These Divided Shores, page 10
Nate rolled his eyes as though Vex had said it anyway. “Speaking of plants.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a vial holding a tangle of leafy green vines.
“Now’s not the time for a Narcotium Creeper high, Nate,” Vex said.
Nate’s nose curled, but he ignored Vex. “Emerdian prisons are a treat, but this one is special. The architect took full advantage of Grace Loray’s offerings and cooked a couple bricks with Bright Mint. There’re a few enhanced bricks throughout the place, most on the lowest level, but damn it if they aren’t potent. A feat of Emerdian engineering—spend too much time around those rocks without proper defense, and you’ll lose your mind. Makes the prisoners near the bricks docile as kittens, but it’ll be hell trying to get them out.”
“The builders cooked Bright Mint into the bricks?” Vex gaped. “Is that possible? And wouldn’t it make the prisoners smarter, enough to figure out how to escape?”
“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” Nate beamed, enjoying his countrymen’s feat. “Emerdian bricks are made a certain way. A special way. Pushes the effects of Bright Mint straight past thinking better and into a full-on mental breakdown. That’s what the Narcotium Creeper is for—it’ll counter the Bright Mint for the affected prisoners, and if any of our group get woozy.”
Vex recoiled. He’d heard that the Port Camden prison was disorienting, but he’d attributed it to entire goddamn hallways moving, not to magic.
But Kari nodded. “I am pleased that you will be providing Narcotium Creeper.”
“Wait,” Vex said to Kari’s lack of surprise, “you knew about the Bright Mint?”
“The Council was aware,” Kari said.
Vex watched Kari watch Nate. They’d both known about the Emerdian prison’s extra twist of insanity? The way they were staring at each other—
It’d been a test. If either hadn’t known about the Bright Mint, they could’ve left that group in the prison, stoned off their asses, while their people got out. Beneath planning a dangerous prison break, there’d been a level of political bullshit Vex hadn’t known about.
He rubbed his temples. God, being a leader was exhausting.
The tension shattered when Nayeli barged into the room, her face sheened with exertion. Or maybe fear.
Vex’s stomach dropped. If she was afraid—
But she shook her head as if to banish a bad thought. “First—the Tuncian steamboats are about three hours out. They’ll be here by dusk.”
Kari waved her thanks. “We will move as soon as they arrive.”
“We will?” Vex croaked.
Nate grinned. “Scared, Bell?”
But Kari didn’t let Vex respond. “Word of an influx of raiders and steamboats in the port will spread quickly. Likely Argrid has already heard of their approach, and may have prepared. Our best chance is to act as soon as we are able. What is the other news?”
Nayeli’s eyes touched Vex, then Kari. “Cansu’s raiders say there’ve been rumors of Elazar’s presence in villages around Port Camden, telling people that raiders are to blame for their suffering and Grace Loray has to unite against their evil. He arrests people like he snatched up the missing raiders, and he heals people, too—apparently it’s the Pious God’s power, but I believe that as much as I believe I’m a long-lost princess—”
She was rambling. A tremor shot to Vex’s toes.
Nayeli gathered herself. “And . . . he has Ben with him. Elazar drags him around as proof that he’ll make sacrifices to create a better world, too.”
Vex wheezed, the room going dark. “Ben’s still—” God, no, he didn’t want to ask that question. “Elazar hasn’t said when he’s going to—”
“He’s alive,” Nayeli confirmed. “If they’re so close, it means Ben’s probably in the Port Camden prison after all.”
“Elazar too,” Vex said. He shoved up from the chair to prove to himself that he still could, but his legs ached, that last tremor affecting his muscles longer than normal.
“Ben?”
Vex looked at Nate, who was glaring at him with a new toxicity.
“Benat Gallego?” Nate continued. Vex cursed. “In the Port Camden prison? The Crown Prince? What the hell, Andreu?” He spun on Kari, his face going purple-red.
Kari put her hand up. “The prince turned traitor to his father and has been working against Elazar. His imprisonment and this treatment”—Kari motioned to Nayeli—“is proof of that. We were not certain where he was being held, or if his rescue would be a factor in this prison break. He will be a valuable asset in the coming war—whether or not you choose to join our fight afterward, the prince will be my responsibility.”
