Page 11 of Cage of Starlight
“Where am I?”
“We’re on our way to a place for people like you.”
On our way.With that, the odd, untranslatable sounds slot into place: the cottony hush of the rain; the clopping of horseshoes against gravel; the grunt of a driver. A cough. The vertigo makes sense. Heismoving.
“People like me?”
“Unregistered Seeds.”
It could be a lot worse. He’s heard of these places. People like Tory are sent there to learn and then assigned somewhere Westrice can make use of them. Like the mines, the Houses, and the labor camps, Vantaras won’t pass up the opportunity to make use of any resource.
It could be worse, but it’s not ideal. Tory takes stock. They’re on the move. He’s probably in a carriage of some sort. Given the hay smell, maybe even some rudimentary livestock transport car. Less sophisticated than he’d expect from Vantaras’ soldiers who like to show off in their brand-new fuel-belching vehicles, but good for Tory. He might be able to find a way out. Movement in his peripheral vision draws his eye.
Thelamp. If nothing else, he could use it as a bludgeon.
The soldier’s eyes follow his. An eyebrow arches. “It’s chained in. No glass.”
“I could still kill you with it.”
“Could you?” the soldier deadpans. “You’re hardly in a position to make threats. You might have noticed you cannot access your Seed at the moment.”
What’s he going to do with hisSeed?Heal the lamp?
He doesn’t need it, anyway. He has hands. That’s all anyone’s ever needed to take a life or piece one back together. Tory could wring this bastard’s elegant neck.
But healing isn’t why he’s here. That carriage—the way it stopped so smoothly it was like it never moved, that wasn’t healing. It wasn’t anything Tory’s heard of. Now is a bad time to regret slipping away from conversations about people like him for fear that his pointed interest might out him. If there’s a name for what Tory did, he never learned it.
The soldier sinks into silence, arms crossed. Without anger to warm him, Tory shivers. Icy autumn wind moans through the openings at the top of the carriage. Tory buries himself in a corner as far from the soldier as he can get, clenching his teeth to stop the chattering. He reaches up to close Thatcher’s cloak around himself, but they’ve taken it away. He’s unmoored without the weight of the treated leather, bare and frozen through. It shouldn’t matter. He’s been cold like this before.
He’s gotten soft, being loved.
He can’t make that mistake again. Lingering in Hulven—holding onto the people there—is what got him into this situation.
He squeezes his eyes shut and lets himself drift, startling awake only when the carriage creaks to a stop. The doors at the back swing wide, and Tory hisses as the cloud-smeared sky sears itself on his vision.
Up ahead, a black road snakes through yellowing grass toward a wall as high as any Tory has ever seen. As soulless, too—seamless, ash-gray stone. Shadowed suggestions of weapons crouch atop it like carrion birds. The forest sits well apart from it, like nature knows to lean away. It’s veryVantaras.
Two soldiers wait outside. “Sir?” the first one says.
“I’ll escort him,” the delicate soldier responds. Except—the outside light glints off a smart set of bars on his uniform. Tory sneers. Not a soldier, then. Anofficer. They’re the worst types, bloodyinghundreds of hands with their orders while their own stay clean and soft. He’s even wearing white gloves,impeccably clean but frayed at the knuckles and fingertips.
“This way.” The officer walks up behind Tory so he has no choice but to get out of the carriage, then steps around him.
Tory plants himself where he is. First order of business: testing boundaries.
The officer walks up the road, measured strides slowing and stopping about halfway up. “You can choose not to follow.”
Two soldiers idle on either side of him, hands on their belts. Tory doesn’t miss the implied threat. “Then what?”
“You learn what happens to the ones who make trouble.”
“What, you gonna kill me?”
The officer’s expression, by form alone, should be a smile. “That might be kinder.”
Tory’s pounding pulse tells him to run. It’s all he’s ever done, all he knows how to do. “What do you mean?”
“Try it and find out.”
