The Commander’s smile dies slowly, extinguished by the look of pure hatred he gives Logan. “I am the law. I am justice.” He’s spitting the words in Logan’s face. “I am the one thing that keeps this city safe. You dare question me?”
“You aren’t justice. You’re a misbegotten monster too drunk on his own power to be trusted with it anymore.”
Purple flushes the Commander’s face, and he raises his sword arm.
“I, Commander Jason Chase, for the crime of treason and murder, do hereby sentence you to death,” he says, and aims his blade at Logan’s throat.
“Wait!” My voice carries across the Square and freezes everyone in place for the split second it takes me to fall to my knees where the Commander can see me, but no guard can reach me in time.
The Commander laughs. “Come to beg me to save him?”
My smile feels just as vicious as his. “He isn’t the one who needs saving.”
“Rachel, no,” Logan breathes.
I ignore him.
“What are you going to do, girl? Kill me?” The Commander’s voice is full of malice.
“No,” I say. Raising my knife, I aim it at the soft spot just below my sternum and take a deep breath.
The Commander’s sword, still pointed at Logan’s throat, wavers. “What are you doing?”
“Taking away the one thing you really want.” I say and dig the tip of the knife into my flesh, feeling a flash of pain and then the warmth of blood running down my skin.
Guards surge forward, and I scream, “Stop, or I’ll do it!”
The Commander sweeps his hand up, palm out, and the guards stop.
“Rachel, please,” Logan says softly. “Not this.”
I don’t look away from the Commander. “You want what only I know how to get. If you or anyone else in this city lays another hand on Logan, I’ll kill myself and you’ll never find the package.”
His jaw is clenched, pulling his scar taut. “Yesterday, I wouldn’t have said you had this in you.”
“The girl you dealt with yesterday is gone.” My voice is cold, my words rising from the terrible grief he carved into me with Oliver’s death. “Give me your word before all these citizens that Logan will remain unharmed for the duration of my journey, or the knowledge of where to find the package dies with me.”
His eyes are fierce pits of hatred as he slowly lowers his sword. “He will be unharmed as long as you return with what I need.” He makes a gesture to the guards holding Logan, and they begin dragging him from the stage.
“Wait!” I leap to my feet. “Where are you taking him?”
“You didn’t honestly think I would let my insurance policy wander around freely while you were gone, did you?” The Commander smiles. “He’ll be in the dungeon until you return.”
I lock eyes with Logan as the guards pull him past me, and I reach up to wrap my hand around his mother’s necklace.
He says softly, “Remember my promise, Rachel.”
I reach a hand toward him, but he’s already off the stage, being pulled through the crowd, which parts like water around him.
“You leave at dawn. Melkin goes with you.” The Commander is next to me, his sword still grasped in his hand. “I suggest you hurry. I doubt even a young man like Logan can withstand the hospitality of my dungeon for long.”
For one brief, glorious moment, I imagine turning, thrusting my knife through the Commander’s crisp blue military uniform, and watching with pleasure as he learns just how vulnerable a flesh-and-bone man really is.
But I’d never get to Logan before the guards deliver the death sentence I would’ve caused. I let the moment pass and turn to stare straight into the Commander’s dark eyes as I silently promise myself I’ll retrieve the package, secure Logan’s freedom, and deliver justice before the Commander realizes the girl whose loyalty he purchased in blood will be his final undoing.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
LOGAN
Rachel is alone. I’ve failed her. Bitter regret swamps me, a twin to my awful grief over Oliver, but I can’t give in to it. I have to pay attention and figure out how to get out of this.
The dungeon is a dank, smelly pit carved out of the stone foundation of the Commander’s compound. Individual cells are simply hollowed-out husks within the stone. The walls are slimy with moisture, iron bars block the doorways, and a few half-hearted torches burn along the aisle between cells.
