Текст книги "Scarlet"

Автор книги: Marissa Meyer

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 22 страниц) [доступный отрывок для чтения: 9 страниц]

Thirteen

Scarlet sprinted into the drive, the gravel biting into her feet. The wind kicked at her curls, throwing them across her face.

“Where did he go?” she said, tucking her hair into her hood. The sun was fully over the horizon already, flecking the crops with gold and filling the drive with swaying shadows.

“Perhaps to feed your birds?” Wolf pointed as a rooster pecked his way back around the side of the house, meandering toward the vegetable patch.

Ignoring the biting gravel, Scarlet jogged around the corner. Oak leaves spun on the wind. The hangar and barn and chicken coop all stood silent in the buffeting dawn. There was no trace of her father.

“He must have been looking for something, or—” Scarlet’s heart skipped. “My ship!”

She ran, ignoring the rocky drive, the prickly weeds. She nearly plowed into the hangar’s door but managed to grasp the handle and yank it open just as a crash shook the building.

“Dad!”

But he was not inside the ship, preparing to fly off with it as she’d feared. Instead, he was standing on top of the cabinets that ran the length of the far wall, reaching into the overhead cupboards and tossing their contents onto the floor. Paint cans, extension cords, drill bits.

An entire standing toolbox had been tipped over, flooding the concrete with screws and bolts, and two metal cabinets on the back wall stood wide-open, showing an assortment of military pilot uniforms, coveralls, and a single straw gardening hat shoved into a corner.

“What are you doing?” Scarlet strode toward him, then ducked and froze as a wrench sailed by her head. When a crash didn’t follow, she glanced back to see Wolf gripping the wrench a foot from his face, blinking in surprise. Scarlet spun back. “Dad, what—”

“There’s something here!” he said, yanking open another cupboard. He snatched up a tin can and tipped it over, mesmerized as hundreds of rusted nails crashed and clanged on the floor.

“Dad, stop! There’s nothing here!” She picked her way through the mess, more aware of rusty sharp bits than she had been of the jagged rocks outside. “Stop it!”

“There is something here, Scar.” Tucking a metal barrel under one arm, her dad hopped off the counter and crouched, working the plug out from the hole in the top. Though he was also barefoot, the jumble of nails and screws didn’t appear to bother him. “She has something and they want it. It’s got to be here. Somewhere … but where…”

The air filled with the pungent fumes of engine lubricant as her dad tipped over the barrel, letting the yellowish grease gurgle and spill out over his mess.

“Dad, put it down!” She grabbed a hammer off the floor and held it overhead. “I will hit you, I swear it!”

He finally looked at her with that same haunted madness. This was not her father. This man was not vain and charming and self-indulgent, all the things she’d admired as a child and despised as a teenager. This man was broken.

The stream of oil became a light drizzle.

“Dad. Put down the barrel. Now.”

His lips trembled as his attention shifted away, focused on the small delivery ship not a body’s length away from him. “She loved flying,” he murmured. “She loved her ships.”

“Dad. Dad—!”

Standing, her dad heaved the barrel into the back window of the ship. A hairline fracture cobwebbed out on the glass.

“Not my ship!” Scarlet dropped the hammer and ran for him, stumbling her way over tools and debris.

The glass shattered with the second hit and her dad was already hauling himself through the shards.

“Stop it!” Scarlet grabbed him around the waist and dragged him out of the ship. “Leave it alone!”

He thrashed in her hold, his knee catching Scarlet in the side, and they both fell onto the floor. A canister bit into Scarlet’s thigh but all she could think about was tightening her hold on her dad, trying to lock his swinging arms to his sides. Blood was on his hands where he’d grabbed the broken glass, and a gash in his side was already turning crimson.

“Let me go, Scar. I’m going to find it. I’m going to—”

He cried out as he was lifted away from her. Instinctively, Scarlet clung, still trying to subdue him until she realized that Wolf was there, dragging her dad to his feet. She let go, panting. One hand went to rub her throbbing hip.

“Let go of me!” Craning his head, her dad snapped his teeth at the air.

Ignoring his struggles, Wolf bound his wrists with one hand and stretched the other out toward Scarlet.

No sooner had her palm sunk onto his than her dad’s screams renewed.

“He’s one of them! One of them!”

