Bluewing (20 page)

Adam sat up and turned to look at who had addressed him. His hair was longer, and the ends curled around his ears and over his forehead. Scruff covered his jaw. He didn’t look at me or the guard, only Korr.

Korr raised the brim of his hat, revealing his face. Adam stiffened.

“Perhaps I’m not who you were expecting,” Korr said, and smiled with half his mouth.

“No,” Adam replied calmly. “You’re not.”

Korr snapped his fingers at me, and I stepped forward. He flicked a finger against the latch on the lid of the box he’d given me, and it opened. A spread of gleaming surgical instruments lay inside. My stomach dropped.

Where had he gotten those? And what was he going to do with them?

Korr selected one, a slender knife with a narrow, almost needle-like blade. He held it to the light as if to inspect it, and the point shimmered. He gave the guard a nod, and the man went out into the hall and shut the door behind him.

“Put those over there,” Korr said to me, and I set the box down on the chair.

Adam still hadn’t looked at me. He kept his gaze focused on Korr and that knife. His shoulders were tense, but he sat on the bed with the ease of someone entertaining an old friend. He tipped his head to one side and looked from the blade to Korr’s face.

“Are you here to oversee my interrogations personally now?” he asked with a bitter smile. “A phantom from my past, sent to conjure up my confession? Did they think that would work? I’ll tell you nothing, just as I told the rest of them nothing.”

Korr only smiled.

I couldn’t contain myself any longer. “Adam,” I said, pulling off my hat to reveal my identity. “It’s me.”

Adam stilled. He stared at me for one long, breathless moment, his expression flicking between astonishment and wonder before he rose from the cot and pulled me into his arms.

“Lia.” His breath was a whisper on my neck, sending shivers across my skin. “Is this a dream? I—”

“It’s no dream.”

Before he could say anything else, I put my hands on either side of his face and kissed him. Adam made a soft sound in his throat and wrapped his arms around me. I felt the rapid beat of his heart against mine, and one of his hands brushed the back of my neck as his fingers curled in my hair. When we parted, his eyes were soft and dark. He opened his mouth to speak.

“Charming, you two, but we have other matters more pressing than your little romance,” Korr drawled, cutting him off.

Adam’s hands slipped from me as he glanced from me to Korr. His face transformed as he tucked away his emotions. His gaze sharpened. He was all business now. “Tell me.”

“We’ve come under the guise of interrogating you,” I explained. “But we’re going to get you out of here.”

Adam raised both eyebrows. “What does he have to do with it?” he asked me, nodding at Korr.

“He’s helping us, as improbable as it might sound.”

“Us?”

“Helping the Thorns. Helping me rescue you.”

Adam’s eyebrows drew together, and he scowled. “I don’t trust you,” he said to Korr. “Just so you know that.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” the other man said. “But you must do as I say if you want to escape. Now, I want you to hit me in the face as hard as you can.”

THE GUARD RUSHED in at the sound of my shout. He looked at the blood running down Korr’s face and raised his gun.

“You idiots,” Korr snarled at him. “Inform the jailer. This man is an important Thorns operative. He must be removed to a more secure facility at once.”

The guard rushed out.

The jailer stumbled inside the cell moments later, breathing hard. He looked from Adam, who was braced against the wall glaring at us all defiantly, to Korr, who stood with a handkerchief pressed to his face. “What—?”

“This prisoner is a high-level terrorist agent who’s been wanted for some time. I want him moved to the palace prison for questioning. In fact, I’ll see to it myself.”

“But—”

“Arrange it,” Korr snarled. “At once, man.”

The jailer visibly quivered at the thunder in the lord’s voice. He mumbled something and left the room.

“You won’t get away with this, dog,” Korr said to Adam, his voice laced with venom.

“I’ll see you dead,” Adam responded fervently, the trace of a smile on his lips. He didn’t look at me, but I felt his attention on me just the same. I stood in the corner, saying nothing, as Korr ranted and made threats about the funding for the prison and the capabilities of the jailer and his guards.

More soldiers came. They restrained Adam’s hands with cuffs and escorted him out with a guard of four men. I watched, my heart beating wildly, as he was put into an armored steamcoach. Two of the soldiers followed him inside. The other two returned to the prison. Korr stood beside me, dispassionate and grim.

