5. Chapter Five
Chapter five
T he halls are still quiet as Blossom and I sneak out of the Warden’s office and down the hall.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to go back to our room?’ I’d asked Blossom just before cracking the door open, and she’d given me a mock stern look.
‘Firstly, I’m not going to miss out on meeting this friend you’re going to a hell of a lot of trouble for, and’—she’d pointed a finger at me—‘the Warden has now involved me too. So, no – not on your life, lovely.’
I gripped that finger and pulled her into the hall.
I still hold her hand now as we take the open hallway that wraps around the upper levels of the internal courtyard and creep towards the prisoners’ wing. In hindsight, we probably should have changed into our uniforms. But our running shoes are quieter on the stone than the sandals we normally wear. It’s not at all unusual for concierges to be visiting the prisoners’ wing, but out of uniform would encourage questions – innocent, legitimate questions – but ones I don’t know how to answer just yet.
The thumping in my chest reverberates through my whole body as we reach the entrance to the wing. Room 18 is towards the end, on the right-hand side. The trip down feels like an eternity and yet, before I can really comprehend, we are staring at the large, brass numbers on the door.
I take a deep, unsteady breath and ease the door open with my concierge key, slipping us both inside before Blossom shuts it again, and we both blink into the darkness. A faint, sharp whisper is the only sound I make out before I’m pressed against the door, something cold against the side of my throat.
Blossom squeaks beside me. A faint light comes up towards my face and the blade slowly drops away.
Fierce, baby-blue eyes lock onto mine and I release a fast exhale, my shoulders sagging a bit on the door. ‘Nix,’ he calls quietly, ‘you’d better get out here.’
River’s stare has grown more intense since I last saw him and I scan his face for a sign of his gentler self. Slowly, he takes a step backwards, giving Blossom – whose hands cover her mouth – a quick once-over.
Tucking the knife into his pants, River reaches behind her, swiping his hand along the wall. ‘Lights,’ he mutters, and the apartment blooms into view.
‘That’s some fucking welcome, Riv,’ I say, staring at Blossom before glaring at him.
He quirks a smile, turning back to her again like he didn’t see her properly before.
‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding.’
Nix’s voice is just how I remember, deep and a little gravelly, and I spin to the second bedroom door where he strides across the living room. I know the prisoner rooms are more opulent than ours, I’ve cleaned them enough times, but the layout is similar. Still, I can’t focus on the details of this one when Nix, broad and stocky Nix, is so close after all this time.
My feet unfreeze themselves and I launch into the arms that stretch out to greet me. Crushing me against him, Nix’s smell envelopes me. A musky wood scent that lies underneath the soap he’s used.
‘I thought I’d never see you again,’ he mutters into my neck, his voice cracking and driving tears to my eyes.
His normally dark, auburn hair is damp – from the shower, I assume – making it even darker. But it’s his slightly curved eyes that make my heart somersault over itself with memories and the deepest sense of home I’ve had in a long time. That deep, sparkling gold soaks me in when I pull back slightly and take his face in my hands. He and River are the personification of my childhood. But there’s no joy in his expression as I pull myself out of his arms.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asks, brows pulling together.
‘Me?’ I ask, blinking furiously as he remains silent. I glance at Blossom whose eyes are narrowed on Nix and River almost to the point of slits. ‘Well … I was waiting to be collected from here … by you.’ The confusion in my voice is clear even to me.
River lifts his chin in a way that makes me think something has just dawned on him. Nix rubs his face.
‘They didn’t tell me no one else came,’ he says. ‘Fuck, I gave them all the detail.’ His gaze finds mine, the gold of so many of my memories now clouded. ‘I would never have left you here, Lu. They said you’d be collected by someone else, I assumed Akira or Zale. I-I didn’t even know you were assigned here.’
I look between him and River, overwhelmed by their closeness and a desperate desire to know everything that’s happened since I last saw them. But the question of why they’re both here screams the loudest.
Until I register what Nix is saying: he thought someone else was going to collect me.
