The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (8 page)

I shake my head,
glowering. The jolting movement of the ship is giving me an upset
stomach and the pounding rain has persuaded a headache to explode
behind my left eye. “Not anytime soon.”

Marie shrugs indifferently—this girl is
always
shrugging—as she scrapes a
spoon across the bottom of her food tin. “Alba says we’ll be there
by tomorrow afternoon anyway.”

I perk up at the
information. “Where is there?”

“Some miserable place
called Hull where there’s more rain, more wind, and more grey.”

“London was very
grey,” Priya points out.

“Yeah, but I never had
to see that. I miss my tunnels.”

Priya nudges the
blonde girl, her dark eyes mirthful. They take each other’s hands
under the table. I’m not sure why they hide the gesture, perhaps
because of my presence. I immerse myself in eating to give them a
moment of privacy. I’m all too aware of being in the middle of them
every second, a perpetual pain in the backside I’m sure.

“Jesus Christ!” I jump
halfway out of my seat when a hand falls on my shoulder, spinning
around with my heart in my throat. “Oh.” I blink at Honour as he
drops into the seat beside me. His forehead shines with sweat, his
white shirt transparent around the neckline where moisture has
affixed the material to his skin. He’s breathing hard, and my own
breaths quicken in response. Is it a Strain? Or has the vaccine
finally begun to claim his life? No. I shake my head at myself. No,
Timofei said there were no symptoms of that, and sweating, elevated
temperature and—I hazard a guess—sickness are all symptoms Honour
appears to be experiencing.

I lay the back of my
hand against his forehead without thinking, reverting for a second
into someone who had a twin sister to care for, someone who would
know how to look after a sick friend.

“Are you alright,
Honour?” His temperature is scorching. I remove my hand. “Do you
have a fever?”

“Yeah. No.” He drops
his head onto my shoulder. “They won’t leave me alone.”

“Who
won’t?”
Please don’t be delirious,
Honour.

“Everyone.” He groans,
long and low. It vibrates through my shoulder. “Everyone’s fussing
over me—Tia, Dal, Hele, even Yosiah. I’m sick but I’m coping with
it, you know? I just … I want a minute to myself. Just a minute.”
He yawns, “Your arm’s really cold,” and promptly falls asleep.

I crane my head to
frown at my friend, not sure if he’s exceptionally ill or just very
tired. Whatever’s wrong with him, he’s fast asleep against me, his
body leant over the gap between my chair and his. It’s a wonder he
doesn’t fall off. I would put my arm around his back to support him
but there’s currently a dead weight drooling on it.

“Honestly
,” I murmur, shaking my
head.

Marie leans over the
table towards us, whispering conspiratorially. “Is he, y’know,
completely insane?”

“M!
”

I push hair out of
Honour’s eyes, the thick strands dripping sweat. “He’s mostly
tired, I think, and suffering from a nasty bout of
seasickness.”

“Ugh. Don’t let him
puke on the table.”

“M.
”

“What?” She turns
innocent eyes on the brown skinned girl.

Priya simply swats
Marie’s arm.

“Must be hard, right?
Starting a revolution.”

“Yes,” I say to
myself, watching Honour from the corner of my eye. “It must.”
Though the rest of him is unchanged, there’s something about
Honour’s glass-brown eyes. They’re not darker exactly, but they
appear that way. He looks younger with those heavy eyes. Daunted.
Igniting this revolution has not been kind to my friend, though it
has brought us together so I can’t despise it completely. It also
saved a number of Forgotten London lives, which is no small measure
of good, but for the void of darkness it has opened in Honour, I
wish it never happened.

“When we get to
Bharat,” Marie says, carrying her own conversation. “I’ll start my
own revolution. I’ll call it the Femme Fighters, and no boys will
be allowed. Sorry, Branwell.”

I don’t glance away
from the point where Honour’s face is squashed against my
shirtsleeves. I say, “I don’t want to be involved in a revolution,
so that’s alright.”

She snorts. “Too bad,
you’re in one.”

