The Healing Wars: Book III: Darkfall Page 9

  “That flash is a good sign,” Quenji said, grinning. “You don’t ward things unless they’re worth a lot. Danello, see if anything else flashes.”

  He grimaced. “I think it’s your turn to check.”

  I scanned the books above where Danello had collapsed. One spine poked out a finger width from the rest of the books. Dark leather, worn binding, the title so faded I couldn’t make out any words. Thin blue strips of pynvium ran along the edges of the spine, looking like decorations. Until you touched them.

  “Step back.” I reached out and ran my finger down the spine.

  Whoomp.

  Sharp pain washed over me, stronger than the typical muted flash. I pulled the book off the shelf. No flash this time.

  The entire front edge was covered with a leather flap, with locks at both the top and bottom corners. “It’s locked.”

  “Forget valuable,” Danello said. “Whatever is inside there has to be important.”

  “Let’s see what it is.” I set the book down on the floor and motioned Quenji over. “Don’t open it, just unlock it. Odds are something else will flash.”

  Quenji gulped but started on the lock anyway. It took him longer than any other lock I’d seen him pick, but he eventually got it unlocked. He stepped back and ducked around the corner. “Your turn.”

  “I think he has the right idea,” said Danello, joining him in the hall. “That hurt before.”

  “Yeah.” I braced myself and lifted the cover. No flash. But the pages were filled with enchanting glyphs and notes and drawings that made my fingers itch. And my heart race. “It’s some kind of enchanter’s book,” I called over my shoulder.

  “Worth anything?” said Quenji.

  “To me, everything. This might tell us how to fix Tali.”

  “How?” Danello asked.

  “I don’t know, but there must be something in here that says how the kragstun works.”

  “Do you read enchanter?”

  “No, I don’t.” My hopes sank, then rose again. “But Onderaan does.”

  Three days until he was supposed to meet us at Analov Park.

  “Keep searching,” I said. “Maybe’s there more here.”

  “Told you,” said Quenji, rubbing his hands together. “Thieves hide stuff.”

  We opened every drawer, looked behind every book, looked in every book, but found nothing else in the library. I went to the next room, running my hand over everything again, but no quivers and no pynvium.

  “Bedroom next,” Danello said, pushing open the door. The room had been searched already, long before we got here. Drawers were empty, chairs were knocked over, nothing left on the tables. Even the bedding was gone.

  My stomach clenched when I walked in, but not from any glyphed pynvium. This had been Zertanik’s bedroom. I’d killed the man who used to sleep here.

  “Let’s get this over with.” I moved quickly, checking the places that might hold hidden compartments like Quenji said. I stepped into the closet, which was as big as my old room over at Millie’s Boardinghouse.

  My stomach quivered. “Check the floor. My toes are tingling.”

  Danello felt around the edge near the baseboards. A knot in the wood had a hole in the center, and he stuck his finger into it. One section of the floor pulled up.

  “Another hiding place,” he said.

  Two bags and one long box sat in a compartment about six inches deep and two feet square. The box was locked.

  Danello picked up a bag. It clinked. He looked inside and sighed. “Only jewels,” he said.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Quenji grabbed the bag from his hand and poured gems into his palm. “Look at all this! We could live like aristocrats with these.”

  Shame we hadn’t found those back when we were living here. That one bag alone would have been enough to get every last one of us out of Geveg and someplace safe. I sighed. I’d been a fool not to search the town house before. To avoid rooms I really hadn’t wanted to go into. If I had, maybe we’d have escaped in time and Tali wouldn’t have … been changed.

  “Nya?” Danello rubbed my shoulder. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Quenji, unlock the box, then stand back again, just in case.”

  Quenji worked on the lock until it snicked, then joined Danello in the hall. I reached for the long box. Lifted the lid.

  Whoomp.

  I winced, the blown sand prickle stinging this time. Zertanik created strong enchantments, stronger than anything Papa had ever made. Zertanik might have been a thief and a traitor, but he was a talented enchanter for sure.

  “What’s inside?”

