Another slum, I realize. Like Gray Town, where Reds live and die beneath a sky full of smoke, forced to build transports, lightbulbs, airjets, everything and anything the Silvers themselves can’t comprehend. Techies aren’t allowed to leave their so-called cities, even to conscript to the army. Their skills are too valuable to lose to war, or their own free will. The memory of Gray Town stings, but knowing it’s not the only abomination of its kind cuts even deeper. How many live in the confines of that slum? Or this one? How many like me, for that matter?
I taste bile as it rises in my throat, but swallow hard, forcing myself to look away. I search through the surrounding lands, mostly mill towns, the occasional small city, and dense forest dotted with a few dilapidated ruins. But Nine-Five Field doesn’t seem to be anywhere on the map. A secret probably, like anything to do with the Scarlet Guard.
Cal notes my confusion and allows himself one last chuckle. “Your friend wants me to land a Blackrun on a damn ruin,” he finally says, tapping the map lightly.
His finger lands on a dotted line, the symbol for one of the ancient, massive roads of long ago. I saw one once, when Shade and I got lost in the woods near the Stilts. It was cracked by the ice of a thousand winters and bleached white by centuries of sun, looking more like craggy rocks than an old thoroughfare. A few trees grew straight through it, forcing their way up through asphalt. The thought of landing an airjet on one turns my stomach.
“That’s impossible,” I stammer, imagining all the ways we could crash and die attempting to touch down on the old road.
Cal nods in agreement, quickly taking the map from my hands. He spreads it wide, his fingers dancing along the different cities and rivers as he searches. “With Mare, we don’t need to touch down here. We can take our time, refuel the batteries whenever we need, and fly as long as we want, as far as we want.” Then, with a shrug, “Or until the batteries stop holding a charge.”
Another bolt of panic streaks through me. “And how long might that be?”
He responds with a crooked grin. “Blackruns went into use two years ago. At worst, this girl’s got another two on her cells.”
“Don’t scare me like that,” I grumble.
Two years, I think. We could circle the world in that time. See Prairie, Tiraxes, Montfort, Ciron, lands that are only names on a map. We could see them all.
But that is a dream. I have a mission of my own, newbloods to protect, and a kingly score to settle.
“So then, where do we start?” Farley asks.
“We let the list decide. You have it, don’t you?” I try my best not to sound afraid. If Julian’s book of names was left back in Tuck, then this little jaunt will be over before it’s even begun. Because I’m not going one inch farther without it.
Kilorn responds instead, pulling the familiar notebook from inside his shirt. He tosses it my way, and I catch it deftly. It feels warm in my hands, still holding on to his heat. “Lifted it from the Colonel,” he says, trying his best to sound casual. But pride bleeds through, small as it may be.
“His quarters?” I wonder, remembering the austere bunker beneath the ocean.
But Kilorn shakes his head. “He’s smarter than that. Kept it locked up in the barracks armory, with the key on his necklace.”
“And you . . . ?”
With a satisfied smirk, he pulls on his collar, revealing the gold chain at his neck. “I might not be as good a pickpocket as you, but—”
Farley nods along. “We were planning on stealing it eventually, but when they locked you up, we had to improvise. And quickly.”
“Oh.” So this is what my few hours in a cell paid for. You can trust me, Kilorn said before he tricked me into a cage. Now I realize he did it for the list, for the newbloods, and for me. “Well done,” I whisper.
Kilorn pretends to shrug it off, but his grin gives away how pleased he truly is.
“Yes, well, I’ll take that now if you don’t mind,” Farley says, her voice gentler than I’ve ever heard it. She doesn’t wait for Kilorn’s response and reaches out to grab the chain in a quick, even motion. The gold glints in her hand but quickly disappears, tucked in a pocket. Her mouth twitches a little, the only indication of how affected she is by her father’s necklace. No, it’s not his. Not truly. The photograph in the Colonel’s quarters is proof of that. Her mother or her sister wore that chain, and for whatever reason, she isn’t wearing it now.
