The Essence (16 page)

When his wrists were free, and he was wholly unbound, Zafir got up, releasing the man pinned beneath him. The man didn’t move at first. He just lay there panting, gasping for breath as his skin changed from a stony shade of gray to a flushed and clammy pink.

When, at last, he regained his composure and sat up, he was facing not just me, but Zafir as well. “We need answers,” Zafir demanded, his voice filling the cramped space and making the walls around us quake.

The man held up his hand in surrender. “Fine. Yes, I—I’ll tell you everything, just don’t sit on me again.”

My lips twitched. I didn’t blame him, really, I wouldn’t want Zafir to sit on me either. “What’s your name?” I asked, my voice infinitely more patient—and less booming—than Zafir’s.

“Florence, Your Majesty.”

“Florence?” Zafir’s eyes narrowed. “You expect us to believe that’s your name?”

The man staggered to his feet, using the nearest chair—one that hadn’t shattered—to prop himself up. “My mother thought it had a certain . . . flare. Friends just call me Floss, though.” His flashed his rotted teeth at me. “You can call me Floss, Your Majesty.” He turned to Zafir, his eyes narrowing, becoming tiny, black pellets. “You, call me Florence.”

Zafir shook his head. “So you think Queen Charlaina is in danger?”

There was a meaningful pause, and even Jeremiah looked up to see if something important was about to happen. “I didn’t say she was in danger. I said she was goin’ to be murdered. Big difference.” It sounded like “mardeered” when he said it.

Zafir took a threatening step closer and Florence’s hands went up again, fending off Zafir as he cowered. “Explain.”

“I already tried, back in town, but you didn’t want to listen to me then, did you?”

Zafir scowled. “You didn’t say anything about someone wanting to harm—”

“Murder,” Florence interrupted, and Zafir’s jaw clenched.

“Murder her,” he corrected himself. “I believe your exact words were: ‘We need to get the queen back to my place where we can keep her safe.’ That’s not the same thing. You sounded like a lunatic.”

Florence cackled, making Zafir’s point for him. “Lunatic? Could a lunatic knock out a royal guard and save the queen from certain death?”

Zafir stiffened. “I think
only
a lunatic would try such a feat,” he ground out. “Now tell us what you know before”—his eyes narrowed to slits—“before I sit on you again.”

“A’right. A’right. Settle down.” Florence blustered, holding his hands up as if to ward Zafir away. “But you should be thankin’ us, Jeremiah and me. We did, after all, save Her Majesty’s life.”

I thought of the way he’d abducted me back at the tavern and forced me to stay hidden in the back of the wagon. “How exactly did you
save
me?”

His grin grew, and this time Jeremiah joined in, whether he understood why he was grinning or not. His smile, though, was infectious, his vast mouth stretching interminably. He was nodding, in the same way Florence was.

“If it hadn’t been for us, you’d’a been on that train, and your throat’d been cut before the next stop. That was the plan, sure enough.”

Zafir reached for my arm and dropped his voice, glancing suspiciously toward Florence. “Your Majesty, you’re not actually listening to this, are you? He’s exactly what I thought he was, a lunatic.”

I raised my head, pinpricks of curiosity niggling at me. “How could you possibly know that? What makes you think something was going to happen on the train?”

Florence grinned again, and I grimaced inwardly. “As I said, Your Highness, we’re not imbeciles out here. We know things. Word travels.”

“Your Majesty,” Zafir corrected pointedly.

“What?” Florence asked, his brows pinched together.

“It’s not Your Highness. The proper way to address your queen is Your Majesty. Maybe you don’t know as much as you think you do.” The corner of his mouth turned up, and I nudged him with my elbow.

“It’s fine,” I said, playing arbiter. “Go ahead. You were saying . . . ?”

“I was saying . . .” Florence huffed, turning away from Zafir and addressing only me now. His expression softened. “I was saying that Jeremiah and I were in the next town over when we overheard a girl callin’ herself a scout braggin’ about how she was part of a new rebellion. She got real loose-lipped the more she drank, and by the time she left the pub, she was telling folks not to get too used to the new queen ’cause she—meaning
you
, Your Majesty,” he said, his voice punctuating the
Your Majesty
for Zafir’s benefit. “’Cause you wouldn’t be around long. Said there was a price on your head and
she aimed to collect it.”

