Ace of Shades (The Shadow Game #1)(88)

“We should just wait,” Lola said, her voice shaking. “The whiteboots will leave eventually.”

“Or come up eventually,” the girl muttered.

Enne looked down again. Several of the whiteboots already stood still, watching them, waiting them out.

“The whiteboots will be gentle with you,” Enne told the girl. “You’re all young, what could they—”

The girl shook her head and showed Enne her hands. They were covered in scars. Enne realized all of them bore matching marks. They were children.

“We just swore,” the girl explained. “Eight Fingers never let us, but Scavenger did.”

Which meant all of them—not just Lola—were in danger.

Enne inched over to the cord. No net to catch her here.

“You could just wrap your legs around the cord and hang upside down,” Enne said as Lola crawled on her stomach closer to her, her chin pressed against the cool metal of the rafter. She looked absurd, all trembling and pale. Then Enne realized that maybe it was she who looked absurd, confident enough to stand and give direction.

“There are holes in the wire,” Lola said, indicating several bare patches with no covering. At the cord’s other end, it was plugged into a machine on the ceiling. “That might be on. Touch it, and you’re fried.”

“Rubber soles,” Enne reminded her. She flicked the cord in a safe spot. It wasn’t perfectly taut, but the give wasn’t severe.

“Fall and you die,” Lola countered.

“Then use your clothes.”

The black-haired girl slid off her jacket. She carefully walked around Enne, then slipped her coat over the cord and wrapped both sleeves around her wrists and clenched hands.

“You’re actually doing that?” hissed the boy beside her. He had swollen cheeks, like he’d recently had a tooth pulled.

She shot him a devious smirk. “Yeah. Tell them all to watch.”

She fell. The jacket turned over the cord, holding her, and she wrapped her legs around the wire. The other children watched in awe as she crawled upside down to the other side.

They were moving, and that was a start. “You go next,” the girl called across to the boy.

Crying unabashedly, he slipped his knitted scarf over the cord and bound it to his wrists. He slowly eased his way off the beam and wrapped his ankles around the top of the wire. It took him ages to move even an inch.

“Kelvin, you gotta move faster,” the girl urged impatiently from the other side. “There are others waiting.” However, only a few of the others looked willing to even attempt the cross.

“I... I’m...” Kelvin stammered. He was a third of the way across now and shaking uncontrollably.

“He looks like he’s gonna piss himself,” another girl behind Enne, around nine years old, said loudly enough for Kelvin to hear. Enne was torn between shock at her language and fear that Kelvin actually might.

He was halfway across now. The nine-year-old took off her jacket to go next.

Kelvin’s scarf snapped.

He didn’t react fast enough. His ankles unlatched, and he fell, screaming. The girl on the other side reached out desperately, as if she could catch him from so far away.

The crowd shrieked when Kelvin hit an old conveyor belt with a bone-crunching thud. His blood splattered across the metal, and his neck was bent at an unnatural angle. Enne hurriedly looked away, fighting her urge to be sick.

One of the boys behind Enne vomited into his hands. The girl on the other side hugged the beam and stared down at Kelvin’s body, moaning to herself.

The crowds grew louder at the gruesome display, and the chaos below them became more and more violent. As the protesters brawled with the whiteboots, several other officials were making their way toward the stairs. Toward them.

“Time to move,” the nine-year-old squeaked. “My jacket isn’t gonna break, so I’m going.”

She made it across. By that time, the first girl had crawled off the beam to the window. Lola and Enne shared a look, an unspoken agreement to wait until the other children had crossed, despite the whiteboots charging up the stairs. Lola closed her eyes and pressed her face to the beam. Every few seconds, she lifted one hand to make sure that her top hat was still pinned to her hair.

There was crying and pauses and cursing, but no more accidents. Everyone reached the other side.

“I should go last,” Enne said to Lola. “I’ll be the quickest.”

“If I die, I will haunt you. And your children. And your children’s children—”

“Just go.” They didn’t have time to waste. The whiteboots had made it to the ceiling’s rafters. Although they were admittedly far away, they wouldn’t be for long. Lola wore the mark of an assassin—the whiteboots very well might shoot first and ask questions later.

“Muck,” Lola murmured. She put her coat around the cord and slid upside down. During that split second of falling, she bit on her lip so hard it bled. Lola muttered to herself and moved inches at a time—quickly, in a worm-like fashion that would’ve made Enne laugh in any other situation—and was three-quarters of the way there when her hat slid off, exposing the white of her hair.

Gunshot.

It missed. Lola shrieked and grabbed hold of the beam on the other side. Two more gunshots. Enne crouched, her stomach in her throat. No. Please no, she thought. I didn’t even want to come here. I shouldn’t have come at all.