Which means Prosper can get a proper education. Farian can study film at any university he wants. My father can stop working three jobs. It takes effort to remind myself that those blessings outweigh the curse attached to them: I’ll never get to go back home.
The best-case scenario is that I survive this, settle into my cousin’s village, and live life as a rancher. Martial is slick enough to help my family visit from time to time, but I’ll miss birthdays and celebrations and all of it. I didn’t know how much I wanted a better life for them until this moment, until I knew exactly what it would cost me to get it for them.
Bastian must recognize the change in my expression, because he keeps walking beside me but doesn’t say a word. The quiet is enough to drive me crazy, though, so I force the conversation in the hopes of thinking about something less sad.
“Where are we going?”
Bastian nods in the distance. “Gig’s Wall. It’s past the first few villages. Our base of operations on this side of the mountain. We’ll camp there and then move through the passes. The plan is to escort you to your uncle’s village.” His cheeks brighten. “Or you could join us. Always need extra hands. It’s your call really.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer this time. Instead, he slides back up to the front of our column and leaves me to consider the life I left behind, and the life that waits ahead.
It’s past noon when we reach the first village. From below, all I can see are the slanting roofs and stone chimneys. Bastian has the rest of the group march an overgrown path, well out of sight. But he walks in the open and flashes a series of signals as he does. I don’t know who’s watching or what any of it means, but fear settles like deadweight in my chest. I realize for the first time I’ve trusted my fate to people I don’t know, and I’m stuck in a place I know even less. I’ve been trusting them because Luca is with them. And because Bastian is nice and they’re Dividian like me. But is that enough?
Thankfully, the signals don’t result in an ambush. Instead, a loaded packhorse waits for us at the next crossroad. Bastian looks patiently through the saddlebags, counting off items, before nodding his contentment. We watch from the woods as he takes a loaded sack from his coat and ties it around the road marker. It’s not hard to understand. He’s leaving payment. Some of yesterday’s stolen Ashlord goods in exchange for food and water.
It’s my first glimpse of life in the mountains.
We skirt the second village entirely, wind up the forested shelves of another valley, and stumble into sight of Gig’s Wall. Once it might have been a marvel. A great stone wall that stretches from one side of the valley to the other, barring encroaching armies from the valleys beyond. It rises fifty feet into the air and stands three times as wide, but the decades have worn away all sense of grandeur. Great blasts of wind have swept chunks out of the wall’s once-even ramparts. At the bottom, I note gaping holes wide enough to ride a horse through.
It’s through one of these, and not the reinforced gates, that Bastian leads us. Everything about his posture—and the posture of his soldiers—changes once we’re inside the fortress. They dust themselves off and move toward familiar nooks in a central room, looking like workers returning after a long day out in the fields. I realize, with a sense of honor and dread, that this place is home to them. One of many homes, and they’ve invited me into their trust. Luca and I both stand off to the side, feeling a little like intruders.
“Rest well,” Bastian calls from the nearest stairwell. “We’ll sleep the night here. A handful of you will move on to escort Imelda to Little Sickle tomorrow. Mattys, let’s get something hearty on the stove. I’d like to have the whole group—”
His words are drowned by fire. It flashes in the air before us like a magician’s trick. The blast of energy knocks everyone backward. I’m on one knee as the flames take form and a man strides out into the center of the room. He’s shirtless and shoeless, wearing the dirtiest trousers I’ve ever seen. What catches every eye, though, is the great falcon mask sewn into the skin of his neck, enclosing a human head within. Everyone stares at the creature, the man, but his great beaded eyes swivel in my direction. He lets out a throaty cry and darts through our ranks.
The gods have come.
We all know which one this priest represents: The Curiosity.
Bastian screams, “Quit staring and kill him!”
The bird-man dodges the first lunge and slips from the grip of a second. Someone fires a pistol, filling the room with smoke and an echoing bang. The bird-man makes the hallway. Three of Bastian’s soldiers chase, following the nightmarish screeches and answering with more gunshots from their pistols.
I ignore caution and run after them. There’s another loud screech, then a thump, and I turn the corner to see the bird-man fall, feathers pluming out. He ran far enough to get back outside the walls. The darkened valley is quiet except for the sounds of him dying at the hands of Bastian’s men. I’m shouldered out of the way as Bastian presses past to stand over the corpse.
“What was that?” I ask.
He spits down, looks at his men, then at me.
“The Curiosity.” He says the name like a curse. “Their god of vision and prophecy. This is one of his priests. Whatever he just saw, they can see. It means they’re coming.”
“Who?”
“The Ashlords,” Bastian replies darkly. “It means they’re already here.”
The fourth day of riding is flawless.
You can almost see the smirk on Maxim’s face as he confirms your record-setting pace to a national audience. Revel started the day impossibly far ahead of you. But as your phoenix burns down in preparation for another night, your bracelet shows that you’re only four hundred paces back now. If you hadn’t gone back through the caves, it’s likely you’d be close to first place. But Etzli would also be dead. Quinn would have abandoned you.
How heavy would that crown have been?
There’s a storm curling to life over the distant plains. You nestle in safely beside Quinn at the mouth of a shallow cave. The other riders are situated along the course’s western valley, along the route you intended to take with Bravos. As rain starts to fall, you imagine the other competitors hunkered over their ashes and trying to survive the night.
This isn’t over. Four hundred paces. Not impossible. In a way, you like that your name isn’t on the leaderboard. It allows you to strike more fear in their hearts when it finally does appear. Deep down, you know that only two riders have ever come back from this distance, but you were born to break records. If a miracle is to happen, let it be one of your making.
“We’re going to win.”