Deception by C. J. Redwine
Parchment.
Frowning, I pull out a square of parchment the size of my hand. Bold black letters across the center read, “How will you make things right?”
Swearing, I crumple up the note and toss it to the side of the shelter just as Rachel ducks beneath the flap.
“What’s that?” she asks as she unties her cloak and tosses it on top of mine.
“Just another stupid prank.” I reach into the bag and this time grab the battery. “Machine’s down again.”
“This is getting old. I thought you put someone in charge of the younger kids.”
“I did. Jan Nelson. Used to be a cook at Jocey’s Mug and Ale, remember? Tall, skinny—”
“Eyes in the back of her head.” Rachel pretends to shudder. “Yes, I remember her. She never let Sylph and me get away with anything when she caught us in the alley between Jocey’s and Oliver’s.”
I laugh. “I imagine you gave her plenty of trouble.” I step close to her and run my fingers lightly across her arm. “I’ll let her know the prankster can read and write. That should exclude the youngest in the bunch.”
“And the girls,” Rachel says. “Unless they had parents like mine, none of the girls were taught to read and write.”
“Something we’ll have to remedy once we make it to Lankenshire,” I say, and lean in for a quick kiss. “I’m going to grab my lunch ration and go fix the machine.”
I’m nearly out of the tent when she says, “Before I forget, you might want to keep an eye on both Adam and Ian. After today’s sparring practice, I learned a few things. For one, Adam isn’t willing to accept you as his leader. I don’t know why he didn’t just go east with the others, but he’s our problem now. And Ian fights like he’s been trained. I don’t know why he’d hide that and pretend that he’s a beginner. If you want, Willow and I could question him and have your answer in two seconds flat.”
There’s no softness in her eyes as she offers to torture Ian for answers, and I wonder if the loss of Oliver, Jared, and our city is slowly turning us into the kind of people we always swore we’d fight against.
I close my fist around the wire-wrapped surface of the battery as I see Ian walking toward the food wagon, surrounded as usual by several girls. “I’ll handle it. In fact, I think I’ll have a talk with him right now.”
I walk quickly through my row of shelters and catch up to Ian just as he’s accepting a portion of roasted pheasant from Thom. Frankie stands beside Thom, his eyes on the sky, clutching a lunch ration even though Quinn is clearly standing in front of him waiting for the food.
“May I have the food, please?” Quinn asks. I can tell by his tone that this isn’t the first time he’s asked.
“I don’t serve leaf lovers.” Frankie’s wide mouth curls into a sneer.
“When you’re on lunch duty, you serve every member of our group,” I say.
Frankie looks at me, his expression mutinous, and then slowly hands the food to Quinn. He jerks his fingers back before Quinn can touch him, and I roll my eyes.
“We have bigger problems on our plate than worrying about whether someone used to be a Tree Person, Frankie.” Before he can reply, I clap my hand on Ian’s shoulder and say, “I’m off to fix the machine. I’d like your help.”
Ian’s brows rise. “Are you sure I’m the best person for the job? I don’t know much about tinkering with things.”
My hand tightens on his shoulder. “You’ll do.”
He shrugs and follows me in silence.
The iron gate at the compound’s entrance stands open, and we hurry up the cobblestone drive and into the main hall. The brilliant noonday sun pours in the front windows, glowing on the white marble floor and then fading against the dark stone walls. If Ian is afraid to enter the Commander’s personal residence, as so many of the group are, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he strides down the hall like he owns the place and doesn’t bat an eyelash when I wrench open the door that leads to the tunnel.
A steep set of damp-slick stairs leads down into the cavernous basement. Our footsteps echo loudly, and I don’t try to speak until we’ve crossed the fifty yards of gritty stone that separate us from the gaping mouth of the tunnel I’ve spent the last two weeks digging.
A bag of copper parts and spare batteries lies just across the seam that separates the basement floor from the dark earth of the tunnel. I pick it up and grab two torches from the pile of extras lying against the wall. Ian strikes the flint and soon both of our torches blaze brightly against the thick darkness that waits for us.
Our footsteps don’t echo in the tunnel. Every sound is absorbed, swallowed up by the dense earth surrounding us. Every three yards, a steel rib salvaged from Baalboden’s wreckage is jammed against the tunnel’s side to act as a support beam. Thick branches or wooden beams cut to size are wedged across the tunnel’s ceiling as well, each end buried in the opposite wall. Frankie and his handpicked team of helpers have been hard at work for the last two weeks, and I’m pleased with the progress. With so much reinforcement, I’m certain the tunnel won’t collapse when I bring the survivors through it.
As we pass each pair of steel ribs, I count the yards in my head. By the time we reach the solid wall of dirt at the end of the tunnel, I estimate we’ve traveled three hundred sixty-eight yards. That’s about one hundred seventy-three yards past Baalboden’s perimeter and into the northern Wasteland.
“You really do need to fix the machine,” Ian says. He sounds surprised. When I look at him, he tugs on the silver chain he wears around his neck and says, “You’ve never asked for my help before. I figured you had ulterior motives.”
