Deception (28 page)

Rachel, who sits opposite me where she can watch for signs of the army’s pursuit, huffs out a little breath and says, “We’re clear of the city now. No one is following us. Either let Sylph treat you, or I’ll do it myself.” The worry in her voice softens the sharpness of her words.

I make myself smile at her, and then turn to Sylph, who sits with Smithson beside an open crate of medical supplies.

“Open your mouth, please,” Sylph says. I obey her and grimace as she sprinkles a pinch of bitter white powder onto my tongue. “There. That should help the headache. Now let’s take a look at this cut.”

Sylph’s fingers are much gentler than Rachel’s. She treats my cut like a new friend she’s just getting to know while Rachel treats wounds like challenges that must be overcome through sheer strength and tenacity. Still, even with Sylph’s gentleness, brilliant shards of pain jab at my skull like they’re trying to drill through the bone.

I sit still while she pats antiseptic on the wound and carefully cuts a small strip of bandage to protect the area from germs. Smithson moves to the bench opposite me, his eyes constantly seeking his wife like he’s afraid if he turns his back she might disappear.

I know the feeling—my eyes are trained on Rachel as she crouches by the wagon’s entrance watching the road. She’s already left me once to tell Drake to write down the names of everyone in a marked room. As soon as I’m finished in here, she’ll resume guard duty along the western flank, and I’ll take my place in the lead. After that, we’ll be focused on staying ahead of the Commander, keeping our people safe from the predatory elements in the Wasteland, and catching whoever left the message in our room last night.

My hand reaches for the gray metallic object that pinned today’s message to our floor, and I worry its smooth surface with my fingers as I pull it from my pocket.

I don’t want to let Rachel out of my sight, not when I know one of our own has betrayed us, but of everyone in camp, she’s one of the most capable of handling herself against a killer.

Besides, the coward only attacks at night.

“It’s a shallow cut. No stitches required. You were lucky,” Sylph says.

“I would’ve stitched him up last night if he’d needed it,” Rachel says.

Sylph’s smile is quick and bright. “I’d have given half a day’s food ration to see that.”

Rachel sounds offended. “I can stitch up a cut. I sat through the same Basic Medical class in Life Skills as you did.”

“Yes, but I paid attention.” Sylph’s voice is warm. “You spent every minute in Life Skills pretending you were somewhere else.”

“Well, maybe if they’d taught us something worth knowing instead of wasting our time with how to sew a pretty dress or set a fancy table, I would’ve had more incentive. Besides, I did well in Basic Medical.”

“Mr. Phillips said you had the worst bedside manner he’d ever seen.”

Rachel rolls her eyes. “I just have a low tolerance for whining.”

I laugh, and the pain in my head is nothing but a faint twinge now. The powder has done its job.

“I can put more salve on this if you’d like. Maybe it won’t scar quite so . . . badly.” Sylph’s cool fingers brush lightly against my neck, tracing the edges of the brand the Commander burned into my skin while I was at his mercy in the dungeon. It’s still healing, and the new skin feels tight and itchy.

“Don’t worry about it. There’s nothing you can do to make it look like anything less than the Commander’s Brute Squad insignia,” I say. And because both Sylph and Smithson look uncomfortable, I laugh a little. “Is it really that bad? Do I need to wear a scarf for life?”

Smithson’s brown eyes meet mine for a long moment. “It’s a good reminder of why we follow you instead of him.”

Now I’m the one who’s uncomfortable. I look at my hands, and wait quietly for Sylph to finish checking the burn.

She pats my shoulder. “All done. Do you want some pain medicine to keep with you in case the headache comes back, or do you want to find the medical wagon when you need more?”

“I’ll take some with me.”

She measures a few pinches of powder into a pouch and hands it to me.

