Dragon-Ridden (39 page)

Night seemed content to crouch and
peer up into the next chamber. Rocks shifted underfoot as Tate stumbled up
beside him and gingerly lowered herself onto her belly. Voices spilled from the
crack along with small slivers of light. Interested, Tate wedged herself
further into the small space, knocking her head on rock a few times before she
finally maneuvered so she could see into the next room. The crack she used to
spy on the next chamber with was no more than inches apart allowing a narrow
view of their neighbors. The levels of the two rooms must have been off because
Tate’s vantage point was very close to the floor, but it was enough. She gasped
and pressed closer when she caught a glimpse of the boy known as the fulcrum.

He had been stripped to the waist
and tied with his arms behind his back. A chained collar wrapped around his
neck to latch securely onto the stone floor. A diagram had been etched into
that same floor in a complicated pattern Tate could only half see.

She carefully wiggled away from the
wall, laboriously backing herself away from the crevasse and looked at Night
with worry. “We found them.” She was a little stunned. She hadn’t really
thought they’d be successful. The catacombs were huge and they were just two
people. She’d prepared herself for the possibility that they’d stumble around
down here for hours, maybe days of fruitless searching. The fact that they’d
found their quarry so quickly was amazing but also just a little unfortunate.

Finding the Red Lady and her
companions so easily and quickly wasn’t the good news that it seemed. They’d
been hoping to find her much further in and not so close to the ocean entrance.
According to Night, the Red Lady’s former hideout was located right off the
Night Market under the heart of the Lower City. Their current location,
however, was right under the cliffs, not far from the sea. Nowhere close to the
night market. To get Ryu and the others meant going through several dangerous
tunnels inhabited by all sorts of creatures. Distance wise it wasn’t too bad,
maybe an hour out and then an hour back. That’s if Night could find a direct
path, didn’t get lost, or have to back track because of Tsuchigon and some of
the other dangerous tunnel dwellers. Even Night would have a tough time
navigating the maze of catacombs.

This was made worse by the fact
that it looked like whatever was going to happen was going to happen soon.
Probably as soon as Umi and Kadien showed up.

She bit her lip and glanced at the
crevasse. They had to try. “Get going,” she told him firmly. “I won’t act
unless absolutely necessary.”

His tail drooped, and he butted his
head against her.
Don’t die.

She raised a hand in goodbye as he
loped out of the room. “I’ll do my best.” Silently, Tate urged him to hurry.

Tate settled down to wait, her back
against the wall. Time passed agonizingly slowly now that they had found the
boys, and Night had gone to get help. Her stomach was an anxious mass of nerves
as she calculated the odds of their plan meeting with success.

Any way she figured it, the odds
favored their enemies.

Eventually she wound up on her
side, her back pressed against the opening of the crevasse, staring blankly at
the glass silhouettes. Though every fiber of her being called for action,
intellectually she knew they had to wait.

She folded her arms and tapped her
foot. One thing she still couldn’t figure out was how Lucius had known about
the key in the first place. Then there was Ai, the odd little girl they’d found
in the tunnels who knew much more than she should. Above all, why hadn’t Umi
and her friends grabbed Tate if they thought she had the key? The thumper had
knocked her out. It would have been easy to grab Tate too. None of it made
sense. There were all these bits and pieces that not only didn’t seem to fit
together, but they didn’t even feel like they were part of the same puzzle.

There was a loud commotion in the
other room. Tate lifted her head and listened. Faint chanting reached her, its
rhythmic cadence rising in strength. It sounded like whatever was happening had
started. Tate crawled into the tight space and pressed herself against the wall
to peer out her spy hole. Legs blocked her view. She cursed silently and
shifted back and forth trying to see something. Anything.

Night hadn’t been gone long. Half
an hour at most. And that was being rather generous with time. She rested her
head against the cool stone.

From the sounds of things Umi
hadn’t arrived yet. Tate doubted with all the trouble the woman had went
through to secure the child that she’d miss the action. It was a huge gamble to
assume that, though.

Tate banged her head against the
rock.