“Nasty little cur,” he said to the jailer as he signed a document. “He deserves whatever he gets for striking me.”

The left side of Korr’s face was already turning purple, and although the cut above his eye had stopped bleeding, it was still puffy and red. Adam had done a convincing job of hitting him, and he’d rather enjoyed it too, I imagined.

“Have them follow us,” Korr ordered the driver of the prison vehicle. He signaled to me with one gloved hand, and we climbed into his steamcoach. I sank against the seat and pressed my face against the chilled glass of the window. Korr watched me, saying nothing. He had a tight, satisfied smile on his face as we began to move.

“It’s rather like romancing a countess,” he murmured, his voice a purr. “Never allow them to think you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.”

I felt sorry for any countesses Korr might be acquainted with, now or in the future.

The steamcoach sped through the city. I resisted the urge to turn and look at the armored car behind us. I knotted my fingers together in my lap as we crossed a bridge of steel and drove under an arch of iron and stone.

Korr directed the driver to turn onto a side road and stop. As our steamcoach slowed, so did the armored car behind us. Korr produced a bottle and handkerchief from his pocket and wet the handkerchief with a few drops from the bottle. He handed it to me.

“Don’t inhale this, or you’ll be useless for the rest of the day.” He gave me a look, then threw open the door and got out.

“It’s my assistant,” he said, as one of the guards disembarked from the armored car to see what the matter was. “The excitement has been too much for her, I’m afraid. Give me a hand, will you? I’m wearing my best gloves and I wouldn’t want to dirty them.”

Inside the coach, I rolled my eyes.

The guard approached the steamcoach and peered inside. I had stretched myself across the seat as if I’d fainted. He climbed in.

“Miss?”

I coughed and shifted. “Come closer.”

He bent over me, and I thrust the drug-soaked handkerchief in his face. He barely had time to struggle before he went down. I climbed over him and out of the steamcoach. Korr had already done the same with the other guard, and he was calmly holding a gun on the driver of the car.

“Open it,” he ordered, and the man did so with a bewildered expression. Korr took the keys from his hand and pressed the handkerchief over his nose and mouth while I helped Adam from the back and unlocked his restraints. The driver jerked a moment in Korr’s arms, then sagged forward, unconscious like the rest. Korr hauled him up and put him in the back of the armored car.

“A little help, man?” he said to Adam. “There’s another in the steamcoach and we can’t very well take him with us.”

Adam hurried to the steamcoach. He hoisted the guard over his shoulder and dumped him in the back of the armored car with the others. Korr shut the door and locked it.

“They should be asleep for a few hours,” he said.

I peered through the bars at them. They lay in a tangle of limbs, their faces slack and their eyes half-open. They looked dead, but I knew they weren’t.

“Now,” Korr said to Adam and me, “we need to get out of here at once. I’m not even in the city, according to the official story. We can’t risk too many people seeing us, and they’ll come looking for these ones after too long.”

“Didn’t you use your name and papers at the prison?” I asked.

A ghost of a smile chased across Korr’s face, but he didn’t reply. He just turned on his heel and headed back for the steamcoach, leaving us to follow.

~

We took the steamcoach back to Korr’s house and changed into our old clothes. Korr found a cloak and set of plain black garments for Adam to wear instead of his prison uniform. When Adam pulled his shirt off, revealing a muscled chest, I lifted my eyebrows in surprise and then blushed.

“Did you expect me to be emaciated?” he asked, catching my expression.

“I didn’t know what to expect. For all I knew, you were missing a hand or a foot.”

“I stayed active in my cell. I exercised, I paced. I’m sure they thought me mad, but it kept me sane.” He shrugged into the shirt Korr had given him and did up the buttons. “I look like a Blackcoat,” he said, surveying himself.

“Speaking of Blackcoats, things have changed in the Frost.”

“Tell me,” he said, stepping closer. He reached for me, but his hands stopped an inch from my waist.

“Gabe is back,” I said.

Adam nodded. A muscle in his jaw tightened, and he let his hands fall.