Wolf yanked Scarlet to her feet and released her, using both arms to restrain her struggling father. Scarlet almost expected to see foam at the corners of her dad’s mouth.

“The tattoo, Scar! It’s them! It’s them!”

She pushed her hair off her face. “I know, Dad. Just calm down! I can explain—”

“You can’t take me back! I’m still looking! I need more time! Please, no more. No more…” He dissolved into sobs.

Wolf’s eyebrows drew together as he peered at the back of her father’s drooped head, then he grabbed a thin chain around his neck and pulled, snapping it.

Her dad flinched and, when Wolf released him, sank heavily to the floor.

Scarlet gawked at the necklace hanging from Wolf’s fist—a small, unfamiliar charm dangling from it. She couldn’t remember her father wearing any jewelry, other than the monogamy band that he’d taken off within days of her mother figuring out the ring hadn’t served its purpose and leaving him.

“Transmitter,” Wolf said, holding the charm up so that its silver sheen blinked in the light. It was no larger than Scarlet’s pinkie nail. “They’ve been tracking him, and, I would guess, listening in on everything as well.”

Scarlet’s dad hugged his knees, rocking.

“Do you think they’re listening right now?” Scarlet asked.

“Most likely.”

A firework exploded in her rib cage and she launched forward, grabbing Wolf’s fist in both hands. “There’s nothing here!” she screamed at the charm. “We’re not hiding anything and you have the wrong woman! You’d better bring my grandmother back, and I swear on the house I was born in if you’ve hurt one hair, one wrinkle, one freckle on her body I am going to hunt every last one of you down and snap your necks like the chickens you are, do you understand me? BRING HER BACK!”

Throat hoarse, she fell back and released Wolf’s hand.

“Finished?”

Trembling with anger, Scarlet nodded.

Wolf dropped the transmitter on the floor, grabbed the hammer, and smashed it with a single, clean strike. Scarlet jumped as metal crunched against the concrete.

“Do you think they knew he would come here?” Wolf said, standing.

“They left him in our cornfield.”

Her father’s voice rose between them, dry and empty. “They told me to find it.”

“Find what?” Scarlet asked.

“I don’t know. They didn’t say. Just … that she’s hiding something. Something valuable and secret and they want it.”

“Wait … you knew?” said Scarlet. “You knew all along that you were bugged and you didn’t try to tell me? Dad, what if I’d said something or done something that made them suspect me? What if they do come after me next?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” he said. “It was the only way they would let me go. They said I could only have my freedom if I found what your grandmother was hiding. If I found some clue that would help … I had to get out of there, Scar, you don’t know what it was like—”

“I know they still have her! And I know that you’re coward enough to save your own skin and not worry about what’s happening to her, or what could happen to me.”

Scarlet held her breath, waiting for him to deny it. To give some twisted excuse like he’d always had, but he stayed perfectly still. Perfectly silent.

Her skin flushed with anger. “You’re a disgrace to her—to everything she’s ever stood for. She would risk her life to protect either one of us! She would risk her life for a stranger if it was the right thing to do. But all you care about is yourself. I can’t believe you’re her son. I can’t believe you’re my father.”

He raised his haunted eyes to her. “You’re wrong, Scarlet. She watched them torture me. Me. And still she kept her secrets.” A spark of defiance flickered over his face. “There’s something your grandmother never told us, Scar, and it’s put both of us in danger. She’s the selfish one.”

“You don’t know anything about her!”

“No, you don’t! You’ve been idolizing her since you were four years old and it’s blinded you to the truth! She’s betrayed us both, Scarlet.”

Blood pounding against her temples, Scarlet pointed out the door. “Get out. Get off my farm, and never come back. I hope I never see you again.”

He paled, the circles like bruises under his eyes. Slowly, he peeled himself off the floor. “You’re going to abandon me too? My own daughter and my own mother, both turning against me?”

“You abandoned us first.”

Scarlet realized that in the five years since last she’d seen him, she’d come to match her father’s height. They stood eye to eye; she burning up on the inside, he frowning as though he wanted to be sorry but couldn’t quite grasp the emotion.

“Good-bye, Luc.”

His jaw flexed. “They’ll come for me again, Scarlet. And it will be on your hands.”

“Don’t you dare. You’re the one who was wearing that transmitter, you’re the one who was willing to sell me out.”

