“We leave in two days. Sooner if we can manage. Drake, Nola, and Thom are in charge of packing up our supplies, loading the wagons, and completing the tunnel. If they ask for your help, you will give it to them.” I wait a beat, but no one questions me. “We’ll need a map of the northern territories, especially the road to Lankenshire. Has anyone been there?”
A voice speaks up from the middle of the crowd. “Many times. It’s about an eighteen-day journey. Maybe twenty with a group our size.”
I glance at the speaker, a short, weathered man with wispy gray hair and a brilliant purple cloth tied in a bow at his neck. He crushes a battered hat between fingers as brown and bent as twigs as he meets my gaze.
“Jeremiah Krunkel, sir. Head groom to the Commander for nigh unto thirty years. Done my fair share of travel.”
I stare him down. “Thirty years of loyal service to the Commander. Why not leave with the others three days ago and seek asylum at one of the southeastern city-states? Why follow me?”
Jeremiah’s pale eyes lock onto mine. “Figured thirty years of brutality was more than any man should have to bear.”
“Fair enough. Can you draw me a map?”
Jeremiah stands and shoves his hat onto his head. His fingers curl and twist like hairs held too close to a fire. “Have a bit of trouble holding a quill these days, but I’ll manage.”
“There are drawing supplies inside the compound. Meet me there in twenty minutes, and I’ll show you.” I look at the rest of the crowd. “We’re going out through the tunnel. I’ll collapse the basement ceiling in the compound to cover our tracks. It will be like we simply vanished. Until then, though, we have two days and a lot of work to do. Let’s get started.”
As the crowd slowly disperses, I gaze out past the city’s Wall at the vast expanse of the Wasteland that stands between us and safety.
Best Case Scenario: Everything runs smoothly, and we’re able to leave within the next two days without anyone realizing where we’ve gone.
Worst Case Scenario: Rowansmark or the Commander arrives before we leave, and I’m forced to flee across the Wasteland with a group of untrained, inexperienced men, women, and children while an army closes in behind us.
Because I’ve never once known anything to go according to plan, I dismiss the group and then head to my tent, where my pack of salvaged tech supplies beckons to me. I might put most of my faith in the tunnel, Rowansmark’s tech, and the steadily improving fighting abilities of those who are training each morning, but it never hurts to have a backup plan.
Just in case.
Chapter Two
RACHEL
After Logan’s speech, I approach the training ground, located fifteen yards away from the first line of tents that mark our camp. Willow is already waiting for me, her olive skin glowing in the sun. The rest of the survivors are hurrying toward their various job assignments, casting furtive glances at the distant Wall that surrounds Baalboden as if wondering when Rowansmark might arrive to claim their stolen tech.
Quinn, Willow’s older brother, weaves around the scattering of people walking through this row of shelters, his movements graceful and controlled. I stop at the edge of the training ground and wait for him. His dark hair has grown past his shoulders, but unlike Willow, he doesn’t seem to care about restraining it before our practice sessions. He still wears the leather breeches and rough-spun tunic of the Tree Village that declared him an outcast before he met up with me in the Wasteland to fulfill my father’s last wish.
“I heard you screaming in your sleep last night,” he says as he walks up to me. His voice is as calm and emotionless as always. “I was walking past your tent after my guard shift.”
I glare at him. “What, no ‘hello’? No small talk? Just straight into things that are none of your business?”
“Rachel.” His tone is gentle but unyielding. “We’re friends. How is it none of my business?”
I sigh. “They’re just nightmares. They’ll pass.”
“Not until you face what causes them.”
There’s a glimmer of pain buried in his words, but I have to search to find it. I used to hate the way Quinn always holds himself under such tight control. Especially after he told me that, like me, he’d killed a man he wasn’t sure deserved it. Back then, fury and guilt burned inside me with equal strength, and I couldn’t help but scorch everything I touched.
But fires only burn until you starve them for fuel. And the ashes of my fury are as cold and silent as the streets of Lower Market.
“I’ll face what causes my nightmares as soon as we drop all these people off at Lankenshire and I can search for the Commander without risking their lives.” My lips feel stiff with cold, though the morning is warm. It’s like the icy silence that swallowed the grief of losing Oliver, my father, and my city is leeching the warmth from my skin. I walk toward the group waiting on the practice field without a backward glance while the silence inside of me shivers.
A breeze lifts silvery bits of ash from the wreckage behind us and slaps us in the face with grit as the twenty-three survivors who’ve faithfully attended every practice session spread out on the field. A pile of salvaged knives and swords lies to my right, and a stack of practice sticks fashioned from tree limbs is on my left. A few have reached the point where they can train with real weapons, but most are still using the practice sticks.
I clear my throat, and twenty-three pairs of eyes lock on me. My best friend, Sylph, is here, her curly dark hair tied back with rope, along with her new husband, Smithson. Jodi, a small blonde girl I recognize from my few years at Life Skills, the domestic arts class all Baalboden girls attended in place of a real education, stands next to Thom, who must’ve found someone to take his place in the tunnel in order to attend this session. A small knot of boys, most of them younger than me, stand close to Willow, eyeing her hopefully. Ian stands near her as well, the sun painting his brown hair gold as he flashes a charming smile in her direction whenever she makes eye contact. Most of the girls in camp melt when Ian aims one of his smiles at them. Willow is a notable exception.
Another boy elbows his way to the front of the pack, and I roll my eyes. If we could get the rest of the survivors as interested in Willow’s instruction, we’d have a battalion full of trained soldiers in no time.
“Are we going to get started, or what?” someone asks.
I look past Thom and see Adam. Bruises mar his golden skin, and his dark eyes glare into mine. He’d be almost pretty if someone hadn’t recently used him as a punching bag.
“Get in another fight?” I ask him.
“He deserved it.” His expression is mutinous.
“You always think everyone deserves it. What if you’re wrong?”
Melkin’s face, pale and cold, burns into my memory, and I shove it away before I can remember the terrible wet sound of my knife sliding into his chest. Before his blood pours over my hands, a stain I’ll wear beneath my skin for the rest of my life.
Adam glares at me. “I’m not wrong. This?” He gestures at the ruins behind us. “This is what’s wrong.”
“I know,” I say, and turn away from the pain I see in his eyes. He needs comfort, and I’m all out.
“That and the fact that our true leader disappeared into the Wasteland, and we’ve got a nineteen-year-old boy trying to take his place.” Adam’s voice is sharp with derision, but beneath it I hear the kind of fathomless grief that drags you under until you no longer care if you ever find the surface again.
Blinking away the stark memory of my father’s grave, I walk toward Adam. I recognize the fury that drives him. I once used something like it as fuel to give me a reason to face one more day. To take one more step forward, even though it meant leaving behind the life I once thought I’d have. Stopping in front of him, I ask, “Who did you lose in the fire?”