2. Silver
2
S ILVER
|15 DAYS UNTIL THE ASSURANCE|
Breaking into the palace is a terrible idea, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it. Impossibility is negotiable. Inadvisability depends entirely on execution. And irrationality? It’s where I live.
But besides all that, I’m desperate.
I leap from one mossy boulder to the next, combat boots thunking against the rock as I land.
“You know there’s a giant wall around the castle, right?” Vie snipes as she crouches and eyes the distance I just jumped, preparing to follow.
“I do, yes,” I tell her. “It’s not overly subtle.”
She makes the leap, landing behind me like a cat, but I’m already hoisting myself up the next one, using a patch of shrubbery as leverage, my forearms chafing against the rock.
“Okay, but do you know about the forest of wickedly sharp, magically unbreakable glass trees around that?” she calls after me.
“Yup,” I grunt. “Totally aware.”
As soon as I clear the top of the rock, she huffs and scrambles up after me, her cheeks reddening with the exertion.
“Are you also aware, Silver, that to get to either one of them, you’re going to have to scale an entire freaking cliff ?”
I smirk. “You mean that one?” I point to the towering ridge in front of us, the one we’re heading toward. It’s steep, slick, and probably near five hundred feet. “It doesn’t seem so bad.”
“Tell that to the guy over there.”
She waves at a flock of carrion crows picking at something splayed on the other side of a tree stump. Something with a very human-looking hand.
“That’s different,” I say. “He was probably pushed.”
“Pushed by the man whose castle you’re about to break into? Great, I feel so much better.”
She glares at me with eyes like storm clouds, always thundering against something. Close-cropped black hair slices across her forehead. Her tattooed arms are flexed, and her square jaw is set, her mouth a downturned slash in the middle of it. As small as she is, she can be intimidating when she wants to be.
I flick a pebble at her.
“You’re not gonna change his mind, Vie,” a voice interjects.
Both our heads whip toward a cleft in the cliffside as a boy our age ducks out of it, practically bent in half because of how tall he is. He swats a clump of springy curls out of his face as he straightens and frowns at me with the air of a father who isn’t angry but is extremely disappointed.
“Hey, Rooftop!” I say cheerfully.
Vie scrunches her face up at him. “What are you doing here?”
Rooftop dusts himself off before coming over. “Me?” he asks. “Just following through on a hunch. See, when Silver told us he was going to try to break into the castle, I thought to myself, ‘Now what would be the most ridiculous, ill-conceived, and frankly unhinged way to pursue that already outrageous goal?’ It was a toss-up between this and seducing the Prospective Seconde, but I know Silver thinks she’s obnoxious.”
“It’s all the pouting,” I confirm. “What’s she got to be so upset about? One of her dresses is worth more than our entire neighborhood, but she always looks so freaking miserable.”
“Right,” Rooftop says dryly. “So here I am. And… here you are, too.” He looks entirely unamused at his own accurate assessment.
“Well, I for one am happy to see you,” Vie says, clapping her hands together. “You grab one arm and I’ll grab the other. Between the two of us, we can drag him back, easy.”
Rooftop lifts one angular shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Nah,” he says. “He’d just jump out a window while we were sleeping.”
“We’ll take turns watching him, then,” Vie says through gritted teeth.
But Rooftop only shakes his head, springy curls bouncing over green eyes as docile as the moss dusting the boulders around us.
“Then why’d you even come?” Vie growls, impatient.
Rooftop takes a cloth-wrapped package out of his bulky, patchwork coat. “I brought breakfast, actually,” he announces with a lopsided grin.
“Breakfast?” I ask. “It’s almost noon.”
“Yeah, well, you took longer than I thought.”
“Vie tied me to a chair.”
“That checks out.”
Vie pouts as Rooftop finds a sunny patch and lays out his coat like a picnic blanket before unwrapping his flimsy bundle on top of it. Inside are three flaky pastries, each one the size of two fists.
“Whoa!” Vie says, her surliness evaporating immediately at the prospect of food. “Where’d you get those?”
“Stole them,” Rooftop says.
“ You? No, you didn’t.” I squint at him, detailing every scrap of his appearance. Ratty shirt, dirty pants, and… no shoes. I stomp over. “You sold your boots? You can’t survive in the Outskirts without boots, Rooftop.”
“Please, tell me how dangerous it is to go without shoes, Mr. About-to-Scale-a-Cliff-with-No-Harness.”