He held her eyes for a long, slow count, like he was waiting for her to change her mind. Waiting for her to welcome him back to the house, back into her life. But all Scarlet could hear was the crunch of the hammer against the transmitter. She thought of the burn marks on his arm and knew he would just as soon give her over for torture, if it would have saved his own skin.

Finally, his gaze fell, and without looking at her, without looking at Wolf, her dad shuffled through the debris and out of the hangar.

Scarlet’s fists settled against her sides. She would have to wait. He would go into the house to collect his shoes. She imagined him rummaging through the kitchen for food before he went—or trying to hunt down some stray liquor bottles. She dared not run the risk of their paths crossing again before he was gone for good.

The coward. The traitor.

“I’ll help you.”

She crossed her arms, protecting her anger against the gentleness of Wolf’s voice. She scanned the chaos all around her, the mess that would take weeks to put right. “I don’t need your help.”

“I meant, I’ll help get your grandmother back.” Wolf ducked away, like he was surprised he’d made the offer.

It took a pathetically long time for her thinking to change directions, from the internal rant against her traitorous father, to the hefty meaning behind Wolf’s words. She blinked up at him and held her breath, imagining his words captured in a bubble that might blow away. “You will?”

His head jerked in what could have been a nod. “The Wolves are headquartered in Paris. That’s probably where they’re keeping her.”

Paris. The word filled her up. A clue. A promise.

She glanced at her ship and its shattered window. Renewed hatred flared for her father, but it deflated quickly—there wasn’t time. Not now. Not when she had her first taste of hope in two endless weeks.

“Paris,” she murmured. “We can take the train from Toulouse—it’s, what, eight hours?” She hated the thought of being without her ship, but even the obnoxiously slow maglev train would be quicker than getting the window replaced. “Someone will have to look after the farm while I’m gone. Maybe Èmilie, after her shift. I’ll send her a comm, then I just need to grab some clothes and…”

“Scarlet, wait. We can’t just rush up there. We need to think this through.”

“Rush? We can’t rush? They’ve had her for more than two weeks! This isn’t rushing!”

Wolf’s gaze darkened and Scarlet paused, for the first time recognizing his unease.

“Look,” she said, wetting her tongue, “we’ll have eight hours on the train to think up something. But I can’t stay here a moment longer.”

“But what if your father is right?” His shoulders stayed stiff. “What if she has hidden something here? What if they come looking for it?”

She roughly shook her head. “They can look all they want, but they won’t find anything. My dad is wrong. Grand-mère and I don’t keep secrets.”

Fourteen

“Your Majesty.”

Kai turned away from the window that he’d been staring out half the morning, listening to the drone of the news anchors and military officials reporting on the escape of the most-wanted convict in the Eastern Commonwealth. Chairman Huy stood in the doorway, Torin beside him. Both looked supremely unhappy.

He gulped. “Well?”

Huy stepped forward. “They’ve gotten away.”

Kai’s pulse hiccupped. He took a tentative step toward his father’s desk and gripped the back of the chair.

“I’ve given the order to deploy our reserve fleets immediately. I am confident we’ll have the fugitives found and taken into custody by sunset.”

“With all respect, Chairman, you don’t sound particularly confident.”

Though Huy puffed his chest out, his face took on a tinge of pink. “I am, Your Majesty. We can find them. It’s only that … it’s complicated by it being a stolen ship. All the tracking equipment has been stripped.”

Torin let out an irritated sigh. “The girl has proven herself to be more clever than I would have given her credit for.”

Kai dragged his hand through his hair, extinguishing an unexpected spark of pride.

“There is also the issue of the girl being Lunar,” Huy added.

“Whoever captures her will just have to be alert,” said Kai. “They should all be made well aware that she’ll no doubt try to turn their minds against them.”

“There is that too, but not what I was referring to. In the past, we’ve had difficulty tracking Lunar ships. It seems that they’ve learned how to disable our radar systems. I’m afraid we’re not sure how they do it.”

“Disable our radar systems?” Kai glanced at Torin. “Did you know about this?”

“I’ve heard rumors,” said Torin. “Your father and I chose to believe that’s all they were.”