Dirt sprinkled down on her as feet
shuffled and one of the men standing next to her little hiding place laughed.
Tate lifted her head and craned her neck to look out her vantage point. She
needed more information before she took any action. She’d act if need be, but
not until the absolutely last moment.

“What are you doing?” asked a voice
next to her ear.

Tate squealed and jumped, hitting
her head against rock. She flailed trying to get out of the tight spot she was
wedged in, but only succeeded in getting herself stuck.

“Did you hear something?” a voice
asked from the chamber.

Tate held her breath and stayed
perfectly still, not even blinking, certain that any moment now they’d bend
down and discover her spying on them.

“No,” his friend replied in a bored
tone.

Tate released her breath and
relaxed, every muscle loosening in relief. She tensed as she remembered what
had led her to squeal in the first place. Dreading what she’d find, she inched
out of the crawl space and straightened to meet a pair of very blue eyes, not
inches from hers. She nearly screamed again and jumped away, her heart thumping
painfully in her chest.

She put one hand to her chest and
took a deep breath. “Ai, you startled me.” She dropped her hand and tilted her
head in confusion. “What are you doing here?”

Ai mirrored Tate by tilting her
head. “You didn’t come to visit.”

Tate blinked at her blankly. What?
Oh, that’s right, the girl had wanted her to visit. Tate had forgotten. Telling
Ai that she’d been busy with more important things didn’t seem like a good idea
so she told a half-truth. “I wanted to come, but I had to save my friends
first.”

“The power source and experiment
553’s descendent?”

Tate’s eyebrows furrowed as she
deciphered Ai’s words. “Yes?” her tone made it a question.

“It will not work.”

Tate lowered her chin and set her
jaw stubbornly. “You don’t know that.”

Ai’s body was still as she stared
blankly at Tate. “Experiment 1269 is currently heading in the opposite
direction of the Red Lady’s former hide out. If one factors in his rate of
speed, the number of times he is likely to lose his way and the detours he will
have to take to avoid the more hostile inhabitants, he will not arrive with
reinforcements for another three hours.”

Tate wiggled her jaw and crossed
her arms. “It’s a good thing they haven’t started yet on the boy, then.”

“I do not understand why you feel
you must interfere,” Ai said stiffly. “You are not related to either one, and
if my hypothesis is correct, you just recently met them. Am I wrong?”

“You’re not wrong.”

“Then why risk your life? There is
no benefit to you.”

Tate sighed and crouched down next
to the crevasse. She didn’t have time for all these questions; she needed to
get back in there to gather information. She paused before crawling beneath the
stone overhang. “What do you see when you look in the mirror?”

Ai’s hands fluttered at her waist
as the slightest crease registered on her forehead. Her eyes met Tate’s. “I do
not look in mirrors.”

Tate’s lips quirked. She’d
suspected as much. “Perhaps you should start.”

Ai’s puzzled, “I do not
understand,” followed Tate as she wiggled back into place, her elbow and knees
smarting from where she’d banged them against the rock.

Umi’s laugh was ugly and mocking.
Tate flinched from the sound. “Go back?” Umi snarled. “To a life as a pretty
decoration where nothing ever changes. Where my talents are wasted simply
because I was born female? Condemned to a pat on the head when I do well and
the best opportunities going to those less qualified simply because they are
men. Where each day is the same as the last? I thank you, but no, my dearest
uncle.” She spat as she paced in a circle around the boy, looking down at him
with hatred. “Don’t you see? We could change things. With the power of the
fulcrum and the key we wouldn’t have to bow our heads to anybody. The Kairi
people have never shown as brightly as when we were at war. Every advance,
every societal change has come about during a time of turmoil.” Her face glowed
with the fervor of her beliefs. “This peace has stagnated us as a people. The
possibilities these people offer us could change everything.”

“This will not end how you wish,
grand niece,” the boy said calmly. If he felt pain or fear, Tate couldn’t see
it. He looked as he had when they’d spoken in her room, accepting and unafraid.
“If you had only gone to your father or one of your peers with your concerns I
am sure they would have helped you do something. But this, niece, this is
madness.”

