The Gauntlet (The Cage 3)

“Please, Rolf,” Nok said softly.

He sighed. She could ask him to jump off a ten-story building and he’d do it.

The deputies lifted the flap higher, and Rolf reluctantly got to his hands and knees and disappeared under the tent flap into the darkness, the heavy fabric stirring up noxious smells. He pressed his sleeve over his mouth, crawling as quickly as he could. The stench of death was suffocating. Bodies brushed against his sides, but in the dark he pretended they were just statues. He finally found the platform. He felt along the edge until his fingers touched charred hair. Ellis’s body.

He recoiled.

Suppressing the urge to gag, he felt along the cadaver’s shoulder to her neck, then to the charred face. His fingers touched metal. He hissed and drew back—the edges were still hot. He had to dig his fingernails carefully into her cheek to free it. As soon as he had it, he crawled out of the tent as fast as he could and emerged into daylight, coughing, gagging.

The badge was slick with blood and singed skin from where he’d pried it from Ellis’s cheek. The metal wasn’t nearly as finely made as it had looked from a distance. This wasn’t anything Kindred made, that was for sure. Someone had roughly hewn this from whatever scrap metal was available on Armstrong.

“Here,” he said, handing it to Nok. He wiped his fingers off on his pants—he’d never missed soap and hot water more in his life.

Nok cradled the badge in her palm. There had been a time, Rolf knew, when just the smell of it would have made her retch. Now she ran her finger over it admiringly before passing it along to Keena.

But the old woman held up a hand, refusing to take it. “I don’t think you understand, Nok.”

Nok wrinkled her face. “Understand what?”

Keena exchanged a long look with Loren and Avery before turning back to Nok. “Dane thinks that whoever controls the badge controls Armstrong,” she said, “because that’s what the mine guards told him. But it’s only half true. The Kindred who oversee this place acknowledge the owner of the badge as sheriff; that’s the only person they’ll do business with. But the humans here don’t care about a scrap of metal. They care about tradition. Tradition that goes back generations, since Armstrong was first founded.”

Rolf eyed the badge in Nok’s hand. He was getting a bad feeling about this.

“What tradition?” Nok asked.

Keena picked up a piece of loose thread from the fallen canvas tent, stringing it through the badge as a makeshift necklace.

“Round up any deputies you don’t trust,” Keena said to Loren and Avery, “and take away their firearms. Especially the mine guards. They’ve been demoted. Tell the slaves they’ll be treated fairly now in return for fair work. The days of Armstrong being a dictatorship are over. There’s a new sheriff in town.”

Rolf let out an uneasy breath. Now he had a really bad feeling.

“I don’t get it,” Nok said. “Who’s the new sheriff?”

“Randall killed the sheriff before him,” Keena explained. “And Ellis killed Randall. That’s the tradition. Whoever kills the old sheriff becomes the new one.” She handed Nok the badge looped over string. “And you killed Ellis.”

Nok gaped.

“We’ll help you, all of us tent guards. We know this place. We know how to run it, how to improve it.” She coughed more, and Rolf wondered how long she could help before the sand-cough rendered her too ill. “But we can’t officially hold the title of sheriff. Only you can.”

The badge tumbled out of Nok’s hand. It landed in the dirt, where Rolf stared at the charred flesh at the edges. The reflected light stung his eyes, but he didn’t look away.

“Sheriff?” Nok sputtered.

Rolf glanced over his shoulder at Dane, who was hanging around just to the side, arms crossed, a nasty smirk on his face. Had he really sacrificed himself to make sure Cora got off the moon? Rolf raised his eyebrows as he realized that now that Dane knew the path toward leadership, he only had to do one thing to be sheriff—kill the current one.

Kill Nok.

And Rolf took his new role seriously: Father. Protector. He was damn sure not going to let that happen.

13

Cora

CORA STOOD OVER BONEBREAK’S shoulder, gazing at the ship’s view screen. “Is that Drogane?” she asked. It was hard not to be awed by the green-and-blue planet that filled the sky. It looked so similar to Earth, except the blue color of the water was two shades lighter, and the shapes of the continents were all different. Regardless, it made her heart ache with longing. Lyrics drifted into her mind.

