Bluewing (17 page)

“We’ll burn the debris to make it look as if we’ve been having fires here,” she was telling another fugitive. “We can stuff up these windows to make it less exposed to the elements...” She spotted me. “Lia, come see what we’re doing.”

“Are you sure you should be up right now?” I put my hands on my hips and surveyed the scene. It did look rather convincingly like the sort of hovel a group of ragtag refugees would use as a hiding place, if the people looking were unaware of the cellar.

“I feel fine,” she said. “I spent several hours in a cold prison cell, resting. They fed me water and gruel. Then I had an invigorating hike through the wilderness and a refreshing sleep.”

“If by ‘invigorating hike’ you mean you were carried in a near-coma by Juniper...”

“I’m fine,” she repeated, and I let it drop. Because truthfully, we needed her help, and weak or tired was far better than arrested or dead.

I left them to finish perfecting the touches on our fake camp and I returned downstairs to see how the camouflaging of the cellar was going.

The others had fixed the ruined piece of paneling across the middle of the pantry, making it appear to be the back wall. The paneling was secured in such a way that it could only be moved from behind, meaning they’d never find a way to open it without breaking down the wall. It also meant that we’d always have to have someone in the cellar to let us in unless we too wanted to break down the wall.

“Well?” Jonn asked, after I’d surveyed the work.

“It really is impressive,” I admitted. “But I don’t like this. I don’t like sitting here like rabbits waiting for Korr and his soldiers to come and trap us in our own home.”

“Of course you don’t,” Jonn said. “You like doing things, Lia, and you always have.”

“Doing things?”

“You like keeping your hands busy with quota. You like running the paths to and from the village. You like reluctantly rescuing Farther fugitives and going on missions and forcing your obstinate little sister to mind and work and keep her feet on the ground and her head out of the clouds. But you’re not so good at the sitting and waiting part. That was always my job.”

I met his eyes with a sheepish smile. “Then perhaps you can teach me how to do it.”

~

I tapped my fingers against the edge of the table as I contemplated my next move. Jonn sat opposite me, composed outwardly, but I could tell by the shine in his eyes that he was excited about his prospects of winning.

Everiss and the fugitive woman named Dara leaned against the table, watching us play. I suspected they were both secretly rooting for Jonn.

“What did you say this game is called?” Dara asked.

“Chess,” Jonn said. “I read about it in Meridus Borde’s books.” He lifted one of the pieces Juniper had whittled out of firewood and set it decisively down in front of my king.

“Check.”

I rested one finger on my bishop, trying to concentrate on my next move, but my mind wasn’t really on the game. Jonn was going to win no matter what I did, and I couldn’t keep my thoughts focused. They ran in every direction like wild horses refusing to be corralled. When would Korr return with Ann as he’d promised? Was he lying, or would he really try to use her to get what he wanted? Would he bring his soldiers? It had been almost three days since we’d altered the appearance of our living space, and we’d heard nothing stirring above. We’d refrained from going out of the cellar during daylight hours, and I was beginning to feel like a buried corpse.

I moved the bishop. Jonn immediately captured it.

“You aren’t focusing,” he scolded.

“Jonn,” I said. “I think I need to be upstairs.”

“Right now?” He glanced at the staircase as if he expected soldiers to come bursting down them any moment.

I shook my head, then slowly nodded. “Well, now and indefinitely. At least until Korr comes. We don’t have the freedom to pop in and out of here, not without potentially revealing our hiding place, and if he really does come with Ann, then someone has to be there.”

“That’s a terrible idea. What will you do for food, for shelter? You’re just going to live up there alone?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think I must. I’m going mad down here, cooped up like an animal in its hole. I need to be with the air and sky and snow. I can sleep in the greenhouse. Someone has to do it...someone has to wait for her arrival.”

Jonn chewed the inside of his lip and stared at the chessboard. I knew that he knew he couldn’t stop me.

“You’ll know it’s me if I give three knocks on the paneling with three beats between each.” I demonstrated on the table. “Have someone stay at the top to listen, a sentry of sorts. They can let me in if I need it.”

