Page 9

“I vote we steer clear of Bjorn in the labyrinth,”

Clark said. His voice quivered, and he coughed to cover it. He couldn’t hide everything though. The restlessness lived in his movements—in the tremble of his fingers, in the swipe of his knuckles against his forehead, in the misstep of his feet.

Others watched as we passed, and I saw the shape of their unasked questions. What manner of threat were we that someone would try to eliminate us so soon? Distrust gathered like clouds behind their gazes, and it bore into us. I felt it as the tip of daggers, dragging against the skin of our backs.

That wouldn’t do. If we were thought to be threats now, we wouldn’t survive a day inside the maze. Not when the officers were gone and all we had was one blade between us.

I folded my pride into a locked chest, then let my feet snag upon the next gnarled root.

My body slammed against the ground.

Clark was at my side in an instant, arm extended to help. I allowed him for a moment, before shifting my weight and fumbling back into the soft earth. After a hard day and night of rowing, my muscles were already weak and it didn’t take as much feigning as I cared to admit. If I was already falling apart, how well would I fare inside?

Hopefully others were thinking the same thing.

“Are you okay?”

Clark kept a firm grip on my arm as I steadied myself. We heard Bjorn’s booming laugh behind us.

I swept a quick gaze at the others, pretending to be embarrassed to have faltered so publicly. Thankfully, most were already passing their interest elsewhere, on to the next vague threat. The officers could protect us to their best ability, but it’d be pitch black soon, and their eyes couldn’t catch everything. It wouldn’t surprise me if more than one person finished the night with a slit in their throats.

As long as it wasn’t Clark.

“Fine,”

I replied, running my hands through the tangles of my hair.

We expected the labyrinth to be dangerous. I never expected to die before reaching the gates.

The gates.

“Come on. Let’s go find out what’s so complicated that others couldn’t get in.”

I expected it to get quieter as we left the busy fjord, where other ships were pulling in and everyone mingled—sizing one another up. But while it got darker, it didn’t get quieter.

“The gates must be over that hill,”

Clark said, looking in the direction of the maze, and the buzzing noise. We hiked up our knees to trudge through the thick forest, where every branch seemed intent on snagging at us as if the forest determined to change our minds. Pine needles crunched, wolves howled again, and the scent of smoke faded into sticky sap.

A full moon overhead drowned everything in silver. It wasn’t the beautiful kind. It was the sort of blue we wore to funerals as we sent our dead to be swallowed by the sea. The color of a child’s lips when we pulled them from the water. The shade of the sky before a storm tore us apart. It turned everything grim and sucked all the anticipation from the air. The light cut through the trees to strike against our skin, almost as if it were feeling us out, trying to get a sense of who competed this year for the prize.

I was grateful to be leaving Bjorn behind. It made the hair on the back of my neck settle down.

We stepped the last way up the hill, then paused to stare.

“Is that…a market?”

Clark asked. Light from the market made the red in his hair glow against the black backdrop.

Flashes of red came from other places too. The tents of the merchants. The stretch of their smiles. The beads dangling from chains. The labyrinth lay beyond, but first we must walk through a sea of tents, all of which were as busy as a morning fair, as if no one had told them what time it was.

I almost forgot the time as we stepped forward. Energy came back in plenty. I was able to wipe away the thought of Bjorn and the hopeful competitors behind us as we neared the market. Their shouts reached us.

“Shop for supplies to help you through the Quarter Labyrinth!”

“One of you will win. Fifty coppers to increase your odds!”

“Magic knives that never miss!”

I steered in that direction. Clark tucked himself into my shadow, eyeing everything with much more skepticism, and keeping his hand at his waist where a blade would be. The sound of the sea faded as a sweet tune wafted between the narrow walkways. Hundreds of competitors walked the paths to buy whatever they thought would help them along the way—or hurt others most.

I’d heard about the magical shops. That was the sole reason I brought my entire savings.

Time to see what thirty-six coppers could buy me.