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“It's enough for now to talk about freeing Thomas based on a dream,” he said. “How much of the healing fruit do we have?”

“Two each,” Jamous said. “You're expecting a fight?”

“Do you think Thomas would forgive us if we healed a few of them after putting them down?”

Mikil looked at Johan. “Wounding a Scab and then healing them? I don't know.” As long as they didn't kill . . . “Why not? That's your recommendation?”

“How can I recommend anything without knowing what Thomas told you in this dream of yours?”

“He told me precisely where he was being kept. He gave me the lay of the land, and he said that there was a woman who had unfettered access to him. He suggested I impersonate that woman.”

“And which woman is this?”

“Chelise, the daughter of Qurong.”

They both looked at her as if she'd gone mad.

“How much time do we have?” Mikil demanded.

“Turn around; let me see you by the moonlight,” Johan ordered.

She obliged him. “How much?”

“Less than an hour,” Jamous said.

“Then this will have to do!” Mikil looked at the compound's wall, just fifty yards to their right.

Jamous spit to one side. “It'll never work.”

“Then give us a better idea,” Mikil said. “How do I look?”

Donning the Scabs' traditional robes wasn't unusual—they often wore the cloaks when they ventured deep into the forest. But Mikil had never applied this white clay to her face and hands. Thomas had suggested she become a Scab princess for the night, and Johan had insisted on a heavy layer of the closest substitute for morst that he could find. White clay.

“Like the princess herself,” Johan said.

“Except in the eyes and the voice.”

“Every disguise has its limitations. Just do exactly like I said.”

Jamous was right; the plan was madness. The only thing worse would be to try it in daylight.

“Remember,” Mikil said, “the library is in the center of the garden. He said four guards, two outside and then two in the basement.”

“We have it,” Johan assured her. “Give us five minutes before you draw them out. And you should raise the pitch of your voice slightly. Chelise is as . . . direct as you. Don't try to sound too soft. Walk straight and—”

“Keep my head up, I know. You don't think I know what a snotty princess looks like.”

“I wouldn't say she's snotty. Bold. Refined.”

“Please. The words ‘Scab' and ‘refined' aren't possibly reconcilable.”

“Just keep your wits about you,” Jamous said. “They may not be refined, but they can swing their blades well enough.”

If Mikil died, Kara would die in Dr. Bancroft's laboratory as well, Thomas had said. Strange. But Mikil was used to danger.

“Go.”

Jamous hesitated, then clasped Mikil's arms to form the customary circle. “Elyon's strength.”

“Elyon's strength.”

The men vanished into the night. Mikil ran to the tall pole fence and scaled the tree they'd selected. The royal garden, Thomas had called it. The moon was half full—she could just see the outline of shrubs and bushes placed carefully around fruit trees. The large spired building a hundred yards into the complex was clearer. The library.

No sign of a guard on this side of the garden. Mikil grabbed the sharp cones on two adjacent poles, slung both legs over the fence, and dropped to the ground ten feet below. Her robe was black—if she walked with white face down, she would be invisible enough. She hurried through the garden, surprised by the care that the Horde had put into trimming the hedges and shrubs. Flowers blossomed on all sides. Even the fruit trees had been properly pruned.

She pulled behind a large nanka tree thirty yards from the library's front door, where two guards slouched against the wall. Strange how she felt no anger toward them since her drowning. She couldn't say she felt any compassion for them, as some did, but she regarded her lack of fury mercy enough. The fact that she'd been complicit in condemning Justin only made her anger toward the deception that blinded them more acute.

She had not been surprised to realize that her anger was directed at the disease, not the Horde. She had no compassion for the disease. The difference between her and some of the others—William, for example—was that when she saw two diseased guards, she saw mostly the disease; William would have seen only the guards.

Mikil blinked away her thoughts. It was time for her to practice a little deception of her own. She had to assume that Johan and Jamous were in place.

She lowered her head and walked directly toward the wide path that led to the library. Twenty-five yards. Gravel materialized under her feet—surely they'd seen her by now. She took a deep breath, stood as tall as she gracefully could, lifted her chin as a princess might, and strode directly for the two guards.

The guard on the left suddenly stood and coughed. The other heard him, saw Mikil, and quickly straightened. They were speechless.
Not too
many visitors this time of night, is that it, you sacks of scales?

She stopped near the bottom of the steps. “Open the door,” she commanded quietly.

“Who are you?” the one on the right asked.

“Don't be a fool. You can't recognize Qurong's daughter at night?”

He hesitated and glanced at his comrade. “Why are you wearing—”

“Come here!” Mikil jabbed her finger at the ground. “Get down here, both of you! How dare you question my choice of clothing? I want you to see my face up close so that you never again question who it is that commands you! Move!”

She wasn't sure she sounded like a princess, but the guards descended the stairs cautiously.

“I intend to let this indiscretion go, but if you move like mud, I may change my mind.”

They hurried forward.

Two shadows flew from each corner of the building, and Mikil raised her voice to cover any sound they might make.

“Now the fact of the matter is that I'm not Qurong's daughter, but know that I'm here on her behalf. She's told me where to find the albino so that I can rescue him. She's in love with our dear Thomas, you see.”

The guards stopped on the bottom step just as Johan and Jamous sailed onto the steps behind and clubbed them each at the base of their necks. They grunted and fell in tandem.

They dragged the guards from the stairs and lay them in the grass. “Any damage?” Mikil asked.

