The Healing Wars: Book II: Blue Fire (15 page)

“A
ylin!”

She didn’t scream, even though she had to be terrified. Branches cracked and snapped, but the sounds quickly stopped.

So did the hammering at the forge.

I climbed, willing my arms to keep moving, stop shaking, and anyone who might come outside to
not
look up at the tree. I didn’t look down, but my ears strained for the shouts of alarm that would get us all arrested—or worse.

None came. The hammer strikes resumed.

Branches and leaves scratched my feet, then calves, and I was in the canopy. Danello grabbed my legs and guided me to a heavy branch near the
trunk. I collapsed into him.

“How’s Aylin?”

“About ready to throw up,” she answered, “and my hands sting, but otherwise okay.”

“Rope burn,” Danello said. “Would have been a lot worse without the gloves.”

Aylin snorted. “Would have been a lot worse if I’d let go.”

Danello climbed over and shook one of the ropes, then the other. “Rest a bit while you can,” he said. “We might have more climbing to do.”

“Oh, joy,” Aylin muttered.

Ceun made it to the tree easier than we had, but small boys were always good at climbing.

“Patrol,” Danello said softly, and we all froze.

Peering through the leaves, we watched the soldiers walk by in the well-lit foundry yard. Both wore chain armor and heavy swords on their belts. Not pynvium though. They rounded the corner.

“Let’s go.”

We started climbing again, heading toward the rear of the building. With luck one of the branches would get us close to a third-story window. Quenji swore no one ever locked windows that high, so we’d probably be able to crawl right inside.

We reached the end of the limb. The thick one
we were on didn’t reach the building, though a few smaller ones did.

“Stay here and keep an eye out for the patrol.” I stepped carefully onto the limb that reached nearest a window, inching along, testing my weight. The closer to the end I got, the more the limb dipped. I climbed back. “It won’t hold me.”

“How ’bout me?” Ceun asked. “I’m small.”

“See if you can get to the window and tie the rope across.”

Aylin peered through the shadows. “Is that room empty?”

“Looks dark, but—Patrol!”

We froze again and the soldiers passed below. And stopped.

Aylin squeezed my hand. I held my breath. One of the soldiers knelt and picked up a broken branch. He glanced up into the tree.

Don’t see us, don’t see us, don’t see us.

He rose, tossing the branch away, and they continued walking.

I exhaled. Too close.

“Ceun, go for the window.”

He nodded and scampered across the branch. It dipped, but not deep enough to drop him. He reached the window and stepped off. The branch
snapped up and bobbed, but no new branches fell.

Ceun clung to the window like a frog on a tree. He scooted down and pressed his palms against the frame, then lifted. The window opened and Ceun slipped inside. We waited, seconds ticking away, then he popped out. “Toss the rope,” he called softly.

Danello tossed an end, Ceun caught it. Both vanished back into tree and room. The rope stretched flat.

Danello didn’t waste time. He hung from his knees on a branch and scooted onto the rope. It held. He crawled across a lot faster than I’d be able to.

Aylin went across, not so graceful, but not slow either. Then it was my turn. I sat on the branch and slid back, hanging from my knees. Reached forward and grabbed the rope. My arms shook already and I hadn’t even done anything.

Just cross already.

I let go with my legs, tried to swing them up and onto the rope. And missed. I dangled, my arms screaming.

Move it, move it, get those legs up!

I pulled with all my strength and my legs caught the rope, then wrapped around. I said a quick prayer and climbed across, forcing my hands forward, sliding my legs closer.

Almost there.

Footsteps below. The patrol!

I hung thirty feet in the air, out in the open. I had no idea if I’d dislodged any branches. I couldn’t move without making noise, and even the small scrape of cloth and leather against rope might alert them.

They passed below.

I exhaled and started moving again, counting the inches until—

“Got you,” Danello whispered, scooping me up and pulling me inside. I sank to the floor, muscles demanding a week off, at least.

“Thanks. Where are we?”

“Storage room, I think,” he said. “Lots of boxes.”

And barrels, and crates.

“Nothing worth stealing,” Ceun said, closing the lid on one. “Tools and forge stuff mostly. One box of swords.”