When she raises her head again, the twitch is gone, her gruff manner returned. “Well, lightning girl, who’s closest to Nine-Five?” she asks, jutting her chin at the book.
“We’re not landing at Nine-Five,” Cal says, firm but commanding. On this, I have to agree with him.
Quiet until now, Shade groans in his seat. He’s no longer pale, but vaguely green. It’s almost comical—he can handle teleporting just fine, but it seems flying does him in. “Nine-Five isn’t a ruin,” he says, trying his very best not to be sick. “Have you forgotten Naercey already?”
Cal exhales slowly, rubbing his chin with a hand. There’s the beginning of a beard, a dark shadow across his jaw and cheeks. “You repaved it.”
Farley nods slowly and smiles.
“And you couldn’t just say that outright?” I curse at her, wiping the self-important grin right off her face. “You know there’s no extra points for being dramatic, Diana. Every second you waste feeling smug could mean another dead newblood.”
“And every second you waste questioning me, Kilorn, and Shade on everything down to the air you breathe does the same thing, lightning girl,” she says, closing the distance between us. She towers over me, but I don’t feel small. With the cold confidence forged by Lady Blonos and the Silver court, I meet her gaze without a hint of a shiver. “Give me reason to trust you and I will.”
A lie.
After a moment, she shakes her head and backs away, giving me enough space to breathe. “Nine-Five was a ruin,” she explains. “And to anyone curious enough to visit, it just looks like a stretch of abandoned road. One mile of asphalt that hasn’t broken apart yet.”
She starts pointing to other ruined roads on the map. “It’s not the only one.”
A varied network webs the map, always hidden in the ancient ruins, but close to the smaller towns and villages. Protection, she calls them, because Security is minimal, and the Reds of the countryside are more inclined to look the other way. Perhaps less so now, with the Measures in place, but certainly before the king decided to take away even more of their children. “The Blackrun and the Snapdragon are the first jets we’ve stolen, but more will come,” she adds with a quiet pride.
“I wouldn’t be sure of that,” Cal replies. He’s not being hostile, just pragmatic. “After they were taken from Delphie, it’ll be even harder to get into a base, let alone a cockpit.”
Again, Farley smiles, completely convinced of her own hard-won secrets. “In Norta, yes. But the airfields of Piedmont are woefully underguarded.”
“Piedmont?” Cal and I breathe in surprised unison. The allied nation to the south is far away, farther even than the Lakelands. It should be well beyond the reach of Scarlet Guard operatives. Smuggling from that region is easy to believe, I’ve seen the crates with my own eyes, but outright infiltration? It seems . . . impossible.
Farley doesn’t seem to think so. “The Piedmont princes are utterly convinced that the Scarlet Guard is a Nortan problem. Fortunately for us, they’re incorrect. This snake has many heads.”
I bite my lip to keep back a gasp, and maintain what little remains of my mask. The Lakelands, Norta, and now Piedmont? I’m torn between wonder and fear of an organization large enough and patient enough to infiltrate, not one, but three sovereign nations ruled by Silver kings and princes.
This is not the simple, ragtag bunch of true believers I imagined.
This is a machine, large and well oiled, in motion for longer than anyone thought possible.
What have I fallen into?
To keep my thoughts from
welling up in my eyes, I flip open the book of names. Julian’s study of artifacts, peppered with the name and location of every newblood in Norta, calms me. If I can recruit them, train them, and show the Colonel that we are not Silver, we are not to be feared, then we might have a chance at changing the world.
And Maven won’t have the chance to kill anyone else in my name. I won’t carry the weight of any more gravestones.
Cal leans in next to me, but his eyes are not on the pages. Instead, he watches my hands, my fingers, as they sweep through the list. His knee brushes my own, hot even through his ragged pants. And though he says nothing, I understand his meaning. Like me, he knows there’s always more than meets the eye, more than we can even begin to comprehend.
Be on your guard, his touch says.
With a nudge, I reply.
I know.
“Coraunt,” I say aloud, stopping my finger short. “How close is Coraunt to the Nine-Five landing strip?”
