CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  -Three Steps, One Knife

  Morning came like it always did. The bell rang. Boys cursed and coughed and kicked at each other’s ankles. Frost bit bare feet. The bar thudded up, the door slammed open, wardens barked the same orders they’d barked a hundred times before. Porridge. Line. Yard.

  Forty-eight wheezed at my shoulder. Eleven glowered at nothing in particular. Rauk cursed the dogs. The overseer’s eyes slid over us all.

  The day moved, but it moved in grooves I already knew: sacks at the river, chains at the dog yard, smoke from the cookhouse. The only new thing in it was the weight of what I remembered pressing behind my eyes. Watching it now, that’s the part that stands out. The day itself stayed dull; I didn’t.

  I knew where the card game would sit that night, by the inner gate near the lamp. I knew where the archer liked to lean his shoulder against the palisade, bow in hand, pissing into the shadow at the base of the logs. I knew how our bodies would fall when his arrows found us.

  I worked like any other boy. I watched like someone who already knew how the night ended. By the time the sun slid down and the yard turned gray, the knots in my head had names. Archer. Cards. Wall. I needed them all.

  The day did its tricks in the same order as before. The dogs lunged, chains jerked, boys scattered. Rauk shoved past us swearing, hand going to his belt and coming away light. Mine came away heavier. I walked back from the dog yard with the knife under my shirt, its point cold against my ribs, just like the last time.

  The bar dropped back into place at dusk with its familiar uneven drag. Left cup first, then right. The wardens shoved the last of us through the door and cursed us into our straw.

  I lay on my back and watched the crack in the ceiling until the dark thickened. When I rolled and let my feet find the floor, the pallet ropes creaked and the cold came up through the boards.

  I crossed the narrow gap to Eleven’s bed and set my hand on his shoulder. He jerked once in his sleep, breath catching. I fed him the same scraps of truth about his father and the forge I’d used on another night. He didn’t remember hearing them before, but the fear of the overseer and the hope of rust giving way sounded the same. By the time his eyes cleared, we were already on our hands and knees, slipping toward the door.

  We moved quiet. Our fingers found the knife and the place where the bar pressed hardest into the floorboards without fumbling. The bar felt different now, less like a mystery, more like a problem I already knew how to take apart.

  It went easier. Eleven slid the tip of the blade into the gap and eased it under the first iron cup. I found the second by feel. Together we lifted until metal cleared metal, stole the weight between us, and let the bar settle into the angle we needed. When we pushed on the door, it only brushed wood instead of screaming.

  The door stuck, then gave. Cold slid in. I left it there, breathing. Behind us, Forty-eight coughed, a low, rattling wheeze.

  “You,” I whispered, padding back to his pallet and tapping his ankle. “If you can walk, walk now. If not, stay here and choke. Grab your blanket. If a cough comes, bite it and keep the sound in your chest.”

  He stared at me for a heartbeat, eyes wide in the dark, then shoved his blanket under one arm, face screwed tight, and began to crawl after us.

  The yard lay outside: thin light, thick shadow. The card lamp near the inner gate burned in its usual place. The warden by the near wall walked his usual path along the face of the logs. I knew his pace now, the scrape of his boots, the sway of the lamp as he turned at each corner. I knew how our bodies would fall when his arrows found us.

  “Listen,” I whispered. “Keep your feet apart. Keep the chain tight. If it hangs, it clinks.”

  “Out,” I whispered.

  This time I went first again. Eleven and Forty-eight squeezed after me, blinking at the cold. The fort at night still felt like walking through someone else’s bad dream. All hollow spaces and old echoes. I hugged the barracks wall and drew the others into the shelter of its shadow.

  “Stay here,” I said.

  Eleven stared. “What?”

  “Against the crates,” I told him, tilting my head toward a stack of broken boxes by the corner. “Low. Don’t move unless I tell you.”

  Forty-eight’s eyes were huge and glassy. “Where are you going?” he whispered.

  I looked toward the far wall, at the patch of deeper dark where the palisade dipped around a support post and the archer liked to stand.

  “To untie something,” I said. “A knot I don’t like the way it pulls.”

  They didn’t understand. That was fine.

  “Just wait,” I said, and stepped away from them.

  The barracks’ shadow swallowed me after three paces. Dead Step settled around my limbs again, smoothing the edges of my movements. I drifted along the wall like a piece of it that had decided to move.