“I guess it was too much to hope for to find pynvium in the first room,” I said.

“With our luck?” said Aylin. “Way too much.”

“Ceun,” Danello said, “grab us three of those swords.”

“Sure.”

I stood, knees shaking only a little, and went to the door. I pressed my ear against the wood. No footsteps, no voices. That didn’t mean no guards though.

I tapped Danello on the shoulder and pointed to the door. He nodded and got ready to open it. I waited to the side with Aylin, both of us with sheathed swords raised like clubs.

Danello turned the latch and paused. Still no sounds outside. He opened the door and peeked out. “Clear.”

We went to the next room. Tried the door. Locked.

Danello watched the hall while Ceun stepped forward, pulling thin metal sticks out of a pocket. He got on one knee and stuck them into the lock. The lock clicked and he opened the door. We followed and shut it behind us. The room was dark, but gentle sounds of breathing floated about. Impossible to tell how many though.

Soldiers or Takers? I pointed to the door and held up my hand, thumb and index finger about an inch apart. Ceun nodded and cracked the door.

Hall light sliced inside, illuminating the foot of a bed. Good boots sat on the floor, with a sword belt hanging on the foot post. Soldier bunks.

We slipped out of the room in a hurry.

Danello went a few doors down and stopped at one across the hall. Another locked door. Ceun picked it and we went inside again, leaving the door open enough to see inside this time.

Dim, but not dark. More breathing, but also whimpers and moans. Six people lay chained to six beds. My heart soared. There
were
Takers here!

“Jovan! Bahari!” Danello said, darting over to his brothers.

Aylin ran to Enzie, surprise and joy on both their faces. I scanned the beds, saw Winvik and two I didn’t know, but no Tali. Why wasn’t she here too?

Guilt dampened my joy. I was glad we’d found them, but it wasn’t fair. Everyone else was here, even people we didn’t even know had been captured, so why not her? My stomach twisted. Had Vyand taken Tali with her?

“What’s hurting them?” Ceun said, his eyes wide.

“They’re being forced to take more pain than they can handle. The Duke’s trying to make unusual Taker abilities surface so he can use them.”

“He’s making quirkers?”

“Trying to.”

“Nya, how are we going to get them out of here?” Aylin asked.

“Ceun, can you pick these cuffs?”

“Already picking.”

“Enzie, have you seen Tali?”

“Not since the jail.”

“Are there more Takers here?” I asked. Tali had to be too young to be an Undying, so where was she?

“Yes. With the weird slab.”

“Slab? Like the one the Healers’ League used?”

She shook her head. “It’s different. It holds us. Hurts us.” She started coughing.

“Do you know where they keep the pynvium?”

“No.”

There’d be some in the smelting room for sure, but I’d hoped there would be some stored that was easier to get to.

I put one hand on Enzie’s head and felt my way in, checking for slowed blood and spots on her organs. So much pain, almost as much as Neeme and Ellis were carrying, but it hadn’t started to kill her yet. But it felt
off
somehow.

Finding so many pain-filled Takers changed things. We’d have to get the pynvium and heal them before we could get them out of here. Worse, even without their pain, I doubted any would be able to
climb up the rope to the aqueduct. Quenji and Zee might be able to haul them up, and Danello could go first and help, then maybe Aylin. She was a lot stronger than she looked.

“I’m going to check on the others. I’ll be right back.”

Enzie nodded, tears dripping from the corners of her eyes.

The others were about the same. They must have been recently filled with pain, though it felt different from anything I’d ever felt before. It wasn’t specific pain like a heal normally caused, but a lot of pain all mixed up into one.

I sucked in a breath.

Like
shifted
pain. Had Vinnot found another like me?

“So where do they keep the pynvium?” Aylin said, her face set.

“Smelting room.”

“That big noisy room with the open doors?”

“Right.”

She frowned but slid the backpack off her shoulders. “Let’s hope they don’t pay much attention to who works the night shift.” She opened the pack and pulled out three uniforms. We pulled them on over our clothes.

“The cuffs are all picked,” Ceun said.

