Green Jack

  Chapter 49

  Saffron

  “Hell of a family reunion,” Saffron said again to Roarke as they watched Jane and Nico walk away.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me why I never told you?” he asked flatly.

  “I wouldn’t have told you either.”

  He nearly smiled at that. She’d meant it—she’d have kept that kind of information to herself. But then she wasn’t the type to hold hands over her feelings, even if they had slept together.

  “Is Cartimandua your mother?”

  “No, thank the Green.” He wouldn’t look at her. “She’s dead now. No one’s safe from Cartimandua, not even her own sister.”

  “Your grandparents?”

  “Also dead, not because of her though. It’s just Caradoc and me.”

  He seemed to need something from her beyond compassion—and she blamed it on Jane that she not only recognized that in him, but wished she knew what it was so she could hunt it down for him. She sighed. Stabbing people was so much easier.

  “Jane will be fine,” Roarke said, misreading her.

  “Mmhmm.” Didn’t he realize he was the one who needed comforting here? And why wasn’t she pouncing on the subject change like Cerberus on a scavenger? They walked on between the trees while she grew more and more annoyed with herself.

  “You don’t have to babysit me, Saffron. I’ve always known who my aunt is.”

  And just like that, her annoyance turned back on him. Every word she wanted to say felt like a knife in her mouth.

  They heard the snick at the same time.

  It was faint, easily overlooked if you’d never heard it before. But if you had, there was no mistaking it. She went so cold, her scalp tightened painfully.

  “Stop!”

  She wasn’t sure who had yelled it, her or Caradoc, but it was too late. That click always meant it was too late. There was no time to pinpoint its exact location, only the slap of the tripwire slicing through leaves towards the trigger. Crossbow bolts followed. Augusta was the first to drop. Livia launched herself at Will, knocking them both out of the way.

  “Anyone hit?” Caradoc asked.

  Livia and Will stood up gingerly. Livia pulled a bolt from her sleeve. “Not really.”

  Will stared at her. “You’re my hero, Liv.”

  Caradoc exhaled. “Directorate trap.” His head snapped around. “Don’t move!”

  Too late.

  The ground suddenly gave away under Will and he crashed through the cover of leaves into the pit waiting below. He disappeared, screaming. “I said don’t move!” Caradoc yelled when everyone twitched instinctively towards Will. He moaned, sounds more animal than anything human. Every line of Livia’s body angled towards him.

  “He’s alive,” Caradoc snapped. “But we can’t charge in there blindly.” He crouched to liberate a long branch from the side of the road. “Nobody jacking move.”

  “Let me do it,” Roarke said. “They need you in the City.”

  “Saffron,” Caradoc asked, ignoring him. “If Roarke moves, knock him out.”

  Caradoc used the branch like a walking staff, gingerly prodding the ground ahead before taking a step. It was a slow and arduous process. Sweat ran down Saffron’s nose and she hadn’t even moved. He found another pit, this one more of a shallow trench, but it was filed with broken bottles and rusted metal. “Almost there,” Livia called out. “Will? Will!”

  There was a clear path to Will, and another that required climbing over rocks and partly up a tree. “Too easy,” Saffron warned loudly. She remembered an old entrance to the underground market where soldiers had set traps of wire, trigger-released rifles, and bombs in old soda cans. One casual kick and Saffron and Killian had seen a girl blown into pieces. Her blood stained the bricks for months.

  “I need a rock,” Caradoc said. Roarke bent to retrieve one from the rubble of the road. “Don’t miss.”

  Saffron stopped him. “Let me. Saffron the Stupendous, remember?”

  She focused on Caradoc who pivoted to face her. He lifted his hand, waiting. She stared at his palm until it was the only thing she could see. She released a long steady breath and lobbed the rock. He caught it easily and tossed it onto the path in front of him.

  Nothing.

  Saffron’s neck muscles threatened to snap.

  “Again,” Caradoc said. Roarke was already collecting them, and passing them to Saffron. She threw four more and they lay innocuously on the path.

  The fifth stone broke open the forest.

