Banished (The Ravenmaster Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  BANISHED

  THE RAVENMASTER CHRONICLES: BOOK 2

  K. A. RILEY

  CONTENTS

  Note from the Author

  Summary

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1. Smell

  2. Surprised

  3. Divided

  4. Moving

  5. Drones

  6. Airport

  7. Meeting

  8. Debate

  9. Confrontation

  10. Tunnels

  11. Bullseye

  12. Button

  13. Brawl

  14. Blind

  15. Banished

  16. Restart

  17. Blink

  18. Surrounded

  19. Lifted

  20. Corbin

  21. Bird’s Eye View

  22. Vision

  23. Willing

  24. Attraction

  25. Rescue

  26. Fastest

  27. House of Men

  28. Ogled

  29. Trapped

  30. Arrival

  31. Descent

  32. Disaster

  33. Cavalry

  34. Important

  35. First Feather

  36. Back to School

  37. Strategize

  38. Take Off

  Epilogue

  COMING UP…

  An Exciting New Dystopian Series: The Cure Chronicles

  Also by K. A. Riley

  About the Author

  COPYRIGHT

  © 2022 by K. A. Riley. All rights reserved for content text, characters, and images. No part of this book in its print, digital, or audio forms may be reproduced without the express written consent of the publisher and/or author, except for brief passages, which may be quoted in a review.

  DISCLAIMER

  Although certain geographic references may correspond with recognizable places, this book is a work of fiction. Names, geographic locations, and events should not be associated with actual places, living people, or with historical events. Any such resemblance is the work of the author and is purely coincidental.

  COVER DESIGN

  www.thebookbrander.com

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Welcome to the second book of the Ravenmaster Chronicles crossover trilogy! It’s so nice to see you again!

  The Ravenmaster Chronicles (Arise, Banished, and Crusade) occur immediately after the events of the spin-off Academy of the Apocalypse series and is an extension of Recruitment and the nine-part Conspiracy Chronicles.

  So…let’s get you up to date:

  For the past five years, Kress and her Conspiracy have been hard at work, training a school full of young Emergents and preparing them to usher in a new era of peace.

  But then the Devoted—having collected most of the guns and other weapons left after the Atomic Wars—decided to take over the country. So Kress and Brohn got called back into action. In Arise, when we last saw our heroes, Kress had just crossed through the hellish, war-torn city of Denver, Colorado to rescue Brohn from the arcology where he’d been kidnapped by Epic. Along the way, she met and then lost some very helpful friends from the Fallen, a captive population of servants to the Wealthies.

  At great risk to themselves, the Fallen helped her save Brohn. Now, she’s determined to return the favor by finding them and saving them from their own various captors.

  And that brings us to Banished.

  But before you jump in, let me just say how much I appreciate you! I write every word hoping that this little diversion might entertain you, distract you, inspire you, and maybe even bring a little joy into your life. (Even if the subject matter can sometimes get pretty grim!) Over the years, a lot of you have reached out to chat, to offer a nice word or two, or to just say, “Hi!” It means a lot to me, and it makes me want to keep writing more and better stuff for you. So that’s what I plan to do! :)

  Okay…now that that’s settled, please keep your hands and feet inside the book at all times, sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight!

  — K. A. Riley

  SUMMARY

  Accompanied by Render, her long-time raven companion, Kress and her boyfriend Brohn set out to track down the five members of the Fallen that Kress had to leave behind on her last adventure. As they make their way through the grim, war-torn streets of Denver, the heroic team finds themselves drawn into the plight of the Army of the Unsettled, a once-powerful, nomadic army, who are now an oppressed underclass being targeted for extermination by the Cult of the Devoted.

  Plagued by internal divisions, some of the Unsettled want to negotiate with the Devoted, while others are planning something much more dramatic.

  Caught in the middle, Kress and Brohn have a decision to make. The side they pick and the path they choose could save—or else end—the lives of millions.

  DEDICATION

  To the ones who’ve been kicked out and who have no desire to get back in.

  EPIGRAPH

  “Is it not true that in ancient times the worst punishment of all was not death, but banishment?”

  ― Jean Said Makdisi

  * * *

  “Only the mind cannot be sent into exile.”

  — Ovid

  * * *

  “I do not offer the old smooth prizes,

  but offer rough new prizes,

  These are the days that must happen to you…”

  — Walt Whitman, “Song of the Open Road”

  * * *

  PROLOGUE

  Denver is a ghost town.

  There used to be a million people here. Now, it’s mostly buckled pavement, empty houses, wrecked buildings, and heaps of bodies and bones.

