For the first time since Baalboden burned, I find I have no qualms about using the tanniyn as a weapon. I grab two of my transmitters and shove those into my pocket as well. And then, I return to the Commander and mount the horse waiting for me.
“Logan, it’s Willow. I can’t just stay behind. I have to do something.” Adam stands beside my horse, his body vibrating with the need to act.
“Then help Frankie bury Drake and the others and then get the rest of the group to Chelmingford. If you stay on this trail and push yourselves, you should arrive in six or seven days. Don’t sleep unless you have to. The trackers could be right behind us, and you no longer have the advantage of horses to increase your speed.”
“That’s not what I meant when I said I wanted to do something!”
I lean down. “I understand perfectly. Do you think I want to be traveling to the northern city-states looking for troops while Rachel is in Rowansmark with Ian and a bunch of trackers? Sometimes we have to make hard choices, Adam. This is yours.” I clasp his shoulder the way Drake clasped mine. “Willow’s a survivor. The second they give her an inch, she’ll make them wish they’d never been born.”
He meets my eyes. “Bring her back.”
“I will. I’ll bring all of them back. And I won’t leave a single highwayman alive to hunt us down again.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
RACHEL
A crew of dockworkers greet us as the boat noses its way into a berth beside a long wooden ramp with thin handrails. The moment the paddle wheel stops churning, Samuel orders the hatch to be lowered onto the dock and gestures for the trackers assigned to me to escort me onto the ramp. They cut the rope that hobbles my ankles, but leave my hands bound. It feels strange to walk on solid ground again. I keep bracing my feet as if the walkway beneath me might sway like the deck of the boat.
“Do we have a carriage?” Samuel asks a dockworker whose ruddy skin is a sharp contrast to her steel-gray hair.
“Just up the top of the ramp and to the left, sir,” the woman says as she grips a rope as thick as my arm and wraps it around a post, doing her part to secure the boat.
Samuel turns on his heel and marches up the ramp. The four trackers assigned to me shepherd me along in Samuel’s wake. Behind us, boots tromp along the walkway. I glance back and see Ian, his face bandaged, stalking up the ramp. He meets my eyes, and the desperate hatred in his gaze makes me wish I still had a weapon. Behind him, I see a flash of dark hair and quick, graceful movements as Quinn quietly lowers himself off the lower deck and into the water.
My escape plan might be in shambles, but I still have Quinn. It might take him a while to catch up to me if we’re using a carriage. He’ll have to move carefully through the streets and ask questions to figure out where I am, but he’s here, and no one else knows it. My knees feel shaky with the relief of knowing I don’t have to face all of Rowansmark on my own.
Several docks line the river, all with long ramps attached. A scattering of oil lamps hang from poles, but most of the area is wreathed in shadows. The sluggish breeze that kicked up as the sun went down carries the scents of algae, rust, and damp wood on the air. The carriage looks like a shorter, fancier version of a wagon—all polished paint, big wheels, and plush seats. A golden fist wrapped around a dragon’s tail—the official emblem of James Rowan—is painted onto the door. We squeeze in, three to a seat, and Ian hops up beside the driver. I’m wedged between two trackers. Samuel sits directly across from me, but he hasn’t looked at me once.
“Where are we going?” I ask, just to force Samuel to deal with the girl he helped kidnap.
“Prison,” he says shortly, his eyes scanning the landscape outside the carriage’s windows. More oil lanterns spill light onto the sidewalk as we pass.
“I thought you didn’t have a prison.”
“You thought wrong.”
Samuel turns away to examine the scenery again. I follow his gaze and watch the streets of Rowansmark move past the window.
The neighborhoods near the docks are full of industrial buildings made of soot-stained brick or sheets of metal with patches of rust spreading from every nail. The carriage bounces over the dark-gray stones that pave the streets, and I brace my feet against the floor to keep from pitching headfirst into Samuel’s lap. My hands, bound behind my back, are useless. The rope cuts into my wrists, and my fingertips are cold.
