Chapter Fifteen
I woke to the smell of woodsmoke and the gummy taste of old blood in my mouth. Tumbling out of the darkness like a landslide, I tried to sit up and found my wrists bound and my arms aching. Panic flooded through me, tightening every muscle in my body. I was ready to lash out.
My radiance was not.
My fingers remained numb and cold even though the thick, itchy cloth from before was gone. My hands were bound in front of me with twine that cut into my thin wrists. A pair of well-worn boots moved into my line of vision where I lay in damp leaves too far from a campfire to feel its warmth.
“Be still,” Ezra said quietly, dropping to a crouch and carefully propping me up to sit against a tree. He wore a sweat-stained green bandana around his neck. I hadn’t noticed it before. “They’re drunk, but they’re always drunk. They won’t sleep for long.”
“What did you do to me?” He’d said to be still, not quiet. “Where’s my radiance?”
“Josephine,” he said with a hiss, eyes darting to the lumps of men beside the fire.
Fine.
“I’ll kill you,” I said. Softly.
Even in the dim light, I could see the pain in his eyes as he let out a breathy, quick laugh. “I believe that.”
“Why can’t I reach my radiance?” I asked again, my breath hitching. I’d never felt so empty, so thoroughly alone.
“It’s the insulation. We had to take it off when you kind of stopped breathing for a bit.”
“Kind of … what? How?”
“It’s woven with glass and minerals. Ike bought it from some peddler near Cascade, but they don’t know what they’re doing with it. I don’t—I don’t think it’s permanent. They’ve never really tried it on a person before.”
My teeth clicked together, rage chasing away some of my panic. “You don’t think it’s permanent?”
He pressed his fingers to his eyes. “Jo.”
“You don’t get to call me that.”
“Apprentice Haven.”
It remained so infuriatingly easy to talk to him. I felt a horrible urge to lean closer despite the betrayal that felt like a ragged wound in my chest.
“You killed him.” A sob ripped through my words. “You killed Julian. How could you do that to him?”
“I …” He cringed as one of the men by the fire let out a disgusting belch and stirred. “Will you please, please be quiet. Trust me.”
“Trust you?” My voice became a shrill, hysterical sort of thing. Letting out several soft curses, Ezra untied his bandana and gagged me before my indignation could truly take hold.
I managed to jam my bound hands into his throat, and he jumped back, coughing wretchedly.
He glared at me, wiping tears from his eyes and rubbing the spot where I’d struck him, and I growled through the gag.
If he was right and this nauseating emptiness wasn’t permanent, I’d char all three of them to bits the moment I reconnected with my radiance.
“Enjoying the hostage?” Ike asked, ambling over with a leer. His nose looked gruesome, and the skin under his eyes had blackened with bruises.
I lifted my chin, hoping he could tell how proud I was that I’d left those marks on him.
“Say that again in front of Ainsley,” Ezra muttered, choking on every few breaths from the blow I’d landed. “I dare you.”
“You sweet on Ainsley, too?”
Neither Ike nor Marshall was anywhere near as tall as Ezra, but the dynamic between them was clear. They treated him like a little brother. Albeit a little brother they were vaguely afraid of.
With good reason.
I couldn’t let myself think of what he’d done to Julian.
I couldn’t comprehend it. And every time my thoughts drifted toward the edges of it, my stomach tried to crawl out of my body.
My ears buzzed faintly, and while the acute numbness had left my chest, I hurt all over with a bruise-like ache.
Radiance had always been a constant inside me, as sure as my heartbeat, as warm as the sun. I’d never felt this cold.
Ike and Ezra were scuffling, pushing each other around with increasing violence. Marshall, sitting up beside the fire, let his gaze drift lazily from them to me. I looked away, unable to suppress a shudder. I had no doubt that he’d kill me if given the opportunity.
And I knew, somehow, that he’d enjoy it.
“First I find the Mission burning and the conduction coils intact,” a woman said, ringing out clear as a bell. “And now I find you fighting like schoolboys?”
Ezra and Ike broke apart in an instant, both hanging their heads.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Ike said with surprising sincerity.
Ainsley stepped into the firelight wearing the same plain dress and apron she’d had on at the train platform.
Her gaze moved slowly from Marshall to Ezra and Ike, then finally to me.
Shaking her head, she let out a small sigh.
“I’ll admit I was a bit relieved when Julian snatched my little parting gift away. But here you are. As foolish as ever.”
I tried to speak, but the bandana muffled my voice.
And then I remembered.
A boy in a green bandana. A long braid in the dark.
They’d robbed the train. Ezra and Ainsley had been with the bandits.
