While the Cursed One laid waste to every densely populated area across the land, many of the individual houses built far outside a city’s limits were left standing. Some of those houses are uninhabitable due to time, weather, and neglect. But some are still safe enough to use as stopping points along our journey through the Wasteland. Every courier has found his own safe houses, stocked them with supplies, and hopes the outside still looks rundown enough to avoid catching the interest of a passing band of highwaymen.
We reach Dad’s first safe house as dusk is falling. The itch on the back of my neck warning me we’re being followed hasn’t abated, though Melkin insists he senses nothing.
I’m not sure Melkin’s mind is on the matter at hand, though, so I don’t trust his instincts. He’s been unapproachable since lunch, and I can’t read his expression. However, he does take me seriously enough to keep his knife unsheathed for the rest of the journey.
The safe house is a two-story brick house with a wide, wraparound porch and a line of stately columns across the front that used to be white until a century of sun faded them into something that resembles grayish clay. Ivy clings to the bricks, wraps itself around windows, and hangs down from the roof like glossy green drapes.
The front yard may have been a perfectly manicured gem once upon a time, but now the grass stretches past my thighs, wild and thick, and the trees behind the house creep closer with every passing year. Still, the house’s location affords decent visibility for the entire circumference of the structure, a quality Dad insisted on in a safe house.
The wires on my arm cuff glow without flickering now, though the light is faint enough that I doubt he’s still here. I don’t care. It’s enough to keep the wild, restless hope within me alive.
“This where he hid the package?”
“No.”
“Then why’re we stopping?”
I brush past him and mount the sagging front steps, making sure to skip the second from the top, where the wood is rotted to the consistency of fig pudding. “Because it’s almost dark. And someone is following us. I want the protection of four walls around me.”
Plus Dad might have left another sign for me inside.
Besides, Melkin looks wound tight enough to snap. He needs a break from fireside watches too.
A large padlock with a keypad on the front—another of Logan’s inventions—bars the door. Dad made sure both Logan and I knew the codes to each of his safe houses. I type in the code, blocking the keypad from Melkin’s view as he carefully climbs the steps behind me, and the lock opens with the barely audible snick of metal releasing metal.
The air inside is musty and heavy with mildew, and dust lies across every visible surface like a layer of gray snow. I move past the entryway and see it—footprints, faint outlines coated with less dust than the rest of the house.
He was here.
The hope inside me burns so fiercely I’m almost afraid to touch it.
Melkin shuts the door behind him, slides the bolt into place, and turns. His knife is still out.
“You can put that away now.”
“What if someone’s already using this place? I don’t figure on surprising anyone unless I’ve got a weapon in my hand.”
“If someone was here, they’d leave footprints in all this dust. See?” I point to the fading steps left sometime in the last few months by Dad.
Melkin grunts, but keeps his knife out as he moves further into the house, taking in the faded floral wallpaper with clusters of black mold spreading along the ceiling and the once-blue couch that has since become a muted gray. “Not if they came in through a window.”
All the windows are sealed shut. Dad saw to that when he first chose this house. I don’t bother telling Melkin, however. He needs to feel like he’s done all he can to secure our safety, so I let him prowl the house, beating at curtains and checking under furniture until he looks every bit as grimy as the house itself.
I leave him to it and move carefully along the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the front of the house, keeping far enough back from the gauzy yellowed drapes that no one approaching the edge of the property can see me.
Someone is out there. I can’t see them yet, and they might be expert enough to stay just out of range, but I know we’re being followed.
The question is, by whom?
Someone who knew to pick up our trail on the road to Rowansmark? It could be guards assigned to follow us, which would mean the Commander intends to break his word much earlier than I’d assumed. Highwaymen who think they’ve spotted easy prey? That would be the last mistake they ever made. Trackers from Rowansmark tasked to keep watch over the paths couriers take in case one of them leads straight to the package?
That’s a risk I can’t afford to take.