“They'll survive.”

Thomas would object, but he would eventually see reason. And though these two might jeopardize the rescue, they would live anyway. That was a kind of nonviolence in itself. The bit about the princess's love for Thomas was absurd—something to give them a laugh later. If Mikil was lucky, it might even land the dear princess in a spot of trouble.

“Let's go.”

Johan and Jamous entered the library quietly with Mikil right behind. The door to the stairwell was precisely where Thomas had told her it would be.

“This one. I'll call them up.” She waited for Jamous and Johan to stand in the shadows on either side of the door, then cracked it open. Torchlight glowed from below.

She nodded at Jamous, threw the door open, and took a step down. “Who's awake down here? I need the help of two guards immediately!”

Her voice echoed back at her. There might have been a sound, but she wasn't sure.

“Are you asleep? I don't have all night! The Books have been found, and Woref demands your assistance immediately!”

Now the sound of clad feet slapped the flat stones below. She spun around just as two guards came into view, both wielding torches.

“Hurry, hurry!” She walked into the foyer as their boots clumped up the steps.

These two were taken by Jamous and Johan with even less incident than the ones outside. It had been too easy. Then again, the right intelligence was often the key to victory in any battle.

Mikil fumbled at one guard's belt for keys, found them, snatched a torch from Jamous, and descended the stairs as quickly as her long robe would allow. A corridor carved from stone led to a door on the left.

“Thomas?”

“Here! Mikil? The door, quickly!”

She inserted the key and unlocked the door. It swung in and her torch illuminated Thomas, standing in a long black robe nearly identical to hers. He saw her face and froze. She had expected him to bound past her and take immediate charge. Instead he seemed oddly stunned by her.

“Relax. Contrary to my ghostly appearance, I'm not an apparition.”

“Mikil?”

“This isn't what you expected? Don't tell me, my beauty stuns you?” She smiled.

He seemed to shake himself free. He ran to her and grasped her arms. “Thank Elyon. The others?”

“I have Jamous and Johan. We haven't gone for the others yet.”

Thomas sprang for the stairs. “Then we have to hurry!”

She had to warn him. “We had to use a little force, Thomas.”

He barged into the foyer and pulled up. Two bodies lay in a heap. He looked from them to Johan, then to Mikil who stepped around him.

“Just a bump, Thomas. If you want, we could feed them some fruit,” Mikil said.

Thomas ran to the door and glanced up at the sky. A faint glow was teasing the eastern horizon.

“No time.”

22

T
homas ran behind them with the dread knowledge that they would be too late. There was no way four albinos could go unnoticed once the city began to wake.

“Speed, not stealth,” he said, passing Mikil. “We don't have time to slip in. We ride hard and we snatch them fast.”

“And let them hang eight instead of four today?” Johan said. “We have to think this through.”

“I've done nothing but think it through,” Thomas said. “There's no other way in the time we have.”

“And you intend to do this without force?”

“We'll do what we have to.”

They catapulted themselves over the fence and mounted the horses. Thomas rode in tandem with Johan, but they would need five more mounts if they hoped to outrun the Horde.

Thomas led them to the stables, where they collected the horses.

“Saddles?” Mikil whispered.

“Bridles only. We can ride bareback.”

It had taken them fifteen minutes, and the sky was gray. They were too late! Riding farther into the city now would be suicide.

And leaving was as good as condemning the others to death.

Thomas swung onto one of the horses and grunted with frustration. So close. The palace rose to their left. Chelise slept there. Something about this escape felt more like an execution to him. Nothing seemed right. They would either be caught and executed as Johan suggested, or they would escape only to meet another terrible fate.

“What is it?” Johan demanded.

“Nothing.”

“This isn't ‘nothing' on your face! What do you know that we don't?”

“Nothing! I know that you might be right about being caught. I only need one with me. Mikil and Jamous, meet us at the waterfalls in thirty minutes.”

“I didn't come to run,” Mikil said. “And I have the disguise.”

“You're married.” He kicked his horse.

“The waterfalls,” Johan said. “Hurry.”

“Then take this. I don't need it.”

Mikil stripped off the robe and tossed it to Johan.

Thomas and Johan rode with two extra horses each, a fast trot, directly for the lake now just half a mile ahead of them. Johan pulled the robe on as he rode.

“She's right about one thing,” Johan said. “Anyone who sees our faces will know we are albinos.”

“Then our only hope is to hit them before they have a chance to think any albinos would be mad enough to crash through their city. Do you have a knife?”

“You're planning on using it?”

Was he? “Planning, no. I have no plan.”

“That's unlike you.”

They rode on, straight toward the dungeons now. Their horses' hooves were muted by the soft, muddy earth. Wood smoke drifted through the morning air from a fire in one of the huts to their left. A rooster crowed. The castle still stood in silence, now behind them.

“Mikil tells me that you need me to dream with you,” Johan said quietly. “Something about a Carlos.”

He'd nearly forgotten.

“Is that a reason to live?”

“Maybe.”

Of course it was. But he didn't have the patience to think through this dreaming at the moment. Here, surrounded by the Horde city, something was gnawing at his mind, making him uneasy, and he couldn't understand what it was.

You don't want to be freed, Thomas.

No, that wasn't it. He would do anything in his power to be freed from these animals. Even if it meant hurting a few of them.

A surge of hatred swept through him, and he shivered. What kind of beast would threaten to kill what Elyon had died to save?