“Stars save me, if you knew a way to get in here that didn’t involve thorns . . .”
Zan grinned as he dropped down to the rocks below. “Always good to have a second way out. This way, our friends on the Humility, the Piety, and the Accountability will think we’ve gone toward the castle.”
“It might not be a terrible idea,” Kellan said, “but don’t think I’m not still mad about the thorns.”
This section of the old canal system was lower than the one that originated in the castle kitchens; the muck was nearly waist-high and wall-to-wall. It was slow going and arduous, and we all tired quickly, even as the sound of marching boots on the ground above ricocheted down the passage.
The tunnel slowly ascended from the mud. When we reached the juncture that would take us to the castle or away to the culvert, we went toward the culvert; Castillion’s men were sure to have reached the castle already. Anything we had left behind in the library would have to remain there.
It was a relief to break out into the light of day, but the mud, caked onto our clothes, squelching in our shoes, and dripping from our faces, continued to weigh us down.
“We can’t keep going like this,” I panted, still exhausted from Zan’s kiss and empty with hunger after two days in the Gray. I looked down at the track of muck that coated the ground in our wake. “We’re leaving a trail that will lead them right to us!”
“Allow me,” Rosetta said. “I can’t turn you all into foxes, but I can do this.”
Her fingers began to work wildly, tracing designs in the air. As she worked, the mud leached from our clothes in rivulets that flowed down to the creek bed.
When she was done, we were all dry and clean once again. We started striding again, but then I stopped.
“Wait,” I said. “If you could do that, why did you have to keep dumping freezing-cold water on me back at the homestead?”
She shrugged. “I thought it was funny.”
There was nothing left of my old hut other than its stone footprint. Kate and Nathaniel’s house was still standing, but barely. The roof had collapsed into the kitchen, the windows were broken, and the paint was peeling, but the walkway and the flower beds were choked with late-blooming goldenrod and phlox.
Kate would have been delighted.
The road that she and I used to take when we’d walk arm in arm into town, however, was completely blocked. Impassable.
“We’ll have to go east,” Zan said. “Where the stairs up the wall used to be. I haven’t been there yet to see how it fared, but we should be prepared for the worst.”
“What’s the worst?” Rosetta asked.
“Use your imagination,” Zan replied.
“Don’t have to,” she said, and she shifted into her fox form and scampered ahead, turning only to give Zan a disdainful yellow stare.
“Where is she going?” he asked.
Onal said, “I think she prefers to know what’s up ahead rather than imagine it.”
We chased after the fox, crashing past the new growth of trees and into the section beyond, where burned-out tree trunks stood like black iron spikes against the craggy hill. Rosetta’s fiery pelt flashed as she zigged and zagged between.
I tried to talk to Onal as we went. “I saw some things in the Gray,” I panted. I was so hungry. So weak.
“You spent two precious days there,” she snapped back. “I hope you got something out of it.”
“It was about you,” I said. “I saw you, Onal. In the past . . .”
I had to stop because we had come to the wall. It had crumbled into a high pile of rocks; the stairs were no more. We had to climb with our bare hands over the serrated shards of rubble, struggling to find footho
lds in the loose stone, losing three feet for every two we climbed when the rocks would begin to slide. From this vantage point, without the leaves blocking our view, the sails of Castillion’s ships were clearly visible.
As were the lines of Castillion’s men methodically combing through the ruins.
Fox-Rosetta was first to make it to the top. She skittered across the pinnacle, then froze.
From beyond the wall, there came an unsettling sound: the howl of a wolf.