and rain and darkness. I pull Laia onto my back, check the rope I’ve tied to an unobtrusive and half-hidden finger of rock, and then swing down into the Jutts silently, going hand below hand until I’ve reached a rain-slicked rock ten feet below. Laia hops down from my back with a slight scrape that I hope the Tribesmen won’t hear. I tug on the rope to release it.
Above, the Tribesmen cough as they enter the smoky cave. I hear them curse as they pull their friend free.
Follow, I mouth to Laia. We move slowly, the sounds of our passage covered by the thudding boots and shouts of the Tribesmen. The rocks of the Jutts are sharp and slippery, the jagged edges digging into our boots, catching on our clothes.
My mind goes back six years, to when Helene and I camped out at the Roost for a season.
All Fivers come to the Roost to spy on the Raiders for a couple of months. The Raiders hated it; getting caught by them meant a long, slow death—one of the reasons the Commandant sent students here in the first place.
Helene and I were stationed together—the bastard and the girl, the two outcasts. The Commandant must have gloated at a pairing she thought would get one of us killed. But friendship made Hel and me stronger, not weaker.
We skipped over the Jutts as a game, light as gazelles, daring each other to make crazier and crazier jumps. She matched my leaps with such ease that you’d never guess she feared heights. Ten hells, we were stupid. So certain we wouldn’t fall. So sure death couldn’t find us.
Now I know better.
You’re dead. You just don’t know it yet.
The rain thins as we move across the rock field. Laia remains silent, her lips pressed together. She’s troubled. I feel it. Thinking of Shikaat, no doubt. Still, she keeps up with me, hesitating only once, when I leap across a gap five feet wide, with a two-hundred-foot chasm beneath.
I make the jump first, clearing the gap easily. When I look back, her face is blanched.
“I’ll catch you,” I say.
She stares at me with her gold eyes, fear and determination warring. Without warning, she leaps, and the force of her body knocks me back. My hands are filled with her—waist, hips, that cloud of sugar-scented hair. Her full lips part like she’s going to say something. Not that I’ll respond intelligently. Not with so much of her pressing against so much of me.
I push her away. She stumbles, hurt flickering across her face. I don’t even know why I do it, except that getting close to her feels wrong somehow. Unfair.
“Almost there,” I say to distract her. “Stay with me now.”
As we get closer to the mountains and farther from the Roost, the rain thins out, replaced by thick mist.
The rock field levels and flattens into uneven terraces, the shelves interspersed with trees and scrub. I stop Laia and listen for sounds of pursuit. Nothing. The mist lays thick on the Jutts like a blanket, drifting through the trees around us and lending them an eeriness that makes Laia draw closer.
“Elias,” she whispers. “Will we turn north from here? Or circle back to the foothills?”
“We don’t have the gear to climb the mountains north of us,” I say. “And Shikaat’s men are probably crawling all over the foothills. They’ll be looking for us.”
Laia’s face pales. “Then how do we get to Kauf? If we take a ship from the south, the delay—”
“We go east,” I say. “Into the Tribal lands.”
Before she protests, I kneel and draw a rough map of the mountains and their surrounds in the dirt. “It’s about two weeks to the Tribal lands. A bit longer if we’re delayed. In three weeks, the Fall Gathering begins in Nur. Every Tribe will be there—buying, selling, trading, arranging marriages, celebrating births. When it’s over, more than two hundred caravans will make their way out of the city. And each caravan is made up of hundreds of people.”
Understanding dawns in Laia’s eyes. “We leave with them.”
I nod. “Thousands of horses, wagons, and Tribesmen head out at once. In case anyone does track us to Nur, they’ll lose our trail. Some of those caravans will head north. We find one willing to shelter us. We hide among them and make our way to Kauf before the winter snows. A Tribal trader and his sister.”
“Sister?” She crosses her arms. “We look nothing alike.”
“Or wife, if you prefer.” I raise an eyebrow at her, unable to resist. A blush rises in her cheeks and blooms down her neck. I wonder if it goes any lower. Stop, Elias.
“How will we convince a Tribe not to turn us in for the bounty?”
I finger the wooden coin in my pocket, the favor owed me by a clever Tribeswoman named Afya Ara-Nur. “Leave that to me.”
Laia considers what I’ve said and finally nods her agreement. I stand and listen, feeling out the land around us. It’s too dark to continue on—we need a place to camp for the night. We pick our way up the terraces and into the dark forest beyond until I find a good spot: a clearing beneath a rock overhang, bordered by old-growth pines, their pitted trunks overgrown with moss. As I clear the rock and twigs from the dry earth beneath the overhang, I feel Laia’s hand on my shoulder.
“I need to tell you something,” she says, and when I look into her face I lose my breath for a second. “When I went into the Roost,” she goes on, “I was afraid that the poison would …” She shakes her head, and her words rush out. “I’m glad you’re all right. And I know you’re risking so much to do this for me. Thank you.”
“Laia—” You kept me alive. You kept yourself alive. You’re as brave as your mother. Don’t ever let anyone tell you different.
Perhaps I’d follow the words by easing her toward me, running a finger along the golden line of her collarbone and up her long neck. Gathering her hair into a knot and pulling her close slowly, so, so slowly—
Pain lances through my arm. A reminder. You destroy all those who get close to you.
I could hide the truth from Laia. Finish the mission before my time is up and disappear. But the Resistance kept secrets from her. Her brother kept his work with Spiro from her. The identity of her parents’ killer was hidden from her.
Her life has been nothing but secrets. She deserves the truth.
“You should sit down.” I pull away from her. “I have to tell you something too.” She is quiet as I speak, as I lay bare what the Commandant has done, as I tell her about the Waiting Place and the Soul Catcher.
When I finish, Laia’s hands shake, and I can barely hear her voice.
“You—you’re going to die? No. No.” She wipes her face and takes a deep breath. “There must be something, some cure, some way—”
“There isn’t.” I keep my voice matter-of-fact. “I’m certain. I have a few months, though. As many as six, I hope.”
“I have never hated anyone the way I hate the Commandant. Never.” She bites her lip. “You said she let us go. Is
