Breakwater (25 page)

The three of us scuttled through the lower levels of the Deep until we reached the dividing line between the rich and the poor. Not a lot more activity, but it was still busier than the poor section.

Ayu dragged us into a side ally. “You are too recognizable. Wait here, I will come back with Octo.”

Before we could protest, she was gone.

“I hope you are trusting the right people,” Ash said softly. I leaned against the wall, the sandstone rough against my skin. I looked down at my clothes, what was left of them. My vest had been torn in the middle, exposing my belly to the cool night air. He reached over and touched me, his fingers light across my sensitive skin. A shiver trembled through me and I looked up at him.

“So do I.”

His jaw ticked and he backed a few steps.

I let out a slow breath. “The pipe system runs through the whole city. It’s how the kids were breaking into the kitchen to snatch food. Maybe we could utilize the pipes, swim through them to get to the throne room without being stopped.”

“And do you know the layout of the pipes? I know you can breathe the water with that hook in your ear, but I can’t. You would have to go in alone.”

“I know.” But already I knew that wouldn’t work. There was no way I could learn the ins and outs of the pipe system in the time we had.

He stared hard at me, as if he would say something else. But he finally shook his head and looked away. “Someone’s coming.”

I crouched low, and Ash did the same as we waited. There was no way of knowing who was coming, or if we would have to fight. Relief flowed through me as Ayu’s voice floated down to us. “Please, you spoke with the Terralings’ ambassador. Will you at least advise me on this?”

A deeper voice, one vaguely familiar answered her. “Healer, what I spoke of with my old friend was inconsequential to what is happening now.”

I stood as they rounded the corner. The old man who’d helped me find the kitchens in what seemed like a lifetime ago stared at me in surprise. “You’re Octo?”

“Ah, Ender Larkspur. I see you have survived the cells.”

Ash stood and Octo blinked rapidly. “It seems we have an epidemic of survivors. How wonderful.”

“You spoke with Belladonna, how is she?” All I wanted to know was that she was alive and we weren’t too late.

Octo shook his head slowly and my heart sank. “I was friends with the previous ambassador, Barkley.” He paused as if gathering his thoughts and a huge sigh slipped out of him. “Barkley figured out what was happening long before any of us did.” The old man stuck his hand into his vest and rooted around, finally pulling out a thick bundle of papers. “It was all I managed to save, but in it I do believe you will see what Requiem plans. Not that anyone will believe you. I certainly didn’t believe it when I saw what was laid out.”

His hand shook as he passed me the papers. I took them, flipping through them quickly. Family trees were drawn for all four elemental families. Exactly like those on the walls of Requiem’s room. I frowned at them, handing some to Ash. “Genealogy?”

Octo reached out and tapped the papers. “Yes, it is very important to Requiem, as you may have noticed. He believes he has the key to creating something we all thought impossible.”

I turned the final sheet over to see a single sentence scratched into the paper. I read it out loud. “A child will come, who will control all elements, and he shall rule all the families.”

The words sunk into me, completing the puzzle I’d been putting together since we’d arrived. “He means to have a breeding program, doesn’t he? He’s trying to get a child who carries all the elements with equal strength in all of them.”

Ayu lifted her hands, as if to stop me. “That isn’t possible. One family has been wiped out, destroyed. Therefore, he could never make this happen.”

Spirit—that was what she meant—Spirit had been wiped out according to the other families. Ice slid down my spine, and I worked to calm myself as I stared at the papers. It was not common knowledge that my mother carried Spirit. But if Requiem knew Spirit could boost another element power, he might have guessed that whoever had set off the tsunami did so with more power than they should have.

And he knew a child within our family carried Spirit—worse, he thought it was Belladonna.

“Requiem thinks Belladonna is a half-breed like him,” I whispered. “He thinks she is powerful with her connection to the earth because she carries Spirit with her as well. She doesn’t, but he believes she does.” Damn me and the anger that caused the tsunami.

The two Undines and Ash stared at me as if I were speaking gibberish. “You don’t know that.”

“I do. It explains so much. Why he was careful with her, why he didn’t just have her killed. He had her marked from the beginning.” I closed my hands over the papers, crumpling them.

But how . . . how could he even begin to suspect, who would tell him that a child of the earth would come and have Spirit tied to her too?

“Cassava,” I breathed her name and beside me, Ash stiffened.

“What has she to do with this?”

My words were no prophecy, they were a certainty that rode me hard. “Cassava knew Father would have to get me out of the Rim if I were to survive. How do we know she didn’t plant a suggestion before she left? It would seem natural to remove me. She had to know about Requiem as this was happening before she was ousted.

“Which meant he might have approached her even, looking for a half-breed who fit his breeding requirements. Father sent me and Belladonna, but Requiem would only see Belladonna as a possible mate, since she is the heir to our family’s throne.” I sucked in a big breath and Ash wrapped his arms around me, pulling me to his chest.

