Samantha Sutton and the Winter of the Warrior Queen Read online

  Copyright © 2014 by Jordan Jacobs

  Cover and internal design © 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover illustration © Odessa Sawyer

  Cover design by Bert Fanslow

  Internal illustration by Marissa Moss, Ute Simon, and Chris Norton/Sourcebooks

  Roman legionary illustrations, p. viii-ix, © Canicula/Shutterstock; Crown illustrations, p. 101, © Mila Petkova/Shutterstock; Royal lion illustration, p. 101, © MaKars/Shutterstock

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For Linz

  England. Samantha Sutton risked a glance through the train window and up at the overcast sky. In the panic of her escape, she hadn’t factored in the early northern sunset. Now, in midwinter, it was dark by five most evenings, and on a day like today, the covering of clouds could snuff out the sun as much as an hour before.

  There were maybe fifteen minutes left of daylight, she figured, and still forty miles between her and the great cathedral city to the south. All of her journey would be in the dark. And most would be at a run.

  She took a long, deep breath as the train ground to a stop and held it until the doors groaned open. Could he have followed her here? Would he be waiting, just outside? She put her head through the open door for a look up and down the platform, and for a second—then two, then three—she was exposed to all who passed by. But a chime and a recorded voice warned her of the train’s immediate departure, and she had no choice but to step outside.

  She felt her muscles clench, ready for hands to close around her throat or to rip her precious backpack from her shoulders. But nothing happened. No one even turned to look at her. The thin crowd just pushed by, indifferent. Threading between the last of the passengers and through the station of glass and steel, she allowed herself a little hope. Maybe she’d lost him, after all.

  She stepped out into the January evening as gloomy Swindon began its slow shuffle home. Her fear could keep the cold away, but not the wet. The snow that showed in the light of the streetlamps had an intensity that surprised her, until she realized that her royal blue raincoat was already flecked with white, and melting snow was seeping through her jeans. She reached behind her to make sure the backpack was cinched all the way closed. The bag was so streaked in mud that the stripes and bars of its Union Jack design were only barely discernible—the red, white, and blue merged to mottled dun. But tacky as it was, the backpack was well made and would shield the object it contained during the long night’s journey ahead. She pulled the bag higher on her shoulders and hurried into the shadowy city streets.

  She knew she couldn’t afford to look lost. A disoriented twelve-year-old girl—especially one of her small stature—would attract concerned attention, questions she couldn’t answer, long-distance calls to her parents in California, and the involvement of police. Any delay would be catastrophic. No one would be able to protect her from the man who hunted her now.

  The first close call came only minutes into her journey. She passed a pub, bustling with evening commuters, and the burly clientele who had spilled out onto the sidewalk to smoke. Samantha shouldered her way through and all fell silent, their eyes pinned on her backpack.

  And no wonder. The bag would have been noticeably heavy to anyone who saw it, the way it arched her back and slowed her pace. But it was what pressed outward through the bag’s dirty canvas that attracted the men’s attention. The light streaming from the pub drew out the contours so anyone could guess at what she carried. There were the big ears, there the professorial brow, and there the sharp Roman nose. A close look would have even revealed the loops of hair, cropped short, as slight ridges beneath the fabric. It was, essentially, just what it looked like: a severed human head.

  “Oi!” cried someone through the pooling cigarette smoke. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

  Samantha flinched.

  “Didn’t you hear me, love? I asked you a question.”

  But she just pulled the straps tighter and increased her pace, her heartbeat thudding behind her eyes.

  She did not slow until she was free of the city center, when the clusters of grim apartment towers gave way to open parkland. The snow had eased enough to make out the motorway in front of her—the M4—and just beyond it the moonlit fields of Wiltshire. Here, at last, she could pause to orient herself.

  She fished her notebook out from beneath her jacket, where it hung from her neck by its knotted length of twine. The map she’d torn from the atlas told her to go almost directly south—through Wiltshire’s fields and downs and its ancient, sacred groves. She would pass through villages with storybook names like Upavon, Countess, and Longhedge—names that on any other journey would conjure a smile to her face and a desperate need to rush to the library and research their origins. But not tonight. While she may have lost her pursuer in London some hours before, he had surely guessed her destination and was likely racing to intercept her somewhere ahead.

  Still—she tried to convince herself—that was tomorrow’s concern.

  An overpass spanned the motorway ahead of her. She hurried toward it.

  “Excuse us.”

  “Miss?”