I’m dragged past five cells before the guards reach the one set aside for me. Two of the cells I pass are empty. One holds a gaunt man in filthy clothing huddled on a thin straw palette. One holds a younger man shackled to the back wall. The cell across from mine holds a young pregnant woman wrapped in a coarse brown blanket. She doesn’t look at me.
I wonder which of them is the spy planted here to gain my trust.
After pulling me into my cell, the guards fasten heavy iron cuffs around my wrists, and take my sword, the dagger in my left boot, and my scabbard. While one guard pats me down, looking for additional blades, the other yanks on the heavy, rusted chains attached to the cuffs at my wrists, testing them for weakness. The chains loop through iron circles welded onto the back wall of the cell and restrict my ability to go more than halfway toward the doorway. I ignore them in favor of scanning the ceiling for surveillance devices. I can’t find any, but decide the smartest move is to act like I’m being watched at all times.
If I’m going to escape, I can’t afford a single misstep.
Satisfied I’m weaponless, the guards take my cloak and toss it just out of my reach, leaving me to the mercy of the dungeon’s chill. They laugh as they slam my cage door shut and leave.
Lucky for me, they’re too shortsighted to understand a man’s true weapon isn’t something that slides into a scabbard.
A few strong pulls assure me my chains aren’t coming out of the wall without help. Which means I can’t reach my cloak. Which limits my options.
Fear for Rachel is a constant hum in the background of my thoughts, but I can’t give in to it. The only way I can be useful to her now is to keep a clear head and apply logic to my current circumstances.
I have my boots. My belt buckle. My empty knife sheath. Not enough to stage an escape attempt. I need my cloak, but I refuse to reach for it. I refuse to even glance at it. If I’m being watched, the fastest way to ensure I never see my cloak again is to look like I want it.
My cell has a thin, water-stained palette lying on the stone floor, and a half-rotted wooden bucket shoved into the corner closest to me. Neither seems particularly useful in an escape effort, but you never know what might come in handy.
The shackles bite into my wrists as I stand and slowly pace the back wall, counting the measurements and feeling for drafts so I can calculate how close I am to the outside wall of the dungeon.
Heavy footsteps sound at the main entrance, and I look up to see two guards, blazing torches in hand, precede the Commander into the miserable space.
I move closer to the bucket, putting enough space between me and the door of my cell that he’ll have to come all the way inside if he wants to hurt me.
He doesn’t come to my cell, though. He stops in front of the cell containing the pregnant woman huddled in a blanket.
“Warm enough, Eloise?” he asks without a hint of concern in his voice.
She doesn’t respond.
“I thought you should know your husband has agreed to the terms I set before him.” He looks across at me. “Once he understood your life and the life of his unborn child were at stake, Melkin was quite willing to do everything I asked.”
I keep my expression neutral as a tight band wraps around my chest. Melkin is the only tracker still in the city. Rachel is leaving to hunt down the missing package. It isn’t hard to reach the conclusion that Melkin will be Rachel’s escort in my place.
Why would the Commander need to threaten the lives of Melkin’s family to get him to do his job?
I put the fact that Melkin is being as
ked to do something he was originally unwilling to do together with the fact that the Commander wants me to know about it, and the band around my chest tightens further.
Rachel. It has something to do with Rachel. Nothing else makes sense. I don’t need the specifics of his plan to know she’s in danger.
Melkin’s wife doesn’t look up at the Commander as she pulls her thin blanket closer to her body, but it doesn’t matter. He never expected a response. This show was for me alone.
His laugh is an ugly thing filling up the space between us as he crosses the aisle and gestures for the guards to open the door to my cell.
I back up until I have several lengths of loose chain at my disposal.
The Commander steps into my cell. The flickering torchlight lights his scar, throwing the rest of his face in shadow.
“You thought you could outsmart me, didn’t you?” He flexes his right hand into a fist. The light slides along the golden circle of his ring, glowing within the olive-sized red stone and highlighting the wicked ridge of the raised talon through its center.
