The Essence (20 page)

Plus, there was the other matter to contend with. Floss and his riders weren’t quick to forgive the men who’d attacked them—Niko’s or Brook’s—even though they’d explained that they’d believed Zafir and I had been captured and were being held as prisoners.

Niko’s men had come across Brook’s soldiers after they’d left the train depot, where they’d been ordered to turn the town upside-down if that’s what it took to find me. Eventually, that trail had led them to Floss’s place.

Apparently, we hadn’t been all that hard to track from there.

Also, apparently, that wasn’t the first group of Brook’s men Niko’s riders had come across. The first party had been butchered and left for dead. Every last one of them.

My stomach heaved as I considered the implications of that attack. Those riders weren’t the only ones who were vulnerable.

Floss didn’t seem to care about any of that. He didn’t much appreciate being accused of kidnapping. . . . Although I wasn’t sure what, exactly, he would have called it. He
had
snatched me from the tavern, after all.

Still, I couldn’t help noticing the glint of pleasure in his eyes when he realized that it was Avonlea who’d struck one of their
attackers
with her arrow. “That’s my girl,” he claimed boastfully to the others as they threw more wood on the fire.

“So, Floss is your father then?” I whispered as Avonlea came over to join us. I sat on an old log, which had been ossified from exposure to the cold.

Avonlea, who’d been staring at me, at the faint shimmer just beneath the surface of my skin, made a face. “Of course not. I haven’t always lived with them.” She leaned in closer, her eyes dancing impishly as if sharing a secret with me. “I was brought there to be Jeremiah’s bride.”

I frowned at that. “Really? So, are you? His bride, I mean?”

“No,” she answered, scoffing at the notion. “Jeremiah has no interest in having a wife. He’s practically a child still. All he really wants is someone to tell him tales and help him build forts in the caves outside the settlement camps. He doesn’t even like living by himself, even though Floss insists that every man needs his own home.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t blame him, though. His place smells like dung.” I thought of the one-room cottage I’d first been brought to. If that was where Jeremiah lived, Avonlea was right, it wasn’t much of a home. “Mostly, he sleeps in the main house with us.”

“So what do you do there, exactly? Why are you still with them?”

She used a stick to trace shapes in the gravel at her feet. Shrugging, she said, “Floss bought me, is why. He owns me fair and square. Wouldn’t be much of a bargain if I up and ran just ’cause I didn’t marry his boy, would it?”

I tried not to react, but I wondered if she could see it in my cheeks, if my anger glowed as brightly as . . . well, as brightly other emotions did. “What about your parents? Don’t they want you back?”

“I don’t have parents,” she explained. “Never really did, I guess. I had a mom once, sort of, when I was real small. People said I looked liked her, back when I knew people who could tell me so. I don’t remember her much anymore. I wish I did.” She lifted her shoulders again. “Never knew my dad, not sure my mama did either.”

“Floss said you didn’t have a name, but surely your mother gave you one.”

She shook her head. “She died before I reached namin’ age.”

I didn’t understand, and I hesitated before asking, “She didn’t give you a name when you were born?”

One of the riders, the tough-skinned woman who Floss had found to accompany us, was listening and scooted closer. Her build was solid, and she would’ve reminded me of Eden—the strength she exuded—except that she was bulkier, thicker beneath her heavy layers of winter wear than Angelina’s guard. “Things are different out here, Your Majesty. . . .” I was suddenly aware that there was no more pretense about who I was. “Life’s hard in the Scablands. People don’t bother naming newborns. Too many of them die in their first few years. Disease, mostly. But sometimes undernourishment or even a particularly harsh winter’ll take a babe. Children generally start getting names around their fifth year. Earlier if they’re tougher’n most.” Her Scablander accent was less pronounced than Floss’s and Avonlea’s.

“What’s your name?” I asked the woman, trying to ignore the stab of guilt I felt over the living conditions of the Scablanders and their families. I made a mental note to talk to Max about this place when I returned.