Tate shifted and squirmed as she
tried to change her view’s angle to get an eye on where the Red Lady was in all
the theatrics. Her eyes caught on a slumped figure sitting beside the Red
Lady’s feet. He had the same shape and build as Dewdrop. When he lifted his
head, her guess was confirmed. A gag had been stuffed in his mouth and a choke
chain slipped around his neck. The Red Lady held his leash tight in her gloved
hands.

“Please,” Umi said scornfully.
“They don’t want change. They want tradition, and anybody who goes against it
is hidden like a dirty little secret. If I steal your power, dear uncle, then
they’ll have no choice but to do what I want. To let me be with the one I
love.”

Tate stopped her furtive efforts
for a moment. She couldn’t mean Kadien. Could she? That hadn’t been the sense
she’d gotten from their interaction earlier, but perhaps she had simply missed
it.

The boy looked as startled as Tate,
for the first time looking a bit disconcerted at what she’d revealed. He’d
greeted every assertion with a bored acceptance, but this seemed to surprise
him.

Umi’s laugh was full of boundless
mirth as it filled the chamber, pulling vacant smiles from the men around her.
In a movement to quick to follow, Umi plucked one of her silver hairpins from
her hair and plunged it into the boy’s side. Tate lunged forward and plastered
herself against the rock and moaned softly, watching in mute horror as he
touched his side and fell to his knees.

“Foolish boy,” Umi said taunting
him as she circled him. “Do you think you will be saved? That someone is going
to come to your rescue? The Kairi, along with that meddlesome lord, have headed
to the Lady’s former chambers.” Umi bent down and grabbed a handful of hair,
forcing him to look at her. “When they get there, we’ve left a little present
for them. Something to celebrate this momentous occasion. They’ll be the first
to fall in this new war, but not the last.”

Tate could only watch horrified,
knowing she needed to move, to act. To slice that condescending look right off
the traitorous bitch’s face.

All she could do was watch as the
boy clutched the wound at his side. Kadien moved out of the crowd to stand at
Umi’s side.

“My love,” she said achingly, her
eyes worshipful.

Kadien, for his part, didn’t even
spare her a glance. Instead he watched as more and more of the boy’s blood
slipped through his fingers.

Tate snarled and pushed away from
her crevasse, or tried to anyway. Her arms wouldn’t move, refusing to respond,
to twitch. Every muscle locked in place making it impossible to move. She
couldn’t even open her mouth to scream. The only thing she was capable of doing
was blink. Rapidly.

Since she couldn’t move outwardly,
she screamed inside her mind. In rage. In pain. At her helplessness. A long
drawn out scream as she struggled to move. She begged her feet to wiggle. Her
arms to lift. Anything.

A red haze filled her vision, and
her heart sped up until all she heard was a pounding in her ears.

“Tatum Alegra Winters. You must
remain calm
,
”
Ai said.

Tate had forgotten Ai was there, so
intent was she on the boy and Umi. She tried to turn her head, but it, like the
rest of her, was frozen in place.

“Ai?” she whispered. She rolled her
lips and wiggled her jaw, slightly surprised to be able to move. “Oh thank the
Saviors. I can’t move. I don’t know what’s wrong but I can’t move. And the boy’s
been stabbed and is bleeding out and I CAN’T MOVE!”

It was like a dream. Being stuck,
unable to move, to act, to live. This time though she could see and hear what
was around her.

“I know. I have frozen you in
place.”

The words were so unexpected that
Tate stopped in the midst of her panic to think about what she said.

“What?” she whispered, her mouth
dry.

“I used the traces of the phase
field that stuck to your skin when you left my chamber yesterday, I have
applied a charge to them to render your large muscle groups inert. You will not
be able to move until I release the charge.”

Tate blinked rapidly as she
digested this news. “Why?”

“You were about to go to that one’s
aid,” Ai informed her. “I cannot let you do that.”

“I have to. They’ll kill him.”

“Still I cannot let you do that.”

Kadien circled the boy, staying
just outside the odd symbols.

“Let me go,” Tate pleaded. “Let me
go now.”