please, I can explain.”

She flutters a hand in my direction. “I don’t care anymore. Besides, you’ve elicited a kill-on-sight order from Tyrus. We’ve all received the mandate. I’m not about to disobey him.”

I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I force softness to my voice though I want nothing more than to scream at her. “If that were true, then you would have your guard kill me instead of dragging me in here.”

She lifts the hand she’s been cradling. It glows a soiled, vibrant purple, and her eyes flicker with a devious glint. “That’s the thing. Why would I let someone else do it when I could do it myself?”

I call my magic forward carefully, letting it sizzle just below the surface, and with it, my hope rematerializes. She hasn’t Proned the room. It’s all so Duncan can hear outside the door and report back to Tyrus, nothing more.

Gwynn rises from her chair, straightening the flared bottom of her fitted khaki shirt. Mouth pursed, her fingers slip toward the dazeblade tucked at her thigh.

She won’t do it, she won’t. Not the girl who used to come over for ice cream, who used to stare blank-faced back at me while I dabbed at her bruises, the girl who waited to walk home with me every day after school.

I tried to explain emotions to her. I tried to explain how it felt when people teased me, how it felt when I crushed on Nick Reeves and the time he barely even exhibited surprise when I touched his hand. I could gush now about how I hadn’t wanted her to leave, how sad I was, what it was like to go to school that next day without her, to sit through that assembly without her, how alone I felt in those moments. She was all I had for so long.

Gwynn poises the dagger, staggering her arms so the blade points directly at me. Her purplish white magic slithers forward, tailing the blade, glinting off its metal.

I glance to the door. Maybe she’s trapped here just as much as Talon is. Duncan may be guarding her to keep her from leaving.

Then why is her hand purple?

“Is it his?” I ask, referring to Duncan, or maybe the other guard she dismissed. “Is he Itharian, like Ren?”
Like you?

“Shut up.”

“There’s still hope, Gwynn. You can come with me. Ren is here—we’ll get you out.”

I lift my hands, hoping to calm her.
She won’t do it. She won’t.
“You don’t want to do this. This isn’t you.”

With a steadying sniff, she cocks her arm back and throws the sizzling, purple-lit blade. I duck and divert it with a spurt of my own magic, but it’s not enough to keep it from slashing an arrow of blood across my thigh.

Pain hisses through me. Her chest rises and falls. A few blonde hairs straggle over her forehead, and we stare at each other across the rug.

She was aiming for the wall. It’s all for show.
As if in affirmation, Duncan knocks on the door outside.

“My lady? Are you all right?”

Though my body trembles, I can hardly move. Her fallen dazeblade lies pathetically on the floor, feet away. The purple gleam drains, leaving the blade a bloodied gray.

“There,” I say. “He heard your attack. Now come on, let’s get out of here.”

She quivers, battling with the disillusionment raging through her.
Give in. Let this go,
I plead inwardly. But she remains motionless as I use the control panel for support and rise to my feet. 

She could stop me at any moment. 
But she doesn’t.

“We can get down to the dungeons,” I say, thinking aloud as I scan the screens. “We can get you out of here.”

I glance around the display of different rooms for the image I saw before…and… There. He’s there, crumpled against the wall of the cell. Fifth floor down, just where Ren said he would be.

“No,” Gwynn finally says. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

My magic curdles up in an instant, licking along my bones, waiting to be used. With a quick motion I touch the power canister on the panel and release a volt into it.

The singe seems to knock sense back into her.

“Stop!” Gwynn shrieks, diving forward and spiraling magic at me. I dodge it just as a high-pitched fizz resounds, emitting the strong scent of burned wire. Steam rises from the buttons, and every image on screen dissolves into black and white blurs.

The door behind her crashes open. Duncan advances, but I dash forward to meet him with a spurt of magic, knocking him back.

“You’ll pay for this. For all of it,” Gwynn calls from behind me.

But she doesn’t send Duncan after me. She doesn’t make any kind of threatening advance. I turn, and her light green eyes capture mine, softening for a flicker in time, and the reality of what just happened pounds straight through me.

She was supposed to kill me but she didn’t. She won’t leave with me now. But there is still hope.

“I’m not giving up on you,” I say through heavy breaths. Her scowl deepens. “Tell Tyrus that, if you want.”

I gesture to her dazeblade still lying on the floor. And with her attention diverted, I slip out the door.

R
en gritted his teeth at the painful, shredding feeling, and it was just as Ayso warned. His duplicate took form—even pushed him down!—and tried to run for it. But Ren was faster. With intense concentration, Ren caught the replica by the back, rammed it down instead, and bolted as the soldiers moved in.

His own screams follow him now, but he runs toward the Tapestry Hall, counting swiftly as he goes. One, two three, four, he ducks beneath the fifth tapestry, a depiction of a golden tree woven with thick growth twining up like tiny birds waiting for their meal. The stony wall ices his back, cold and secluded from the windows at either end of the hall. He presses his fingertips at either side, his pulse hammering.

He hears the soldiers’ taunts, the sounds of their fists hitting flesh.
I’m so glad I’m not feeling this right now.
He wonders if the replica feels it, but soon it won’t matter. Soon the illusion will fade.

Ren slides along, feeling for the notch he described to Ambry. Finally, his fingers hit the small variance and press. Just as he knew it would, the stone gives way under his touch, slowly and soundlessly, and he darts into the darkness before it closes again.

Blackness hits him on every side. Small slivers of light spoke through arrow notches in the stone, and Ren waits for his eyes to adjust. Time passes; more time than he likes. Ren begins reciting the gatekeeper pledge in his head—a fallback habit he resorted to whenever he had to stand for long periods of time waiting for Tyrus.

Magic for the people, not for control
, he narrates in thought.
Secrecy is vital, trust above all. Hands alone can rescue, hands alone can save. I pledge to use my hands for good, to conceal that which is most grave.

Minutes pass, and by the time he’s made it through three rounds of recitation, the impatience nagging at him blooms to full-on worry.

“Come on, Ambry,” he whispers, catching his breath. “Come on.”

A sense of unease holds him back. He can’t leave without his sister. Did she get lost?

I told her which tapestry and where to push,
he tells himself, though it’s not as reassuring as he hoped. The Triad is huge—it took him weeks to figure out his way through the various halls.

His Illusio worked, so where is Ambry? Did she drink it in time? He could go back out, try to find her, help her if he can. But the soldiers recognized him—and hurt his illusion, from the sound of it. It would be like handing himself over.
They know we’re here now,
he thinks.
No doubt Tyrus will amp up the security and begin searching.
If that’s the case, he can’t stand around waiting. There’s nothing for it. He’s got to keep going.

The stairwell curves downward and he takes the stairs faster, not noticing the faint light crawling in his direction from a branching corridor until the figure draws too near for him to step away. He completes the curve and nearly collides with, not a soldier, but a girl.

Ren catches himself for a moment. She’s short, managing to be both muscular and curvy at once. He’d have to be eyeless not to notice her smooth complexion and big, dark eyes, the way her hair is piled up in two buns atop her head. She wears a sash across her chest equipped with throwing knives, of all things. She holds a small light in her right hand.