Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
GWENNA
And suddenly, we’re on our way.
First leg: business class, Boston Logan to London Heathrow.
Seven hours in the soft beige twilight of the air above a dark Atlantic ocean, the nicest airplane I’ve ever been on: lie-flat seats, five-course meal, champagne and hot towels and a zip-up case of tiny amenities.
I’m seated next to Kai, across from Kingston, Cal and Lanz behind us, Luther somewhere apart from us all.
Kingston turns on his reading light and buries himself in something; Kai sleeps, curled on his side, headphones on, fingers wrapped through mine like he’ll never let go.
I stare out the window.
Then: wheels down, London. Bright and loud, already midmorning, lots of joking and jostling for bags as Lanz and Callahan jockey over who’ll carry my little black suitcase into the terminal while Kai yawns loudly and slips his arm around my waist under my massive parka; Kingston jogs to catch up as we descend the jetbridge and makes sure to ask if I had a good flight.
There’s customs, passport control, an extra-long wait in a featureless gray room to ensure the gear bags have all been securely checked through for the next flight.
A walk across a crowded terminal. Everyone a little bleary-eyed over white china cups of Nespresso in the airport lounge, all of them getting up constantly the moment I seem to need something, until it turns into a kind of competition, a scavenger hunt to see who can bring me the best little present: a packet of Haribo gummi bears, a crisp copy of the Financial Times, an array of vegetable slices swirled to look like flowers.
They’re nervous, I realize. That combination of travel fatigue and too much energy.
Finally, the 11:25 a.m. to Helsinki. A smaller plane, no business class: Lanz and Callahan offer me window or aisle—I choose window, always—and the next thing I know I’m waking up with an ache in my neck and Lanz’s coat over me like a blanket.
Finland. A country I’ve barely even considered, if I’m being honest, and a language I’m wholly unfamiliar with, I realize as signs sweep over and past me: aas in every other word, diacritics decorating vowels, very little I can parse on sight.
It feels colder here, even indoors, and the joking is gone now, replaced by all-but-wordless movements: for suitcases, passports, finding the way to the customs hall where we’re reviewed and stamped and then escorted to a small, auxiliary corridor—not towards the counter for Erikoismatkatavarat / Specialbagage, where I can see the hard-shell cases marked CALIBURN UNIVERSITY—ATHLETICS waiting diligently, but in another direction, around the bend of a featureless hallway to a door that reads Terveystarkastus / H?lsokontroll – Health Inspection.
I look to whoever’s nearest to me—Lanz. “What are we doing?”
“Medical screening, I think?” He squints. “TB, HIV…I forget what all it is.”
I frown. “Blood test?”
“Yeah.” Kai’s shrugging off his coat. “You know, in case we chop off a hand and bleed all over some innocent Finn.”
Kingston gives him a look.
“We’re foreign athletes in a contact sport,” he explains to me, taking off his own coat. “Bloodborne transmission isn’t likely, but it’s possible. It’s just part of our visa requirements in order to compete.”
“Oh.” I suppose that makes sense. I glance past him, at a window in the wall that looks into a tiled room of chairs, rolling carts, paper-covered exam tables, partitioned with mint-green curtains.
“Miss?” A round-faced man in a dark, collared uniform stops me. “Are you a competitor?” he asks in clear, almost tuneful English.
I shake my head. “I’m a…”
There’s absolutely no simple way to complete that sentence, is there?
“Tourist,” comes a deep voice from behind me. “Same as I am.” Luther Pendragon hands him a small dossier. “Affiliated, but not competing.”
The official nods, darts his eyes from Luther to me, and gestures for my passport, which I relinquish. Then he turns to Luther.
“The forms, please?”
“I can present them,” Luther says, stepping for the door. But the official deftly cuts in his path.
“Competitors only, I’m afraid,” he says. “To maintain integrity of the results.”
Luther’s jaw tightens. The official doesn’t so much as blink.
“The forms?” he asks.
Luther hands them over. The man smiles.
“I will process these. Just a moment.”
I stand, silent and a bit awkward, next to Luther as we wait. Through the glass, I watch Kingston on the exam table, sweater and shirtsleeve rolled up and arm extended as a masked male nurse in pale blue scrubs slides a needle in the crook of his arm.
Shuddering, I look away.
I hate blood.
