The Gender Game 5 (The Gender Fall)(3)

The darkness didn’t care. It loomed over me like a terrible, ancient thing. My lips barely had the chance to form the word ‘no’ when it crashed down on me, dragging me back, deep into unconsciousness.





2





Viggo





Violet went limp in my arms, and it took everything I had not to panic. I carefully adjusted her until my fingers could seek out her heartbeat against her chest. I felt the steady thud against my hand and let out a breath I hadn’t even been aware I’d been holding, biting off a growl of irritation at having to move her again so soon. Too soon. But there was nothing that could be done about it.

We were in a dim, cramped space beneath a set of wooden stairs in the house of one Mr. Alton Kaplan. The dim space smelled like old sawdust, and I could feel the crunch of old spider webs disintegrating as I brushed against them. We’d stumbled across the man by chance a few hours after escaping from the palace. We’d been desperately driving around on the dark, dirty backroads of the farm country in search of not only a doctor, but fuel for our car, hoping some scared countryfolk would take some of our modern tech arsenal as payment for letting us siphon a tank from a tractor or unused vehicle.

We’d managed to find something even better: a huge, busy old ranch that kept a supply of gasoline in their own tanks for their farming equipment. We’d managed to trade one of Ashabee’s guns—the rancher had been more than happy to let us fill up to get his hands on the state-of-the-art semiautomatic we’d had in the trunk. And then, as we’d been debating the safest way to get Violet some medical attention, the local veterinarian had come out of the barn, fresh from treating a cow with some kind of infection… Close enough.

Mr. Kaplan was a kind, older man with no family to speak of, and his skills were probably the reason Violet was still breathing now, why she was even somewhat conscious. Upon seeing her condition, he’d let us follow him home for the remainder of the night, shaking his head at our notion that we would immediately continue our journey. Owen had slept. I had not—I couldn’t let this stranger operate on Violet throughout the long night, on his own. He had been able to set her arm, stitch up cuts, and provide strong medication that was helping to stabilize her. It was also effectively doping her up, keeping the pain at bay but doing who knew what to her logical reasoning. At this point, I didn’t care what kind of animal the sedatives had been designed for. It would at least tide her over until we got back to Ms. Dale and the others and let our doctor look at her.

If we got out of here.

Even if we did, we would be scrambling to keep ahead of the other patrols flooding the area, in search of the terrorist who had bombed King Maxen’s palace. These farms were out of the way enough that they hadn’t been immediately searched, and I had hoped, last night, the patrols wouldn’t get around to it until after we were gone… but no such luck.

I wasn’t sure what news had filtered out into the area regarding the attack—the news tickers had gone out around the same time the palace had fallen, according to our host’s news report—but I was certain that while the public was being told the official “terrorist” story, the Matrian wardens were well aware of whom they were looking for.

Violet was barely twenty years old, but she was Matrian enemy number one. She was being held responsible for the assassination of her home country’s former monarch, Queen Rina. She had actually killed another one of their princesses, although that operation had been kept much quieter. Two princesses, if Tabitha had been killed in the blast in the palace, as I fervently hoped.

Now it was morning again—much too early in the morning after yesterday, barely past dawn—and we were hiding from an approaching Matrian patrol in a storage compartment under Mr. Kaplan’s stairs. Our host was outside the door, casually adjusting the painting that hung over the already seamless spot of wall that marked the hidden door. He was a man who spoke softly and asked few questions, for which we already had cause to be grateful.

“It will be all right, Mr. Kaplan—just act natural,” Owen coached our ally quietly through the wall, though I thought he might have been more nervous about this than Mr. Kaplan was. The blond man met my questioning gaze, but kept talking. “Be polite, calm, and answer their questions without giving it too much thought. Avoid lying when you can. Be vague.”

I frowned at his growing list of suggestions. Everything he was saying was good advice, individually, but it was like taking months of spycraft training and trying to condense it down, then jam all the tips for being questioned into a thirty-second speech.