Page 22 of The Infinite Glade (The Maze Cutter #3)

CHAPTER TWELVE

Cold Secrets

I ce cold water climbed up Alexandra’s calves as the bottom wool of the Pilgrim’s coat dragged along the shallow inlet. Like in the ice baths Nicholas had once made her take to strengthen her soul, she welcomed the chilling shivers dancing across her skin. Much better than the fires of war.

“It’s freeeeeezing,” Trish complained.

“Pretend you’re crab-fishing,” Miyoko said. That one was calm. Quiet. The Goddess would promote her in time. Those who were quiet, obedient—she liked them best.

“Careful, it’s slippery here.” Orange focused a tactical light on the water for the others straggling behind. “Let’s get there as quick as we can, get it over with.”

Alexandra wasn’t worried. Never mind the temperature, the three women at the Villa would have a fire lit to warm them up. They’d have tea. And they’d finalize the Cure. Sounded so simple, so close. Maybe even a bit mad.

Every step felt colder as the water rose a few inches in the middle of the inlet, but Alexandra’s Evolution was in sight. Even the scent of pine trees harkened that it was near. The war was behind her, the Evolution closer and closer. So close, now. Yes, so close.

“Can the digits warm me up?” Sadina asked sarcastically from behind.

Alexandra had so much to teach her, among the first things: how to talk to a Goddess. She hadn’t rid herself of Nicholas and Mikhail just to be disrespected by replacements. She was the last remnant of the Godhead and the keeper of the Evolution.

“Numbers can’t do squat.” Minho lifted his knees with every step, slamming his feet down and splashing the Goddess with icy water.

Alexandra inhaled for three seconds, held her breath for three, exhaled . . .

If she could convince even a Pilgrim like Mannus to bow to her, then she could convince Minho. In time, he would be her faithful Guard.

“Whatever you want to be, see, feel, or find . . . you can shape it with the digits.” Alexandra had the urge to run, get to the other side, get warm, but she stood still to let Minho move past her. Then she resumed, close to Sadina. She took her hand.

“Dear Sadina,” she said as they waded through the shallow, dark waters. “Reciting them out loud is exactly what gives them power.”

“How, though?”

The Goddess needed to start her teachings at the very beginning. There was nothing more basic than the digits. But also nothing in the entire existence of time that could be more complicated.

“Reciting the digits while holding a thought gives those thoughts all the influence of the digits. The intention is entangled into the numbers.”

There. She didn’t know how to say it more simply than that.

“So the numbers circled in the Book of Newt , 1, 2, 3?—”

“No. No. No.” She said it too quickly and revealed her annoyance. Sadina pulled her hand back, but the Goddess held on to her. Blood of Newt’s blood. She needed this girl, needed patience like never before.

“What I mean, Dear Sadina,”—she squeezed her hand— “is that there are two numbers in the sequence before that . . .” No.

She would teach her later, by fireside, with tea.

“Come, let’s climb out and get warm. There’ll be plenty of time for lessons later.

” She let go of Sadina’s hand so they both could climb the embankment.

“Here, Miyoko, give me your hand.” Dominic helped her and the other young ones scramble up.

Alexandra stood where she was, her feet numb, looking back for Roxy and the orange-haired one, still wading toward them.

Roxy spoke from the darkness. “Go ahead, Ms. Godhead, we’re catching up.”

“Goddess?” Minho bent over the river’s ledge and offered Alexandra his hand.

Finally, reverence. She put her hand in Minho’s and placed her foot on the soft-soiled bank.

Had she been able to feel her feet she might have had better footing, but before Minho could yank her up, her foot slipped and the Goddess fell against the bank, then back into the water with an embarrassing splash.

“Minho!” Sadina cried.

“She slipped, it wasn’t me,” Minho said. “Come on, I got you . . .” The soldier tried again, this time pulling Alexandra from the water by her wrist and her elbow. Her feet finally found solid, stable ground.

“Thank you, soldier.” She made to straighten out her cloak and brush off the mud, but Minho held on to her wrist, tightening his grip.

“This marking . . .” Minho clenched her wrist with both hands and twisted.

“Let go. You’re hurting me.” She tried to pull her hand back to no avail. He was too strong. “Let. Go,” she repeated firmly.

“This tattoo . . . it’s the same as the Great Master’s . . .”

Minho finally looked at Alexandra with God-fearing eyes.

He had no idea that his Great Master wasn’t a master of anything.

That he was nothing more than a maddened Crank.

She wouldn’t address his ignorance on the matter.

The symbol of the sequence was sacred, and the Goddess didn’t owe Minho or anyone else an explanation.

She pulled against the soldier to free her hand, then hid her wrist within the wet, yellow folds of her cloak.

Orphans have no names.

No friends. No family.

But in the Remnant Nation, there was one thing they did always have.

Symbols.

Markers.

Minho never learned the meaning of all of them, but in the absence of knowledge, he had made up his own.

Mostly something to do with death. “Kill the Godhead” and all that.

But despite not knowing the true significance of the etching on Alexandra’s wrist, the quickness with which she had covered it up told Minho all he needed to know. She had more to hide than he thought.

“That’s a Remnant Nation symbol.” He pointed at the so-called Godhead’s wrist and called to Orange to see if she recognized it, too.

All Orphan soldiers had stared at the same walls their whole lives.

Minho had memorized every last molding of an archway and every last scratch in the cement.

