The Earth Dwellers

“What?” Roc says. “You don’t mean the…” He trails off.

“The earth dwellers,” Tristan says, eyes still closed, head still down. “She infiltrated the New City to try to stop them.”

“Stop them from what?” Tawni asks.

Tristan looks up. “From killing everyone who’s standing around you right now.”

~~~

We give the prisoners, who I guess ain’t really prisoners any more—except to Skye, who keeps muttering that we should at least tie their hands t’gether—water and food and a place to sleep. Wilde also manages to scrounge up a couple more masks, stolen off of dead Glassies. Tristan tells ’em ’bout all the stuff they missed, and even though he skips over the part ’bout the Icers quickly with only a few words, Skye leaves the tent and I hafta blink a few times when my vision goes all blurry. Roc and Tawni, whose eyes’ve been wide for most of the story, are suddenly interested in their hands.

“God,” Roc breathes when Tristan finishes.

Tears are making tracks down the tops of Tawni’s cheeks, disappearing beneath her mask. These two ain’t Glassies. Glassies’d be cheering right ’bout now, wetting their britches with delight.

“The sun goddess only watches us, gives us hope,” I say. “But we hafta make our own choices. The Glassies made theirs today.”

“The Glassies?” Roc says. “You all kept calling us that. You thought we were from the New City?”

“Yes,” Wilde says. “Before Tristan and Adele, anyone that looked like you were Glassies. The enemy.”

“That’s why that crazy girl who was here earlier wanted to kill us,” Roc says.

“I’m pretty sure she still wants to kill you,” I say. “And watch what you say ’bout her. She’s my sister and she’s grieving something awful right now. Looking for revenge.”

“Because of the…Ice—Icers?” Tawni says.

I nod. “They were our friends,” I say. “But one of ’em was more’n a friend to Skye, and she doesn’t let people in very often.”

“That’s horrible,” Tawni says. “The earth dwellers are horrible. Like ten times worse than the sun dwellers.” She looks at Tristan. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Tristan says. “I want things to change as much as anyone. That’s why I didn’t come back. I have to do what I can to help these people, the Tri-Tribes. We can’t let Lecter get away with mass murder.”

Skye steps back in. She’s been listening the whole time and her eyes are on me, softer’n ’fore, but still twice as hard as the canyon walls. “Now yer talkin’,” she says. “If I don’t get to kill you all, then I wa

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Tristan

I still can’t believe Roc and Tawni are sitting in front of me, lifting their masks to sip water out of a skin and eat prickler, and learning all about what’s happening up here. They’ve been asking questions, just like Adele and I did, for near on an hour now, and Skye and the rest of them have been answering every single one, taking them through the situation. There’s a bloodthirsty gleam in Skye’s eyes every time Lecter’s name comes up. I don’t blame her.

“Without the…”—Skye’s voice cracks slightly, and she takes a deep breath—“…our friends to the north, even if Adele can take care of things on the inside, we still don’t have the numbers to beat ’em.”

She’s right. Adele could assassinate Lecter and it probably wouldn’t make one bit of difference. The soldiers would get orders from some other follower of Lecter and do the killing just the same. We simply need more bodies.

“Roc,” I say. “Tell me about below.”

Under the torchlight, what I can see of my half-brother’s face looks orange. “The generals have been asking to meet with you since the moment you left. Their troops are angry, frustrated. They were wi

“What did you tell them?”

“That you decided to become a hermit and live the rest of your days in a cave, letting your hair and beard grow to your knees,” Roc says with a straight face. I give him a look. “What do you think I told them? I lied, held them off as best as I could, said you were dealing with a lot right now, in talks with the leader of the Resistance, General Rose.”

“And that worked?”

“Hell no. They left me alone for an hour, maybe two, and then they were back on me like a bad hair day.” Roc’s still cracking jokes, but his eyes are grim. He’s stressed. “They finally said they’d take matters into their own hands if they had to. We caught the first scary-box-rocket thing to the surface, fell outside the cave like a couple of newborn babes, and wandered the desert for almost a day before we ran into your new ‘friends,’ who immediately began discussing whether to kill us now or later.”

“They tend to do that,” I say, trying a smile but not quite getting there. Crap. The Glass City is the rock and the Tri-Realms is the hard place. I’m stuck.

But there’s really no choice. “We’ve got to go back,” I say.

“Yer leavin’ us?” Skye says, her eyes eating me alive.

“No…yes…it’s not like that.”

“I knew you were a baggard. Yer woman’s probably burnin’ us ’round too.”

“No. Skye, no.” She seems surprised that I said her name, like I know her; her face lights up for a second before returning to a dark frown. “Skye. Seriously, I’m with you.” Her hands are clenched at her sides and I can see the hurt on her face. There’s a person beneath the hard shell she’s built around herself. Human feelings. Pain and loss. I can almost see the goodness seeping out through her pores. “Skye,” I say again, pulling my thoughts together. “I have a plan. No one’s abandoning you.”

She purses her lips, breathes deeply through her nose, slowly unclenches her fists. “Spill it, dweller,” she says.

Looking right into her eyes, I say, “In three days’ time, we attack the Glass City.”

~~~

Even Skye seems satisfied now. Everyone’s happy, or at least as happy as possible given there’s a good chance we’ll all be dead in less than a week.

After some rest, Hawk and Lara will escort Roc, Tawni, and I back to the cave, where we’ll return to the Sun Realm. Our mission: to convince as many soldiers as possible from the Tri-Realms to accompany us back to the surface to fight with the Tri-Tribes. We’ll be counting on Adele to help find us a way into the New City by then, or at least create a disruption in the earth dweller chain of command.

Skye and Wilde will lead their own forces northward, toward ice country, looping around the edge of fire country and then moving south. While the Glassies are searching to the west, they’ll be northeast.

If all goes according to plan, we’ll converge on the New City in three days, from the two places they’ll least expect to be attacked from. There are a million variables in the plan that could go against us, but Skye’s right about one thing: we have to act first, not wait for Lecter’s army to hunt us down and massacre us like they did to the Icers.

With Roc already snoring softly beside me, his arm draped around Tawni, I finally stop staring at the tent roof, which is turning from black to brown with the rising sun.

~~~

“Git up you lazy, wooloo baggard!” a voice says, shoving me out of a dreamless sleep. The voice sounds familiar, but the words don’t make sense coming from his mouth.

Someone shoves me for real, and I grab at the arm, blinking my eyes open. I pull Roc hard, throwing him off balance. He tumbles over me, cracking his head on one of the tent poles.