I study him for a moment and say, “I could use the help, but yes, I had ulterior motives. I wanted to talk to you. Alone.”
He grins. “Never thought the first person in camp to try to get me alone in a dark, private place would be you, but—”
“Where did you learn how to fight?”
Ian stiffens and slowly raises his gaze to mine. Torchlight flickers against the blue of his eyes. “What makes you think I know how to fight?”
I step closer. “Answering a question with a question is simply a way to gain enough time to think of a plausible lie.”
His lips thin, but his voice is calm. “I wasn’t trying to think of a lie. I was asking to see what gave me away.”
“You have one minute to explain to me where you learned how to fight and why you’ve been hiding it from the rest of us before I decide you’re the one with ulterior motives here.”
“It was Rachel, wasn’t it?” He slaps his hand against the wall behind him. “I knew she was watching me too closely this morning. She should be happy that someone on that practice field knows what he’s doing.”
“You should be happy I’m the one questioning you instead of her. You’d already be missing a few vital organs. Who are you really, and what are you hiding?”
His shoulders sag, and he seems to shrink a little before my eyes. “I want your promise that what I tell you will stay between us.”
“Absolutely not.”
Something flickers in his eyes, but he blinks it away before I can identify it. “If you don’t—if you tell the others about this, they’ll kill me in my sleep.”
“If you deserve death, you won’t be leaving this tunnel, never mind getting another opportunity to go to sleep.”
He holds his body still, his eyes locked on mine. “I don’t deserve death, Logan. But others might not see it that way.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
The torchlight dances in his blue eyes like inner flames, and he nods slowly. “Judge and be judged.”
“What?”
He shakes his head. “Just something my father used to say.”
“Answer, Ian. Now.”
Without taking his eyes from mine, he says, “My father worked for the Commander. He was . . . loyal.”
He lingers over the word as if it holds some secret meaning for him as he pulls the silver chain
“What was your father’s job?”
Ian looks away. “Brute Squad.”
Brute Squad. The Commander’s elite group of guards tasked with torturing prisoners, scaring the population into compliance, and publicly flogging those who broke the law. My palms are suddenly damp, and I clench my fists. “And you?”
“Apprenticed to take his place.”
It takes every ounce of willpower I have to force my expression to remain neutral. Ian’s right. Every person in our group would want him dead if they knew who he was.
When I don’t reply, Ian looks me in the eye again. “In the interest of full disclosure, because I wouldn’t want to be accused of having ulterior motives”—he brackets the words with air quotes—“I know more about Rowansmark than the average survivor in our camp.”
“How?” The stolen Rowansmark tech I wear strapped beneath my tunic suddenly feels heavy and obvious.
“My father died in Rowansmark. Punished at the hands of a tracker for being loyal to the Commander. I was there.” He dangles the dragon-scale charm between us, his gaze locked on the trinket like it hurts him to look at it. “This was the last gift my father gave to me. It’s all I have left of him.”
His voice is crisp. Almost emotionless. I’m not fooled. I can see the horror in his eyes. The scars that rot him from the inside out. I know what it’s like to watch a parent die. To stand helpless while someone bigger and stronger destroys someone you love and leaves you with nothing. I know how the loneliness sours into bitterness until every memory is tainted with the dregs of a sorrow you can never quite shake.
I take a slow breath. “Why didn’t you follow the Commander? Or leave with the group who went to find him?”
“Follow the man who put my father in that position in the first place? No.”
I understand the anger. The desperation to keep his background a secret from the others. He wants a fresh start.
I do, too.
“I’m sorry about your father,” I say, and step back from him. “I won’t tell you it will get easier or that you’ll move on or any of the other useless things people say to make you feel better.”
“I’ll feel better when the man responsible is punished.” Ian stuffs his necklace beneath his tunic again and pushes away from the wall.
Another thing we have in common. We both want the Commander to pay for his crimes.
“Are you going to tell the others?”
“I’ll tell Drake. I don’t want our new society to be a place of secrets. But we won’t spread news of your former occupation to others. You can have a fresh start, but you have to stop pretending to be less skilled than you are. We need you.”
“Will you tell Rachel?”
I imagine Rachel’s reaction to the news that we have an apprenticed member of the Brute Squad in our midst, and shake my head slowly. The Brute Squad held her captive in a wagon while the Commander tortured and killed Oliver. And then they surrounded me on the Claiming stage and nearly took my life. If I told her Ian was apprenticed to the Brute Squad, I don’t know what she’d do. Maybe nothing. Maybe decide he’s an acceptable proxy for the Commander and beat him with her Switch.
“Thanks.” His usual flippant charm chases the seriousness from his face as he crouches beside the silent machine. “Now, are we going to fix this or stand around sharing life stories all day? I have four or five girls I’ve promised to eat lunch with, and I hate to disappoint the ladies.”
I kneel beside him and drive my torch into the ground for light. The machine looks like a multitiered plow with a catch-tray beneath each row of teeth and a pair of pipes attached to each tray, ready to sluice dirt away from the teeth and shoot it backward at the completed tunnel in its wake. Dumping the contents of the tech bag onto the ground, I grab a new gear and exchange it for the stripped one while Ian removes the broken teeth and uses large metal scraps in their place.