“Maybe when we get to
Bharat you could leave us,” Priya suggests in her silken murmur.
“Not—not that I want you to. But if you didn’t want to be a part of
our mission to dismantle the Ordering Body, I’m sure our leaders
would let you find a home in Bharat. Maybe you could be an
archivist like us. You did say you like books.”

I make a noncommittal
sound. The truth is I don’t know what I want to do with my future.
When I was home, things were simple. I would continue to assist my
father with his inventions, and do my own scientific work on the
side. When he died, much later in life, I’d take over the house and
any estates or businesses we might have left. But now? How can I
know what I want to do with my life when I hardly know what my life
is?

For a time I planned
to use this new life to find my sister, but I doubt there’s hope of
that. She’s gone. She’s dead. She has to be.

“I
think I
will
stay
in Bharat,” I say. “I’m not cut out for war.”

“I’ve got an idea,”
Marie says, her eyes lighting up. “Maybe you could take up
knitting.”

“Maybe I will,” I
retort. “There is nothing to stop me.”

Priya smothers a laugh
with her hand, her brown cheeks tinged slightly red. When the laugh
becomes louder, uncontrollable, she rests her head on the table,
shoulders shaking. Marie pats her between the shoulder blades, a
smirk softened into fondness.

When recovered, Priya
says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh at you knitting, but the
image was too funny. I can’t imagine you making scarves and little
socks.”

“Neither can I.” My
arm is starting to ache under Honour’s weight. I wonder how gently
I can wake him. “How long is it until we get to Bharat?” I ask the
Guardians.

“Weeks. Months. Who
knows?” Marie shrugs. “We need time to plan anyway.”

I raise my head,
fighting a frown. “To plan your war?”

She inclines her head,
smiling. “To plan our war.”

***

Honour

21:16. 13.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Eastlands coastline.

“Honour, we need to
talk.”

Bran’s voice is a
shock in the silent cabin. I take my head out of my hands and look
at him questioningly. For a second I’m glad he’s here, a welcome
distraction from the deep downward spiral of my fears. But then I
see his shuttered expression. I can’t think of Bran’s feelings ever
being closed off before.

The door closes
silently behind him and two unfamiliar girls, one carved of ice,
the other of brown stone. The dark girl holds a large book to her
chest while the other surveys the room, her surreally bright eyes
analytical. I don’t usually pay much attention to people’s eyes but
this girl’s have a way of keeping my attention. There’s something
not quite right about them.

A sense of being
cornered comes over me and I wish I hadn’t pushed Tia to go with
Hele and Dal to the common room. I watch Bran lean against the
wall, agitation in his posture, and I know I’m not gonna like what
is coming.

“What’s going on?”

Bran won’t meet my
eyes.

“My
name is Priya Vyas.” The girl with the book perches on the edge of
Hele’s bed. Her eyes peer out of a small face partially hidden by
long black hair. I watch her, wondering if she’s Indian or black or
mixed before I catch myself. This girl’s race is none of my
business, and it shouldn’t matter anyway. I never liked people
asking rude questions about my ethnicity back in F.L., and I never
even knew what my ethnicity
was
. I guessed, of course, but I
never had a way of knowing. Not until Hele took me to the Guardians
library and showed me a book about my dad, the famous white rebel,
and my black mum, who was ‘kind’ and ‘beautiful’.

I couldn’t give a crap
about the Unnamed. I already know about him. But I wanna know about
my mum—what she believed in, what she wanted for the world. Would
she want me and Tia to unite the Forgotten Lands? Would she approve
of us being a part of the Guardians’ revolution? Would she rather
we’d died in the Fall?

I think sometimes I
would.

I
see people looking to me at important meetings, or when something
goes wrong and plans have to be hastily rewritten. Waiting for me
to do something impressive, something
great
. Something motivating, like
the Unnamed would have done. I wish they wouldn’t. It’s too much to
expect me to function like an ordinary human, let alone an
extraordinary one.

If I’d Fallen, I
wouldn’t have any of these expectations, wouldn’t have people
waiting for a moment of brilliance that’s never going to come. I
wouldn’t be waiting for that moment myself.

I keep thinking maybe
today I’ll change. Maybe I’ll find myself. I’ll know what to say
and how to say it. I’ll wake up one morning and discover this well
of moving words and passionate speeches, just hidden under my
damaged, worthless shell. I’ll become someone I actually like,
someone I don’t get sick of hearing whine, someone I could even be
proud of.

