The strong hands that gripped the other ends of the guiding poles began to force him forward. Pushing, pulling, swiping, his guides moved him away from the fortress he’d protected for so many years, across the empty plain where one met a death sentence if they approached from the opposite direction. When he and others like him returned, it was through a path known to only a few, a secret more guarded than the identity of the Great Master in the Golden Room of Grief. The Great Master, whom no one had ever seen.

  Forward, forward they marched, the Orphan not resisting, moving as elegantly as he could along the trail his guides set. The wind whipped, the icy pellets of sleet bounced off of his rough, woven armor, making a sound like war drums. No words were spoken. The cloth pressed against his nose smelled of freshly dug earth, the deepest grave, still waiting for a body to call it home.

  He marched forward, forward, the guiding poles chafing his skin.

  Hours later, they reached the edge, the very edge, to which they guided him carefully. The Orphan could feel its stony threshold under the balls of his feet. The wind was stronger than ever here; he felt as if he could lean into it without fear of falling. They’d have to give him a really strong push. Even as he thought this—with something close to giddiness—the acolytes unfastened the poles from the leather belts that still were like vices around his arms and legs. Once those were freed, unleashing waves of pain as blood gushed within his veins, he sensed the priests and priestesses line up behind him. He continued to face the abyss.

  “Any words before you depart?” one of them asked.

  Beetles of fear scurried across his skin, as if they’d burrowed beneath the cloth that wrapped him so tightly. This was the moment that began his future, a future unlike the ones his Bearers of Grief envisioned. He quoted the litany of calm in his mind, a device that still worked despite his blasphemy.

  “Eh?” a woman shrieked across the wind. “Want to say something, lad?”

  The Orphan spoke as loudly as he was physically able.

  “Yes! Long live the Cure, and may She bless my path! May I wander for forty days and forty nights and return a Bearer of Grief in Her service! May the Godhead die, and the Cure rule the earth for evermore!” And may you all go to Hell, he added in his mind. I, the Orphan called Minho, will never return.

  Hard hands pushed him from behind, and he fell over the edge.

  Thoughts of Kit gave him wings.

  She sat in the quiet dark of her room, drinking a strong tea, urging the panic that threaded through her veins to unweave, to leave her with some semblance of peace. This was a problem that could be dealt with, and she already had several plans of action lined up inside her mind. However, this very second, there was nothing she could literally do to make those happen any faster, and she tried, tried very hard, to allow herself some measure of respite.

  But that peace refused to come, even after going through the digits. Images of the Coffin—the artifact taken from the Box by Mikhail—continued to flash across her vision, as if it floated in front of her, an inexplicable thing that stirred up her ancient terror of madness. A terror so deep-set that it often made her worry that she’d go mad from it. Oh, the circular logic, the irony.

  She stood up and walked to the sink and poured out the remains of her bitter tea. It tasted like the bile of a starving, emaciated beast. Something stronger. That’s what she needed. Something stronger that would scorch her throat, warm her stomach, deaden her brain.

  There was a knock at her door.

  “Flint?” she called out. In how many ways could she tell the man that she didn’t want to be disturbed? Was it time to throw a little violence in? It had been a while . . .

  The door opened—she heard the barest of creaks, the swish of the bottom rail against the thick carpet. Violence. Yes, violence. Her anger ignited, she marched out of the kitchen and entered the main hallway of her apartment, ready to unleash all the frustrations of her day on to poor Flint. But it wasn’t Flint.

  “Nicholas?” She barely recovered in time, barely dissolved her anger and rage and haste. Citing the digits within her mind, calmness spread through her like a quick shot of drugs. But if anyone could perceive . . .

  “Why so agitated?” Nicholas asked.

  Though most people probably imagined the First of the Godhead to be an enormous, imposing, powerful, frightening giant of a man, he was very average, in every way. Medium height, medium build, neither handsome nor ugly. He never smelled particularly good, but he didn’t really stink, either. Some whispered that Nicholas had Evolved so far as to read the minds of others. She highly doubted such a thing, but she’d also watched her thoughts like straying servants lately when he was around.

