The Silver Scar Page 21
Trinidad kept his guns on them until he had to slide in behind the wheel. This was the most dangerous moment, when he had to set down one of the guns. But Seth’s dray was armored and running and it leapt to life as he punched the pedal.
Trinidad stared straight ahead as he drove away, fast, trying not to anticipate a bullet chasing his head. Adrenaline burned in his veins and nausea pulled a string inside his stomach. It contracted painfully.
“I thought you were serious for a minute, about killing me,” Wolf said.
“I was,” Trinidad answered. “I am.”
“Don’t worry about it, kid. Not yet,” Castile said.
Trinidad kept his gaze on the road, trying to focus on where to go next instead of his guilt over mistreating Wolf. No one was following. That he could see. Yet. “We need to ditch the dray,” he said, pulling over.
“We go to ground, yeah,” Castile agreed. “It’s the only way we’ll buy enough time get over the wall.”
Trinidad had only gotten them as far as the prison, looming on its hill over the desecrated university grounds and the black-market shantytown that crouched in its shadow. Plenty of people wandered among the makeshift structures, but it wasn’t a place of second glances or talking to marshals about what they saw.
Trinidad got out of the dray, cut Wolf’s bonds with his knife, and drew his pistol. He wished he’d found some boots somewhere. Seth had made a good point about that.
His hands shook violently and he almost fumbled the gun.
“Give me that before you hurt yourself with it.” Castile took Trinidad’s pistol and tucked it in his waistband. The other he palmed against his thigh as he cast a wary glare at the cliff-like walls of the prison. Stained black from the ash-clogged air, streaks of red sandstone shone through like bloody scars.
“What now? What are we doing?” Wolf asked.
“Exactly as I say. Come with me,” Trinidad answered.
“But—”
“Shut up, Wolf,” Castile said.
Trinidad led them away from the prison down a street that backed to the south wall, weaving between tree stumps, broken concrete, and trash. The houses sat close together, boards and warning signs concealing windows. Protective symbols—Christian crosses, Wiccan horns, Indigo ghost glyphs—glared from doors. Dogs snarled behind metal gates, making this a formidable stretch of city wall.
Broken concrete and rocks scraped Trinidad’s cold feet raw. A cat policed the fence across the street, setting half a dozen dogs to yapping. Castile stood still a moment, narrowed his eyes, and waded through trash to a sagging porch. He pressed his ear to the door. No sigils marked the doors. Metal plating covered the windows. “No dog,” he said. “I think it’s empty. Come on up.”
Piles of blown rubbish mounded in the front yard and Trinidad had to watch his step closely. Edges of broken cans glinted like knives, papers, torn books, broken crockery, a shattering of glass, all covered in a fine mist of ash and snow. It was undisturbed. No one had crossed through but Castile in at least a couple of days. They had found a chink in the wall.
Trinidad nodded Wolf ahead. The teenager followed Castile, elbows jammed against his side. A pistol butt jutted from his waistband. Castile must have slipped it to him as they walked. Trinidad scanned the empty street for parishioners or patrolling marshals, but no one appeared. The bombings likely had everyone spooked or busy elsewhere. He picked his way through the trash toward the house.
After a quick glance around in the fading light, Castile backed up to the edge of the porch and leapt, kicking in the door. The kick broke the lock in the jam but it caught and scraped on something inside. Trinidad surveyed the street again, realizing how many of the houses looked deserted, windows boarded, doors askew or missing. Still, tension gripped him. If someone saw, if someone told the marshals …
Castile shoved at the door and beckoned them through. “A lot of these old houses aren’t lived in at all,” he said. “The cell used them for meets, like that old place on 4th.”
Trinidad stared around at the shadowed, crate-filled room before Castile shut the door behind them. “We can go over the wall now.”
“No. We sit tight until late, Hunter hold them from our gates,” Castile said. He moved between boxes, then found and lit a lantern with matches left by it. The oil smoked, stinking. Soon it would be obvious to anyone outside someone was within. “You need off those feet. You’re bleeding.”
