The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (15 page)

***

Miya

14:44. 21.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Northlands, Manchester.

I narrow my eyes at
every person in the crowd before us, searching for the biggest
threat. I find him—tall, old, weathered, and balding. His hand
rests on a big gun, everything about his posture relaxed and easy.
He’s a soldier for sure, maybe even ex-Official like Siah, though
he’s old enough to have been in one of the armies from before. I’m
suspicious of him instantly.

At his side, in the
direct centre of the group, is a skinny black girl about Yosiah’s
age, her chin stuck out like she’s the most important woman in the
world. Her curling white hair draws my attention first but her
shrewd eyes hold it. Given where she stands in the middle of the
crowd and the way she’s scanning the Guardians— for Alba, I’d
guess—this girl must be in charge here. That explains the bleached
hair. Rich people in Forgotten London used to do the same. She’s
important and powerful and I hate her as instantly as I’m wary of
her bodyguard.

Around the blonde girl
and the army man, children of all ages have clustered. Women as old
as Alba and men even older hold them back. I’ve never seen so many
old people in my life. They didn’t exist in Forgotten London. We
die before twenty and it’s a fact of life. My mum lived to thirty
two because she spent most of our credits on black market drugs,
but most of us? Dead. I doubt they have those drugs in Manchester,
but how else do they stay alive?

Tom clings to my hand
hard, as wary of these people as I am. I catch a red blur moving in
my peripheral vision and nearly break my neck spinning to it.
Yosiah’s already fastened onto the place I’m looking but there’s
nothing there.

“Soldiers,” he says.
At my expression he clarifies, “Civilian soldiers, not
Officials.”

I nod. When the panic
wears off, I’m glad I know what to expect. The old man in the brown
dress that took over from Alba introduces himself to the Manchester
people, clear and calm, trying, I reckon, to make us appear
harmless and friendly. He can speak for himself.

I glance around,
catching more creeping figures. They’re all dressed in different
colours and styles but I still look for a uniform. Without a way to
identify who can kill us, how am I supposed to defend my family?
They could turn on us in a second and we’d be caught off guard. I
wrap my fingers around the knife at my waist. The blonde woman
steps forward with a cold smile.

“Welcome to
Manchester.” Her voice is deep, low. She doesn’t seem like she’s
going to order her soldiers onto us right now but I don’t risk
dropping my guard. “We’re happy to host you here. We’ve cleared a
place for you to sleep and a meal will be waiting for you in the
square when you’re ready. Treat this town as you would your own.”
She gestures to a ginger haired girl in the crowd. “Maddie will
show you to your building.”

With a word from our
speaker, leader, whatever he is—I should probably pay attention to
his name next time—most of The Guardians trail after the girl. At
this point I’m pretty sure they’re just following the promise of a
bed and food. The Guardians’ council stay behind—Timofei, the old
guy in the dress, a man with a huge moustache, an albino guy my
age, and a dark woman with the features of a hawk. We stand close
by Timofei, right on the edge of being Guardians. We’re not ordered
to leave so I guess we qualify as important, thanks to Honour’s
celebrity status and our immunity to The Sixteen Strains.

Nobody has brought up us being immune yet but every time a
new Guardian speaks to us I expect them to. Timofei too, sometimes,
though I think he’s too weird about his connection to—and his kiss
with—Yosiah to pry. Mostly we have two minute conversations,
sticking to exciting subjects such as
the
weather
, before he has to rush off to
something important. I think he’s scared of Yosiah, to be honest,
but I’m not sure why.

The civilian soldiers
hovering at the edges converge, forming a ring of bodies around the
Manchester people. Holding my knife isn’t enough; I take it out,
hold it at my side. Tom glances at it but doesn’t question. Livy
looks ready to snatch it out of my hand and attack them herself. It
wouldn’t surprise me if she did.

The
blonde woman introduces herself formally as Dagné—a name our
speaker mispronounces twice, first as Dana, then as Danny, instead
of the way she said it:
dan-yay
. I snort every time he gets
it wrong. Dagné’s face darkens at the error. The other Manchester
people introduce themselves but I forget all their names except
Marc—army guy. I won’t need the rest of their names so why bother
remembering them?