I narrow my eyes. “Fair point, but… you sold them for a handful of desserts? Why?”
Rooftop’s expression darkens with a menace that is uncommon on his face. “I sold them for a final meal with my blockheaded friend before he falls pointlessly to his entirely predictable death and leaves me forever,” he says. “Now shut up, sit down, and tell me how much you value our friendship.”
I sit.
But I’m still looking at his feet.
“Vie?” I call. “Do you think—”
“Already checking,” she says, skipping over to the body behind the stump. There are some scuffling noises and then she reemerges with a pair of shoes. “They’re froofy loafers, but they’re better than nothing,” she says, tossing them at Rooftop.
He wrinkles his nose as he catches them but slips them on his feet without protest. They fit okay.
That taken care of, I relax and reach for a pastry, the other two following my lead.
And it’s incredible. Flaky, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth deliciousness, with dollops of sticky-sweet jam. They’re not warm anymore, but that doesn’t matter. They’re the best thing any of us has had in weeks.
“When I finish this job, we’re going to eat these every morning,” I say. “In our own kitchen, in our own house. And we won’t have to sell any of our possessions to be able to afford them.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Rooftop grouses. But I see a wistful smile curling the corner of his mouth.
We eat mostly in silence, with Rooftop giving me mournful glances and Vie glaring at the cliff over my shoulder. When we’ve consumed every tiny crumb and licked away all hints of jam on the packaging and our fingers, Rooftop stands up.
“Wait until I’m out of sight, will you?” he says.
“You’re not staying?” Vie asks, leaping up after him.
“I almost fainted last month when he jumped out of that tree. There’s no way I can watch this. Goodbye, Silver. I hope you turn out to be slightly less of a harebrained nitwit than I believe you to be.”
“I have valued our friendship greatly these many years,” I say solemnly.
He punches me in the chest, mumbles, “Me too,” and heads back toward the Outskirts, his back slumped.
I look at Vie and she squares her shoulders at me, hands on her hips and feet firmly planted.
“Fair enough,” I say. “Someone’s gotta bury me if it all goes wrong.”
“No way,” she says. “If you actually end up dying because you decided to scale a freaking cliff with no ropes and nothing to catch you, I’m gonna leave your body to rot.”
“Okay, then,” I tell her.
“I’m serious,” she insists. “You’re gonna get picked apart by scavenger birds like that guy over there. They’re gonna peck out your eyeballs. And your innards.”
“I’ll try not to fall, then.”
“You freaking better try not to fall.” Her voice catches and I put a hand on her shoulder.
“My very hardest, I promise.”
She makes a face and lapses into silence as I let my arm fall back to my side.
“What do you think is the best path?” I ask, because I know that’s what she was trying to figure out when she was glaring at the mountain like she could intimidate it into becoming stairs.
She points. “That crack will take you halfway up. Then there’s a ledge where it ends that you can follow to the left and get up a little higher. It gets kinda rough after that and you’ll have a couple long reaches, but you can make them if you stay steady. Then it’s a pretty clear shot to the top from there.”
I follow her line of sight and even though it’s obvious that it’s not a clear shot at any point, I don’t correct her. She knows as well as I do.
“All right, then,” I say. “When the crows come to eat me, try to grab one so you guys can eat, too.”
“It’s not funny!” she says, even though she’s the one who started it.
I take off my shoes and rub my feet in the dirt to give them better traction, then tie the shoes around my waist. Vie pulls on the knot to test it and it holds. But she doesn’t let go of the rope. Instead she steps closer and bites her lip.
“I know you’re doing this because of me,” she says quietly.
“Hey,” I say. “I’m not doing this because of you. Or because of Rooftop. I’m doing it for you guys, but that’s different.”
“It isn’t,” she insists. “And if you die, I’ll blame myself forever.”
“Oh, yeah?” I press my fingers lightly against her stomach and she hisses and flinches back, wrapping both arms around her midsection as she shoots me an acidic glare. “And what if you die fighting people three times your size for a handful of loose change?” I demand. “You think I wouldn’t blame myself for that? You think either of us would ever get over it if Rooftop was caught and killed for moonlighting at a bakery without the proper papers? Academy runaways like us don’t have a path that’s free of danger. But if I pull this off… then we will. So Rooftop was right, you’re not going to talk me out of it, Vie. Don’t try, okay? Because I don’t want to fight.”
She winces and looks at the ground. “I don’t either,” she says, voice small.
