The rain slowed to a drizzle, a soft percussion on the leaves around us. A new energy hummed between us, a quiet understanding forged in the storm. We found the ironwoods an hour later, half-submerged in black water, just where my theory and her navigation predicted. Their decaying trunks were hosts to the fungus. It grew in wide, woody shelves, like petrified ears listening to the secrets of the swamp.
As I moved to harvest Zé’s fungus, I spotted another, smaller cluster nearby, growing on the same log. It was different—pale and delicate, with an almost ghostly luminescence. “Luzia, look,” I said, my academic curiosity piqued. “I’ve read about this one. The locals call it ‘night light.’ ”
I carefully broke a piece off. “The interesting thing isn’t the light,” I murmured, my mind racing through old textbooks. “The spores are a mild irritant, but the flesh… if processed correctly, the concentrated alkaloids are a powerful soporific. An aerosolized sedative. Odorless. Colorless.” I looked from the ghostly fungus in my hand to Luzia, my heart starting to pound with a new, terrifying possibility. “It doesn’t kill. It puts people to sleep.”
The journey back was transformed. A new rhythm settled between us, a silent conversation played out in gestures. My pointing finger, indicating a treacherous root, was answered by her hand on my arm, guiding my feet to solid ground. WhenI stumbled, she was there. When she paused, I scanned the canopy above. By the time we finally emerged from the treeline, covered in mud and scratches, the fungus for Zé was the least important thing I carried. In my pack was a weapon. In my mind, a key. Between us, a plan born of the swamp itself—a plan that, against all logic, might actually work.
CHAPTER 22
Luzia
Zé was waiting, a dark shape leaning in the doorframe. His eyes, small and sharp like a river hawk’s, tracked us from the treeline. They lingered on our mud-caked clothes, the scratches on our arms, and finally settled on the damp sack in Caio’s hand. As we drew closer, he pushed himself upright, his limp more pronounced with the effort.
Caio, ever the diplomat, held out the sack. “Ironwood fungus.”
Zé took a piece. His gnarled fingers, stained with dirt and river water, turned it over and over. He brought it to his nose and sniffed, his brow furrowed. The silence stretched, thick and heavy as the swamp air. I stood ready, my weight balanced on the balls of my feet. I did not trust this man, but I understood his pain, and I knew this was only the first part of the transaction.
“Hmph,” he grunted. The sound was a stone dropping into a deep well—a mixture of disbelief and a respect he clearly hated to give. He reached into his pocket and tossed the heavy, darkwatch to Caio. “A deal is a deal,” he said. “You are harder to kill than you look.”
He turned as if the transaction was finished, but Caio’s voice stopped him. “Wait. We’re not just here to survive. We’re going after the Orchid.”
Zé snorted a harsh, ugly sound. “Suicide. Silva’s compound is a fortress.”
“Every fortress has a crack,” Caio countered, his voice burning with the certainty I’d felt from him in the storm. “His compound is on the river. There’s an intake pipe.”
I stepped forward then, feeling the truth of it in my bones. “A false current,” I said, my voice quiet but firm. “The river’s song will be wrong. I can find it. It will guide us.”
Zé stared at me, then at Caio. He wasn’t just skeptical—he was angry. “Find it? And then what? You swim up to a grate and knock politely? There are guards. Dogs that can smell you from the other side of the river. Searchlights that turn night into day.” He jabbed a finger toward Caio. “Your city knowledge is useless here.”
This was the moment. I watched Caio, saw his eyes flick not to theOrelhain Zé’s hand, but to the pack on his back. He reached into his pack and pulled out the other fungus, the pale, ghostly cluster of ‘night light’ we had found.
“No,” Caio said, a slow smile spreading across his face. “They won’t see us. They won’t smell us. They’ll be asleep.” He held the delicate fungus out for Zé to see. “This is not for your leg. This is for Silva’s men. My father is a chemist. I know my alkaloids. This fungus,Mycena lux-coeli, processes the flesh, concentrates its compounds, and creates a powerful soporific. It’s an aerosol, odorless and colorless. It puts people to sleep.”
Zé’s eyes widened. He took a half step back, looking from the pale fungus to Caio to me. The anger in his face was replaced by a slow, dawning comprehension. He was no longer looking atvictims. He was looking at a weapon, and the mind that knew how to wield it. His shrewd, calculating gaze returned, but this time it was different. It was the look of a man seeing a path to something he wanted.
“How?” Zé rasped, his voice low and intense. “How do you get this… dust… to his men?”
“Through the water pipe,” Caio explained, his voice matching Zé’s intensity. “It doesn’t just feed the greenhouse. It feeds their barracks. Their kitchens. We turn their water supply into a delivery system. We make them breathe their own defeat.”
Zé was silent for a long time, the wheels turning in his head. “My wife’s cousin,” he finally said, the words heavy with risk. “Miguel. He works the morning supply run. He hates Silva… hates what he did to this village.” He looked from Caio to me, his gaze hard. “This plan of yours is insane, but it’s a clever kind of insane.”
He took a deep breath, the decision made. “For a share of whatever you find in theSussuron,” he said, his voice a low growl, “I can get you close. Close enough to swim for that pipe unseen.”
Caio found a piece of charcoal. He kneeled, placing a wide, flat piece of bark on the floorboards between us. I sank to my knees across from him. With a grunt of effort, Zé lowered himself, his bad leg stretched out beside him. The small room felt different now, the air humming not with suspicion but with the sharp energy of a coming storm. Zé’s presence, once a threat, was now a heavy, grounding weight. Caio’s hand hovered over the bark for a moment, and then he began to draw.
He sketched the compound’s layout from memory—a square for the main building, a circle for the greenhouse. “The pipe should surface here,” he said, drawing a line from the river’s edge. “Near the generator house.”
Zé jabbed a thick finger at the drawing, smudging the charcoal. “No. That’s where you’re wrong. The generator is loud. They built the barracks on the far side. The pipe will run there first. But there’s a problem.” He drew a crude circle near the barracks. “Searchlight. New. Sweeps the water every thirty seconds.”
A cold knot formed in my stomach. Caio stared at the map, the flaw in his logic exposed. For a moment, the plan felt impossible again.
I closed my eyes, pushing away the drawing and the fear. I placed my hand flat on the dusty floorboards, reaching for the memory of the river. I felt its deep, slow power, and then, I imagined the light. A harsh, unnatural beam. It would be hot. It would disturb the air. It would cast a shadow.
“The light is a clock,” I said, opening my eyes. “It moves. It has a rhythm. And it has a shadow. The shadow moves too. It will hide us.” I traced a path on the map with my finger, a curving, indirect route. “We don’t swim against the current. We swim with the darkness.”
Caio looked from my finger to Zé. “And Miguel?” he asked. “The cousin. Can he create a diversion?”
Zé’s lips twisted into a grim smile. “The fuel lines on the supply boat are old. Sometimes, they ‘leak’ during refueling. A spill on the main dock would bring every guard running. It would give you five minutes.”