When I open my eyes again, Kingston’s speaking with the nurse, frowning. He shakes his head. The nurse seems to repeat whatever he’d just said. Kingston shakes his head again, slowly. The nurse notes something on a clipboard.
Luther is following my gaze, I realize. He sidles to the door as Kingston comes out.
“Everything all right?” he says. “Was there some kind of problem?”
Kingston’s nostrils flare, but he nods, rolling down his sleeve. “Fine.”
A few more minutes and documents are returned, gear bags are located, and we are shuttled away over the tarmac as the sun sinks into violet.
The last plane is smallest and loudest.
Little hatch-steps up. Just six seats. Chartered, private, but no one’s basking in it—either they’re all used to it or they’re all focused on something else. Outside the windows is nothing.
And then we’re descending. The air heaves us, rolls the cabin left and then lets it fall right, as my stomach drops away inside me. I clutch the thick arm of my seat and feel the warmth of someone’s hand on mine—Callahan’s.
“I don’t like flying,” he murmurs. Eyes closed.
I ease my thumb over the edge of his hand, stroke it there.
“You should have said something,” I whisper back.
“I am. This is me saying something.”
His hand stays tense. The plane heaves again. I lean into him, see his jaw tight and his eyelids twitching.
“Sive vivimus, sive morimur, Domini sumus,” I whisper. “You know what one?”
“Sive vivimus, sive morimur, Domini sumus,” he repeats. Eyes still closed.
“Whether we live, or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”
“Right.” I put my other hand on top of his. “Sometimes…sometimes that makes me feel better. To think.”
He opens his eyes then, looks at me. Really looks at me.
"Gwenna," he says quietly. "When we land..."
"I know." My throat tightens.
Across from us, Kingston shifts in his seat. His reading light clicks on, illuminating his face—stern, focused. He's been listening.
"The moment we're on the ground," Kingston says, his voice low enough that Luther, dozing in the back, won't hear, “we’re on high alert. Understood? We have every reason to think they’re looking for a way to take us the four of us out. During the bouts, during training. They’ll make it look legitimate—a concussion, a blad strike—”
Kai, sprawled in the seat beside Kingston, cracks one eye open. “Or they won’t,” he says. “We’re practically in No Man’s Land. They don’t have to use fencing as a pretext if they just shove us off a cliff.”
“Which is why I’m saying to keep your heads,” Kingston says. “
The Grail. Me. The words hang unspoken.
Kingston leans forward, elbows on his knees. "But they don't know about you, Gwenna. That's the critical thing. As far as Moroslav is concerned, you're just our equipment manager. Same as before.”
"Are you sure?" The question escapes before I can stop it. “Won’t it be…strange that I’m here with you?”
Kingston shakes his head. “They invited us to bring others. Spectators. It’s a courtesy custom.”
“And we said no,” Kai adds, “because the logistics of bringing an entire Caliburn cheering section to a hunk of rock in the Finnish ocean were stupid complex. Which apparently they understood.”
I nod. Okay. I want to believe that.
"So you just...what? Let them try to hurt you?" My voice cracks.
“If that happens, we defend ourselves," Kingston says. "We fight and we win. If not, if they don’t do anything—and maybe they won’t—then we just proceed with the final as usual.”
“And win,” Lanz adds.
“It’s just three days.” Callahan’s hand is firm on mine, and I’m not sure whether he’s talking to me or to himself. “Just three days.”
“Either way, Gwenna,” Kingston says. “All you have to do is stay quiet and stay safe. The moment they suspect you're more than you appear to be—"
"They won't," Kai interrupts. "Because we're not giving them any reason to look twice at her.”
The plane gives another violent shudder.
Slam.
We land.
Outside, it is night—profoundly night. The airstrip is what feels like three feet from a cliff, to hear the sound of the waves, but it’s hard to see anything at all; the sky is black and the sea is black and the wind stings and smells like salt.
Around us are hills, swells of earth I can sense more than see, because the only real light is the blinking red of the airstrip—and then headlights, suddenly, blinding us all before revealing a truck, small cab and flatbed.
The lights flare off, and a figure disembarks, an electric lantern in one hand.
From inside a thick fur collar, Alexei Moroslav gives a broad smile. He extends a hand, and Kingston steps forward to shake it.
“Welcome,” Moroslav says, “to the edge of the map.”