“And if the soldiers make you reveal our location at gunpoint?”

“I’d die first,” I said, and I meant it.

He sighed. “I don’t like this.”

“I know. But you’re the one with all the practice in waiting, not me.” I got up from the table and headed for my bed to gather my things.

~

The air was sharp and cold above ground, and it tasted like snow and freedom. I inhaled deep lungfuls as I slipped through the interior ruins, listening for voices or footsteps.

Nothing stirred but the sunlight as clouds scudded across the sky.

I picked berries still crusted with ice and ate them even though they numbed my lips and tongue. I perched on the steps of the ruined back porch, a vast marble structure that had once probably been the location of grand galas and parties. It made me think of the village and all the stones that formed the bones of our homes and shops. They had once been the walls and floors and streets for another world. That other world had perished, but they had remained, weathering the cold and wind and ice to cradle another, more primitive people within their stony boundaries.

Would the Frost always be this way—a place where things were hidden, buried, and on the brink of death? Or would the liberation we plotted bring with it something new, something wonderful? Could the Frost become a place of happiness?

Thinking that made me think of Adam.

Hours passed. I didn’t have the heart to think of things like love or romance, so I didn’t try to imagine what could be in an impossible world. But still, I ached for Adam down to my bones. I wrapped both arms around my middle to hold in the hurt, but it seemed to go on and on, radiating from me like an unbridled fire that threatened to consume me until I was nothing but ashes.

Was this love? Did it always hurt so much?

The faintest skitter of sound met my ears, and I straightened. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled as I slid off the railing and melted into the bushes. Was that a footstep, or just a bird foraging for food on the roof?

There it was again. A whisper of noise. A scrape. A footstep.

Soldiers? I held my breath and didn’t move as visions of gray-clothed, grim-eyed figures crept through my head.

Then I heard the voice, hesitant, lost.

“Lia?”

IT WAS ANN’S voice. My heart drummed and my breath caught, but I didn’t move, not yet.

It could be a trap.

I heard her footsteps louder now. “Hello? Is anyone here at all?”

She appeared on the porch, clad in a thick gray cloak instead of her familiar red one. I took in every detail. Her hair was longer, fuller. She seemed paler than I remembered, but less emaciated. Wherever she’d been, they’d been feeding her.

Ann’s head swiveled in my direction. Her eyes widened as she spotted me among the vegetation.

“Lia?” She took a step toward my hiding place and lowered her voice. “It’s all right. No soldiers.”

He’d done it. Korr had done it. He’d brought her back. I scrambled forward from the bushes and threw my arms around her. She was solid and warm. This was not a dream.

“I can’t believe you’re here, you’re safe...how did it happen? How did you find us?”

“Well, I didn’t come here alone,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

Ann nodded toward the doorway behind us. Korr stepped from a shadow and appraised me without speaking. The wind stirred the ends of his hair and made the bottom of his cloak dance.

My stomach twisted.

“Listen to me, Lia,” Ann said, and she spoke in a voice too low for Korr to hear. “He isn’t what we thought. He isn’t what he seems. Please, I know you have no reason to trust him, but you must. He will help us overthrow Raine. He will help us get the Frost back.”

“He told you those things?”

“Yes.”

“And you believed him?”

“Yes.” She put a hand on my arm. “Lia, some things have changed.”

I drew back. “What things?”

Ann bit her lip. She hesitated as if considering what to tell me, then she shook her head. “Where are the others?”

“I can’t tell you until I’m sure I can trust you.”

Hurt shimmered in her eyes. “Lia. It’s me.”

“Well, I can see it’s you, but here you are talking about change and trusting Korr. For all I know, they’ve brainwashed you in Aeralis.”

She sighed. “Can we walk a little? That garden looks...fascinating.”

I recognized the invitation to explain for what it was. I nodded. She looked over her shoulder at Korr, giving him a glance I couldn’t decipher. He didn’t move.

We descended the stairs together. I breathed easier once we were away from Korr’s piercing gaze. “What is going on?”

“It’s a long story,” she said. “But I trust him.”