The industrial section gives way to a neighborhood that reminds me of South Edge—peeling paint, sagging gates, and the beaten-down air of people who’ve known nothing but poverty. The buildings are filthy and often crumbling. They look like structures left over from the previous civilization. People cluster on front steps or lean against lampposts, their eyes cast down as we travel past them, though I can feel their gazes on the back of the carriage once they’re no longer in danger of making eye contact with a tracker.
The people in South Edge were the same. Afraid to look at those who were supposed to protect them. Tired of scrabbling for food and shelter and weary from the certainty that nothing they did would bring them a better life.
If I can escape from prison, this is the neighborhood I need to find. I can disappear here among people who don’t feel an inborn loyalty to the leader who has consistently ignored their plight.
Of course, it’s just as likely that someone might be willing to sell me out to a tracker for a meal, but if I change locations often, I’ll be okay. Especially if Quinn is with me. I don’t know how he’ll find me when I’m being taken through Rowansmark in a carriage, but I don’t doubt that he will.
I just have to stay focused, learn everything I can from my enemies, and watch for my first opportunity to escape and begin hunting for the tech that James Rowan will use to destroy Logan.
The crumbling buildings slowly give way to smaller structures, neat squares of grass, and clean streets. Oil lamps give way to iron braziers with cheerful little fires lit. The streets glow in the golden light. We turn a few corners, and enter the heart of Rowansmark—the place Dad and I stayed whenever we’d visit. A sudden shaft of pain hits as I remember the last time we walked these streets, arm in arm, unaware that our lives were about to be ripped apart by Marcus McEntire’s fierce need to rescue his missing son.
Blinking the sting of tears out of my eyes, I watch the familiar streets. If the slums resemble a beaten, mangy dog too tired to clean itself up anymore, the heart of Rowansmark is a regal woman wrapped in moss and draped with necklaces of ivy. The brick-and-mortar buildings have elegant lines, fancy scrolled-iron balconies, and pillars on either side of their doors.
Another left turn, and we drive through the marketplace. It smells of fresh-cut flowers, bitter coffee beans, and fried bread dusted with sugar.
Dad once took me to the marketplace while we were in Rowansmark on my birthday. He found a vendor who sold thick, honey-soaked cakes and frothy lemon drinks. We sat at an iron table in the shade of a pecan tree and watched the Rowansmark women, in their colorful silk scarves, bargain fiercely for bags of walnuts, sugar, strawberries, and more. At the time, with my father next to me and sweet treats to eat, it was easy to forget that three blocks over, near the grand mansion that houses James Rowan, a bloodstained stage was used to carry out pain atonement sentences on the same citizens who indulged themselves in silks and sugar and a life spent ignoring the ugliness that hovered just beneath Rowansmark’s surface.
Maybe we were no better in Baalboden. We walked the streets with our Protectors. We wore our dresses. We gave up our education because that was the price of safety. That was the bargain we’d made with the devil we knew to escape the devil we didn’t.
Until Dad decided that I should know how to protect myself. That dresses would hamper me in a fight, so I should have pants as well. That I needed to know how to read, how to write, and how to think
for myself.
Maybe all the people of Rowansmark need is for someone to encourage them to think for themselves. To point out that the price they pay for safety is covered in their own blood.
Maybe, but I don’t know how to send that message. And I don’t have time to figure it out. I have to stage an escape from prison, find and destroy some tech, and reunite with Logan so that we can finish what we started.
The carriage rolls to a stop in front of a pair of huge scrolled-iron gates. Beyond the gates sits the sprawling brick mansion of James Rowan. Either I’m meeting with James Rowan before being locked in the prison, or the prison is somewhere on this property. A woman in the brown-and-red uniform of a city guard opens the gate and waves us through.
Magnolia trees with waxy flowers and pecan trees with branches coated in feathery patches of moss are strewn across the green grass. Huge, glass-enclosed oil lanterns are spaced evenly along the brick road that circles around to stop directly in front of the stately white columns that line the spacious porch of the mansion.