“Not all my contemporaries agree with me on this matter,” said Huy. “But I myself am convinced it is the Lunars disabling our equipment. Whether it’s through their mental abilities or some other talent, I can’t tell. Regardless, Linh Cinder won’t get far. We’ll have every resource searching for her.”

Tempering his inner turmoil, Kai molded his face into stone. “Keep me informed.”

“Of course, Your Majesty. There is one other thing I thought you might want to see. We’ve finished going over our security footage from the prison.” Huy gestured to the inlaid screen in Kai’s desk.

Rounding his chair, Kai tugged on his long sleeves, suddenly warm, and sat down. A comm from the council of national security rotated in the corner. “Accept comm.”

The screen brightened with footage of the prison, all white and glossy walls. It showed a long hallway lined with smooth doors and ID scanners. A prison guard moved into view and gestured at a door. He was followed by a short, old man wearing a gray cap.

Kai jerked upward. It was Dr. Erland. “Volume up.”

Dr. Erland’s familiar voice filtered through the screen. “I am the leading scientist of the royal letumosis research team, and this girl is my prime test subject. I require blood samples from her before she leaves the planet.” Looking miffed, he reached into a bag and pulled something out—a syringe, but the bag still bulged. That wasn’t all that was inside it.

“I have my orders, sir,” said the guard. “You’ll have to obtain an official release from the emperor to be allowed entrance.”

Kai frowned as the doctor put the syringe back into the bag, knowing that Dr. Erland hadn’t made such a request.

“All right. If that’s protocol, I understand,” said Dr. Erland. And then he just stood there, serene and patient. After the space of a few heartbeats, Kai glimpsed the doctor’s smile. “There, you see? I have obtained the necessary release from the emperor. You may open the door.”

Kai’s jaw dropped as, amazingly, the guard turned toward the cell door, swiped his wrist across the scanner, and punched in a code. A green light flashed and the door opened.

“Thank you kindly,” said Dr. Erland, passing the guard. “I’ll ask that you give us a bit of privacy. I won’t be but a minute.”

The guard complied without argument, shutting the door and meandering in the direction they’d come from, leaving the screen empty.

Kai glanced up at Huy. “Has that guard been questioned?”

“Yes, sir, and his statement is that he remembers denying access to the girl, and then the doctor left. He was confounded when we showed him this footage. He claims to not remember any of it.”

“How is that possible?”

Huy busied his hands by buttoning his suit jacket. “It appears, Your Majesty, that Dr. Dmitri Erland glamoured the guard into allowing him access to the prisoner’s cell.”

Hairs prickling beneath his collar, Kai slumped back in his chair. “Glamoured? You think he’s Lunar?”

“That is our theory.”

Kai stared up at the ceiling. Cinder, Lunar. Dr. Erland, Lunar. “Is it a conspiracy?”

Torin cleared his throat, as he did whenever Kai mentioned some off-the-wall theory—although it seemed like a perfectly legitimate question to Kai. “We’re in the process of investigating all possibilities,” said Torin. “At least now we know how she escaped.”

“We have other video that shows the prisoner glamouring the guard on the next shift,” said Huy, “and being shown to a new cell. In that footage she has two feet, and a different left hand from the one she entered the prison with.”

Kai shoved himself out of his chair. “The bag,” he said, pacing toward the windows.

“Yes. Dr. Erland was bringing her these tools, we must assume with the intention of assisting her escape.”

“That’s why he left.” Kai shook his head, wondering how Cinder really knew Dr. Erland—what they’d really been doing all those times she’d come to see him at the hospital. Plotting, conniving, conspiring? “I thought she was just fixing a med-droid,” he murmured to himself. “I didn’t even question—stars, I’ve been so stupid.”

“Your Majesty,” said Huy, “our few resources not searching for Linh Cinder have been dedicated to finding Dmitri Erland. He will be arrested as a traitor to the crown.”

“Please excuse the interruption,” said Nainsi, the android who had once tutored Kai as a child, but had now taken on the more significant role of personal assistant. The android who had malfunctioned—was it not even four weeks ago?—and led him to his first meeting with Linh Cinder, back when she was nothing more to him than a renowned mechanic. “Her Majesty, Lunar Queen Levana, has requested an immediate appoint—”

“I will not be announced by an android!”