But then I was thinking of Max—about his steel-gray eyes and his soft kisses that tasted like honeyed mint—and a different kind of pain coursed through me. A deeper, more intimate ache that I had to force myself to shove aside.

The woman smiled at me, revealing teeth that were almost too white, and too straight. “Just Zora, Your Majesty, plain and simple. My mama didn’t subscribe to none’a that city naming rubbish. Didn’t see the need to cause trouble where there was none.”

“Were you born out here, Zora?”

“In the Scablands? No,” she explained. “I came to it the proper way, because I broke the law.” She glanced back toward the other men she’d been riding with. They kept as much to themselves as they could now that the camp was teeming with military men. “
I was a counselwoman’s daughter
,” she said quietly, in perfectly enunciated Termani. It surprised me to hear that kind of eloquent articulation coming from her. She was so rough, almost dangerous . . . at least until the moment she’d smiled.
“And I fell in love with a vendor’s son.”

One of the men looked up then. He couldn’t have heard her, but it was as if he’d sensed her. Their gazes held, the connection between them palpable, like a wire that stretched from one to the other, joining them.

“Is that him?” I asked, and Zora started, as if surprised that I’d understood what she’d just said, and I realized she probably had been. Everyone knew I was the Vendor queen. The girl who’d been raised speaking Parshon.

But not everyone knew the rest of the story: that I could understand everyone.

She didn’t answer, just nodded slowly as the man looked away once more. Her cheeks were red now, and I knew it had nothing to do with the fire. It was unlikely she’d meant to reveal so much of her private life to her queen.

I couldn’t stop myself from asking my next question. “Do you ever miss it? Ludania, I mean. Have you ever wanted to leave the Scablands?”

“Everyone has regrets, I suppose. You can’t choose one path without missing out on another,” she said slowly, thoughtfully. “But I can’t say I wish I’d done things differently. It’s a hard life out here in the Scablands, sure, but it was a matter of trading one form of tyranny for another.”

I knew she meant living under Sabara’s dictatorial rule.

She smiled then, her eyes wandering to the other rider. “I think I made the right decision.”

I looked too, noticing him for the first time. He was younger than the other man. Younger than both of them, but similar to each as well. “What’s his name?” I asked.

She stood up, making an attempt to brush the dirt from the front of her pants but it was everywhere, coating everything, and I realized the gesture was more habit than useful. “Jacob. He was the only child we had that ever reached an age where we could name him,” she said, and then she left, joining her family.

I watched her go, determined to change things out here. Determined to give these people a better life.

I turned to Avonlea then, my curiosity unending. “How long have you lived with them? Floss and Jeremiah?”

She dug around in the dirt some more with her stick, pondering the question. “Ten years. Maybe more.” She shrugged. “Probably more.”

I studied her disbelievingly. “How—how old are
you?” I asked.

She was silent for so long I thought she wasn’t going to answer me. But after what felt like an endless stretch, she glanced up, her eyes locking with mine. “Last I thought about it, I was in my sixteenth year. So not much older than that, I guess.”

I was almost as shocked by that information as I had been by how long she’d been in Floss’s care. When I’d first met her, she’d looked so much older . . . so tired and worn-down. Knowing the truth, I could see that she’d been robbed of any real childhood.

I tried to imagine Avonlea as a little girl with no name. A child bride taken away from everything she knew and transplanted into a new home, with another family. I thought of the way Floss had treated her. He was demanding and crude and certainly not affectionate. Not what a little girl needed. At best, she was a tolerated servant beneath his roof.

I wanted to wrap my arms around her, to let her start her life all over again. To give her a new story altogether, one complete with parents and a home. One in which she hadn’t been sold into servitude as a mere child. One in which she had her own name, rather than the one I’d made up for her.

“Do you like living with them?” I asked, trying to keep the censure from my voice.

“I don’t hate it,” she answered. “There’re worse places I could’a ended up.”

