Nameless (14 page)

Zo’s head weighed too heavy for her neck to support. The gentle rocking motion made her want to sleep forever. Light brushed her eyelids in abrupt patches. The brightness teased her awake until she blinked away the sun.

“You’re going to have a headache.” Gryphon cradled her in his arms as he walked. His chest warmed her side, while her free side numbed from the cold.

Startling recollection rushed through Zo’s mind. The cave. Gabe’s horrific injuries. Gryphon wringing the air out of her lungs. She looked up at him and instinctively moved her hands to protect her throat. “Put me down.”

Gryphon looked at her hands and frowned. “I’m sorry about that. It was the only way to know for sure.”

“I said, put me down!”

Gryphon stopped walking and let her slide out of his arms.

Zo couldn’t get hold of her nerve. There was no chance that Gabe hadn’t reacted to Gryphon’s attack. He was a classic hothead. Especially when she was involved. She straightened her clothes and yanked her headscarf from Gryphon’s shoulder. “Are you going to kill me?”

He folded his arms and leaned back onto the trunk of a tree. “Do you want me to?”

She sneered. “I don’t care what you do, just don’t stand there acting superior.” The words rolled out of her mouth before she could harness them.

Gryphon’s eyes narrowed. “I won’t have to. Your tongue will get you killed soon enough.”

They locked eyes for several minutes, until realization hit Zo like a brick to the face. “Wait. You’re going to let me go?”

Gryphon shrugged. “I took you to the cave to make sure I could trust you. I thought the Wolf would recognize you, or at least make a move to save you when I grabbed you.” He shook his head. “Even if you do have some Wolf in your veins, you must not be that important.”

The words should have come as a relief, but Zo’s stomach twisted.

“Besides,” Gryphon went on, “a life for a life. You saved Joshua. We’re even.” He handed her the medical kit. “The road will take you back to the Medica.”

He stepped off the trail and trudged through the overgrown forest, leaving her staring after him.

There was no way that happened. No possible way. Suspicion filled her with doubt. What was Gryphon playing at?

Dusk pushed away the sun, making the sky bruised and angry. Gryphon inhaled the heavy air, confident the humidity would turn to rain by nightfall. He’d spent the whole afternoon wandering in the back wilderness of the Ram’s Gate. He did his best thinking among the giant evergreens with the sound of the ocean crashing against the cliffs in the distance.

How could he use the Wolf prisoner’s information without breaking his oath to keep the healer safe? He couldn’t report the girl’s involvement without incriminating her, and he also couldn’t warn his people without explaining how he came by the information.

Gryphon still couldn’t believe Wolves and their allies were camped downstream so close to the Gate, receiving messages from the girl in corked bottles. Right under the Ram’s noses! The Wolf prisoner said they were gathering information. But for what purpose?

It bothered him that they’d sent a girl to infiltrate the Gate. A girl! She might be fast and decent with a knife, but the healer was no warrior. And worst of all, she was pretty. Far too pretty to go unnoticed inside the great walls of the Ram. The Wolf claimed the girl had volunteered for the position. If that were true, she must not have understood her slim chances for survival.

Had they not warned her?

Gryphon shook his head and walked the five miles down the sloping hills to join his mess unit in their barracks among the fifty mess cabins that lined the inside of the Gate. The log and mortar buildings formed a giant horseshoe around the main entrance, closest to the danger that existed outside the menacing walls of Ram’s Gate. The rest of the Ram people lived on farms and in the hills that led to the cliff, each with a healthy number of Nameless slaves to help tend their fields.

Gryphon pulled open the cabin door to the barracks to see all of his brothers seated on the edge of their beds. At the front of the room, the Seer, with her black, beady eyes, stopped talking and glared at him.

“I’m sorry to interrupt.” Gryphon quickly settled onto his bunk. Like every other mess cabin, the room was a perfect square with bunks lining the outer four walls. “I didn’t know we had a briefing.” He could almost feel Zander’s eyes boring into him.

The Seer cleared her throat and continued. “Now that everyone is here.” She paused and glared in Gryphon’s direction once more. “I’d like to inform you of a change that will affect all of the unmarried members of this mess unit.”

Gryphon caught Ajax’s eye, but Ajax only shrugged.

“We have decided to lower the marrying age from thirty to twenty-two.” The Seer raised her hands to silence the quiet murmuring in the cabin. “We expect every man in this mess who qualifies to choose a bride by the end of the week. If you fail to do so, one will be assigned you.”

Being only twenty years old, Gryphon thought he had a whole other decade before the Ram would expect him to marry and start a family. For now, he was still a bachelor, but there were at least five or six men in the mess between the ages of twenty-two and thirty. Their reactions to the Seer’s news were mixed. Some smiled and received congratulating punches while others looked like they just found out their favorite hound had died.

No one dared ask the purpose of changing the age-old matrimonial custom. One didn’t have to keep the meticulous tallies and notes of the Seer to know the Ram’s population was on the decline.