Ian hops down from the driver’s bench and yanks open the door. His jaw is clenched, and he merely glances at me before saying, “Get out.” Turning away, he begins pacing the driveway in short, tense circuits while the six of us inside the carriage make our way into the open. Samuel motions for the four men who accompanied us to remain with the vehicle, and then he and Ian flank me and we all move toward the house.
The front door opens soundlessly the moment we set foot on the porch. A man in a crisp white shirt and black pants bows slightly, his graying blond hair flopping forward over his eyes as he says, “Tracker Donnelson. Tracker McEntire. Our leader will see you in his receiving room now.”
“No mention of seeing me. Guess that means I’ll have to wait out here,” I say.
Ian grabs my arm and jerks me forward so that I’m forced to match his pace as we move down a wide hall with gleaming wood floors and framed portraits of James Rowan in various semi-heroic poses lining the walls.
“That’s an awful lot of pictures of himself to keep around, don’t you think?” I ask, and curse my voice for trembling as we near a set of elaborately carved wooden doors. I don’t know what James Rowan will do to me, but I imagine any man who put in place the pain atonement policy and who rewards his trackers for brutality is going to have several creative ideas for how to punish a girl who helped steal his precious technology.
“You understand nothing about him.” Ian’s voice sounds just as shaky as mine. I wonder if it shakes from fear or from anticipation. “He’s a great man. His people want to remember him when he’s gone.”
“Then maybe he should give these portraits to his people instead of keeping them in his own house.”
The man who let us in frowns at me as if I’ve trespassed over sacred ground, and then stops before the double doors and says, “He will see Tracker McEntire first.”
Once Ian enters the room and shuts the doors behind him, and the blond man disappears back to his post, Samuel meets my eye. “Rachel, there is no love lost between us. We’re on opposite sides of an argument neither of us can afford to lose.” He leans toward me and lowers his voice. “But for your own sake, I’m telling you now that you will not be allowed to show disrespect to our leader and get away with it. Swallow every rude, challenging thought that comes into your head and speak with deference if you want this to go well.”
I straighten my spine. “I’ll show respect when I see something worth respecting.”
Samuel’s expression becomes cool and detached again, and he waits in silence until Ian opens the door and motions us in. I can’t tell from Ian’s face if his interview went well, but I’m absolutely certain all of the blame for the fact that Ian still doesn’t have either the device or his brother has now been firmly placed at my feet.
Turning away from Ian, I look around the room. Shelves filled with books line three walls while gold drapes bracket a bank of windows on the fourth. Light from multiple oil lamps floods the room with warmth and lingers over the face of the man standing near a side table that holds a pitcher of tea and some cookies on a platter. The room smells faintly of lilac and old books.
James Rowan is short, thin, and dressed in a plain blue tunic and pants. His almond-shaped eyes and olive skin remind me of Adam, and his age-spotted hands shake as he raises his arm in a snappy salute. Samuel returns the salute, his chest puffed out, his shoulders back. Samuel holds his pose until his leader lowers his arm.
“Be seated. Please.” Rowan’s voice is soft around the edges, like he enjoys lingering over his words. “Who would care for something to drink? It’s been a long journey. I always appreciate a bit of cold tea after I’ve been traveling. Ian, cut those ropes off her. She can’t hold a glass all trussed up like that.”
Ian frees me from the ropes around my wrists, and then he and Samuel crowd me toward a cluster of simple chairs with straight backs that surrounded a short oval table, while James Rowan, leader of Rowansmark and instigator of the pain atonement laws, pours tea and sugar over cubes of ice. I feel off-kilter and uneasy as I slowly sink into a chair and accept a glass of amber liquid with tiny grains of sugar floating lazily toward the bottom of the glass.
The Commander would never serve his own guests. He would never allow the extravagance of ice for a guest he knew he’d likely throw into his dungeon. In fact, he wouldn’t bother being polite at all.
