I get it. He won’t believe until he sees it for himself. I run a hand over my face, feeling exhausted. My clan powers are draining, and the reality of Hastiin’s death is starting to sink in. And that broken sound Ben made. I never want to hear that again.
“I’m going to take a look at the cave. Restrain this one.” I kick at the archer. “And make sure you cover her mouth. She’s got some sort of weaponized singing thing.”
He slides his pack of supplies off his shoulder in reply.
I press past him, up the trail toward where he said he found the cave. I guess I need to see for myself too. See if there’s any sign of the White Locust. Get a feel for what kind of monster he is.
Plus, if I’m honest, I can’t deal with Ben right now. Because if I do, I’ll have to explain her uncle’s dying wish.
Chapter 6
The cave is empty, or, more correctly, abandoned. It’s clear someone’s been living here, and more than one someone. There are shallow shelves carved in the walls that still hold a stash of canned goods. A spatula and a wooden spoon hang next to each other from hooks forced into the cracks in the rock, and a tub of soapy water sits next to a Coleman camp stove, both on an old Walmart folding table. A metal chair is pushed back from the table in front of the remains of someone’s breakfast, hastily left unfinished. The archer was definitely living here. But it looks like she was living alone, at least for now. But if they’d all fled, why leave one woman behind alone? To protect something? To punish her?
There are papers on the table next to the Coleman. I dig through them, looking for some sign of where the White Locust and his people might have gone. I find a guard schedule, penciled in neat, precise handwriting. A list of traveling supplies. An inventory of weapons.
The weapons list gives me pause. Hastiin was right. The White Locust has a shitload of explosives. And not just explosives. Compound bows, likely similar to the one the archer was using. Small firearms. Long guns. Grenades. I’m starting to think we were lucky we missed visiting with the White Locust. Guns are one thing, but a grenade?
A map catches my eye. Lake Asááyi is clearly marked with a “RV.” No idea what that means. Black pencil limns the road back to the main highway and then down through Tse Bonito, all the way to the southern Wall. The markings end abruptly at Lupton, a small border town on the edge of the Wall. Beyond Lupton, on the other side of the Wall, is the old highway. Route 66, they used to call it, and then Interstate 40.
I pocket the map in case the Thirsty Boys want to take a look, but I can guarantee that the Thirsty Boys won’t cross the Wall for any amount of trade, or revenge. The truth is that Dinétah got off easy when the rest of the world went to shit. Outside that wall is the horror of what happened to everyone else. And it may sound truly selfish, but I’ve had enough horror in my life. I don’t want to know about other people’s horrors too.
I walk past the makeshift kitchen to find at least a dozen crudely dug holes, wide enough to accommodate a human and about ten to fifteen feet deep. I bend to look down into one and see blankets piled at the bottom. Sleeping holes? Prisons? Whatever they are, people were living in them. In the last hole I find him. The Tribal Council representative. Dead. But there’s no smell, so he can’t have been dead long. A day, two days max.
A sound comes from outside the cave. A high-pitched keening, the sound of a girl in mourning, that instinctively makes me want to cover my ears and run away.
But as much as I’m tempted to run, I don’t have the option. I owe Hastiin for the month he took me in, gave me a purpose with the Thirsty Boys so that I wouldn’t dwell on what happened at Black Mesa, what I’d done there. The blood staining my hands. I owe him for his friendship, prickly as it was. For his forgiveness of my social transgressions. For being there, in his own way, when everyone else was ready to give up on me.
And so, mouth set in a grim line and soul aching, I leave the cave to face Hastiin’s niece.
Chapter 7
Marvin Atcitty’s splayed the archer out on her back, tied and staked spread-eagle. She’s got a skull bandanna stuffed in her mouth, and her eyes roll wildly between Atcitty, the other Thirsty Boy, and now me.
“What’s going on?” I ask. I expected them to have the prisoner tied up and ready to take back to Tse Bonito to be turned over to the police or the Law Dogs or whoever’s in charge of paying out the bounty. “Why is she staked to the ground?”
Ben rises to her feet. The front of her shirt is covered in blood I know isn’t hers.
“Maggie,” she says. Her voice is a teary whisper. Her eyes are red-rimmed and so hard to look at that I have to stop myself from turning away.
“Maggie?” she says again, but this time her voice is heavy with a question. More than a question. A demand.
She wants something from me. Something terrible that I recognize. Hastiin must have told her stories about me. About the bloodthirsty monsterslayer. About the indiscriminate killer.
And now she’s asking me to be that person for her. To kill the archer.
I know it.
But it’s a request that I have no interest in fulfilling. My stomach hardens like a rock. My jaw clenches, the frustration so acute that I dig my fingernails into my palm for relief. I relax my hand, but the tiny moons shallow with blood stay carved in my flesh.
“No, Ben,” I say, my voice firm. It’s not her fault that Hastiin misled her, but I won’t be that monster for her. I can’t.
She whimpers. Looks to my hip where my Böker is sheathed.
“Ask Atcitty,” I tell her, somewhere between weary and angry. “Or that other guy. I don’t owe you this.”
“My uncle said it would be you. If I got in trouble, I should ask you. That the Boys weren’t . . .”
“Weren’t what?”
“Killers.” She looks right at me as she says it. Hard, uncompromising. Older than sixteen.
I must have looked the same way when I was her age and faced down the men who killed my nalí. It’s not a good thing.
I curse. Something crude enough to make Atcitty shuffle his feet uncomfortably. The archer between us writhes in her bonds, looks at me with big brown eyes, pleading for her life. A cut mars her cheek, blood smeared across her face from where I punched her.
“Don’t ask me this, Ben.”
“I have to.”
“You don’t.”
“I—please.”
I flinch back like she hit me. So dumb. Such a small word, trite even. But I can’t ignore it. My surrender must show in the set of my shoulders, the way I shift on my feet, because Atcitty comes forward to unstake the archer’s hands and legs and pull her up on her knees. He stretches her arms up high behind her, pulls her head back, exposing her throat.
So easy.
I glance at the other Thirsty Boy, but he’s looking down into the valley where somewhere below us Lake Asááyi glitters in the late-morning sun. “Coward,” I mutter, and watch him recoil.
As I come to her, the archer’s strange wings flare momentarily. They look like spun lace in the sunlight, fine and delicate. Atcitty struggles to hold her. I lay the tip of the Böker against the delicate skin in the hollow of her throat. She stills, wings drooping to her sides.
One cut, one small thrust of my hand, and the blade is in her brain. But I wait, pull the bandanna from her mouth, and ask instead, “Who are you?”
She opens her mouth, and I tap her chin with the tip of my knife. “Words,” I warn her. “I hear singing and it’s the last noise you’ll make.”
“What are you doing?” Ben shouts, confused. “I don’t care who she is. I want her dead.”
“We need information,” I say. Not a lie, but I’m definitely stalling. “You want to know about the White Locust, don’t you? We won’t know anything if she’s dead.”