She was right, of course. Everyone in Ludania had heard the rumors of life in the work camps. Stories of children worked in the fields until they could no longer stand on their own two feet, and then being tied to the horses and dragged back to the camps. Stories of children who’d been chained to the fences for speaking out of turn, and then charred to death when the generator-power fences were started up. There were stories of intentional starvations and of guards experimenting on children who weren’t old enough to work, using all manner of medical, farm, and science equipment.

The camps were a source of childhood nightmares, and every little girl and boy in Ludania feared that if they misbehaved badly enough their parents might send them to the camps.

Orphans were often sent there when there was no other family. And I’d seen more than one household send their children away simply because they could no longer afford to feed them.

“Are you all right, Your Majesty?”

I blinked, frowning at Avonlea who stared back at me. I nodded slowly. “Of course. I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

Avonlea started to reach out to me, but she paused, her hand frozen halfway between us. Her face scrunched up. “I—,” she started. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

I glanced away from her, wiping my cheeks. I hadn’t realized I’d been crying. “It’s not you,” I assured her when I turned back to her. She was still watching me with that same horrified expression. “I swear it wasn’t your fault.”

It’s mine.
I winced inwardly, realizing how negligent I’d been. There was still so much I had to do for my country.

max

He tried to tell himself a lone rider wasn’t a bad sign.

But it was a lie, and he knew it.

It was the middle of the night. A lone rider was
always
a bad sign.

“What do you think it means?” Claude asked from the empty library behind him.

“A message,” Max answered.

“From who?”

Both of them should have been in bed at this hour, but Max hadn’t been in his bed in days. Not since he’d watched Charlie board the train to the summit.

It had been too soon for her to go and too hard for him to let her. Sleep, ever since, had been damn near impossible.

Instead he spent his nights like this, staring out the palace windows. He was worried and afraid. He wouldn’t rest until Charlie was home again. Safe.

He turned to face Claude, who watched him with quiet resignation. Claude, who could have left him alone hours ago, but who stubbornly remained at his side. Just as he had for years. “Only one way to find out.”

The doors were already being opened when Max reached the entrance, and the messenger was escorted inside. His clothing was ragged and torn, and he was covered in grime that went far deeper than a day’s ride. His cheeks were lean, and dark circles ringed his eyes. He staggered slightly when Claude’s shadow passed over him, not an uncommon reaction—royal guards were known to make grown men cower in fear.

“Who sent you?” Max questioned the rider, who seemed to have a hard time keeping his gaze level.

The man glanced up, ever so slightly. Ever so hesitantly. “A-a man named B-Bartolo, Your High—” He stopped himself in time. It was a common mistake, one that was made often since people still assumed he was the crowned prince. But that legacy had died when Charlie—the rightful queen of Ludania—had taken his grandmother’s place on the throne. “I was sent with word that a party of ten soldiers was found slaughtered just outside the Scablands, just south of the train line.” He lowered his head now, unable to look at anything but the floor. “They were from the palace,” he offered nervously, as if he himself were responsible for the soldiers’ demise. “That’s all I was told. I ran my horse here fast as I could. Barely stopped to piss.”

Max looked to Claude, and wondered if his guard’s heart was racing nearly as fast as his own, but he knew that it wasn’t. Claude liked to tell that he’d been born without a heart.

Max’s, however, was trying to beat its way out of his chest.

There were only so many palace soldiers out there right now. And the only ones anywhere near the Scablands were those sent with Charlie.

“Damn,” he heard Claude mutter.

Damn,
Max thought as his airway constricted,
was an understatement.

xiv

The flowers were just out of my reach and I had to lean forward, the water lapping around my knees. My small hands—my fingertips—grazed one of the blue petals, sending the flower shooting away from my grasp.

I stood there for a moment, studying the still surface, trying to decide. I was already in too deep, deeper than I’d ever been before. But it was right there, one more step and I’d have it.

I held my breath and took a step. Only this time I wasn’t standing on the same slimy surface I’d been on before. This time I stood on something rigid, something scaly, something
alive.

It moved before I could think, and the water around me thrashed before I could react. The scream that reached my throat came seconds after I felt sharp teeth sink into the tender flesh of my leg . . . tugging, tearing, ripping.