“Some more rooms to search on this floor,” Danello said, taking the last uniform from Aylin. “We can try those first.”

I hated to just leave Enzie and the others here, but until we found pynvium, we couldn’t do anything to help them. “Okay, let’s check them.”

We slipped into the hall and went to the next door. Locked, which was a good sign. Ceun picked it and peeked inside.

“Dark and quiet,” he said, then went in.

We followed. My eyes adjusted enough to make out more boxes and crates, a few barrels. I pried the lid off one. Something dark, like sand.

“Danello, open those curtains, please.”

He did, and moonlight lit the room.

“What is this?” I scooped my hand into the barrel. It
was
some kind of sand, but coarser, almost metallic.

“Worth anything?” Ceun asked.

“I don’t even know what it is. But there’s a lot of it if all these barrels are filled with it.”

Ceun nodded and pulled a bag off his belt. “Might be worth good coin, then.”

I pulled a small bag out of my pocket and filled it with the sand. Might be nothing, but who knew what
the Duke was making here. Better to get a good look at it in the light.

“This trunk is locked,” Aylin said from the other side of the room. “It’s big.”

It was. Maybe four feet long, three feet tall, three feet deep. Thick iron bands wrapped around it like a Winterfest gift. My heart quickened. You didn’t lock something up that tight unless it was worth a lot.

“Open it. Maybe it’s pynvium.”

Ceun went to work on the lock. Took him longer than the doors, another good sign. It clicked open and he lifted the lid.

“Wow.” He held up a wrist bracer. The entire trunk was filled with armor.

“Let me see that.” I brought it to the window under the moonlight. It looked black, same as the sand. I needed more light. I went to the door, listened for noises outside, then opened it enough for the hall lamps to shine in.

Blue armor.

I shut the door.

“It’s pynvium. It’s the Undying’s armor.”

Ceun dropped his piece like it was on fire. Aylin started yanking pieces out and filling her arms.

“Are there more trunks like this?” she said.

“Three more about the same size.”

“Get as much of the armor as you can,” I said,
grabbing more. “This will heal them.”

More than that, there were full sets here. Who needed a healing device if we could look like one of the Undying and walk right into the Taker camp? We filled our bags and slipped back into the room with the Takers.

“Does anyone here know how to heal?” I asked, holding up one of the armor pieces. “Or how to push pain into pynvium?”

A boy I didn’t know raised his hand, though it barely got above the bed sheet. I brought the armor to him.

“Is this fillable?”

He took it, closed his eyes, and smiled. My heart soared. Seconds later he sat up, the color returning to his cheeks. “I’ll heal the others.”

“Can anyone else heal?”

“Me, maybe,” Enzie said. “Tali was teaching me.”

I brought her a piece as well. She held it and her brow wrinkled. “It doesn’t want to go.”

“Don’t rush it, just feel your way in.” At least that’s what Tali had told me last summer when she was teaching
me
. It hadn’t worked, of course. No matter how hard she’d tried, my ability just didn’t work like anyone else’s.

Her eyes flew open. “I got some!” She’d gotten
rid of most of her pain by the time the healer boy stopped at her bed.

“I can get it!” She jerked away as he reached for her.

He smiled and gently placed his hand over hers on the armor. “Just kind of sprinkle it over, like this.” He closed his eyes. Enzie narrowed hers and nodded slowly.

“I see, okay, let me try.” She closed her eyes and pushed the rest of her pain into the armor.

“I knew you could do it,” I said. I turned to the healer boy. “Can you heal me, please?”

He took my hands, and my arms felt much better.

“Thanks.” I picked up the two bracers full of pain and slipped them under my shirt. Clunky to carry, but we needed all the weapons we could get.

Bells started clanging in the hall. Then shouts and thumps. People moving very quickly. Ceun cracked the door a finger width, listened, then shut it again.

“Bad things. The patrol found the rope.”

P
anicked faces turned to me.

“Back in bed,” I whispered. “Make it look like the cuffs are still on you. Ceun, under the bed, hide.”

“What about us?” Danello asked.

“We’re soldiers. We’re here to guard this room. Aylin, turn the lamps up.”