I hold out a hand. “Tell you what, go ahead and write down all the names you were gonna call me on little slips of paper and when we see each other again you can ball them up and chuck them at my face one by one. Deal?”
She takes my hand, gives it a firm shake, and then forces herself to drop it, uncurling her fingers with noticeable effort.
“Fine,” she chokes out. “But no dodging.” It seems like she wants to say something else, but instead she purses her lips together and takes a step back.
“No dodging,” I promise.
She nods.
And then there’s nothing left to do but step up to the rock and start climbing.
The gray stone is cool beneath my palms, and the first bit, when I follow the split in the rock that Vie pointed out, isn’t too difficult. I climb every day to get around, so it’s mindless at first. Just one move after another, a series of incremental steps. By the time I reach the end of the crack, though, my muscles are burning.
I take a moment to breathe before I edge onto the rock shelf. It’s narrower than it looked from the ground, but still definitely wide enough for my toes and the pads of my feet. I ease my foot sideways, feeling confident, but then I accidentally look down and the mountain seems to lurch.
I dig my fingers into the rock and close my eyes. The height doesn’t matter as long as I don’t fall. This part isn’t even hard. If I hadn’t looked, I would’ve been on the other end of the ledge by now.
But I did look, and it was so much farther than I thought, so much farther than it seemed from below. Vie is a tiny doll peering up at me. I can’t even read her expression. And I don’t remember those rocks being quite so pointy when I was on the ground.
Pushing all of that out of my mind, I focus on the taste of breakfast pastry in my mouth. Tart strawberry. Browned butter. Flaky crust. The traces of mint and rosemary that I’m only able to identify because Rooftop pointed them out to me. Eventually my heartbeat slows.
Careful now to keep my eyes on the ledge and nothing below it, I creep sideways, then up. The handholds here are deep and easy. I gain some distance and some of my confidence back. But then I hit that smooth patch Vie pointed out. My hand gropes around for any kind of purchase, but there’s none. The closest divot in the rock face is way too far. I look at the hole, assess at the distance I need to reach, and my limbs lock up.
I don’t look down this time, but I know the height isn’t survivable. Not a chance.
My leg starts to shake.
“Oh, come on,” I say. “Not now.”
This happens to me sometimes with heights. I’m not afraid of them. But my leg is, I guess, because every now and then when I get too high it starts to lose it.
Loose gravel falls out of the pocket I wedged my foot into and I try not to listen to the sound of it skittering down, down, down, down.
“You shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss that ‘seduce the Prospective Seconde’ idea,” I grumble to myself. “Flirting wouldn’t end in shattered bones.”
Then again, she did rip apart a menagerie of animals with her bare hands, so maybe this was the safer route after all.
I inhale through my nose and exhale through pursed lips. If I can’t get my traitorous leg under control, it will buckle when I put weight on it.
“What kind of fear response is this anyway?” I ask it. “Do you think this is helpful? In what scenario would you shivering like a wet kitten be of any use to me at all? Huh?”
My leg does not answer. It just keeps banging against the rock. My knee’s probably going to have a bruise, which is just great.
It is also, quite definitely, the least of my problems.
Vie shouts something and her voice echoes off the rock, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. Despite the chill of the stone, my fingertips are getting sweaty. I have to move.
I don’t think the pastry will work again, so this time when I clear my head I think of safety. Four walls around me, a roof over my head, and solid ground beneath my feet. I think about walking around barefoot with no fear of glass in the dirt. I think about Rooftop cooking and Vie not feeling like she has to keep guard all night and a door that can shut out everything in the world that we don’t want to let in. A place where we make the rules and where nothing can hurt us. Real jobs we don’t have to hide. A real future.
Bit by bit, my leg relaxes. I take four more deep, steadying breaths. As I exhale the last one, I steel myself. I am calm. I am impenetrable.
I reach.
Only to come up short. The next handhold is too far, and I can only graze it.
I lean out as much as I can and try again.
This time, I can grasp the lip of it just barely, but it’s not enough. I won’t get a good grip unless I let go with my other hand.
And if I think about that too much, I know my leg will start up again and I’ll never get it to stop. So I don’t think.
I let go.
I know that the moment I’m holding on to nothing can’t be more than a second or two, but it feels like forever. My stomach scrapes on the rock as I thrust myself sideways, grabbing at the handhold with a desperation I haven’t felt since I was first on the streets, before I learned to steal and thought starving might be the only way. But when I dig my fingers in, the rock is solid. It holds. I can pull myself up and swing my leg into another foothold.
