Neverseen (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #4)(138)

“Are you sure you can handle this?” Tam asked his sister as she reached toward the sky.

“The falling water has not been tainted.” Linh closed her eyes, her brows pressing together. Mist curled off the waterfalls and gathered into two thick gray clouds, blocking the sun and casting shadows across the playa.

“You’re pushing yourself too hard,” Tam said, catching her when she collapsed.

“I know my limits,” Linh promised, but her voice sounded ragged. And when she tried to stand, she fell over.

“We need to keep moving,” Alvar said. “The ogres could find those clouds suspicious.”

“I’ll carry her,” Fitz told Tam. “You need to concentrate on the shadows.”

Tam reluctantly handed his sister over, and Alvar and Biana vanished again as everyone headed into the playa. They walked with slow, deliberate steps to avoid kicking up dust. Sophie kept her eyes trained on the mountain as the city came into better focus.

Metal pillars capped by green glowing fireballs illuminated the paths through the city, which were all zigzagging and narrow and treacherous. There would be no quick climb to the top, nor any way to avoid the busier parts of the city.

“That’s the Triad,” Alvar whispered, his arm blinking into sight long enough to point to the center of the mountain. A ledge jutted farther than all the others, stretching to a sharp point between two wide waterfalls.

They were too far away to see the throne or guards, but Sophie knew they were up there.

“You sure you want to do this?” Alvar asked.

She swallowed the bile on her tongue and nodded.

The more she thought about it, the more she had to accept that there was no way they could get the cure without being seen—and King Dimitar had to be counting on that. So if they could turn his expectation on its head with a trick, it might buy them enough time to get what they needed and get out alive.

“Okay,” Alvar said, letting out a breath. “Now we head into the city.”

He led them to a stairway on the far side of the mountain, and they climbed to the lowest level of Ravagog. Alvar had them pause at the top, pressing their backs against the rockface. Sophie couldn’t tell if they were hiding or resting.

This level was a curved platform, about as wide as the bottom floor of the glass pyramid at Foxfire, and it was crammed with booths selling all kinds of foul-smelling things. Ogres bartered for better prices as the shopkeepers shouted to get their attention, the ogre language sounding blunt and clipped.

Sophie had never seen a female ogre before, and they were even harder to look at than the males. They wore only two narrow tubes of leather, one around their chest, the other their hips, leaving most of their warty skin on display. Brittle white hair grew from a single patch in their lumpy foreheads and stuck out like wild feathers, and their eyes had a strange milkiness to them. There were children too, playing with strange metal toys that reminded Sophie of pinwheels. They chased each other through the markets, laughing as they scurried around their mother’s legs. The scene felt unnerving, but also incredibly normal. Families going about their daily lives. Sophie wondered if they even knew what terrible threats their king had made.

Fitz set Linh down and she called mist around them, thickening Tam’s shadows before they tiptoed into the crowd. Their snail’s pace went against all of Sophie’s instincts, but it gave Tam time to adjust the shadows with every movement, and Alvar time to select the best path through the ever-moving ogres. Sophie was soaked with cold sweat when they reached the end of the market and started up another flight of stairs. But they made it. One down—many more to go.

The second level was narrower and blissfully ogre-free, though Sophie was sure there were plenty of ogres behind the massive barred doors heading into the mountain. They sprinted the whole way across, to yet another stairway, wider than the others, with jagged carvings on each step.

As they climbed, Sophie decided it was time to transmit her crazy plan. She started with Tam and Linh, since she had no idea what they would say. Naturally, Tam shadow-whispered that he thought she’d lost her mind. But both twins promised they’d help however she needed.

Sophie transmitted the plan to Fitz next, knowing he would have a lot of questions. They’d crossed another entire level—some sort of construction zone that time, filled with ogres in chains hammering at the mountain—before Fitz told her, If that’s what you think we should do, I trust you.

Biana was easy to convince, as was Dex. Which meant it was time to stop stalling and ask Keefe. She almost changed her mind—the role she needed him to play would be the most dangerous thing any of them had ever done. But he was the only one who could pull it off.

I was wondering when you were going to include me, Keefe thought, the second her voice filled his mind.

Oh, you’re part of this, she promised. You’re the most important part. But if you don’t think you can handle it—

I can handle it, Keefe interrupted. Boss me, Foster. I’m in.

He responded to the plan better than she’d thought. In fact, he almost seemed . . . excited.

This isn’t a game, Keefe.

No, but it’s what I’ve been wanting to do for weeks. I got this, Foster. Trust me.

I do, Sophie promised. I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t.

She transmitted her plan to Calla next, and the tiny gnome nodded. Which meant she only had one more person to convince before things became real.