Mud, Page 6

  The boots are getting closer, a clutter of stern taps just a few blocks away. They’re heading toward the wall.

  For a moment, I imagine myself creeping behind them, snapping necks, and bashing skulls. These Silencers are coming for them, my humans, and I am their only protector. But the blank eyes of a thousand dead Hunters are on me as soon as I think of it, cold and accusing. My skin clams, my stomach tosses. Shame burns through me. Maybe I should take these men down, but I can’t, I just can’t. I can’t bring myself to do it.

  But we can’t stay here and wait for them to find us, either. Our only protection here is the shadows.

  I signal to the woman, pointing to the next street down. We need to keep moving. She gives a nod and takes the boy’s hand. I run past them to the edge of the block and out into the open street. Their soft steps trail just behind me, the rustling of their packs in my ears. We make it into the cover of the next block’s buildings. The woman presses against the rough brick right next to me, and I can feel the tense heat radiating off her skin, the soft exhalation of each quick breath. Beside her, the boy pants. His wide eyes stare up at me. I’ve never seen him so quiet.

  It’s only seconds before boots crunch on the sharp rocks by the wall. I twist around the corner to see. Five of them. Just a few blocks away at the wall, they hover in a circle, listening as one gives orders from one with a jutted brow and sharp, square jaw.

  The Silencer from the market.

  I turn my body, widening my shoulders to create a barrier between him and my refugees. He can’t see them. I won’t let him.

  He stops talking. They split up.

  One treads this way.

  The boy must live. It rumbles through my brain without permission. Ceil’s warning. And the strange small man with the mangled beard—choose. I clench my fingers into the wall behind me and squeeze my eyes shut tight. It can’t mean what I think it means. They can both make it. I will make sure of it.

  The woman’s hand is braced against the brick right next to mine. Strong, rough, hardened by years of difficult work. I lean out to check the Silencers again—my hand shifts, our fingers touch. It quivers all the way up my arm and down my spine.

  One of the Silencers is coming this way, checking each side road as he moves closer and closer. There’s no time to think. I take her hand in mine and pull them along the building wall and around the next corner.

  A close miss. I hear the Silencer’s tread just as we settle against the new wall. But we can’t move building to building all night. They have to get out of Epoh, and the sooner the better.

  Will I go too? The question tugs at my mind. Kythiel’s offer is the only chance I have to break free, but even thinking of going beyond the wall into the unknown is enough to make my mind go blank. I shake it back into focus.

  For now all that matters is that none of us can afford to be out in Epoh’s streets when the sun rises, and the sky’s darkness keeps fading more and more.

  I can’t fail them. I have to do something.

  Straight ahead, my eye catches the shadow of a winding staircase against a tall building. The one I was heading toward when I found them. It’s only blocks away, right ahead of us.

  We could at least see better from up there. Make a plan. And the Silencers aren’t looking for them on rooftops. It’ll be safer there, at least for now.

  I nudge the woman and point to the stairs, then up. She squints, and then nods. I take her hand again, and her other hand holds tightly around the boy’s. I pull them after me and we weave through the dark street to the next cluster of shadows.

  As I flop against the wall, there is a throbbing in my temples and my ears and my neck. Beside me, the woman and the boy are hunched over, stifling heavy breaths. Did they hear us? I brace for the fast tapping of boots on cement as Silencers start running our way.

  It doesn’t come.

  I allow myself to breathe again. One slow, deep exhale.

  One block down. One, two, three, to go, it looks like. I can hear at least one Silencer wandering through the streets somewhere ahead of us. I strain to listen, try to figure out where he is, but it’s impossible. We need to keep moving.

  Soon as their breathing steadies, I take her hand again and pull them another block. Two more. Then one more. I can smell the rust on the stairs reaching to me. Still the Silencers are unaware of us. But his steps are getting closer. His steps hit my ears still fresh from the pavement. He can’t be more than a block away.

  All the more reason to keep moving, and fast.