“Thank you,” I say, and capture her gaze with mine. Once upon a time, she was the talkative, energetic girl whose heart was big enough to love Rachel, sharp edges and all, even when she could never fully understand the inner chambers of Rachel’s spirit. Now grief and loss have carved away the innocence and left wisdom in its place. I’m grateful that the size of her heart remains unchanged.

She smiles, her green eyes lighting with true pleasure. “You’re welcome. You’ve done so much for us. It’s nice to be able to do something for you.”

I don’t know what to do with her words, so I smile a little and head toward the wagon’s exit. Time to get us off the main road to Lankenshire.

Best Case Scenario: I continue to elude the Commander, get our people to safety, and catch the killer before the body count rises.

Worst Case Scenario: I fail.

I step out of the wagon as the path dips down between two chunks of moss-covered stone. I don’t know if I can catch the killer. I don’t know if I can keep everyone alive as we travel through the Wasteland. And I don’t know if I can convince Lankenshire to form an alliance with us.

But I do know that I’m prepared to lay my life on the line to make it happen. These people may have ignored me or mistreated me when we were all living in fear of the Commander’s vicious reprisals, but now they look at me with respect and trust. I refuse to be unworthy of either.

Chapter Thirty-One

RACHEL

L
ogan pushes us hard for four hours before calling a halt for lunch. We left the main road to Lankenshire two hours ago. Quinn, Willow, Ian, and I doubled back and did everything we could to disguise our trail and lay false ones instead. Hopefully by the time the army reaches the place where we left the road, we’ll be too far out of range for any of the guards to track us with our wristmarks.

We’ve seen no sign of the army behind us, but everyone is jumpy. Looking over their shoulders. Losing their tempers. Clutching their loved ones close. We may have left the Commander on the other side of the fire we set, but all one hundred forty-five survivors are still traveling with us, which means the person working with the Rowansmark tracker is still in our midst.

I take my lunch ration of rabbit meat wrapped in dandelion leaves and find Logan sitting next to Drake beneath the shade of a large walnut tree. He smiles when he sees me, but there are shadows in his eyes that have nothing to do with the pain in his head, and he won’t hold my gaze. Drake’s shoulders are slumped, and he keeps tugging on his beard, something he only does when he’s worried.

I toss my cloak onto the ground and sit beside Logan. “What’s going on?”

Logan holds the gray metallic object he found with this morning’s message. His thumb rubs across the fluted edge as if he thinks he can figure out who put it in our room if only he presses hard enough.

Without looking at me, he says, “According to the map, we should reach the river that separates us from the northern city-states by nightfall. Maybe sooner. I just hope I can find a way to get us across before the Commander realizes he’s lost us and starts looking for where we left the main road. If he’s using a tracking device, it won’t take him long to figure out we aren’t where he thought we’d be.”

I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t. Neither does Drake. And both of them won’t stop looking at the metallic object in Logan’s hand. Finally, I say, “Okay, what’s
really
going on?”

Logan rubs the piece of metal. “We need to talk about what happened this morning.”

I sit up straighter. “Yes, we do. We need a plan. We have to catch this person before he has a chance to kill again.”

Drake tugs on his beard, and Logan’s jaw clenches.

“What? What did I say?” I look from one to the other.

Logan holds up the gray object. “See this edge?” His thumb presses against the fluted end again. “There’s a hole here and the tube is hollow inside. The other edge is as sharp as a needle.” His eyes meet mine, and the pain in them makes it suddenly harder to breathe. “I think this is a conduit for poison.”

The ground beneath me remains steady. The birds above me still chatter and squawk. All around me people eat their lunch rations and huddle in small groups. Everything is the same, and nothing is the same. My hands start to shake and my pulse feels heavy and uneven as it slams against my skin.

“The message said the marked
will
die. We think the killer poisoned the people in the marked rooms. He could’ve taken a syringe from the medical wagon. If someone is sleeping heavily enough, a little prick against the skin isn’t enough to bring them fully awake,” Drake says. His words rake across the silence inside of me, and I wrap my arms around my stomach as I stare at Logan.

