Maybe they thought they could bully me because I’m not Shannon, she thought. She smiled faintly. “If you want to catch Berkens, shouldn’t you be looking for him?” She raised her eyebrows. “You’re not going to find anybody by standing around here.”
The men looked at each other, then at Raquel’s smiling face. As one, they turned and started down the docks.
They happened to pass Shannon and Pacifica on the stairs. One of the men glared at Shannon and spat at his feet.
Shannon turned to look at the men in confusion. “Uh…” He turned back to Raquel. “Did I do something?”
Raquel shrugged. “Berkens escaped,” she explained. “He happened to find me here, and those men saw us talking.”
“So they assumed we were helping him?” Shannon rolled his eyes. “Right. This place has a real problem with tunnel vision.”
“Old Berkens was okay, huh?” Pacifica looked relieved. “Oh, yeah. Raquel—did you find what you were looking for?”
“Not yet,” Raquel said as she gathered her notebooks. “But if my hunch is correct…” She looked up through long eyelashes. “Getting off this island is going to be harder than we thought.”
Cuphon walked through the tunnels toward Reynard’s quarters. After the gathering, most of the villagers had returned to their homes above ground, so the tunnels were deserted. Her footsteps echoed in the silence.
Reynard had asked her to come see him after the meeting. She’d been expecting this—in fact, she was surprised he hadn’t wanted to talk to her sooner. She had drugged the cows on that Inquisitor’s boat. Reynard had always discouraged unauthorized acts of violence. He insisted that the villagers control themselves, only using violence when it was controlled and according to strict justice ideals.
Cuphon and the other younger islanders were often frustrated by Reynard’s philosophies, but they still respected him. In just ten years, he’d created a huge organization as well as a secret weapon for fighting the church of Mauser; the three docks and the massive network of tunnels had been built just for moving the equipment needed for the weapon’s construction. It was located in the center of the Garden underground, where all the tunnels lead. No difference in opinion could erase everything Reynard had done for them.
Reynard’s room was located along one of the underground corridors, so he could easily direct the construction in the central area. Cuphon reached her destination and knocked on the door.
“Sir,” she called. “It’s Cuphon Spectore.”
No answer.
She knocked again, louder this time. Still, no one came.
Cuphon hesitated for a moment, then tried the door handle. It was unlocked.
She opened the door just enough to poke her head in. The room was dark; her lamp only illuminated a tiny part of it.
“Sir Ganvas?” she called out quietly. She walked into the room and looked around, but didn’t see him anywhere. Am I late? she wondered.
Someone stepped behind her. She whipped around, and the door slammed shut.
“Aah!”
A man stood between Cuphon and the door. He was middle aged, with a thin smile on his face. Cuphon didn’t recognize him… until she looked noticed the black mask in his hand.
Cuphon’s eyes widened. “S-sir Ganvas?” she breathed.
The man’s face was gaunt, with high cheekbones and a sickly complexion. Cuphon wasn’t sure it was actually Reynard; the expression on his face was completely different from Reynard’s usual demeanor.
The worst part was his eyes. They were twisted in dark ecstasy.
“Wh-who are you?” Cuphon whispered. She started to back away, her eyes shifting between the man’s terrible smile and the mask in his hand.
With an eerie shriek, the man lunged at Cuphon and knocked her onto the stone floor. He pressed his right hand into her face so hard that his fingers dug into her skin.
“Return the soul to nothingness!” he sang crazily. “All power brought back to the beginning… leave behind all emotion, and find a new strength!”
Cuphon didn’t understand what was happening. She struggled wildly, but couldn’t escape the man’s grip.
“Now you can’t escape! You’re going to disappear!” He cackled shrilly.
In desperation, Cuphon swung the lamp in her hand. It smashed right into the man’s forehead. He fell back, clutching his face.
Cuphon shoved him off and crawled frantically away. Desperate to get to her feet, she grabbed a metal hook that was attached to a strange contraption near the back of the room. It looked like some kind of device surrounded by metal cylinders.
She tried to pull herself up using the hook, but it wasn’t strong enough to support her weight. A sheet of metal crashed loudly to the floor.
She froze.
Inside the now-open metal tube lay Cuphon’s younger brother. His eyes were open and his chest moved up and down, but he didn’t seem to see her.
“Quart!” she shouted as she grabbed his shirt. He still didn’t respond; his blank eyes just stared out at nothingness.
Cuphon spun and faced Reynard. “What did you do to him?!” she cried. “What’s wrong with my brother?!”
Reynard grinned evilly, still sitting on the floor. “Thanks to the dead field of science called magical engineering, even your precious little brother can help my booster.” He slowly rose to his feet. “But I’m going to need a replacement for him soon. I think you’ll do very nicely!”
Reynard reached out for her, and she stumbled back against the tubes.
“No! Don’t—” Before she could finish speaking, her vision started to blur. She raised a hand to rub her eyes, but suddenly all the strength was sapped out of her. She fell and didn’t feel herself hit the ground. The boundaries of her consciousness fell away.
The last thing she heard before darkness claimed her was Reynard’s shrill, piercing laugh.
Elfitine lay back in bed and sighed. She wearily closed her eyes.
The meeting at the assembly hall had been exhausting. In her mind, she saw all of the people of the island hanging on her every word, their eyes glued to her with complete trust and respect. She sighed.
If not for her ability to “read time,” none of what she and Reynard did would be possible. Her power was what made her seem special, made her claims of being the Scrapped Princess believable. But she knew that her power alone was not nearly enough to gain that kind of devotion—without Reynard guiding her every step of the way, she would never have had an island of followers.