  I doubt there are more than a few thousand people left alive in the middle of the ruins of collapsed highways, toppled trees, rubble, assorted junk, cratered roads, and thick, endless coats of grainy, red dust.

  I want to be optimistic and teeming with hope. I really do. But there’s no phoenix rising out of these ashes.

  Instead, the Wealthies packed themselves into the top two hundred or so floors of the Goldsmith Arcology to live out their safe, isolated lives of luxury, with a stable of a few thousand servants called the Fallen at their beck and call. The Devoted, in an unholy partnership with Epic and his confederation of techno-geneticists, took over one of the towering, serrated spires of the mammoth building as headquarters where they could store their weapons, plan their takeover of what’s left of the country, and control the future of humanity. Down here in the city, factions of survivors—the Unsettled, the Communers, the Scroungers, the Favor Traders, and the Fallen—do whatever they can to stay alive and as far from the reach of the Devoted as they can get.

  Brohn and I were going to do some reconnaissance work here. Our plan was to figure out the best way to stop the Devoted from amassing total control over all of us who were lucky—or unlucky—enough to survive the Eastern Order invasion and the Atomic Wars.

  After scouting the place out, we knew Denver was home to the desperate and dangerous. We intended to sneak in, be stealthy, and work around the edges. Instead, we wound up smack dab in the middle.

  Throughout it all, I keep reminding myself, at least Brohn and I are together. Of course, the thought of us being together is a lot more pleasant than the very real possibility of us dying together.

  Shaking off that depressing, pessimistic thought, I turn my attention to our mission:

  Of the stragglers who are left living on the streets, burrowed away in underground parking garages, basements, dried-up sewers, or holed up in what’s left of the buildings and shops still strong enough to stand, there are ex
actly five—four teenagers and one thirty-year-old man—we need to find.

  I feel my eyes go inky black as I connect with Render and tell him that for this part of our mission, we’ll need a bird’s eye view.

  The glossy black raven—my best friend and telempathic companion since I was six-years-old—kraas! his understanding and launches himself from my shoulder.

  Beating his powerful wings, he’s a beautiful black missile streaking through the hot, crimson sky.

  “He’s heading deeper into the city,” Brohn points out, his hand shielding his eyes as he tracks Render’s flight over a forest of shattered, roof-less, and half-collapsed office buildings in the distance.

  “Then that’s where we need to go.”

  Beckoning to Brohn, I start marching into the heart of the city, back toward all the enemies and events that nearly killed me less than twenty-four hours ago. I know full well what I’m risking, but I also know full well what’s at stake. It’s not just a few specific people I’m trying to find and save. I’ve got a personal interest in this. I’ve got the Academy’s mission to consider. And I’ve got my own complicated origins to figure out. So, in a lot of ways, I’m also trying to save myself. If that means I need to jeopardize my life in order to save it, so be it.

  Just because something is potentially bad for me, I remind myself, doesn’t meant it isn’t potentially good for someone else.

  I draw in a deep breath. It’s the same breath I’ve drawn in a hundred times, usually right before I step knowingly into some hazardous, life-or-death situation. Every time I take this breath, I know it could be one of my last, so I also take the time to enjoy it while I can.

  Sure, Brohn and I could just go home right now. We could slip past the guards at the city’s perimeter gates, hike out to the city’s outskirts, hop into the Terminus—our behemoth military transportation rig that we parked in a secret spot outside of the city—and drive back up the mountain. It would be the easiest thing for us to cruise along the winding hunter trails and navigate our way through the old, hidden mine shafts until we reached the Emergents Academy, hidden high up behind its Veiled Refractor.

  But that would mean leaving behind the unexpected heroes who risked their lives to save ours.

  They deserve better. Hell, we all deserve better.

  There are a few thousand people left in the city. Eventually, we’re going to help them all. For right now, though, Brohn and I are going to start by finding and saving five.

  1

  SMELL

  I glance up to find Brohn leaning in, fascinated as he always is by the transition my eyes make from pure, glossy black back to their normal white with irises of gold-flecked amber-green.

  “I’m always worried they’re going to get stuck like that,” he frowns, stroking his jawline as if deep in thought. His voice is laced with pretend concern even as his perfect blue eyes glitter with amusement. “I’m worried you’ll spend the rest of your life looking like someone filled your eye sockets with molten tar.”

  “If I wind up with a head full of hot tar, I’m pretty sure the color of my eyes will be the least of your worries. Or mine, for that mater.”

  Brohn laughs his agreement and asks if Render has found any of the five members of the Fallen yet.

  I shake my head to clear it and to get myself back to me. “I think so. He’s been sending me images, but they’re kind of a patchwork. I saw the House of Men.”

  “The House of Men?”

  “The blue house where I had to leave Simeon behind.”