Meaning something changed and he didn’t tell me.
Didn’t check to confirm that I wasn’t going to be left here.
‘Don’t look like that, Lu,’ Nix says, his voice strained - a dead give away he knows exactly why I might be hurt.
‘Like what, exactly?’ I ask, lifting my shoulders in what feels like a very false show of nonchalance. ‘Like I thought my best friend didn’t collect me because something awful happened? Like I haven’t been worried sick since you didn’t show? Like I am now stuck in limbo in a life I don’t want because you didn’t show? Like my best friend decided to leave me here?’
My voice rises with each question I don’t leave space to be answered. At the same time, Nix’s shoulders drop lower and lower until he looks almost defeated.
‘Not to mention that something terrible must have happened for you to be sentenced—’ I cut myself off.
He – they – decided not to get me. Possibly so quickly he couldn’t tell me.
The Warden was expecting them.
Nix is clearly unhappy with the prospect of me staying here.
My head starts to spin.
‘How—’
‘The how doesn’t matter now, Lu,’ River says, cutting me off with a firm look at Nix before letting his gaze slide to Blossom’s again. ‘Are you going to introduce us?’
My cheeks tremble with the effort of holding back on demanding Nix tell me everything. That is one tactic that has never worked, and trying to force it with an audience will only make him clam up tighter. River holds out a hand to Blossom, his face full of suspicion, and she looks at me instead, eyes wide and questioning.
‘Sorry, Bloss … this is River,’ I say, barely sounding civil. ‘And he doesn’t normally hold knives to people.’ I glare at him again and he pulls an apologetic grimace.
Blossom walks past his outstretched hand and takes a seat on the large couch. Nix takes my elbow and I reluctantly let him lead me to sit next to him. I don’t bother introducing Nix to her, she’d have worked that out by now, but I do tell him and River who she is. Nix gives a tight smile even as the worry in the small crease between his brows doesn’t dissipate.
‘I’ve heard a lot about the “friend” you have here, this is her?’ he asks in a clear attempt to help River shift the subject along.
I nod slowly. We’re not allowed to name any other concierges in our letters or texts. My heart warms at having them in the same room, despite the circumstances, and I try not to resent the fact that Nix always wins me over in the end.
‘I need you to explain what’s going on,’ I say, looking between the brothers.
They share a look.
‘There’s not a lot we’re able to explain,’ River says, looking sideways at Nix. ‘The … magic they used on us before we came is not unlike what they do with the service contracts – the sensitive ones anyway. We can’t tell you why we’re here.’
I lean back on the couch, tiredness starting to take hold as my sleep deprived mind tries to understand what’s happening here.
‘We already know you’ve been sentenced to Vana and Traelen – the Chief of Staff – is investigating how you ended up here instead. Yet, somehow, the Warden knew you were coming here instead,’ I say quietly. They stare at me, neither confirming or denying, and I wonder if Claudius organised the shift in destination himself or is working with someone who did. ‘I also know I don’t believe you actually did whatever you’ve been accused of to get you sentenced to Vana.’
I drag myself forward on the couch, too restless to stay cocooned in the luxurious cushions that suck me in. Watching Blossom glance out the window at the lightening sky, I know we don’t have enough time here.
‘You’re in on this, too?’ River asks Blossom.
She gives him a long look. ‘I was … until you shoved a knife at the throat of my best friend.’ There’s a hint of steel in her voice and I wince. Not quite the introduction I was hoping for.
‘Shoved,’ River says evenly, ‘is a bit of stretch. Preparing to defend my brother and myself from two unexpected intruders is just common sense.’
He leans back on his part of the couch, resting an arm atop it, and folds one leg over the other. I look at where his ankle meets his knee. There’s a strap there and the glint of another blade.
Yesterday, I would have said I had no idea how they got them in here. Today, I am wondering if the Warden had a hand in that, too?
‘And it won’t happen again,’ I say on his behalf. ‘Nor will they hurt anyone else here Bloss, I know them. They’re not violent.’