  I look out around the corner to make sure the street is empty—it is, at least for the moment. The woman and the boy are still panting but even so, I take her hand in mine one last time, and the world rushes around me as I break for the stairs. Behind me, a stiff tug on my hand, a sharp gasp. I twist around as I run—the boy. He’s fallen, is sprawled in the street, still as stone.

  The woman fights my grip, pushing back madly to get to him, but I hold her hand tight— we’re in the middle of the street, caught in the light of rising morning. I push her toward the alley’s shadows and then I run back to him, stop to scoop him up in my arms. His eyes are closed and he is limp in my arms, but I hear the padded thump-thump of his heart and am filled with relief. He’s only unconscious.

  But something else is wrong. A new kind of quiet has set in around us.

  The Silencer stopped walking.

  I lift my eyes from the boy and there he is, the Silencer, his eyes hooded and dark under his heavy brow. The square jaw locks into a smiling grimace. We stand there frozen for half a moment before he kills the silence with a yell. The rage takes over, wild and hot and out of control. The boy is back on the ground and I am racing toward the Silencer, grabbing his throat, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing to stop the sound.

  The Silencer thrashes against my arm and kicks at my legs. His pulse races, and then subsides, and for once, the Silencer’s jaw goes slack as his eyes roll back into his head.

  Then I feel the sagging weight in my hand. I realize what I have done, and drop the lifeless heap to the ground. The panic and rage leaves my hands and pools into my core in a heavy knot. My fingers shake. Can I do anything but kill? I turn away.

  Behind me, the boy is awake again, and he gawks up at me, shaking. He saw.

  But there’s no time to calm him. The other four guards are responding to the Silencer’s yell and their footsteps are closing in from every direction.

  I scoop the boy over my shoulder and run.

  When I round the corner, it is already too late. I’m only half a block from the woman, but the Silencer running up the other side of the alley is even closer. He grabs her wrist and tears the scarf from her head, sending her curls flying. The scarf drops to the ground as he twists his hand into her hair and tugs her head back. She doesn’t make a sound. Not until she sees us does she cry out, fight against the Silencer’s iron grip, reaching out for the boy.

  He twists in my arms when he sees her and bursts into hysterics, screaming and reaching for her, desperate to be freed from me.

  I hold him tight.

  Another Silencer rounds the corner at the far end of the alley, and I hear even more footsteps behind me. Surrounded. There’s no time. I feel a dull tug at my chest. If I put the boy down to free her, he will be captured in seconds.

  The boy must live.

  “He’s alright,” I call to her.

  What else is there to say? We both know it’s too late now. A futility behind her eyes echoes inside, me, too. I tried to help them, did all I could. It wasn’t enough.

  She gives me a last frantic look. “Protect him, angel,” she says. It’s as much a command as it is a prayer.

  Angel. I nod. Yes. Anything. My chest hollows into a heaving empty vacuum.

  But there’s no time to think about this now. I have to get the boy to safety. Another Silencer rounds the corner and races toward us. A hard clatter of boots tells me the others are getting close.

  The only escape is
up.

  The old stairs cry out under my weight as I race up them three at a time, twisting through its slithering turns. The boy screams in my ear, struggles, trying to get back to her. His teardrops absorb into my shoulder. It goes against everything in me to leave her, stings bitterly through my chest, but it’s the only choice.

  We’re only a flight up when the Silencers start clamoring after us, a stampede of echoing, shuddering clangs rushing toward us.

  I wind round and round and round until finally I am on the roof. I gained on them in the climb, their human muscles weakening with use, but I still don’t have long. Behind me, the sun’s first rays graze over the wall, stretching my shadow across the roof like a giant.

  I rush across the roof’s edge on all four sides. There’s nowhere to go from here. Only down. We must be six stories up, at least. Can this small boy even take the fall? I have only seconds before he will be taken by the Silencers and suffer an even crueler fate. And me, what would I do on the other side of the wall? There’s only one thing I could do.

  The boy must live. Choose.