Home is more than a house . . .

It’s more than a room . . .

Home means loved ones and . . .

“That’s Drogane, all right. It’s got a similar atmosphere to your planet, but the air has a higher nitrogen content. Swallow these—oxygen adjusters. You’ll be able to breathe.” He handed her three white pills, which she weighed in her hand hesitantly, then distributed to Anya and Willa. She swallowed her own down dry. Bonebreak began the procedure to slow the ship and then started muttering as he fumbled with the controls. “Damn Axion technology. Where’s the blasted . . . oh.”

The ship lurched sharply to the left, and Cora clutched the back of his chair to steady herself.

“Go sit with the others,” Bonebreak said, waving toward the corner where Anya and Willa were seated. “You make me nervous hovering so close.”

Cora sat on the floor next to Willa, who slid a paper her way.

You know you cannot trust the Mosca, don’t you?

Cora glanced at Bonebreak and tried to keep her voice low. “I actually think he’s not so bad,” she whispered. “But just in case, that’s why Mali and Leon went back to the aggregate station. If Bonebreak tries to claim ownership and sell us, Cassian will stop him. Technically, Cassian’s still our owner. Once they find him, they’re going to meet us on Drogane.”

Willa wrote something else.

Was it true what Dane said? That you love this Kindred?

Cora read the note and felt her cheeks warm. The first time she’d seen Cassian, she’d certainly been intrigued. Drawn to him, even. And she had to admit that there were times when she’d lain awake at night, thinking of their kiss, breathless at the memory. But love? How could she love someone who wasn’t even human?

And then she pictured him being tortured.

She closed her eyes.

Images filled her head: him with those snaking wires attached to his skin, and then flashes of her nightmare too, bullet holes ripping through him. They mixed together in a guilty haze that she could barely swallow down. If she really loved him, how could she have let that happen?

And yet, she told herself, it had been his choice.

Love was always about choice.

“I do care about him. And he does for me. But it isn’t as simple as it sounds. It isn’t love like regular couples back home. It’s more like . . . a connection. Like we see something special in each other, something no one else fully sees. It’s just . . .” She opened her eyes. “How can you really love someone you can never fully understand? A different species?”

Willa nodded thoughtfully and then wrote:

Anya and I are different species and yet we care abo

ut each other. Not romantic love, but still the care you describe. A connection. A recognition of something special. That kind of bond is not easily broken. Perhaps different species have more in common than you believe.

As Cora read the note, her guilt lessened, and a thrill ran through her. It was true that the bond she felt with Cassian was powerful: it had been built slowly, over many trials, and was all the stronger because of it.

She felt herself shaking a little with hope.

Could she and Cassian actually have a chance for a future together?

She glanced over the paper at Anya, who was turned toward the view screen, silently watching the stars, knees hugged in close. Even if she hadn’t known Anya long, she too felt a connection, and not just awe at the girl’s unnatural brilliance. Anya was the only other human she’d been able to communicate with telepathically.

She closed her eyes and tried to reach into Anya’s mind to send a message of reassurance. Everything will be all right. The wolves are strong, but the rabbits are clever.

But her thoughts hit a wall. It felt odd, as though there were something mentally blocking her. Anya only continued staring at the screen as though she hadn’t sensed anything at all.

“Anya?” she asked aloud.

The girl turned and smiled, flashing a thumbs-up.

Her thumb didn’t shake.

The ship began to rumble as they entered Drogane’s atmosphere. Cora folded the paper and stashed it in her pocket. Strange curled clouds flew by, giving way to a ridge of mountains in the distance. The mountains were mostly bare patches of steep rock with a few clusters of trees nestled in the lower elevations, towering over lakes and oceans shimmering in the valleys. The entire planet looked pristine and untouched.

“Where are the cities?” Cora asked.

“The climate is too volatile for any species to live permanently on the surface,” Bonebreak explained. “The mountains are hollow. We make our cities there, where it is safe from the storms.” He wagged a finger at the beautiful blue sky. “Don’t trust clear skies. You take a breath and next thing you know there’s a snowstorm.”