The Watch (The Red Series Book 1) (29 page)

“All right,” Farrell Dean said,
rowing harder and grimacing with the pain of it. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll
manage.”

I crawled up onto the seat but
my back was to the shore. I didn’t want my back to the shore. What if the
bullet was about to come, was about to hit me? Hurriedly I glanced over my
shoulder, bracing myself to feel the shot, the bullet piercing my body.

That quick glance
relieved one fear and replaced it with another. No one was
pointing a gun at us or even looking at us; but on top of the peninsula several
figures were fighting, some in the black uniforms of wardens, two of the
struggling figures in gray, while a third in gray knelt on the ground, on his
hands and knees—a dark man—
Ezzie
. Three
in gray was too many—and where was Sir Tom, in his brown and green
clothing?

Farrell Dean slowed our outward
thrust, turned the front of the boat down the shore, south. There was no room
for me to turn fully around on the little end bench; I twisted, straining to
see what was happening back on the cliff top.

Was
Ezzie
hurt? Why was he kneeling like that, watching and not fighting? Had he been
shot? As I watched he collapsed onto the ground, tried to rise, collapsed
again. Oh,
Ezzie
 . . .

The three wardens were fighting
hand to hand with—yes, it was Cline, I could see his short blond hair,
but who was the other? No one else was supposed to be out here. The others were
all supposed to be at the stockade. He was smaller than Cline, most everyone
was, but this person also was blond and I had a sick feeling it was Judd, who
was just the sort to do such a stupid thing, trying to protect me when I had
promised to protect him.

 
I turned toward Farrell Dean, fighting my
hair out of my eyes. “Can you tell who it is?” I started to say, but Farrell
Dean’s gaze was fixed elsewhere, a short distance to the right, where two
figures stood alone on a high precipice above the sea, watching the fight
below.

One was easily recognizable,
tall and well built, long pale hair lifting in the wind: Angel.

The other I would know anywhere,
from any distance, day or night, dead or alive.

“
Meritt
!”
I screamed, standing up. The boat tilted and a wash of water came over the
side.

“Sit down!” Farrell Dean grabbed
my leg and yanked me unceremoniously off my feet, then reached for a small
metal bucket. He began bailing, his eyes still on the two figures. The oars
jerked in their locks and the boat stopped moving.

“
Meritt
!”
I screamed again, my throat burning with the effort. On the big rock,
Meritt
raised one arm toward me in acknowledgement.

I kept my eyes on him as I
untangled myself, got up on my knees, soaked through by the freezing water
sloshing around the bottom of the boat, not caring, not feeling anything but
joy that
Meritt
was alive, he was there, I could see
him, soon I could talk to him, touch him.

 
“We have to row,” I said. I climbed onto
the middle bench, squeezing in beside Farrell Dean. Grabbing the oar on my side
I rowed hard, gouged at the sea. It yanked back and the oar ripped out of my
hands, clattered in the oar lock. I grabbed it again, caught it, held it more
firmly as I dug at the water again, not as deeply this time, and in response
the boat listed sideways, in the wrong direction—there had to be a better
way, I had no idea how to do this—we needed to row back to shore, farther
down, far from the wardens, where we could land and make our way to
Meritt
.
Meritt
, who wasn’t
dead—
Meritt
, whom I hadn’t gotten killed.

“Angel was telling the truth,” I
said, gabbling, stumbling over the words. “He would have taken me to
Meritt
. I should have gone with
him. Row, Farrell Dean! I can’t do it by myself.”

He didn’t budge. He
bailed water from the bottom of the little boat, shifting the items sloshing
around—a spade, a leather canteen, various odd bundles—with
maddening deliberate movements.

“Please,” I said,
grabbing his arm. “Please help me.”

But though I ordered
and pleaded and finally wept with fury, Farrell Dean wouldn’t
row,
wouldn’t move so I could reach the other oar, wouldn’t even look at me. He
finished bailing the water out of the boat, then held his oar up out of the
water and watched the two figures grow smaller. He let the wind and waves seize
us and turn us outward, away.

