Page 33 of These Divided Shores
Elazar stood in the hall, Ben restrained by Jakes and Gunnar rattling on the bars of his cell, as Milo dosed her with Lazonade and cut her apart.
After Milo left, she sat on the cot, her head on Ben’s shoulder, dreading and hoping for her numbness to subside. Ben ground down more Healica for her.
“Vex,” Lu said into the stillness. Horror set her spinning. “I haven’t... I haven’t asked you what plants the Church might have given him.”
Ben moaned in confusion.
Sensation crept into Lu’s hands and she fought not to scream as her new wounds burned. “Shaking Sickness. The Church gave him Shaking Sickness. You would know what they used.”
Ben shifted. “Paxben has Shaking Sickness?”
She frowned. He didn’t know? She had to have told him....
Ben drew her closer to him and handed her the prepared Healica. “We can talk about—Vex—later. Rest.”
Panic split through Lu’s fog. They couldn’t rest. Milo would return, again and again; defensors would whip Gunnar, over and over.
She wanted to get out. She wanted to go home. She wanted to be alone on this island with only the people she loved. She wantedpeace.
Lu reached to her boot, a shout cracking her lips. She grabbed the vial of Powersage and Aerated Blossom.
Ben didn’t speak as Lu downed the vial. She cringed at the syrupy tartness, not at what it might do to her. Whether this potion worked didn’t matter—when Lu was healed, she would pick the lock again. She would leave this cell and never come back.
One way or another.
9
VEX, HIS CREW,and Kari were going to break into the Port Camden prison with the Emerdian and Tuncian raider syndicates.
No matter how many times Vex repeated that, he couldn’t take it seriously. But if the war went as expected,allthe syndicates would be working together, and with the Council too. It was so inconceivable that Vex found himself constantly shaking his head.
While Cansu’s raiders used Nayeli’s Budwig Bean to coordinate the arrival of the Tuncian raider armada, Nate went over the prison layout. His syndicate had gotten schematics for the building over the years—Emerdian raiders were, after all, the ones most likely to get locked up there—so he showed them sketches of the prison’s floors, explaining which halls could be moved and where the levers were hidden.
There were as many as seven levels, four deep in the prison’s plateau, three aboveground; but with a twist of a lever, one section connected to another and seven levels became six. When the Emerdians and the Tuncians attacked the prison, their priority would be getting to the levers and knobs first, and putting a half dozen people in charge of fighting off any guards who tried to overtake them.
“The levers correspond to walls; the knobs to cells; large cranks move whole hallways,” Nate explained one night to Kari and Vex. A fire raged in the peach-blush brick hearth, sweltering the room alongside the constant island heat. Having a fire whenever people were in a room was an Emerdian tradition, Vex had learned.
After four days cramped in Nate’s rickety townhouse—“This is just a beat-up old safe house. My real home is far more lavish—don’t touch that! It’s an antique!”—Vex had learned more about the Emerdian Head and his raiders than he had ever wanted to know. They couldn’t go into the city too often for fear of Argrid snatching them up, so they’d stayed cramped in this three-story hotbox, sleeping on the floor, arguing over the food Nate’s raiders managed to find in the desolate streets, and generally getting in each other’s way.
Nate gulped from a canteen and hissed at the acidity of—he’d told Vex three times now—liquor that’ll rip the skin off your throat.
“That water too much for you, Nate?” Vex asked.
Nate ignored him and leaned over the table. He was theonly one standing—a sad attempt at snatching control when it was clear at every moment that Kari was in charge.
“There are four places in the prison with smaller control panels.” Nate pointed at a map. “Only the guardhouse—here—has a panel with all the controls, but shit, it’s a nightmare. Twenty different levers. Fifteen knobs. Five cranks.” Nate folded his arms triumphantly. “Luckily, you have someone who understands the innermost workings of this complicated system.”
“Oh?” Vex leaned back in his chair. “When does he get here?”
“You’re dying of Shaking Sickness, yet you have the energy to insult me. I’m honored.”
The heat had already made Vex’s face red, but he swallowed hard. They’d spent too long in this small space together—Vex knew Nate had a minor Narcotium Creeper addiction and chewed leaves every night before bed; another of his raiders hummed in his sleep; one raider named Barnabas had a bag of nasty Emerdian licorice hidden under a floorboard, and he’d stuff a few pieces in his mouth when he thought no one was looking. As though candies that smelled like feet were in danger of being stolen.
If Vex’d noticed that, of course someone had noticed him shaking. It happened all the damn time now, anyway.
“Insulting you is effortless, Natey,” Vex spat. “I hardly break a sweat.”
“Why are you here?” Nate countered. “You aren’tcontributing. Go wait for the Tuncians by the door like the good little unaligned Argridian rat you are.”