We’ll have to either flush our followers out into the open, or circle behind them and spring a trap. Which means Melkin is going to have to pull it together and help me.
“You’re sure it isn’t hidden here?” he asks directly behind me, and I whirl around, my hand reaching for my knife before sense overrides my instinctive panic.
“Sneak up behind me again, and I’ll gut you like a sheep.”
His eyes, black pits of something that looks like bitterness, capture mine. “Are you sure it isn’t hidden here?”
“Yes. It’s near the next safe house.”
“He could’ve moved it.”
“Really? With the Commander and Rowansmark already combing the Wasteland for him and for the package? He knew when he left Baalboden for the last time that he would be followed. He’s too smart to lead them right to it.”
He nods, a sharp movement that severs whatever line of tension he’s been teetering on since lunch, and sheaths his knife. In his other hand, he holds a scrap of yellow.
“Found this tied around the doorknob in the kitchen.”
It’s another of my mother’s ribbons. I take it from him, rub my fingers over the embroidered S. A. at the end, and tuck it into the same pocket that houses the purple one. I don’t need the signs to know I’m closing in—Logan’s tracker sees to that—but having this tangible connection to Dad soothes some of the ache within me. Having Logan by my side would go a long way toward soothing the rest.
“I saw our followers. Come up to the attic, and you can see them too. Mind the stairs, though. Half of them are rotted through.”
I follow him, skirting spots of obvious rot and doing my best not to rub up against too much dust. The attic is a stale, cluttered box of a room with two grimy windows, one at each end. We head for the front window, and I scan the grass, raise my eyes to the tree line, and find them in less than a minute.
Standing two trees in, watching the front door, and moving restlessly beneath the fading rays of the early evening sun.
Amateurs.
Which means they’re guards. Highwaymen and trackers are far too experienced to be so obvious. I say as much to Melkin.
“I thought the same. Can’t figure why the Commander thinks we need extra protection.”
“Please tell me you aren’t that stupid.”
He frowns at me.
“They aren’t here for our protection, Melkin. If they were, they would’ve traveled with us from the start. They’re here to pounce once we have the package.”
“But we’re going to bring it back. We have to. I’m not going to lose Eloise. You said you thought if I did what he asked, he’d keep his word.”
I lied. But looking into the misery on his face, I can’t find the cruelty to give him the truth. “Maybe they’re insurance in case we decide we want whatever’s in the package more than we want Eloise and Logan’s safety.”
“There’s nothing more important than her safety.”
“To you. But the Commander doesn’t place the same value on human life as you do.”
We’re silent for a moment, staring at the two guards as the day subsides and the first stars of the night glitter like shards of silver in the darkening sky.
“What if they want the package for themselves?” he asks, the darkness he harbored earlier back in his voice.
“Then they’ll try to kill us once we find it.”
“Not if we kill them first.”
Crimson. Sliding down silver blades. Covering me in guilt that won’t ever wash clean.
I shake the morbid thoughts away. It’s ridiculous to think I’d feel guilty shedding the blood of a guard. Especially one who is here with the express purpose of shedding mine.
But if I do this—if I deliberately ambush and kill without provocation—will I lose something I need? Something that keeps me from becoming like the Commander? Will it harden me toward violence the way repeatedly holding my knife builds calluses into the skin of my palm?
Or will it strengthen me into the kind of weapon I need to be to bring the Commander down?
“I’ll go out the back and circle around. I’ve already checked through the window at the opposite end. There’s no one watching us from behind. Give me at least an hour to work my way to them without being noticed. Then sneak out of the house as if you’re going looking for the package. While they’re focused on you, I’ll kill them.”
His voice is cold, empty, and more than a little scary. Gone is the courteous, understanding Melkin I’ve been traveling with for a week. In his place stands a fierce predator willing to do whatever he must to obliterate anyone who stands between him and Eloise.