“Sylph was in a marked room.” My voice is a desperate, haunted thing, and Logan looks as if I’ve struck him.

“I know.” He reaches for me, but I can’t bend into his embrace. I can’t let him comfort me, because I won’t need comforting. Sylph will be okay. We’ll find the antidote. Better yet, we’ll find the killer and force him to give us an antidote. She’ll be fine. Everyone will be fine.

“We won’t know for sure unless people start getting sick,” Drake says.

“We can’t wait for that.” Logan shoves the dart into his cloak pocket and takes out the packet of pain medicine Sylph gave him earlier.

While he measures out a dose for his headache, I scan the little clearing we’re using for our lunch break and find Sylph laughing with Jodi and Cassie, her arms wrapped around them both. My heart twists painfully inside my chest, and I have to look away before my eyes start to sting.

I turn to Logan. “The message said the marked
will
die. That’s in the future. Maybe he was warning us. Maybe it hasn’t happened yet.”

He takes my hand in his. I imagine I can still feel the cold imprint of Rowansmark’s dart on his skin. “I hope so. But we need to keep a close eye on everyone who was in a marked room last night. And we need to start looking for anyone in the group who could have loyalty to Rowansmark.”

“The real problem here is that Baalboden was a city-state of thousands, and there’s only a handful of us left.” Drake scratches his leg with fingernails that have tiny half-moons of dirt beneath them. “Many of us didn’t know each other before the fires. We’re just taking everyone’s word that they lived in Baalboden, because why else would they be here?”

“We can start by checking again to make sure everyone in the group has a Baalboden wristmark. It was chaotic before the funeral. We could’ve missed someone,” I say. “Anyone besides Quinn and Willow who doesn’t have one—”

“Will be arrested.” Logan gets to his feet and reaches down for me. “And then questioned.”

“Forget questioning. I want whoever did this to be
dead
.”

Logan’s eyes are grim. “Oh, he will be. But not before he gives us the answers we need.”

Drake stands. “I’ll go line everybody up.”

In minutes, the entire camp stands in two rows facing each other. Drake and Thom walk down one row, checking each survivor’s right wrist for the distinctive tattooed ridges of Baalboden’s mark. Logan and I take the other row.

“Right arm, please,” I say to a man nearly as old as Oliver. He raises his hand, and I slide his tunic sleeve down his arm. His skin sags away from his bones, and the wristmark has faded over time, but it’s there. I rub my thumb over it, searching for any signs that it could be fake, but the ridges are right where they should be and the ink is a permanent stain on his forearm. The ridges in his mark are longer than mine. Skinnier, too. Each mark is different, so that a guard’s Identidisc can bounce sound off of the mark and come back with a sound signature unique to that citizen.

Logan stands beside me, checking Jan’s wristmark. I move past him to check the next person, and we quickly fall into a rhythm.

Cassie. Ian. Elias. Geraldine. Susan. Nick. So far everyone in my line has a wristmark. Logan is checking the wristmark of a woman whose brown skin gleams like a polished jewel beneath the midday sun. I step around him and discover that Sylph and Smithson are next in line.

“Right arm, please,” I say to Sylph. She smiles at me and lays her hand in mine. I lift our hands in the air, and her sleeve slides to her elbow. I gasp. A deep purple bruise blossoms like rotting fruit along the underside of her arm.

“What happened?” Abandoning any effort to check her wristmark, I grab her arm as she starts to pull it down. “Who did this to you?”

The bruise is easily the size of my palm, and its center is black. Whoever hurt her
meant
to hurt her. With a bruise like this, she’s lucky her arm didn’t break. Fury gushes through me, sharp and vicious.

My eyes find Smithson, and I arrow my rage at him, as if I can flay him to pieces with nothing but my glare.

But he isn’t looking at me. Instead, he’s staring at Sylph’s arm, worry in every line of his face. “What happened?”