  The mine shattered dirt, fire and twigs. The blast shivered through the trees, shaking trunks and tearing though leaves. The force of the explosion sent Caradoc careening backwards. He seemed to hang in the seared air for an impossible moment before hitting the ground. Heat and power flung the others away with enough force to steal their breaths. Saffron’s ears rang and her lungs clenched. Yellow dandelion petals drifted off her mask.

  She grabbed Roarke’s ankle when he scrambled to get up, screaming his uncle’s name, and was nearly kicked in the face for her trouble. He only subsided when Caradoc sat up slowly, covered in dirt and blood. His shirt was shredded, the left side of his body raw with welts and scrapes. Roarke slumped with relief. Livia took her hands away from her ears. Caradoc spat dirt. “Guess I’m going to need more stones.”

  The sound of his voice was muffled as if Saffron was underwater, but she could mostly hear it around the throbbing in her ears. She studied the damage of the landmine, the small crater of earth, the branches dangling above, the smoldering leaves. The rest of the path led into the trees. “I can get us through the next part,” she said. She thought she might be shouting.

  She eased closer, taking care to step only where Caradoc had already stepped. The grass tangled around her. She crouched, digging through it until she could feel a tree root pushing up through the ground. “Come on,” she muttered to the mask or the green, or both. “Grow.”

  The smell of pine needles grew sharper, stronger.

  She pushed an image through the roots, and the branches growing out to touch each other over the path. She imagined a bridge growing towards the pit where Will had stopped making any noise at all. The branches grew, touched, but didn’t form anything but more forest shadows. Her hair, full of thistles fell into her face and she pushed back at it, frustrated. A thick braid brushed her elbow, giving her an idea. She pulled tendrils out of the leaf mask and braided them together. “Come on,” she muttered. “You owe me.”

  Slowly, slowly, the branches responded. Birch and maple and pine tangled together, braiding into a bridge any Dryad would have been proud of. She straightened, weary and light-headed. “Let me try first,” she said. “If it’s not strong enough, the trees should keep me from falling.” It was as good a theory as any.

  She used the thrown rocks as a guide and stepped up onto the branches. She hoped she wasn’t about to plummet and break something important like her ass. They creaked, but held. She took another step and suddenly it was just like crossing the rope bridges in the City. Caradoc and Roarke followed.

  Will was slumped inside the pit, the bottom was lined with sharpened sticks, glass, and rusted metal. He was just out of reach. There was blood on his face and his neck, but he was breathing. “Will, grab the branch,” Caradoc was on his stomach, reaching down. Will moaned, eyelids fluttering. “Damn it, the blast knocked him out.”

  “There’s rope over here,” Livia said. She was close enough that Saffron could see the melted buttons on her jacket.

  “No,” Caradoc said. “Anything that looks useful or tempting in any way is probably hiding a bomb of some kind. Don’t touch anything.”

  Livia recoiled. Saffron reached up to grab three pliable branches from the tree brushing her shoulder with leaves. She braided the branches together, willing them to keep growing in the same pattern. She was glistening with sweat by the time she had something long enough to be useful. She looped it around her waist and Caradoc lowered her down
. She had to tuck her feet against the side so as not to get caught in a nest of rusty barbed wire.

  Will’s legs were torn and raw. One of the stakes was stuck near his shin, pinning him. She couldn’t quite reach it to free him. She looped the branches around his chest, knotting them. She hoped he passed out again. “Pull him up!”

  There was a sharp tug and he choked on a scream. He was conscious and clammy by the time they pulled him out completely. Caradoc carried him on his back over the bridge back to the relative safety of the fields. Livia was cleaning and wrapping Will’s legs when Jane and Nico found them. His boots, thankfully, had mostly protected his feet.

  “Shit,” Nico rushed to Will. “What happened?”

  “Protectorate traps,” he downed whiskey from a flask.

  “We got the bleeding stopped,” Livia sat back. “Mostly.”

  “You’ll have to head back to camp in the morning,” Caradoc said. “Can you handle it?”

  Will nodded. Saffron noticed Jane had a fat lip. “Shanti or Anya?”

  “Shanti,” Nico confirmed. “She was perfect.”

  “No,” Jane elbowed him hard. “You are not allowed to flirt with the girl who beat up my face.”

  “But she agreed to a meeting?”

  Jane touched the bruise on her jaw. “Eventually.”