Page 33 of The Infinite Glade (The Maze Cutter #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY

Senado de los Secuenciadores

O rphans are born motherless. Penniless. Powerless.

The only way for an Orphan soldier to advance is to enter into the initiation of the Remnant as a Junior Grief Bearer, but even as a young soldier watching Griever Glane, Minho never wanted to be like any of them.

They were seasoned losers. Weaker than even some of the youngest soldiers.

Because while leaders like Griever Glane had power and handed out punishments, they grew lazy with that power.

Orphans were trained to fight. Protect the Nation. Kill the Godhead.

And it finally came time for Minho to do all three.

As the Remnant soldiers pushed him off the Berg, the relief Minho felt at realizing they weren’t going to the depths of tortured Hell in the fortress were immediately replaced by the suffocating smell of sulfur and ash.

It was another smell Minho knew well, and one he tried not to think about. The smell of burning flesh.

He lifted his head and tried to see through swollen eyes.

The army of Remnants had set up hundreds of fires in makeshift camps that stretched for miles.

Remnant snipers stood watch on top of any buildings still standing.

The Nation had already set up posts and lookouts to protect the ruins of what used to be the City of Gods, and the Orphan soldiers were all too happy to drag Minho and a barely conscious Orange in front of the Grief Bearers to present them as the traitors they were.

Minho didn’t bother twisting or kicking; the sounds of the Nation and the sheer quantity of soldiers around him well signaled his defeat.

He only turned his head as best he could, past the soldiers who beat him and carried him forward, to see if they were separating him from Roxy, Dominic, and Sadina.

“Griever Ayers, Sir.” The soldiers dropped Minho on to the ground with a thud and kicked his back to flip him forward-facing to the Bearers. They also kicked the back of Orange’s knees to bend her body to a bow.

Minho looked at the Grief Bearer in front of him.

He knew better than to look any Bearer in the eyes, but what were they going to do if he did— kill him?

So he did. His jaw clenched as he stared deeply into Griever Ayers’ dark, soulless eyes.

An anxious spirit of rebellion rose inside him the exact same way it had the day of his cliff ceremony. But today would be different.

“There aren’t any mountaintops to throw me from.” Minho squinted.

The Grief Bearer rubbed his little hands together like a man that had waited his whole life to play with fire. “We’ll shove you off the only cliff that matters.” The Bearer showed his teeth, but it wasn’t a smile. “The one in your mind.”

Griever Ayers was right. More painful than the stabbing in Minho’s chest, the Orphan admitted to himself that the cliff in his mind held the most danger.

Orange had known that when she’d told him to get off that wall in his mind back on the Maze Cutter.

He looked over at a lifeless Orange before realizing he shouldn’t have.

A kick to the back of her head confirmed it.

The Orphan named Minho knew his life would end at the hands of the Remnants, one way or another, and he wasn’t going to waste his death.

“You’ve destroyed this whole town, probably killed thousands,” Minho said as he looked past Griever Ayers, “but what’s really gotta chap your ass is the fact that the one person you came here to kill .

. . you’ve barely managed to inconvenience. ”

He let out what sounded like a pathetic chuckle and then a sudden burst of air as a soldier kicked the back of his head then stomped on his kidney.

But he wasn’t done taunting them. Not yet.

“In fact, you’ve led the Godhead to the one thing they were looking for, what they needed to complete their ridiculous Evolution.

” The Orphan let his pain and nerves escape him through another laugh, a sound the Grief Bearers hated most. Minho was pleased with himself—even the boot to his back felt damn good.

“What makes you say that?” Griever Ayers asked. “Speak, boy!”

Minho laughed even louder, because Grief Bearers never asked such weak questions.

Certainly never questions they didn’t know the answer to.

Even if Minho died at that moment, he would consider it a victory.

He outsmarted the Nation not once, but twice.

He and Orange weren’t traitors—they were rebels who held the most important information of the war. The location of the Godhead.

“Say what you meant by that.” Another Grief Bearer stepped up and demanded Minho’s attention, but he wouldn’t give it to them. He already gave them enough.

“You’re too dumb to figure it out?” Minho took two more swift kicks to the back and coughed up blood. He spit at the feet of the Bearers. “I guess that’s why the Godhead is still alive . . .”

“Go. Now!” The Grief Bearer waved his arm. “Take them to the other captives!”

The soldiers behind Minho kicked him in the ribs one more time for good measure, then dragged him to his feet.