Boring pleasantries
after boring pleasantries send me yawning. The strangers have the
same thought, more and more of them disappearing. Eventually
there’s only three—Dagné, Marc, and a sharp faced Asian girl who
keeps her head down, either uncomfortable with new people or
disinterested. The sword across her back and gun at her hip makes
me think the latter. You can’t be shy if you’re a protector.

The
Guardians—we—outnumber them now but they don’t seem to notice or
care. I make an attempt to listen to them but it’s either strategy
and planning that I don’t understand, or enquiries about people
we’re missing—it wasn’t just Alba who died in the Hull explosion.
The Guardians lost seven. After ten minutes of awkward small talk,
we’re guided up a wide street lined with old glass-fronted
shops.

Mangled metal benches
are dotted in the middle of the paved road; Tom decides it’s a good
idea to jump onto one and balance on the thin bench spine. I grab
his hand and yank him down with a stern look. Instead of cringing
under the force of my glare he snickers under his breath, pleased
with himself. Infuriating little rat.

“Such a child,” Livy
mutters, as if she isn’t younger than him.

I tune out Dagné as
she blathers on at the front of the group about the self-sufficient
state of the town. I couldn’t care less about the canal filtration
system—whatever that is—or how they leach electricity from an
Official power port a few hours away.

The Asian woman keeps
cutting looks at us, specifically at Honour. I watch her watch him,
her small mouth pressed into a thin line. I make a mental note to
watch out for her. Whatever reason she has for paying special
attention to Honour can’t be good.

Silently, we make the
decision to ditch the boring council and the Manchester leaders.
Honour and his sister branch off first, joined quickly by Dalmar
and Hele, and then the rest of our band just sort of ambles after
them. I’ve got no idea where we’re going but the town seems a lot
smaller than Forgotten London, so we can’t get that lost.

Apparently we can.

Dalmar sighs for the
fifth time, stopping us. We stand in a hopeless, defeated circle to
figure out what to do.

“We could just drop
here,” I suggest. I feel half dead after all the walking. “The
floor looks really comfy.”

“I concur.” Branwell
drops to the ground without a second thought. “If only for a few
minutes.”

We sit there for an
hour in the mouth of a damp alley, with Tom asleep in my lap and
Olive against my side, fighting her closing eyes. Dalmar still has
a pack of cards, so we improvise a game of poker with small rocks
as chips and favours as stakes. I lose one favour to Dalmar, and
gain four—two from Honour who sucks at playing, one from Siah who
gnashes his teeth at losing to me yet again, and one from Hele who
smiles helplessly when she loses.

Eventually two
Manchester civilians find us—a stranger and the woman who was
watching Honour. She looks at each of us, her lips pursed, and
says, “You shouldn’t wander off again. I’ll show you to the
Station.”

On tired legs we make
our way to a flat semicircle of a building with a front made
entirely of glass and a huge clock face in its centre. The massive
space inside has been divided by sheets of plastic and long lengths
of fabric pinned and clipped and hammered together to make small
ramshackle rooms. We weave our way around corridors of cloth and
blankets to four tents huddled against a back wall.

My little family
claims a room with two thin beds and a wider one. I suspect it was
put together for us, and a cold stone settles in my stomach at that
thought. If the people of Manchester already know enough about us
to put together a room, what else do they know? I shake my head, my
hair so greasy it barely even moves. I’m being paranoid. I need
sleep.

Barely awake now, I
say bye to everyone and stumble into our tent. I doubt by morning
I’ll remember the poker or the favours I’m owed.

Tom crawls into one
bed and shuffles around until he finds a comfortable spot—and then
he’s out in a second. Livy takes the other small bed, after I
insist three times she needs to sleep, and even though she’s huffy
about it I can tell she’s relieved when her head hits the
pillow.

I watch my siblings
like the frantic sister I am until they fall asleep, and then I
drop the tension from my body with a long-repressed sigh. I eye
Siah as, with gritted teeth, he lowers himself to the larger
mattress, our bed. He struggles with his right leg. Badly.