He saw the walls in his mind as he fell asleep.

“This is from the Remnant Nation,” he said again, this time louder.

“What is?” Orange asked.

“Her wrist.” Minho pointed again. “Dom, you saw it, right?”

Dominic shook his head. “Not really.”

“Sadina? Trish?” Minho looked at the others. Someone had to have seen it, too. “She has an etching . . . a tattoo on her wrist that is the exact same as the Great Master of the Remnant Nation. I’m telling you. No doubt whatsoever.”

Sadina tried to intervene. “Let’s just find the Villa, get inside and?—”

“I’m not going anywhere until she shows us her wrists.” He crossed his arms and planted his feet. He glared at Alexandra, sure she’d try to pass off another lie.

“We can warm up inside and discuss etchings of the Gods later.” The Goddess turned her back on Minho, but Dominic held his arms out, blocking her from walking any farther.

“If you don’t have anything to hide, why not just show us your wrists?” the boy asked. “Goddess?”

Alexandra turned back to the group. The others didn’t scold Dominic for challenging the Godhead the way they did Minho.

That was fine. She stood there, looking pathetic until enough eyes were on her, waiting.

She sighed and finally pulled up her cloak sleeve.

Even in the dark, with only the light of the full moon, Minho could see that it was just a bare wrist. Nothing there.

“What about the other one,” Minho said. “Show us your other wrist.”

Alexandra whipped her hand around her cloak so quickly that she flashed the material underneath.

Thin and shiny, something the Orphan had never seen before.

His dullest knife could slice through it, easily.

She pushed up her left sleeve on the wool cloak and Minho wondered if her swift motions were supposed to scare him.

She turned her bared wrist over to more confused looks. Nothing there.

But Minho knew what he had seen. He stepped up and held both of her wrists until he could see the faint lines of a marking.

She raised an eyebrow at him when he finally let go, then rubbed at her own wrist. She rubbed at it until a growing spiral in black ink appeared.

Roxy, Orange, and all the rest came closer to look.

“A tattoo? Were you in some kind of trial or ritual?” Sadina asked.

Alexandra let out a laugh. “I’m a Godhead, not an infinite God. The Trials ended long before I was born, child.”

“So what’s with the tattoo, then?” Trish asked.

“A tattoo? Just like Old Man—” Miyoko said until Dominic elbowed her.

“Old Man who . . . ?” Alexandra looked at them both, but Minho wouldn’t let the fake God know about poor Frypan.

“Nothing,” Minho said. “What’s your etching mean?”

“It’s a symbol of the Sequence of Digits. Part of my knowing. A reminder that I am one with the whole. I am a part of everything and everything is a part of me. That is what the digits mean, among other things. . . . The digits are sacred . Beyond sacred.” She spoke nonsense, as usual.

“If you say so.” Minho tried to seem unfazed, uncaring. If he’d learned one thing from the Grief Bearers, this in fact would bother her more.

“The only tattoos we ever saw were from the Gladers of Old,” Trish said.

“And on half-Cranks,” Roxy added. “I’ve seen a lot of half-Cranks with markings.”

Maybe that explained it. Maybe Alexandra was a true half-Crank.

“Come on. There are many people with inked memories.” Alexandra covered her wrist back up with the cloak. “Some of them choose patterns that aren’t their own memories but are memories nonetheless.” She motioned to a path through the tree. “Can we continue to the warmth now?”

Dominic looked at Minho. “Might be a good idea. We’re gonna freeze to death out here.”

But Minho couldn’t let this opportunity pass. “It doesn’t matter where you go, that symbol is a marking of the Remnant Nation. Which means you’re not a Godhead at all. You’re a Grief Bearer or maybe a part of some other Nation, but you’re no Goddess of Alaska.”

The group let out a collective groan. He’d lost the chance after all.

“Can we at least argue about this inside? I’m cold.” Sadina shivered to prove her point.

Minho shrugged. “Orange?” He needed her to back him up.

Orange shook her head, showed genuine remorse in her expression. Nothing, then.

Minho wished he could forget things from the Remnant Nation as easily as Orange apparently had, but even the smell of the air in the lower level called Hell was something that would never leave his inner senses.

Sewage and black mold. “You don’t remember seeing that symbol?

In the walls? It was a direction marker. ”

Orange’s face went blank.

“There was one by the food hall?” Minho insisted. “Come on. The food hall . . . sometimes after my watch, I’d punch the marker on the wall just outside the hall, and you and Skinny made fun of me for it.”

Orange took a deep breath and squinted into a smile. “Yeah, that’s why he called you Happy .”

“Sounds about right,” Dominic said.

“Wait . . . you’re sure that’s the same carving?” Orange asked as the others walked toward the Villa, but Alexandra and her Remnant wrist were already well ahead of them.

“The same.” Minho wished he had a wall to punch right then.

Sadina had hung back. “But why would the Remnant Nation have anything to do with the Godhead?” she asked. Alexandra didn’t hear or didn’t have an answer. She just continued to walk away from them toward the trees like a coward.

Minho caught up to her. The others followed.

Then he shared his thoughts on the matter, clear as day, making sure the woman could hear him. “She’s not a God or Goddess or anything close to a Godhead. She’s just some lowly Orphan, probably escaped the Nation at a cliff ceremony before coming to Alaska.”

Alexandra laughed again, kept walking.

No one else said a word.