“Theirs was a large love,” I tell Mustang.
“A love to shake the earth,” she replies.
I’m woken the next morning by Tactus. His eyes are cold as the dawn’s freeze.
“Our horses have decided to run away. All of them.” He guides us to the Ceres boys and girls who were watching the horses. “None of them saw a thing. One minute the horses were there; the next they were gone.”
“Poor horses must be confused,” Pax says sorrowfully. “It was stormy last night. Perhaps they ran for safety to the woods.”
Mustang holds up the ropes that held the horses during the night. Pulled in half.
“Stronger than they looked,” she says dubiously.
“Tactus?” I nod my head to the scene.
He looks over at Pax and Mustang before answering. “There are foot tracks …”
“But.”
“Why waste my breath?” He shrugs. “You know what I’m going to say.”
Proctors pulled the ropes apart.
I do not tell my army what happened, but rumor spreads quickly when people huddle together for warmth. Mustang does not ask questions even though she knows I’m not telling her something. After all, I did not simply find the medicine I gave her in the Northwoods.
I try to look at this newest kink as a test. When the rebellion begins, things like this will happen. How do I react? Breathe the anger out. Breathe it out and move. Easier said than done for me.
We move to the woods to the east. Without horses, we’ve no more play to make in the plains near the river. My scouts tell me the castle of Apollo is near. How will I take it without horses? Without any element of speed?
As night falls, another kink reveals itself. The soup pots we brought from Ceres to cook over our fires are cracked through. All of them. And the bread which we kept so securely wrapped in paper in our packs is full of weevils. They crunch like juicy seeds as I eat a supper of bread. To the Drafters it will look an unfortunate turn of events. But I know it is something more.
The Proctors warn me to turn back.
“Why did Cassius betray you?” Mustang asks me that night as we sleep in a hollow beneath a snowdrift. Our Diana sentries watch the camp’s perimeter from the trees. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I betrayed him, actually,” I say. “I … it was his brother that I had to kill in the Passage.”
Her eyes widen. And after a moment she nods. “I had a brother die. It’s not … it wasn’t the same thing. But … a death like that, it changes things.”
“Did it change you?”
“No,” she says, as though she just realized it. “But it changed my family. Made them into people I don’t recognize sometimes. That’s life, I suppose.” She pulls back suddenly. “Why did you tell Cassius that you killed his brother? Are you that mad, Reaper?”
“I didn’t tell him slag. The Proctors did through the Jackal. Gave him a holocube.”
“I see.” Her eyes go cold. “So they are cheating for the ArchGovernor’s son.”
I leave her and the warmth of the fire to piss in the woods. The air is cold and crisp. Owls hoot in the branches, making me feel watched in the night.
“Darrow?” Mustang says from the darkness. I wheel about.
“Mustang, did you follow me?” Darrow. Not Reaper. Something is amiss. Something in the way she says my name, that she says my name at all. It is like seeing a cat bark. But I can’t see her in the darkness.
“I thought I saw something,” she says, still in shadow, voice emanating from the deeper woods. “It’s just over here. It’ll blow your mind.”
I follow the sound of her voice. “Mustang. Don’t leave the camp. Mustang.”
“We’ve already left it, darling.”
Around me, the trees stretch ominously upward. Their branches reach for me. The woods are silent. Dark. This is a trap. It is not Mustang.
The Proctors? The Jackal? Someone watches me.
When something watches you and you don’t know where it is, there is only one sensible thing to do. Change the bloodydamn paradigm, try to even the playing field. Make it have to look for you.
I break into movement. I sprint back toward my army. Then I dash behind a tree, scramble up it and wait, watching. Knives out. Ready to throw. Cloak curled about me.
Silence.
Then the snapping of twigs. Something moves through the woods. Something huge.
“Pax?” I call down.
No response.
Then I feel a strong hand touch my shoulder. The branch I crouch in sinks with the new weight as a man deactivates his ghostCloak and appears from thin air. I’ve seen him before. His curly blond hair is cut tight to his head and frames his dusky, godlike face. His chin is carved from marble, and his eyes twinkle evilly, bright as his armor. Proctor Apollo. The huge thing moves again below us.
“Darrow, Darrow, Darrow,” he clucks over at me in Mustang’s voice. “You were a favorite puppet, but you’re not dancing as you ought. Will you reform and go north?”
“I—”
“Refuse? No matter.” He shoves me off the branch, hard. I hit another on the way down. Fall into the snow. I smell dander. Fur. And then the beast roars.
38
THE FALL OF APOLLO
The bear is huge—bigger than a horse, big as a wagon. White as a bloodless corpse. Eyes red and yellow. Razor black teeth long as my forearm. Nothing like the bears I’ve seen on the HC. A strip of red runs along its spine. Its paws are like fingers, eight on a hand. It’s unnatural. Made by the Carvers for sport. It’s been brought to these woods to kill, to kill me in particular. Sevro and I heard it roaring months back as we went to make peace with Diana. Now I feel its spittle.
I stand there stupid for a second. Then the bear roars again and lunges.
I roll, run. I sprint faster than I ever have in my life. I fly. But the bear is faster, if less agile; the woods shudder as it crashes through brush and trees.
I run beside a massive godTree and dive through bramble. There the ground creaks beneath my feet and I realize, as leaves and snow crumble under my feet, where I stand. I put the place between myself and the bear and wait for the bear to tear through the underbrush. It bursts clear and lunges for me. I jump back. Then it is gone, shrieking as it plummets through the trap floor onto a bed of wooden spikes. My joy would have been longer lived if I didn’t dance back and step into a second trap.
The earth flips. Well, I do. My leg snaps upward and I fly into the air on the end of a rope. I dangle for hours, too frightened to call to my army for fear of Proctor Apollo. My face tingles and itches from the blood rushing to my head. Then a familiar voice cuts the night.
“Well, well, well,” it sneers from below. “Looks like we’ve two pelts to skin.”
Sevro smirks when I tell him I’ve allied with Mustang. At camp, where Mustang was preparing search parties to send out for me, his reputation precedes him amongst the northerners. The Minervans fear him. Tactus and the other DeadHorses, on the other hand, are delighted.
“Why, if it isn’t my belly buddy!” Tactus drawls. “Why the limp, my friend?”
“Your mother rode me ragged,” Sevro grunts.
“Bah, you’d have to stand on your tiptoes to even kiss her chin.”
“Wasn’t her chin I was trying to kiss.”
Tactus claps his hands together in laughter and draws Sevro in for an obnoxious hug. They are two very peculiar people. But I suppose snuggling in horse corpses gives a bond—makes twins of a morbid sort.