She doesn’t look convinced.
‘What was your plan, Lu?’ Nix asks, shifting in his seat next to me.
My brows shoot upwards. My plan?
‘Well,’ I start hesitantly, the details feeling slippery in my mind, ‘on my way here, I was thinking I’d get you off the island by leveraging the Warden’s contact, and have your charges cleared.’ The three of them just watch me with variations of the same, expectant, expression. Nix’s face starts to creep into a grin as he seems to wait for me to come to the right conclusion. ‘Now, I’m realising there is something more that I’m not understanding but it seems you can’t – or won’t – tell me what that is.’ As the words leave me, the temperature of my blood seems to start rising. Nix left me here and he can’t even tell me why?
River looks sadly at me as Nix laughs. I bristle at the sound.
‘Correct,’ Nix says. ‘We can’t – and won’t – tell you anything, and you know nothing, which means you have no plan, Lu. No reason to be here. And every reason to return to your duty as your country requires of you.’
I feel more than see Blossom slowly look at me, as if she’s waiting to see how I take that comment, or if I will.
‘ No reason to be here ?’ I ask, staring at Nix’s irritatingly smug face. Something else simmers underneath it, but he is not getting out of this so easily. ‘How about the next year of my life, Nix? Is that reason enough? No. How about two of the people I’m closest to have been sentenced to fucking Vana ! Tell me you’d sit back and watch that happen to me?’
I exhale and I cross my arms. ‘Actually, you’d decide to leave me to it. But River wouldn’t,’ I say, looking at him instead, silently daring him to contradict me.
River sighs heavily, so much like he used to when he’d be stuck in the middle of Nix and me. ‘Lu, there are no charges that can be cleared,’ he says. ‘We either do what we came to this…establishment for and get out; or end up in Vana, current sentence or a new one. So Nix is right, that’s equivalent to no plan for you. You will have no part in what we’re doing here and neither of us will share anything that will endanger you, you know that.’
I search his face. There’s no joking there, not that I expect there to be. These two have always protected me, almost to the point of exclusion. I try not to dwell on that right now – not when it’s the first time I’ve seen them in years. I look across to the other lounge where Bloss wrings her hands together. I’d promised I’d help her start again when her service was finished. That’s two years away. And mine has been extended … indefinitely. My stomach falls as the idea of going home seems more and more like a dream. However Nix came to his decision to leave me behind, I know it wouldn’t have been lightly – even if I am still so mad at him I feel like screaming. And neither he or River seem to be in a hurry to get off the island. Quite the opposite. There is a determination in both of them to do ‘what they came for’.
Something I know from experience after experience I will not be able to talk them down from. The same as I wasn’t able to convince them jumping from their three-storey house before River’s wings were fully grown was a terrible idea.
The room is quiet for a moment and my mind fills with space. Space for more questions than answers.
‘How do you know the Warden?’ I ask them.
‘A connection from a previous duty,’ River says, his features full of meaning that feels just outside my grasp, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want to know.
‘So you know the Warden,’ Blossom says when River doesn’t continue, ‘and he was expecting you here, but you also need to do something at Vana before he can try to get you out again.’
She doesn’t pose it as a question and neither of them confirm. But there’s something in their faces that tells me she’s right. The pieces floating around in my mind were heading in the same direction. Blossom turns to me.
‘Their task at Vana is the same as ours – the Warden said as much. But that it would be faster and easier for us to do it now,’ she says.
Nix blanches. ‘You’re not to go anywhere near that place.’
‘Are there other things you’re supposed to do here, in addition to making contact with the Vanan prisoner?’ I ask, ignoring him. I can’t imagine what else they could be doing up here, as if trying to break out one prisoner isn’t enough. But he doesn’t answer which makes me think, yes, there’s more.
‘We know what’s required for Vana,’ I say slowly, reinforcing Blossom’s statement and swallowing away that it’s against all my instincts to do it. ‘We can help with that part – I can likely give, or access, information that prisoner needs to … fill in any gaps.’