I’m not sure what to do with a man who forces a boy to whip his father to death and then graciously serves that same boy a glass of tea. Ian and Samuel each sip their tea and thank their leader for it, but I lean forward and set my glass on the table in front of me. I’m not interested in gracious hospitality. It won’t change why I’m here. It won’t change what James Rowan has done. What Ian has done.
What I still have to do.
Rowan settles himself across from me, sets his tea down next to mine, and looks at me. I stare into his eyes. For a moment, his gaze is nothing but benign graciousness, but I narrow my eyes and lean closer, a clear challenge. He blinks twice, the creases around his mouth pinching close, and then I see it—powerful confidence edged with sharp intolerance for anyone who would dare stand in his way. Beneath the calm reception, behind the tea, the sugar, and the pretense, lurks the man who knows how to bend the will of others into a shape of his own choosing.
He’s going to find my will impossible to bend.
He gives me a small smile, but I refuse to return it. Folding his hands in his lap, he studies me in silence, and then says, “You’ve caused us quite a few problems. Refusing to return our property, threatening my trackers when they’re simply doing their job . . . I must say I’m disappointed in you.”
I hold his gaze and slowly lift my chin. Swallowing hard, I will my voice not to shake and say, “I could say the same about you.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
RACHEL
James Rowan’s eyes narrow slightly—the only indication that my words have upset him. His smile remains friendly and paternal as he brushes an imaginary speck of dust from his tunic. The silence between us stretches so long, I begin to wish for a swallow of my tea just to keep my mouth from going dry. Dad used to use this technique on me when he was certain I’d done something I needed to confess. I always broke in less than two minutes, but I’m not going to break now.
Ian adjusts himself on the chair beside me, and his leg brushes against mine. I jerk away from him, and a tiny frown digs into Rowan’s forehead, as if the tension he sees between Ian and me causes him concern.
“Ian was good enough to fill me in on the details of these past two months,” Rowan says, his voice kind but firm.
I snort. “Was he kind enough to tell you that he burned my city down, causing thousands of people to die, and then systematically murdered innocent people as we traveled t
o Lankenshire?”
Ian shifts in his seat and leans forward, but Rowan gives him a tiny warning glance, and he goes still.
“I see you have your pet dog on a tight leash,” I say, and though I can’t see his face, I can practically feel Samuel’s disapproval radiating from his body.
Rowan presses his fingers into a steeple, and says, “I enjoyed a good relationship with your father. I’m sorry for his passing. My condolences.”
“I’d love to explain to you in great detail where you can put your condolences.”
Samuel’s hand latches onto my shoulder and squeezes. Hard. “You will be respectful.”
“Or what? You’ll throw me in the dungeon? You’ll kill me? I already know you’re going to do both, so what have I got to lose?” My body vibrates with fury. How dare the man who created the kind of environment that kept Marcus from being able to go to him for help in rescuing Logan, the man who sent Ian after us knowing he would kill innocent people, sit there and pretend to mourn my father?
“I told you she was nothing like her father,” Ian says, his tone smug.
I round on him and hurl my words at his face. “You know nothing about my father. He never blindly followed anyone’s orders. He thought for himself. He stood for what was right, even when it cost him everything.” I seal my lips before I can tell him that I may not be a hero like Dad, but nothing, not Ian, not James Rowan, not the stupid fire-breathing Cursed One, is going to stop me from doing the right thing.
Even if it costs me everything.
I turn back to face Rowan, who is watching me with speculation buried beneath his bland mask of concern, and say, “My father didn’t steal anything from you. Once he realized the package he’d been given by Marcus McEntire was something the Commander shouldn’t have, he hid it rather than bring it back to Baalboden. And you declared him a traitor. Then you sent Ian to kill everyone. . . .” My voice breaks as I remember Sylph’s lifeless face. “Even though the people who died weren’t responsible for any of this. So you don’t get to sit there and tell me how sorry you are that my father is dead. Or how sorry you are that anyone from Baalboden is dead. Your condolences are useless to me.”