22. Hope
22
Hope
T he day had come. It was time. And Hope couldn’t help but feel like it was the beginning of the end. The end to all the lies and half-truths. The end to a life accepting her fate as a discarded being and not doing anything about it. The end to an isolated life in the woods. The end to questions that had marked her mind, and she had learned to live with.
She was both excited and scared about this first step towards a new beginning. The beginning of her search for truth. The beginning of Cardinals knew what else her life would bring for her. Maybe even the beginning of her life as a panom, if she figured out what to do about that useless mark.
The only thing Marcus and Aridian were waiting for in the control room that lead to the vertical tunnel connecting to the vessels was the arrival of the largest cellholt.
“And here it comes,” Marcus inclined his head towards the approaching dark dot on the living map of the wall.
Aridian pointed at it, signaling to Nina, Aurora and Hope which of the multiple moving dots Marcus meant. As if they hadn’t been staring at this massive map for weeks and were not perfectly aware of where they stood. Of precisely which cellholt they had to intercept.
“Careful with that finger,” snapped Marcus. “If you move a vessel by accident, we will have to wait another five bloody weeks for this big one to pass underneath. And I will have plenty of time to cut your balls slowly during that time.”
“Savage.” Aridian flinched but quickly put both hands in his pockets.
Hope looked around the crowded room. Some courtrades were rearranging the weapons on their belts, mainly a good-quality assortment of knives and daggers, but also the most loved one by them: a dark metal semicircle that appeared sharp on both ends. Hope had observed them these past couple of weeks and still hadn’t figured out how did their hands not bleed to death when handling these weapons. Every courtrade had their own “crois”, they called it, and looked after them as if they were part of their own body.
Hope adjusted her own belts full of daggers. The ones at the waist and under her breast. The ones on each thigh. She also checked the daggers hid in each boot were tucked in nicely.
These learned, unconscious movements comforted her. They felt as natural as breathing. As natural as being always alert, aware of any danger nearby. Always ready to strike.
Hope would probably never return to Verdania. She was not sure if she would even be alive after confronting her father. But at this point, Hope didn’t care. If he took her down, she would be ready to take him down with her. Even if it was the last thing she did in this damned place of a world.
Leaving this island was leaving her past behind. Leaving behind the biggest part of herself. What she had learned and been during these twenty-four dangerous years of her life. Ironically, leaving it was probably even more risky than living in this place where only killers survived.
“Everyone steady now,” Marcus’ grave voice sounded across the room, everyone focusing their eyes on him and shutting up. Hope saw the cellholt almost at the intersection where Marcus would push the vessel on the living map, redirecting it to the one under the quarters. “Jessica, ready to sound the bell in thirty seconds.”
A middle-aged woman with short dark hair, Marcus’ third in command, was kneeling next to the opening of the tunnel, a black bell on her hand as she looked with determination at Marcus, awaiting his order.
Hope knew the ladder inside the tunnel was full of courtrades ready to pass the supplies they needed for the five-week journey as soon as they obtained the control of the waholt. In order to do so, four of the most experienced and lethal courtrades were waiting for the bell to sound before jumping into the vessel and stopping the approaching cellholt.
“Fifteen seconds,” Marcus said, his index closing into the intersection of blue lines as the dark dot in the living map approached it.
They had practiced most part of the process a few times these past days. How to move supplies down the tunnel passing them from one person to another, the precise order in which they would descend, if the bell was heard from down the tunnel. They had practiced all kinds of things. Except the most important part: intercepting a large cellholt full of roixers, stopping it in the middle of a vessel before the roixers raised the alarm, entering the cellholt and killing said roixers.
“Three, two, one. Bell!” Marcus shouted as he pushed the vessel with the dark moving dot in it towards the one right underneath the courtrades’ quarters.
The silence and tension in the tunnel and the control room gave Hope goosebumps. She felt the usual adrenaline rush before a kill. Except this time it wasn’t her turn. There were courtrades down there risking their lives.
The feed of three different cameras on the screens in front of Marcus showed the blind spot where four courtrades were now standing in a line in front of a fast-approaching cellholt, the loud noise of the vehicle emanating from the tunnel. As one, the courtrades held their hands up.
Shadows filled the vessel, only thick darkness visible on the feeds of the cameras. A thundering noise came from the tunnel, the only sign that the cellholt had stopped.
