Stolen Read online

  “Okay,” said the voice, with palpable relief.

  “Is it only you in there?” asked Wes.

  “It’s just me,” said the voice.

  This was going to be easier than he thought. “All right, toss out your gun.”

  The cloud of smoke cleared and a rifle flew out, skidding on the floor. A stout soldier followed, walking out with his hands up and his head down.

  “What the hell is this all about?” Wes asked.

  The boy looked up, from Wes to Nat, wide-eyed. “Is it really her? The girl? The one who destroyed the missile? The one everyone’s been talking about? The rider?”

  “Drakonrydder,” Nat corrected, stepping forward. “How do you know about me?”

  Wes smiled drily. “Yeah, that’s her,” he said to the soldier. To Nat, he said, “Seems you’re quite the hero these days. The grunts all tell stories about your black-winged friend and the girl who rides on his back.”

  “They do?” Nat sounded amused.

  “It is her.” The soldier stood inches from Nat, his gaze filled with admiration, with awe. He looked hopeful but intimidated, like a little boy standing before his hero. The soldier’s hand wavered as he offered her a handshake. “I want to join you,” he said, his voice trembling. “I want to follow the drakonrydder.”

  “Her name is Nat. And she’s with me,” Wes said smoothly. “So I guess you are, too, now. What’s your name, soldier?”

  The kid looked around fifteen years old and twenty pounds overweight. Wes hadn’t seen many overweight kids in the RSA. Food was a luxury; only the wealthy could afford to eat too much of it.

  “Ice Cream Cone, I mean, Chip. Chip’s my real name. Chips Win. I know it’s a dumb name, what can I do, my parents worked in the casinos. The guys call me Ice Cream Cone, Cone for short.” He spluttered out the words, nervous or embarrassed. Probably both.

  “How’d you get that handle? You eat all the hot fudge squeezers on your boat?”

  Cone blushed, which probably meant he had. Wes was amused but tried not to show it.

  • • •

  Back on deck, Shakes had rounded up the rest of the Colossus crew and was working with Brendon and Roark to ferry the last of the pilgrims into the lifeboats heading toward the Goliath. Without having to tell them, his boys already knew what they had to do. Wes had promised Shakes they would get out as soon as they saw an opportunity, and this was it. They were giving the pilgrims their cruiser—with the larger boat, they would be able to survive the perils of the black oceans, and their odds of reaching the Blue improved markedly.

  “Hey, Nat,” Shakes said with a ghost of a smile. “Welcome back.”

  “Shakes!” she said, and gave him an affectionate hug. Wes was irritated to find that now he was even jealous of Shakes, if only because Nat seemed to have no problem showing her affection for him.

  Get a grip, man.

  His friend winked at him and let Nat go. Shakes always knew exactly what he was thinking. He’d better, since they were running out of time.

  “Head back to base, don’t follow us,” Wes said to the remaining soldiers of the Colossus and the Goliath, whom they had dumped into the last inflatable. “You only have enough fuel to get back there, so don’t waste your time. If you want, you can join us like Cone here. We’re going AWOL, and you’ll be fugitives, but we need good men. I’ll take you on.”

  There were no takers.

  “Fine.” Wes nodded.

  Next to him, Nat turned pale and gripped his arm. “Liannan!” she said, her eyes closed. “She’s calling me. We need to find her.”

  “Liannan?” Shakes said urgently. “You know where she is? She’s alive?”

  “Yes.” Nat opened her eyes. “They’re keeping her alive for now . . . but she doesn’t have much time.”

  Chapter 24

  NAT OPENED HER EYES AND STARED at the group of friends who surrounded her—Wes, handsome and severe in his gray lieutenant’s uniform; Shakes, now a skeleton of his former self, sallow-skinned under his scraggly beard; Brendon and Roark, hopeful but wary; Farouk, keeping his distance a bit; and Faix, standing apart from the group, his silver eyes glittering like icicles. She might as well be looking at a patchwork quilt made up of clashing, tattered, mismatched rags.

  Half of them hate the other half.

