The Gauntlet Read online

  “You must be grateful to her, then,” Nok said carefully, gauging Keena’s reaction.

  Keena paused at the flap to a tent, giving Nok a hard look. “Do I look like I enjoy throwing nice girls like you to men like those?” She gestured to the boisterous sounds of male deputies coming from the nearest tents. “The mine guards are the worst. Brutes—and I don’t just mean the male ones. They’re as rotten as the fumes they smell all day.”

  “I told you,” Nok said, “I can take care of myself.”

  Keena’s look softened. Her eyes fell to Nok’s stomach, disguised by the robe’s tie. “I hope that’s true—for you and your baby.”

  Nok sucked in a worried breath. “You can tell?”

  “You’ve done a good job hiding it, but I was a nurse in an obstetrician’s office back home. I knew the moment I saw you.”

  A hesitant flicker of hope fluttered to life in Nok’s chest. An obstetrician’s nurse—especially one who could keep a secret—could be exactly what she needed.

  Keena pressed something into Nok’s hand. “Vitamins,” she whispered. “Hide them in your robe pocket. They aren’t easy to get—Ellis hoards any that come in on the supply drops. But you’ll need them for that baby to be healthy. It isn’t a problem we’ve ever had to deal with before. The Kindred sterilize everyone else as part of processing before sending them here.”

  Nok slipped the bottle into her robe, touched by the risk the woman had taken for her. Maybe giving birth on Armstrong wouldn’t be the worst possibility, if there were women like Keena here. She nodded her thanks.

  Keena opened the tent flap.

  Four men sat on low benches in the small canvas room. It was just as faintly lit as the rest of the tents, candles flickering on a low table laden with strong-smelling alcohol. Nok stepped in, and the men’s conversation died. Four sets of eyes leered at her bare legs.

  Keena started coughing again behind her, then let out a long sigh.

  But Nok didn’t need anyone’s pity. Keena didn’t know what Nok had been through. Keena didn’t know about Miss Delphine, her modeling agent back in London, who had trained her in exactly how to manipulate men like these.

  Nok rested her hands on her hips.

  “All right. Listen.” Her commanding tone seemed to surprise both the men and Keena. “I know why you’re here, but I have another proposal.”

  She paused for dramatic effect, pacing slowly around the table as though she were a sheriff herself, not a slave. “I’ve just come from Earth. Where I watched Wimbledon, the World Series, college basketball. I know it all.” She raised an eyebrow tantalizingly. “Pour me a drink and I’ll tell you everything you’ve missed at home.”

  As much as Nok had hated Miss Delphine, the talent manager had possessed one redeeming trait: she’d bet heavily on sports, which had the best return in the business. And she’d sent Nok to place every single bet.

  The men stared at her, slack-jawed.

  “Come on,” Nok urged. “How long has it been since you were taken? Five years? Ten? Don’t you want to know who won the World Cup?”

  The deputies glanced among themselves, stupefied.

  “What are you doing?” Keena whispered, but Nok just tossed her a reassuring look. The men kept shifting, uncertain, but then one stood abruptly. He reached down nervously, poured a glass of the alcohol, and held it out to Nok.

  “Screw it,” he said. “I don’t care about sports. But if you tell me what’s happened on the last three seasons of Vampires of Brooklyn, I’ll do anything you want.”

  Keena coughed in surprise.

  Nok grinned.

  She strode into the room, motioning for the men to part ways so she could have the best seat with the fluffiest cushions. She kicked her legs on the table and waved away the offered glass.

  “Last I saw,” she started, “Tara had just dumped Franklin. Now hand me some of those grapes.”

  Keena hovered by the tent entrance. When their eyes met, Nok saw a flicker of emotion on the old guard’s face that hadn’t been there before.

  Nok recognized it at once.

  Hope.

  7

  Cora

  FOR THE NEXT TWO days, back in the marron root mines, Cora tried to get Willa to talk to her. She whispered to her while they were working and begged for information on the Gauntlet, but Willa always ignored her.

  At least she didn’t throw any more dirt clods.

  “Is it because of what you heard Dane say?” Cora whispered at last. “About the Kindred that I . . . I had a relationship with?”