I brace myself and gather up a length of chain as quietly as I can, ignoring how bruised and battered I feel from the swordfight on the Claiming stage.
“You were always so sure of yourself. So convinced no one could outwit the great Logan McEntire.” His lip curls as he spits my name at me.
Maybe I shouldn’t engage him. Maybe I should keep my silence and let him talk, hoping to pick up nuggets of information along the way.
Or maybe pushing him to his limits is the best way to peel back the mask and see what I’m truly dealing with.
“How would you know?” I ask. “You’ve never bothered to have a proper conversation with me.”
His fist plows into my gut, slamming me back against the wall. I double over and take the opportunity to gather more lengths of chain while catching my breath.
“I don’t have proper conversations with the sons of those who’ve been disloyal.” He kicks my feet out from under me.
I hit the floor hard, and nearly lose my grip on the chain I’m holding like a rope. Pushing myself back to my feet, I say, “My mother wasn’t disloyal.”
His fist slams into my shoulder, spinning me to the side. I narrowly keep from hitting the wall with my face.
“I wasn’t speaking of your mother.” His breath is a harsh pant against my ear.
I take a deliberate step away from him. He’s playing games with me. He knows I have no idea who my father was, and he’s using it against me. Still, part of me wants to ask, just to finally have that gap in my past filled in.
“You knew my father.”
He laughs. “You’re just like him. Two men cut from the same cloth.”
“And what cloth would that be?”
His face, bathed in shadow and firelight, is lit with malice. “Unworthy. Disloyal. Without honor.”
I straighten and brace my feet. “You wouldn’t understand honor if it was branded into your skin.”
He lunges for me, but I duck back. Swinging the chains up, I wrap them around his arm. One swift jerk and I fling him onto the filthy floor of the cell. He lands hard, and I drive my knee into his back, but the guards outside the cell are already on me.
They pull me from him, toss me to the ground, and attack. I swing the chains, brutally slashing one guard’s face and knocking out another’s tooth. One draws his sword, but I duck out of the way. Looping the chains around the sword’s hilt as I go, I yank back hard. The sword goes skidding across the cell.
Two more guards arrive, and I’m fighting for my life. Dodging blades, absorbing blows, and doing as much lethal damage as I can with the lengths of chains in my hands.
It’s four on one, and I know I can’t keep it up much longer. I’m hoping I won’t have to.
The Commander rises from the floor and screams at his guards to stop. They back away, bleeding and cursing.
I’m bleeding and cursing too, but I hold my head high as he approaches me. I have to make his next actions seem like his idea.
“Go ahead and kill me, if you can,” I say, rattling the chains in my hands as if I’m ready to go another round with the guards. “You’ve given me all the weapon I need.”
He spews venom at me. “The second I no longer need you to ensure the girl’s cooperation, you’re dead.” He closes the distance between us, stopping just out of range of the chains. “She’ll die thinking she saved you. Melkin will see to that. But you, you get to live long enough to know you haven’t saved anyone.”
I’ve got the answer I needed about Melkin’s arrangement with the Commander. Ignoring my anger at the thought of Rachel traveling the Wasteland in the company of a man tasked to assassinate her once her usefulness is finished, I focus on getting the second thing I need.
I rattle the chains as if I still have the energy to use them. The Commander gestures at the closest guard. “Get those things off him and remove them from his cell.”
I put up a fight, make it look like I mean it, and it takes three of them to get the shackles off me. The instant I’m free, I back into a corner like I know I’ve been beaten at my own game.
The Commander laughs and waves at his least-injured guards. “Teach him a lesson. Just make sure you leave him alive.”
Two guards advance, fists raised. I parry the first punch and absorb the second as it plows into my shoulder, but see stars as one guard’s booted foot slams into my ribcage and sends me sprawling. Pain flares to life within me, and it’s all I can do to curl up in a ball and endure as the guards use me as their punching bag.