Trinidad had left bloody tracks. His feet were so cold he couldn’t feel the cuts.
“Looks like some kind of storehouse,” he observed.
Castile put his back to a water-stained bureau and pushed it up against the wall. Wolf jumped in to help.
“Good man,” Castile said, giving Wolf a slap on the shoulder. “I’m glad we didn’t have to kill you.”
Wolf looked from Castile to Trinidad, eyes wide.
Trinidad sighed. Where to begin? They didn’t have time to hash it all out. “You can rove and the Bishop wants you.”
Wolf shook his head, bewildered. “Rove. I don’t know what that is.”
“Roving,” Castile said. “Dreamwalking. Don’t pretend you can’t. We know. All those weird dreams you have—they’re real. You’re going into other people’s heads.”
“All three of us can do it,” Trinidad said. “Marius already tortured Castile. I can’t let her have you, Wolfie. She wants us to take her to the …” He paused. Wolf had no idea about the Barren. “She wants to use us. In the crusade.”
“But we’re with the army,” Wolf said, giving Castile an uncertain glance.
“Not any more, we aren’t,” Trinidad said.
Wolf blinked at him. He drew himself up and shoved his hair back from his face. “Let me go out and get you boots and some coats. I’ll go to the trade shop.”
“With what? We have no money. And they’ll catch you.” Or you’ll turn yourself in. He could hardly blame Wolf if he did. The Church was familiar, home.
Wolf lowered his brows. “No, they won’t. I’m better than that. Best in my class.”
Castile glanced around at the boxes. “And we have stuff to trade. Good stuff, maybe.”
Part of archwarden training included going to ground, avoiding those seeking them, in case they had to transport a priest inparish in adverse situations. But Trinidad didn’t like the idea of Wolf going out alone. It was stupid to split up.
Trinidad ran his hand over his face, trying to scrub away his exhaustion. “This must be the most poorly run escape in the history of mankind.” He shook his head at his companions. “And these things aren’t ours to trade.”
Castile gave an exasperated sigh. “Today’s been a busy day. Wolf blew up some buildings. We broke out of jail. You abducted us at gunpoint. I think your god will forgive you a little theft, yeah?”
Trinidad noticed he left out Magpie’s death. On the backburner, then. He had no doubt it would come back to haunt them.
“I … what?” Wolf looked from one to the other of them.
Trinidad tore into a box. “Don’t worry about it, Wolf.”
Cans of vegetables, shipped in from the West Coast. Trinidad pondered a can while his stomach growled, wondering if he could cut into it with his knife. Would ruin the blade, he reckoned, and tore open another box. Machine-made dresses, plain and loose. The Eastern Seaboard still had some manufacturing but few of its goods reached so far West. Castile hunted through two more boxes and came up with socks. He tossed several pair to Trinidad and to Wolf as well. “Something I learned in the field, kid. Never turn down fresh socks.”
“Roman always says that,” Wolf said.
Trinidad sat to pull on the socks and realized just how badly cut up his feet were. He’d been too busy watching his surroundings to avoid the glass in his path.
Castile knelt before him and grasped one of his feet, tipping it upward. He gently picked at a shard of glass—an inch-long bloody dagger—and pressed a sock to it to stem the flow. “Not good, my friend.”
His armor constricted his chest and sweat chilled him in the cold air of the dusty house. Ache settled into his bones and head. The drain of adrenaline dragged his eyelids down.
Wolf disappeared around the corner into the kitchen. Trinidad heard the tap come on, the sputter of air, the groan of empty pipes. Then a splash and gulping noises.
Castile laid his palm over Trinidad’s forehead. “You’re pale and hot.”
“Just tired.”
“What’s on your mind? Something.”
“When this is all over …” Trinidad shook his head. “Never mind.”
“This is hard on all of us. But hardest of all on you.”
“How can you say that after what they did to you?”
Castile just gave him a tired, wry smile, his eyes locked on Trinidad’s.