There was only one way to become a full member of Ram society and a hundred ways to fail. From birth, every member of the clan was put through a series of tests. Young boys and girls endured grueling training sessions and scheduled beatings. Systematic starvation. Survival missions outside the wall without weapons or provisions. It was all part of the great weeding—the Ram way of determining who was worthy enough to be named a member of the most powerful clan in the region.

“Those of this mess who qualify for marriage will report your request before week’s end. After the matches have been arranged, the Ram will celebrate your engagements with the Wolf prisoner’s execution in the square. Consider it an early wedding gift from your generous chief.”

The next day, Zo numbly worked at a table in her wing of the Medica, her eyes glazed over, her mind far away from the task of rolling cotton gauze bandages while her patients rested. Most of her thoughts were of Tess. Thankfully, Gryphon didn’t know anything about her little sister, and she needed to keep it that way.

Life experience had taught her that no matter how convincing Gryphon’s promise to not report her to Ram authorities, chances were he’d betray her eventually. He must have had an angle—a reason for keeping her secret.

You could never trust a Ram.

From now on she would have to be extra careful with her correspondence with the Allies. Any wrong move could tip the scales and prompt Gryphon to talk.

The handle of the workroom door slowly turned and Zo’s attention came back to focus. A slender figure in her trademark leather vest and boots stepped through the doorway.

The bandage Zo had been rolling spilled onto the floor, up and over the woman’s fur-trimmed boots. “Madam Seer,” Zo said, keeping her eyes trained on the ground.

The Seer reached down and picked up the roll of cotton. “Such a waste.” Her artificial smile stretched in a flat line. “Are you always so careless with our supplies, Nameless?”

“No, Ma’am. I was just startled.”

The Seer sighed and motioned Zo out of the chair. “I’ve come to discuss some reports.” She sank into the chair and gestured for Zo to sit on the stone floor.

Zo obeyed, crossing her legs and clasping her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking. “Reports?”

This was it. The Seer knew she’d stolen the military records from her desk. Zo looked around the room for something, anything, to help her fight this woman, to kill her before she had the chance to order Tess’ execution. Zo would hide them in the woods. Scale the deadly cliff to the ocean. Anything to escape before they hurt Tess. There was a pair of scissors on the table. They would do the job, if she could get to them before the Seer had time to react.

“The Medica reports I received recently indicate that your patients have been well cared for. No deaths to speak of. However, there was one bit of information that I found curious.”

“Curious?” Zo managed to whisper.

“Our use of glass vials and bottles is up ten percent.” The Seer crossed her arms in front of her flat chest and stared down at Zo with her crazy bird eyes. “Do you know anything about that?”

Zo cleared her throat. “I haven’t been here for very long, Ma’am, and none of the other healers in the Medica speak to me. I am sorry, but I have no information for you.”

The Seer stared at her for a measure of time. Zo kept her head down and counted to fifty, employing some of Commander Laden’s interrogation tactics to keep calm.

Finally, the Seer rose to her feet and headed for the door. She reached for the handle and paused. “The funny thing about numbers, Nameless, is that they never lie. I can calculate down to inches the amount of medical gauze you will use this year based on a few variables that I make it my business to know. When a number stands out to me, it is because a variable is out of place.” She opened the door, but turned back to add, “I hope you are not one of my bad variables. For your sister’s sake.”

Zo thought of the Seer as she rubbed ointment into Tess’ hands and feet before bandaging them up for bed. Thick calluses had formed on her sister’s fingertips, and heels, where her too-small boots rubbed against them. As usual, Tess’ eyes drooped and her head lolled to one side in exhaustion.

For Zo, sleep seemed as likely as a full stomach for a Nameless inside the Gate. Especially with the Seer’s threats of missing bottles and “bad variables” squeezing at her thoughts. Something was wrong with that woman, and it wasn’t just her manic obsession with numbers. Zo needed a backup plan. A way to keep Tess safe, in case Zo was discovered.

She pulled the blanket up to Tess’ chin and kissed her forehead. “Good night, bug.” Zo bent closer to Tess’ ear. “I’m going to take a walk tonight.”

Tess’ brow bunched up.

“Just to clear my head. Everything’s fine.”

Tess digested Zo’s explanation for a moment until her eyes fluttered with want of sleep and she rolled to her side. “You wouldn’t tell me if it wasn’t fine,” she mumbled, on her way to the place where dreams exist. Zo hoped it was a safe place. Where her back didn’t hurt and she was able to run around and play like a child should.

I have to get her out of here
.

When all the other Nameless women and children in the barrack were asleep, and even Anne—who usually stayed up mumbling nonsense into the darkness—was quiet, Zo crept out into the crisp spring night. She shivered and pulled tight a thin jacket, crossing the cobbled road that divided the forest from the town. She climbed the gradual slope until she couldn’t see the torches that burned outside each of the barracks in town. Here, surrounded only by trees and darkness, Zo felt herself relax for the first time since her run-in with the Seer.