“A thief in training? No wonder that shopkeeper called you one of the untamable Ballenger brood.”
I shrugged. “We
gave the hats back, but got a scolding from our mother. She said if we put half as much work into our studies as we did our pranks, we’d all be geniuses. But when she thought we weren’t looking, we saw her shoot our father an approving nod. They both thought we were quite clever.”
“Yes,” Kazi conceded. “Clever as little foxes stealing eggs from the henhouse.”
* * *
The forest had grown thicker, and the peculiar chirps of striped squirrels sounded overhead, disturbed by our presence. We fell into silence, and my thoughts drifted back to Beaufort, as they frequently did. Kazi and I had discussed him together many times, but we’d come to no conclusions.
Dominion over the kingdoms.
But how?
Yes, Beaufort was developing powerful weapons, but he had no army to use them. He came to Tor’s Watch empty-handed, rags on his back, and his hat in hand. He and his group were a pitiful sight. Even if he was working with one of the leagues and he armed every one of them with the launchers he had developed, he still couldn’t bring down an entire kingdom, much less all of them.
Was Beaufort delusional? Trying to speak his lost dreams of power into truth? If so, Kardos and the rest all had to be as mad as he was. But Sentinel Valley was no delusion. The mass graves were sickeningly real. Maybe it took madmen to concoct such schemes.
“Do you think this is Ogres Teeth?” Kazi asked.
We passed a row of broken columns rising up in the middle of the forest, their purpose long lost to the world, but they looked like they might be the ruins Sven had described to us. There were so many vestiges of another time in this forest, I pulled out the map and checked it again to be sure.
“Yes,” I answered. “This is it.”
You asked me why an open world frightens me, Jase? Because it gives me nowhere to hide.
According to the map, we were headed into another one of those open worlds soon. I think it bothered me more than it did her. I was used to solving problems, fixing them one way or another, and this one I couldn’t fix. I couldn’t undo the past and take away what had been done. Her fear weighed on me. I had already studied the map, trying to find any way around it, but there was none.
We turned on a switchback, and the mountains and forest ended abruptly. We found ourselves on a high trail, looking out at an endless plain that was a strange deep red. In the distant north the harsh land of Infernaterr shimmered like a silver sea lapping at its shores.
“Whoa, Mije.” Kazi stopped and stared at the vast emptiness. It was our third time having to cross an empty landscape that offered no shelter.
I watched her eyes skim the miles, her chest rising in quicker breaths.
“You don’t have to be afraid of Zane anymore, Kazi. He’s in the family’s custody. They won’t let him go.”
She blew out a disbelieving huff. “You so sure? Gunner seemed willing enough to trade him away the last time I saw him.”
“I promise you, Gunner won’t let him go.” I wished I could tell her it was because of what Zane had done over a decade ago to her and her mother, but that wasn’t why he would hold him. Zane had a connection to the labor hunters that had descended on Hell’s Mouth and stolen me and other citizens away, and for that Gunner would never let him leave Tor’s Watch—at least not alive.
I watched her focus on the horizon, on some tiny point in the distance, probably imagining a busy town full of shadows and dark corners and how only a flat landscape lay in the way of her getting there. Her chin lifted. “I’m not that powerless six-year-old anymore, Jase. I’m not afraid of Zane. I guarantee, he’s the one who’s afraid of me now. He’s the one looking over his shoulder, waiting for a door to open and for me to walk through it. He’s the one who’s afraid to sleep at night.”
I had no doubt of that. I’d seen his expression when he saw her that last night in Tor’s Watch—when he saw her looking at him. Her eyes had glowed with a primal hunger, with the ferocity of a Candok bear that couldn’t be stopped. And yet I’d felt her heart pound beneath my arm when I pulled her close at night and a wide-open sky pressed down on us.
“But I’ve seen you—”
“Still struggling to sleep out here in the open? I know.” Her expression darkened, her brows pulling together, as if she was perplexed by this too. She sighed. “I can’t quite shake it. For now, I suppose, it’s a part of who I am. My mind reasons that there’s nothing to be afraid of, but something inside me I can’t control reacts differently.” I heard the confusion in her voice. She turned and looked at me. “I’m not sure how long it will take to convince my heart to stop racing every time I’m confronted with no place to hide. Maybe a lifetime. Are you up for that?”
“That’s a lot of riddles.”
“I still have a few in me.”
I did too. Like how many of my brothers would it take to hold me back from Zane when we got home again? How would he ever answer my questions with my hands around his throat? He stole Kazi’s mother. He left a six-year-old child to die on the streets of Venda. My pulse raced hot thinking about him, but I knew Zane wasn’t mine to finish. I had only cultivated a few months’ worth of hatred for him. Kazi had eleven years. Her anger trumped mine by a long shot.
Zane would be left for Kazi.
After she got her answers.