Page 10 of A Thief to Die For

Oh, but I can. Maybe I don’t care if it exposes me.

‘I’ll handle it. Stay here,’ he hisses and hurries off.

I half follow, but heads swivel in my direction, and I stop, grinding my jaw. I stand out like a torch, especially with my hood.

Clara flies out of the door and scoops up her enraged boy. ‘Stop, baby,’ she scolds.

Little John fights to be set down and wins, but Clara shoves him behind her. ‘I’ll pay soon,’ she says breathlessly to Diggs. ‘Just give me another couple days. I’ve been sick.’ Her legs are bare under her nightgown and seem to wobble as she clutches her stomach.

She has? Clara has always been quick to offer me a smile or some clever comment. And I’ve had no choice but to discourage it, even to the point of being rude. I’d love to be friends, but we can’t be. It’s too dangerous in Atlas’s world. That hasn’t stopped me from keeping tabs on her, though, so I do know that she’s friends with Brother Thomas. Why hasn’t he helped her?

Diggs glares at the young mother. ‘You have to make a payment today.’ He shoves past her, entering her ramshackle home. Little John chases after him, but Clara snags her son by the arm.

‘Get out of our house,’ Little John screams after him.

Diggs reappears with a flat body-sized pillow. Likely their only mattress, a sack filled with feathers and rags. ‘I’ll take this. That’ll buy you two days.’

Clara moans. ‘Please, we need it to sleep.’

‘No.’ Arthur limps forward and removes his wedding band – the one he wouldn’t part with before. ‘This is Clara’s payment. Take it.’ Jaw clenched, he holds it out.

Diggs stares for a long time, as if disappointed he now needs to rescind his casual cruelty. ‘Lucky,’ he mumbles, dropping the mattress in the dirt. He opens his hand and accepts the ring.

But then he lunges at Little John and rips the wooden sword from the boy. ‘I’ll be taking this, too.’

Little John’s cry is quickly smothered by his mother’s arm. Diggs waits for a menacing second, begging for a reason to use his baton. Then, like a taunt, he tosses and catches Arthur’s ring as he walks away.

I have to run to get into position, drawing the attention of a couple of Dresden. A woman calls out, ‘Slow down. Where you going in such a hurry?’

I adjust my hood and make it to my spot among the trees with seconds to spare. The horse trailer filled with collections ambles up the road towards the compound. My lungs are on fire with breathlessness – or maybe that’s my anger still seething beneath my breastbone.

Diggs holds the burning sulphur-and-lime torch, his horse riding slightly ahead as Soren guides the mare pulling the trailer. They talk and joke loudly. Nice and distracted.

The earthy tang of grass fills my nose as I lower myself, lying flat. Normally at this point, I’d be debating whether this is a stupid way to die. But after watching Diggs tonight, I’ve never been more ready to go. They pass by and I spring up, then mount the back of the trailer. It dips with my weight, but the endless array of potholes in the road makes it less obvious. Moving quickly, I drop canvas bags, baskets and boxes of food into the weeds lining the road. In the darkness outside the ring of torchlight, the spoils easily disappear.

Briefly, I wonder where Diggs might have shoved Arthur’s ring – probably in his pocket. And I’m sure that shifty parasite won’t even turn it in.

My efforts slow as bare spots appear on the trailer floor. As quietly as possible, I slide a few items over to cover them. If I take more, they’ll notice when they get to the storehouse, and I can’t have them looking for any lost goods.

I’m careful not to jostle the trailer as I climb back over the edge and drop to the ground, rolling into the ditch. The crickets fall silent. Something scurries through the long grass around my head and my eyes squeeze shut as I resist the urge to scream. Agonising minutes pass before the trailer is a safe distance away. Now begins the tedious part – finding my new treasures in the dark.

It’s like everything wants to kill us out here, including the trees.

Those trees, specifically.

Our horses come to a stop as we survey the valley below. The sun is setting, casting the sky in a soft yellow and pink. Mixed with the redness of the forest, it looks more like a painting than what it actually is – deadly.

After two days of edging along the badlands, this is the heart of the bomb’s poison. Or, one of the hearts. Up until here, the land looked like home: mountains, trees, valleys – green, overgrown and scarred in places, with rusted remnants of the old world. Everything except towns. Villages just don’t exist, even thirty-eight years later. There’s nothing out here like Kingsland – the one place that somehow survived unscathed from the attempted massacre of everyone in the Federated States of the Republic.

Which doesn’t bode well for our mission.

‘Would you look at that?’ Levi marvels. ‘What is this place?’

‘It’s the red forest, you horse chip,’ Samuel mutters.

Levi’s eyes narrow in a way I’ve seen too often over the last couple of days of travelling. Here we go. Why our town council chose a teenage sword prodigy to go with two elite guards to find a functional coal mine is beyond me. But it wasn’t for his ability to shut up.

‘But why call it red?’ the kid asks.