“Take them all to the Maze,” Griever Ayers ordered.

Ximena stormed out of the Villa with Kletter’s notebook.

“She won’t get far. Grab what you can for our next stop.” Cian spoke with Erros while packing items from the cabinets. “Stabilizer?” Cian held up a vial.

Erros nodded. “Bring it.”

Old Man Frypan motioned for Isaac to follow Ximena. “Go on. We’ll stay here.”

He obeyed, hurrying out of the Villa, but couldn’t see Ximena anywhere.

Dead soldiers littered the lightly snow-covered ground, and Isaac walked around their bodies as carefully as he could.

Tiptoeing around the bodies, he finally spotted Ximena, not far from the bank.

Beyond her, farther down the ocean and almost out of view, the bright fires of the Maze Cutter flamed on and struck Isaac’s heart.

His world continued to burn in so many ways as sections of the ship crumbled, slowly breaking down and falling into the cold, dark ocean.

Ximena held the notebook by her side just looking at the burning ship. “There’s probably something in this book that can help us . . .”

She turned around to face Isaac and shook her head. “Things that will help us . . . and things that will hurt us. Hurt me at least.”

Isaac still couldn’t quite figure her out. She wanted the truth so badly, she was willing to threaten Erros with a crossbow to his throat, but now that she had Kletter’s diary, she was afraid to read it? “You seem so fearless . . . but you’re . . . actually really scared.”

“I’m not scared.” Ximena sat on the bank of the island. “I’m angry.”

He joined her on the ground and kicked out his injured leg.

Maybe the cold ground could help numb the pain.

Finding Miyoko had given Isaac hope again.

He wasn’t as mad at Ximena as he’d been back on the Berg.

Maybe it was seeing her face her mother’s death alone, but he understood her anger. “I’m scared, too, sometimes. I get it.”

“No, you don’t,” Ximena snapped. “That ship is where Kletter killed my mom, and now I have to read about it from Annie’s own selfish words like any other one of her absent-minded excuses.

I have to look and see it in her handwriting.

” She waved the captain’s log in the air.

“There’s not one thing or one person, alive or dead, who I could possibly hate more than Annie Kletter .

. . and I sure as hell don’t want to hear the truth from her . ”

Isaac thought for only a second before he had an idea. Maybe a stupid one, but maybe not. “I can read it out loud.” He shrugged. “For you to translate.”

“You don’t speak Spanish.” She looked at him like he was an idiot. He’d long since gotten used to those looks.

“I definitely don’t. But I can sound out the words, close enough to something that sounds familiar to you, and that way .

. . you won’t have to hear it from Kletter.

Better than nothing.” He scooted closer to her and lifted the journal from her hands.

He slowly opened it to the first page—filled with cross-hatch markings as if Kletter had measured or counted something.

“Okay. But whatever we find . . . don’t . . .”

“Don’t what?” Isaac asked. He wasn’t sure there’d be anything Kletter wrote that could shake his world more than it had already been shaken.

The Maze Cutter sat on the ocean, engulfed in flames only yards away.

His best friend, Sadina, and all the others were as good as dead.

There wasn’t anything they could learn that would change any of that.

“Don’t tell those two anything we find. Not yet,” Ximena said.

“Cian and Erros? I know you don’t trust them, but you don’t trust me, either.”

“I don’t have a feeling about you,” she said without emotion.

“Oh.” Isaac’s throat twitched with something like shame. For some reason, her words made him feel good about himself, as if he’d passed a magic test.

“Sorry. What I meant is . . . I have feelings when bad things are about to happen. Visions. I hear things. I don’t know why it’s mostly bad feelings, but right now I feel like we can’t trust Cian and Erros with whatever’s in here.” She brushed her hair from her face. “Just not yet, okay?”

“Okay,” Isaac agreed, then looked for words next to the cross-hatch marks on the first page. “Millas náuticas . . . ”

“Nautical miles.”

“So far there’s just a lot of lines and numbers.

” If the first page of the notebook was an indicator of what went on inside Kletter’s head, she could have been a half-Crank.

Very erratic. He flipped to the next page.

“And here . . .” Isaac pointed . . . “It’s hard to tell if these are words or scribbles .

. .” He tried to sound out what might have been something comprehensible.

“última oportunidad . . . ?” He looked at Ximena. “Is that something?”

“Yes, keep going.” She nodded.