Excerpt from The Reawakened
“Wake up!”
Sura felt a chill as blankets were whipped off her. A pack was shoved into her arms, jamming her middle finger.
“Ow.”
“Shh!” A cool, thin hand covered her mouth. “They’re coming,” Mali whispered. “You know what to do.”
Sura sat up, eyes searching the dark and seeing only her mother’s pale face. “Soldiers?”
“Down the road. Torynna just came to warn me. Five men, all armed.” Mali pulled aside the chair that sat between their beds, then yanked up the rug.
Sura shuddered at the thought of going into the tunnel, but a decade of running this drill pushed her limbs into automatic action. She grabbed her boots and shoved her feet into them. “Come with me.”
“We’ve discussed this a hundred times.” Mali started pulling up the floorboards. “If I run, I’ll be admitting my guilt. They’ll kill us both.”
“Not if we escape.”
“They’ll follow. If I let them take me, they won’t search for you. They don’t care about you.”
They will, Sura thought as she put on her pack, jerking the straps tight against her shoulders. One day the Descendant scum would pay for everything. They would all burn.
Mali lifted the last board. “Go. Now.”
Sura lowered herself into the hole, stepping quickly down the ladder that had been nailed into the side of it. With her chest at floor level, she stopped.
“What are you waiting for?” Mali hissed.
“Maybe I should go to the hills to find my father.”
Her mother put down the board and grabbed Sura’s shoulders. “What did we say?!” She shook her so hard, Sura thought her teeth would fall out. “What’s the plan?”
“Kalindos.”
“So where are you going?”
“Kalindos,” Sura whispered.
“But first?”
“Get a horse from Bolan.”
Mali pulled her close and kissed her forehead. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” When her mother released her, Sura clutched her wrist. “Please come. They might kill you.”
Mali shook her head. “They don’t want another martyr on their hands. They’ll imprison me, discredit me to our people.” She cupped Sura’s chin. “Tell the Kalindons the truth. That’s your job. Don’t try to be a hero.”
“But my father could be—”
“Your father could be under the ground or at the bottom of the river for all we know. If you want to survive, you stay far away from him. Understand?”
Sura nodded.
“Remember, if Lycas cared about us, he wouldn’t have left in the first place.”
A knock came at the door. Sura’s heart slammed her chest, but Mali didn’t even blink.
“Go.”
Sura moved down the ladder and took one more look up. Shadows sharpened the angles of her mother’s rigid face.
“You know what to do,” Mali whispered, then slid the boards back over the hole.
Everything went dark. Sura swallowed hard and lowered herself to the floor of the tunnel. She began to crawl.
Her pack scraped the ceiling, triggering a rain of moist dirt that tickled her skin where her shirt had ridden above her waist. Earthworms and beetles skittered off her as well, and a distant part of her mind hoped none of them fell down her trousers.
She listened for a struggle in the house above her, though she knew she was too deep to hear. The only sounds were her own pounding heartbeat and the scrambling of tiny claws. A mole or shrew, no doubt.
She crawled faster. Pretend it’s another drill, she told herself. Pretend the walls aren’t closing in. She closed her eyes, since there was no light, anyway, and focused on keeping her breath steady.
Soon her knee hit a wooden slab, signaling the end of the tunnel. She put a hand out to avoid banging her skull. Her fingers scraped another ladder.
Though her lungs longed for fresh air, she forced herself to climb slowly and quietly. When the top of her head tapped the hole cover, she stopped and listened.
Voices, distant, arguing. Her ears strained for a closer sound, one that would tell her a soldier was waiting outside her hiding place, like a fox watching a rabbit hole.
No leaves rustled nearby except those shifted by the faint breeze. Descendants had no talent for covering their footfalls. Even their raspy breath seemed to fill the air for miles, belying their presence as well as a shout.
Sura took a handful of mud from the tunnel wall and smeared it over her face. With her black hair and dark clothes, it would complete her night camouflage. She slowly lifted the wooden cover, far enough to peek.
It was a cloudy, moonless night, but after the total darkness of the hole, the world seemed bright and clear. She had emerged in the woods across the lane from her mother’s house. The front door was open, but she couldn’t see Mali behind the group of soldiers, two of whom flanked the doorway, facing Sura. She stayed low and slitted her eyes to keep them from reflecting the torch.
Another soldier came from around the back of the house, where he had no doubt been guarding against Mali and Sura’s retreat. The other two stood inside the front doorway. As the voices rose in argument, the leader grabbed the guard’s torch and waved the flame toward the walls, as if threatening to burn down the house.
Sura’s fist clenched the edge of the hole, fingers sinking into the mud. She’d spent all eighteen years of her life there. They couldn’t settle for stealing her mother, they had to take her home, too?
Mali just needed the element of surprise to overcome these soldiers. Her second-phase Wasp powers gave her the fighting skill and strength of three normal men. In the dark, she could probably overcome all five. Then she and Sura could flee together to Kalindos.
Sura rested the hole cover on the crown of her head, then cupped her hands to her mouth, ready to strike.
They led her mother out of the house. The torch-wielding soldier held his light near Mali so that two of the others could bind her. They pulled her arms behind her back and wrapped a thin rope around her wrists.
Mali kept her chin up and her jaw set. She had always planned to surrender without fighting, to counter her reputation as the fierce leader of the Asermon resistance. The less trouble she caused them in custody, the sooner the authorities would let her go, and the sooner she could get back to planning their assassinations.
Mali’s posture stiffened suddenly, just as the breeze died. In the silence, Sura heard one of the men say, “Now she won’t be able to hit us back.”
Before the soldier could finish the knot, Sura focused on the torch, called upon her Spirit, then sucked in her breath, hard and swift.
The torch snuffed out.
The men shouted, and Mali broke free. She whirled on them, fists and feet flying. Two collapsed, moaning and clutching their groins.
Mali turned to run. A soldier grabbed her long dark braid and slammed her onto her back. The other two moved quickly to point the tips of their swords at her throat and stomach. She froze, panting.
Sura gritted her teeth in frustration, and at the torch’s searing heat that careened within her now.
The largest soldier--the one who had caught Mali--flipped her over, then planted a knee in the small of her back as he bound her wrists. He lifted her to stand and turned her to face him.
“Are you going to be good?” he said.
She spit at his feet.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you.” He punched Mali in the mouth. She staggered back only a step, then spit again. He struck her once more. Mali didn’t even flinch this time, just smiled as she spit in his face.
They repeated the process over and over, until Sura knew her mother’s saliva must have been dark with blood. Still Mali said nothing, and her legs did not give way.
Sura shook her head. Surely the soldier had been told that Mali’s Wasp defenses allowed little injury and even less pain. She was a warrior in body and Spirit. He might as well be punching a tree.
Grunting in frustration, he struck her in the gut, then the side. Mali laughed.
His punches turned flailing, yet he refused the others’ offers of help. By now, Sura knew, his knuckles would be raw, maybe even broken from the impact against Mali’s tough exterior.
Finally he tottered back and raised his arm, then lost his balance and tipped backward into the mud. The others laughed--at least, the two who weren’t still curled up on the ground in agony.
The large soldier rolled over and lurched to his feet. He tugged down the end of his red-and-yellow jacket, as if a crooked uniform were the most embarrassing part of the situation.
“Let’s take her in and be rid of her,” he said. “Let her plague the prison guards.”
The two injured soldiers were roused, reluctantly. They all proceeded down the lane, and Sura noticed that even after the beating, her mother walked taller than the rest.