  “Why so silent?” Nicholas asked when she didn’t respond. He always exuded so much patience that it made her want to punch a wall.

  The truth, she thought. For now, the truth.

  “Agitation and silence are the least of my worries,” she said. “Don’t come in here and insult my intelligence and ask your clever questions. Why did you do it?”

  Nicholas pinched his lips together, forming an expression that almost implied admiration. “Good way to start. I didn’t think we’d get here for at least a half hour.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s time. You know it’s time. We have to take the next step or the worst thing that could possibly happen to us and our people and this world will happen. You know this and it’s asinine to argue about it.” He walked past her, brushing her shoulder, then entered the living room and flopped himself down on the couch. At the same time, it was both ungodly and the most condescending thing he could do to her. “Come and sit. Let’s have the requisite argument before you finally admit that I’m right as usual and we move forward.”

  Alexandra closed her eyes, ran through the digits again, this time reciting them at a slower pace. She’d learned from experience with Nicholas to battle patience with patience, calm with calm, indifference with indifference—that was the way to gall him.

  A minute or two passed in silence. Then Alexandra sauntered back into the kitchen, where she poured herself a glass of water. She didn’t do the same for Nicholas. Let him get his own damn drink if he’s so all-powerful. After heading into the living room with her glass, she sat on a chair as far away from her visitor as she could. She took a sip. Then another. She said nothing.

  “Well?” he finally asked. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

  Victory.

  “No. I’m just waiting for you to explain yourself. I’m ready when you are.”

  Nicholas straightened his posture a bit, crossed his legs. “It’s been over thirty years since the Evolution, Alex. We’ve accomplished all that we possibly could accomplish, and we’ve set things up exactly how we planned. It’s time to move on. It’s time to Evolve the others. You can’t possibly disagree with this. What else is the point of everything we’ve done?”

  Alexandra took another sip. “Did you come here on your fancy Berg?”

  “Why does that matter?” He sighed and took an extra-long blink. “Is that what this is? You’re jealous because I have a Berg that actually works?”

  “Can you utter even one sentence without condescension? That’s always your first thought—that we’re jealous or hiding in closets wishing we could be more like you. That’s not the case, Nick old boy. I have what I need and I have what I want. When you have everything you want, you literally don’t want anything. Does this concept make sense to you?”

  His face flushed with anger, something he’d never allow to happen by accident. She was pushing her luck, and she relished it.

  “The reason I asked about your Berg,” she continued, “is because I want to know where you’ve been. It’s been almost three months since Mikhail or I have seen you. Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been away. I’ve been planning. I’ve been scouting. I’ve been spying. We have some pretty nasty enemies in case you’ve forgotten, but we also have many, many potential source communities. It’s time. The next wave needs to Evolve, and the Godhead needs to take its proper place—you know, on top of the heap. I’d be happy to hear your arguments otherwise. Go.”

  He pointed at her and settled deeper into the couch, as if getting comfortable to hear a long dissertation that he already planned how to repudiate. His look of ultimate confidence had fully returned.

  Alexandra stared at him, unmoving. She’d had such a great plan, devised over many years to take place over many years. This turn of events had surprised her, utterly. She hadn’t the slightest notion that Nicholas was ready to remove the Coffin from the Box, much less do it without consulting one of his partners in the Godhead. Relying on every single element of the Flaring discipline she’d ever learned, she ran through calculation after calculation in her mind, reaching out to multiple futures and branchings of those futures, analyzing the possibilities and their respective probabilities. She could still do this. Despite the enormous disruption, she could still do this.

  “I need an answer, Alex. We need to move on this.”

  As the arrogant bastard spoke the words, she continued to look at him without looking, her mind expanded to the very reaches of her ability. Her great, magnificent ability. And then, like a thousand gears of a giant machine rotating, grinding into action, it all fit together.

