Borderlands (8 page)

I scoop a fistful of water from the crook of a nearby branch, and splash my face. It's cold and sharp; I rub it into my eyes, my mouth, my cheeks. Then I tip a handful down the back of my shirt. It jolts me awake, a whiplash on my spine.

I take a deep breath, shake my head to clear it, and steel myself to walk on.

A pistol clicks behind my skull.

‘If you even think about running,' says its owner, ‘I'll blow your brains across this island like alchemy fire.'

It's a female voice, but not one I know. Not Sharr Morrigan, and not one of my friends. A stranger.

A stranger with a gun.

I know she is close behind me – close enough to press the barrel against my head. I consider whipping around; maybe I could grab the pistol, wrestle her away, make her shot burst into the trees . . .

‘Don't even think about it, my friend,' she says. ‘My finger's on the trigger. One false move, and –'

‘All right,' I say. ‘I get it.'

I hear her step away, but I don't doubt the pistol is still aimed in my direction. I suck in a deep breath, tense my muscles and prepare to leap sideways. If I heard the crack of a bullet, could I jerk away in time? No, that's impossible.

‘On the count of three,' she says, ‘I want you to turn round, all slowly like. No sudden movements.'

If it were night, I could melt into the blackness. But the harsh light of noon shines above the trees, and my proclivity is dead to me. Perhaps I could risk an illusion; I could trick her for a moment, and then –

‘One,' says the voice. ‘Two. Three.'

I turn.

She's older than I expected. Old enough to be my grandmother. Hair coils across her shoulder in a thick white braid, almost like a snake. Her clothes are plain and practical – and
not
the uniform of a hunter or soldier. Yet she holds the pistol like an expert: two steady hands, legs spread slightly to keep her balance. Her eyes are cold and her lips are thin. I can tell she isn't bluffing. If this woman decides it's necessary to shoot me, she will do it without ­hesitation.

But on the other hand, if she knows some­thing . . .

‘My friends are missing. They've got hunters chasing after them, and I have to find them. Have you seen any –?'

‘Seen plenty of things, my friend.' The woman's tone is cool, unconcerned. ‘What I don't see is why I should share 'em with a trespasser.'

‘A trespasser? What, you mean
here
?' I glance around me, bewildered. ‘But this land doesn't belong to anyone.'

‘Yep. Here.' She tightens her grip on the pistol, fingers twitching. For a second I think she's about to pull the trigger. Then she gives a mocking smile, amused by my moment of panic.

‘Look,' I tell her, ‘I'm on a refugee crew. We're travelling to the Valley, and –'

She raises an eyebrow. I hesitate. I'm going to have to take a risk. If I want this woman's respect, if I want any hope of convincing her to help me save my crew . . .

‘We destroyed the king's air force,' I say. ‘My friend stole a biplane and dropped a load of alchemy bombs on the base. We blew the whole thing to smithereens.'

For the first time, the old woman looks taken aback. There is a moment's pause as she stares at me. Then she gets a grip on herself, and reels her expression back into cool disinterest. ‘My people ain't afraid of kings. And the king weren't trespassin' on my land, last I checked.'

‘If I'm trespassing,' I say, ‘then so are the hunters chasing my friends. Don't you want to stop them?'

‘I ain't concerned with hunters,' the woman says, ‘or soldiers, neither. If they want to go wanderin' round the borderlands, that's their business. What concerns me is what I can't explain – and right now, my friend, that's you.'

‘Soldiers?' A chill runs down my spine. Lukas made it sound as though the army was concentrated near the Valley – not spread all over the borderlands. ‘What soldiers?'

She shrugs. ‘Been gathering by the Valley for a week now, I'd judge. They send out patrols into the borderlands, but my people don't fear 'em.'

‘But if they're patrolling this whole area –'

‘Like I said, ain't my problem. They'll leave us alone, if they know what's good for 'em.'

‘But they serve the king!'

The woman gives me a disdainful look. ‘My people don't bother with kings,' she says. ‘Kings come and go, my friend, but my people survive. We move between lands, and we care nothin' for politics. Why should I care who rules a lump of land? My people do what we please.'

‘Your people?'

Her lips curl into a smile. ‘We've been called many things. The wild folk. The pirates. The nomads. But nowadays, most folk call us smugglers.'

Instantly, my head brims with the folk song that led us here. Smugglers are the only people who dare defy King Morrigan – who travel with contraband goods in their packs. I've never thought of ‘smuggler' as the name of a people, though – more like a job description. They're just a type of criminal, aren't they? They transport spices, weapons, salt. They transport illegal or magical things, such as magnets and alchemy charms.

And sometimes they transport people. The twins hired a smuggler called Hackel to lead us safely across Taladia. It might have worked, too, if Hackel hadn't tried to sell us out for the reward money. That's the trouble with smugglers. Their skills are legendary, but their loyalty lies with their purse strings.

This woman travels Taladia under the king's radar. She thwarts his law. She could be every bit as treacherous as Hackel, but right now, if anyone can help me save my friends, it's her. ‘My name's Danika. What's yours?'

The old woman doesn't hesitate. ‘Silver.'

‘Really?'

‘Course not.' She gives me a withering look. ‘But my last job was a stash of spice and silver, so it'll serve as well as any.'

‘We blew up the king's stash of Curiefer,' I say. ‘He was going to destroy the Valley's magnetic seams and invade the land beyond. That would've put a crimp in your smuggling routes, wouldn't it?'

Silver shifts her weight. ‘Perhaps.'