  The voices startled her so much that the backpack slid from her shoulders. Two figures emerged from the shadows some feet away. They were police officers—one man, one woman—each garbed in a fluorescent yellow vest. Part of her wanted to turn to them, confess everything, and beg for their help. But there was too much at stake. And they wouldn’t be able to protect her, even if they tried.

  She was about to break into a run when they caught up with her, flanking her one on each side. As innocently as she could, Samantha shielded the backpack with her body.

  “What are you doing out here?” the female officer asked. “Not a nice night for a walk.”

  Samantha knew not to say
anything. Her pale freckled skin, slight elfin features, and dark brown braids were not out of place in this part of the world, but her accent would immediately identify her as a foreigner.

  “Miss?” the man said, taking off his cap. “Are you lost?”

  “Come on, then,” said the woman, stooping to Samantha’s level. “It’s cold tonight, and more snow is on its way. Can’t we give you a lift?”

  Samantha forced a smile. She knew she would have to respond.

  “Oh, I can make it on my own,” she began, trying to avoid any telltale American “r’s.” “I’ll be okay.”

  The officers looked at each other. It hadn’t worked.

  “Sounds like you might be very far from home, indeed,” said the man.

  He turned to his partner.

  “Better call this in.”

  But just as the policeman unclipped his radio, and just as the policewoman reached out to comfort her, something stopped them short. Pounding footsteps, at a run.

  Samantha felt the evening’s chill. So he had found her, after all. He had tracked her like an animal all the way from Cambridge, across busy London, then through Swindon’s darkened streets. He had stalked her all this way, waiting for her to enter the frozen countryside where she would be vulnerable and exposed. Here he would reclaim what she had stolen and exact his revenge.

  “Keep her there!” came the deep, familiar American voice. “Don’t let her get away!”

  The moment of confusion was enough. Samantha twisted free. And then she ran, fixing her eyes on the overpass ahead, her heavy backpack slowing her steps through the deepening snow.

  “Grab her!” cried the voice. “That’s my niece!”

  Now Samantha broke into a painful sprint, her lungs sucking in the frozen air. There were cries behind her, orders to stop, and then muffled sounds of struggle. But it wasn’t until she sped up the icy ramp and reached the bridge’s midpoint that she risked another look back.

  From above the sparse and speeding traffic, she saw the officers writhing in the snow. With horror, she noted that her pursuer had slowed his chase. Samantha could not make out his features in the darkness, but his muscular shadow was well defined in the pool of a streetlight, black against a patch of snow. There was nothing left to stop him. Now he could take his time.

  “It’s hopeless, Samantha,” said the voice, hoarse from yelling. “You don’t have a chance.”

  She feared that he was right. The weight on her back now seemed impossibly heavy. She stopped, ready, almost, to hand over the bag and accept whatever retribution he had in mind.

  But then something cried out from deep inside her.

  Boudica. For Boudica.

  And she began to run again despite herself, deep into the cursed English night.

  Samantha recognized the truck all the way from the corner of Sycamore Lane, parked in her parents’ driveway at the end of Colby Drive.

  “Whose car is that?” asked Janet Pitt-Rivers, wheeling her bike to a stop.

  “Yeah, whose?” asked her twin sister, Jeanette. “Did your brother get his driver’s license?”

  Samantha didn’t answer. Normally, the sight of the truck’s chipped red paint, grimy windows, and thick layer of bumper stickers would have given her a giddy feeling—the sense of an adventure about to start. But on this November day, it only brought back the dread of her horrible summer. She felt again that crawling panic, that fear of mayhem and madmen on the far side of the world.

  “It’s just my uncle’s,” she said at last. “Evan’s too young to drive. He’s only fourteen.”

  “Oh,” said Janet. “I guess he just seems older.”

  “Because he’s so mature!” said Jeanette.

  “You don’t know him like I do,” Samantha said, then cycled down her leaf-strewn street toward home.

  The summer seemed so long ago, now. Memories of Chavín de Huántar, Peru, had been swept away by the autumn winds, then layered over by the new friendships, new interests, and the weird and unfamiliar demands of junior high. It was a fresh start—one she needed badly. But her uncle’s reappearance brought the undercurrent of unease again to the surface.

  Of course, it wasn’t Jay’s fault how her summer had turned out. Not entirely, anyway. Most of the blame could be laid on the dangerous pair who were now inmates of Peru’s Canto Grande prison—the same duo who had pillaged the site, kidnapped Samantha’s brother, and come so close to destroying her uncle’s entire career. She would never have to worry about them again, Jay had told her. And this, at least, she believed.

