North! Or Be Eaten (31 page)

Two days?
Janner thought with a shudder. It had felt like a lifetime. He couldn’t imagine a third day in the coffin.

As Mobrik led him back across the empty room where the carriage sat, Janner caught a sweet smell. Against the wall near the door sat three baskets of apples, berries, and melons. Mobrik took a deep sniff and giggled.

“Hurry up, tool,” said Mobrik. “I’ve fruit to eat once you’re back at work.”

“Can’t you eat some now?” Janner asked, hoping to distract the ridgerunner, but not yet sure why. He had to be careful from now on, but this might be the last time he would be this close to the exit. “You could take an apple with you. It’s a long walk to the paring station and back.”

Mobrik paused. “It
is
a long walk.”

“And fruit tastes best when it’s fresh. ‘The longer it sits, the worser it gets,’ my mother used to say.” Janner forced a laugh. Mobrik stared at the baskets with longing.

“Come on,” the ridgerunner said, glancing at the Overseer’s door. Their footsteps echoed as they crossed the room to the fruit baskets. Janner caught a glimpse of the portcullis, down the corridor behind the carriage. He wondered if the two children in charge of opening it stayed there or if they only manned it when the Overseer was out and expected to return.

Mobrik ran ahead of Janner to the baskets, the tails of his little coat flying out behind. He ran his little fingers over the fruit, caressing it and testing its firmness. Janner looked back at the Overseer’s door. It was still closed.

“The longer it sits, the worser it gets! A true thing for a boy to utter!” Mobrik said, enraptured with the fruit.

Still not sure what he was doing, Janner lifted a head-sized melon from the basket.

Mobrik gasped. “Put that back! This is
my
fruit! Mine!”

“Sorry,” Janner said. When he replaced the melon, it fell from the basket, hit the floor with a wet
thunk
, and rolled away. Mobrik shrieked and scrambled after it. When the little creature’s back was turned, Janner slipped four apples into the pockets of his breeches, thinking as he did that Tink’s quick hands could probably have snagged twice that many in half the time.

“Terrible idea!” Mobrik said, replacing the melon with great care. “I should never have let you near my fruit. Never. Come on.” He popped a sugarberry into his mouth and shivered with delight. Then he pushed Janner toward the double doors that led to the factory, heedless of the way Janner’s pockets bulged.

Janner was sent directly to the paring station. He looked for Sara Cobbler as he wound through the aisles of the factory, but he didn’t see her. All the children he passed ignored him intensely, girls and boys with shovels stared at the ground as if it were the most fascinating thing they’d ever seen. Only the Maintenance Managers paid him any attention, and their attentions were of the sniggering, malicious kind. They glared at him from their perches on the walls.

Janner hoped Sara Cobbler hadn’t been punished for talking to him. The Maintenance Managers hadn’t seemed to notice her in the moments before they knocked him unconscious. The other coffins in the dungeon had been empty, so at least she wasn’t there.

He wasn’t sure what had happened inside of him at the sight of her glimmering eyes in those moments at the stairs, but he liked it. And the sound of his name on her lips, the tears in her eyes, the bright skin showing through the streaks on her cheeks—all of these produced in Janner an urgency to see her again, to speak to her.

With a sigh, Janner pulled on his gloves, surprised to find that his blisters no longer stung. He worked in a slow, steady rhythm, lost in his thoughts, finding the work almost soothing. It somehow helped him think, helped him dwell on the faces of his family, of Oskar, to think on the things he would have to do to escape.

Before he knew it, the day had passed. He stood before a pile of pared swords and forks, and the boy with the red hat and the bell strolled by, whacking it with a hammer and saying, “Shift’s over. Shift’s over. Shift’s over, tools.”

Janner ate two bowls of soup and guzzled cup after cup of water before finding his bunk. When he was sure no one was watching, he slipped the apples from his
pockets and stashed them inside his pillow. He lay on his back, grateful he was no longer stuck in the horrible coffin. He stretched his arms as far as they would go, swearing to never again take for granted any room bigger than a closet.

As he drifted off to sleep, he had in his mind the beginnings of a plan.

The next day Janner woke before the bell-clanger arrived.

He had to figure out what to do with the apples.
The longer they sit
, he thought with a roll of his eyes,
the worser they get
. It was obvious he should use them to bribe the ridgerunner, but bribe him to do what? To let him go? Janner didn’t think Mobrik would go that far, no matter how much fruit Janner offered. What, then? He could use the fruit to get answers to questions. He wanted to know why the Overseer used children in the factory instead of adults. He wanted to know if the Black Carriage brought all its children to the factory or if it sometimes indeed carried them to Fort Lamendron for transport to Dang. But none of those questions seemed worth a precious apple.

He needed a way out, and as far as he could see, the only way out was through the portcullis. But even if he figured a way to get through the long corridor to the empty floor, he had no way to open the gate. He’d seen the way two children strained to raise it; there was no way he was strong enough or fast enough to do it alone.

But what if he wasn’t alone?

Sara Cobbler had helped him once. Maybe she’d do it again.

Janner smiled. He knew what to do. He just had to find Sara.

He scanned the faces around the table carefully. Of the forty or fifty children eating their soup in silence, none was Sara Cobbler. He studied the children serving the soup, the ones who stirred the vats of soup, but none was Sara Cobbler. Throughout his first shift he looked for her, in the faces of those who passed, those who brought him new carts of bad blades, those on the high walkways, and even among the Maintenance Managers. But she was nowhere to be seen. He began to wonder if he had dreamed her up.

When he returned to the dining hall after his shift, he found her at last.

She sat at the table on the opposite side of the room, stirring her bowl mechanically. Her face was still dirty, her hair still matted, but he knew it was her, even before she raised her eyes and rested them on him.
Stars in a storm
, Janner thought again, and he smiled at her across the room. Almost imperceptibly, like the swish of a redgill fin beneath the surface of the river, she smiled back.

