The Darkest Path

James glanced out the open door into the hall.

“What are you doing here?” he asked as he picked up the remaining shards. “If you’re a spy, President Hill will find out.”

“So it’s President Hill now?” James glared at me, then went back to his work. “Someone had a bomb at his speech and I saved his life.”

“Why?”

It was a knife-edge of a question and I didn’t know how to answer it. A speck of barbecue sauce flew off his rag as he scrubbed, striking his uniform. James hissed and rubbed at it with his thumbnail. I took the rag and found its single clean corner.

“Here.”

I held the cloth of his uniform between my fingers and worked at the stain until it began to fade. If I closed my eyes, I could have sworn we were back at Cormorant.

When I was done, I stepped away and caught James staring hungrily at the private’s stripe on my shoulder. He had been dragged across the country to scrub floors and clean plates and he still lusted after a stupid stripe. I remembered dogs in Quarles’s kennel that were the same way. The harder you kicked them, the more they tried to please.

“Private Roe!”

James jumped to attention as soon as he saw Parker standing by the door.

“Everything okay here? This novice bothering you?”

“No, sir. Everything is fine.”

“Good. Then let’s move out.”

I nodded and Parker strode away down the hall. James started toward a door to the kitchen.

“Wait.” I took his arm but he snatched it away from me. “James—”

“I didn’t tell Monroe anything when I got back. Nothing. But if you’re planning to do something here—”

“I’m just trying to get home.”

“Fine,” he said. “Do it and leave us alone.”

James shoved the door open and disappeared into the kitchen. I wanted to tell him what I thought of a kitchen boy’s smug superiority, but then a single thought came from nowhere and stopped me dead.

It’s because of me.

There was no one in Cormorant more on Path than James, and yet he had been stripped of his place as a valet and hauled across the country to scrape food off trays. How better to humiliate the brother of a traitor? It wasn’t Monroe who had done this to him, it wasn’t the Path, it was me.

I backed away from the door. I had done enough to James. It was time to leave him alone.

A cheer broke out down the hallway. I left the mess as the hall filled with soldiers. I joined the stream, bouncing from officer to officer.

“Sir!” I said. “Sir, what’s going on?”

A major grinned mid-stride. His hand found my shoulder. “It’s about over, son,” he said. “We just punched a hole in the Fed’s lines north of Richmond. We’re taking territory faster than we can secure it!”

“Philadelphia?”

“We’re on our way!”

I eased out of the flood of bodies and into a nearby doorway. The major ran a key card through a reader next to a set of double doors down the hall. He stepped through and before the doors could close, I saw banks of computer screens and the dark silhouettes of soldiers. In the middle of it was Nathan Hill.

“Roe!”

Parker was standing beside an open door. Inside was a small room with a table and two chairs. On the far side of the table was Nat, her wrists cuffed and secured to the table.

He pushed a notepad and a pen into my hands. “We’ll be recording everything you two say, but we also want a signed confession and details on Fed forces.”

“Yes, sir.”

Nat didn’t look up when I entered the room. She was wearing a gray pair of Path work pants and a gray T-shirt. Her feet were bare. Her skin was waxy-looking, but I couldn’t see bruises on any of the skin that was showing. So far Hill had kept his word. She hadn’t been hurt.

The door shut behind me, and a lock was thrown.

“You’re a private now,” she said, her brown eyes sunken and dark. “Not bad pay for a job well done.”

I sat down across from her. There was a large black microphone in the center of the table. I pulled the notebook toward me and began to write.

“Do you need water?” I asked, pausing for an answer I knew wasn’t coming. “Something to eat? Are you injured at all?”

I held up the notebook so she had to see it.

I won’t apologize for wanting you to live.

Nat looked at the paper without reaction.

“I was able to make a deal with President Hill—”

“President Hill,” she said.

“I explained to him why you did what you did and he’s prepared to forgive you and let you go.”

“You explained why I did it?”

“Yes.”

“And why did I do it, Cal?”

I took the notebook back and started to write. “You were distraught over the deaths of your parents. Like I said, the president decided to be merciful and is willing to let you go. You just have to tell him everything you know about the Federal forces.”

“I don’t know anything about the Federal forces.”

I held up the notebook again.

The Path broke the Fed line a few hours ago. They’ll be in Philadelphia by the morning. Say something about forces at the front. True or false, it won’t make any difference now.

When I put the paper down, Nat had a thin smile on her face.

“I’m not afraid to die, Cal.”

I scribbled another note.

Do you think all they’ll do is kill you?

Nat’s smile vanished. Her chains rattled as she put her hands flat on the table, like she was bracing herself.

“We’re going to win,” I said. “We were always going to win. Keeping things to yourself won’t do you or anyone else any good.”

Nat said nothing.

Please, I wrote.

Nat flexed her hands into fists and then let them go. Her hair hung down in greasy locks along her cheeks. She looked so tired. I wanted more than anything to touch her.

“Their numbers aren’t what you think they are,” Nat said, her voice steady but lifeless. “They have maybe ten or fifteen thousand good fighters left. They moved them all to the front so the Path would assume they must have more in reserve. They’re going to rely heavily on armor and artillery, which they have a lot of. More than the Path.”

Nat took the pen and a sheet of paper from the notebook. Moments later she pushed it back at me.

“Show them that.”

Scrawled on the paper was a rough map of the front, indicating where their artillery was, along with the location of a small airfield and a brigade of armor. The plastic pen clattered to the desktop. We sat there beneath the buzz of the fluorescent lights.

“What else, Cal?”

The microphone was crouched between us like a rat. I wanted so badly for this to be over, to take Nat’s drawing and walk out of the room, but I forced myself to meet her eyes.

“You have to make the Choice, Nat. You have to say the words.”