  Samantha had made another enemy that summer, though—she and her uncle both. Adam Quint had once been her uncle’s prize archaeology student at the red-roofed university on the far side of San Francisco Bay. But not anymore. It was because of Jay that Adam Quint had abandoned his research at Chavín. And it was Samantha’s fault that Adam had fled from the Andes on a doomed bus, had tumbled from a cliffside road, and had been scarred for life—a grisly X seared forever across his throat and jaw.

  In their one phone call since Peru, Jay had been infuriatingly casual in telling her that Adam had forsaken his studies and disappeared. To where? she wondered as she sat in her new classes, day after day, or tossed and turned through her wakeful nights. And now Samantha saw him everywhere, or thought she did. A man with mirrored sunglasses at the grocery store. The square-cut cap of a soldier on leave. One day, Adam would come for her and for her uncle—Samantha knew it—and he would have his revenge.

  Now she wheeled into her driveway, parked her bike in the side yard, and slipped in through the back door to slink to her room unseen. But her parents caught sight of her down the hallway from the living room, and there was no escape.

  “Your uncle’s here,” said her mother.

  “Come on, Samantha,” said her father. “Come and say hello.”

  Her parents had fully forgiven Jay now for what had happened in Peru. Or what they thought had happened. Things would be different if they knew the full story. No one did, though, outside the archaeological team. Though Jay was banned from ever working in Peru again, and barred from returning even as a tourist, he and his colleagues had reached a delicate truce with the Peruvian officials. The authorities’ own embarrassment over how they had handled the looting investigation and their failure to protect the site ensured that the details would never get out.

  Samantha was grateful for this. But it had been also been her uncle’s job to protect her at Chavín, and he had failed.

  And now here he was in her living room, as if nothing had happened. His big, brown eyes were as mischievous as ever, his grin just as big on his unshaven face. Other than some new gray strands in his dark brown hair, he was his same old self.

  “Sam,” he said in his warm baritone. “Just the girl I wanted to see.”

  She sank into a chair beside the window.

  “Wait a sec, kiddo,” Jay said, his wide smile fading. “Where’s your notebook?”

  Her hand flew up to check, forgetting for a moment that she hadn’t worn it from her neck since school began.

  “Oh,” she said. “It’s in my locker.”

  His grin returned.

  “Don’t worry, Sam, I get it. Seventh grade. New school. You might not want to be known as the Girl with the Notebook.”

  No, she thought. That wasn’t it. What other kids said never bothered her. It was that her interest in archaeology was all confused. She didn’t know whether she ever wanted to have anything to do with the science again.

  “Maybe this will help.” Jay said, throwing something at her with such enthusiasm that she barely had time to react.

  The object she picked up from the floor was a crumpled backpack, the kind that cinched closed at its top with a cord. It was bright blue, with red and white stripes running across it at diagonals. As soon as she pulled it flat, she recognized
its design as the Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom.

  “You’re going to need it, Sam. I’m going to England in December for a project, and you and Evan are coming to work with me.”

  She felt cold all of a sudden. The same old fear.

  “We are?” she asked. It came out almost as a croak.

  Did Evan know about this? He wasn’t home—probably off somewhere with his latest girlfriend, Annie Cartano.

  “You are,” said Samantha’s mother. “You’ll have to miss some school, unfortunately, but your father and I agree with your uncle that it will be a net positive for your college applications.”

  “Sustained interests, Samantha,” her father said. “Sussstaaaaaained. Remember what the college admissions counselor said?”

  She did. And she remembered the counselor’s bewildered tone when her parents left her alone with him and he asked why, at only twelve years old, Samantha was already preparing for college.

  “It’ll be real archaeology this time,” said Jay. “Plain and simple. Fewer…” he looked sidelong at her parents. “…interruptions.”

  Everyone was silent, waiting for her consent. She looked at the backpack spread out in her lap. She knew she would be going to England whether she wanted to or not.

  She gave a hesitant nod.

  • • •

  So, with weary resolve, she slipped a brand-new notebook into her brand-new backpack and returned to her old table at the Yolo County Library.

  Getting started wasn’t easy. Britain’s past was a jumble of invasions, and none of the books seemed to agree about where one culture ended and the next began. Her first notes were equally messy—a tangle of sketches and terms and lists of things to look up later. But as she went on she took more care, trading her old, cartoony style for something more precise.

  It felt good just to be studying. There was a certain kind of magic in the smell of the books and in the studious silence of the reading room. Slowly, Samantha found herself drawn into the descriptions of mottes and baileys, torcs and loom weights, Druids and Normans and Anglo-Saxon hoards.