Snakeroot (32 page)

The boy threw another glance over his shoulder. Five more steps, and he’d hit the tripwire. Four. Three. Two. One.

He cried out in alarm as his ankle hooked on the taut line stretched between two trees. His yelp cut off when his body slammed into the forest floor, forcing the air from his lungs.

Charlotte lunged from her hiding place, muscles shrieking in relief as they snapped out of the tight crouch. Her practiced feet barely touched the ground and she ran with as much silence as the low rustle of her skirts would allow.

The boy moaned and started to push himself up on one elbow. He grunted when Charlotte kicked him over onto his back and pinned him against the ground with one foot.

His wide eyes fixed on the revolver she had aimed at his chest.

“Please,” he whispered.

She adjusted her aim—right between his eyes—and shook her head. “I’m not in the habit of granting the requests of strangers.”

Charlotte put more weight onto her foot, and he squirmed.

“Who are you?” she asked, and wished her voice were gritty instead of gentle.

He didn’t blink; his eyes mirrored the rust-tinged gleam of the breaking dawn.

“I don’t know.”

“Say again?” She frowned.

Fear bloomed in his tawny irises. “I . . . I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” she repeated.

He shook his head.

She glanced at the tangle of brush from which he’d emerged. “What are you running from?”

He frowned, and again said, “I don’t know.”

“If you don’t know, then why were you running?” she snapped.

“The sounds.” He shuddered.

“Sounds?” Charlotte felt as though frost had formed on the bare skin of her arms. She scanned the forest, dread building in her chest.

The whistle shrieked as though her fear had summoned it. The iron beast, tall as the trees around it, emerged from the thick woods on the same deer trail the boy had followed. Imperial Labor Gatherers were built like giants. The square, blunt head of the machine pushed through the higher branches of the trees, snapping them like twigs. Two multijointed brass arms sprouted on each side of its wide torso and its long fingers were spread wide, ready to clutch and capture. Charlotte’s eyes immediately found the thick bars of its hollow rib cage.

Empty.

“Who sent a Gatherer after you?”

His voice shook. “Is that what it is?”

“Are you an idiot?” She spat on the ground beside him. “You must know a Rotpot when you see one! Everyone out here knows how the Empire hunts.”

The screech of metal in need of oiling cooled Charlotte’s boiling temper. A horn sounded. Another answered in the distance. But not nearly distant enough.

She didn’t have time to mull over options. She lifted her foot from the boy’s chest and offered him her hand. The only advantage they had over the Rotpots was that the lumbering iron men maneuvered slowly in the forest.

“We need to leave this place. Now.”

The boy gripped her fingers without hesitation, but he shot a terrified glance at the approaching Gatherer. They were partially concealed from view by a huge oak, but the machine was close enough that Charlotte could see its operator shifting gears from within the giant’s iron skull. She watched as the man reached up, pulled down a helmet with telescoping goggles, and began to swivel the Rotpot’s head around.

Charlotte hesitated a moment too long. And he saw her.

Cranking hard on a wheel, which made steam spout from the machine’s shoulders, the operator turned the iron man to pursue them.

“Go!” Charlotte shoved the boy away from her. “Run east! I’ll catch up.”

“What are you—” he started to ask, but began to run when she pushed him so hard that he almost fell over.

When she was certain he wasn’t looking back, Charlotte reached into her skirt pocket. Her hand found cool metal, and she pulled a small object from within the folds of muslin. It only took a few winds of the key before sputters and sparks leapt from her palm. She sighed and regretfully set the magnet mouse on the ground, pointing it at the encroaching machine. The little creature whirred and skittered away, its spring-anchored wheels accommodating the rough path she’d set it upon.

“Come on.”

When Charlotte caught up with the boy, she ignored the puzzled look on his face and grasped his hand, forcing him to run with her into the dark western wood, away from the now bloodred haze of early sun that stretched through the forest canopy.

Between gasps of breath, his fingers tightened on hers. She glanced at him.

His tawny eyes had sharpened, and he peered at her like a hawk. “What’s your name?” he asked.

Charlotte dropped his hand and gathered her skirts to accommodate her leap over a moss-covered log.

“Charlotte.”

“Thank you for not leaving me back there, Charlotte.”

She looked away from him, nodded, and ran a bit faster. Behind them she heard the explosion she’d been waiting for. Though they were hardly out of danger, Charlotte smiled, feeling a surge of triumph. But a moment later, a single thought chased her giddiness away.

Ash is going to kill me.

2.

T
HE LAST BEAMS of sunlight were cutting through the forest by the time they reached the tree.

“Bloody hell!” Charlotte groped through the tangle of roots in search of subtle tactile differentiation. Her companion gasped at her outburst, and she spared him a glance. Not that he could tell. She’d tied a kerchief around his eyes when the sounds of the Gatherers seemed far off enough to risk slowing down.

The boy’s face scrunched up, as if he was thinking hard. After a moment, he said, “Girls shouldn’t use that kind of language. Someone told me that . . . I think . . .”

Though he appeared to be running from the Brits, she couldn’t risk letting a stranger learn the way to the Catacombs. The Empire’s attempts at finding their hideaway had been limited to Gatherer sweeps and a few crowscopes, none of which had been successful. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that they’d stoop to sending a real person out to hunt for them. And someone like this boy, who seemed so vulnerable, would be the perfect spy. If he was and this was a trap she’d sprung, Charlotte would never forgive herself.

“Well, you may not know who you are, but apparently you were brought up in polite society,” Charlotte said sourly, her mood darkened by new suspicions about who he might be. “If you’re planning on sticking around, you’ll find girls here do a lot of things they aren’t meant to do.”