“You are grasping at splinters, Lark. You don’t know if any of that is true. Guesses are not the same as fact.”

I wrenched myself out of his arms and shook the papers in his face. “It’s here! Don’t you see? Barkley
knew
. He knew what was going on. He would have sent the information to my father who was controlled by Cassava.”

Ash put his hands on his hips and bowed his head. His silence stung me, as if a thousand tiny biting gnats drove tiny teeth into the small piece of trust I still had for him.

He raised his head. “I was wrong before. I was wrong not to trust you.”

Hope flared in my chest and I waited, breathless. “I’m not wrong about this. I know it.”

Slowly, he nodded, but the words he said stunned me. “Lead. I will follow.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat. “We have to get to the throne room.”

Such a simple statement, and yet, accomplishing it would be anything but.

Octo gave me a smile. “Ah, well, I think I can help you there.”

We all turned to face him and I couldn’t help asking. “What happened to being afraid of Requiem like everyone else? You even said you wouldn’t give me your name for fear of him finding out you spoke with me.”

He raised his eyebrows, the gray fluff blowing in the breeze like the under feathers of a goose. “And if he knew you were speaking to the one person who might know what he was truly doing? What do you think he would have done to us both then? It would have done none of us any good to have him know. Pick your battles, young one.”

Octo made a good point. Several actually. As he leaned against the wall, he thumped his walking stick on the pebbled road, a shell cracking under the tip. “While I believe old men should leave the fighting to younger ones, I’m not above taking one last shot at making things right. Perhaps I can make the memory of my friend shine a little brighter if I do this.” His eyes swelled with grief and love, and the truth hit me square between the eyes.

I took his hand. “I’m so sorry you lost him.”

Octo squeezed my fingers. “He was a good man, a brilliant man. He tried to tell me and I . . . I didn’t believe him. We fought about it, and he left. I never saw him again.”

I remembered him wandering the same halls as me, the hall with the supposed secret entrance to the cells. “You were looking for a way into the cells too, weren’t you?”

A bitter laugh escaped him. “Yes, but I didn’t have the gumption to be thrown in with him as you two did. Too much fear for too long in these old bones. But no more. I will help face down Requiem and whatever comes will be my reward or punishment.”

His earlier words reverberated in my head. Pick your battles. Requiem had shown us how very powerful he was and that he wasn’t afraid to use that power. How many more lives would be wiped out if we tried to face him without a solid plan?

The chance was too high that he would kill us all. And seeing how we were completely outnumbered, I wasn’t willing to take that chance. My job was still first and foremost to get Belladonna to safety. The only way to do that was to keep my own skin, and Ash’s, intact.

Folding the papers, I smoothed them out and handed them to Ash. “We just need to get Finley and Belladonna. That’s the plan. We get them out and we get out of the Deep. We’ll wait ‘til after the wedding ceremony.” Which would make it near dawn.

Ayu gasped. “You would let him wed your sister?”

I didn’t get a chance to answer her. Ash did it for me. “It makes sense. He won’t be expecting us after the ceremony. He’ll be waiting on us prior to it, or during.”

I looked at him. “You think he knows we survived?”

“When his shape shifters don’t come back, he’ll go looking. Or send more of his lackeys to make sure we’re dead.”

Octo and Ayu looked at each other and then me. “You won’t try to kill him?”

I shook my head. “I’m an Ender. I have no right to his life, and while I think he should die, I don’t want to risk anyone else’s life to make it happen. Certainly not my sister’s, and not Finley’s, either.”

We spoke a little longer, to clear up the details. Ayu would go to Requiem and make sure the two girls were “healthy” enough for being wedded and bedded. She would tell them we were coming for them, to stay strong. Octo would try to get word to my father. According to the old Undine, Requiem planned to go old school, marrying his two brides, and then sending them to his bedroom to wait on his pleasure. He would take part in the revelries and Octo would do his best to get him stinking drunk and keep him away as long as possible.

Ash and I would break into Requiem’s private quarters, wait for Belladonna and Finley, at which point we would extract them. Ayu would make sure there was a skiff waiting for us.

Such straightforward plans.

Yet my stomach rolled with anxiety as we waited. Standing in the darkness, the clear weather turned as if in tandem with my fears. The night sky clouded over and the wind picked up. Sharp, cold air snapped along Ash and me as we waited in the alley.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” I whispered as the first rumble of thunder boomed into the night. Ash’s fingers brushed against mine.

“Don’t say that, I’m starting to look forward to my pedicure.”

Laughing softly, I shook my head. “Damn, I was hoping you’d forgotten.”

His eyes shone in the darkness, as if lit from within. “Never.”

rom our hiding spot, we heard the drums that signified the start of the wedding ceremony. My palms were sweaty and my heart rate soared as I strained to hear the words that would bind Belladonna and Finley to Requiem. I kept reminding myself when he was dead, the vows would be nullified.