Bluewing (5 page)

“How exactly did you come by this message?” I shot a look at Jullia, who withered beneath it.

“It appeared in my bag,” she whispered. “No one spoke to me. They do not know where you are, or even that you are alive, Lia. The whole village thinks that you and your brother have either fled or perished. Ivy has been reassigned a home. She is in essence an orphan now. And no one questions that, although I think there are some who suspect Everiss still lives in hiding and has joined the Thorns, hence their using me as a contact.”

“Do they think we’ll trust them?” Anger threatened to choke me. The Blackcoats had put my sister in danger. They’d tried to steal the PLD for their own purposes. They’d behaved foolishly and recklessly. Everiss had almost died because of their mishandling of things. And now they wanted to join with us and muck up our plans? “What could they possibly want from us?”

“The Blackcoats think that we could expel the Farthers for good if we joined forces,” Jonn said. He rubbed a finger against his chin. “And they might be right.”

My blood turned to steam.

“This,” I said, “is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard you say, Jonn Weaver.”

He turned his head to looked at me. “Oh?”

“Yes!” I threw up my hands. “I can’t believe...are you truly going to make me formulate a protest against this insanity?”

“You’re not even listening,” Ivy protested. “You’re saying no without thinking this through.”

“Ivy makes a good point,” Jonn said.

“Ivy has been making lots of bad decisions lately,” I snapped. “Right now her judgment is seriously in question. And I don’t have to ‘think this through.’ The Blackcoats are foolish and incompetent, as they’ve demonstrated previously by getting their own leader shot and many of their members injured or arrested. Collaboration with them will most likely reveal our identities and get us killed. Right now we need to lie low, marshal our resources, contact the Trio, and find our friends.”

Everiss sat beside Jonn, her lips pressed in a straight line and her arms crossed. I couldn’t tell what she thought about this. She claimed she had no ties to them any longer, but I wasn’t so sure of her loyalties. Jonn reach out and touch her elbow lightly, and she shot him a glance. The wordless exchange contained a library of information, but I didn’t have time to ponder it now.

“We’re not doing this,” I said. “I refuse.”

Jonn opened his mouth to reply, but another voice beat him to it.

“Well, you aren’t the only one who makes the decisions around here.”

I swung around in surprise to see Gabe standing behind us. His cheeks were flushed with anger, and his body was stiff.

“Gabe,” I said, taking note of his posture, his expression. He was angry.

“How long were you planning on discussing this before you told me what was going on?”

“You’re not...” I began to say, and stopped. Something inside me turned brittle, and it felt like regret. I shouldn’t have gone down that path, not here. Not now.

“Not a member of the village? Not a true inhabitant of the Frost?” Gabe asked, speaking solely to me. “You think I don’t have a stake in what happens here? Is it because I’m a Farther, too?”

Words rose in my throat and stuck there.

“I just don’t trust them,” I said finally.

“They have a new leader now.” Jonn spoke as if I were a horse that had gotten spooked in its stall and needed calming. I bristled at that tone—I didn’t need soothing—but I listened. I’d spoken my piece, now I might as well let him speak his.

“Those who haven’t been arrested are the clever ones,” he argued. “The ones who learn from their mistakes. And they have many new members.”

“Things have gotten bad in Iceless,” Jullia said softly. “Raine is threatening everyone. Food is scarce. Some have lost their homes. Many more have been punished—put in stocks, flogged, just like I told you before. The villagers all want to do something, but they’re afraid.”

They all watched me, their gazes sharp as they waited for my response, and suddenly my arms and legs seemed heavy as rocks. Exhaustion burned behind my eyes.

“I’m going for a walk.”

I turned and headed for the corridors, my cloak whispering around my ankles.

~

I wandered through the halls of Echlos, pacing past ruined labs and through crumbling doorways until I reached the place I sought—the echoing chamber that held the gate. The massive round eye slumbered in silence while beams of sunlight lanced the air around it and turned dust motes gold and glittery. Memories haunted this room now—memories of Gabe leaving me, of Atticus urging me forward into the unknown to find him again, of us returning with far more fugitives than anyone had planned for. Now I shouldered a great burden, one I hadn’t asked for, hadn’t wished for. What did they want from me? Did they want me to keep them alive, or did they want me to nod and say yes to whatever idiot schemes they dreamed up next?