I wonder if I’m catching a glimpse of who I’m becoming as well.
Banishing that unwelcome thought before it can take root, I nod my acceptance of his plan and follow him back downstairs. He leaves out the back door, and I mark time by lighting candles in the kitchen and assembling dinner from the supplies Dad keeps here. I eat my fill, leave plenty on the table for Melkin, and pack a spare travel sack with food supplies from the cupboards.
My hour is up. Checking that my knife slides easily from its sheath, I light a small torch, the better to make myself seen, and open the front door. The loamy scent of the sun-warmed ground is fading into the crisp chill of night. I creep along the length of the porch, peering beneath the boards as if I expect to find something.
My skin prickles with awareness. I’m being watched.
Which is exactly the point of this entire charade, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.
When Melkin doesn’t appear within the first few minutes, I leave the porch and wander to the side, still in full view of the guards at the tree line. I feel exposed with my brilliant little torch ablaze amidst the overgrown grass and the distant icy stars. The tingle of awareness becomes a full-fledged, adrenalin-fueled need to draw a weapon and be ready for anything.
I don’t ignore it.
Instead, I drop down, shove the lit end of the torch deep into the soft soil at my feet to extinguish it, and run as silently as I can away from the spot where I was last seen. In seconds, I hear someone crashing through the grass behind me.
I dodge to my left, drop to a crouch, and freeze. The darkness will cover me. The person following me doesn’t have a NightSeer mask, or I’d see its green glow.
He also doesn’t have the sense to stop moving once he no longer hears me. Soft footsteps creep toward the spot I just vacated. I slide my knife free without a sound, and ready myself.
The fear I felt earlier at the thought of shedding someone’s blood without giving them fair notice is gone. In its place is cold determination.
I’m not going to die. Not until the Commander lies in a pool of his own blood at my feet.
My pursuer is close enough that I can hear him breathe now, rough, uneven pants that speak of someone without the proper training to control his breathing when it matters most. I wait until he’s a mere three yards from me, and tense for my attack.
A hand snakes out from behind me and wraps around my mouth while a second hand grabs my knife hand before I can swing it back.
“Wait,” Melkin breathes against my ear, and I hold still.
My follower moves forward, making enough noise to announce his presence to any but an inexperienced fool, but I trust Melkin and wait.
By the time the man moves out of range, my muscles are stiff, and I can’t feel my lower legs. I turn to look at Melkin, his gaunt frame a black smudge against the starry sky.
“Who?” My voice is little more than a whisper.
“Rowansmark tracker.”
That doesn’t make sense. Any tracker worth his weight would’ve been on me before I ever knew what hit me. And if by some chance I managed to elude him, he wouldn’t have chased me in such a noisy, clumsy fashion.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. He killed the guards before I got there. Saw his handiwork. He’s an expert.”
“Then why act like an amateur?”
He looks at me, and the answer hits me. Because the tracker didn’t want to kill me. He wanted to flush me out so he could capture me and force me to reveal the location of the package to him. The realization adds fuel to the adrenalin already pounding through me. The cruelty of Rowansmark trackers is legendary. Some say they carve off pieces of their victims and feed it to the vultures bit by bit while the person bleeds and begs. Some say they know how to kill their victims with a single, deadly touch.
On our second-to-last trip to Rowansmark, we entered the city through an aisle of half-rotted human heads skewered on stakes. Five on one side. Six on another. An entire band of highwaymen who’d had the stupidity to try cheating Rowansmark merchants out of their coin.
What would a tracker do to me to get the location of the package stolen from his leader? My skin is icy as I turn to Melkin.
“We need to leave.”
Melkin nods, and together we slowly circle back to the house. I crouch in the shadow of a tree, my knife ready, while Melkin slips inside and snatches up my pack, my Switch, and the bag of food supplies. When he returns, we melt silently into the tree line behind the house and make our way south, our weapons out, our ears straining to catch the sound of pursuit.