Nate glowered, unconvinced. “Just get my people out and get these damn Argridian rats away from Port Camden,” he grumbled, and strode out the door.
Vex didn’t move until Nate’s footsteps receded. He slumped forward.
Nayeli winced. “Sorry,” she said.
Kari shook her head in dismissal. “Go prepare.”
Nayeli started to leave, but Vex hesitated. “You didn’t tell Nate that Ben’s my cousin.”
Kari’s eyes were shielded. “Neither did you” was all she said.
Vex swallowed. Dread tasted like acid and iron and the cedarwood his father used to burn in his study’s fireplace. Should he let everyone know his lineage? What good would it do?
“Tonight!” Nayeli bounced over to Vex, trying overly hard to be cheerful. “Tonight, tonight! We’ll get Cansu and Ben back tonight!”
“Yeah. Let’s hope.”
“No hoping.” Nayeli poked him in the chest. “Certainty. We’ve lost too much already. We will get them back.”
Vex almost said, I hope you’re right, but he caught himself.
Nayeli hooked her arm through his and led him out of the room. Kari stayed at the table.
They had all lost too much to this war. But what about the people who couldn’t get back what they’d lost? What would Kari gain from this? Not that saving Ben would fill Vex’s chasm of missing Lu, but it would ease a different pain.
Vex let Nayeli pull him down to the basement, where the Emerdians had weapons and various plants. He didn’t remind her, or anyone, that giving him a weapon was five kinds of stupid. As he walked down the stairs, he had to keep a death grip on the railing through a spasm. There was no way he could fight, but he’d be damned if he’d stay in this townhouse.
Dread could fill Vex up. Tremors could break his legs.
But he was going into that prison, and he was getting his cousin back.
The Port Camden prison sat in the northeast corner of the city, near the tanneries that billowed sour, gaseous clouds into the air. The stench was the least of Vex’s worries as he crouched on the deck of a Tuncian steamboat, pistols across his waist and an ax on his back.
The exposed wood frameworks and ivory masonry of the city gave the buildings white teeth that gnashed in the moonlight. The threat of Argridian arrests had emptied the streets, so when Vex’s boat and three others stopped at a cobbled road, they had an unobstructed view of a winding staircase at the north end. At the top of that staircase, a black square cut through the cloudless night sky—the Port Camden prison.
Next to Vex, Nayeli let out a long breath. On his other side, Edda settled her loaded guns next to the Narcotium Creeper tonic she’d been given, like everyone else.
Vex steadied himself, telling his body it wouldn’t break down. He wouldn’t have any shaking fits. He wouldn’t fall, or drop his weapons, or mess up this plan in any way.
One of the dozen raiders on the boat disembarked. Another—Nate. A mix of Tuncians and Emerdians were landing farther west, coming from a different angle. To the east, more waited on the prison docks in the Scoria River, which connected Port Camden to Lake Regolith, with seven steamboats for the freed prisoners.
Once the escape boats were full, they would either head for Port Mesi-Teab or split up and leave Nate’s two boats in Port Camden. It depended on whether Nate joined the war against Elazar. Even Vex, with his weak knowledge of politics, knew Nate was keeping that decision for bargaining power. Not like the freedom of Grace Loray depended on it or anything.
If they all decided to head for Port Mesi-Teab, each escape boat had a different route, to give them the best chance of not getting caught as they made the day-and-a-half-long journey—another contribution Vex had been able to make. He knew routes across this island that had made Kari and Nate gape at him in equal parts concern and confusion. Rivers that overflowed and connected one to another; streams that weren’t on maps.
He was Devereux Bell, after all. He knew this island so well, a politician’s daughter had broken him out of prison and hired him to find a missing Argridian diplomat.
Mapping those escape routes had felt like an homage to Lu. Like she was watching him chart the ways, smiling over his shoulder.
God, he missed her. He missed her in breaths that only filled halfway, in heartbeats that quivered. He had to actively remind himself that she was gone, or he’d cast an absent glance around a room for her and remember she wasn’t there in a fistful of grim sorrow.
