“I’m here to pick up Rachel,” I say when Maria Angeles opens her front door. “I hope the girls enjoyed learning how to host a dinner party.”
Actually, I’m hoping Rachel didn’t shock the Angeles family by expressing her strong distaste for setting a table with more than one fork per person unless you were expecting to use the second fork as a weapon. My lips quirk, and I suppress a grin before I have to explain to the formidable figure of Mrs. Angeles what I find so amusing.
She opens her mouth, snaps it shut, and stares at me. “Rachel?” she asks, as if uncertain. As if I might be at her doorstep to pick up someone else.
Dread pools in my stomach, and a lick of anger chases it up my spine. “I dropped her off here two hours ago. She said … never mind what she said. Is she here?”
Mrs. Angeles shakes her head, turns, and calls over her shoulder, “Sylphia, come to the door, please.”
Sylph obeys immediately, but when she sees me, she flinches and her steps falter. Mrs. Angeles’s voice cracks like a whip. “Where is Rachel?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice trembles. She’s a terrible liar. I’m grateful.
“Sylph, please. If Rachel gets caught—” The unbidden image of my mother lying broken and bloody on the cobblestone streets while a crowd of citizens slowly back away fills my head. The air is suddenly too thick to breathe.
Sylph looks at the floor. “She just wanted to spend the afternoon at Oliver’s.”
“I would have taken her there.” My tone is harsher than Sylph deserves. She isn’t the mastermind. Fear drives the anger that pounds through me now with every heartbeat. I couldn’t protect my mother from the Commander’s ruthless punishments. But I can protect Rachel. I have to. I can’t bear the thought of adding that failure to my list.
“She wanted to spend time there without …” Sylph doesn’t continue, but I can fill in the blanks on my own. Rachel wanted to see Oliver without having to worry about me looking over her shoulder, listening in, telling her when to leave and what road to take on our journey home.
I can’t blame her for chafing at the restrictions placed on her by Baalboden law, but the proof that she’d rather risk a public flogging than spend time with me hurts more than I want to admit. Barely pausing to say good-bye to Sylph and her mother, I hurry through North Hub.
As I rush through Lower Market, I note the unusual number of guards present. A flash of double gold bars above a talon on one of the guard’s uniforms catches my eye.
Brute Squad.
Suddenly panic claws at me, threatening to fill my head with useless noise, and I beat it back. Rachel is okay. She has to be. I’m going to get to her before the Brute Squad notices a girl walking without her Protector. And then I’m going to lock her in my loft for as long as it takes to finish working out my plan to go looking for Jared.
I reach Oliver’s stall in record time, burst through the tent flap, and say, “Where is she?”
Oliver waves his hand impatiently at the back flap. “There you are! Took long enough. She left me in the dust fifteen minutes ago. She knows I can’t keep up with her.” He gestures at his considerable bulk, and then snaps, “Why are you still standing there? Brute Squad is out there!”
“Where did she go?”
“To the Wall.”
I stride forward and yank the back flap of the tent aside. I should’ve known that in the face of my refusal to make a plan to escape Baalboden with her, she’d leap headfirst into a plan of her own.
The alley behind Oliver’s tent cuts through the remaining stalls on the western edge of Lower Market before merging with one of the last paved streets on this side of the city. I keep to the side, head down, looking like I’m doing nothing more than hurrying home.
Dark clouds cover the sky, and a chilly breeze is blowing, carrying hints of the storm to come. I calculate no more than ten minutes before a fierce round of early spring rain hits, reducing visibility to nothing.
I pick up my pace. I can track her through the rain if I have to, but that isn’t what worries me. A glance around the streets shows the number of guards has increased in just the last few minutes. I don’t believe in coincidences, which means somehow Rachel tipped them off to her intentions. She’s smart, resourceful, and knows her way around weapons, but she’s no match for the Brute Squad.
I’d rather not be a match for the Brute Squad either, but I’m not about to fail her.
I exit the alley, turn right, and stride along the street, my cloak wrapped close, my expression neutral. There’s a guard in the doorway of the feed merchant, another pair outside Jocey’s Mug & Ale, and I’m certain I caught the glint of a sword on the roof above me as I make the left into the alley between the armory and an abandoned warehouse. Under the pretense of adjusting my cloak, I scan the street.
No one seems to be following me. That doesn’t reassure me about the guard on the roof, but I have quick reflexes.
The alley twists away from the street and ends abruptly at the edge of an expanse of waist-high yellow grass about fifty yards wide. Beyond the field of grass, the Wall looms. Immense steel ribs joined by tons of concrete as thick as twelve men standing shoulder to shoulder wrap around the city, holding the Wasteland at bay and the citizens beneath the Commander’s thumb. Every one hundred twenty yards, a turret rises. Guards assigned to the Wall spend most of their shift in their assigned turrets. But three times a day—at dawn, at noon, and at sunset—they turn off the motion detectors and leave their turret to do a detailed sweep of their section of the Wall.
I reach the edge of the field just as the first drops of rain slam into the ground, the sun sinks below the Wall, and the low hum of the motion detector stutters into silence. The guards in the turret closest to me step into the steady downpour, swords in hand, NightSeer masks in place, and walk north with measured precision.
Rachel rises from the center of the field. The panic I’ve kept at bay flares to life as she stays low to the ground and races across the field in spurts—sprint, drop, roll into a crouch, and repeat. Beneath the curtain of rain, aided by the swiftly falling darkness, she’s nothing but a shadow.
If I can see her, so can the guard above me. In seconds, I hear the soft whoosh of a body plummeting to the ground and brace myself. He lands slightly to the right of me, all of his attention on Rachel. I leap forward, slam my fist into the side of his head, and drag his unconscious body back under the lip of the roof. A quick scan of the area confirms that no other guards are pursuing Rachel. If I can get to Rachel before she’s seen by the turret guards, maybe I can avert disaster completely. I take off after her at a dead run.
She reaches the Wall before the faint glow of the guards’ NightSeer masks has completely disappeared in the distance. I estimate just under ten minutes before the guards return. Just under ten minutes to capture her, subdue her inevitable argument, and get her back into the relative safety of the city before she puts both of us on the Commander’s execution list.
The driving sheets of rain make it hard to be certain, but I’m pretty sure she just dropped her skirt to the ground and started up the ladder in a pair of skintight pants. Fury overtakes my panic and fuels me. If a guard sees her dressed like that, he won’t hesitate to take what he thinks she’s freely offering, and then I’ll have to kill him.
She makes it to the top before I reach the base. The rain pounds into me, but I barely feel it. The rungs are slippery, so I wrap my hands in my leather cloak, grasp the metal, and climb as quickly as I can.
Best Case Scenario: She’s foolishly setting herself up for a covert trip down the side of the Wall and into the Wasteland, and I get the unenviable task of standing in her way, but she hasn’t been noticed by any guards.
Worst Case Scenario 1: The turret guards return early, and I talk our way out of it.
Worst Case Scenario 2: The Brute Squad finds her, and we fight our way out.
Worst Case Scenario 3: Commander Chase discovers her act of treason, tries to punish her for it, and I draw my weapon against the man who rules all of Baalboden with an iron fist of terror.
I climb swiftly and pray I’m not too late.