Janner’s insides swelled. Before he had time to think about it, he walked straight toward her. Her eyes widened, and she went back to her soup, stirring it a little too fast. Janner sat across from her and lowered his voice.

“Thank you,” he said. “I remember you—from the Dragon Day Festival last year.”

She didn’t answer.

A Maintenance Manager passed, and Janner looked down quickly and slurped a spoonful of broth. “I need your help,” he said after a moment. “We’re going to get out of here—I’ll get you back to your parents. But I can’t do it alone. Can you help me?”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “They’ll put me in the box again.”

“You’ve been in the…?” Janner’s heart ached for her. He wondered how many of the children in the factory had endured that awful place. “Listen. I can get us out of here. Will you help me?”

She shook her head again.

“Sara,” Janner said, then he paused while another manager walked by. “I can’t stay here. There’s something I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what it is yet, but my brother and sister and I—”

“I remember them, too,” she said, staring at her bowl. “Though it’s hard to remember anything before coming here. Her name was Leeli, right? And Tink. Tink was funny.”

Janner smiled sadly. “Yes. He still is. But I have to find them. We have to get to the Ice Prairies.”

“The Ice Prairies? Why?”

“I can’t tell you.” He wanted to tell her. He wanted to tell everyone there that his father was the High King of the Shining Isle, though most of these children didn’t believe the place was even real. He wanted to tell Sara Cobbler because he thought she would be impressed. “You have to trust me,” he said instead. “Please.”

She paused. “What do you want me to do?”

Janner grinned. “I knew you were a brave one. I
knew
it.”

Sara Cobbler smiled.

Janner was glad she smiled. He knew he would need it to carry him through the next three days and nights in the coffin.

N
o sooner had General Khrak arrived at his palace in Torrboro and sat down in his chambers to eat than he was interrupted. He was tired of chasing the Jewels of Anniera, tired of sending disappointing messages to Gnag the Nameless. He didn’t understand why Gnag wanted the children, and he didn’t care. He just wanted to eat his gruel in peace. He wiped the corner of his mouth with his forearm and said, “What?”

A nervous old woman entered the room and bowed. “My lord, a visitor to see you.”

“Who isss it?” he hissed as he toyed with a rat tail that garnished his gruel. “I’m eating.”

“My apologies, lord,” she said. “A man has arrived in Torrboro from the Ice Prairies. He wants to speak with you. He says his name is Gammon.”

Khrak stared at the woman. He loathed her, but she prepared his food with such care, such devotion to his wishes, that he had restrained himself from putting an end to her many times. And now she had interrupted his meal to announce the arrival of what was sure to be an imposter. Gammon would never show his face in Khrak’s presence.

But his curiosity was piqued, so he pushed back from the table and left the room, resisting the urge to push the old woman to the floor as he passed.

General Khrak situated himself on his throne and put on his fiercest teeth-baring face before he nodded to the Fang soldier to allow the man claiming to be Gammon to enter. The door swung open, and a man with black hair strode across the hall. He was dressed in furs from head to foot and looked at Khrak with a boldness that surprised him. Khrak was used to the groveling of Fangs like Commander Gnorm or Plube, Fangs who lacked the courage to meet his eye—and wisely so. Khrak had killed enough Fangs for little enough reason that they all shrank from his presence. But this man met his gaze and groveled not.

Khrak was intrigued.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Are you General Khrak?” said the man.

“I am.”

“My name is Gammon.”

“Is it?” said the Fang. In a fraction of a second, he could slither down from his throne and sink his fangs into this arrogant fool. And the man must have known that. Yet there he stood, unafraid. Khrak was surprised to find that he respected the man for it. “If it’s true that you’re Gammon, then you must be a fool indeed to come here where you could so easily be killed. We know about you and your petty gathering in the Ice Prairies. Kimera, is it? Gnag knows all about your plans to ignite a rebellion and drive us from Skree. Do you think it is so easy as that? Do you think Gnag has not made arrangements for the destruction of your little army?”

Gammon spread his hands. “Yes, Khrak. And it is those arrangements I would like to discuss. As you said, you know I’ve amassed an army. You know I don’t want you in Skree. You know I won’t rest until you and every one of your scaly brothers is on the other side of the Dark Sea. Or at the bottom of it,” Gammon said evenly.

Khrak flitted his forked tongue and waited. He kept his cold black eyes fixed on Gammon until he saw the tiniest flinch in one of his eyes.
Good
, he thought.
The man knows fear after all
.

“After all these years,” Gammon continued, “I have finally learned why you came here.”

“Oh? And why do you think that isss?” The conversation was far more interesting than Khrak had expected it to be.

“The Jewels of Anniera. Three children. You didn’t come here to destroy us. You didn’t come here to conquer our land. You came here because Gnag wanted those three blasted kids, and he suspected they fled here. Am I right?”

Khrak leaned back in his throne and toyed with the end of his tail.

“Yesss. That is correct. In the beginning, our Gnag thought little of Skree. It was the jewels that he sought, not your hills and woodlands. He cares not for such thingsss.”

“I’ve learned about the fortress in the Phoobs,” Gammon said. “I know what’s happening there. And I know we don’t have much time.”

Khrak wondered how Gammon had learned about the operation in the Phoobs. He had done his best to keep it secret so that when it came time to unveil the plan,
he would have the advantage of surprise. But it didn’t matter that Gammon knew. It didn’t change anything. The more the man talked, the more Khrak wanted to hear him scream for mercy.

“What do you want, then?” Khrak said with a clack of his fangs as he leaned forward. Gammon gulped, and Khrak relished his fear.