  “Glyphed pynvium. Long strips of it, about two inches wide, maybe a quarter inch thick. They look a little like rulers.” A single column of glyphs ran down the center.

  “Are they weapons?” Danello called.

  “I don’t know. We’d have to trigger them to find out, and they might only have one flash.” I pulled over the box from the bookshelf, my stomach doing flips. I took a deep breath and opened it.

  Whoomp.

  Same sting, same sharp pain. If I were a thief, I’d run the second I touched one of these things.

  “It’s clear,” I said, reaching inside the box. Something the size and shape of a battlefield brick was wrapped in cloth. I unwrapped it as the boys gathered around.

  “That looks expensive,” Quenji said.

  A cylinder of ocean-blue pynvium sat in my hands, glyphs carved deep into four vertical strips of silvery-blue metal.

  Kragstun.

  “What is that for?” Danello whispered. Something about that cylinder made me want to be cautious, too. And run as fast as I could out the door and hide. I held the cloth carefully, not letting the cylinder touch my skin.

  “I don’t know.” But I was sure it had something to do with the Duke and his weapons.

  Zertanik had been working with the Duke to help create his pain-cycling device, and maybe more than just that. The Duke’s pynvium weapons had flashed several times—and they’d flashed hard. Had Zertanik made those? Had he made the pynvium armor? The lining?

  I guess Vinnot hadn’t been the only one doing experiments.

  I put the cylinder back in the box, feeling better the moment the lid closed. Zertanik probably hadn’t wanted anyone to find these things. Maybe not even the Duke. He was, after all, planning on robbing him. Selling his enchanted items would have no doubt made him more money than anything the Duke had been offering.

  I slipped the boxes into a makeshift bag made from scraps of curtains and wondered if killing Zertanik hadn’t been a bad thing.

  There was no way we were going swimming again, so getting back to the boat was going to be tricky.

  “Is there another way around the bridge guards?” asked Aylin. She’d curled up on a chair next to Tali. Quenji sat on the arm, his hand in hers.

  “Going around them is even more dangerous. The ones closer to the League will be the Duke’s men.”

  “We could lure them away,” Quenji said, worried eyes on Aylin. “The pack used to do that to get into guarded windows.”

  “A distraction?” she asked.

  Quenji smiled. “Part of it. What good is getting rid of the guards if they catch you? You also gotta trick them.”

  “We could try talking to them,” said Soek. “I know it sounds crazy, but what if they’re on our side?”

  Danello nodded. “We wanted to make contact with someone in charge and warn them about the Duke. We’ll have to talk to someone to do that.”

  Guilt washed over me. I’d forgotten about the army, the danger to Geveg. “If we’re going to try talking, should we wait until morning?”

  “They’ll be more people on the streets,” said Quenji. “That could go either way for us.”

  The clock tower chimed, deep bells ringing out one after other. Tali gasped and jerked awake, head swiveling, eyes panicked. She shrieked and lunged at Quenji, sitting above her on the arm of Aylin’s chair.<
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  “Tali, no!”

  She knocked him to the floor and pummeled him, swinging wildly. I grabbed one arm, Danello grabbed the other, and we dragged her off. Quenji scrambled away, his nose bleeding.

  “Saints, what got into her?” he said. Aylin had both arms around him, watching Tali warily.

  We held Tali down. She screamed, trying to get to me and Danello, flailing about with fists and feet.

  “Shh, Tali, it’s okay, please be quiet or someone will hear you.”

  Her shrieks bounced off the bare walls, sounding loud enough to wake every person on the isle.

  “Tali, quiet!” I hummed a lullaby Mama used to sing to us, the one about clouds and fish that dreamed of flying. She fought us all through the first verse but settled down on the second. I started over, and finally her body went limp and she dropped back to the floor.

  Danello let go of her, his hands hovering above her arms a few seconds before pulling away.

  “Soek,” he said softly, “any movement outside?”

  Soek peeked out the window. “Doesn’t look like it.”

  I didn’t know whether or not to be relieved or bothered that a young girl screaming in the middle of the night was ignored.

  “Sorry she hit you, Quenji,” I said.

