Shadows of Sherwood (4 page)

Intruder Alert

Robyn shut off the faucets and dried her hands and face on a small towel. As she brushed away the water and the tears, she became aware of a sound other than the soft sloughing of terry cloth against skin. A sound from beyond the closed bathroom door.

She opened it a crack and listened.

Floorboards creaked in the foyer. A long, wide shadow emerged through the moonlit atrium. A deep, whispered voice said, “Still no sign of the child.”

Another man answered: “Look again.”

Robyn did not return to the main hallway. She left the bathroom by the opposite door that led to the mudroom behind the kitchen. She ran up the rickety rear stairs and tore down the corridors to her bedroom. She ran toward the canopy bed, planning to slide under it into the deep shadows behind the dusty zoo of outgrown stuffed animals.

Halfway across the room, she froze.

Her covers had been mussed in an unusual way, the sheets torn back and the comforter strewn across the wooden chest below the footboard. Her childhood toys disturbed.

Who was in the house? Why were they looking for her?

It didn't matter—she had to get out of there. Robyn ran toward the small ballerina painting on her wall and lifted it aside. She pressed her fingertips against the four indentations in the tiny wall safe. The latch clicked open. The slim space contained a pair of fingerless black gloves, a silver sphere the size of a golf ball, and a single pale-brown envelope. Nothing more?

Heavy treads on the staircase. Robyn whipped her head around. The bedroom door was still wide open.

Robyn didn't have time to wonder further. She scooped the items into one hand and tried to jam them into the side pouch of her backpack as she ran to the window. She thrust her legs out and—oops! The silver sphere popped out of her grip and bounced down the stones.

Trembling fingers made it harder to scale the wall. Fragmented instructions flitted through her mind, things her father had told her.
If anything ever happens to me or your mother . . .

But these dire warnings were the sort of thing Robyn usually tuned out. Her father worried too much. He was always afraid of the day the government would come for them. But the fears were just carryovers from the old days of the Crescent Rebellion, her mother insisted. The rebels had
won, and formed a Parliament. Her parents were
part
of the government now. Who would try to hurt them?

But blood on the kitchen floor told a different story. Strange men in the house . . .

Robyn's sweating fingers lost their grip on the stones. She slid the last few feet to the ground. She scooped up the silver sphere, which lay in two pieces on the ground. Ignoring the fresh scrapes on her wrists and knees, she pushed off the wall and started running.

“It's done, sir.” The leader stood in the Loxley Manor driveway and reported the news to the governor through the PalmTab screen. She held her hand up in front of her. The screen remained gray-black, which was Crown's choice, but she knew he could still see her. “All dissident High Office personnel accounted for.”

“Excellent.” The merest quiver in the responding voice revealed profound excitement. Months of planning, and now, perfect execution. “You know where to take them?”

“Yes, Governor.”

The voice in the radio cleared its throat. A sinister little scratching sound. “I thought you said you'd achieved your objective.”

The leader experienced a flutter of panic. Crown couldn't know about the missing girl, could he? “Yes. We did, sir.”

“Then, I'm no longer simply the governor, am I?”

“Oh no, of course not,” stammered the leader, relieved to discover the simplicity of her mistake. “Congratulations, Your Highness.”

“Thank you.” Crown paused. “There is a position open in my administration.”

“I would imagine there are several,” said the leader.

Over the thin airwaves, Crown's laughter sounded like the squeal of distant tires. “Indeed.” Pause. “How does ‘deputy commissioner of the Nott City Military Police Department' sound to you?”

The leader smiled in the darkness.
Deputy Commissioner Marissa Mallet
. “That has a nice ring to it. I'm at your service, Your Highness.”

“Of course, I'll need you to take care of Sherwood a while longer, Sheriff Mallet. Just until the dust settles.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep up the good work, and the job will be yours.”

The screen flipped to a deeper black. Mallet clicked off the PalmTab and lowered her hand. She glanced around at the group of dark-dressed men from her truck. When she spoke, her voice resonated with the fresh authority that had just been bestowed upon her. “Every man here will hold a high rank in the new world order,” she said. “You are my inner circle.”

She strode around the arc, looked into each of their faces one by one. Loyalty could be bought, she knew, for she had sold her own to Crown many years ago. Now she would reap the benefits. She made a second round, hardening her face
as she locked eyes with each of them in turn. To be sure they understood.

One little girl, one little white lie, would never be her downfall.

CHAPTER SIX

Into the Untamed Woods

Robyn dashed across the manor's wide lawn for the second time that night. Unlike the first time, her heart was racing with terror, not delight. Unlike the first time, she stopped at the edge of the grass, and glanced back at the manor house. Tears filled her eyes, and she fought the urge to cry out loud.