And from there I don’t stop. I can’t take any more time to contemplate what an insane thing I just did. I scuttle up the rest of the cliff until I’m finally pulling myself over the edge and clenching fistfuls of grass like I’m still dangling and they’re my only anchor.
It’s only when Vie’s whoop echoes behind me that I cough out a laugh and unclench my fists.
“It’s not over yet,” I say under my breath.
Rows and rows of glass pines stand before me, an army as formidable as any battalion of soldiers. Each individual tree is decked with thousands of sinister points, like a bouquet of crystal knives glittering in the muted sunlight. But together, crowded so close that they form a near-solid mass of edges and spikes, and towering so high that I almost can’t see above them, they form a forest that looks impenetrable.
I hold up a finger. “If you guys could give me just a minute, that would be great.”
The forest of death doesn’t move, so I flop on my back and close my eyes, once again trying to slow my heart and my breathing. My mom used to tell me I was reckless. If she hadn’t died in the war, she probably would have had a heart attack watching me do that.
Then again, she wouldn’t have let me.
Then again, I wouldn’t have had to in the first place.
I sit up, this time looking at the castle beyond the pines, a barely visible collection of dark towers and edged spires laying its claim to the cliff’s highest points.
The monster in there took everything from me.
And I’m ready to take a little back.
I push myself to my feet and approach the glass forest. Prime Elod, the current Prime’s father, grew these, but he had to be standing on the ground to do it. Which means as close together as these trees look, there must be some paths between them.
I walk up to them and try to fit myself between one tree and another. I can do it, but barely. One slip, one fall, and I’m impaled.
“Good thing my leg doesn’t have a thing about glass,” I mutter.
I go agonizingly slowly, placing careful footsteps on soft, overgrown grass, and keeping my spine ramrod straight. At one point a hawk’s shriek makes me flinch and my arm gets a few new gashes, but I’ve had worse. I keep going, leaving my blood glinting on the crystal branches.
When I get to the wall, I press up against it with an eager grin. This last obstacle seems like nothing after the two before it. I scale the sleek surface in what feels like two strides, ready to swing my leg over it and finally enter the castle.
And that’s when someone grabs my wrist.
Panic surges through me and I jerk back, wrenching my hand free. But that motion tips me off-balance and I fall into a shock of empty air.
With frantic clawing motions, I grapple for purchase on the wall as I plunge downward, only a mere breath away from the sea of sharpened glass when I manage to dig my fingers and toes deep enough into mortar-filled cracks to stop my descent. But even then I don’t relax.
I expect the sound of an alarm. Or an arrow through my head. I brace myself to be scraped off the wall like a bug and unceremoniously dropped into the waiting jaws of the forest below at any moment.
But nothing happens. Finally, cautiously, I tilt my head back and look up.
The soldier is leaning over the edge, regarding me with amusement, and I can’t figure out why he’s not attacking me until I take in the features of his face.
Sharp cheekbones, light stubble, keen eyes the blue of ice.
It’s… Guerre.
As in the guy who offered me this job. The guy who said he needed someone who could get into the castle for him.
“So you’re perfectly capable of breaking in on your own, then, huh?” I grumble.
He pulls me up with a chuckle. “Of course I am. But I already know what I can do. I needed to know what you could do. It was a test, and you passed.”
“I’m thrilled,” I say dryly, rubbing a knot in my shoulder.
He gives me a smirk that’s halfway between friendly and mocking. “You know, there’s a servant’s tunnel on the other side of the grounds. One you don’t have to clamber up a cliff to use.”
“Oh, sure,” I say. “I knew. I just thought this way would be more fun.”
He laughs and claps me on the back. Then he strolls toward a guard tower nearby, clearly expecting me to follow.
But I hesitate.
I don’t completely trust Guerre. There have been rumors circulating about him for months, passed through back alleys and whispered in Outskirt shacks. Rumors that he had under-the-table jobs for kids without papers, but that those jobs were always… sketchy. Dangerous. Odd . The general consensus was to stay away.
And if Rooftop hadn’t lost his bakery gig, I probably would have. But then the Prime announced the Assurance, an event that not only formally establishes the heir and second-in-command, but also usually comes with several other internal appointments and promotions. Suddenly, all the Prime’s soldiers got real interested in proving themselves, and smoking out Academy runaways like us is an easy way to do it. Kids were disappearing right and left, then showing up dead in the town square, their employers right beside them. So Rooftop’s boss got spooked and threw him out. Of course, Rooftop didn’t argue, and he still insists that his boss was a good guy. But personally, I don’t have a lot of respect for cowards.
