Deception

Chapter Twenty-Three LOGAN

With less than an hour until dark, I make my way to the long rectangle of a room at the end of the hall where Rachel is drilling our recruits on fighting techniques. Thick ivy clings to the windows. The sunlight that seeps past it is a sickly green-gold color that bathes the room in a verdant half-light. Rachel stands in the middle of the room, her sleeves rolled to her elbows, her Switch in hand, and her eyes locked on Ian’s. A scattering of others—Jodi, Elias, Keegan, Cassie, Eric, and Thom—lean against the walls, watching Rachel and Ian spar.

Ian lunges forward, his practice stick whistling through the air.

Rachel blocks him and swings the weighted end of her Switch into his thigh. I wince in sympathy. I’ve been on the receiving end of that move a few times. It took every ounce of pride I had to walk without limping afterward.

“You can cry if you need to,” Rachel says as she drives her elbow into his stomach and then whips around to swing the Switch at his head.

He dives under the blow and slams into her, knocking them both to the ground.

“You first,” he says as he tries to pin her to the floor by holding her arms down.

I sigh. This is going to get bloody, and Ian’s wearing his best tunic.

Rachel goes limp and drops the Switch. Ian relaxes his grip for a second, tossing a quick grin toward his audience, and Rachel attacks. Bringing her knees up, she plants her boots on his chest and sends him skidding onto his back. Flipping into a crouch, she lunges for him before he can get to his feet.

She’s got him. He’s on his back, out of position, and she’s dropping toward his chest. He’ll be lucky if he can breathe without pain for the next hour once she lands.

But before Rachel can deliver, Ian scissors his legs and rolls to his left. Rachel lands where seconds before Ian was lying. With controlled, methodical movements—movements that speak to years of training—he lashes out and sweeps her legs out from under her, flips onto his stomach, and whips her arms into a submission hold.

Rachel swears, and both Jodi and Cassie applaud Ian’s win. He grins.

The second he lets go of her, Rachel gets to her feet and shoves a finger into Ian’s chest.

“Where did you learn how to do that?”

“You’ve been training us for over a month now,” he says.

Her eyes narrow. “I never taught you how to do that. I don’t even know how to do that.”

He casts a quick, pleading glance my way, as if hoping I have some magic answer that will derail Rachel once she’s on a roll. I’m not going to be the one to tell Rachel that Ian apprenticed to be on the Brute Squad. Not after what they did to her on the Claiming stage. Not after they were a party to Oliver’s death. She’d tear him to pieces. I’m also not going to lie to cover Ian’s mistake. I give him a little head shake. He’s on his own.

He raises his hands slowly as if to placate her, and says, “You weren’t our only teacher, remember?”

“Quinn taught you that?” she asks, and I can see she believes it’s possible.

He’s spared from answering when there’s a commotion in the hall and Quinn himself strides through the door, Willow right behind him. Relief weakens my knees for a moment, and I steady myself with one hand on the wall beside me. I’d truly thought I’d have to leave them behind in the morning.

“You made it,” I say, and Rachel rushes to my side.

“We’re two days late. You shouldn’t have waited,” Quinn says, but he smiles at us both.

“We only arrived an hour ago, and plan to leave in the morning.” I walk forward and clap him on the shoulder. “Did you find the killer?”

“We found his boot prints,” Willow says. “Twice. He’s following the group.”

“Pretty sloppy for a tracker,” Rachel says.

Willow smiles a little. “Not where these prints were. We had to move leaves and underbrush to find them. He’d done a good job of covering his tracks, but he made the terrain a little too perfect, and that’s usually the sign of someone trying to be invisible.”

“Could you see a maker’s mark on the print?” I ask.

“Rowansmark,” Quinn says. “He’s good enough to hide from Willow and me. We doubled back, circled around, laid traps . . . everything we could think of, but he stayed a step ahead of us. He’ll come after the group again. No one dedicates this much time and attention to hunting down prey without coming home with their prize.”

Prey. A chill brushes across my skin.

“Well, we’re safe for now. Rachel, Ian, and Adam checked every inch of this building before we allowed the group inside. We’re alone here, there’s only one entrance, and I’ve tripled the guards we normally use. No one is going to get inside this building tonight.”

“I hate to tell you, but the tracker is the least of your worries.” Willow grabs my arm and pulls me toward the stairwell at the end of the hall. “You have a bigger problem now. Come on.”

My heart thuds painfully against my chest as we reach the stairwell and begin to climb. This ridiculous building has thirty-five floors. I cling to the railing and practically drag myself up each miserable step. The air in here is stale and dank, and clusters of moss cling to the cracks that spread across the walls. Sweat gathers at the small of my back, and I’m breathing way too fast, but I can’t seem to control it.