  Willa tossed her an exasperated look, flicking her fingers as though she couldn’t care less about the romantic entanglements of Kindred and humans.

  “Then what?” Cora asked. “Why won’t you help?”

  But she got no answer.

  That night, Cora tried to find Willa in the slave barracks tent, but the chimp had a habit of sleeping high in the rafters, out of reach. When Cora called her name, trying to get her attention, Willa just yawned dramatically.

  At last, Cora let out a resigned breath. “Okay, I get it. You’re not going to talk to me. I’ll leave you alone.” She paused. “I never meant to bring up any bad memories. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to go through the Gauntlet.” She looked down at her fingers, cut and bruised from digging in the tough soil. “I know how the puzzles can mess with you,” she said more quietly. “I was in an enclosure filled with them, and they drove my group apart. We turned against each other. We’re only now piecing back together our trust.” She glanced over her shoulder at Rolf. “It took time to remember we were on the same side. All humans are.”

  Willa, high in the shadows of the rafters, said nothing. But her head was turned slightly, as though deep in thought.

  A sore on Cora’s middle finger was oozing, and she took out a jar of ointment from her pocket. Getting it hadn’t been easy—the day before, she’d traded another slave two rations for it. She started to unscrew the lid but then thought about Willa’s hands, which were even more damaged than her own.

  She set the jar of ointment on the ground beneath the rafter. “Here. You need this more than me. I’ve seen the scrapes on your fingers. If they get infected, you won’t be able to work and you’ll end up in the sludge with the other bodies.”

  Willa made no move to get the ointment, though she rubbed her damaged hands together, hairy fingers running over the scars.

  Cora glanced at the other slaves. Though most were fast asleep, a few eyes were watching her in the darkness. If she left the salve there, someone might steal it before Willa came down. Better to give it to the chimp directly. She drew a deep, centering breath and concentrated on the jar. It was heavier than the pebble, but her weeks of practice had paid off, and she was able to telekinetically lift it clear up to the ceiling and balance it on the rafter next to Willa.

  The chimp immediately sat straighter, incredulous gaze moving from the jar to Cora.

  Cora met her eyes. “I wasn’t lying. It isn’t a game to me. Humans are evolving and I have to do everything I can to keep us safe. Even if it means facing the Gauntlet.”

  The chimp paused, still looking shocked at Cora’s display of telekinesis, then picked up the jar. She held it up in a silent, hesitant gesture of thanks.

  Cora nodded.

  She made her way back to the corner of the tent and sat next to Rolf, shaking her head. “Whoever experimented on her, they must have been cruel. She won’t say a word.”

  She and Rolf shared a bowl of marron root broth and curled up to try to sleep. She tossed and turned, images flashing behind her eyes. She was back in the menagerie’s safari hunting grounds. Only this time, she was the hunter. She clutched a rifle with both hands, following tracks in the sand to the water hole, big tracks that could only belong to a Kindred. She cocked the rifle and then spun around a boulder, catching sight of a uniformed Kindred.

  She let out a volley of bullets that pierced his arms and neck.

&n
bsp; The man fell.

  She ran up and gasped. It was Cassian in the water. Drowned. Dead.

  She’d killed him.

  A crumpled piece of paper fell on her face, waking her.

  She jerked upright, feeling disoriented. A wave of heat assaulted her, and she coughed a few times, remembering that she was on Armstrong. There was no watering hole, no cadaver pockmarked with bullets.

  Just a nightmare, she told herself. Cassian isn’t dead. He can’t be.

  If he hadn’t survived the torture, she would sense it, she just knew. And yet the ominous feeling of the dream didn’t leave her. She pressed a hand to her throat, strangled by guilt. She’d seen Cassian strapped down and tortured. For all she knew, he really had died. And wouldn’t she be just as much to blame as if she’d fired that rifle?

  She picked up the crumpled paper, smoothing it out.

  The Gauntlet will take everything from you. It searches for weaknesses and exploits anything it finds. You say you love this Kindred Warden; think hard about who you care about. The Gauntlet will test you on it—it tested me. It defeated me. Now I have nothing. And you are asking me to revisit that dark time—a heavy request.