I stashed the pynvium and the backpacks under Enzie’s bed and drew my sword.

Danello got beside me. “Are you sure about this?”

“We can jump out the window if you want.”

“Three stories is a bit much, even for me.”

The door burst open and two soldiers came in,
swords of their own ready to swing. Fighting every instinct I had, I sighed in relief and lowered my sword. After a moment, Danello and Aylin did as well.

“Good, it’s just you,” I said with a dry chuckle. “We were expecting a lot worse. What’s going on out there?”

One of the soldiers looked at me, confusion on her face. The other looked suspicious.

“Well?” I said, adding just a bit of worried irritability.

“Have you seen anyone on this floor?” the woman soldier asked.

“Just you. Been quiet all night.”

“You’ve been here all night?”

I nodded. “Don’t know why we need three to guard a bunch of sick people, but I wasn’t going to argue with that tracker woman.” Vyand had probably made an impression while she was here.

“Oh. Yeah, probably a good idea.” She glanced at her partner, who shrugged subtly.

“She thinks someone is going to steal them.” I laughed, then stopped. Might be pushing it. “What’s going on outside? We heard something about a rope?”

The soldiers sheathed their swords. “Patrol found
a rope tied from the tree to the third-floor storage room. Someone might be inside.”

“Think they’re after these people?”

She scoffed. “Them? Doubt it. More likely the pynvium.”

“Or whatever they’re hiding on two,” one of the guards muttered.

The woman shot him a look and he quieted. “We’ll check it out. Stay alert though.”

“We will. They won’t get in here.”

“You need any help searching?” Danello asked.

The woman hesitated, then looked at her partner and shook her head. “No. If Vyand wants you here, stay here. We don’t want Vinnot mad at us. Keep the door locked.”

“Will do,” I said, forcing my voice to stay steady. Vinnot was
here
. This wasn’t just a foundry; it was where he conducted his horrible experiments. No wonder it was so well protected, and why there were Takers here. Was Vyand working for him? Is that why she’d had Undying with her?

They left the room, and I locked the door so it clicked loudly.

“Quenji is gonna be mad he missed that,” Ceun said from under the bed. He sounded like he was having fun.

“So they’re hiding something on the second floor,” Aylin said.

“Sounds like it. I bet it’s something Vinnot is working on.”

It’s different. It holds us. Hurts us…

“Enzie, tell me more about the weird slab. Is that what they’re hiding? Is that where they take you all to hurt you?”

Enzie nodded. “They carry us downstairs and lock us into it. It hurts. Puts pain into you.”

“Like I can?”

“Yes. Only it doesn’t take it back out.”

Jovan shook his head. “It takes it back out. I saw Vinnot do that to six Takers when he brought us to it. I think he took it out of them so he could put it in us.”

“It has cuffs on it,” Winvik said. “Like the ones on the bed, but not on chains. They grew out of it.”

Saea be merciful. Was it to test Takers, or was it some kind of weapon? Maybe both. But if the Duke already had a weapon that put pain into people, why would he need me?

Because you don’t look like a weapon.

Forget the risk. I couldn’t leave without destroying the pynvium forges, no matter how many soldiers were down there. Without those forges,
Vinnot couldn’t build anything else. And I had to get onto the second floor and destroy his pain-shifting device. But first—

“Nya, you have that look again,” Aylin said. “You want to do something we’re
not
going to like, don’t you?”

“We need to get everyone out so I can destroy this place.”

She gaped at me. So did Danello. “It’s a
foundry
,” he said. “Molten metal, lots of stone and brick. They don’t break.”

“He’s right, and the guards are already on alert,” Aylin added. “We were lucky to find Enzie and the twins, so maybe we should just get out of here with them and the pynvium while we can.”

“
I
can’t. You saw what the Undying did to that family. How long until the Undying are breaking down Gevegian doors and killing Gevegian families? And now the Duke has this pain-shifting weapon? Imagine what else he has in here. No, I have to stop him.”

“How?”

I grabbed my backpack from under the bed. “With these.” I pulled out one of the four boxes Ceun had gotten for me.