Be quick, and be quiet
, her father had said, each and every time they'd practiced this flight. He had always been beside her, holding her hand. Now she was alone.

Robyn spun away, forcing herself out of sight. The pitch-dark woods became her refuge. But for once, Robyn found no solace in the swaying of even the most familiar branches. She sprinted toward her favorite tree, a massive live oak with low, thick arms, and knobs in the trunk at just the right spacing to climb. Robyn's toes could feel their way up that tree on even the pitch-blackest moonless night. She longed to climb it now, but . . .

Get as far from the danger as you can.

Robyn dashed past the huge live oak, vaulting its exposed, sprawling roots. The woods' black air gave way to a slight clearing, and Robyn tumbled to her knees on the leaf-strewn floor. She cupped the pieces of the silver sphere—what was it? And was it ruined? There was not quite enough light to tell.

The moon's white glow drifted through the dappled leaves overhead. Robyn lifted her tear-streaked face and gazed at the white circle in the sky. Not a full moon, but full enough to receive the brunt of her anguish.

“What happened?” She begged of the moon. “Where are they?” Her desperate whispers echoed loudly in the cavern of the wood.

The elders said that the moon knew all. If you learned well enough to read its face, you could find any answer. Robyn stared upward, gripping the sphere with a careful fist.
Shadows on the moon
, Barclay had said.

Leaves danced across the moon's face, obscuring its particular pattern of shadows. It didn't matter. Robyn had never learned to read the moon. Her parents believed in the moon lore, but she had always been too impatient for lessons about tricks of shadows and light. If only she'd paid more attention . . .

Leaves began to rustle behind her. Not a breeze, but a thrashing. As if someone was coming. Robyn's heart pounded. She scrambled to her feet and spun around. Unnatural, pointed lights shone through the tree trunks, like dots in the distance, but growing larger.

You will not know whom you can trust.

Robyn did not wait any longer to see who was coming. A rescue? A threat? She thought of the blood on the kitchen floor and instantly she knew what her father would want her to do.

She ran.

Robyn left the moonlit clearing behind. She bounded toward the darkest space she could find. She did not look back again.

Go to our place in the woods and hide. I will come for you.

But she had already passed all the places where her father used to take her when she was small. The ring of live oaks edged the Loxley property, creating a boundary between the landscaped region, with its manicured shrubbery and artfully mulched trails, and the untamed woods beyond.

Within moments, Robyn could no longer see more than a few feet around her. She moved as quickly as she could, not knowing what lay ahead. She tucked the sphere securely in the side pocket of her backpack and took out the gloves. The fabric was thin, but it held snugly, comfortably. There was a bit of structure to the gloves, in fact. She could feel the slight frame of spidering wires across the back of her hands. It was similar to the fit of the PalmTab devices her parents owned, except sized for Robyn and not a grown adult. It reminded her, too, of the sort of BioNet sleeve she had to wear in the doctor's office sometimes. The sleeve monitored vital signs and blood levels and organ function through the skin.

Robyn held her hands out in front of her and raised her feet high with each step to stay atop the maze of brambles
and uneven roots. The woods quieted around her. The midsummer air grew cool.

She brushed away strings of web from her mouth, kept her eyes closed so they wouldn't get poked by reckless branches. When she peeked now and again, the view was mostly dark. She could barely even see the light-brown backs of her own hands stretched merely arm's length in front of her. In places where the trees were thin, moonlight streamed down in patches.

Owls hooted and other night birds wailed. Robyn, who had never been scared among these dark trees for a moment in her life, felt a terror so deep it seemed to pass right through her, sharp and unending, like a very long knife. The sort that might draw a very large pool of blood.

She stifled a sob and kept walking. The moon held no answers. The darkness only reminded her of the questions. She clung to the hope that her parents would return, somehow, and find her. She hummed to herself for comfort, an old lullaby her parents used to sing, though she couldn't recall the correct words.

Robyn pressed slowly on, through the darkest hours of the night, easing her way among the damp, brushing leaves and scratchy sticks. When the sun began to rise, she sensed it. The foliage remained thick, but there was a lightening of the air and the chirping of new birds and insects awakening with the dawn. The trees seemed to thin, finally, as shafts of light peeked through.

Robyn blinked her eyes to ward off sudden sleepiness. She had walked all through the night. Her stomach growled. She
began to think seriously about what would happen when she reached the other side of the woods.

The Castle District was edged by Notting Wood on the east side and Notting Lake on the other. Most homes in the Castle District had property that bordered one or the other. “Are you lakeside or wood shear?” people would ask each other at parties. The outlying counties were scattered around the outskirts of the central loop, like wedges of pie.