“Alright,” I say.
“Enough.” I swing the backpack from my shoulders and pull out the
first aid kit. “Roll your pants up.”

“They won’t roll up.”
Siah levels me with a look.

“Then take them off.”
I fix my jaw, fighting the horrible anxiety in my gut. I’m too
tired for this embarrassment.

The Guardian trousers
Yosiah was given have long since changed to a beige-brown colour
but even that doesn’t hide the rusty stain that appeared three days
ago. I’ve been purposefully ignoring it, telling myself he’s fine,
but his leg has obviously got worse so I’m gonna fix it. Yosiah
searches me for a long moment, then he removes the dirty jeans,
slow and timid. At first I look away but I force my eyes back. I
won’t be squeamish or nervous about this, not when Siah’s in
obvious pain and I might be able to help. I crouch on the floor in
front of his legs and look over the wounds dotted across his amber
skin.

“What happened?”

A long, deep scratch
cuts across his old jagged scar, surrounded by small cuts and
scrapes that have mostly healed. I curse him for not saying
anything about it and reach for the first aid kit I stole in
Harwich.

“I landed badly when I
jumped.” He doesn’t have to say when that was—it’s as sharp between
us as a blade against my throat. “Caught my leg on a piece of
broken metal.”

I nod, pretending this
doesn’t affect me at all. Playing nurse, all proper and
emotionless. I clean the deeper wound with antiseptic and smother
the scrapes with pain relief cream. “This is infected. You know
that, right?”

“Yes.”

I bite my lip against
the sharp words on my tongue and dab more antiseptic on the cut,
spiteful. Siah clenches his jaw against a moan but the muscle
twitching in his cheek is satisfying on its own. “Well, I think
it’s clean,” I say, wrapping it more tightly than I need to. I tie
off the bandage and jerk at the feel of fingers in my hair.
“What—?”

“Thank you. You didn’t
have to do that.”

“And let you die?” I
scoff. “That’s likely.”

“I won’t die. I’ve
been taking antibiotics when you weren’t looking.”

I scowl, sitting back
cross-legged. “I’m always looking.”

“I’ve noticed.” His
expression turns sly. “Hiding things from you is nearly
impossible.”

“Good.” I wrestle my
jacket and boots off and survey the thrown-together room. The side
walls are made of fabric clipped and sewn together, with a brick
wall at our back and two swaths of material making doors at the
front. Inside are the three beds and a dark green backpack of—I’m
assuming—essentials. I rifle through it as Siah puts his trousers
back on.

“How nice of them,” I
snort. “They gave us chocolate. Because we’ll die without that for
sure.”

Siah, safely clothed,
leans forward. “What else?”

“Water and dried meat
mostly. Bandages, painkillers. A—I don’t know what this is.”

I hold it up. Siah
squints.

“I think that’s a
flare.”

“Oh. Useful. When
Officials attack us, we can put on a light show. Make sure even
more find us.”

He rolls onto his
back. “Stop being belligerent.”

I shove everything
back into the bag. There’s a few other things in the pockets that I
can feel but I don’t investigate. I can’t be bothered. After my
brief bout of anger at Siah, exhaustion has returned.

“Tired?” Yosiah
asks.

“What do you think?
We’ve been walking for years and sleeping on the ground.”

He pulls me onto my
back beside him. This mattress gives us more room than we had in
the other beds we’ve shared but a shard of nervousness still lodges
in my stomach. “You’re always grumpy when you’re tired,” he
says.

I elbow him in the
ribs.

“Thomas said your name
in his sleep last night,” he tells me when I’ve become one with the
mattress and given up with being angry at everything.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” There’s
something reluctant about his tone that makes my heart squeeze. I
won’t like what comes next. “So I figured—” He inhales a tight
breath and says, “Vian. My birth name is Vian. You should know
that.”

I
prop myself up on an elbow, his words cutting into me for two
reasons. I know his name now, the one he was given, not the one he
gave himself. And he knows mine. That’s what he meant. Tom
said
Leah
in his
sleep. Yosiah knows the name my mother gave me.