  Prove first that you deserve my help.

  Cora looked up into the rafters, but Willa was long gone. What had changed the chimpanzee’s mind? The display of telekinetic abilities? Maybe it was the salve too. In a place like Armstrong, a selfless gift—even a small one—carried a lot of weight.

  All the rest of that night, Cora stayed up, awake with the possibilities. Back home, she’d had to prove herself too. For her first few weeks in Bay Pines, she’d tried hard not to be noticed, to keep to herself, but it hadn’t made a difference. Word had gotten around that she was a rich kid, and the other delinquents threatened to beat her up in the cafeteria bathroom unless she transferred commissary funds to their accounts. It had been her roommate, Queenie, who’d finally agreed to help her. Queenie had taught her how to fight back. How to time her movements so a guard was always near. How to cheat at cards. Of course, it was prison, and so Queenie wanted something in exchange—but not commissary funds.

  You have a real gift, Queenie had said, reading through Cora’s notebook. Not everyone can do this. Write songs like this.

  It’s just some lyrics, Cora had said.

  It isn’t. It’s the beauty and the pain. The darkness and the hope. Queenie had picked up a pen. I feel all that too, especially in this place, but I don’t know what to do with those feelings. Teach me to put those feelings into words, and I’ll teach you to defend yourself.

  A deputy came in, searching the crowd of slaves, and pointed at her. Cora forgot about her deal with Queenie. She crumpled Willa’s paper and stuffed it into her shirt.

  “Ellis wants to see you,” the deputy said, then kicked Rolf awake. “Both of you.”

  Cora blinked around the tent at the slumbering bodies of the other slaves, only their tattered clothes for cover, each other’s arms as pillows. She caught sight of a hairy leg hanging from the far rafters—Willa’s. Whenever they got off of this moon, Cora promised herself, they were taking that chimp with them. She’d proven her worth to Queenie, and she could prove herself to Willa too.

  The deputy prodded them with his rifle. “Up. Now.”

  Rolf winced as he stood, shaking out his muscles. Cora followed them across the tent. Outside, the desert night was still warm. The sun was just starting to rise in the east, casting a purplish light over the ground. Heat from the sand radiated up in undulating waves that blurred the mountains. Cora paused and closed her eyes, breathing in the fresh air. On the horizon, the Kindred’s transport hub loomed like a dark shadow.

  “Move,” the deputy ordered.

  THE DEPUTY LED THEM around the edge of the slave barracks tent, and Cora nearly stumbled in surprise: the vast plains beyond the tent encampment, usually empty, were now filled with a fleet of ships. There had to be fifty. In the faint starlight, their identical sleek white hulls glistened. A masked, uniformed flight crew stood at attention beneath each ship. A veritable army of hundreds.

  “Those look like the illustrations of Axion ships from the picture book,” Rolf whispered.

  “Yeah, but look at the crews,” she said. “They’re hunchbacked. It’s a Mosca army.” She gave him a meaningful look and then mouthed, “Bonebreak?”

  Rolf’s eyes widened. “You think he stole all those ships?”

  “Inside,” the deputy ordered, holding back the flap to Ellis’s command center tent.

  Cora stepped into a tented room that was blessedly cool. Next to her, Rolf sighed with relief at leaving the heat. The tent reminded her of something out of a fairy tale, with its big pillows on the floor, oil lamps flickering on poles, low tables laden with bowls of water and flowers.

  Ellis sat on an elevated platform that surrounded a crackling fire pit. She was bent forward, talking to someone out of view behind a canvas curtain. Nok sat cross-legged on the floor nearby, still wearing her apron to hide her baby bump. She’d bathed, and her hair was soft and loose. She caught sight of Cora and Rolf and gave them a reassuring nod. There was even a fresh streak of pink dye in her hair, which ruffled in the breeze.

  Breeze?

  Cora looked around for the source and nearly laughed.

  Standing behind them, shaded in the corner, was Leon. He was shirtless, wearing blue satin pants, fanning the room with an enormous paper fan.

  “Bring them here,” Ellis said, glancing in their direction. “Put them in that corral.”