Nix sighs heavily and takes my hand. ‘Lu,’ he says gently, ‘we talked about this in our letters. You’re supposed to be at home, living your life.’
Tears spring to my eyes unbidden and I try to blink them away.
‘Did you get your recommendation?’ he asks.
I sniff quietly. ‘The Warden said it would be ready for me after I was collected …’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says, pulling me closer and tucking me under an arm. The words strike home, feeling like they’re for so much more than my recommendation.
‘Where was it for?’ River asks.
‘Parliament,’ I say into Nix. His grip on me tenses and he curses.
River mutters something and I sit up, watching Blossom assessing us all.
‘I’m going to take a leap and say you were supposed to be their contact there – after you were done up here,’ she says to me.
It makes sense – that’s why the Warden wants me to find the Vanan prisoner. In addition to whatever reason he wants her out for, he wants me off the island to take up my recommendation in Parliament so I can … I don’t know. But my vision clears and I sit a little straighter. In all my time here, the Warden has never asked me for things I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do. And he’s certainly never put me in a position to compromise myself. If he feels that taking up my recommendation in Parliament is the best place for me – a place I can help him – I will do whatever I can to get there. Even if one of the suggested means is a bit more unusual, I trust his intentions.
The four of us look at each other for several moments until Blossom breaks the silence and stands. ‘We need to get to work.’
I blow out a breath. The thought of going back to my duty now, after I thought I was done, is … depressing. And now so much more complicated.
‘We’re not done here,’ I say, looking at Nix and River. ‘The Warden gave Blossom and me the task of working with Cortane, and he’s processing my recommendation. I intend to follow through with both of those things. I don’t know how well you know him, but I know him and the two of you. Claudius is finding a way off the island for me, and I know his plans for you will work, too. There’s no way he brought you here without something in place to get you out. As for the two of you – I know you’re not going anywhere until whatever else you came here for is done. So … you need to focus … and I’ll get Cortane to trust me as quickly as possible.’
And I will hope like hell they’re – we’re – not now all mixed up in something even more dangerous than Vana.
River and Nix look carefully at each other – a look they used to share when they thought I needed to be shielded from something. But I push the unease away and breathe into my faith in the Warden. He’s going to help us. I’m going to help the boys. We’ll be fine.
‘Outside of the people in this room,’ Nix says, ‘the only person you trust is the Warden, okay?’
Slowly, I stand with Blossom and look down at Nix. Something sad flashes across his face but I can’t quite tell what before he looks up at me.
‘I really don’t want you mixed up—’
‘It’s best we don’t let on that we know each other,’ I say across him. ‘The less attention from the other prisoners, the better. If Traelen has any sense you’re causing a … disruption here, he will accelerate the transfer to Vana.’
As Blossom and I wander to the receiving hall where another small transfer of prisoners has arrived, my eyes feel gritty as I look at the prison in a new light. I wasn’t supposed to be here anymore and I’ve found, overnight, the admiration I’d had for its beauty is starting to slip. I wonder if there is something that happens in one’s mind when they have finished the time they’d been given and it just refuses to accept a moment more.
I look up at the painting nearest to me, it’s one that often catches my eye on the way to the hall. A woman, draped in white fabric and lying on an almost equally white chaise lounge, gazes off into the distance. She’s probably meant to look serene. I can’t help but think she’s dreaming of all the other things she should be doing, could be doing.
There are only five prisoners in the receiving hall today. One of our smaller intakes, but not unusual given it’s only been a few days since the last official one and they are often months apart – and less than a day since Nix and River arrived. There has been a slight increase of the number of prisoners arriving here over the last year or so, but that’s not completely unusual depending on the political landscape and priorities at home. And sometimes they just need a break from the public eye.
The team that greeted them on the portal platform scatter, only three staying behind for the allocations, along with Blossom and me. Traelen scans the group, now dressed in their chosen outfits – a mixture of casual and more formal, but all opulent – and clears his throat.
