After he’d gone, I concealed the blade like he’d said to and backed into the shadows, winding the ropes around my legs in a way so that I could kick them loose quick. Then I tore open the pouch Kade had given me, and damned if it weren’t full of that good Kalliq mud the Healer had packed around the saplings and roots. Kade must have scooped up some of it, though there hadn’t been a whole lot left. Must have figured I needed it bad, I reckon. And I did need it. I grabbed that fistful of gray slime and smeared it on my belly, rubbing it into the patches of red, the blisters and black.

The mud felt soothing, like a cool hand in a fever, and I let its goodness seep into me, cutting the sting. And I almost busted out crying as I sat there in the cell, remembering the Healer telling me her name, her beautiful smile falling away as her body turned stiff in my arms.

I wondered how deep Kade’s feelings for my sister had run. Had he cared for her like I cared for Alpha? Yeah, I thought. Maybe he had. And maybe I was going to lose my girl, like Kade had lost his. Now or come springtime, no matter how hard I fought against it.

I felt shut down as I slumped there in the darkness. It was like I’d never been more trapped. GenTech above, poachers crawling all around me, and King Harvest creeping through the corn with his copies, heading straight for the trees.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

I came awake in a panic as the metal hinges screeched, the door to my cell flying open. I hoped it was Kade. It had to be Kade.

But it was Baxter.

He stood there for a moment, illuminated by the lights behind him, scratching his bald red scalp, then chewing on his fingernails. Looked like he was making his mind up about something. But then he gestured in the guards.

They found my ropes untied and began binding the cornhusks back in place until Baxter stopped them. “There’s no time,” he said. “Just bring him. Now.”

The passageway was loaded with poachers, some with cornstalk spears, others carrying machetes. They had other cell doors yanked open, and I watched as they dragged Crow out through one of them. His arms were bound up tight, but his legs were free. And as the guards shoved him around, I saw Crow could stand again. He was even able to walk.

Up ahead of us, they hauled out Alpha. She was conscious now and thrashing around. And Kade had said he’d tell the others the plan, but what was it? Just sit tight and wait, he’d said. And where the hell was he now?

“Come on,” Baxter called to the guards. “Let’s get moving. Quick as we can.”

A spear jabbed my back, pushing me along, and then they bundled us out of the passage and down through the tunnels. Hell, they practically ran us around the place. Half pulling us, half pushing. We were all shoved up together, about a dozen guards surrounding us, with Baxter out in front, his flaking red scalp leading the way.

“What’re you grinning at?” I said, glancing up at Crow.

“I be walking, man,” he said. And sure enough, he was moving them legs pretty smooth.

“Yeah, well, you’re walking into a whole mess of danger.”

“Least I ain’t being carried. And look at these things now.”

The purple thread Alpha had cut off the side of our mammoth had done more than bind Crow’s legs back together—it had started to grow shaggy all over the bark.

“So, what? Now you’re a furry sort of freak?”

“Almost like Namo be here with me,” he said. “Giving me strength. I feel all right about, too. Like a lion, no?”

“Look at you, being all positive.”

“And I can feel my legs getting stronger. I can feel it more each minute that goes by.”

“Better enjoy this walk then. Seeing as it might be our last.”

“Banyan,” Alpha called, trying to push through the throng to reach me, but the poachers kept holding her back.

I craned my neck, trying to catch another glimpse of her. And I remembered again how it had been a damn poacher who’d shot her in the cornfields. And now she had that GenTech bark on her belly. The start of a disease.

And what about Crow? His legs seemed to have been somehow altered, changed by the fur they’d been splinted up with, but would he still suffer the same fate as the woman who’d been all wrapped in bark, sealed up and suffocated in the spring?

I had one hope of finding a way to stop that from happening to Crow, to Alpha. I had one desperate idea, that final trick up my sleeve, my plan for the last tree. But to fix anything, to put my plan into action, to find a cure, I had to get out of here, and I needed those saplings.

So where the hell was Kade when we needed him?

“I have to tell you something,” Alpha called. “Banyan. It’s about what I saw.”

“Silence,” said Baxter.

I saw Alpha try to wriggle free of the guards that were holding her.

“Beneath the peaks,” she cried. “Beneath those mountains.”

“Guards,” Baxter yelled. “Keep them quiet.”

One of those filthy grubbers smothered Alpha’s mouth with his hand. There were too many of them surrounding us, rattling their weapons. Not a thing we could do.

I glanced up at Crow, and he was gazing straight ahead, and he’d quit smiling. Maybe he’d remembered what we were up against. Or perhaps he was remembering the things he’d seen himself below the Speak It Mountains. The vision he’d been screaming about when we found him in the water. Something about a lion’s mane and an army, and something buried beneath the South Wall.

We entered the sprawling chamber with the high ceilings and the scaffold. Poachers everywhere, milling around and keeping busy. But there were too many of us to be ignored now. The workers quit shucking their corn and digging their ditches, their rusty mine carts rolled to a stop. Folk watched us awhile, then wiped the sweat from their faces, and then they turned back to their backbreaking work.

The heavy steel door to the Council’s chamber was already cracked open, and the guards shoved us towards it, then squeezed us inside. The room was just as smoky and foul as before—the fire still roaring in the center, flames and shadows dancing across the Council’s faces. I looked around for Kade. But then my eyes found the trees. They were right there near the fire. The last six saplings.

And they were dried up and shriveled in the dirt.

Looked like if you grabbed that bundle of sticks, they’d turn to ash in your fingers. The last bit of Pop was like a punctured sack, as if he were now no more than a wilted womb, or the remnant shell of a swollen seed, the bark brittle and ruptured.

“What the hell?” I yelled, shoving guards out of my way, wrestling their spears from my path.

“Let him closer,” said one of the lords.

They’d set the trees in the middle of the circle. Laid them on top of the plastic pack, right beside the flames.

I collapsed on my knees before them.

“We think it’s cold,” said Baxter, when he saw me tug the clump of saplings away from the smoky pit.

And he was right. The saplings felt cool to the touch. Like they were sucking the life out of my fingers.

“What happened to them?” asked Kade, kneeling beside me, all crunchy in his cornhusk robes. And it seemed to me like the trees were as dead as the husks Kade wore wrapped around him. Just as dead but twice as fragile.

And I had no idea what to do.

The tank had protected the trees. The liquid and the lights and GenTech’s science. And when the tank was shattered and the liquid was gone, the Healer’s wisdom had nursed Pop’s saplings back to health.