Deception

Chapter Thirty-One RACHEL

Logan pushes us hard for four hours before calling a halt for lunch. We left the main road to Lankenshire two hours ago. Quinn, Willow, Ian, and I doubled back and did everything we could to disguise our trail and lay false ones instead. Hopefully by the time the army reaches the place where we left the road, we’ll be too far out of range for any of the guards to track us with our wristmarks.

We’ve seen no sign of the army behind us, but everyone is jumpy. Looking over their shoulders. Losing their tempers. Clutching their loved ones close. We may have left the Commander on the other side of the fire we set, but all one hundred forty-five survivors are still traveling with us, which means the person working with the Rowansmark tracker is still in our midst.

I take my lunch ration of rabbit meat wrapped in dandelion leaves and find Logan sitting next to Drake beneath the shade of a large walnut tree. He smiles when he sees me, but there are shadows in his eyes that have nothing to do with the pain in his head, and he won’t hold my gaze. Drake’s shoulders are slumped, and he keeps tugging on his beard, something he only does when he’s worried.

I toss my cloak onto the ground and sit beside Logan. “What’s going on?”

Logan holds the gray metallic object he found with this morning’s message. His thumb rubs across the fluted edge as if he thinks he can figure out who put it in our room if only he presses hard enough.

Without looking at me, he says, “According to the map, we should reach the river that separates us from the northern city-states by nightfall. Maybe sooner. I just hope I can find a way to get us across before the Commander realizes he’s lost us and starts looking for where we left the main road. If he’s using a tracking device, it won’t take him long to figure out we aren’t where he thought we’d be.”

I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t. Neither does Drake. And both of them won’t stop looking at the metallic object in Logan’s hand. Finally, I say, “Okay, what’s really going on?”

Logan rubs the piece of metal. “We need to talk about what happened this morning.”

I sit up straighter. “Yes, we do. We need a plan. We have to catch this person before he has a chance to kill again.”

Drake tugs on his beard, and Logan’s jaw clenches.

“What? What did I say?” I look from one to the other.

Logan holds up the gray object. “See this edge?” His thumb presses against the fluted end again. “There’s a hole here and the tube is hollow inside. The other edge is as sharp as a needle.” His eyes meet mine, and the pain in them makes it suddenly harder to breathe. “I think this is a conduit for poison.”

The ground beneath me remains steady. The birds above me still chatter and squawk. All around me people eat their lunch rations and huddle in small groups. Everything is the same, and nothing is the same. My hands start to shake and my pulse feels heavy and uneven as it slams against my skin.

“The message said the marked will die. We think the killer poisoned the people in the marked rooms. He could’ve taken a syringe from the medical wagon. If someone is sleeping heavily enough, a little prick against the skin isn’t enough to bring them fully awake,” Drake says. His words rake across the silence inside of me, and I wrap my arms around my stomach as I stare at Logan.

“Sylph was in a marked room.” My voice is a desperate, haunted thing, and Logan looks as if I’ve struck him.

“I know.” He reaches for me, but I can’t bend into his embrace. I can’t let him comfort me, because I won’t need comforting. Sylph will be okay. We’ll find the antidote. Better yet, we’ll find the killer and force him to give us an antidote. She’ll be fine. Everyone will be fine.

“We won’t know for sure unless people start getting sick,” Drake says.

“We can’t wait for that.” Logan shoves the dart into his cloak pocket and takes out the packet of pain medicine Sylph gave him earlier.

While he measures out a dose for his headache, I scan the little clearing we’re using for our lunch break and find Sylph laughing with Jodi and Cassie, her arms wrapped around them both. My heart twists painfully inside my chest, and I have to look away before my eyes start to sting.

I turn to Logan. “The message said the marked will die. That’s in the future. Maybe he was warning us. Maybe it hasn’t happened yet.”

He takes my hand in his. I imagine I can still feel the cold imprint of Rowansmark’s dart on his skin. “I hope so. But we need to keep a close eye on everyone who was in a marked room last night. And we need to start looking for anyone in the group who could have loyalty to Rowansmark.”

“The real problem here is that Baalboden was a city-state of thousands, and there’s only a handful of us left.” Drake scratches his leg with fingernails that have tiny half-moons of dirt beneath them. “Many of us didn’t know each other before the fires. We’re just taking everyone’s word that they lived in Baalboden, because why else would they be here?”