I’ve lost track of time when the Commander calls them off. I’m bleeding from my nose and mouth, my body feels like I’ve been run over by a wagon, and a rib on my right side feels like someone is skewering me with a lit torch every time I breathe.
The Commander strides over to me, grabs a handful of my hair, and wrenches my face around to his. “You’ve lost your little game. And everyone you love will die because of it.” He gestures to a guard, and I hear something sizzle and spit in the flames of the nearest torch. I can’t crane my head to look because the Commander holds my hair in a vicious grip.
A guard steps closer, a long pole in his hands. At the end of the pole, the metal insignia of the Brute Squad—a curved talon beneath two slash marks—glows red-hot.
I twist away from the Commander, but he settles his knee on my side, turning my aching rib into a breath-stealing howl of agony, and holds my face steady with both his hands.
“I beat you,” the Commander says, “and every time I look at you, I’ll know it.”
The guard presses the blazing-hot metal into the side of my neck, and I scream.
The smell of scorched skin fills the air, and I retch as brilliant spots dance in front of my eyes. I drag in a deep breath and try to ride out the worst of the agony, but it refuses to abate.
Letting go of me, the Commander rises and says to the dungeon guard. “Water only. Don’t bother offering this one any food. We won’t need to keep him alive long enough to warrant it.”
Leaving me huddled on the floor, burned and bleeding, the Commander and his guards leave, slamming the cell bars closed in their wake.
I wait until I hear their footsteps fade. Until the door at the entrance closes. Until I’ve silently recounted everything I know about the Pythagorean Theorem. The conductive properties of copper. The relationship between negative mass and negative energy.
Only when I’m certain I’ve spent enough time looking defeated and broken that anyone watching me wouldn’t question my need for warmth, do I slowly crawl across the floor.
Every inch is torture. I clench my teeth and tell myself pain is just a state of mind. I can rise above it. My body doesn’t agree with my theory, so I force myself to recite the Periodic Table to give myself something productive to focus on.
I’m shaking by the time I reach my destination, but furious triumph warms me from the inside as I lay hands on the one thing I wanted all along.
The thing that will make inciting the Commander to remove my chains and beat me nearly senseless worth it. The thing that will make escape possible.
My cloak.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
RACHEL
Dawn is a whisper in the cold morning air as I tighten the leather fastenings on my cloak, wrap it around the tunic and pants I wear, adjust my travel pack until it fits smoothly against my spine, and face the gate leading out into the Wasteland.
I’m taking my own bag with me. The Commander instructed two of his guards to accompany me home so I could pack, and neither of them batted an eye when I headed into a side street off Center Square. If they wondered why I kept a bag hidden in the bushes near a mercantile, they never asked. Instead, they kept one hand on me and one on their weapons at all times. I’m betting they thought I might try to escape.
I would have, if I didn’t have to reclaim the missing package so I can ransom Logan’s life. Not that the Commander is the kind of man who’ll keep his word to me once he holds the package in his hands.
Which is fine. I’m no longer the kind of girl who’ll keep my word to him, either.
Shelving the need to plan a way to free Logan without giving the Commander what he wants, I study my travel companion while pretending to watch the guards unchain the gate.
Melkin is tall, about Logan’s height, though he doesn’t have Logan’s muscle. Instead, his frame is all bones and angles, his skin stretched painfully thin. With deep-set dark eyes, a nose resembling a cloak hook, and a sparse coating of mud-brown hair hanging down his back, he resembles a starving hawk.
He clutches his cloak with long, skinny fingers and darts a glance at me. “Hope you know what you’re doing. I don’t figure on having to rescue you every time I turn around.”
I simply stare at him. I don’t know him. Dad kept me, and the fact that he’d trained me, separate from the others who ran courier or tracking missions for Baalboden. I don’t know Melkin, but that doesn’t stop the rage inside of me from begging to lash out at him. He works for the Commander. That’s justification enough.