They were the bandits.
Something must have shown in my eyes, because Ainsley came closer and smiled knowingly, but not unkindly.
“It’s a terrible thing to feel like a fool, I know.
” She crouched in front of me. Behind her, Ezra’s shoulders tightened, but he didn’t move as she loosened the gag and let it fall around my neck.
“You’re a bandit?” My voice wavered. I felt small before her calm, measured gaze. “A resistor?”
“I’m a defender of life and nature. Of our wild, unspoiled frontier.” Her pride was a real and bright thing in the night. She smiled serenely. “With Ezra’s help, we’ll shut down every Mission on the railway line and drive the House all the way back to Sterling City.”
I couldn’t hold back a ragged shout. “Why are you doing this? Resistors are murderers. They kill children!”
Ainsley laughed. “What did I tell you about believing everything you’re told?”
Marshall echoed the sound, slapping his thigh. “Murderers, she says. That’s rich. You should have taken her to the graveyard, Ez.”
“This isn’t right.” I gasped for breath, reeling. I couldn’t make sense of what they were saying. “You didn’t have to kill Julian. You don’t have to kill people.”
“This isn’t right?” Ainley asked, a disdainful echo. “Didn’t Ezra tell you what you’re doing with your poison? That the Mission is making everyone here sick?”
I choked, shaking my head helplessly. Ezra avoided my searching gaze.
“Did he tell you that you killed your own parents?” Ainsley asked. “That the House of Industry killed mine? And Henry’s? Progress is a blight on this world. Your parents should have drowned you the moment you came into this world squalling and sick inside.”
Her words became a liquid thing within me, seeping into my bones.
Into my lungs. If she had told me this the afternoon I’d spent in her little house, I would have raged at her for lying.
But I’d seen Ezra shrink from me. I’d seen the dead trees.
The sick folk carried away from the worksite. The wasting, the wasting.
Don’t you ever wonder why we were all orphaned?
Had Julian known? Or had he died believing himself to be part of a greater good? The march of Progress.
“I’m sorry,” I said, helpless and dizzy with everything I’d seen at the edges of my vision but had refused to look at directly.
I’d brought something terrible to this town, and I’d allowed Ezra into Julian’s home to kill him, and I’d listened to everything I’d ever been told without asking enough questions, without asking why death followed us everywhere we went. “I’m so sorry.”
“I believe you.” Ainsley stood and brushed the dirt off her hands. “But you still have to die. I don’t need a hostage.”
Marshall straightened in an instant, his grin like a blade. I’d seen street dogs wear their hunger less plainly.
She angled her head toward him, her voice hardening with disdain. “I didn’t say to torture her.”
He glared but said nothing, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“I can’t be choosy with the help I hire,” Ainsley said to me with a mild shrug. “I’m not bloodthirsty or cruel. I hope you know that.”
“Ainsley,” Ezra said quietly, approaching her from behind with halting steps. “We wouldn’t have to hold her long. There’s another train next month.”
“A train back to the House of Industry. Yes, that’s exactly where we need to send her.”
“Then let her go. She’s got nowhere to run to. No one to send for. The woods will take her eventually.”
Ainsley was watching me. For a moment, she appeared thoughtful. My throat worked against dry, hot panic. She closed her eyes for a moment, regret softening her features. “No. We don’t make exceptions.”
“But she’s a child.”
“I’m not a child!” I snapped, in tandem with Ainsley muttering, “She’s not a child.”
Ainsley went on. “She’s a killer. She’s a Conductor of death. We both tried to warn her, and she carried on. Uncaring.”
“Warn her?” Marshall asked, feigning confusion. “I thought the plan was to seduce her, not warn her.”
“Bet Ezra warned her all night long.” Ike chuckled.
A tree branch broke above him with a clack as loud as thunder, and it narrowly missed dashing his brains into mush. He stumbled back into the fire and hopped around briefly, swearing and shaking the coals off.
Ezra didn’t move. Even the forest around us had gone quiet. All I could hear was my coarse breathing, shallow with fear that filled all the spaces where radiance had once bolstered me. I was no better off than a helpless babe, my legs trembling and my arms bound tightly.
“If you’re going to kill me,” I said to Marshall, my lip curling in a desperate sneer, “at least untie me and make it a fair fight.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Ainsley said. For a moment, I felt a dizzying swell of hope. Then she turned to Ezra. “Marshall isn’t going to kill her. You are.”
“Ainsley,” Ezra said hollowly. His hands twisted into his loose shirt as he shuffled a half step back.
“Don’t do this,” I whispered.