“We can start by checking again to make sure everyone in the group has a Baalboden wristmark. It was chaotic before the funeral. We could’ve missed someone,” I say. “Anyone besides Quinn and Willow who doesn’t have one—”

“Will be arrested.” Logan gets to his feet and reaches down for me. “And then questioned.”

“Forget questioning. I want whoever did this to be dead.”

Logan’s eyes are grim. “Oh, he will be. But not before he gives us the answers we need.”

Drake stands. “I’ll go line everybody up.”

In minutes, the entire camp stands in two rows facing each other. Drake and Thom walk down one row, checking each survivor’s right wrist for the distinctive tattooed ridges of Baalboden’s mark. Logan and I take the other row.

“Right arm, please,” I say to a man nearly as old as Oliver. He raises his hand, and I slide his tunic sleeve down his arm. His skin sags away from his bones, and the wristmark has faded over time, but it’s there. I rub my thumb over it, searching for any signs that it could be fake, but the ridges are right where they should be and the ink is a permanent stain on his forearm. The ridges in his mark are longer than mine. Skinnier, too. Each mark is different, so that a guard’s Identidisc can bounce sound off of the mark and come back with a sound signature unique to that citizen.

Logan stands beside me, checking Jan’s wristmark. I move past him to check the next person, and we quickly fall into a rhythm.

Cassie. Ian. Elias. Geraldine. Susan. Nick. So far everyone in my line has a wristmark. Logan is checking the wristmark of a woman whose brown skin gleams like a polished jewel beneath the midday sun. I step around him and discover that Sylph and Smithson are next in line.

“Right arm, please,” I say to Sylph. She smiles at me and lays her hand in mine. I lift our hands in the air, and her sleeve slides to her elbow. I gasp. A deep purple bruise blossoms like rotting fruit along the underside of her arm.

“What happened?” Abandoning any effort to check her wristmark, I grab her arm as she starts to pull it down. “Who did this to you?”

The bruise is easily the size of my palm, and its center is black. Whoever hurt her meant to hurt her. With a bruise like this, she’s lucky her arm didn’t break. Fury gushes through me, sharp and vicious.

My eyes find Smithson, and I arrow my rage at him, as if I can flay him to pieces with nothing but my glare.

But he isn’t looking at me. Instead, he’s staring at Sylph’s arm, worry in every line of his face. “What happened?”

Sylph pulls her wrist free of my grip and examines the bruise. “I guess this is from hitting my arm when I got our lunch ration. I slipped in some mud and fell against the wagon. I must have fallen harder than I realized.” She sounds puzzled, but not upset.

Poison.

The air is suddenly too thick to breathe. I’ve known Sylph for most of my life. I’ve never seen her bruise easily. Sickness crawls up the back of my throat as I make myself ask, “Any other bruises? Do you feel sick? Tired?”

She shrugs and smiles at us both. “I’m fine! I feel fine. I didn’t realize I hit my arm that hard. That’s all. Honest. Stop worrying. Both of you. I’m not used to roughing it, but I’ll toughen up. We all will. Now shouldn’t you be checking my wristmark to make sure I’m really from Baalboden?”

My fingers rub gently across her wrist, though I don’t need to check. Sylph is a bright, laughing presence in most of my childhood memories. I can’t think of my life in Baalboden without thinking of her. And I refuse to consider a life outside of Baalboden without her.

Smithson thrusts his arm at me, lets me verify his wristmark, and then carefully wraps his arm around Sylph as if she’s made of glass. She laughs and leans into him, but I meet Smithson’s gaze above her head and know the worry burning in his eyes also burns in mine.

Only he doesn’t realize how much he truly has to fear.

Unlike Logan, I’m not brave enough to put it into words. Because maybe Logan’s wrong. Maybe Sylph really did hit her arm too hard against the wagon. Maybe the knowledge that someone out there is ruthlessly determined to torture us is messing with my head.

Besides, if bruising were a symptom of poison, wouldn’t Smithson be bruised too? The X was over both of them. Holding on to that thin comfort, I continue down the row, checking every survivor with dogged determination.

All of them have a Baalboden wristmark. So do the survivors in Thom and Frankie’s row. We’re no closer to figuring out which one of us is working with Rowansmark. As Logan calls for us to start moving again, I slowly scan the faces of the survivors who walk past me.

One of them is a traitor. One of them might have poisoned Sylph. All I need is a sign, a single glimmer of guilt or treachery, and whoever painted a bloody X on her door is mine.

Ignoring the tiny voice whispering that I was once sure of Melkin’s guilt, and now I don’t know how to live with myself, I heft my Switch and take my place along the western flank.