Huy and Torin spun around as Queen Levana swooped in and backhanded Nainsi across her single blue sensor, eyes flaming. The android no doubt would have toppled onto her back if her stabilizing hydraulics hadn’t kicked in just in time to catch her.

The queen’s usual entourage followed—Sybil Mira, head thaumaturge, whose role in the Lunar court seemed to be a cross between a doting lapdog and a gleeful servant who delighted in seeing to Levana’s cruelest requests. Kai had once seen her attack and nearly blind an innocent servant at the queen’s bidding, without a hint of hesitation.

She was followed by another thaumaturge, one rank beneath Sybil, who had dark skin and piercing eyes and no purpose, it seemed to Kai, other than to stand behind his queen and look smug.

Sybil’s personal guard followed, the blond man who had held Cinder during the ball when Levana first threatened her life. Even after a month of their being guests in his palace, Kai didn’t know his name. A second guard, his hair flaming red, had been the one to jump in between a bullet and Levana at the ball, taking it squarely in the shoulder. It seemed that bullet wounds weren’t enough to let one off royal guard duty, though, and the only indication of the wound was the lump of a bandage beneath his uniform.

“Your Majesty,” Kai said, addressing the queen with, he thought, an admirable lack of contempt. “What a pleasant surprise.”

“One more patronizing comment and I will have you slice off and nail your own tongue to the palace gate.”

Kai blanched. Levana’s voice, usually so melodious and sweet, was rigid as steel, and though he’d seen her angry many times before, it had never been enough for her to drop the thin veneer of diplomacy. “Your Majesty—”

“You let her escape! My prisoner!”

“I assure you, we’re doing everything we can—”

“Aimery, silence him.”

Kai’s tongue fell limp. Eyes widening, he reached a hand to his lips, realizing it wasn’t only his tongue, but his throat, his jaw. The muscles had gone useless. Which perhaps was better than having his tongue nailed to the palace gate, but still …

His gaze darted to the male thaumaturge in his pristine red coat, who grinned charmingly back. Rage flared inside him.

“You’re doing everything you can?” Levana flattened her palms on Kai’s desk. Their glares battled over the netscreen that still showed the empty prison hallway, frozen in time. “You’re telling me, young emperor, that you didn’t assist her escape? That your intention from the start hasn’t been to humiliate me on your soil?”

Kai sensed that she wanted him to fall to his knees and silently plead for forgiveness, to promise to move the Earth and heavens to satisfy her—but his anger overwhelmed his fear. With his ability to speak removed, he folded his arms over the back of his chair and waited.

From the corner of his eye he could see Torin and Huy, still as statues but for dark scowls. Sybil Mira, with her hands innocently tucked into her ivory sleeves, must have been holding them at bay with her Lunar mind magic.

Nainsi, the only being in the room that the Lunars couldn’t control with mind tricks, was being physically held by the blond guard, turned so that her sensor—and built-in camera—couldn’t capture the proceedings.

The queen’s fingertips whitened against the desk. “You expect me to believe that you didn’t encourage this escape? That you had nothing to do with it?” Her expression tightened. “You certainly don’t seem too upset about it, Your Majesty.”

Bewilderment stirred in Kai’s gut, but his face remained neutral. Years of rumors and superstitions circulated in his thoughts—rumors that Levana knew whenever anyone was talking about her, anywhere on Luna, even on Earth—but he suspected a much more plausible reason for her uncanny ability to know what she shouldn’t know.

She’d been spying on him, and his father before. He knew it—he just didn’t know how.

Realizing that she was waiting for a response, Kai quirked an eyebrow and flourished a hand toward his mouth.

Levana seethed and pushed herself back from the desk. She stretched her neck until she was staring down her nose at him. “Speak.”

Sensation returned to his tongue and Kai threw a thankless smile at Aimery. He then proceeded to do the most disrespectful thing he could think of—he pulled his chair back from his desk and sat down. Tipping back, he folded his hands over his stomach.

Anger sizzled behind Levana’s charcoal eyes until she was almost—briefly—unbeautiful.

“No,” Kai said. “I did not encourage the fugitive to escape or assist her in any way.”

“What reason do I have to believe that, after you seemed so enchanted with her at the ball?”

His brow twitched. “If you’re going to refuse to take my word, why don’t you just force a full confession out of me and be done with it?”