  The deputy prodded her in the back toward a small, fenced-in ring like one used for holding cattle. From here, she could finally see Ellis’s companion.

  She grinned.

  Bonebreak!

  She’d never imagined she’d be so happy to see the hunchbacked Mosca who had almost gotten them killed. Maybe the Mosca weren’t as bad as she’d first imagined. Bonebreak hardly looked like himself now. His dented, dingy shielding had been replaced with gleaming white armor that matched the ships outside. He reclined on an enormous pile of pillows, empty platters of food sprawled around him, massaging his belly with a gloved hand. Behind him, Anya and Mali stood at attention like servants. They had some sort of Mosca shielding sewn to their thumbs but otherwise looked unharmed.

  Mali gave her the slightest hint of a nod—otherwise pretending they had never met.

  Cora closed her eyes and thought, Anya, can you hear me?

  The girl’s big eyes snapped to Cora.

  Bonebreak is enjoying this way too much. Anya’s sarcastic voice projected into her head. We couldn’t afford to buy a new ship—the best we could do was a holo-projector. The army outside and the fleet of ships are only holograms to make Ellis think we’re more powerful than we are. We need to hurry up before Ellis’s deputies figure that out.

  Cora glanced at Ellis—if the sheriff could levitate guns with her mind, there was a chance she could read telepathic messages too. But Ellis didn’t even glance at them.

  Once we free you all, Anya continued, you, Nok, and Rolf will come with me to Drogane. Mali and Leon will sneak back to the station to get Cassian.

  Cora gave a slight nod.

  “These are the youngest humans I have,” Ellis said, her words tense, as though she hated every moment in Bonebreak’s presence. “And that one there, with the fan, as well.” She motioned to Leon. “He’s been nothing but trouble. Refuses to bow. Refuses to sweep. You can have him for half price. Call it a peace offering.” She looked around as though just remembering something. “Oh, and there’s another young one.” She turned to one of her deputies. “Get Dane.”

  Cora tried to hide her surprise.

  “What about that one?” Bonebreak pointed to Nok casually. “She looks young.”

  Ellis rubbed her chin, finger tapping on the badge soldered to her cheek. “That one would cost you extra. She’s become quite a favorite among my deputies.”

  “I’ll pay you well for her.”

  The dep
uties returned with a sleepy-eyed Dane, whose hair was mussed. He stopped cold when he saw the other teenagers herded together in the corral.

  “What’s going on?” he said, but Ellis nodded to a deputy, who silenced Dane with a rifle butt to the jaw. Dane cried out as the deputy opened the corral gate and prodded him in with the others.

  “Wait!” Dane said, gripping the corral bars. “You can’t sell me to this . . . creature. I’m a deputy. I—”

  “You’re a traitor, is what you are,” Ellis said. “And a mutineer. Or didn’t you think I’d find out that you’ve been whispering to the mine guards about how I’m getting old and soft? How it’s time for a replacement?”

  Dane’s face went white.

  Ellis smiled darkly. “You’re lucky that I haven’t put your head on a spike in front of the sheriff’s office as a warning to other would-be mutineers.”

  Dane turned to Cora with wide, fearful eyes.

  “Did you hear that?” he whispered. “She’ll kill me. You have to take me with you.”

  Cora noted the desperation in his voice with a certain amount of satisfaction. She’d once begged Dane for help, and now he was doing the begging. But as much as she wanted to tell him to screw off, she hesitated. For what it was worth, Dane had truly cared about Lucky. The grief in his eyes hadn’t been an act. And his words still stung her—that anyone who got too close to her wound up dead.

  Cora nodded reluctantly to Bonebreak, a signal for him to include Dane. She hoped she wasn’t making a mistake.

  “That means our negotiations are over, Mosca,” Ellis snapped. “I’ve made you my offer, and your smell is starting to make me sick.”

  “Likewise,” Bonebreak said, standing theatrically and brushing the crumbs off the glistening white shielding over his red jumpsuit. “My fleet and I will be most pleased to be gone from this reeking moon of yours. I would say it’s been a pleasure doing business with you, but it hasn’t.”