  And finally I do. Suddenly my choice is so clear I can’t remember what was holding me back.

  Of course, I go over the wall. Anything else is a dead end, an endless loop I’ve already lived over and over again.

  And the boy is coming with me. At least into the wasteland. He can’t stay here. The rest I’ll figure out later.

  The Silencers’ footsteps are getting close.

  I back up to the opposite end of the roof, my eyes locked on the wall, the one thing that can get us past the Silencers. I wrap my arms around the boy as tight as I can, and then I run across the roof and straight into the sky. A last second thought makes me clip my final step, and I aim to land on the wall instead of over it. Maybe I can at least cut the fall in half.

  I slam into dusty cement and my foot skids across the ledge. I bend low to absorb the force of the landing and scramble to bring us to a stop, holding onto the boy tight, tight, tight. But I can’t balance fast enough, and we roll over the wall’s edge. I twist around and grip the ledge with my hand.

  We dangle off the outside of the wall. My head pounds, thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk, drowning out all thought.

  I squint toward the ground, a shimmering blur. It is shorter than the leap we just took. I still don’t know what it could do to the boy, but there’s no other way.

  I release the wall and wrap myself around the small, young body above me and wait, praying I take all the impact.

  Chapter 9

  THE CRASH OF our landing thunders over the landscape. Neither of us moves.

  My splintered limbs sprawl over rough shards—glass. They put glass down outside the wall, one last little way to hurt anyone crazy enough to try to escape. My skull pushes back out into shape, twisting with echoed distortions as the impact tears through it. I must have hit it on something. Somewhere beyond it, faint voices and the shuffle of boots headed back into the city. They probably think the fall killed us. It probably would have if I were human.

  All I can see of the child on my chest is a limp tumble of his bright curls, the top of the pack on his back bulging over him. His heart beats weakly against me. I wait anxiously for my broken bones to pull back into place so I can see how much harm I’ve done to him.

  Finally, I am back in one piece. I slide out from under him, shift him gently to the ground, trying to move him as little as possible. How much damage can his small frame take? How much pain?

  With the dark bruises from yesterday under his eyes, his slack expression is haunting. I softly check over his arms and legs for breaks, then his head, a knot twisting through my stomach. Nothing appears askew or broken. His chest rises and falls.

  He’s unconscious, but he will be okay.

  Relief mixes with anxious churning and the flat taste of clay.

  But what do I do with him now?

  Protect him, she said to me. Her deep eyes burned into mine. Angel.

  But he can’t go where I am going. He can’t cross to the Underworld. And even without that, staying with me is anything but safe. I am no angel. I wonder what the woman would think if she knew what she’d really left him with.

  I’ve tried it before, living with the humans. I look enough like them to pass, mostly. They accepted me, for a short time. But they asked questions. I didn’t have answers. And when generations passed and I did not, they changed toward me, grew suspicious. As they should have. I started moving a few times a century. The hard accusing looks in the eyes of those who had been friends were worse than the sad goodbyes, the questions I could not answer for them.

  Even then, there were incidents.

  Humans are strangely curious things. They are drawn to beauty as wasps to a flame. If they saw the box, they reached for it. It called to them.

  What happened next was unstoppable.

  I was unfit for life among them. I knew what I was. Something wrong. Something missing. Golem.

  It didn’t take long for the guilt to outweigh the loneliness. I left them. Locked myself away the best I could. In the centuries since, the only lives I have taken have been those of the Hunters. No matter where I hide, where I wander, they find me. All others I left behind long ago.

  So it is impossible for me to stay with the child.

  But how can I leave him behind? Alone, here at the doorstep of those who would destroy him. Alone, out here in the unknown? Who knows what’s out here. He might not last until sunset. I promised to protect him. I can’t leave him here.

  I look to the horizon. It is broad, blank, and endless. It is overwhelming. Before it, the wasteland. A wide stretch of debris, hints of the lives that used to be lived here—hints of buildings, shattered ceramic and glass, patches of cement—all crumbled, weed-infested, and fading away. The debris of the Second Realm War. Even after all these years, it’s still as barren and devastated as it was the day the gods banished the rebels from the realm.