Now Nayeli leaped off the boat. Edda followed, and when she reached back to help Vex, he grabbed the railing and hurled himself off just to prove he could.
Only he couldn’t. Landing on the cobblestones shot pain up both his legs, and a spell came on, a quiver in one ankle, a twitch in his thigh—
He started walking, hands in fists, damn it, he would not collapse.
Nayeli shot ahead, and Vex knew Find Cansu, find Cansu rolled through her mind the same way Find Ben, find Ben rolled through his.
Nate led their group up the road, noiseless but for the rattle of their weapons. A few of his raiders scrubbed pastes on their skin—Powersage, the plant that gave strength. The more extreme Emerdians had vials of Croxy, the berserker plant, reserved for the heat of battle; a select handful had small, rare Incris fruits, the plant that gave increased speed.
Everyone readied plants and weapons alike as they reached the staircase, the stones slick with moss and a recent rain. They began to climb, tension as thick as the humidity.
The stairs led to a narrow yard that ran along the prison’s plateau. A handful of paces away, a wall loomed. Midnight choked the port; the prison sucked away all sensation. Vex could almost hear the shift of his own muscles as he followed Nate along the wall.
Their group stopped at a road that ran out from the west gate. Shadows heaved behind parked carts across the way. The other group, led by Kari.
Raiders from both sides of the road, including Nayeli, broke off and met at the gate. They shuffled in the dimness, a heartbeat passing, two, before they shot away at an all-out sprint, some moving so fast they had to have taken the speed-giving Incris.
Stealth had brought them this far. But it had to end.
Sparks of light flickered around the gate. A second more, and a dozen Variegated Holly leaves did what they did best: blew up.
Vex stifled a shout. Destroying the gate had been the plan, but knowing didn’t counter the shock of going from hollowing silence to instant chaos.
Nayeli, Edda, Vex, and the rest of Nate’s group dropped behind a short stone wall along the road as splinters shot through the air. The corresponding BOOM! set a ringing in Vex’s ears, the vibration of the blast stopping his heart so he gasped, breathless, stunned.
He glanced over the wall. Dust from the explosion made the entrance hazy, but he had to imagine the gate was gone.
A bell started tolling from the prison. The shouting of orders echoed.
Nate and Kari were in charge of almost a hundred Emerdian raiders and twenty-two Tuncian raiders, divided between here and the escape boats. Getting a head count on enemy guards within the prison had been impossible, but Nate had guessed there could be as few as two dozen, or as many as “Well, how big’s Elazar’s army?”
That kind of math made Vex queasy.
Pistols blasted through the explosion’s fog from the other side of the former gate—soldiers firing at anyone who would enter. Nate shoved himself to his feet with a war cry, brandishing a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other. His raiders joined him from either side of the road, the Tuncians too, everyone rallying with an invigorating scream that ushered Vex to his feet.
A group of Tuncians dove for the gate. Three shrieked, grabbing a leg, an arm, as pistols fired from within. Two of Nate’s raiders dropped, the dust and night’s cover hazing the air.
“How are we going to—” Nayeli started, but she squinted. “Shit, what’s she doing?”
Kari stepped into the dead center of the road, a pistol in each hand and a murderous look on her face. Horror pinged off Vex’s chest with every bullet that narrowly missed her.
Kari was going to take out the soldiers beyond the gate on her own.
A bell woke Lu from the restless sleep she had managed while Ben kept watch. One of them was always awake, should Milo or Elazar decide to pay a visit.
Lu sat up, muddled. Her first thought went to her wounds, healed thanks to another application of Healica.
“Lu.” Ben was standing in the middle of their cell, his head cocked.
The bell tolled again. Distantly, defensors shouted: “Lockdown—we’re under attack—”
Lu rubbed her forehead. She had started drinking the water at the insistence of the defensors, but these delusions seemed determined to—
Ben looked down at her. “Tell me you hear that.”
She shot to her feet. “It’s not . . . it’s real?”