  “Right. Simeon. That’s the one who you—”

  I put my hand up to stop him from completing that sentence. I already told him about some of the weird stuff that happened between me and Simeon. I told him about the drugs, the hallucinations, and the surreal bizarreness of it all. But I didn’t tell him everything. Some feelings, like some sentences, are best left unfinished.

  So why do I feel like a jigsaw puzzle with a missing piece?

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” I promise Brohn.

  He gives me a cryptic stare, his icy eyes as hard and narrow as the top of a pair of flat-headed screws. A hand of assurance planted on his arm, I point down into a shallow valley, past a ring of abandoned houses in a cul de sac around a deep crater in the ground. “The two houses where I lost Tallynne and Dove are somewhere in that direction. The hospital and the parking garage where we lost Caryl are farther away, but I think I can get us there, with Render’s help, that is.”

  “And the French girl…Méridienne?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. She could be anywhere. She was alone the last time I saw her. She doesn’t have weapons. She’s been a captive for a long time, and she doesn’t speak English. Realistically, she could be—”

  Now it’s Brohn’s turn to cut me off. He raises his hand and wags his finger. “Don’t say it. If she survived long enough to get you to the arcology, there’s no reason to believe she isn’t still out here in the city, alive and well somewhere.”

  I nod my tepid agreement. She’s a formerly enslaved, sixteen-year-old girl in the ruins of a city where Death seems to be hanging out at every corner, just waiting for anyone who happens by to slip up. So I’m not optimistic. I’ve seen too much of Death in this city already. “I don’t know if anyone can be ‘well’ out here,” I tell Brohn. “But I’ll settle for ‘alive.’”

  “Come on,” he urges, taking my hand in his. “We don’t have weapons, and we don’t exactly blend in. I think we should probably stay off the main roads.”

  He’s right, as usual. While I’m wallowing in worry, he’s doing that clear-headed leadership thing he does where he manages to block out the distractions to focus on the next practical steps that might keep us alive for another ten minutes. In our black military-style cargo pants, black combat boots, and white, Academy-issue tank tops with the blue raven crest, we don’t look like desperate Scroungers or like Devoted soldiers. Clothing-wise, that puts us somewhere in the middle. And out here, being in the middle means standing in the crosshairs with a target on our backs.

  Scurrying on, Brohn and I slip into a litter-cluttered laneway and prepare to clamber over a trio of wrecked pickup trucks blocking our path. The trucks are painted red and blue with matching white emblems stenciled on their sides. The writing is faded, but it looks like these were probably some kind of city-owned landscape vehicles at one time. Now, they’re just another reminder of the aftermath of war. There are countless sharp edges in the bent and battered steel and enough broken glass to make it a slow-go for me. Brohn, on the other hand, charges right over the wreckage and hops down on the other side, calling out in a teasing singsong for me to hurry up.

  Taking extra care to make sure I don’t slip and wind up cut to shreds, I tell him not to distract me while I make my way over the steel mountain-range of death.

  For all the physical skills and coordination I’ve developed over the years, I continue to err on the side of caution. It’s a part of myself I don’t particularly like. I still find myself looking around at others—people like Brohn, Rain, Kella, Mayla, War, and Wisp—and wondering where they get their confidence and fearlessness, and I wonder if I’ll ever be free from the annoying self-doubt that keeps following me around like some leering, drooling stalker.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I guess I figured that time and experience would lead me to a place of unbridled confidence, a place where I wouldn’t be plagued with the endless mental refrain of second-guessing my every thought and action. It’s bad enough to have actual people in the world trying to hunt me down and kill me. Adding a harsh insult to potential injury—and with a cluster of nagging tendrils of insecurity snaking through my head—sometimes I think my own brain is out to get me.

  Hopping down from the hood of the last of the crumpled trucks, I brush my hands on the sides of my pants as Brohn teases me for being so slow. I whack his arm and remind him that I was the one who rescued him from the arcology. Grimacing and holdin
g his arm but refusing to concede the point, he at least goes so far as to admit that maybe—just maybe—he owes me one.

  “Damn right,” I confirm.

  Sporting matching smiles, we shake hands on it and then follow Render down a narrow, litter-strewn alley between two buildings with foundations of dusty yellow brick.

  At the end of the tight, cluttered alley, we slam to a stop as a pack of feral dogs pads out, directly in our path. There are five of them, each looking like a nightmarish cross between a pit bull and a grizzly bear. They lower their heads and issue a refrain of guttural warnings from deep inside their chests. The patchy fur on their necks and around their muzzles is sticky with blood, which means they’ve either fed recently and will leave us alone, or else they’ve got a taste for blood and are on the hunt for more.