‘Porter Mills,’ he calls out, and a man in a pale-orange, open-neck shirt steps forward, ‘instrumental in driving wealth creation for future generations and implementing Nuntainia’s first retirement reserves for all eligible citizens.’
‘Allysia,’ the Warden responds. Allysia nods politely to Porter and leads him from the hall.
‘Finn Archt,’ Traelen says, ‘recognised for special services to the Prime Minister and cross-border negotiations.’
‘Luka,’ the Warden says. His expression is warm when he looks at me but the tension that was apparent when I last saw him is still there, gently simmering under the surface, and I make myself turn away before Traelen notices as well.
I smile a welcome to Finn, a tall, very fit man with skin the colour of a night-time sky and hair to match. Deep charcoal eyes blink down at me. He doesn’t smile, but there’s no hostility there, either. Just assessment of one kind or another.
‘This way,’ I say as I walk him out, and back down the hall with the lounging woman in her gold frame.
‘I’ll take you to your room first,’ I continue, trying to sound as if all my attention is on him and not still whirling through my last proper conversation with the Warden and Nix and River. ‘Your belongings will have been delivered by now. You’ll have about thirty minutes there, and then I will show you the rest of the facility. Do you have a preference for what you’d like to see first?’
I glance sideways at him but he still doesn’t seem to react, just soaks in the surroundings. I let my own gaze travel over the stone hallway that runs above the internal courtyard and up to the open sky. It’s particularly blue today, with a smattering of fat white clouds. It’s not different to what it looks like most days but, when I take the time to take it in, it’s still breathtaking. Even if it feels a little tighter than it did yesterday.
‘Just my room is fine,’ Finn says.
I try not to jump at the sudden sound of his soft voice. For the first time in a while, I wonder why he’s really here. My first few prisoners intrigued me to no end, to the point I would dream about why they were here and the inability to ask them directly was torturous. Then they just became a blur of prisoner after prisoner and I let the duties of my role take focus, counting down to my own future instead of fixating on their pasts.
But Finn is different to others I’ve had before; he’s quietly self-assured, graceful, but without an ounce of obvious arrogance.
Not to mention the reason for Nix and River being here sits as an uncomfortable question at the forefront of my mind.
‘Of course,’ I say as we reach the prisoners’ wing.
Leaving him in his room, taking care not to look at Nix’s door, I head to the concierge breakout room. Until I can get more information on the Vanan prisoner and understand the Warden’s plans to get more than myself back to the mainland outside of a scheduled collection I need to fill my days with work again. Which means I have to get a handle on where things are up to and what needs doing.
On the back wall of our breakout room a large, glass board takes up most of the space. It’s filled with prisoner names, their allocated concierge and room number, as well as all manner of requests they have made and things that are outstanding. It also tracks the facility’s management like maintenance, and cleaning, and what events and activities we have planned.
I sigh as I scan the information on the board. It tells me so much, yet so little. I know every moment of the prisoners’ movements and whims while they’re here and yet I know almost nothing about my own situation. Like why the Warden wants me in Parliament? Who is this Vanan prisoner to him that he wants to get her out badly enough to risk everything? How does he know Nix and River, and what did they do to end up destined for Vana? And why did the Warden arrange for them to be here instead? Something Traelen will be actively trying to rectify.
How did Claudius do that?
How do I get myself into a role in Parliament outside the collection cycle without marking myself as ‘wanted’ if I take some sort of unsanctioned way home? And how do I do that without condemning Nix and River to end their lives on the other side of the island? Not to mention what would happen to Blossom?
Playroom request: Blossom reads the board next to Davorous – the prisoner she danced with at our recent feast.
My gut turns over at the repeated request. I have every faith the Warden’s position on moving us to the playroom will hold, but Davorous takes the denial less well each time.
Someone runs into the room and I spin, their fast pace startling me. Its presence in the serenity of the prison is very out of place.
‘Emeris,’ I gasp at his paling form. ‘What is it?’
His white vest hangs limply.
‘The Warden – I think he’s dead.’