I needed Adam and his advice. The profound hole left by his absence ached within me.

Footsteps crunched on the debris behind me. I turned.

Gabe leaned in the doorway, hands in his pockets, eyes on the gate. He chewed his lip, and I could see that he was sorting words in his head. His eyes were tired. The silence curled around me like ice and hardened, holding me prisoner.

“Do you remember how we felt that night?” he asked. “The night I went through that gate?”

I exhaled in a shaky laugh. “I remember well.”

The silence tightened again, squeezing me. I had so many things that I wanted to say. But they were sharp things, and I was afraid.

“I miss him,” I said finally. The admission made me feel naked.

His chest rose and fell in a breath. “I know. I can see it in everything you do.”

The rest of the things I wanted to say seemed too fragile, as if the words would shatter as they left my lips. I laced my fingers together and turned back to the gate. Pain throbbed in my chest in time with my heartbeat. “I’m sorry about earlier,” I said. “You aren’t from the Frost, but it’s your home now, too.”

“It’s hard to get used to.” His admission of vulnerability was a gesture of forgiveness. I understood that. I stepped toward him, wanting to be near him.

“Do you miss Aeralis?” I asked.

“More than I know how to say.” He moved closer, close enough that he could take my hand if he wanted, but he didn’t. We stood side by side, gazing at the gate, a gate that could transport travelers across the world, but couldn’t take either of us home. “My father’s house—the palace—is built of black stone and surrounded by gates of wrought iron. It’s an imposing place, I suppose, but I always loved it. Fog wraps the city in darkness most of the time, so our gardens were all enclosed in glass houses. I played in them for hours every day. The air was so damp and hot that my hair would curl and moisture would drip from my nose.” He paused. “It is so dry here. So cold and dry.”

I inhaled a lungful of sweet, icy air and let it out. Through the hole in the ceiling, a patch of blue sky glowed like a sapphire. The wind blew, scattering shards of ice that prickled our faces.

“Steam rises from pipes on the roofs of the houses and fills the air,” he continued, wistful. “It’s always misty there. The lights catch the fog and glow. The whole city glows, like a painting where all the colors run together. The whole city breathes the same breath. Here...here everything is stripped bare, stark, wild.”

“Free,” I said simply. He didn’t disagree, but by the look on his face, the word meant different things to him.

I wanted to apologize for earlier, but that seemed too heavy amid this gossamer mood of memory. “What do you think of the note from the Blackcoats?” I asked instead.

He considered the question. His forehead wrinkled. “I think you are right to be wary, Lia. From what your brother and you have told me, the Blackcoats made a mess of things before. But,” and he lifted both eyebrows as he said the word, “the Blacksmith’s son is dead now. There is a new leader. Things might be different.”

“Is it worth that risk?” I argued. “Right now we have two goals: rescue our friends and contact the Trio. The Blackcoats have nothing to do with that.”

“If we can drive the soldiers from Iceless, we will no longer have to live in this ruin,” Gabe said. “And everything will be easier.”

That, if nothing else, was sensible. I hesitated. “I will think on it,” I said.

He nodded, satisfied, and said nothing more. I might have reached for his hand in that moment, but before I could he lifted it to scratch his neck. We continued to stand together, inches apart but experiencing the same silence. Then I thought of Adam, and pain radiated from my chest.

I needed Adam here. He was my partner, my confidante, and I felt lost without him. But he was gone, and I had no choice but to go on alone.

“All right,” I said. “We can meet with the Blackcoat leaders to discuss the possibility. But I don’t trust them. And I don’t like it.”

THE DARKNESS OF night enveloped me as I journeyed to meet the Blackcoat leaders three nights later. Every inch of me screamed to turn back, but I kept moving forward, slipping between tree trunks and ducking around ice-covered boulders that jutted from the forest floor like broken teeth in the mouth of a monster. I had to do this. Adam was gone. I was the one everyone was counting on, and the weight of that knowledge pressed against me like a pile of stones.

