Chapter 11 The Full Escape
Daisy walked until the city shrank to a bruise against the horizon.
She kept to the low ground at first, weaving between thickets of scrub and rock, shoes squelching with every step. The sun was a hammer, beating the stink from her hair and clothes. By late afternoon, her hands were raw from clutching roots and stones, and her shirt clung wet to her back.
She found the stream at dusk. The water was cold and brown, full of pebbles and darting things, but Daisy knelt anyway. She scrubbed her face, her arms, the worst of the tunnel filth from her legs. She wrung out her shirt and let it hang, shivering as the evening breeze found her skin. The taste of the water was metallic, but she drank it anyway, cupping her hands until her belly cramped.
She waited by the stream, letting her clothes dry, letting the day’s panic bleed away. The wound on her wrist, a scrape from the tunnel, had stopped bleeding, but when she washed it, the old spiral birthmark glowed red and angry, like a fresh burn. Daisy stared at it, remembering her mother’s words, and traced the lines with a dirty finger. North, she thought. Always north.
When the shirt was only a little damp, Daisy put it on and started up the nearest rise. Her feet left muddy prints in the grass. At the top of the hill, she turned back for the first time.
The city was a bowl of darkness, rimmed by the unnatural light of the barrier. At this distance, the dome shimmered blue and gold, stars flickering within it like someone had bottled a chunk of sky. For a second, Daisy missed it. The noise, the stink, the hunger. But then she touched Delia’s charm, threadbare and stiff, hanging from her neck, and she felt the old anger return. She wasn’t going back. Not for anything.
The wind off the hill was sharp, numbed her ears and nose. She wrapped her arms around her knees and watched the barrier until her eyes burned.
A movement below, near the base of the wall. Too far to make out faces, but the figures stood out in their discipline, no shouting, no running. Just the slow, steady sweep of torches, the glint of a lens catching sunset. Daisy saw the line of searchers fan out, dark coats against pale grass. They moved with purpose, a silent tide.
Daisy lay flat, pressing herself into the earth. She watched as one of the figures, taller than the rest, moving with deliberate care, held something up to his eye and swept it across the hillside. He paused. Daisy could almost feel the gaze, cold as a knife.
She waited, not breathing, until the sun dropped away and the hill was cloaked in shadow.
Below, the tall man cupped his hands and whistled, a night bird’s call, sharp and quick. From the dark, other shadows peeled away and began to climb.
Daisy got up. She pressed Delia’s charm between her palms, felt the scratch of the spiral on her wrist, and started north. The land ahead was empty, the city fading behind her, and the only thing that mattered was moving forward. She ran, boots pounding, her silhouette a fleeting smudge against the stars.
At the base of the hill, Cornelius Blackwood lowered his lens, the magic still burning in its glass. His mouth twisted into a smile, the scar on his cheek pulling the lips wide, and he signaled his men to follow.
Daisy didn’t look back.