  Still, they were familiar, and they were here to help. And help was what she needed more than anything else right now.

  “Liannan needs us,” Nat said, raising her voice. “She’s so scared.”

  “Where is she?” Shakes asked, red-faced. “You said she didn’t have long to live . . .” He choked on his words. The possibility was too difficult to talk about. Nat understood, because she felt the same way.

  “She’s a prisoner somewhere, but her call faded before I could focus. I thought she was here.” Nat sighed. “I need your help again,” she said to Faix.

  “We must not act rashly,” said Faix. “We answered the call and it brought us here, where she is no longer. It could be an echo, or some sort of deception.”

  “I heard her,” Nat argued. “There has to be a reason the call brought us here.” Maybe Liannan wanted me to find Wes, she thought. Maybe she sent me here first. The thought made her blush. But why would she do that if her life was in danger?

  She tried again. “I know we can find her this time. Faix, please.”

  “Who’s blondie?” Shakes growled, casually holding his gun as he turned to the silver-haired Faix.

  “Nat’s new friend,” Wes said. “Fake the Drau. Or something.”

  “Faix,” said Faix, with a withering look. “Son of—”

  “Save it, Fake Blondie,” said Shakes.

  Faix did not smile. Nat tried not to. “He came here to help,” she said. “And he could basically kill you with one breath, so I’d watch the jokes.”

  “Must be some breath,” muttered Shakes. Still, he backed away.

  Nat shook her head. “You don’t get it. Liannan’s call brought us here, and I was only able to focus on it with his help.” She had to make them understand that even if they couldn’t trust Faix, they needed him, especially if they wanted to find the missing sylph.

  And she knew that, more than anyone, Shakes did. Now he looked almost contrite. Message received.

  Nat closed her eyes again, straining to hear Liannan’s soft voice. It was there, a faint echo, muffled, most likely by an iron cell that dampened her magic.

  “Faix,” she said. “Can you help me find her voice again?”

  Faix shook his head, and Shakes looked like he was about to murder him.

  “So Fake Blondie won’t help,” Wes said. “Maybe we can convince him otherwise.” He cocked his gun.

  The drau looked annoyed. “You misunderstand. There is no need for violence. I will aid you in your quest to find your friend.”

  “Thank you, Faix.” Nat smiled.

  “I was merely expressing my concern that perhaps this call that you hear is not what you think it is.”

  “And what are you, the expert on fake calls? That seems pretty convenient, doesn’t it, Fake?” Wes turned his gun over in his hand, polishing it with the edge of one uniform sleeve.

  Faix ignored Wes. “If you insist, Nat, you must do as before, open your mind to mine, and together we will find her.”

  Nat nodded, and she noticed Wes looking uncomfortable at the idea. She could only imagine what he thought about her merging consciousnesses with a drau, especially Faix. But there was nothing else to be done; this was the only way.

  Faix held his hand out and she took it, closing her eyes before she could see the look on Wes’s face.

  With every second, she could feel Faix’s power amplifying the call.

  Nat, can you hear me? Don’t let them—

  The words died but the image remained. Nat could
see it clearly now—Liannan, standing with her back to her, wearing a white robe and looking out a small window with iron bars.

  Nat opened her eyes. “She’s in a holding cell. In a prison that overlooks some sort of a temple with a statue of a white elephant in front of it.”

  “That’s the Grand Temple of the High Priestess of the White,” said Roark. “The one in New Kandy’s Red City.” The country used to be called Sri Lanka, a tropical island nation in the continent that was once called Asia, but nothing of the country remained after the Big Freeze, other than a few icons from its past that the white priesthood had adopted for its own.

  “Are you sure?”

  “There’s only one,” said Roark. “We know it well. It’s where they take the marked, and afterward . . .” He shrugged, but Nat knew what everyone knew. Afterward, the people who were brought there were never seen again.

  Wes looked grim. “Eliza’s in the Red City base as well. Looks like that’s our next stop.”

  Shakes nodded, hope returning to his eyes again. The happy-go-lucky guy was still in there, hidden beneath all that pain, and she was glad to see it.