Farley doesn’t bother to look for the village on the map. She doesn’t need to. “Close enough.”
“What’s in Coraunt, Mare?” Kilorn asks, sidling up to my shoulder. He’s careful to keep his distance from Cal, putting me between them like a wall.
The words feel heavy. My actions could free this man. Or doom him.
“His name is Nix Marsten.”
TEN
The Blackrun was the Colonel’s own jet, used to skip between Norta and the Lakelands as quickly as possible. It’s more than a transport for us. It’s a treasure trove, still loaded with weapons, medical supplies, even food rations from its last flight. Farley and Kilorn sort the stores into piles, dividing guns from bandages, while Shade changes the dressings on his shoulder. His leg stretches out oddly, unable to bend in the brace, but he doesn’t show any signs of pain. Despite his smaller size, he was always the toughest one in the family, second only to Dad white-knuckling through his constant agony.
My breath suddenly feels ragged, stinging the walls in my throat, stabbing in my lungs. Dad, Mom, Gisa, the boys. In the whirlwind of my escape, I’ve forgotten about them entirely. Just like before, when I first became Mareena, when King Tiberias and Queen Elara took away my rags and gave me silk. It took me hours to remember my parents at home, waiting for a daughter who would not return. And now I’ve left them waiting again. They might be in danger for what I’ve done, subject to the Colonel’s wrath. I drop my head into my hands, cursing. How could I forget them? I only just got them back. How could I leave them like this?
“Mare?” Cal mutters under his breath, trying not to draw attention to me. The others don’t need to see me curling in, punishing myself with every little breath.
You’re selfish, Mare Barrow. A selfish, stupid little girl.
The low hum of engines, once a slow, steady comfort, becomes a hard weight. It beats against me like waves on the Tuck beach, unending, engulfing, drowning. For a moment, I want to let it consume me. Then I will feel nothing but the lightning. No pain, no memory, just power.
A hand at the back of my head takes a bit of the edge off, pushing warmth into my skin to meet the cold. The thumb draws slow, even circles, finding a pressure point I didn’t know existed. It helps a little.
“You have to calm down,” Cal continues, his voice much closer this time. I glance out the corner of my eye to see him leaning down next to me, his lips almost brushing my ear. “Jets are a little sensitive to lightning storms.”
“Right.” The word is so hard to say. “Okay.”
His hand doesn’t move, staying with me. “In through the nose, out through the mouth,” he coaches, his voice low and calming as if he’s talking to a spooked animal. I guess he’s not entirely wrong.
I feel like a child, but I take the advice anyway. With every breath, I let another thought go, each one harsher than the last. You forgot them. In. You killed people. Out. You let others die. In. You are alone. Out.
The last one isn’t true. Cal is proof of that, as are Kilorn, Shade, and Farley. But I can’t shake the feeling that, while they stand with me, there’s no one beside me. Even with an army at my back, I am still alone.
Maybe the newbloods will change that. Maybe not. Either way, I have to find out.
Slowly, I sit back up, and Cal’s hand follows. He draws away after a long moment, when he’s sure I don’t need him anymore. My neck feels suddenly cold without his warmth, but I have too much pride to let him know that. So I turn my gaze outward, focusing on the clouds blurring past, the sinking sun, and the ocean beneath. White-capped waves angle against a long chain of islands, each one connected by alternating strips of sand, marsh, or a dilapidated bridge. A few fishing villages and light towers dot the archipelago, seemingly harmless, but my fists clench at the sight of them. There could be a watch atop one of them. We could be seen.
The largest of the islands has a harbor filled with boats, navy judging by their size and the silver-blue stripes decorating their hulls.
“I assume you know what you’re doing?” I ask Cal, my eyes still on the islands. Who knows how many Silvers are down there, searching for us? And the harbor, crowded with ships, could hide any number of things. Or people. Like Maven.
But Cal doesn’t seem concerned with any of that. Again, he scratches his growing stubble, fingers rasping over rough skin. “Those are the Bahrn Islands, and nothing to worry about. Fort Patriot, on the other hand . . .” he says, pointing vaguely northwest. I can just make out the shore of the mainland, hazy in the golden light. “I’m going to stay out of their sensor range as long as I can.”
