Chapter 28
TINK
Women line the walls of the car. Most are hunched over, hands shackled in front of them, but some have fallen over onto the floor. There are dozens of them, all unconscious. As my vision adjusts, I recognize them, not by their faces, but by their wings. Broken and tattered, like mine.
The Nomad and I share a look.
“No,” he says, reading the grief in my expression. “I didn’t know. They must’ve panicked after the shortages,” he murmurs. “Decided to move them elsewhere.”
I study the nearest faerie—a woman with light brown skin, long silky black hair, and hollow cheeks. Her translucent wings resemble a torn kite. Strings dangling. Edges ripped.
“We need to move on,” the Nomad says softly.
I ignore him, reaching toward her, until he grabs my wrist.
“If you startle her, she’ll scream.”
I shake my head. I don’t have time to explain that girls like this have forgotten how to scream at unwanted touch. So I simply brush my fingers across her forearm. She stirs, but doesn’t wake.
I jump to my feet, searching frantically around the room for a key.
“They’re not going to keep a key in the same room where they keep the prisoners,” says the Nomad. For once, there’s nothing condescending in his tone.
I ignore him, searching the room anyway.
Finally, when I find nothing, I hold out my palm.
“What is it that you want?” he asks, but I don’t have time to explain.
So I grab his jacket and slip my hand into the inside pocket.
His lips flicker ever so slightly at my touch, but I ignore him.
Finding a leather pouch, I yank it out and open it, revealing a set of lock picks, then start working on the first faerie’s lock.
It takes me several minutes, the seconds measured by the tapping of the Nomad’s foot.
Finally, her chains come free and clatter to the floor. I start on the next one.
“Tink,” the Nomad says, his voice a warning. “At this rate, it’s going to take you hours to let them all go. We don’t have hours. Truth be told, we don’t even really have minutes.”
I don’t want him to be right. Can’t stand for him to be right.
Not when I can feel in the numbness of my wings what these girls have gone through.
Who knows for how many years, and for how many years longer they might suffer if I leave them?
Will they spend more of their lives as prisoners than they ever did free?
But the Nomad is right.
We don’t have time to release all of them. I don’t even really have time to unlatch another set of bonds, not just for our sake, but for theirs as well.
We’ll be at the train station before I can get all of them undone, and even then there’s always the chance the Company comes through to check on them before then.
I rush to the Nomad and search through his pockets.
“Are you intending on making a habit of that?” he asks, sounding perfectly content with the idea.
I pull out the notepad and quill and get to writing.
I press the note into the hand of the one faerie I managed to unbind, shaking her softly. Her eyes flutter open and look as if they might close again, so I shake her harder. She startles, confused, but I press a finger to my lips.
Then I hold the note up in front of her face. At first, I worry she can’t read, but her eyes scan it deftly.
She nods, then looks down at her unbound wrists, tears filling her eyes as she whispers, “There are several of us who used to earn our bread by breaking into houses,” she says. “I’ll release those first. They can help with the others.”
I turn to the Nomad and sign, More.
He makes a face that to me, looks as if he’s trying to decide whether to lie about the number of lock picks currently on his person. Instead, he rolls his eyes, groans, and produces five more sets, handing them to the faerie.
“Thank you,” she whispers, but the Nomad has no patience for accepting her gratitude.
“Come on, then,” he says, gesturing toward the door. “Before you forget what we came here to do.”