But every day I wake
up the same, and every day I lose a little more hope of becoming
that person. I guess I’m just stuck this way. Honour Frie:
perpetual waste of space.

I’m glad my mum isn’t
around to see this, to know me. I don’t need another person to
disappoint, even if I have moments where I’m desperate to know
about her, to find out where I came from, what the other half of my
legacy is. Tia and I are carrying on the Unnamed’s holier than thou
rebellion, but we’re also carrying our mother’s story. If only we
knew it.

I come back to myself
slowly, remembering I’m not alone in this cold cabin, remembering
Bran and the two girls. Guardians, I see. Guardians in pristine
white. They must have found new clothes somewhere; all our old ones
are bordering on unwearable.

Branwell is frowning,
a deep crease between his eyebrows. I must have zoned out for more
than a second, long enough for it to be obvious.

“Sorry,” I say,
pinching the inside of my elbow. “What were you saying?”

The taller Guardian
smiles at me, and I see a bit of Horatia’s patience and kindness in
her. “I was just introducing us,” she says. “I’m Priya, and this is
Marie Fitzgerald.” She motions to the white-haired girl with the
weird turquoise eyes. Marie is short and squat, watching me with a
narrowed squint that reminds me of Miya on a good day. “She and I
are archivists,” Priya continues. “We organise and protect The
Guardians’ books and records.”

Marie crosses the room
in three long strides that defy her shortness to stand cross armed
at Priya’s side. “Long story short, we found something while we
were organising.”

“What’s that got to do
with me?”

Priya crosses her
ankles, uncrosses them. “There were files we weren’t allowed to
access in the base, but after all that happened, everything
important got put together and brought here for us to organise. I …
I didn’t mean to find it, or to read it, but we were sorting
through all the things that were saved and—”

“Just tell me,” I
snap. I take a deep, deep breath and try to purge the unkindness
from my voice. Branwell’s vacant expression has me on edge.

“The years the
Guardians lost track of you and your sister,” she begins, but
falters, turning to Marie.

“You
went missing for a long time,” Marie states without emotion. “A few
people have managed to hide from our radar before but they were
older and way more experienced than you. You were
kids
. There was only
ever one explanation that made sense but nobody had proof of
it.”

“Or so we thought,”
Priya adds.

“There were Guardians
in every corner of every zone in Forgotten London—except for
Underground London Zone. We’ve always had allies there, people we
recruited from the inside, but we were never able to send proper
Guardians inside.”

I was ready to be
shocked and horrified and sick to my stomach, but this isn’t even a
tiny bit believable. “You’re saying Tia and I disappeared to
Underground London Zone for years? Don’t you think I’d remember
that? The only time I’ve ever been there was to destroy the
Strains!” That feels like months ago, not just days. How was that
only the beginning of this week? Quieter, I say, “I would
remember.”

Bran shakes his head,
a fleck of anger showing “You wouldn’t if they had tampered with
your memories.”

I look instantly to
Marie, the girl with answers in her narrowed eyes. “Explain.”

“Priya give him the
file.”

Tucked between the
pages of the large tome are a few sheets of once-white paper. Priya
passes them to me and I spend several heart-racing minutes reading
them, waiting for the horror to kick in. It doesn’t. I’m missing
something. “I don’t get it.”

“You were part of a
project.”

I shake my head, still
waiting. “What kind of project?”

“A biological
one.”

There it is: the acid
rising to the back of my throat, the sluggish comprehension. My
eyes seek Branwell, but he won’t look at me. “ A biological
project,” I repeat. I take a breath, then another. “Run by who?
Officials?”

Marie nods once.
“States.”

“So they …. The
Officials altered my biology or something? Messed with my mind? My
memories? Why?” I can’t sit any longer. I get up and pace. “Why the
hell would someone do that to me? If they wanted super soldiers,
you’d think they’d have picked someone buff, someone with actual
training. Wait—”I cover my mouth with my hand. I need to get off
this boat. I need to get off this island. “Tia—my sister—did
they—?”