He grinned. Happiness was so foreign here that it sent Lu back a step.
“Gunnar,” Ben gasped, relief gushing out of him. “Gunnar, wake up!”
Gunnar, curled with his back to the hall, was on his feet before Ben finished saying his name. He blinked at the ceiling, confused.
“Alarm?” he asked. He flinched, eyes unfocused. “Thaid fuilor—well—all is well—”
His delirium made Lu waver. Maybe the prison wasn’t under attack.
But if something had happened that had the guards distracted, and Milo came by to see Lu tucked into her cell, not having taken advantage of the opportunity to run . . .
The thought of his smile, wicked and satisfied, filled Lu with determination.
No picks. Nothing delicate that would take time. They were leaving now.
She dropped onto the table. The distance from there to the cell door would give her the leverage to kick at the lock.
“Lu!” Ben jumped away. “You could—”
One firm jab of her heel and the lock cracked, the door flying open.
Ben gaped. “The Powersage? It worked?”
Lu eased off the table, stretching her fingers experimentally. Had it? What about the Aerated Blossom that had been in the potion? She felt no lighter, even bouncing on the balls of her feet. Had only some of the potion worked?
Shouting came. Defensors, running toward them.
“We’re getting out of here,” Lu stated.
Ben’s eyes were drawn, his relief flickering at the reminder of the obstacles in their path. He nodded and yanked their cell door shut so it looked as though locked.
Seven defensors swarmed the hall, pistols out, swords flashing in the torchlight.
“Ben.” Jakes grabbed the bars of their cell—and the door opened. He looked up, startled.
“Gunnar,” Lu said in a tone like murder. “The lights.”
He curled his fingers and the torches along the stone walls snuffed out.
The defensors’ shock was rich and satisfying. Lu didn’t wait for her eyes to adjust—she swiped the mortar with their remaining healing plant, Cleanse Root, off the table. Ben had prepared it should Lu need something strong, but the skin-mending Healica had been enough.
Gunnar would need Cleanse Root, though. Lu grabbed the pitcher with their antidote water as well, a few swallows that would help clear him of the prison’s magic.
Lu barreled through the door, flinging Jakes back.
“There!” a defensor cried.
“No—that spot, the corner—”
Lu bounded across the hall, weaving through the confusion, a blur of shadow in a world of shadow. She grabbed the door to Gunnar’s cell and pulled, hard. The lock broke with a pop.
Her veins tingled, her muscles surged—the Powersage? Was it a part of her now? Had she and Ben, against the impossible odds of their situation, made a magic plant permanent? She couldn’t bear the answer with its ramifications and blessings, not now.
A day, maybe two, had passed since Gunnar’s last whipping. The monxes had healed him enough to keep him alive, but he was in no state to escape, let alone fight as Lu needed him to.
She shoved the prepared Cleanse Root and water at him, expecting to have to force him to take it—but he snatched both and downed the contents.
In the darkness, he growled. “Grab Ben. Get low.”
She dove back into the hall, taking out one of the defensors with the point of her elbow. The man’s yelp drew awareness, but Lu dropped to her knees and rolled across the floor into her cell. She wrapped her arms around a set of legs and heaved—Ben.
He crashed to the ground. Beside him, a defensor stumbled blindly. “Ben—wait—”
Jakes drew closer, a looming swath of blackness against the dark. Lu shoved herself up, punched him in the temple, and dropped back down as his body fell.
Next to her, Ben swayed. “Did you—is he—”
“He’ll live,” she said, though she wasn’t certain. Her strength was new and unfamiliar.
A defensor managed to light a torch. Or—no. The light came from Gunnar, who held a flame in his palm. The golden brilliance made all attention swivel to where he stood, out of his cell, a beast of flame and ash whose eyes said one thing: retribution.
10
VEX WATCHED IN horror—and awe; god, she was so like Lu—as Kari lifted both her guns, fired, and ran at the prison’s gate.
“Give her cover!” Edda started shooting into the dust fog caused by the explosion. Other raiders obeyed as Kari gained speed, leaped through the remains of the gate, and was lost from sight in the prison’s courtyard.