  “We’re coming with you. We came to help Liannan,” said Nat.

  “We?” Wes said. “I don’t think the boat’s big enough for that so-called friend of yours.”

  “They’re all set, boss,” Farouk said, meaning the rest of the pilgrims had been transferred to the Goliath.

  Wes nodded. “Good work.” He yelled over to the former hostages huddled on board the deck of the ship. “You guys know how to drive that thing?”

  One of the smallmen nodded.

  “Ten minutes,” Shakes said.

  Ten minutes to what? Nat wondered.

  Wes nodded. “Okay, you guys, get out of here!”

  “Wait!” a voice called from the Goliath, then another and another. “Where is she? Where is the rider?”

  Wes turned to her. “They want you. Looks like everyone does these days.” He sounded bitter, and Nat didn’t like it.

  She ignored his remark and pushed her way to the railing. Across the water, the pilgrims stood in a group, their arms raised in farewell. “Thank you.” One by one, they murmured their thanks, blessing her and wishing her luck on her journey. “Bless the drakon. Bless its rydder.” It was the same song that the birds had sung to her on her first trip across the ocean.

  They honor you, Faix sent.

  She nodded, a lump in her throat. She was a drakonrydder, a protector of Vallonis. She’d waged war on their enemies, fought on the black waters, taken risks without seeking thanks or praise. When she went to battle, she only knew rage and fury. But now she understood. When she fought the drones, she fought for these people, the faces she’d never seen. Even if she did not know them, they knew her, and they thanked her.

  Slowly, she, too, raised her hand in farewell.

  The rest of Wes’s team were helping stack the bodies, saying a few words of blessing before putting them into the water. She joined Wes, who was standing by the railing and supervising the task.

  “What happened to that drakon of yours, by the way?” he asked. “You traded it for the drau? Because I have to say, I think you got the short end of the stick here.”

  She inhaled sharply and tears sprung to her eyes.

  When he saw the hurt look on her face, his frown softened. “I’m sorry. Is it . . . is it okay?”

  “We were hit by an iron bomb and it was hurt badly,” she said. “It’s in Vallonis—in the Blue—healing.”

  Wes’s face softened, letting her know he cared. “Will it live?”

  “I hope so,” she said meeting his gaze, letting him see her pain, the worry in her eyes. Her voice trembled. “Faix says it will. That once it’s whole again, it will join me.”

  He nodded, but his eyes darkened again at the mention of the drau. “Look, I can’t have him on my team. They’re killers, drau. I’ve met their kind. They’ll do whatever it takes to get what they want. I won’t do that. That’s why I left the military in the first place. I threw away my career, a half-decent life. I didn’t want it, I didn’t want to be like your friend.”

  Nat took a deep breath to respond, but Wes wasn’t done.

  “I know what you’re thinking, that he’s helping you somehow, but believe me, he’s using you, I don’t know what for, but trust me, that’s what they do. I took a job once, ferrying a drau out of Ashes. He paid upfront, acted polite, thankful, humble even. I snuck him out of a hospital, kept it secret, kept it quiet. I stowed him in the trunk, but he panicked as we reached the hospital checkpoint. He popped the trunk, killed the guards, and killed one of my men. Said he didn’t need my help anymore, then took his watts and he left me to die. I got out, but I learned my lesson.”

  “You don’t know him. We all suffer, and we all have our reasons for what we do,” she said.

  “Nat, his reasons are the wrong reasons. He’ll get you killed, he’ll get us killed.”

  “But he’s with me.”

  “Yeah, you made that abundantly clear,” he said bitterly.

  “What does that mean?” she asked sharply.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “‘It doesn’t matter’?” she asked, forcing him to look her in the eye. “All those things you said to me before you left? All those promises?” Her heart broke just a little every time he looked away from her. “If that doesn’t matter, then what does?”

  She saw a flash of pain on Wes’s face, and then he shrugged. “People say stuff all the time. It’s not as if they mean it. I got caught up in the moment.”