‘So your people owe us,' I say. I know I'm pushing my luck, but what else can I do? Every second I waste, my friends' lives could be ending. ‘If you help me save my friends, though, we'll consider your debt repaid.'

Silver gives a sharp laugh. ‘Our
debt
? You're joking.' When I don't respond, her expression hardens. ‘Smugglers don't do debts, my friend. We sure like good luck when it falls our way, but we ain't about to repay it unless we have to.' Silver lifts her chin. ‘Want to know our secret? How my people survived for centuries? Sense, not sentimentality.'

I think of Hackel's eagerness to sell us out. It was nothing personal, he'd assured us. Just common sense for a smuggler. In his eyes, we were just chattel to escort along the road. Another load of spice and silver.

‘If you want my help,' Silver says, ‘you'd best offer something in return.'

‘All right,' I say. ‘If you help me, I'll be the one who owes you. I'll repay my debt, I swear. I'm not a smuggler.'

Silver snorts. ‘Well, that's obvious.' Her lip curls as she looks me up and down. ‘Still, if you've made it this far, you can't be completely useless. I suppose Quirin might find a use for you.'

I hesitate. What might a smuggler ask me to do? Throw my life away to carry his goods? Sneak through the enemy's camp, or steal from King Morrigan himself? But whatever the consequences may be, I can't let my friends die. I can't.

I hold out my hand. ‘Whatever job needs doing, I'll do it. I'll repay my debt. Just help me find them before . . .' I take a deep breath, then force myself to finish the sentence. ‘Before it's too late.'

Silver raises an eyebrow. ‘Well, my friend, looks like we've got a deal.'

The old woman's handshake is firm and confident. The grip of a lifelong dealmaker. As we break apart, I wonder how many other poor suckers' hands she's shaken – and how many lived to tell the tale.

We find the soldiers before we find my friends. Silver darts ahead, as nimble in the trees as Teddy would be on a rooftop. At first I expect her to move slowly, creaking and hobbling through the forest. But she leaps between branches, scoots up and down trunks, and thrusts her head above the canopy to check for clues. I don't know if it's fitness, good health or perhaps an alchemy charm, but she moves more like a squirrel than an old lady.

‘This way, my friend.' Silver skims down the side of a tree. ‘There's a cluster of people over there, I'd judge.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Saw the canopy wobblin'. It weren't from the breeze, neither – from bodies in the bushes ­underneath.'

It seems a bit farfetched to me. Surely a wild animal could cause such wobbling, or even just the breeze? But Silver seems so sure of herself that I believe her.

‘Quiet,' she whispers.

I frown, then glance at my feet. I thought I was moving quietly, myself, but I suppose I'm still not used to the noisy remonstrations of forest floors. I don't see how you can avoid the occasional twig crunch or leaf crackle – not without the ability to levitate. But I nod, refocus, and make an extra effort to step in the least offensive patches of ­undergrowth.

We hear them before we see them: voices muttering in low tones. I don't recognise them. They don't sound like any of Sharr's hunters, and certainly not like my friends.

‘Soldiers.' Silver points between the trees. ‘Headin' for the shore.'

I follow her gaze. If I squint, I can just make out the silhouettes of adults between the trees – men and women cloaked in the khaki uniforms of the king's army. They seem as unfamiliar with forests as I am: clunky and loud, cracking every twig they pass.

Silver gives a disapproving sniff. ‘Buffoons,' she says. ‘Least your king's hunters know how to move in the wild. These ones . . . well, it don't speak well of your king that he's got no one better to send on patrols.'

‘The hunters are an elite force,' I point out, oddly annoyed by this comment. ‘These soldiers aren't like that. Those could be eighteen-year-old scruffers – newly conscripted, for all you know. They might've never seen a forest before this week.'

‘Well, you see why my people ain't afraid of soldiers.'

I raise an eyebrow. ‘Those soldiers still have guns and proclivities. A lack of wilderness skills won't stop them slaughtering your people if they want to.'

‘Nope,' Silver says. ‘What stops 'em is their fear.'

‘You really think smugglers are so frightening?'

She meets my eyes with a hard look. ‘No, my friend – we ain't frightening. Bears are frightening. Snakes are frightening. That's a word for beasts: monsters and creatures in the wild.' She pauses. ‘My people are
efficient
. There's a difference.'

‘Like what?'

‘A smuggler don't kill for beastly pleasure. A smuggler kills in the interest of his purse. And if a smuggler wants to kill you, you ain't likely to know it till your throat's slit.' She smirks. ‘Sense, my friend, not sentiment. That's how we outlast kingdoms.'

We pull back and fade into the dark of the trees. I feel the tension building within me. There's still no sign of my friends, and no sign of the hunters. Silver darts up trees to survey the canopy, but always returns with a shrug.

‘Nothin',' she says. ‘Yet.'

And so we walk on. I keep a close eye on my companion, trying to suss her out. She is old, but she moves like a leopard in the trees. And about fifteen minutes after spotting the soldiers, she stops walking.

She throws out a hand to halt me, and raises a wrinkled finger to her lips. ‘Shhh.'

‘What's wrong?' I mouth.

‘Listen.'

I hear it a moment later: the slide of movement upon leaves. This isn't the clumsy march of the soldiers. These people know their way around a forest. They know how to track, how to move silently. How to slip through the undergrowth like it's carpet underfoot.

Hunters.

We clamber into a nearby tree to spot our quarry. Thankfully I'm better at silent climbing than silent walking. Bark prickles against my skin, but at least I'm hidden by the sway of leaves, and secure enough to focus on the hunters below.