Just a nightmare, she told herself. Cassian isn’t dead. He can’t be.
If he hadn’t survived the torture, she would sense it, she just knew. And yet the ominous feeling of the dream didn’t leave her. She pressed a hand to her throat, strangled by guilt. She’d seen Cassian strapped down and tortured. For all she knew, he really had died. And wouldn’t she be just as much to blame as if she’d fired that rifle?
She picked up the crumpled paper, smoothing it out.
The Gauntlet will take everything from you. It searches for weaknesses and exploits anything it finds. You say you love this Kindred Warden; think hard about who you care about. The Gauntlet will test you on it—it tested me. It defeated me. Now I have nothing. And you are asking me to revisit that dark time—a heavy request.
Prove first that you deserve my help.
Cora looked up into the rafters, but Willa was long gone. What had changed the chimpanzee’s mind? The display of telekinetic abilities? Maybe it was the salve too. In a place like Armstrong, a selfless gift—even a small one—carried a lot of weight.
All the rest of that night, Cora stayed up, awake with the possibilities. Back home, she’d had to prove herself too. For her first few weeks in Bay Pines, she’d tried hard not to be noticed, to keep to herself, but it hadn’t made a difference. Word had gotten around that she was a rich kid, and the other delinquents threatened to beat her up in the cafeteria bathroom unless she transferred commissary funds to their accounts. It had been her roommate, Queenie, who’d finally agreed to help her. Queenie had taught her how to fight back. How to time her movements so a guard was always near. How to cheat at cards. Of course, it was prison, and so Queenie wanted something in exchange—but not commissary funds.
You have a real gift, Queenie had said, reading through Cora’s notebook. Not everyone can do this. Write songs like this.
It’s just some lyrics, Cora had said.
It isn’t. It’s the beauty and the pain. The darkness and the hope. Queenie had picked up a pen. I feel all that too, especially in this place, but I don’t know what to do with those feelings. Teach me to put those feelings into words, and I’ll teach you to defend yourself.
A deputy came in, searching the crowd of slaves, and pointed at her. Cora forgot about her deal with Queenie. She crumpled Willa’s paper and stuffed it into her shirt.
“Ellis wants to see you,” the deputy said, then kicked Rolf awake. “Both of you.”
Cora blinked around the tent at the slumbering bodies of the other slaves, only their tattered clothes for cover, each other’s arms as pillows. She caught sight of a hairy leg hanging from the far rafters—Willa’s. Whenever they got off of this moon, Cora promised herself, they were taking that chimp with them. She’d proven her worth to Queenie, and she could prove herself to Willa too.
The deputy prodded them with his rifle. “Up. Now.”
Rolf winced as he stood, shaking out his muscles. Cora followed them across the tent. Outside, the desert night was still warm. The sun was just starting to rise in the east, casting a purplish light over the ground. Heat from the sand radiated up in undulating waves that blurred the mountains. Cora paused and closed her eyes, breathing in the fresh air. On the horizon, the Kindred’s transport hub loomed like a dark shadow.
“Move,” the deputy ordered.
THE DEPUTY LED THEM around the edge of the slave barracks tent, and Cora nearly stumbled in surprise: the vast plains beyond the tent encampment, usually empty, were now filled with a fleet of ships. There had to be fifty. In the faint starlight, their identical sleek white hulls glistened. A masked, uniformed flight crew stood at attention beneath each ship. A veritable army of hundreds.
“Those look like the illustrations of Axion ships from the picture book,” Rolf whispered.
“Yeah, but look at the crews,” she said. “They’re hunchbacked. It’s a Mosca army.” She gave him a meaningful look and then mouthed, “Bonebreak?”
Rolf’s eyes widened. “You think he stole all those ships?”
“Inside,” the deputy ordered, holding back the flap to Ellis’s command center tent.
Cora stepped into a tented room that was blessedly cool. Next to her, Rolf sighed with relief at leaving the heat. The tent reminded her of something out of a fairy tale, with its big pillows on the floor, oil lamps flickering on poles, low tables laden with bowls of water and flowers.
Ellis sat on an elevated platform that surrounded a crackling fire pit. She was bent forward, talking to someone out of view behind a canvas curtain. Nok sat cross-legged on the floor nearby, still wearing her apron to hide her baby bump. She’d bathed, and her hair was soft and loose. She caught sight of Cora and Rolf and gave them a reassuring nod. There was even a fresh streak of pink dye in her hair, which ruffled in the breeze.