Danello looked dubious. “Boxes?”

“These are watertight,” I said, holding one up. It wasn’t large, about six inches long, four wide and deep. “Fishermen use them to keep rescue flares and tinderboxes dry out on the boats. When my father was an apprentice enchanter, another apprentice accidentally threw a box like this into the forge. It heated up and exploded. Shattered the bricks to bits. Ruined the entire forge. I figure it’ll work on the smelting furnaces as well as the forges.”

He still didn’t look convinced. “Won’t the Duke just use another foundry?”

“Not to smelt pynvium. It takes a
lot
more heat to melt pynvium than iron. You need enchanted bricks to do it, and those aren’t so easy to get. It’ll stop his whole weapons and armor production. The Underground might be able to do something then to bring him down.”

“If you can get down there in the first place.” Aylin frowned at the door. Alarm bells still rang.

I tapped my uniform. “I’ll blend right in.”

“
We’ll
blend right in,” Danello said. “I’m going with you.”

“Good,” Aylin said. “Otherwise I’d have to.”

“But—”

“No discussion.” Danello put one finger against my lips. “We do this together or not at all.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“So,” Aylin said, “how do we get everyone out?”

“Through the front gates, I guess—it’s the only way.” I went to the window. The front gates had to be on my right. The tree was useless as an escape route now that they had found the rope.

I looked down into the foundry’s yard. No bushes between the building and the wall. Lamps every ten feet, all lit. I didn’t see any soldiers, but they were out there.

“Strip the sheets off the beds.” I turned away from the window. “Make a rope.”

“We’re going out the window?” Enzie said. “Like you did at the League?”

“Exactly. When you’re all down, run for the main gate. Hopefully you’ll be able to open it from the inside, but if not, Ceun can pick the lock.” I looked at him and he nodded.

Quenji and Zee must have heard the alarm bells by now, seen the patrol and the rope. If they were smart, they’d be getting out of here fast along the aqueduct before they were spotted.

“What about the guards?” Jovan said as he tied sheets together. “They’ll be after us as soon as they see us.”

Aylin chuckled. “Not if Nya starts exploding
the forges, they won’t.”

“That’ll make them look the other way,” Ceun said with a wide grin.

I grinned back. “Wait here until you hear a lot of noise, then run for it.”

Danello and I slipped out the door. The hall lamps were brighter, the shades wide open. He drew his sword.

“You don’t search for intruders without a weapon out,” he said.

“Right.” I drew mine.

We headed toward the stairs at the end of the hall. The sounds of doors opening and closing echoed in the stairwell, and men shouting orders. Danello took the lead, moving quickly as if he had someplace to be. We paused at the second-floor landing.

“Not good,” Danello whispered.

Soldiers searched rooms on the second floor, with extra guards posted on a door at the far end. If the room was that well guarded, the pain-shifting weapon had to be inside.

“We won’t be able to get in there.” I hated saying it, but if we tried to talk our way past the guards, they’d get suspicious.

“Maybe we can come back after we put the boxes in the forges.”

I hesitated, but Danello was right. “We don’t have any other choice.”

Danello pushed open the heavy door to the first floor, and heat washed over us. It was a lot noisier, with hammer strikes, furnace blasts, and men shouting. This was the foundry proper, the lower half filled with the forges and metalsmithies, the upper half for the smelting. Two sets of stone steps connected the levels, with long channels in between to pour the ore from the smelters to the forges.

There were four forges, one in each corner of the lower room. Coals burned bright orange in the firepots, their tips white as the sun. The enchanting glyphs glowed blue in the bricks, burning the coal hotter than regular fire could. Two troughs sat in the middle of the room, both filled with liquid pynvium running down the channels from the smelting room above.

Enchanters worked at each forge, scooping pynvium out and filling molds on one side, pounding out bars and making weapons on the other.

My chest fluttered. I’d spent so many hours helping Papa in the forge. He’d lower the raw pynvium into the smelting cauldron and it burned blue, like flaming moonlight. I’d hand him tongs and pokers, mugs of water. The leather coveralls were hot and
heavy, but I didn’t care. I loved being there.