Since then, all we’ve had to live off of is what I could steal and what Vie could win in the ring. And it’s not enough. Vie started fighting more often, throwing herself into new fights long before she’d recovered from the last ones. When she came home spitting blood last week, I decided it was time to seek Guerre out.
And to my surprise, he’d been watching me, too.
He offered me something big. Academy graduate papers, ones that would get us whatever jobs we wanted. And a house that isn’t in the Outskirts. Somewhere safe and comfortable where we could build a real future. It’s everything we could want, everything we need—everything the Prime took from us in the first place.
But he wouldn’t tell me what he wanted in exchange, only that the first step was to break into the castle.
And now that I’ve done it, I feel more anxious than elated. There’s something about this guy that I can’t put my finger on. Like some core part of him, something important, is missing. He gives me shivers whenever he talks.
But I’ve come this far.
And like I said, I don’t have a lot of respect for cowards.
So let’s see what kind of mess I’ve gotten myself into this time.
I make my feet move and follow him into the guardhouse, swallowing hard. If he notices my reluctance, he doesn’t show it. He just takes a bundle off a shelf and passes it to me, his expression unconcerned.
“What’s this?” I ask as the fabric unfolds in my hands.
“A servant’s uniform,” he says. “It will come in handy for the next part.”
“The next part being what exactly?” I say pointedly. “You said you’d tell me.”
“I will.” He levels his cool blue eyes on me. “I need something with the Prime’s seal on it. I need you to steal it.”
I almost drop the uniform completely.
“The Prime’s seal?” I gasp. “But that’s—”
“Impossible, I know. So is breaking into the palace. But here we are.”
I blink at the folded waistcoat and crisp white shirt bunched in my hands. They’re nicer than anything I own. “Are you sure you don’t already have twelve seals in your back pocket or something?” I grouse.
This time, he doesn’t laugh. “I assure you, every task I give you from here on out will be vital. This is the first of three. You’ll get details on the other two when it’s appropriate, but you can expect them to be of a similar difficulty.”
Well, that’s great.
I don’t care what this guy does to the Prime. Whatever it is, I’m sure the brute deserves it. Guerre can burn down the whole castle with everyone in it, and as long as I get paid I’ll be perfectly happy.
But as reckless as I may be, I’m not trying to get killed for someone else’s scheme, and if this first task is only the beginning of the danger, then I’m not sure it’s worth it. I sincerely consider climbing back down the cliff when Guerre pries open the shutters of the guard tower with a clatter and sweeps his arm over the realm below us. “Do you see the house with the green roof?” he asks me.
I lean out, the wind on my face. And the whole of the Cliff Realm is spread before me. Bulging bluffs surrounded by scraggly forest. Homes, storefronts, and meeting places crammed along a steep, narrow road zigzagging to the top. Most of the roofs are thatched, but one near the middle has painted green shingles.
“I see it.”
He places a heavy hand on my shoulder. “That’s the one I’ll give you if you successfully complete all three tasks. That”—he unfurls a scroll that somehow appeared in his other hand—“and these.” I see my name in neat calligraphy, and then he slides his thumb so I can see Vie’s and Rooftop’s names on scrolls behind it. The language of the documents is exact, and the lettering is perfect. If they’re forgeries, they’re very good ones. Except…
“They’re not sealed,” I protest.
He makes an exasperated noise. “And why do you think that is?”
Oh. Duh. “Because… you need me to steal the seal.”
“There it is,” he says, rolling the scrolls back up. “For a second you made me doubt you were clever enough for this after all.”
I watch the scrolls disappear into his pockets, resisting the urge to snatch them out of his hands. Seeing tangible proof of the future I’m fighting for has done a lot to shore up my resolve. So it’s without any lingering trace of reluctance that I say, “All right, I’ll do it.”
“Good,” Guerre says. “Then report to the kitchens. As it happens, the head of the serving staff is taking on temporary new hires to help prepare for the enthroning of the Seconde. You’re one of them. Good luck.”
He smiles in a way that makes me feel small, and I look down, my gaze drawn back to the house he promised. As I greedily soak in its ivy-covered walls, wrought iron lanterns, and burgundy shutters, I know I made the right decision, and the last of my unease is snatched away by the wind whipping my face. I’m doing this, no matter what the risks might be.
But when I turn back to say so, Guerre is gone.