  Across the yard, the card game murmured. Coins clicked. A low laugh cut itself short. Above, a lamp swayed on the palisade, carried by the wall watch. Its glow moved, faded, moved again.

  I kept to the ground. I slid past the cookhouse, its door a dull rectangle outlined by banked coals. Past the empty dog yard, the chains lying quiet like dead snakes. Past the granary’s looming bulk. The outer wall rose up ahead, cold and rough, logs dark with old pitch. At the angle where it met a corner watch platform, the shadow thickened.

  I heard the archer before I saw him. Boots scuffed against wood. Cloth rustled. A stream of liquid pattered against packed earth and the lower logs, freezing there in thin, uneven streaks.

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  The man sighed, long and satisfied.

  “Best part of the shift,” he muttered to himself.

  Death’s Awareness painted the lines of him in my head: one foot braced, shoulder to the palisade, hips angled out, one hand on the wall for balance, the other somewhere below.

  I approached from the darker side, matching my steps to his breath. Two for the inhale, one for the sigh. I meant to be on him before that sigh finished, knife in the low, soft place under the ribs. Clean. Quiet. I misjudged. The stream cut off a heartbeat earlier than I expected. Cloth rustled. He hitched up his trousers and turned his head.

  For an instant we were face to face, close enough for me to smell old ale and meat on his breath.

  His eyes widened.

  “Oi,” he said. “What d’you think you’re doing out here?”

  The knife in my hand felt very small. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t look at it. I dropped my gaze instead, letting my shoulders curl in.

  “Master,” I whispered. “The others are trying to escape.”

  The words came out thin and quick, like something scared of the dark.

  He blinked.

  “What?” he said.

  I turned my head, pointing back the way I’d come, toward the crates by the barracks wall.

  “There,” I said. “They slipped out when the door opened. Please. I’m scared. If they get away, the overseer’ll punish us all. I came to tell you. They’re hiding behind the crates near the wall.”

  He squinted into the yard. From here, the crates were only a lump of shadow joining other shadows. The card lamp by the gate didn’t reach them. The palisade lamp was too far.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said, more annoyed than alarmed. “What’re you on about, rat? Lost your mind?”

  His hand came down on the back of my head with a flat smack. Pain sparked across my skull, familiar as hunger.

  “More to the left, master,” I said, biting down on the flinch. “Please. Near the corner. Look. I swear. If I lie, beat me. But if they run…”

  I let my voice crack on the last word. Let my shoulders hunch, making me look small and harmless.

  He hesitated. Fear of the overseer did what my words alone might not have. He grunted, shifted his bow to his other hand, and took a step away from the wall, squinting harder. Another step.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. “If you’re wasting my—”

  He caught a hint of movement. Just a flicker. Forty-eight’s hand, maybe, twitching against the crate. Or Eleven’s foot, an inch too far out.

  “Fuck,” he said again, sharper now. “They really are out.”

  He never turned back.

  I moved. I didn’t exactly leap. Just a small rise onto the balls of my feet. A breath of height was all I needed. The knife came up with me, then down and forward over his shoulder.

  The blade slid across the soft part of his neck where the pulse lived. There was no scream. The sound was wrong for that. A choked gargle, the wet snap of breath losing its path. Warmth sprayed my face and hand. His bow clattered against the wall and bounced off his boots as his legs buckled.

  I stepped aside, letting his weight fall past me. He hit the ground hard on one knee, fingers clawing at his throat. Blood pumped between them, bright even in the dark. He toppled on his side and lay still except for the small, foolish twitches bodies made when they hadn’t understood yet that they were finished.

  I wiped my face with the back of my wrist. The brief warmth on my skin cooled quickly in the night air.

  “He bleeds,” I murmured, mostly to myself.

  I went back the way I’d come, keeping low. Dead Step wrapped my steps again, making the frost under my feet no louder than my own breath. Back then, that was what steadied me more than anything: not the knife, not the kill, just the way the ground still let me move.

  Eleven’s eyes flashed in the dark as I slid back into the shadow of the crates. Forty-eight’s hands were clamped over his own mouth, like he was holding in a shout.

  “I thought you snitched on us,” Eleven hissed. “You pointed right at—”

  “Follow me,” I said.