We reached the bottom of the steps and turned right, following a crumbling path.

“When the news first came of Adam’s arrest, I was implicated in his crime. Raine immediately ordered my execution. Korr was the one who stepped in to save me. You should have seen him. He was like an angel of destruction. I thought he might physically strike Raine. He said he needed to take me to Astralux for further questioning, and that the dictator himself might be interested in the whole affair, and Raine’s hands were tied. He had to let me go to Astralux to be interrogated.” She paused. “Korr saved my life.”

“Saved your life? You were taken away to be interrogated. He flung you from the frying pan into a fire he’d built himself!”

“I wasn’t interrogated in Aeralis,” Ann argued.

“What?”

“Well,” she said. “He didn’t turn me over to the Aeralian dictator and his interrogators. Instead, I spent almost eight weeks living in his house, unharmed,
protected
I daresay. He asked me a few questions, but that was all. During that time I was contacted by several members of the Thorns, and I managed to complete several missions. Whether or not Korr knows this, I don’t know. He has his own agenda, and it is not so contrary to our own. He wants to see the dictator deposed. He wants to see Aeralis returned to the way it was before. And he’ll help us if it’ll get him what he needs.”

I could barely believe it, but Ann’s eyes blazed with a fervency that I couldn’t refuse to acknowledge. She believed he was trustworthy. She believed he would help us and not betray us. The question now was: could Ann’s belief be trusted? Did we need his help if we were to have any hope of recovering the Frost?

I sighed. “I will speak with him. And I will speak with Jonn and Gabe. But I am making no promises.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m not asking you to blindly follow him. I just want you to allow yourself to consider the possibility of an alliance.”

I blinked at her, my once timid, fragile friend, now vibrant and strong as she stood before me. “You’ve changed.”

“We’ve all changed,” she replied, and a ghost of a smile brushed her lips. “Even you, Lia. Especially you.”

I didn’t know if I liked that idea or not, but it didn’t matter now. I turned to head back to the porch.

It was time to speak with Korr.

~

Gabe, Jonn, Ann, and I traveled through the forest at dusk, heading for the place where we’d agreed to meet Korr, a clearing halfway between the mansion ruins and the village of Iceliss. Jonn rode the gelding, who we’d been stabling inside one of the mansion rooms nearest the gardens. His sides had grown fat from grazing on shrubbery in the former garden of the Compound director’s wife, and he tossed his neck and snorted at the snow with the spunk of a colt. Gabe walked in front, his shoulder set in a rigid line and his chin high. He didn’t speak to any of us. Ann and I made up the rear, walking so close that we occasionally bumped into each other.

“He’s angry about Korr,” she observed, studying Gabe’s back. “And I don’t blame him. He has had little reason to trust his brother until now.”

“None of us did,” I reminded her. “We still don’t.”

“He protected me, and returned me safely to the Frost just as he promised you. And you need his help just as he needs yours.”

“We’ll see,” I said.

She gave me a look that said she was tired of hearing that. I gave her a look that said to get used to it. And we both smiled, because we were friends even though we were not seeing eye to eye, and she was here again, safe, and I was glad.

We reached the clearing and our footsteps slowed. The remnants of a dying sunset were visible beyond the branches, and I saw the first few glimmers of stars. Snow blossoms lined the perimeter of the trees, creating a circle of blue filled with the shocking brightness of snow. In the center of the clearing stood Korr, his cloak a billowing streak of black against the white. He didn’t move, but his stillness crackled with energy. His hands dangled at his sides in a way that suggested he was seconds away from reaching for a hidden weapon. He raised his head slowly as we approached.

Jonn dismounted and limped forward on one crutch. Gabe walked beside him, his movements stiff. I hung back to tether the gelding to a limb, and Ann lingered uncertainly a few feet from me. Her eyes were on Korr. He looked at her and then away. A vein in his neck pulsed. She brushed her hands over the bodice of her gown and cleared her throat.

I left the gelding and approached the others. I spoke first.

“You say you want to work with us to overthrow the Farther presence in the Frost?”

“In exchange for access to the PLD and the gate, yes.”