Chapter 5
Chapter five
X Marks the Spot
Our swords clashed, the clang of metal echoing through the yard outside our home. Elena mounted an aggressive attack, as she always did. She had natural strength and enough quickness to get herself out of overcommitments…most of the time.
This time, she lunged so hard that she lost her balance, and I found an opening, smacking my blade against her straw-padded chest.
“Ouch!” she cried. Dull blade or not, a rod of steel never feels good.
“You overcommitted,” I said. “Let’s go again.”
Elena grunted and reset, a scowl on her face. She didn’t like to lose.
I’d been training her to duel since she could pick up a wooden training sword.
If she ever found herself cornered and alone in the city, I wanted her to stand a chance.
Lately she had gotten quite good. She’d nearly powered out of that last jam with sheer strength alone.
It was the nuances she still needed to learn.
We clashed swords again. This time, she held back and didn’t overcommit, but her eyes were on my sword and not on me—another of her typical weaknesses. So I feinted left, and when she moved in that direction, I swung my sword for the killing shot, and—
Somehow she parried my strike, following up with a quick counterstrike, her sword smacking my shoulder.
“How in the dust did you do that?” I asked in utter shock.
Elena smiled widely, enjoying herself way too much. “First of all, I know that trick you do when you think I’m watching your sword. I saw it coming.”
“So you faked watching my sword as a diversionary tactic?”
“Yep,” she said, her wide smile somehow getting wider, perhaps a little evil.
“Elena, that’s amazing!”
“I thought so.”
“You said ‘first of all.’ What’s the second thing?”
“You had that look.”
“And what look is that?” I asked.
“The one you get when you’re thinking about a man you fancy.”
Did I? I supposed she was probably right.
Since that afternoon, my mind had been a jumble of thoughts, including ones regarding how I’d get to the Bleeding Oak.
But the infuriatingly handsome stranger had indeed occupied much of my attention, not to mention the ghost of the golden-eyed thief.
I was up to my neck in men. Anyway, it was a good enough deflection to keep her from asking more probing questions.
“Guilty as charged,” I said with a laugh.
“So you really were wooing some man this afternoon,” Elena said, looking a little disappointed. “And here I thought you were off on some grand adventure.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” If she only knew. But of course I couldn’t tell her.
We finished her lesson with little more conversation.
Later, we had a simple dinner of cured meat, cheese, and freshly baked bread from the local bakery. After we cleaned up, I gathered my supplies, ready to head to the Bleeding Oak.
As I snuck toward the door, Elena looked up from the book she was reading by the fire. “Where are you off to, Cas?”
“Off to run some errands,” I said, not meeting her gaze. I didn’t like lying, but it was for her safety. If the Royal Guard were ever to catch me, I didn’t want them coming after her, so the less she knew, the better.
“Very well. Have fun. And I’m not the least bit curious about the mysterious things you do wearing your all-black clothes and carrying your little bag of tools.” She gave me a knowing smile, then waved me off. “Go on. I’ll be fine on my own.”
I sighed. “Based on how smart you seem to be, I don’t doubt that you’ll be fine. Good night, Elena.”
“Good night, Cas. Don’t let thoughts of men distract you too much during your errands,” she said, the last word dripping with sarcasm thick as honey.
Sometimes Elena’s keen observations were downright infuriating. When had this girl turned into a young woman, and a clever one at that?
I shook my head, then snuck off into the night, sinking into the shadows.
The last rays of sunlight licked the edges of the sky, casting the clouds in a golden hue. By the time I arrived at the center of the Citadel Garden, the Bleeding Oak formed a stark silhouette against the deep-purple sky.
The guard I had scouted earlier was still on duty, still displaying the same weakness.
Beyond him, the wrought-iron fence topped with razor-sharp spikes barred entry to the tree.
From my pack, I took out a glove coated in Wildwood sap and a piece of Vanara silk, which rivaled chain mail in puncture resistance.
I waited for my moment to strike. The guard turned early, not completing his entire circuit, just as he had done this afternoon. I raced out of the shadows and ran for the fence, my boots barely whispering against the stone.
With a leap and one grab of my sticky glove, I scaled the slick iron fence.
In a single motion, I threw the Vanara silk over the spikes on top and slipped over them unscathed, dropping to the grass without a sound.
But as I grabbed for the silk, the edge caught on a sharp spike.
No matter how I pulled and wriggled the silk, it wouldn’t come free.
There was no time to climb up and free it. The guard was turning around, and I had only a moment to act before he saw me.
Reaching into the pocket on my belt, I grabbed a small pebble and lobbed it over the fence, and it landed on the pathway in the opposite direction. The guard spun around. “Who’s there?”
With only a moment to act, I climbed the fence, snapped my wrist to free the silk from the spike, then raced for the cover of the tree. A half breath later, I was crouched in the shadows of the Bleeding Oak as the guard continued on his rounds.
My pulse hammered in my ears. That had been too close. Maybe this whole thing was foolish. Was the risk worth it? After all, getting caught here meant more than a beating or a night in the stocks. It might mean death or a life sentence in the Pyrehold prison. It meant leaving Elena alone.
For a moment, I considered simply climbing back over the fence and forgetting this whole thing.
But I had made it this far, and quitting now would mean I’d taken all these risks for nothing.
I owed it to myself to at least see this trial to the end.
So I started to climb to see where fate would take me.
The tree’s generous boughs made navigating up the spine of the stately old oak as easy as climbing a ladder. Still, the bark bit into my palms, and sap stuck to my fingers. On more than one occasion, I froze as the guard walked by on patrol.
A splash of red caught my eye. In the middle of a hefty branch was an X carved in the same flowing script as the writing on the parchment. The thrill of discovery, that rush of endorphins, rippled through me, and I knew that this was something only a select few had ever seen.
I inspected the mark, analyzing the shape of the broad red strokes.
The two slashes were not perfectly balanced.
The upper-right point of the X was more pronounced than the others, its end tapering to an arrow that pointed directly up the branch.
I followed it. Ten feet up, there was a hole bored into the limb.
I reached into the hole, expecting a note or some kind of clue, but it was empty. Had a previous recruit taken the clue and not replaced it?
Frustrated, I sat down on the limb. I couldn’t climb down empty-handed. There had to be more here.
A knot in the limb dug into my rump. As I shifted to avoid it, a splash of moonlight shone through the hole, which I could now see went all the way through the limb.
I pressed my face to the bark, the smell of sap sharp in my nose.
For a moment, only a circle of black was visible.
Then light filtered through and framed an image so perfectly centered that it couldn’t be anything but intentional.
The Royal Crypt stood atop the lone hill in the Kingsrest Cemetery—the final resting place of Queen Amara, the Bleeding Oak’s namesake.
The hole didn’t contain a clue. It pointed to the next clue.
A laugh nearly escaped my throat, half wonder, half dread. Was this what the Trials were all about? Upping the stakes and seeing how far I would go to chase this foolish dream?
Entering the tomb would make climbing this tree seem like a task for a child. Going in directly was out of the question. The Royal Guards surrounding the perimeter would cut me down in seconds flat, and there would be far too many on patrol to sneak past.
But there was another way in that only members of the Underworld knew of and few would dare attempt—the mazelike catacombs that stretched for miles below the city.
Every thief in Analon knew of the voracious bone rats that could swarm you and strip you of all your flesh in no time.
And while most of the tales were probably exaggerations, one fact was indisputable: few who went far into the catacombs came back out alive.
I wondered yet again if that was a risk worth taking.