  I didn’t explain. I didn’t have time. The card game voices still drifted from the far side of the yard. Chairs scraped. A coin rolled and was caught. No one had noticed the missing archer yet. No bell. No shout.

  “Now,” I said.

  I moved. We hugged the barracks wall until its shadow ran out. We crossed open ground toward the stretch of fort where I’d once crawled under the palisade alone and dropped into freezing water.

  Memory filled in the path before my eyes: the narrow gap under the logs, lower than my shoulder; the outer ditch below, crusted with cloudy ice; the reeds; the river beyond. I’d drowned there. I didn’t intend to this time.

  We were halfway across when I saw the lamplight. Not the steady glow of the card lamp or the far posts. This was smaller, meaner, moving in a short, jerky line along the top of the palisade above us. A warden on wall duty.

  He held the lamp on a short pole, pushing it out over the edge to peer down. Three footsteps. Pause. The light swung out, searching. Three more. Pause. Swing again.

  I froze, hand shooting out to stop the other two.

  “Wait,” I breathed.

  The light swept past our patch of yard without lingering. The man muttered something about the cold and took another three steps.

  I listened with more than ears. Three hard scrapes of boot on wood. Stop. The lamp creaked on its pole. Breath fogged the air above. The pattern settled in my bones. Steps, pause, search. Steps, pause, search.

  “Listen,” I whispered. “When he walks, we walk. When he stops, you stop. Don’t breathe loud. Don’t run.”

  Eleven swallowed loud enough I could hear it. Forty-eight just nodded, eyes locked on the moving light.

  The warden took three more steps. The lamp swung out again. I moved. Dead Step bled my footfalls into the frost. I kept low, dragging the other two with me, crossing the white-crusted ground in a short, quick burst.

  The lamp paused above, then started its next little march along the wall. I stopped. So did they.

  The patrol man muttered to himself, bored, half-asleep. The lamplight drifted on. Three steps. Pause. Swing.

  We moved when he moved, froze when he froze. My world shrank to the rhythm of those boots. Scrape, scrape, scrape. Stillness.

  Our breaths puffed shallow clouds in front of our faces, vanishing before the lamplight swung back. The space between us and the wall narrowed. The card game noise faded behind us. The barracks became a darker lump at the edge of my vision. The dogs’ snoring from the pens settled into a low, constant saw.

  The lamplight walked. So did we. By the time the base of the wall loomed above, my calves ached from the repeated starts and stops. Sweat cooled on my back despite the cold. I pressed my palm against the rough logs of the palisade.

  “Here,” I whispered.

  To anyone else, it was just more wall. To me, it was the place where mud had crumbled under my fingers when I dragged myself up once before. The place where the logs didn’t sit flush with the ground, leaving a narrow crack just wide enough for a desperate body to wedge through.

  “Down,” I said. “Hands first. Don’t think. Don’t stop.”

  Forty-eight stared at the gap.

  “There’s water,” he whispered. “I hear it.”

  “It’s cold,” I said. “It’s deep in some places. It carries you if you let it.”

  I remembered the river’s hand closing on my ankle chain, pulling. I remembered the black between that and the barracks ceiling.

  “Will it kill us?” Forty-eight asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “If we stay, it will too. This way we choose when.”

  Eleven let out a strangled breath that might’ve been a laugh.

  “You’re terrible at comfort,” he whispered.

  “Good,” I said. “Comfort won’t help you. Getting you through the wall will.”

  Above us, the lamplight shifted. Three steps. Pause. The lamp swung out over our heads, its glow skimming the top edge of the logs. We pressed flat against the wood, breath locked.

  “Come on,” the warden muttered. “Nothing out here but frost and rats.”

  He moved on.

  I waited for the third scrape, the next pause. I dropped to my knees and shoved my arm into the gap. Splinters bit my skin. Mud crumbled around my fingers. The cold seeped into me from both sides. I wriggled forward until my shoulders hit the logs, then twisted, forcing one side through. The wood raked my back, tearing my shirt anew, skin stinging.

  Behind me, Forty-eight sucked in a breath.

  “Go,” I hissed between my teeth. “The river doesn’t wait for us.”

  I bared my teeth and pushed harder. Beyond the wall, the ditch waited: ice, water, darkness. I’d drowned there once. This time, I went in knowing exactly how sharp it was. I didn’t hesitate. I dragged myself through.