"The moment we're on the ground," Kingston says, his voice low enough that Luther, dozing in the back, won't hear, “we’re on high alert. Understood? We have every reason to think they’re looking for a way to take us the four of us out. During the bouts, during training. They’ll make it look legitimate—a concussion, a blad strike?—”
Kai, sprawled in the seat beside Kingston, cracks one eye open. “Or theywon’t,” he says. “We’re practically in No Man’s Land. They don’t have to use fencing as a pretext if they just shove us off a cliff.”
“Which is why I’m saying to keep your heads,” Kingston says. “
The Grail. Me. The words hang unspoken.
Kingston leans forward, elbows on his knees. "But they don't know about you, Gwenna. That's the critical thing. As far as Moroslav is concerned, you're just our equipment manager. Same as before.”
"Are you sure?" The question escapes before I can stop it. “Won’t it be…strange that I’m here with you?”
Kingston shakes his head. “They invited us to bring others. Spectators. It’s a courtesy custom.”
“And we said no,” Kai adds, “because the logistics of bringing an entire Caliburn cheering section to a hunk of rock in the Finnish ocean were stupid complex. Which apparently they understood.”
I nod. Okay. I want to believe that.
"So you just...what? Let them try to hurt you?" My voice cracks.
“Ifthat happens, we defend ourselves," Kingston says. "We fight and we win. If not, if they don’t do anything—and maybe they won’t—then we just proceed with the final as usual.”
“And win,” Lanz adds.
“It’s just three days.” Callahan’s hand is firm on mine, and I’m not sure whether he’s talking to me or to himself. “Just three days.”
“Either way, Gwenna,” Kingston says. “All you have to do is stay quiet and stay safe. The moment they suspect you're more than you appear to be?—"
"They won't," Kai interrupts. "Because we're not giving them any reason to look twice at her.”
The plane gives another violent shudder.
Slam.
We land.
Outside, it is night—profoundly night. The airstrip is what feels like three feet from a cliff, to hear the sound of the waves, but it’s hard to see anything at all; the sky is black and the sea is black and the wind stings and smells like salt. Around us are hills, swells of earth I can sense more than see, because the only real light is the blinking red of the airstrip—and then headlights, suddenly, blinding us all before revealing a truck, small cab and flatbed.
The lights flare off, and a figure disembarks, an electric lantern in one hand.
From inside a thick fur collar, Alexei Moroslav gives a broad smile. He extends a hand, and Kingston steps forward to shake it.
“Welcome,” Moroslav says, “to the edge of the map.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
GWENNA
I hardly knowwhat to make of this place.
I read up about it. Obviously. St. Ignaty’s, the remote island monastery, founded by Old Believers in the 17th century, fleeing the schism in the Russian Orthodox Church. Briefly and allegedly taken over for a labor camp in the in the 1920s, a kind of proto-Gulag. Militarized before World War II—hence the airstrip—and serving as a kind of training camp until the postwar shuffle saw it thrown back to Finland and reclaimed as a place of religious study.
The truck hits a bump in the dark. Next to me, Lanz grips my leg to steady me--hardly necessary, given that I’m wedged between him and Callahan so tightly I can barely breathe. Behind us, in the flatbed, the gear and our luggage gives a muted rattle.
It’s entirely dark around us. I can sense the landscape more than see it—vague lines of black hills that meet the blacker sky, the faint smell of salt. Before us, the headlights illuminate only dirt and gravel, a light fringe of gray-green grass on either side of the narrow road.
“Beautiful here in summer,” Moroslav says from the driver’s seat. “Now…” He laughs. “Now it is more honest.”
“We are indebted to your hospitality,” Luther says, terse but polite. He and Kingston are up front on the bench seat, with the four of us in the back. It’s cold in here, unheated, but humid from all of our breathing, and I vaguely wonder what time it is—if it even matters. The drive feels endless, even though we can’t have gotten that far at this speed, and I find myself antsy despite my exhaustion, longing toseesomething.
