Chapter Thirty-Six. Tinman
THIRTY-SIX
Tinman
There’s darkness in the tunnel, but at the bottom, just below the ladder …
… fresh footprints. Two sets, human.
I shut the torch off and straighten. Cleo is beside me, Faos in front of me. His soldiers are fanned out just beyond the shed.
To Faos I say, “Fly over the wall. Spread out. If they’re out of the tunnel, they won’t be far off.”
He nods and disappears outside.
To Cleo I say, “Stay here.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s close quarters down there and last time I slunk into the dark after this stupid girl, I was stabbed.”
She scowls at me, crosses her arms over her chest. “You brought me all this way to leave me here at the end? What am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“I’m not staying.”
For a girl who was afraid of her own voice, she sure has a hell of a lot to say now.
“Suit yourself.”
I climb down the ladder and flick on the torch again. Saturated orange light fills the darkness.
The tunnel is just tall enough for me to stand upright, barely wide enough to spread out my arms. I’m not claustrophobic, but it’s hard not to feel buried alive down here.
Cleo scrambles down the ladder behind me and hits the dirt with an umph. In the tunnel, she looks just as small as she is. She can barely reach the ceiling.
We start forward. The tunnel curves slightly ten feet ahead so I can’t see to the other end. If it goes below the wall and out the other side, it can’t be a long tunnel. There would be very little use for it to keep going beyond the wall.
“You won’t hurt her, will you?” Cleo’s voice rises up out of the dark.
“She’s supposed to be delivered alive. Witch’s orders.”
Her breath of relief is unmistakable behind me. I would just as soon Dorothy be dead, but I do what I’m paid to do. The man she’s with, whoever he is, won’t fare so well. He’s dead on sight.
We reach the curve in the tunnel and I slow, gesturing behind me to stop Cleo too.
I peek around the bend and find only darkness beyond. I suspect they’re out if they were here at all.
“What will you do once you’ve delivered Dorothy to the witch?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
Truthfully, I haven’t. I’ve been trying to release Gabriel for so long it’s practically consumed my every waking moment.
That and avoiding our other brother, and our mother, at all costs.
Because if I came face-to-face with either of them, I would be confronted with the question of whether or not I had the courage to kill them.
I am who I am today because of the two of them.
They deserve to die by a thousand whacks of my blade.
And yet …
A discordant pressure forms in my chest in the place where my heart used to be. Without it, killing is easy, love hard, but love can exist in the mind as much as the heart and sometimes my mind gets in the way.
I can remember a time when we were brothers, when no one could tear us apart.
But he’s proven over and over again that he will always choose himself. And with Gabriel forsaking our mother, no longer the favorite, our other brother has taken the reins.
I don’t have to guess whose side she’s on.
“Do you think the witch will kill Dorothy?” Cleo asks.
I come to an abrupt stop. Cleo slams into me.
“You are overly concerned with people not dying. It’s irritating.”
“You’re irritating,” she grumbles.
I trudge forward. “I don’t know why she’d kill her when it’d be easier for me to do it.”
“Have you stopped to ask yourself why she wants Dorothy so badly?”
My pace slows. “Why do you think she wants her?”
“I asked you first.”
I sigh. “A girl doesn’t fall from the sky often.”
“No, one doesn’t.”
“Especially not a girl who can kill a Cardinal Witch.”
“Yes.”
“But if the West was concerned about the girl’s ability to kill witches, why risk her own life?”
“A working theory is she wants the girl to kill the other Cardinal Witches so only she remains.”
I stop again, but Cleo catches it this time and comes to a stop beside me.
“What is it?” she asks.
If the West really wanted the other witches dead, that would include the South. Fucking Glinda.
“And if she does?” I ask Cleo. “Do we care?”
“You’re truly asking me for my opinion?”
“Yes.”
She thinks for a second. I overheard the innkeeper telling Cleo not to doubt what she knows. I haven’t looked very hard at who she is, what she might be. But a part of me has wondered if there is more to this East Ender than meets the eye.
I’m realizing I might trust her intuition more than I’m willing to admit.
“My opinion…” Cleo starts, her gaze unfocused and faraway.
“I think the Cardinal Witches have had lots of time to right the wrongs of the royal family and the war that destroyed so much of Oz. And they haven’t.
They’ve only made things worse. They’ve exploited the citizens of Oz at every turn.
So if they aren’t going to fix Oz and protect its people, then they need to step aside and let someone else do it. ”
The conviction in her voice makes the hair on the back of my neck stand.
“Perhaps we are more alike than we first realized,” I tell her.
She glances up at me. Surprise pinches between her brows. “We are nothing alike.”
“If you say so.”
I turn back to the tunnel, back to the mission at hand.
Not surprisingly, Cleo follows.