“And when you can’t?” Kilorn is suddenly standing over us, leaning on the back of my chair. His eyes dart back and forth, alternating between Cal and the islands below. “You think you can outfly them?”
Cal’s face is calm, confident. “I know I can.”
I have to hide my smile behind a sleeve, knowing it will only incense Kilorn. Though I’ve never flown with Cal before today, I have seen him in action on a cycle. And if he’s half as good at flying jets as he is at driving that two-wheeled death machine, then we’re in very capable hands.
“But I won’t have to,” he continues, satisfied with Kilorn’s silence. “Every jet has a call sign, to let the forts know exactly which bird’s going where. When we get in range, I’ll send an old one out, and if we’re lucky, no one will think to double-check.”
“Sounds like a gamble,” Kilorn grumbles, searching for anything to poke holes into Cal’s plan, but the fish boy finds himself woefully outmatched.
“It works,” Farley pipes in from her place on the floor. “That’s how the Colonel gets past, if he can’t fly between the sensories.”
“I suppose it helps that no one expects rebels to know how to fly,” I add, trying to alleviate a bit of Kilorn’s embarrassment. “They’re not looking for stolen jets in the air.”
To my surprise, Cal stiffens sharply. He gets up from his seat in a quick, jarring motion, leaving his chair spinning. “Instrument response is sluggish,” he mutters in hasty explanation. A lie, poorly made, judging by the dark scowl on his face.
“Cal?” I call, but he doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t even acknowledge me, and stalks off toward the back of the jet. The others watch him with narrowed eyes, still painfully cautious of him.
I can only stare, perplexed. What now?
I leave him to his thoughts and go to Shade, still sprawled on the floor. His leg looks better than expected, supported by the well-made brace, but he still needs the curved metal crutch at his side. After all, he did take two bullets in Naercey and we have no skin healers to put him back together with a simple touch.
“Can I get you anything?” I ask.
“Wouldn’t say no to some water,” he says begrudgingly. “And dinner.”
Happy to be able to do at least something for him, I collect a canteen and two sealed packets of provisions from Farley’s stores. I expect her to make a fuss about rationing the food, but she barely spares me a glance. She?
??s taken my seat in the cockpit, and stares out the window, enthralled by the world passing beneath. Kilorn idles next to her, but never touches Cal’s empty chair. He doesn’t want to be scolded by the prince, and is careful to keep his hands away from the instrument panel. He reminds me of a child surrounded by splintered glass, wanting to touch but knowing he should not.
I almost take a third ration packet, as Cal hasn’t eaten since the Colonel locked him up, but one glance toward the back of the jet stills my hand. Cal stands alone, fiddling with an open panel, putting on a show of fixing something that isn’t broken. He quickly zips himself into one of the uniforms stored away on board: a black-and-silver flight suit. The tattered clothes of the arena and execution puddle at his feet. He looks more like himself, a prince of fire, a warrior born. If not for the distinctive walls of the Blackrun, I would think us back in a palace, dancing around each other like moths around a candle. There’s a badge emblazoned over his heart, a black-and-red emblem flanked by a pair of silver wings. Even from this distance, I recognize the dark points, twisted into the image of flame. The Burning Crown. That was his father’s, his grandfather’s, his birthright. Instead, the crown was taken in the worst way, paid for with his father’s blood and his brother’s soul. And as much as I hated the king, the throne, and all it stood for, I can’t help but feel sorry for Cal. He’s lost everything—an entire life, even if that life was wrong.
Cal feels my gaze and looks up from his busywork, still for a moment. Then his hand strays to the badge, tracing the outline of his stolen kingdom. In one sharp twist that makes me flinch, he rips it from the suit and tosses it away. Rage flickers in his eyes, deep beneath his calm exterior. Though he tries to hide it, his anger always bubbles to the surface, glinting between the cracks in his well-worn mask. I leave him to his fussing, knowing the inner workings of the jet can calm him better than anything I might say.