Secrets of the Swords, Book 1

Chapter 31: What the Night Brings

Someone gasped, and Suthe's eyes darted to the right.  A middle-aged woman was standing at the corner of an old building, eyes wide at having witnessed Suthe's sudden appearance.

Suthe scrambled to her feet and held out her hands, desperate for the woman to understand somehow that she meant no harm. Though the woman didn't scream, she didn't turn away, either, and remained frozen in place, clutching her coat tightly around her as if afraid that Suthe would snatch it away.

Where was she, exactly? Suthe looked around, trying to get her bearings. The faded colors and towering buildings were undeniably of those in Fai, but she didn't recognize the street. The sun had almost set now—was it too late for the training cannons at the fort? If she could find out which way the fort was, it would give her at least some sense of direction.

Suthe wet her lips and turned back to the woman who was still staring at her.

"Fort?" she tried. The woman shook her head. "Uh...boom?"

Suthe mimicked an explosion with her hands, and the woman took a step back in terror.

"Wait!" Suthe cried out, but it was too late. The woman took off down the street, not looking back even once.

"Ohh..." the uneasy sound escaped from Suthe's lips as she felt a sickening pit open up in her stomach. It was the purest form of panic, and she felt like she couldn't get enough oxygen in her lungs. This was bad. She didn't know where she was, why she had suddenly appeared here, or how she was going to get back to Sang Bur on time.

Suthe brought a hand to her forehead, willing her sudden bout of nausea to subside. How was she even going to survive this night?

People were beginning to notice the Montese girl standing in the middle of the street. Suthe caught sight of an elderly man with a handcart who had pulled up from an intersection and was now stopped on the side of the road, studying her with narrowed eyes but not daring to pass. Movement above had Suthe whirling to see three children peering out of a window with wide eyes, too young to be fearful, only curious of this stranger in their midst.

But her fears about the people only lasted a moment. It was a clank at the end of the street that sent her heart hammering in her chest, and a cold sweat broke out at her brow when she noticed the metal box inlaid with a glowing blue stone at its center.

It was a clockwork soldier – and it was waking up.

Suthe stumbled back, searching wildly for a safe haven until finally taking off down a side road, desperate to put distance between her and the metal creature. No doubt the residents on that street would tell the thing about her sudden appearance – if it even understood words to begin with – and it would come chasing after her at any moment. The only option she had right now was to run, and maybe later she would be able to find a hiding place to wait out the clockwork hours and figure out how to use her ancestors-cursed druith abilities to send her back to Sang Bur.

She had no such luck.

Her foreign appearance, she assumed, was the first strike against her, coupled with the fact that she looked like she was running for her life. There were still a few residents of Fai who had not yet returned to their homes, and they gave out shouts and cries of shock as she barreled past them, heedless of who she ran into in the process.

There was a clockwork box on this street, too. Suthe let out a frustrated breath and sharply turned, narrowly avoiding an old woman with a wicker basket.

"Sorry!" she gasped over her shoulder, stumbling on an uneven cobblestone before continuing down the way. She almost turned right again, but it was a dead-end, so she backtracked and veered left instead, hoping this next street would be less busy.