“So why did you think Her Majesty was in danger on the train? Wasn’t that the safest place for her to be?” This time it was Zafir asking.

“Look here.” He reached into the back of his waistband and pulled out a scroll of worn parchment. He bent down on the floor and rolled it out, smoothing it with his gnarled hands. “She left this behind. Wasn’t hard to figure out it was a map.”

Zafir and I leaned down, and my eyes widened. He was right, of course; it was most definitely a map. And despite the fact that it wasn’t written in Englaise, or any of the other Ludanian languages, it also wasn’t hard to tell what it was a map of: the train line. More specifically, the train line I had been on.

“See?” Florence said, tracing one filthy finger along the tracks, stopping to tap the spot where two jagged red slash marks crisscrossed them, marking an X. It was just past the train depot where Florence had intercepted us. “This is where it would’a happened, I figure.”

I turned to Zafir. Maybe Florence was right. Maybe someone had been sent to kill me.

Zafir continued to glare at the map. “And did she say who’d set the price on the queen’s head?”

“Didn’t have’ta. After news of the bombings in the city, everyone knew that Jonas Meyers or Mayer, or whatever his name is . . .” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a dirty blade, setting it in the center of the map. “Everyone knows he’s out to get the queen. You’re just lucky Jeremiah and I convinced that conductor to move along without you, Your Majesty. Otherwise you’d’a lost your head.”

brooklynn

Brook shivered, clutching her jacket tighter as she scooted nearer the fire, wishing she’d dressed warmer. Wishing that she’d been more prepared. Instead, not only was she unprepared for the weather, but she had no idea what she was doing. She’d never led a search party before. For all she knew, she was leading her soldiers into some sort of trap.

After that first fruitless hour, Brook had made the tough decision to break her soldiers into three separate groups. She hoped that by splitting up, they might increase their odds of locating Charlie.

She’d sent one group, a traveling party made up of ten of her best riders, back to the palace, with news of what had happened at the depot. It was entirely possible that Charlie had decided to head south, too, and that Brook’s riders would intercept the queen on her journey home. Maybe the message to Max would be entirely unnecessary, and her riders would simply become escorts to Her Majesty.

The second group of ten had been ordered to remain in town, to keep searching. They’d already scoured buildings and questioned everyone they’d come in contact with, never revealing why it was so important that they find the “missing girl” for whom they searched. But they’d come up empty.

The men she’d left behind were to continue hunting, moving outside of town and combing every inch of the Scablands if necessary. Turn every home and shop inside out for signs of their lost queen. For this, Brook had sent ten of her most resilient and well-trained men and women. Survivors. Those whose instincts and skills matched the treacherous lands they’d be searching.

She would keep moving north, the most likely place Charlie was headed. Charlie was nothing if not predictable. Tenacious. She’d made a commitment, and she had a goal in mind, and nothing—not even a little hiccup like losing an entire army to back her up—would stop her.

Brook just hoped that wherever Charlie was, Zafir was as well.

She cupped her hands around her mouth and blew into them, trying to dethaw her frozen fingers.

“You shouldn’t be so stubborn. This will warm you,” Sebastian promised, sitting beside her and handing her a dented, silver flask.

Across from the fire, Aron nodded. “He’s right, you know?” His lips curled, the promise of a smile. “I mean that you’re stubborn, of course.”

“I don’t see you drinking any of it,” she shot back to Aron, lifting her hand to ward away the flask. She knew Sebastian was worried, they all were, but she needed some space. Needed to think. “No thanks. That’s what the fire’s for.”

Aron reached for another log and threw it on the already blazing campfire. The red coals beneath the flames flickered, and wayward sparks shot into the chilled air, turning black and then drifting away with the smoke.

Brook worried about that too, the fire. It made them an easy target, pinpointing their location in the yawning blackness that engulfed them. Pointing them out to rogue outlaws who might chance by. But they’d had to stop. They’d ridden hard, her band of thirty-odd soldiers. Well, thirty-odd soldiers plus Sebastian who tended the horses, and Aron who was practically useless. They’d stayed as close as they could to the rail lines, following the tracks as far as possible, until even the moon overhead couldn’t provide enough light to let them find their way.