“Here it is.” Marcus touched a button on the control panel, the feeds now showing sources of warmth: the five bodies of the roixers moving quickly, grabbing their weapons, one of them running towards the spot where the alarm that would inform the Roix Reigner of any incidents was.
Hope did not even hear a sound from the courtrades. She only knew six more were now jumping on top of the cellholt because that had been the plan. A breaking sound came through, followed by the whispered confirmation by Marcus, “We’re in.”
The five bodies of the roixers stopped dead on the feed, as if the screens had frozen. The courtrades were not anywhere on the screens, Hope realized with cold sweat down her spine.
A second later, the roixers fell to the floor, their bodies slowly vanishing from the screens as the warmth left their bodies. “And they’re out.”
Excited shouts and claps came from the vessel. The courtrades in the tunnel were banging the metal ladder as if they were applauding, the people in the control room hugging each other or clapping their hands.
“You lot stop banging the fucking ladder before it falls down!” Marcus shouted down the tunnel, a nervous grin on his face. “Someone tell the assholes in the cellholt to take those shadows away. We have work to do!”
Pressing a button again, Marcus stared at the screens as the darkness went away and a cellholt without a roof was visible again, ten courtrades inside the cellholt, smiling and showing the middle finger to the camera they knew Marcus was looking at. One of them shouted, “You’re welcome, boss!”
Hope could have sworn that silver lined Marcus’ eyes as he tilted his head back, roaring with laughter.
As if reading Hope’s mind, Aurora asked, looking around, “Are you sure this is the biggest cellholt they have?”
“It is,” Marcus looked at her as if she had insulted him. “So be thankful.” He continued analyzing the small clone of the living map that the vehicle had built in at the front cabin, where the drivers sat.
Aurora spun around in a full circle, as if trying to find some hidden part of the cellholt that she had missed. She shook her head in desperation as she got closer to the corner where Hope and Nina were sitting on some of the food crates, silently whispering, “This place is going to start smelling soon.”
Hope chuckled and quickly turned that into a fake cough. The last thing she wanted was to piss Marcus off when they had to be stuck in a small space with no exit for five weeks. She lowered her voice. “I bet it will smell in a week.”
Nina was looking through the crystal wall on the side of the cellholt, already in motion as they were moving through the vessels. The sea was dark and clear, nearby fishes and other sea creatures a blur at their speed. She shook her head as she said, “No way, I give it two days. There are more than twenty of us in here.”
“Twenty-five passengers. I can’t believe he has actually taken all these people with him. It just makes things way more complicated.” Aurora scratched the scar on her neck distractedly.
Hope nodded, biting her bottom lip. They still did not know why Marcus needed twenty-one courtrades in Thyria on top of him and why he was so desperate to get there that he had planned this for over two decades. But he hadn’t asked for details of their mission to get there, so they hadn’t asked him either. Hope preferred it this way.
Nina crossed her arms over the tight, black leathered clothes that the courtrades had given to all of them. The ones they had been using since they got to Cralia and ended up in their quarters. “Not only because of the space, but also the food and water all of us are going to consume in such a long time.”
Because right now, five weeks seemed like a very long time. But precisely that was what five courtrades seemed to arrange at the other end of the cellholt. The daily rations of tinned food and water pouches assigned to each of them. The walls were full of shelves, probably used to transport stock and supplies across the islands, so that was helpful.
Along a whole side of the cellholt, another group was piling blankets on top of the crates they had brought in. Some were carefully drilling on the glass walls and ceiling, placing hangers where they hung hammocks from. They would sleep in set timed shifts, never more than eight people at a time, so that they would be ready should any incident occur, and also to occupy less space.
On the other side of the cellholt there were three small closed cabins: a washroom, a lavatory and a changing room. All the privacy they would get here.
Hope was not worried about the lack of privacy or not having even her own sleeping space, but a shared one. She was already missing the fresh air, though. All the previous days in the quarters of the courtrades, she had missed it too, not daring to go outside should any roixers see them. She missed the sound of the wind while she stared at the movement of the leaves on the trees. The sound the squirrels made when they climbed and jumped and the wings of the birds flapping. She would miss her buddy, the one that had visited so many times since she had memory.
All she had taken with her from home were her weapons. Everything that had ever mattered in order to be safe. All that would ever matter, Hope thought as she closed her eyes and let her body feel the engine of the cellholt taking them across the Radel Sea.