Chapter 9 #3
‘Behind the waterfall?’ I say hopefully.
Atlas edges along the cliff and sticks his head behind the curtain of water.
‘Nothing,’ he calls out.
I put the loquisonus down and sit on the grass.
Serena holds out her hand for the headphones. ‘Can you still hear it?’
I nod as she sets them on her ears and her eyes light up.
‘If there’s an entrance around here, a wyvern is bound to come out at some point, right?’ Marquis says.
‘You do understand the concept of underground tunnels, don’t you, Featherswallow?’ Gideon snorts.
‘Wyverns still have to fly,’ I snap.
‘And so the Swallow waits. Again,’ Serena mutters, handing me back the headphones. ‘Our radio listeners might just die of boredom.’
‘You were the ones supposed to track and find the wyverns, Serena,’ I say. ‘I’m just here to master the language.’
‘Ah yes, we forgot we are merely your footmen,’ she replies. ‘The meagre enablers of your higher translation powers.’
Marquis grins and I turn my back on them both, closing my eyes in the sun.
We wait, listening to the birds and the calls from the loquisonus machine.
I pull a thick blade of grass from the ground and suck the sweet sap from the end as my stomach gurgles.
Marquis leans back against a tree, his eyes on the cliff face.
‘How was Karim when you last saw him?’ I ask quietly.
‘Furious.’
‘I can’t imagine Karim furious.’
Marquis snorts. ‘He couldn’t believe we were being sent to Canna without Cormac or any of the adult rebels. He called it a suicide mission.’
I nod, thinking of Krasimir. ‘He’s not wrong.’
‘Hollingsworth is willing to risk our lives to find these wyverns, so why hasn’t she told us how they’re supposed to help us?’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘Do you think, maybe, she doesn’t know?’
I shake my head. ‘You said it yourself: she’s risking our lives. She wouldn’t do that unless she had a bloody good reason to.’
‘Then why hasn’t she . . .’ Marquis trails off as he bolts upright. ‘I saw something. In the water.’
We all peer into the pool. Its surface ripples in the centre.
‘A shadow,’ Serena says lazily.
‘Or a fish,’ I offer.
‘No,’ Marquis insists. ‘It was bigger than that.’
I stare at the water, willing myself to see a shape. A dark shadow blooms beneath the surface as if summoned. I clutch Marquis’s arm. The shadow is huge, taking up the whole pool, but in the blink of an eye it’s gone.
We’ve found the wyvern tunnels.
‘The entrance is beneath the water,’ Serena says.
‘One of them must have seen us and gone back inside,’ Atlas replies.
‘So how do we get in?’ I ask.
‘I . . . are you sure we want to go in there?’ Gideon says. ‘Underground tunnels full of wyverns, and only an underwater exit?’
‘Stay here if you want,’ I say. ‘But this is what we came for.’
I hide the loquisonus and the journal with our packs behind the waterfall, then turn back towards the pool.
‘Time for a swim, recruits,’ Marquis says.
He steps out of his trousers first.
I look pointedly at the water as I shrug off my coat and pull my jumper over my head.
The air is cold on my bare skin and I realise I’m standing in the most regrettable underwear possible, taken from a donation package provided by Hollingsworth back in London.
I look anywhere but at Atlas. At the line of white birch-rod scars on my naked arm, and then at Serena, infuriatingly chic in the white brassiere she’s been hiding beneath her military uniform. The wound in her arm is almost healed.
We line up by the pool and as Atlas steps into the freezing water I sneak a glance at him.
He’s skinnier than I thought he’d be, a lump of scar tissue knotted across his left shoulder.
I study the curve of his bare arms and the dark hair at his navel.
Serena is staring too. She catches my eye and smirks.
I step into the pool. The glacial temperature cuts my breath short and my feet begin to burn.
‘Too cold,’ I hear Gideon gasp.
I force myself further into the water until I’m waist-deep, my body trembling uncontrollably.
Serena shivers beside me. ‘I don’t think I can.’
Gideon swears as Marquis dives suddenly, disappearing beneath the surface. We wait in silence until he re-emerges and takes several deep, desperate gasps.
‘There’s an entrance,’ he says, his teeth chattering.
Atlas wades in next to me. The tops of his thighs are bright red.
‘I’ll go first,’ Marquis says.
‘I’ll go with you,’ Serena says, wincing. ‘Someone needs to be able to pull you out if you start to drown.’
I swallow. They dive one after the other and it’s just me, Atlas and Gideon left, standing in our underwear on the most dangerous island in Britannia.
‘What’s taking them so long?’ Gideon says.
‘It hasn’t even been a minute.’
‘And what’s the plan when we get in there? Provided we don’t get eaten.’
I blink. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Before anyone can answer, Marquis surfaces and Serena emerges next to him.
‘You only have to swim for a few seconds before the tunnel gets higher than the waterline,’ Marquis says, gasping again. ‘We’ll be able to breathe down there.’
‘All right,’ I say, feeling a swoop of dread. ‘Once we’re inside, I’ll try to convince the wyverns to let us stay. Then we have to get to know them. Whatever secret weapon Hollingsworth thinks they have should soon become clear if we befriend them.’
Atlas is nodding. ‘Once we have it, we get out. The rebels won’t be able to hold off the Bulgarians forever and the information we uncover could be crucial.’
I look around at them. ‘See you inside, then.’
I dip beneath the water. The cold freezes my brain and everything in me begs me to return to the surface.
I open my eyes. The water is clear and Atlas’s face is in front of me, his cheeks bulging with air.
I gesture at him to hold on to me and he nods, his hands settling on my waist. Then I follow Serena downwards towards a patch of dark water.
Tiny silver fish trailing algae dart in and out of the cave entrance.
I don’t want to go in, but if I hesitate we’ll run out of breath.
I grip the rocky edge of the entrance and push us inside.
I swim upwards, looking for the place where the ceiling gets higher, but my head hits solid rock.
I immediately go dizzy with panic, but when Atlas’s feet meet the bottom of the tunnel, he pushes us forward.
I can just make out Serena’s shape in front of me as she reaches out a hand and pulls me towards her.
We surface, gulping air. The water is up to our necks, but at least we can breathe.
I feel for Atlas in the dark. ‘Are you all right?’
My hand meets with his ear and when he replies I feel his breath on my cheek.
‘Now I am,’ he pants, his voice echoing through the dark.
We move along the tunnel as Marquis surfaces behind us, followed by Gideon. I use my arms to pull myself through the water until the ceiling above us disappears at the same time as the floor drops out.
‘This is the most stupid thing we’ve ever done,’ I hear Gideon say.
‘For once, Gideon,’ Marquis whispers, ‘I agree.’
I tread water as my eyes adjust to the light streaming in through small gaps in the walls. We’re in another pool that sits inside a cave. And directly opposite us, staring out from beneath the overhanging rocks, are a hundred pairs of eyes.