Chapter Nine. Gin
CHAPTER NINE
GIN
Without another word, the three of us rush forward and grab anything we can from the barrel, shoving smaller items into our pockets and gathering as much as we can hold in our arms. I checked what I’ve gathered and a shiver runs down my spine when my fingers make contact with the glowing bottle I’d taken earlier.
The glass is as warm as human skin and I startle, nearly dropping it before tightening my grip and shoving the bottle into my satchel, my thoughts buzzing.
This is no ordinary treasure. That much is certain.
Eban tries to grab another bottle but yelps and pulls his hand back. “Ouch!”
“What happened?”
“It burned me,” he says, mystified.
Then Vergel tries to grab one of the glowing crystals, but he, too, is repelled.
But there’s no time to puzzle over it. Eban has one bottle, I have another, and we just try to shove as many coins and jewels into our pockets as we can.
We run away, coins and jewels spilling onto the road as we go, clinking evidence of which direction we’d fled, but we can’t stop to collect them. The clatter of hooves grows closer and closer.
I follow Eban and Vergel into a narrow alleyway—if it can even be considered one. We turn sideways to scoot through.
Eban throws an arm across me suddenly. We all stand still as statues, barely daring to breathe, as the first group of Blackcoats, a battalion on horseback, gallops down the street, right past the alley.
Their sharpened swords gleam when they catch the reflection of a flickering streetlamp nearby, horses neighing loudly.
We move on, using clotheslines and trash piles for cover as more Blackcoats arrive—this time, a battalion on foot that spreads out across the area.
“This way,” Eban mouths, tilting his head. We sneak out from behind a dilapidated outhouse. I spot a shadow approaching across the yard. I slip around a corner just before the figure comes into view.
“I think someone saw us,” I whisper.
But the Blackcoat doesn’t come our way, and so we continue on, coming up to the rear of a decrepit building. The door is secured by a mismatched series of hastily installed bolts and padlocks, some older and more rusty than others. This door hasn’t been used in ages.
There’s nowhere else to go. I check to see if anyone’s on our trail. I don’t see anyone yet, but they’re bound to appear any second.
Eban pulls a small metal stick from his pocket and starts picking at one of the locks.
There’s no reason to stay with the two of them. I have my cut. I can take my chances alone and flee, before we’re all caught. But I stay where I am. Maybe I’m too tired to run on my own, maybe I’m too scared to move.
The lock pops open. Eban performs a series of confounding maneuvers on the rest of them. They each click, one by one. Then they stop abruptly.
He curses.
“Wrong order?” Vergel asks him, glancing around the yard nervously.
Eban doesn’t answer. He stays focused on the locks and counts under his breath. “Five, seven, three, one.” The fifth lock, the seventh lock, and so on. Finally, he stands up straight, satisfied, and opens the door. “After you.”
I step into a grimy storehouse full of burlap sacks, broken wood crates, and cobwebs. Mice scatter across the floor. The air smells stale and earthy.
Once we’re all inside, Eban fastens the locks back into place using the metal stick. They all click back into position at once.
“How…?” I ask.
Eban sweeps past me before I can finish the question. Vergel gestures to follow them. “Come on,” he says.
We trail Eban around a maze of crates to the other end of the room. He holds his finger up to warn us to be quiet and places his ear to the wall. Then he roots around beneath a filthy window. Another popping sound, and then he lifts the rickety frame. A gust of warm air flows inside.
After we climb out the window, we dash through a desolate stretch strewn with more broken crates, surrounded by a palisade made of stout logs of wood, and slide through a gap where one of the timbers has rotted away.
But then a stack of broken beams blocks our way.
Eban bends down, cupping his hands so I can place a boot in his cradled fingers and lift myself over the top of the barrier.
Vergel follows. Eban is the last to scale it.
Jumping, he grips the edge with white knuckles and vaults over the top, joining us.
We descend into yet another warren of old and abandoned buildings and rotting shacks.
We reach a cliffside and I fear we’ve stumbled upon a dead end, but Eban slips behind a decaying tree that conceals a narrow path that leads up the cliff.
We climb, slipping in the black mud, gripping sharp rocks and bare roots, hoping we don’t fall.
Halfway up, I pause and glance over my shoulder.
My stomach drops. The ground beneath me is slick with moss and padded with a dense layer of roots and dead leaves.
It would be easy enough to lose my footing and tumble to the distant ground.
I tighten my grip on the dead roots that I cling to for support, but they tear like paper when I tug at them.
Eban sees my panic. “Don’t worry, we’re almost there,” he says, offering me a hand. I take it, and he pulls me onto a narrow ledge high above the Sleeve where an abandoned cottage overlooks the cliffs.
“It’s not much, but it’s dark and quiet and no one will find us here,” he says as we step inside.
The cottage is empty aside from a few stools and some discarded glass bottles. The floor isn’t clean, exactly, but it has been swept recently. A makeshift ladder leads to a hole in the ceiling.
Eban walks through the cottage, then starts up the ladder. Vergel collapses on the floor with his arms spread. We’re exhausted, but we’re free, and we just made the best score of our lives, despite having to leave most of it behind.
I sit on the floor and reach into my pocket to feel how many coins and jewels remain. I don’t want to count them in front of my new acquaintances. Imagine what else we left behind there. But I can’t allow myself to ponder that; I’m alive, and that’s the most important part.
“That was close,” Vergel says, sitting up. “I thought we were goners, for sure.” He laughs. “I can’t believe we got away.”
“Me either,” I agree. I twist my hair back into a bun. I survived yet another close call. I’m grateful, and lucky. I try not to wonder how long that luck will last.