The afternoon tunnel crew approaches as Ian hammers the last tooth into place. I flip the power switch, and the machine instantly hums to life. Chugging forward, it digs into the wall of soil in front of it and spews dirt out of the pipes, nearly hitting me in the face.
I step back as the tunnel crew leaps into action. We need to tunnel another seven hundred yards into the Wasteland to feel truly safe. I just hope we don’t run out of time.
Chapter Four
LOGAN
“I can do it this time.” I slide the arrow into place the way Rachel showed me and slowly pull the wire taut, my elbow perfectly parallel to the ground.
At first, it was nice having Rachel teach me how to use a bow and arrow to hunt. We headed south out of Baalboden immediately after lunch, carefully climbing over the slabs of steel and stone that litter the ground in front of the remains of the gate. I’d taken an extra moment to double-check that the explosives we’d removed from the compound and laced along the gate as a defensive measure were still in place, but I hadn’t lingered. With Drake in charge of the camp, and an entire crew of men working in the tunnel, I figured I’d take down my first rabbit, and then we’d have plenty of afternoon to spare for . . . other things.
Five misses later, I’d adjusted my description from “nice” to “somewhat unpleasant.”
Eleven misses after that, I’d decided the best word to sum up the experience was “humiliating.”
“Turn your left shoulder toward the target,” Rachel whispers.
“I did.”
“Not enough.” She nudges me to make her point. The rabbit in my sights freezes. “Now,” she breathes against my ear. “Shoot now.”
My fingers curve around the wire, and I quickly run through the steps in my head. One vane turned away from the bow. Body perpendicular to the target. Feet shoulder width apart. Relaxed tension—whatever that means—in my stance.
“Logan, now.”
The rabbit will run when I shoot. The faint noise of the arrow launching from the bow will send it scrambling for safety. Which way will it go? I’ll need to compensate. Aim slightly to the left, to the spot where it first nosed its way out of the undergrowth? Or to the right in case it sprints forward?
Probably to the left. He’ll try to return to what he knows is safe.
The rabbit jerks its head up, ears swiveling. I try to find the anchor point along my cheekbone in time to shoot with any sort of accuracy. I release the wire, and the arrow wobbles slightly as it sails toward its target.
The rabbit dodges safely to the left.
That’s what I get for ignoring logic.
I hook the bow over my shoulder and move forward to collect my arrow. Sunlight filters in through the oak branches above me and hangs in the air like golden mist before disintegrating into the deep shadows that stretch across the forest floor.
“I should’ve torqued my shot to the left,” I say as I bend to dig the arrow out of a bush where it has gallantly speared a handful of thick green leaves. “I knew it was going to run.”
“Well, of course it ran. You gave it a good ten minutes’ notice that you were going to shoot it.” Rachel steps to my side as I brush the last of the leaves off of the arrow’s chiseled copper tip.
I stare her down. “I was double-checking the steps you gave me.”
“You’d already done the steps.” She crosses her arms and taps her fingers against her elbow. “You were wasting time.”
I speak with as much dignity as a man who’s missed seventeen shots in a row can possibly speak. “I was making calculations.”
“You were doubting yourself.” Her eyes meet mine. “Hunting with a bow and arrow isn’t science, Logan. It’s poetry. Let me show you.”
“It’s a specific algorithm of speed, mass, and velocity.” There’s nothing poetic about that, unless you appreciate the beauty of a well-defined mathematical equation. Which I do, but that isn’t the point. The point is that hunting with a bow and arrow isn’t some romanticized communion
Maybe even better than I understand Rachel.
She leads me to the edge of a little clearing, the towering oaks of the Wasteland circling us like silent sentries. Twigs crunch softly beneath our boots. A handful of sparrows scold us vigorously as we stop beneath their tree.
I’m still arguing my point.
“You calculate the angle between yourself and your target, factor in wind speed and direction, account for the prey’s instinctual flight, and—”
She steps behind me and slides her hands over my hips to position my body, her fingers pressing against me with tiny pricks of heat.
“And what?” she asks as she reaches around my back to pull my arms into position.
I swallow against the sudden dryness in my throat and try not to dwell on the fact that her chest—her entire body—is leaning against me.
“Logan?” The wind lifts a long strand of her fiery red hair and slides it against my face. “You were giving me your list of Things That Must Be Taken into Account Before One Dares to Shoot an Arrow. What’s next?”
“I don’t—” I clear my throat. “I don’t remember.”
“Oh, really?” Her voice is low. “Maybe you wanted to warn me to always multiply the force of the arrow with the probability that the prey will jerk to the left?”
“That doesn’t . . .”
She hooks her fingers around my hand and together we nock the arrow, one vane pointed away from the bow. Her skin is smooth against mine, and I try hard not to imagine anything more than her hands.
“That doesn’t what?” she asks, her voice nothing but a whisper against my ear.
“That doesn’t make sense. You can’t multiply force with . . . whatever it was you said.”
“With a probability?” Her body is molded to mine, our hands are inseparable, and my heart feels like a hammer pounding against my chest.