Ted Dekker - Mortal

South, to Byzantium.

Two miles outside the city they paused to water and rest their horses. Jonathan and Jordin ate a simple meal of cheese and dried meat in silence. Neither spoke much in the company of others-Roland had wondered aloud once whether they actually communicated with each other some other way. Did the boy see beyond normal Mortal perception? Could he, with a glance, discern another’s thoughts?

They were both uncanny, even for Mortals. Jordin, with her undemonstrative nature among a class of warriors from whom a certain amount of swagger was expected. Jonathan, with the burden of the world on his shoulders.

And then there was this new threat of Saric and his Dark Bloods.

The prisoner’s death confirmed one thing in Roland’s understanding: Dark Bloods were an abomination. A defiled race.

And yet, somehow, the Dark Blood’s death had disturbed the boy greatly.

“The boy.” It was funny how they all still thought of Jonathan that way despite all of the evidence to the contrary. He was as strong as most warriors his age and faster than all but a few among all Mortals.

Roland glanced at Rom, offered him a piece of dried jerky, and ate it himself when the man refused it. He knew there was only one thing other than Jonathan on their leader’s mind.

Feyn.

Rom had spoken less of her as the time for her waking had neared-clear indication that there was far more weltering beneath the surface. He spoke even less now.

Roland admitted his own concern about her potential ascension, but only insofar as it affected their mission to see Jonathan into power. To protect the Mortal bloodline. To see their superior race thrive. This was Jonathan’s true purpose-nothing else mattered. For the sake of the Nomads, he would die to serve that cause.

The sun was just nodding toward the horizon when they started the last miles into the city. Rom, riding in the front. Jordin, always at Jonathan’s side. Roland, flanking them all.

Within a half hour the muted lights of Byzantium appeared-not the bright orange Nomadic fires they were accustomed to, but a glow dimly reflected by the opaque sky. He watched Jonathan lean forward in his saddle as the spires of the city came into view.

That’s when it came to him, faint as smoke on the wind, but far less pleasant.

Corpse scent.

Rom stopped, hand up. It was coming from just west of them, too near to be the population of the city itself-not yet, at least. Too near, and too weak to be so many.

Roland nudged his mount forward, past Jordin and Jonathan.

“There,” Rom said, lifting his chin toward a copse of trees that hid a small lean-to, about a hundred and fifty yards off. It was barely more than a piece of siding propped against the gnarled trunks of two trees.

Scavengers, escapees of Order. Two, from the look of it-a woman, her arm bound in a heavy bandage, and a teenage girl, black-haired, perhaps fifteen, with a noticeable limp. Victims of an accident, then, fleeing the city and the wellness center with it, and with good cause. Many who went in as victims of sickness or accidents often did not return. The Order did not permit reminders of Mortality, of the thing all Corpses feared most: death.

It was said that those who left did so in secretive fear, knowing that spouses and family members were obligated under Order to report them to the authorities. Which they did, because there was only duty to the laws of Order.

These two didn’t stand a chance. They’d be found by the authorities that regularly roamed the city outskirts for just their kind within days.

Jonathan pulled up between Roland and Rom, rapt, staring from the saddle. Why the keen interest? A Corpse was a Corpse. Dead. Diseased. Worthy of Mortality only through council approval.

“They’ve fled the city,” Rom said to Jonathan. “In an effort to live.”

Roland glanced west. The sun was dropping below the horizon.

“We need to go.”

He threw one last look toward the lean-to and moved on. Jordin waited for Jonathan who, after a long moment, finally turned around.

Bringing him had been an unnecessary risk in Roland’s judgment. It was true, his blood was much more potent than their own and could not survive more than an hour outside his body. But their blood might just as easily be given to Feyn to turn her Mortal. Still, Jonathan was Sovereign.

Ignoring the Corpses completely, Roland rode after the three of them.

The Mortals had long ceased to enter Byzantium by conventional means. Nine years ago, Rowan had undertaken a new project in Jonathan’s name to fortify portions of Byzantium’s sewer system, beginning beneath the Citadel itself and extending to the northern edge of the city. The ancient sewers that had weathered millennia would have easily weathered a thousand years more, but thanks to Rowan, a portion of them had been conveniently connected to form an underground route into the city.

It was by this route that the Keeper would meet with Rowan regarding Feyn’s care. The same way that Rom’s spies had come and gone unseen from the capital.

They reached a hill just outside the city. There, a metal culvert the height of a man opened into a stony bed that had once been a shallow drainage river.

They dismounted in a sparse grove of trees, tying their horses, retrieving torches from saddles in the dark.

“Jordin,” Rom said. “You’ll bring yours and Roland’s horses to the back of the northeast basilica-the Basilica of Spires. Leave the other two here.”

Jordin gave him a sharp look and then glanced at Jonathan. Her skin appeared dusky in twilight, emanating its own kind of glow.

“We take no chances with Jonathan,” Rom said, seeing her reluctance. “We need two escape routes. Wait behind the basilica with the horses. If we’re not there in three hours, return and meet us here.”

Her gaze flicked from Jonathan to Rom. She nodded.

It was the right choice. She was the most likely to find her way out as swiftly and inconspicuously as possible.

Rom pulled up his hood. Roland had his up already and was tying a dark scarf over his nose and mouth. It wasn’t to mask the smell of the sewer, but something far more offensive: the reek of five hundred thousand Corpses walking, breathing, and dwelling in fear.

Jonathan glanced back at Jordin once without speaking, and then pulled his hood up over his head.

And then they crossed the rocky drainage bed to the culvert, lit the torches, and went in as darkness settled over the city.

Rom hadn’t entered these tunnels in six months-since the last time he’d met Rowan in Feyn’s stasis chamber as he had twice a year for nearly a decade.

He moved quickly through the culvert, pushing back the smell of rat feces, the refuse of the city, the rot and mildew seeping through the thick weave of the scarf over his mouth and nose. The image of Feyn’s body hung in his mind.

Still. Pale. Her lashes so distinctive in the fluid-filled tank that he expected her to open them. Her hand with nails so meticulously trimmed. The finger with the moonstone ring.

She’d been in stasis so long that the few days he’d once known her seemed less like a memory than some vestige of a dream.

A dream that had brought them to this moment, here. Now.

He picked up the pace, boots splashing through the sediment that had settled at the bottom of the culvert. He glanced back at Jonathan, who moved with all the stealth of the Nomads, head down, Roland a shadow behind him.

Just ahead, the culvert opened into the brick sewer tunnel. The opening was new, reinforced with rebar, but the brick was ancient. They stepped into the tunnel, which was slightly lower than the edge of the culvert and filled with half a foot of water.

The tunnels belled out beneath the edge of the city, near the northern underground terminus. A grate in the side of the tunnel emitted soft light-and then a distant squeal of brakes on wheels.