A pair of soldiers walked around the room, each armed with a sword and a pynvium rod. They watched the enchanters and the weaponsmiths with hard stares as if they were guarding them, not protecting them. They were probably making sure the enchanters didn’t steal any pynvium. Plenty here to tempt even the most loyal follower: racks of finished weapons, healing bricks. Nothing large enough to be a League Slab though. Everything here was crafted for war.

Danello tapped my hand, then looked at a forge and shrugged his shoulders. I shrugged back. I didn’t know how we were going to get the boxes in there yet.

I headed toward the smelting-room stairs at the other end. One of the soldiers nodded to us as we passed. I nodded back, keeping my face as grim as his. He had to know about the alarm, so he’d just assume we were searching for the intruder.

It got even hotter at the top of the stairs, the blue-white flames burning in the smelting pits, one on each side. Giant bellows blasted the furnaces heating them. Cauldrons bubbled with liquid pynvium, chunks of impurities floating on top, waiting to be swept away. Thick chains ran from the cauldrons to
heavy cranes above. Two men were carefully dragging a cauldron along the crane tracks, moving it over the channels to the forge area. The cauldron tipped, and shimmering blue pynvium poured out.

Danello watched, wide-eyed, until I nudged him and shook my head subtly. If he was used to being posted here, he wouldn’t be so awed by the process.

By the right furnace five large ore carts of raw, unrefined pynvium sat open, the rough blue nuggets glinting in the firelight. Five! The Duke must have raided dozens of mining towns to have that much. It was enough to keep Geveg in Healing Slabs for years.

The other furnace had three pallets of smooth pain-filled slabs and bricks waiting to be melted down and forged into weapons. Enough to arm—and armor—more soldiers than the Duke probably had.

An enchanter and two apprentices worked at each smelter, their backs to us except for when the apprentices ran to get more ore and had to swing the cauldrons to the channels.

I leaned in close and put my lips next to Danello’s ear. “We need to get rid of that soldier.”

He nodded and started toward the pynvium bricks, grabbing one when the soldier wasn’t looking.
Danello walked up to the soldier and smacked him in the head with the brick. He crumpled to the floor.

One of the enchanters gaped at him, caught mid-turn by the sight.

“I think the heat got to him,” Danello said.

“I think that brick to the head got him,” said the enchanter.

I hurried over and slipped my hand to the pynvium bracer hidden under my shirt. “We don’t want any trouble here.”

He shrugged. “Beat each other to death if you want. Not like I can do anything about it.” He shook a foot. A chain ran from the smelter to his ankle. Same with the two apprentices working with him.

I gaped at him. “You’re prisoners here?”

“Everyone here but the soldiers.” He looked me over. “Something tells me you’re not a real soldier.”

“We’re trying to destroy the foundry.”

Now the enchanter and apprentices gaped at me. “Foundries aren’t easy to destroy.”

“People keeping telling me that.” I pulled out one of the boxes.

He looked at it and smiled. “You’re a wicked girl.”

“Think it will it work?”

“Oh yes. But we’ll be hanged for it if we’re caught.”

“Let’s not get caught.”

He laughed and nodded. “Deal. I’m Sorg.”

“Nya. That’s Danello.”

I kept an eye on the other soldiers patrolling the forge area below while Danello used the smelting tongs to cut Sorg and the other enchanter and apprentices loose. We’d have to subdue both forge guards and free the others before we could do anything more.

“What now?” Danello said.

I pointed to the unconscious solider. “Grab his pynvium rod. I’ll run down, get the others’ attention, and lead them up here. Flash them as soon as they’re in range.”

“Got it.”

I waited until he was ready behind the crates of pynvium, then ran down the stairs, waving my arms and yelling.

“They’ve escaped, they’ve escaped!”

The soldiers looked at each other, then started running toward me.

“This way, hurry!” I turned on my heel and headed up the stairs, angling right at the top as if about to run out the open doors.

Whoomp!

The soldiers dropped without a sound. Pain
stung my skin hard—no rod in Geveg ever flashed that strong.

“It didn’t hurt you?” Sorg asked.