  “I guess so,” she said coolly. “I guess I did, too. But I’m going to help find Liannan. She reached out to me. I can’t let her down. And Faix isn’t going anywhere.”

  Wes frowned and didn’t respond.

  Nat sighed. She wished he wouldn’t act like this, pretending he didn’t care for her. But maybe it was for the best. What kind of future could they have anyway? She belonged to Vallonis. Wes was a boy from New Vegas. They had both walked away from each other once, and maybe he was right: What did it matter?

  What could it? So why was her chest aching? But if he could stand it, then so could she. She could stand to not touch him, to be apart from him. She could, she really, really could, she told herself, even if all she wanted to do was put her hand in his and lean on him, feel his heart beating against hers again.

  Faix sidled up to Nat. Wes looked sourly at the two of them. Nat wondered if he would really leave them behind, if Wes could say good-bye to her so casually after everything they had been through, without even giving her a chance to explain.

  Finally, after the silence between them had turned from awkward to uncomfortable, Wes made his decision. “Look, if the two of you are going to join us, there are some ground rules. This is my crew and my command. You obey orders. We don’t kill and we don’t hurt anyone unless it’s truly necessary. The world’s fallen apart, but we haven’t,” he said. “I’m not in the business of killing kids.”

  Faix regarded him gravely. “Our opinions differ, Wesson, but I will abide by your rules. Anastasia is important to Vallonis. I am here by the order of the Queen to protect our last drakonrydder.”

  “Oh yeah? You’re her bodyguard? Is that it?” Wes asked, annoyance and jealousy written all over his face.

  Nat shook her head at Faix. Don’t spoil it. Stop taunting him.

  The drau looked amused. Why not tell him what you really feel, as he is dying to know. Look at how angry he is because you are acting indifferent.

  She pushed Faix out of her head, unwilling and too stubborn to listen.

  Wes cleared his throat.

  “Thank you. We accept. We will join your crew,” said Nat. “How far is the Red City?”

  Wes sighed. “Two weeks, depending on the oceans, the trash, and the waves. It’s har
d to predict these things.”

  “Two weeks in one of those?” she asked Wes, motioning to the lifeboats.

  Wes barked a laugh. “We wouldn’t last two days in one of those.” He looked up at the sky, searching for something, and Nat did the same, wondering what he was looking for. They heard it first, a loud whirring sound of blades cutting through the air, and a few minutes later a black helicopter appeared, hovering above the boat.

  “That’s our ride,” Wes said with a grim smile. He hit his comm. “Shakes, you ready?”

  “Roger that,” Shakes replied. “Right behind you, boss. Almost finished packing.”

  “With any luck we’ll be in the Red by tomorrow morning,” he told Nat. “Listen, make sure your friend does everything I tell him, otherwise I will leave you both behind. I’ve got a bird to catch.”

  Part the Third:

  REAPING DAY

  Often, for undaunted courage, fate spares the man it has not already marked.

  —BEOWULF

  Chapter 25

  THE HELICOPTER LANDED ON THE DECK, like a fly on honey. Wes straightened his uniform and ran a hand through his hair, still unused to how short it was. Time to work. He counted twelve men on the chopper, guns in hand, visors, full body armor. Had someone snitched? Were they onto him?

  Relax. It’s just protocol.

  Probably they’d just assumed they were landing in a hostile situation. Which they were, even if it wasn’t the kind they expected.

  A full strike team had arrived, and all Wes had was his wit and uniform, two loyal soldiers who were tired and hungry, a couple of smallmen, and of course Nat and that white-haired friend of hers. The two of them could probably waste the entire crew without blinking an eye, but that wasn’t the way this was going down.

  Wes planned to take control of that helicopter as easily as slipping a wallet out of someone’s pocket or tricking a mark during a shell game—two things he had no problem doing. Which cup held the ball? Whichever one you didn’t pick. He’d had to steal every single thing he needed in his life, so he had lots of practice. From a limousine to take him to El Dorado to a chopper to take them to the Red City, and in the end he’d probably have to steal Nat away from that pretty boy, no matter what she said about them being only “friends.”