“Oh, I could, Your Majesty. I could put any words into that mouth of yours that I wanted to hear. But, unfortunately, we are not mind readers, and I am concerned only with truth.”

“Then allow me to give it to you.” Kai hoped he seemed more indulgent than annoyed. “Our preliminary investigation has shown that she used both her Lunar and cyborg abilities to escape from her cell, and while she may have had assistance from within the palace, it was done without my knowledge. I’m afraid we were unequipped to keep a prisoner who is both cyborg and Lunar. We will, of course, be working on strengthening our prison system for the future. In the meantime, we are doing everything in our power to track down the fugitive and apprehend her. I made a bargain with you, Your Majesty, and I do intend to keep my end.”

“You’ve already failed your end of the bargain,” she spat, but then her face softened. “Young emperor, I certainly hope you didn’t fancy yourself in love with this girl.”

Kai’s grip tightened until his knuckles screamed. “Any feelings I may have imagined for Linh Cinder were clearly nothing more than a Lunar trick.”

“Clearly. I am glad you recognize that.” Levana folded her own hands demurely before her. “I am done with this charade and am returning to Luna, immediately. You have three days to find the girl and deliver her to me. If you fail, I will send my own army to find her, and they will tear apart every spaceship, every docking station, and every home on this pathetic planet until she is found.”

White spots flashed in Kai’s vision and he shoved himself back to his feet. “Why don’t you say what you mean? You’ve been wanting a reason to invade Earth for ten years and now you’re using this one escaped Lunar, this nobody, to accomplish it.”

The corners of Levana’s lips tilted. “You seem to misunderstand my motives, so I will say precisely what I mean. I will someday rule the Commonwealth, and it is your decision whether that is to be through a war or through a peaceful and diplomatic marriage union. But this has nothing to do with war and politics. I want this girl, or I want her corpse. I will burn your country to the ground looking for her if I must.”

Levana pulled away from the desk and drifted out of the office, her entourage falling in step behind her with neither expression nor comment.

When they had gone, Huy and Torin each melted in front of Kai, looking like they hadn’t taken a breath since the queen’s entrance. And perhaps they hadn’t—Kai didn’t know what Sybil had been doing to them, but he could guess it hadn’t been comfortable.

Nainsi swiveled on her treads. “I am so sorry, Your Majesty. I never would have given her access, but the door was already open.”

Kai silenced her with a wave. “Yes, how coincidental that she chose the one time when the door wasn’t shut and coded to barge in here, isn’t it?”

Nainsi’s processor whirred, no doubt running the odds.

Kai rubbed one hand down his face. “It doesn’t matter. Everyone, out. Please.”

Nainsi vanished out the door, but Huy and Torin lingered.

“Your Majesty,” Huy said. “With all due respect, I need your permission—”

“Yes, fine, whatever you need to do. Just, I need a moment. Please.”

Huy clicked his heels. “Of course, Your Majesty.” Though Torin looked more apt to argue, he didn’t, and soon the door was hissing behind them both.

With the click of the latch, Kai let himself crumble into his chair. His entire body was shaking.

It was suddenly so clear that he wasn’t ready for this. He wasn’t strong enough or smart enough to fill his father’s shoes. He couldn’t even keep Levana out of his own office—how was he going to protect an entire country from her—an entire planet?

Spinning his chair around, he raked his hands back through his hair. His attention swept over the city below, but was soon pulled up to the glaring blue sky, cloudless. Somewhere beyond it was the moon and the stars and tens of thousands of cargo ships, passenger ships, military ships, delivery ships, vying for space beyond the ozone. And Cinder was in one of them.

He couldn’t help it, but a part of him—maybe a large part of him—hoped Cinder would just disappear, like a fading comet’s tail. Just to spite the queen, to keep from her this one thing she so desperately wanted. It was only her vanity, after all, that had set off this tirade. Because Cinder had made that one foolish comment at the ball, suggesting that Levana wasn’t beautiful after all.

Kai massaged his temple, knowing that he had to give up these thoughts. Cinder had to be found, and soon, before millions were murdered in her place.

It was all politics now. Pros and cons, give and take, trades and agreements. Cinder had to be found, Levana had to be appeased, Kai had to stop acting cheated and indignant and start acting like an emperor.

Whatever he’d once felt for Cinder—or thought he’d felt for her—was over.