  “Okay,” she said.

  After that, she went to her room without another word, shutting the door behind her. Eventually, he left.

  She’d finally started feeling comfortable around Kletter and the other old people—most of them having made the leap from suspicious creepers to sketchy acquaintances—when all hell broke loose. She’d had a good rest. Her legs feeling like pounded meat from all that walking—after all that sitting on a boat—she’d been slouched next to Carson and Lacey for at least a half hour in complete silence. Carson was asleep, his head leaned back against a tree, mouth open, snoring just loud enough to be heard. Just loud enough to be annoying. Lacey sat with her legs crossed under her, picking at the sparse grass, lost in her thoughts as usual.

  There’d been a little commotion. Isaac and Sadina went to explore an old house that looked as haunted as Peak’s Graveyard back on the island, then Trish had yelled at them and been ignored. When Kletter herself jogged over to the dilapidated front porch and climbed up the rickety steps, through the tilted doorway, into the darkness, Jackie first wondered what in the world was going on. She didn’t have long to ponder before several alarming sounds erupted from that twisted mouth of the house.

  A shout; a scream; more shouts—muffled, this time—all words indecipherable.

  Jackie leaped to her feet, smacking Carson’s shoulder on the way up. He grunted, flinched, started to say something, but Jackie was already on the run, following Lacey, who’d somehow beat her to the punch. But in front of all of them was Trish, sprinting pell-mell as if an expanding sinkhole collapsed behind her every step. Others joined the rush toward the house—Miyoko, Dominic, Old Man Frypan, everyone—the air suddenly pulled taut like cloth, making it hard to breathe.

  Carson yelled her name from behind. She ignored him, tried to catch up with Lacey. They were in the yard now, weeds grabbing at their ankles. Trish cleared the steps of the porch with one jump but then ground to a halt right before the yawning maw of the doorway. Lacey stopped just short of the porch, Jackie right next to her. Ms. Cowan, Frypan, that old bald dude she didn’t much care for—they all gathered there in seconds, watching Trish’s back, which had gone rigid. Then someone stepped out of the house.

  Kletter.

  A soon-to-be-dead Kletter.

  The woman’s eyes were wide, the whites of them like full moons partially eclipsed by round shadows. Her skin was slick with sweat, her lips as pale as a pig’s underbelly. And her neck . . . that was the bad part. The really bad part. It had been slashed with something sharp, from one side to the other like a necklace, and blood poured down the front of her body in gushes.

  Trish had stepped back on instinct and now lost her balance, falling butt-first and crashing through the rotted bottom step. Above her, Kletter collapsed to her knees with a terrible double thump, then fell forward, the smack of her face against the wood one of the worse sounds Jackie had ever heard. She lay still and no one stirred for a horrible moment that stretched beyond any sense of rational time. Then everyone was moving at once.

  Lacey grabbed Trish under the arms and helped her get back up. She’d barely gained her feet before shooting back up the porch again, jumping over Kletter’s body like it was nothing more than a stray log. Sadina. Thoughts of her could be the only thing in Trish’s world in that moment. Jackie was too stunned to process it all at first, but then recovered herself. Isaac and Sadina both had gone in there and now Kletter was dead.

  “Trish!” she yelled, already in motion. “Trish get out of there!”

  But it was too late. Lacey had already gone after her, then Ms. Cowan, shrieking with despair, then several others. Jackie followed them, avoiding a direct look at Kletter’s grisly remains as she sidestepped the body. When she crossed the threshold and entered the dark gloom of the interior, it took a second for her eyes to adjust. But before she could see that the room was empty—no people, no furniture, nothing—she heard the cries of Trish shouting Sadina’s name.

  Over and over, Sadina, Sadina, Sadina, growing louder and softer as Trish ran through every inch of the house, coming and going, finally leaving out a back door, searching the swath of dusty hardpan and weeds in the small yard. Ms. Cowan trailed her, fraught but silent.