Did the previous government outlaw the building of new homes or shops? I can’t imagine any other valid reason for agreeing to stretch steel and glass toward the sky as if daring the wind to knock it over.

I’m panting, and my fingers feel numb when we finally reach the brown metal door that leads to the roof. It sticks. Quinn slams into it with his shoulder, and it reluctantly creaks open on hinges nearly immobile with rust and age. He walks onto the roof, followed by Willow, Rachel, and Ian. Thom, Cassie, Keegan, and Jodi stayed downstairs like the admirably sane people I know them to be.

Adam looks up as we walk onto the roof, and his eyes go straight to Willow. “You’re back. I was getting worried.”

She tugs on her braid and says, “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“No, but I did anyway,” he says. Willow’s cheeks turn a dusky pink, and her smile is a little shy.

Then she turns to me and says, “Coming out sometime today?” Before I can respond, she strides toward the edge of the roof.

I cling to the doorjamb, staring at the wide-open space before me. The rooftop is a faded gray stone riddled with cracks and holes. Rusted pipes stick out at irregular intervals, like some sort of ventilation system. A large, square metal box rests in the corner. Almost every available inch is covered with a clinging green vine or a carpet of moss. The edge of the roof is surrounded by a low railing that barely reaches Willow’s waist.

That can’t possibly be safe.

She waves me over, a sharp, impatient gesture, and I edge my way out of the doorway. The wind tugs and pushes, and only pride keeps me from dropping to my knees and crawling. I step over vines, slide across moss, and grimly calculate the trajectory necessary to slam into the railing instead of sailing over into thin air, should the capricious wind have its way with me.

When I reach Willow, I grab the railing with both fists and hold on as if my life depends on it. Which it probably does. Because no one was meant to be this far off the ground.

“Look.” She points south. “No, there. A few degrees to the east.”

I crane my neck and sweep the cityscape and beyond, manfully swallowing the need to whimper when I accidentally look too far down. “I don’t see anything,” I say in a voice that doesn’t exactly shake, but doesn’t do me any favors, either.

“That line of buildings to the south of us is in the way. We need to find a better angle. Come on,” she says, and starts walking. The others follow her.

I stay put. I’m not walking across that death trap again unless I’m heading for the door. “I’ll take the east side,” I say, and creep along the railing by sliding my fists. No need to let go. No need to plummet thirty-five stories to my inglorious demise.

I scan piles of rubble with trees growing from their centers, broken metal spires leaning precariously over the remnants of roads, and random clusters of buildings that remain somewhat whole. My eyes are drawn to the edges of the Wasteland, steadily encroaching on the borders of the city. Nothing moves. Nothing is out of place.

But when I lift my eyes above the tree line, I see faint lines of smoke drifting up into the air from the bluff just beyond the city limits.

“Fire?” I ask, because apparently along with a shaking voice and a white-knuckle grip on the railing, I feel the need to humiliate myself by stating the obvious.

“Campfires,” Willow says. “The army. That’s what took us so long. We had to go west and circle back around to avoid them.”

“Our lookouts have reported that the army has been getting closer every day,” Ian says.

“If they get any closer, they’ll be able to hear you snoring in your sleep,” Willow says.

“I don’t snore.” Ian sounds offended.

“Right. And bunnies don’t reproduce every time they look at each other, either.”

“The army is right on top of us. I think the only reason they haven’t already attacked is because they don’t know exactly where we are.” Quinn appears at my elbow. If he notices the death grip I have on the railing, he doesn’t react.

Rachel’s voice is fierce. “The Commander will send scouts. We should—”

“Oh, he sent scouts,” Willow says. “Five of them. And they were doing a good job of searching the city. Unfortunately for them, all they managed to find was me.”

“You killed them?” Ian asks.

“No. I invited them over for dinner.” She smacks his shoulder. “The sun is almost down. By the time the Commander realizes his scouts aren’t coming back, it will be too dark to send more. He can’t risk us seeing torchlight, and they can’t search these ruins without light.”

“You scare me a little,” Ian says, but his voice is full of admiration.

Adam steps closer to Willow. “She’s good at everything she does.”

Quinn clears his throat. “Maybe we should get back to the problem?”

“We can’t travel at night,” I say. “We need light as well. But we can leave at dawn, and—”

“They’ll leave at dawn, too,” Adam says. “And if they’re that close already, there’s no way we can outrun them. Not with children and elderly and the wagons.”

“Which is why we’re going to create a barrier between us,” I say. “Something they can’t cross.”

Rachel meets my eyes, and her smile is cold and bright. “Fire.”

I match her smile with one of my own. “Fire. And when the army finally gets past the blaze, we won’t be where they expect, because we’re leaving the main road behind.”

“What are we waiting for?” Willow asks. “Let’s go burn something down.”