Caged Warrior

THIRTY-ONE

Everything Leto prized was inside a building set to detonate.

He searched outside, with Silence close behind, until he found a service entrance half-buried by the snow. Here, at least, his body was all he needed. Perhaps another man’s fingers would have gone numb, but Leto’s sense of touch didn’t wane. He cranked the service door open with a grunt and a shove.

That smell. Lab filth. He nearly coughed on the potent reminder of how Nynn had first come into his care.

Within a supply room, he found repair equipment. Pipes. Hammers. The tools of humans, perfect in the hands of Dragon Kings. He grabbed one of each, and slung three more hammers in the belt of his armor. Smiling, Silence snatched a pair as well. Leto adjusted his grip, but hand-to-hand violence was nothing compared to the blast waiting to take out the entire building.

“Quickly.”

He tore down the hallway leading from the service entrance. The three guards he met were fallen men within seconds. Silence dispatched any who lingered on the bright side of consciousness when he moved on. She was a living shadow. Only her white-blond hair gave her away in the half-lit gloom.

They stepped into what must’ve been a main corridor. Dazzling. Sterile. The stink of fear had nearly been rubbed clean by bleach.

“Can you hear voices?”

Silence tilted her head, her black eyes going distant. Leto felt the touch of her gift as she soaked up some of his powers—his senses and the strange new currents of telepathy. She blinked free of her slight trance, then pointed.

Leto nodded. “My thoughts, too.”

They found a hallway that seemed as anonymous as the rest, but it was lined with doors no higher than Leto’s waist. Each was labeled by metal plates. He used the claws of the hammer to pry open one of the doors. When it wrenched free, he stumbled back—not because of momentum, but because of the stench. An inhale from Silence was as compelling as a cry of indignation.

Inside one room huddled a thin woman, maybe thirty years old. In the next was a robust man in his fifties, who was completely devoid of clothing and hair. A third revealed another woman, scarred in patterns that nearly matched those Nynn bore.

All were Dragon Kings. No lustrous skin tone. No superiority. They were not warriors and would never fight in a Cage, but these abused wretches were his people.

He pried open doors as Silence led prisoners into the light. Most collapsed against the corridor wall, blinking furiously. He remembered rumors that Dr. Aster kept his test subjects physically fit. None of the freed prisoners was too weak to move, although some wore bandages and splints. Instead, they seemed stunned. Some curled into themselves, as if the open corridor was scarier than sleeping in metal boxes. Their lethargy made him appreciate Nynn’s fierce attempts at self-defense. She’d come at him with a chunk of concrete. These people stared with blank confusion.

His heart beat faster as he neared the last of the doors. The head of one hammer tore away. He flung it aside and retrieved another from his belt. Pry. Screeching metal. Pry again. The burn in his muscles was nothing compared to the fear in his heart—that he would find Jack or Pell, or that he wouldn’t.

“Dragon be!” came a shocked voice.

Leto turned to find a tall blond man in cold weather gear at the far end of the tunnel. Between them stood Silence, with two dozen of Aster’s test subjects on the floor. Leto lifted his pipe and half crouched, ready to defend these people. “Who are you?”

“Malnefoley of Tigony.”

“The Honorable Giva,” Leto said slowly.

He could see the resemblance now. Nynn and the Giva shared the same coloring and the same perfection of features. Only, this man didn’t have Nynn’s freckles or the slight point to her ears. He was pure Tigony, and he wore the lineage well.

“You must be Leto.”

“I am.”

The Giva gestured to another pair of Dragon Kings, a man and woman, as they flanked him. “We’ll keep these people safe. Go. Finish your work.”

Leto had started on the next door before the Giva finished speaking. He should tell them about the detonator. To what end? Two dozen dazed faces were ready to panic at the smallest threat. Even if five healthy Dragon Kings managed to get every prisoner outside and away from the building, they would be stranded on the tundra. And there was no guarantee that the bomb was limited to the outpost, lab, or arena. The whole underground complex could be wired.

The best he could do was give these people a taste of freedom, for however long they had left.

He pried open yet another door.

Pell.

At first he didn’t recognize her. He couldn’t count the years since last seeing her face. She was on her back, with her head pointed toward the opening. Beneath her was a rolling pallet. They simply . . . wheeled her in and out of what may as well have been a coffin.

Leto had fought for this travesty.

Some part of him had held out hope that it wasn’t that stark, that brutally true. But seeing Pell’s etherally still face stole the last of his hope. The Asters were murderers and liars.

He forced steadiness into his hands as he rolled her pallet into the corridor. He caressed her brow, half surprised to find she’d matured into a lovely young woman. The tightness in his chest wouldn’t ease. Her skin was warm, but she didn’t respond to his touch. She was beautiful and would never awaken. All he’d ever wanted was her comfort, but now—knowing what had been done to him and to Nynn during their adolescence—he wanted her well.

If the building didn’t burn around them first.

He kissed her forehead. Silence’s face was etched with sympathy. She touched two fingers to where Leto had kissed, then nodded. Leto shuddered at what he took to be a wordless vow.

On he went. Three more doors. Three more people to set free. The first after Pell’s revealed a young boy.

Leto froze.

“Jack?”

The boy’s head jerked up. His eyes were Nynn’s eyes. The same brilliance and intelligence, but tempered with so much fear.

“Come with me, Jack. Your mother is waiting for you.”

The fear, apparently, was only part of what he was capable of feeling. Wariness, then aggression took its place. He looked more like Nynn with every breath. “What’s her name?”

“Audrey MacLaren.”

“Her other name.”

“She told you that, did she? Stories in the dark?” The boy nodded, which made Leto smile. He’d never smiled with more vicious pride. “Your mother is Nynn of Tigony, and she’s been burning buildings to the ground to find you.”

¦   ¦   ¦

Hark walked cautiously toward the Pet. Nynn could barely keep her gift from obliterating the corridor. Her light blazed until the marble glowed white and sparkled with snaps of power.

The Pet leaned against the far wall with her hands at the small of her back. She looked tidy and small, like a teenage girl who’d accidentally wound up with an ancient woman’s maturity behind her strange, piercing eyes.

“Hark, who is she?” Nynn asked.

“A soothsayer.” Although he seemed at ease, Nynn noticed the loose bend in his knees. With any breath, he could spring forward and wield that hunk of sheet metal offensively. “She sought out Silence. ‘Wait for the living