“Don’t,” Trinidad said. “Not with me. After all this … if we’re even still alive, I …” The words faded. He wasn’t even sure what he was trying to say. He’d spent so much time focused on the moment, this was his first chance to consider the future.
“We’ll stay together,” Castile said. “You and me and the kid, yeah?”
Too tired to argue or even consider what that really meant, Trinidad relented with a nod.
“Then it’ll be all right.” Castile flashed him another grin and tore into another box. “Oh—here. This’ll do nicely for a trade.”
He held up a box of small batteries. Trinidad rose, forgetting his bleeding feet in his shock. “Where did they get those?”
“Must be an Indigo storehouse,” Castile said, shrugging. “Raided or traded off a caravan.”
“Indigos wouldn’t set up here, inside the parish. Not like this,” Trinidad said. He rubbed his hand over his mouth. Who owned this stuff? Not the Church.
“Stranger things have happened,” Castile said. “Real recent like, yeah?”
“Indigos come inparish sometimes. But this …” Trinidad looked around the boxes half-spilled from their exploration.
“Is it so shocking? The Church is so busy tramping all over the county lands that you ignored your own yard. Divide and conquer, the right hand doesn’t watch the left, pick your euphemism. Reine d’Esprit is ignorant and mean, but she’s not stupid.”
Sensitive subject. “Why do you bring her up?”
“Like her or not, she runs the biggest tribe in the county—”
A creak outside on the front porch made them both look up.
Trinidad eased his sword from its sheath. Castile drew his gun, though he didn’t risk the noise of chambering a bullet. They slipped back into the kitchen and put their backs on either side of the doorway. Wolf appeared in the doorway of the room off the kitchen, and Trinidad gestured him back. But large eye bolts screwed into the floor caught his eye.
It all clicked into place. He hadn’t thought to look in there yet, and obviously Wolf hadn’t realized the eye bolts were for shackles. This wasn’t an Indigo warehouse. He gestured to the bolts and mouthed to Castile: slavers.
Castile nodded grimly, his jaw set.
The front door edged open and hit the bureau in front of it. “Maldición. Someone broke this lock.”
Another voice answered, low and gruff, “Move it, shithead.” Shuffles echoed on the hollow front porch. Soft clinks and a muffled sob. The latter sounded female. “The fuck with the door? We got to get inside.” Someone slammed against the door and the bureau shoved forward a couple inches.
Trinidad whispered, “How many?”
Castile shrugged and shook his head. Then he mimed his wrists tied together and shook his head again. No idea how many armed slavers, nor slaves.
Trinidad scanned their surroundings again. The back door, cracks seamed with ice, was barred. The only thing left in the kitchen was the sink in a metal cabinet. Dirt and grime blackened the corners. The faucet dripped, plunking against the metal, echoing. It left an ugly rust stain on the steel.
Castile chambered a bullet, trying to time it with the scrape of the bureau on the floor as the slavers shoved the door open wide enough for them to get through.
“You hear that?” one of the slavers said.
Noise of a shove and a muffled cry, and a succession of chambered bullets—at least four, Trinidad reckoned.
“Sí. Visitantes.”
THIRTY-SIX
Flying snow stung Reine d’Esprit’s wind-burned face, but she pulled down her scarf to smile grimly at the tents stretching across her freehold’s sallow winter fields. Fires burned in the snow and smoke hung over the encampments like a dense fog. If she looked close enough, she could see person-shaped shadows moving in the smoke where it was thickest, right over the fires. The tribal war parties from outcounty had brought their Ancestors along with them.
An outcounty scout challenged her, an arrow to her string. Fresh shafts bristled from a quiver on her back. She had a gun on one hip, probably passed along with scouting duty. Her armor and scarf were clean, fierce paint obscured her face, and rows of braids capped her helmetless head. As the scout looked her over, Reine thought of her own locks, grown more from necessity than style, and the dirt ground into the cuts on her fingers.
“Reine d’Esprit,” she introduced herself, and winced. Talking made her head hurt.