  “She didn’t mean it. And look”—he stuck his nose in the air, turning it to each side—“the bleeding’s already stopped.”

  Tali rolled over and pulled herself up, her knees shaking. She crawled into the chair and curled back into the same ball she’d been in before. I wanted so much to hug her and let her know it would be okay.

  “Do you think it was the bells?” Aylin said. “Or just that she woke up scared?”

  “I don’t know.” My guts said it was fear. I’d woken up in a panic before, almost every night the first month after the soldiers had thrown us out of our home. I had to find a way to get her back, make her Tali again.

  For once I was actually looking forward to seeing Onderaan.

  We left the town house shortly after the clock tower struck one. Tali jumped when the chimes started, but didn’t attack anyone. I kept the rope around her waist, left her hands free. The street was quiet as a grave, but I still felt watched. Even in the shadows it felt out in the open.

  No one said a word while we sneaked along the buildings and climbed over low walls. Aylin carried the bag with the enchanter’s book, pynvium, and jewels close to her chest, keeping it as silent as we were. We stopped near the bridge behind some gardenia bushes, their white flowers sickly sweet.

  I scanned the street ahead. I counted four soldiers, all sitting. They’d built a barricade, crates piled high, tied together with rope. More crates were stacked across the street at the foot of the bridge. They wouldn’t be easy to get over.

  “So what do you think?” I whispered. “Distract them or talk to them?”

  If they didn’t want to talk, Danello had his rapier. Quenji no doubt had at least one knife on him. Aylin and Soek had thick table legs from the town house. The soldiers had swords. Probably no pynvium weapons.

  “Won’t hurt to try and talk, right?” Aylin said. “But just in case, you’d better take this.” She handed me one of the ruler-shaped pynvium strips out of its metal box. Soek had checked them earlier and discovered they did indeed hold pain.

  My skin started itching as soon as I touched it. “Right. Never hurts to be prepared.”

  “I’ll go first,” Danello said, giving Aylin a quick grin. “Just in case.”

  He slid out quietly and slipped around the bushes. Quenji and Soek went next, then Aylin. I followed her, Tali right behind me. We crossed the open distance, fifty feet, seventy-five.

  One soldier turned, glanced away, then snapped back to us. He cried out and his partner turned our way as well. They both stepped forward, swords out. Hard to tell in the moonlight, but both looked fair-haired.

  “Hold it right there!”

  “We’re Gevegian,” Danello said, hands out to his sides. “We need to speak to whoever is in charge of the rebellion. The Duke’s army is on the way.”

  “Don’t care who you are, and on this isle, we’re in charge.”

  “But the Duke is coming!”

  “So?” The man tipped his head at the bundle in Aylin’s arms. “What you got there, girlie?”

  She gripped it closer. “Nothing of yours.”

  “It’s all ours here.”

  Saints, they were looters. They weren’t fighting for freedom—they were trying to steal what they could while everything was a mess.

  “We don’t want trouble—we just want to pass,” Danello said, hand on his rapier. Quenji pulled out his knife and Soek hefted the table leg.

  I pressed my fingers against the pynvium strip and angled closer. I had no clue what the trigger might be, but it was usually just a flick of the wrist. My guts said it would be a strong flash, just like all Zertanik’s weapons, but the other two men were still back a ways and could be out of range.

  “Give us the bag and you can pass.”

  “No.” Danello drew his rapier.

  “Better know how to use that shiny sword then.” He charged forward. I flicked my wrist.

  Whoomp!

  The two men in front screamed and went down. Other men hollered, shouting orders, swearing, yelling at each other. More stepped out from the barricades they’d been hiding behind, swords drawn. A lot more.

  “They got pynvium!”

  Tali’s rope yanked out of my hand. She shoved me aside and dived for one of the swords lying on the street. Grabbed it in one hand as she somersaulted back to her feet.

  “Tali!”

  She sidestepped Danello, spinning right and sinking the blade into the stomach of one of the looters. Kept moving, graceful as a dancer, the sword flying from man to man. Danello gaped at her, then stumbled back, parrying an attack.