  “Sadina!” Trish screamed. “Sadina!”

  Dominic shouted Isaac’s name through cupped hands. Miyoko and Carson were peeking over the run-down fences, searching for signs.

  Jackie’s mind had slowly been growing numb, unable to comprehend the horror that had descended upon them. She seemed unable to move.

  “What’s going on?” she whispered, knowing it was too soft to be heard over the commotion. Old Man Frypan stepped up to her, gently placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it as if he’d been her grandpa all along. She expected him to say something, but he didn’t. There was no need for words.

  Bad people had come. Bad people had killed Kletter. Bad people had taken their friends.

  Sadina and Isaac were gone.

  And the only person who knew how to sail The Maze Cutter back home—back home—was dead.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Story by Oil Lamp

  He didn’t understand.

  He . . .

  He didn’t understand.

  What had happened? He remembered the cloth on his face, on his ears, on his head, wrapped tightly and roughly around his neck with a cord. He remembered the bumps and thumps of being dragged, then the stomach-tilting whirl of being lifted from the ground, thrown across someone’s shoulder. And then he’d felt it—a prick, a little stab of something sharp. Then the world had faded just as he felt his captor begin to run.

  His eyes were still closed and he couldn’t open them. But his thoughts lifted out of the haze.

  How? How had they been taken so easily, taken before his friends could come to the rescue? Kletter had been there; surely the others had been right behind her. The man named Timon was by himself. Or . . . there had been another . . . a woman . . . he’d heard her voice. And the ones who’d carried him away.

  It was a blur. His head hurt. Why couldn’t he open his eyes? Why did he feel nothing solid, as if he floated in the middle of a dark and warm ocean? What had happened? Who had taken them?

  He didn’t understand.

  He slipped away from consciousness once again.

  It was a light that brought him back, this time. A bright one, piercing his eyelids as if they were made of stretched wool. He blinked them open, squinting into the white brilliance. It disappeared, replaced by a man’s face. An ugly, bearded, pockmarked face. Even though the light had messed with Isaac’s vision, he could tell that much, at least.

  “Bless me,” the ugliness said. “It’s like you people have never been given a drug in your life. Knocked you out cold.”

  Isaac groaned. He tried to say something but coughed instead.

  The man jerked back and sat on his haunches. “Hooboy. Get this man a mint. He smells like Gilgamesh’s vomit.”

  Isaac rolled on to his side, groaning again; it felt like he’d been asleep for three days, every inch of him drenched with weariness. And his head pounded, right behind the eyeballs. His mind swam through the weariness, trying to break the surface. He felt the alarm of being taken, felt the panic, but it was dull and distant, like a throb in his ankle. Until he remembered Sadina.

  He sat up, a sweet explosion of pain rocking his head, followed by a spill of nausea.

  “Where is she?” he sputtered. “Where is she!”

  “I’m here, Isaac.”

  He looked to his right and saw her, sitting on a chair. They were inside, in a room of a house, although it was too dark to decipher any details. He breathed a deep sigh of relief.

  “You two must be close.” A woman’s voice, spoken from a corner draped in shadow. Isaac thought he made out a folded set of arms, the rest of the body leaning against the wall. “At least you’re together in this.”

  “Tell him what you told me,” Sadina said. Her voice sounded awfully steady for someone who’d been kidnapped with a bag over her head. “I’d love to hear it again, myself.”

  The woman stepped forward, coming into the scant source of light, which Isaac now realized was a small oil lamp sitting next to the ugly giant of a man they’d met at the start of all this. His partner came closer and squatted next to Isaac.

  “My name is Leticia.” She had skin somewhere between dark and light, brown eyes, brown hair cinched up into a ponytail. Her long-sleeve shirt had a warped picture of the moon on it. “But Timon here calls me Letti. You can call me Letti, Isaac. That’s how good of friends we’re going to be. The others have gone on ahead of us, but you’ll meet them later.”