But I did not go completely alone. Gabe, Arla, and Everiss kept pace beside me, though we moved through the night without speaking. Everiss’s curly hair bobbed in the places where it had escaped from her braid, the tendrils visible where the hood of her cloak had slipped back. Her eyes were huge in her face when she turned to look at me. It was her first time in the Frost since we’d fled my family’s farm a few weeks ago, and in the moonlight I could see her hands shaking.

Gabe was silent and grim, as he always was in the Frost. He was frightened too, but he hid it better. Only I knew him well enough to read the way he moved and know it meant he was two breaths away from panic. But he pressed on anyway, never hesitating. Beside him, Arla did the same.

We all wore long, dark cloaks. Scarves covered our mouths and noses, and hoods drooped over our eyes, almost obscuring them. To an observer, I would be unrecognizable, as would Gabe and Everiss. It was exactly as we wanted it, because I was supposed to have fled the Frost, Everiss was supposed to be dead, and Gabe bore a striking resemblance to Korr. We all had our secrets to keep.

We reached the river that flowed black as ink alongside the road marking the end of the Frost and the beginning of Aeralis, the Farther world. We’d agreed to meet the new Blackcoat leaders here in the Hunters’ clearing, a place where Hunters stored extra weapons and traps. The snow-filled circle lay undisturbed. Nothing stirred in the darkness.

I crouched in the bushes and pressed my back against the rough bark of one of the trees. Gabe and Arla took their places beside me, and Everiss crept forward alone. Her boots whispered across the scabby mixture of ice and mud that coated the ground. She reached the center of the clearing and stopped.

A branch snapped in the distance. I straightened, straining to see.

The darkness rippled, and three figures emerged.

Blackcoats?

Everiss stiffened but didn’t move. She raised a hand in greeting, and the three figures halted. One stepped forward alone to meet her. It was too dark to distinguish faces, and they all wore plain black cloaks that hung over their eyes, much like ours did.

I signaled for Gabe and Arla to circle around behind them through the trees.

The figure who had come forward spoke. It was a man. His voice was muffled.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet us. Can we have some proof of who you are?”

Everiss nodded and produced the silver symbol of the Thorns, a broken Y-shaped branch with tiny pricks. “Do you recognize this?”

The man nodded. His shoulders relaxed.

Gabe and Arla rejoined me and shook their heads to show that no one was hiding in the woods behind the figures. Satisfied by now that the Blackcoats were alone, I rose from the bushes. The cloaked heads swiveled in my direction. I thought I saw one reach toward his waist, as if going for a weapon, but he relaxed when he realized I was with Everiss.

“You said you wanted to talk,” I said, lowering my voice and making it sound gruff. “So talk.”

The first figure spread his hands in a gesture of friendship and nonaggression . He wore gloves, black like the rest of his attire. “We need your help. Things have become dire in the village, as you may know. Officer Raine is driving our people to starvation. Children are being indoctrinated and their parents allow it so they can get a little more food. Honest citizens are having their property confiscated.”

“You should speak with your Mayor,” I said sharply. “He was the one who promised this would be temporary and beneficial to all.”

The Blackcoat flinched. “The Mayor is powerless to act against Raine alone. That’s why we need your help.”

“Plan on blowing up any more buildings?”

He winced at the mention of their previous reputation. “That was the old way. We are choosing a different path.”

“And what’s in it for us?” I demanded. I couldn’t let them know how afraid I was. I couldn’t let them know anything but ruthlessness. They couldn’t gain a foothold in this conversation. My voice was strong as steel, but beneath the folds of my cloak, my legs trembled.

“We can help you,” he said. “We know you hide in the forest. We know the Frost would make an excellent point of connection for your other operations. We will partner with you. With the soldiers gone, you can move freely, and you won’t have to live in the wilderness.”

No more hiding and skulking and bedding down in ruins. I ached to think about it. My bones were cold and my blood half-frozen. And in my mind, a single image crystallized.

With the Farther soldiers gone—with Raine gone—I could have my family’s farm back.

But was this the best decision for everyone? My own desires tugged at me selfishly, but I hesitated.