  What was she doing?

  Aylin swung the table leg at a looter’s head. It cracked against his skull and he went down. More men appeared from the shadows. There had to be a dozen, maybe more now.

  “Two on your left,” I called, trying to watch Tali and the looters at the same time. She moved through them fearlessly.

  A looter thrust his sword at me. I threw myself right, but not fast enough and the tip cut through my side. I grimaced, rolling the moment I hit the ground. He came at me again. I held my ground and my breath, then darted for his wrist as he struck. Skin met skin and I pushed the wound into him.

  He tumbled forward, hand pressed against his side. “Shifter! It’s the Shifter!”

  I cringed and scrambled back to my feet. I had to get Tali, get them all, and get out of there.

  “Across the bridge, hurry!” Danello shouted.

  Aylin smacked a soldier with her club and ran for the crates blocking the bridge, the bag tucked under her arm. A looter lunged at her. Quenji jumped between them, taking the blade in his shoulder. He gasped and stumbled sideways.

  “Get away from him!” Aylin flailed with the table leg, nearly smacking Quenji with it as she hit the looter.

  I darted between shocked-looking soldiers, protecting Soek’s back and heading for Quenji. A looter got past Danello and came at me, his sword slicing my thigh. Sharp pain pinched my leg, but he jumped back out of reach before I could touch him. Danello swung his rapier around and stabbed him.

  Tali was still a blur of blades and anger. Quenji backed away, protecting Aylin as they moved across the bridge. A looter charged out of the darkness and kicked Danello behind the knee. He collapsed onto the bridge, and the man kicked him again, catching him across the temple.

  “Danello!”

  Two other men lunged at me, grabbing my arms and pinning me to the railing. I struggled, writhing against the warm stone, trying to break free.

  “Let me go!”

  Soek raced over and smacked one in the head with his club. The grip loosened, and my arm wrenched free. Quenji appeared, running right at me. He leaped at the man holding
my other arm, and they both toppled over the side of the bridge and into the canal, dragging me over the rail with them.

  “Quenji!” Aylin screamed.

  I clung to the railing, my feet dangling. Two splashes below—the looter and Quenji. Then a third splash, and a raspy growl that chilled me.

  Crocodile.

  TEN

  Quenji screamed, thrashing wildly. I caught a glimpse of flailing arms before the water churned and his scream was cut off. The croc spun, twisting Quenji round and round, then sharp snaps that I prayed were hyacinths, but they sounded far too much like bones breaking.

  Please, Saint Saea, help him.

  My fingers clung to the stone railing, but my arm muscles were already shaking. I couldn’t hold on much longer. Part of me wanted to drop, grab the croc, and see if shifting worked on animals.

  Another raspy growl, more splashing. The same croc, or had another arrived to finish off the looter?

  Oh, Quenji.

  “Hang on!” Soek grabbed my wrists. Aylin seized my shirt. They both pulled, dragging me over the railing and back onto the bridge.

  Shouts and screams all around me. Terror from below, fear from above. The looter in the water clawed at the lakewall as if trying to climb it.

  I glanced at where Quenji had vanished, the water’s surface dark again.

  Was there blood? Anything that said Quenji was down there?

  “We can’t just leave him,” Aylin said, and I realized we were moving. Soek had us each by a hand, pulling us across the bridge. Danello was on his feet, blood running down his face. He had Tali’s rope in his hand and was leading her away from the fighting.

  “He’s gone. We have to go,” Soek said.

  Aylin slapped at his arm. I stopped. Her arms were empty. Her bag was gone.

  “The book! Where’s the enchanter’s book?” I couldn’t lose it. I let go of Soek’s hand.

  “Nya, we don’t have time, come on!” Soek looked ready to throw us both over his shoulder and run, but Quenji had died helping me get that book so I could find a way to save Tali. He wasn’t going to die for nothing.

  I spotted the bag. Some of the looters were on their side of the bridge, hauling their friend out of the canal. The others were racing toward me. I snatched the bag and ran back to Soek and Aylin, the looters right behind me.