He simply turned his head in her direction, puzzled and waiting for an explanation. Charlotte’s answer was an unkind laugh. Perhaps she should have been more compassionate, but the consequences of revealing their hideout were too dangerous. And Birch was almost too clever with his inventions. She’d never been able to locate the false branch without effort, and delays could be very costly. The Rotpots might have been stopped by her mouse, but nothing was certain. A slowed Gatherer was still a threat.

“I . . . I . . .” Beside her the boy was stammering as if unsure whether to apologize.

“Hush,” she said, keeping her voice gentle, and he felt silent.

Her fingers brushed over a root with bark harder and colder than the others.

“Here it is.”

“Here’s what?” He waggled his head around pointlessly.

“I said hush.” Charlotte stifled laughter at the boy’s bobbing head, knowing it was cruel given his helpless state.

She found the latch on the underside of the thick root, and a compartment in the artificial wood popped open. Quickly turning the crank hidden within the compartment, Charlotte held her breath until the voice came crackling through.

“Verification?”

“Iphigenia,” Charlotte said with a little smile.
Birch and his myths.

The boy drew a sharp breath. “Who is that? Who’s there?” He sounded genuinely afraid.

“It’s all right,” she whispered and leaned closer to the voicebox. “And there are two of us, so you’ll need to open both channels.”

There was a long pause in which Charlotte’s heart began to beat heavily, once again making her question the decision to bring the strange boy with her.

“The basket will be waiting,” the voice confirmed, and a little relief seeped through her veins.

The pale boy was still twisting his neck, as if somehow doing so would enlighten him as to the origin of the voice despite his blindfold.

“What’s happening?” he asked, facing away from Charlotte. Rather than attempt an explanation, Charlotte grabbed his wrist and tugged him toward the roaring falls.

As the pounding of water on rocks grew louder, the boy resisted Charlotte’s guidance for the first time.

“Stop! Please!” He jerked back, throwing her off balance.

“Don’t do that!” Charlotte whirled around and grabbed his arms. “We’re about to cross a narrow and quite slippery path. If you make me lose my footing, we’ll both be in the drink, and I don’t fancy a swim, no matter how hot the summer air may be.”

“Is it a river?” he asked. “Where are we?”

Charlotte couldn’t blame the boy for his questions, but she was close to losing her patience. Hadn’t she already done enough to help him? All she wanted was to get inside the Catacombs, where they would be hidden from any Gatherers that might still be combing the forest. What did Meg always say when she was fighting with Ash?

Meg’s warm voice slipped into Charlotte’s mind.
Try to see it from his point of view. It’s a horrible burden, Lottie. The weight of leadership.

Charlotte looked at the pale boy, frowning. His burden wasn’t that of her brother’s—a responsibility for a ramshackle group aged five to seventeen—but this boy bore the weight of fear and, at the moment, blindness. Both of which must be awful to contend with. With that in mind, Charlotte said, “I’m taking you to a hiding place beneath the falls. I promise it’s safe. The machines won’t find us there. I can’t tell you more.”

The boy tilted his head toward the sound of her voice. He groped the air until he found her hands.

“Okay.”

She smiled, though he couldn’t see it, and drew him over the moss-covered rocks that paved the way to the falls. As they came closer, the spray from the falls dampened their clothing and their hair. Charlotte was grateful the boy had decided to trust her and ask no further questions because at this point she would have had to shout to be heard.

When they passed beneath the torrent of water, the air shimmered as the native moss gave way to the bioluminescent variety Birch had cultivated to light the pathway into the Catacombs.

Charlotte wished she could remove the boy’s blindfold. Entering the passageway that led into the Catacombs delighted her each time she returned. Not only because it meant she was almost home, but also because the glowing jade moss gave light that was welcoming. Seeing it might ease the boy’s mind, reassuring him that she led him to a place of safety rather than danger.

She turned left, taking them into a narrow side passage that at first glance would have appeared to be nothing more than a shadow cast by the tumbling cascade. Within the twisting cavern, the shimmering green moss forfeited its place to mounds of fungus. Their long stems and umbrella-like tops glowed blue instead of green, throwing the cavern into a perpetual twilight.

The boy remained silent, but from the way he gripped her fingers, Charlotte knew his fear hadn’t abated.

“We’re almost there,” she whispered and squeezed his hand, garnering a weak smile from him.

The passage abruptly opened up to a massive cavern—the place where the falls hid its priceless treasure: a refuge, one of the only sites hidden from the far-seeing eyes of the Empire. While from the outside the falls appeared to cover a solid rock base, several meters beneath the cascade, the earth opened into a maze of caves. Some were narrow tunnels like the one from which they’d just emerged. Others were enormous open spaces, large enough to house a dirigible. Far below them, the surface of an underground lake rippled with the current that tugged it into an underground river. A dark twin that snaked beneath earth and stone to meet its aboveground counterpart some two leagues past the falls.

They were standing on a platform. Smooth stone reinforced by iron bracings and a brass railing that featured a hinged gate. On the other side of the gate, as had been promised, the basket was waiting, dangling from a long iron chain that stretched up until it disappeared into a rock shelf high above them. The lift resembled a birdcage more than a basket. Charlotte opened the gate and the basket door, pushing the boy inside and following him after she’d secured the gate once more. The basket swung under their weight, and the boy gripped the brass weave that held them.

“You put me in a cage?” Panic crept into his question.

“Shhh.” She took his hand again as much to stop him from ripping the blindfold off as to reassure him. “I’m here too. It’s not a cage—it’s an elevator.”

With her free hand, she reached up and pulled the wooden handle attached to a brass chain that hung from the ceiling of the basket. Far above them, a bell sounded, its chiming bounced off the cavern walls. A flurry of tinkling notes melded with the roar of the falls for a few moments.