Finally, when they’d realized they couldn’t keep going, Brook had ordered the fire, and she’d set up watch shifts, taking the first one herself and giving some of her soldiers a chance to sleep.

They were well into the second watch now, and as far as she could tell, neither Sebastian nor Aron had slept yet either.

“You should turn in,” she said vaguely to the both of them. She turned, looking into Sebastian’s dark eyes, which reflected the fire’s light, and spoke again. “I need you refreshed in the morning. Don’t make me order you.”

He opened his mouth, as if to argue, but then closed it again when he caught her determined expression. There was no point disputing a command. He leaned closer, and reached for her hand, squeezing it reassuringly. “The same could be said of you, Commander. You need to sleep.”

Hadn’t Aron said the exact same thing just the night before? Why did it sound so much more sincere coming from Sebastian, Brook wondered. Why, when he spoke, didn’t it sound like he was laughing at her? Taunting her?

He pressed the flask into her hand. “Just in case,” he said, and then she watched as he gathered his jacket tighter against the chill and went off toward the camp they’d set up just outside the perimeter of the fire, using as many blankets as they’d been able to scavenge from the merchants near the train depot before leaving town. Another reason they’d have to sleep in shifts.

“’Night, Sebastian,” she called after him, and he lifted his hand in a wave, not looking back.

“What about me?” Aron asked when it was just the two of them. Somehow he made even that simple statement feel like a joke. “Don’t you want me to be
refreshed
?”

Brook pinched the bridge of her nose. “Not unless you’ve learned to wield a mean sword or shoot like an expert marksman over the past few months. Otherwise, you can water the horses for Sebastian.” She peeked up at him, over the top of the fire. “You know, like a stable hand.”

Aron laughed then, and Brook caught a glimpse of his scars, captured in the flickering light cast from the flames.

At first, right after Charlie had taken the throne, those same scars had been impossible to miss, a daily reminder of what Aron had done for Brooklynn, of how he’d refused to give Queen Sabara the information she’d wanted. Even when she’d tortured him for it. Of course, he hadn’t realized it had been Brook he’d been protecting; he hadn’t realized that it was
she
who’d been part of the underground movement Sabara was so desperate to locate. All he’d known was that he had no intention of turning on one of his friends. . . . Traitor or not.

And, for that, Brook had been grateful.

That gratitude had faded, however, as days stretched into weeks, and weeks into months. Aron’s scars had blanched, blending into his skin until they were practically imperceptible, unless you knew the right places to look for them. Brook had allowed herself to forget what he’d gone through, allowed herself to believe that nothing had changed between them because of it. In her eyes, they were the same Brook and Aron they’d always been.

But that wasn’t the case, she was reminded as she stared at the tiny white fractures marring his otherwise perfect complexion.

Nothing was the same anymore.

“You don’t know. I could be the best marksman in Ludania. You wouldn’t want to waste a skill like that on horse duty, would you?”

“It wouldn’t exactly be wasted, we need the horses as badly as we need another gunman, maybe more. In fact . . .” She shivered, clutching herself tightly, her teeth just starting to chatter. “Until we find Charlie, that’s all that matters.”

She hadn’t realized how loud she’d been speaking until several sets of eyes turned in her direction.

Aron got up and made his way to her side of the fire, lifting both hands in mock surrender. “Fine, I give. I’ll be a stable boy, or whatever you need me to be.” He settled down beside her, dropping one arm around her shoulder and pulling her close to him.

Despite herself, she found herself leaning into him. He was warmer than he should be, considering the temperature, and she felt like a moth, drawn to that kind of heat.

“We’ll find her,” he promised, leaning his chin against the top of her head, his voice growing distant and thoughtful. “If it’s the last thing we do, we’ll find her.”

xii

There had to be some sort of mistake.

I repeated those same words to myself over and over again, long after we’d left the confined walls of the rank cottage and Florence had taken us to his main house, a place only somewhat larger, but vastly cleaner and more homelike. It had real floors, real wooden walls, and smelled far less like manure than the other building had.