  I crouch down, taking the boy in my arms. His arm rests across my chest, soft, warm, and trusting. So close to the box hidden in its pocket. I push his hand to his side and try to forget the trembling that is taking over my body.

  I hold him close, and I walk.

  The wasteland extends on and on and on. As I make my way through it, my mind settles into its blankness. The child is soft and warm in my arms, his head gently resting on my shoulder. Light catches in his curls, like the sun reflecting back at itself. A hard seed of anxiety forms in my stomach. What am I leading him to? He’s been unconscious all day. What if he never wakes up?

  Finally, he stirs and I am filled up with relief, overcome with anxiety. He jolts his head up and pushes away with a gasp.

  “Miriam!” He squirms in my arms and it is all I can do not to drop him. A thread of panic quivers through me and I put him on the ground as carefully as I can, wait for it all to fall apart. He looks around.

  “Miriam… ” he says again. This time the tension dissolves from his face, leaves behind only a deep sadness. He turns slowly, taking in the empty wasteland that surrounds us. He stops when he is facing me.

  Just like in the temple tower, he is not afraid. His stare wrenches my shoulders tight.

  The guilt sinks deep within me. “She… I… I tried, I tried—”

  But he is not paying attention to me. He stares at the ground. Tilts his head, as if listening intently. “They got her, didn’t they?”

  Such certainty.

  “Yes.”

  He nods his understanding.

  The guilt piling on my shoulders is too much. “I’m sorry, I failed—”

  He stares at the dirt between his feet. “No. You’re the only reason we had a chance.”

  I struggle for a response. “She would have done anything to protect you. Made me swear to do the same. She is a good mother.”

  “My mother is dead. Miriam is my sister.”

  I close my mouth and bite my lip. He really is alone now.

  All I want is t
o fix it for him. To hold him tight until it all dissolves. My chest contracts with the ache reflected in his eyes. “We cannot go back for her. It’s too dangerous. I promised her I’d—”

  “I know. She wouldn’t want us to.”

  He turns away and rubs the tears away with his palm. Takes in the blank horizon again. “How long has it been?”

  “Since sunrise.” The sun is high over our heads now.

  “Where are we headed?”

  “West. The sea.”

  He nods. “That’s what she wanted.”

  What she wanted? But there’s nothing out here. Did she know something? Was there a plan? My mind crowds with questions, but I look at him and his eyes are wet with pushed-back tears and I let them go.

  “We should keep going.”

  “Not yet.”

  He scavenges the ground, picks up small sticks and other pieces of debris. He keeps going until his arms are full.

  Crouching, he arranges his collection into a careful pile. He tosses off his pack and digs through it, pulling out a piece of flint and steel. Sparks begin to fly as he hits them together. He continues until the pile catches. As the fire crackles across the debris, the boy kneels before it and prays to the Three. A prayer for a safe passage into death to Gods who left their people behind. Something long ago forgotten in this realm. Whether it is more shocking he knows this ritual, or that he dares perform it, I can’t decide. Could They really deny him this small thing? Do They even hear him?

  There is a pause when he is done, both of us staring into the flames. Then he stands and extinguishes the fire with a kick of dirt.

  He pulls his pack back onto his shoulders and rubs his eyes with the edge of his sleeve. “Okay.”

  I want to know how he learned this, hear some kind of explanation. But his head is tucked down to his chest, his gaze locked on the dirt. Again, I make myself stay quiet.

  We walk on in silence.

  Every swing of his arms makes me flinch, my muscles tense and strained. I try to keep myself still, not to show it to him. But what if he tries to reach for the box? So many before him have stumbled onto it one way or another, as if it calls to them. The fear is all-consuming, it drenches every step I take and sloshes in my mind. Pointed corners press tensely against my chest through the pocket. I keep my distance from him.