The guard gave her the dip of a knee due a spirit queen before moving along, and it wasn’t until Reine reached the gates that she realized the guard hadn’t said a word.
She didn’t have the energy to wonder at that for long. Her head was a raging mess of pain, centered on the bruises Javelot had left on her face. Fury still broiled in her gut. Her own guards recognized her and swung the gates open. She straightened her back as best she could and walked through. They slammed shut, gears not making the usual rusted sounds. Someone had been at them with cooking grease, and when she glanced over her shoulder she saw they’d been reinforced with additional metal crossbeams.
Tents crouched pole-to-pole between houses, cook fires burned, and children scrambled in the dirt, bound in little cloaks, playing at war with sticks and string bows. Treating it like a party. Of course, the outcounty tribe would have only sent their warrior families, and war was a party to them. She turned toward her house. Their last party, no doubt.
Cur intercepted her and pointed at the common house. “Captains’re waiting on you.”
Of course they were. She sighed and changed direction without answering.
Cur trotted along at her heels. “How’d it go inparish, if you don’t mind my asking, Reine?”
“I mind,” Reine said, mounting the steps to the common house and shutting the door in Cur’s face.
They’d cleared things out for the evening and a fire burned in the hearth. Just the two: the bowcaptain and the guncaptain. Javelot, the spearcaptain, was missing, of course. The bowcaptain, Darleen, tended a couple of small animals on the spit, showing this was a private meeting, no kin or help. Darleen rose from the fire and faced her, pressed her hands together, touched her fingers to her chin and bowed. “Namaste, my queen.”
Reine repeated the gesture tiredly, more out of respect for Dar’s ability with the bow than agreeing with her faith. She pulled down her scarf. “Peace to you, too, Dar.”
“You look like shit, Reine,” Hugh said.
Hugh had run the riflemen under Reine’s father and knew her from diaper days, so he’d earned the right to skip formalities. He was ancient now, near sixty-five, and still a dead shot. When there were bullets.
Reine let them look her over hard, touched the back of her head ruefully, and sat. “Fuckin Javelot knocked me out and left me inparish. Coulda been caught or worse.” She glanced around, feeling like Javelot might pop out from a corner. “Thought she’d come running back here so I could fix t
hat problem.”
Dar shook her head and sighed. She was young, younger than Reine, but she had four kids already and it made her act old. She grabbed rags and took down one of the spits, laid stringy bits of meat on a tray. Groundhog, looked to be.
“How’d the Israel gig go?” Hugh asked.
“You heard the bombs out here, you must’ve.”
Hugh shook his head. “Wind carryin from the east tonight. Nothing comin from the valley but crusader scouts.”
“Not even them tonight,” Reine said. “They’re all inparish, cleanin up. Seems quiet, at least from as close as I got, which wasn’t very. Still. Won’t take long for the bishop to march.”
“Make a new savvy with the bishop, then. We convert or whatever they want.”
Reine would have laughed if she hadn’t been so depressed and tired. “Fuckin convert? Marius doesn’t want us to convert.”
“Surrender the hold. We pay her taxes then.”
“She wants us dead, Hugh.” Spirits, she was tired. “She won’t stop until we’re dead.”
Hugh broke the silence by asking the question hanging between them. “Where’s Javelot now, then? What exactly happened between you?”
Reine sat and leaned her elbows on the table. “Shit went south and fuckin Javelot took over. I was gonna stop the bombing. Not why Javelot thought, not because I was scared, but because it felt wrong.”
Dar asked slow and careful, “Wrong how?”
“Fuckin I could’ve kept the savvy, I think, before Jav …” She swallowed hard as Darleen put a plate of food between her elbows on the table. The smell nearly made her lose her guts. “We dragged the other tribes into this fuck-all, and we’re all still going die here. Can’t fit them all in the freehold and the crusaders’ll just burn us out if we did. But I didn’t know. Javelot didn’t tell me … Well.” She met both their eyes, knowing she sounded as disjointed as she felt. “I didn’t know until I got back the other tribes would be here now, so soon.”