We don’t leave the cottage for another two days while Logan tinkers with his invention and works on a plan to smuggle Oliver safely out of Baalboden, and I brush up on my knife-wielding skills. When we talk, we focus on how to leave. How to deal with the Cursed One if he attacks while we’re in the Wasteland. And what might be inside the package the Commander wants so badly. We leave alone both the topic of our almost-kiss and the way we clung to each other in the wake of the beast’s attack, and I’m grateful. I don’t know how I feel about any of it, and I don’t want to be the one to ruin things by talking about it.
In addition to a pair of guards, the tracker Melkin haunts the orchard near the house at night, and another tracker watches the cottage during the day as well. We can’t do anything about the constant surveillance, so Logan works harder on his gadget, and I move on from my knife to practice with Dad’s Switch.
The Switch is one of Logan’s more useful inventions. It looks like a solid wooden walking staff, but one end is weighted enough to crush a man’s skull, and the other conceals a spring-loaded double-edged blade. It takes hours of work before I can balance the heavier end, swing it like a mallet, and knock Bob, our practice dummy, flying. Even so, I’m still off balance enough that if I have to deal with two foes at once, I’ll find myself skewered at the end of a sword before I can regain my footing, and I’ve yet to manage springing the blade after the initial hit without getting knocked to the ground.
Bob is about Logan’s height and weighs in at an even one hundred seventy pounds. He’s got me by forty pounds and five inches. Dad always said if I could take out the dummy, I could handle any man who tried to give me trouble.
I doubt he was thinking of Commander Chase when he said it.
Last year, Logan strung a heavy wire between two trees and hooked Bob to it. The dummy slides, swings, and moves with my own momentum, and while it isn’t the same as fighting something with intelligence, he keeps me on my toes. I can run him through with my knife, yank the blade free, duck, and spin around to bury my weapon in his back while he slides toward me. The Switch is another story. I slam the weighted end of it into Bob’s side, but can’t spin the blade side around before my sparring partner swings back and sends me sprawling.
After my fourth disastrous attempt, I let fly with the most creative swear word I ever heard my father say and toss the Switch onto the grass beside me. I can’t master it. Can’t swing it around in time to deliver the crucial blow that could mean the difference between life and death. I lay back on the grass, squint against the glare of the afternoon sun, and suddenly feel like crying.
With Dad by my side, I’d always felt invincible. Now I feel like a freshly shorn lamb, stripped bare of a shield I never thought I’d lose. Whatever was in that package he refused to deliver, whatever he’s keeping from the Commander’s grasp, I have to help him. And to help him, I have to be prepared to face anything the Wasteland has to offer. Which means that failing at the Switch isn’t an option.
I slowly push myself to my feet. Grasp the Switch. Close my eyes. Take a deep breath that smells of grass, sun-warmed dirt, and the fresh buds slowly unfurling in the orchard next door. If I keep my eyes closed, I can imagine Dad, standing behind me, his arms wrapped around me, his hands covering mine and holding me in place.
I widen my stance, crouch, and remember the last time we sparred together.
“Drop your shoulders a bit. You’ll need the room to move.” He tightens his grip on my hands when they start to slide together. “No, you don’t. Nice, wide grip. Keep it loose. Gives you balance and control. There’s my girl.”
I drop my shoulders, widen my grip, and keep my eyes closed.
“All right, now, you’ve got a weapon on either end. You’ll only have seconds to decide which one to use.” He lets go of my hands, and places calloused palms on my shoulders. “Big man, sprinting toward you.”
“Weapon?”
“Doesn’t matter, Rachel. He’s twice your size and his speed will bring him in range within seconds. Which end do you use?” His fingers curl around my shoulders as if willing me to know the answer.
“Blade. No time to swing the weighted end.” I slide the blade free and crouch, the afternoon sun painting crimson swirls against my closed eyelids.
“Very good.” He squeezes my shoulders and walks around to face me. “Now, if you must engage an opponent who is bigger, stronger, and faster, what do you do?”
“Take him down. Make it so he can’t get up and come after me.”
“Yes. He won’t expect a Baalboden girl to know how to stop him. You get one chance to surprise him. Make full use of that advantage. Where do you make the first cut?” His eyes are deep gray, like a sky before the rain falls, and the fierce determination in them fills me with the same.
I’m Jared Adams’s daughter. I can do this.
“Let him come in, then spin and slash the inner thigh as I turn. Cut open the artery.” I draw in a deep breath, imagine a man barreling toward me, let him come almost too close for comfort, and then spin and slash, planting my left foot to keep my balance for the next move.
“Good! He’s bleeding, but the pain hasn’t hit yet, and he doesn’t realize how badly he’s hurt. He’ll try to come after you. How do you stop him?”
“Cut the Achilles tendon as he passes me, then get out of range.” I spin and slash again, the Switch beginning to feel like an extension of my arm as I thrust, turn, and slice in tune with my father’s voice in my head.
He’s clapping, pride and love written on his face. “You did it. I knew you could. I always knew you could.”
“But what if I can’t?” I lower the Switch. “What if one day I don’t know what to do?” My throat closes, and I have to force myself to whisper, “What if you’re gone, and I have no one left to teach me?”
But the scene in my mind falls silent. I never asked him those questions last time we sparred together. I never knew I should. And now, when I desperately want to fill in the blanks, to hear his voice tell me how to escape Baalboden, how to find him, and how to keep the Commander from finding what Dad so desperately wanted kept hidden, he’s gone.
“I can teach you,” Logan says quietly, and my eyes snap open.
He’s a few yards away, his face shadowed by the branches of the tree he stands under. As he steps forward, I swear if I see pity on his expression, I won’t speak to him ever again. But when the sunlight brushes against his face, there’s no pity in his eyes. Instead, they’re steady and filled with the same determination I always saw in Dad’s.
He walks toward me and reaches out to slide his hand along the weighted end of the Switch I still hold.
“I miss him,” he says. “That unmovable assurance he always carried with him. Like he could shoulder the weight of the world, and it wouldn’t break him.” His fingers brush mine, but neither of us pulls away.
My voice is quiet. “I miss his laugh. Remember?”
He smiles. “He filled a room when he was in it, didn’t he?”
I nod, and the raw ache of feeling so alone subsides a bit.
“I know I can’t take his place, and I don’t want to. But I know how to use a Switch. And you’ll need it in the Wasteland. Will you let me teach you?”
I smile a little. “If you don’t mind getting humiliated by a girl, tech head.”
“You’re going to eat those words.”
I toss my hair out of my face. “Make me.”