I reached for them. “And he and I are friends. We’re not...I mean, we haven’t...” I faltered, not quite knowing what to say. Instead, I stepped forward and kissed him again. Adam stiffened in surprise and then sighed, his hands finding my back, my hair.

“You keep surprising me with that,” he said when we drew apart, and his mouth turned in a rare smile.

“I like surprising you.”

“I’ve thought about you every day,” he said. “What I could have done or said differently. We did not part happily. Atticus—”

“Atticus is dead. We lost the farm to the Farthers. We had been living at Echlos, in the lower levels.

He lifted both eyebrows. “Things
have
changed.”

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it.”

~

We returned to the train yard at dusk and waited, staring across a dozen tracks at the train we needed to board. The orange light of the sunset caught the edges of the cars and made them glimmer like gold and copper, strangely beautiful things in the midst of clouds of soot. Shouts echoed across the yard, and in the distance, a whistle blared.

“Just get across without being seen,” Korr said to Adam. “Keep low to the ground, run at a crouch if you can. The train will already be in motion, because we can only get on once they’ve inspected it. We’ll get one shot at this—don’t botch it.”

A train thundered past, making the ground beneath our boots shake. The clatter of the wheels made my ears ring. I ground my teeth together and waited for Korr’s signal.

“Now,” he said, as soon as the train had passed.

We streaked forward across the tracks, slipping under and between stationary cars waiting for their engines to take them away into the countryside or deep into the city. A rusty bit of metal caught my cloak and tore a chunk from the bottom, but I didn’t stop.

We reached our train and ran alongside as it picked up speed. Korr vaulted up into the car first, and Adam right behind him. I stumbled but didn’t fall. I grabbed the edge of the door and hauled myself inside. When I looked over my shoulder, the train was already flying over the tracks, leaving the yard far behind.

I let out my breath and leaned against the cold metal of the car wall. Adam sank down beside me, and Korr settled against the wall opposite us.

The rhythmic clacking of the train lulled me into a light sleep, and I dreamed of snow in Aeralis and Watchers roaming the alleys. I woke, startled and wide-eyed. Adam slept beside me, and Korr watched us both with the gaze of an eagle. He said nothing.

Finally, when the light had faded completely and the world outside was nothing but black melded with silver where the sky touched the snow, Korr stirred.

“Get ready to jump,” he said.

Adam opened his eyes, instantly alert. We said nothing as we moved to the open door of the car. Korr joined us, his cloak fluttering, and we stared out at the snow rushing by at impossible speeds. Fear was a breathless flutter in the pit of my stomach, fear and something else that felt like exhilaration. I filled my lungs with icy air and listened to the sound of the wind roaring outside the car, and felt the force of it on my face. Korr whispered, “four, three, two, one—” and we jumped.

I fell through blackness for one agonizing moment.

With a bone-shaking smack, I hit the snow. Wet filled my eyes and went into my nose and mouth. Numbness shot through my upper body and shoulder. I rolled and lay still, stunned. The sound of the train still thundering past filled my ears, or were they just ringing from the fall?

I coughed and scrambled up. Nothing felt broken. Near me, Korr dusted snow from his cloak. His hair was disheveled and he had a new cut on the side of his face to match the one Adam had given him, but otherwise he appeared unharmed.

“Adam?” I called.

“Are you all right?” he asked quietly, appearing out of the darkness and catching my face in his hands.

“I’m all right. You?”

“Never better.” A smile touched his mouth and vanished, but his eyes stayed warm. He lifted his head to look at Korr. “We should get away from the tracks.”

Korr nodded. Adam looked down at me before heading toward the tree line, which was just a dark smudge against the sky. I followed them, and together we walked for the Frost. Our boots crunched over the frozen stalks of grass, bowed down and frozen under a layer of powdery snow. I felt tingly and shaky and vitally alive. Adam was back. I’d just jumped from a moving train and survived. We were heading home.

Korr left us at the river where Aeralis ended and the Frost began. He crossed the fallen tree and disappeared into the darkness beyond the bank. Adam and I watched him go.

“I don’t trust him,” I said to Adam. “I don’t care who he helps me rescue; he has his own agenda and we can never forget that.”