Breeze?
Cora looked around for the source and nearly laughed.
Standing behind them, shaded in the corner, was Leon. He was shirtless, wearing blue satin pants, fanning the room with an enormous paper fan.
“Bring them here,” Ellis said, glancing in their direction. “Put them in that corral.”
The deputy prodded her in the back toward a small, fenced-in ring like one used for holding cattle. From here, she could finally see Ellis’s companion.
She grinned.
Bonebreak!
She’d never imagined she’d be so happy to see the hunchbacked Mosca who had almost gotten them killed. Maybe the Mosca weren’t as bad as she’d first imagined. Bonebreak hardly looked like himself now. His dented, dingy shielding had been replaced with gleaming white armor that matched the ships outside. He reclined on an enormous pile of pillows, empty platters of food sprawled around him, massaging his belly with a gloved hand. Behind him, Anya and Mali stood at attention like servants. They had some sort of Mosca shielding sewn to their thumbs but otherwise looked unharmed.
Mali gave her the slightest hint of a nod—otherwise pretending they had never met.
Cora closed her eyes and thought, Anya, can you hear me?
The girl’s big eyes snapped to Cora.
Bonebreak is enjoying this way too much. Anya’s sarcastic voice projected into her head. We couldn’t afford to buy a new ship—the best we could do was a holo-projector. The army outside and the fleet of ships are only holograms to make Ellis think we’re more powerful than we are. We need to hurry up before Ellis’s deputies figure that out.
Cora glanced at Ellis—if the sheriff could levitate guns with her mind, there was a chance she could read telepathic messages too. But Ellis didn’t even glance at them.
Once we free you all, Anya continued, you, Nok, and Rolf will come with me to Drogane. Mali and Leon will sneak back to the station to get Cassian.
Cora gave a slight nod.
“These are the youngest humans I have,” Ellis said, her words tense, as though she hated every moment in Bonebreak’s presence. “And that one there, with the fan, as well.” She motioned to Leon. “He’s been nothing but trouble. Refuses to bow. Refuses to sweep. You can have him for half price. Call it a peace offering.” She looked around as though just remembering something. “Oh, and there’s another young one.” She turned to one of her deputies. “Get Dane.”
Cora tried to hide her surprise.
“What about that one?” Bonebreak pointed to Nok casually. “She looks young.”
Ellis rubbed her chin, finger tapping on the badge soldered to her cheek. “That one would cost you extra. She’s become quite a favorite among my deputies.”
“I’ll pay you well for her.”
The dep
uties returned with a sleepy-eyed Dane, whose hair was mussed. He stopped cold when he saw the other teenagers herded together in the corral.
“What’s going on?” he said, but Ellis nodded to a deputy, who silenced Dane with a rifle butt to the jaw. Dane cried out as the deputy opened the corral gate and prodded him in with the others.
“Wait!” Dane said, gripping the corral bars. “You can’t sell me to this . . . creature. I’m a deputy. I—”
“You’re a traitor, is what you are,” Ellis said. “And a mutineer. Or didn’t you think I’d find out that you’ve been whispering to the mine guards about how I’m getting old and soft? How it’s time for a replacement?”
Dane’s face went white.
Ellis smiled darkly. “You’re lucky that I haven’t put your head on a spike in front of the sheriff’s office as a warning to other would-be mutineers.”
Dane turned to Cora with wide, fearful eyes.
“Did you hear that?” he whispered. “She’ll kill me. You have to take me with you.”
Cora noted the desperation in his voice with a certain amount of satisfaction. She’d once begged Dane for help, and now he was doing the begging. But as much as she wanted to tell him to screw off, she hesitated. For what it was worth, Dane had truly cared about Lucky. The grief in his eyes hadn’t been an act. And his words still stung her—that anyone who got too close to her wound up dead.
Cora nodded reluctantly to Bonebreak, a signal for him to include Dane. She hoped she wasn’t making a mistake.
“That means our negotiations are over, Mosca,” Ellis snapped. “I’ve made you my offer, and your smell is starting to make me sick.”
“Likewise,” Bonebreak said, standing theatrically and brushing the crumbs off the glistening white shielding over his red jumpsuit. “My fleet and I will be most pleased to be gone from this reeking moon of yours. I would say it’s been a pleasure doing business with you, but it hasn’t.”