I called him every bad name I
knew while all the time keeping my eyes fixed on the figures high on the rock,
figures growing smaller and smaller and, as they grew dark with distance,
becoming silhouettes, becoming more and more alike—tall, broad
shouldered, familiar and unfamiliar, safe and mysterious—

“He’s
Meritt’s
father,” Farrell Dean and I said at the same moment.

I should have seen
it before. Their coloring was different, and
Meritt
wasn’t as perfectly beautiful, and he was thinner, hadn’t yet filled out as a
completely grown man, but the resemblance was there, not only in their faces
but in their height, in the way they stood, in the timbre of their voices, in
ways I couldn’t put my finger on but knew were there, were true
 . . .
Meritt
was Angel’s son. He was
the son of a Guardian.

Surely
Meritt
knew—why else would he be out there with
Angel? But why hadn’t he told me? And who was his mother?

The waves rocked the
boat and I clutched at the side, staring at the figures on the shore until my
eyes burned. The gray sky rocked above us, the gray sea below. Farrell Dean sat
there, waiting, not touching his oar, letting the elements propel us.

“Why are you taking
us out so wide?” I said, bewilderment beginning to drive out anger. “And we’re
supposed to circle round counterclockwise, toward the stockade
 . . .”

Farrell Dean didn’t
answer; he merely shook his head, his eyes fixed on
Meritt
.

It was the currents,
I thought, or the tide, forcing us to take an altered path to the other side of
the island, sweeping us out and curling us clockwise around the island.
No—not curling us around it—we were—

“Farrell Dean!” I
said, panic flaring. “You have to row—we’re getting too far out—we
might not be able to get back—”

He looked at me, then, and I saw pain in his eyes, and something
else, too, something that struck me suddenly frightened and desolate. And all I
could manage was a single short sentence, terse and under my breath: “No more
secrets.”

Farrell Dean didn’t
look away, though it seemed to cost him. “There’s another island,” he said.
“We’re going there.”

Another island?

Was he insane? We
had to get back—had to get home. I couldn’t jump out of the boat. I
couldn’t swim. And I could see by the set of his jaw that there was no
persuading Farrell Dean this time. I was helpless, stolen away from everything
I knew, everyone I loved, sent off over the edge of the world into some mad
dream of that mad old man.

“You planned this,”
I said. Farrell Dean shook his
head, but I went on.

“You didn’t speak to me all day
because you knew you were lying to me. Yes, you were—Cline knew you were
going away.”

Oh, yes, Cline had
known—that was why he had attacked me. He had known that Farrell Dean was
going to carry me off somewhere, that he wouldn’t be seeing us again
for—how long? And he wanted to chew me out before we went.

Seeing their deception, thinking
it through, kept me from yielding to the blinding panic that swam just past the
edges of my vision. The
distant figures of
Meritt
and his father were tiny now, blurring together into
one dark shadow.

Divided loyalties.
That was what the Watchers had said about
Meritt
. Did
they know about his father the Guardian, or were they thinking only of me
, of
our friends?

I got up from the middle seat,
crawled to the end bench, as close to
Meritt
as I
could get, and stared until he was gone, until even the rock he stood on
blurred, became part of the island, indistinguishable from other rocks and
ridges. I stared until the island itself was nothing but a low shadow on the
surface of the water.

“Everyone lied to me.” I turned
toward Farrell Dean with a look so stony that he flinched. “Sir Tom. Cline.
Your mother. And you most of all.”

Farrell Dean ran one hand across
his eyes. “Sir Tom misled you,” he said quietly. “He misled you for your own
good. But I didn’t even do that. I was going to take you back. They didn’t know
it, but I was going to take you to the stockade.”

When he dropped his hand and
looked straight at me, I could find no trace of deception in his eyes.

“So what’s stopping you?” I
said. “We can still get back.
”

He shut his eyes
briefly, as if my words hurt. “No,” he said. “They were right, Sir Tom and my
mother. They said it was too dangerous for you here, that you needed to get
clear away. I thought we could keep you hidden in the woods, that that would be
good enough, but  . . .” He broke off midsentence, leaned
forward. “On the far side of the other island, Red—if they’re still
there, if we can get help—Sir Tom says—”

It was an obvious
attempt to distract me. “Take me home,” I said cutting him off. “I want to go
home.”

The island—my
island, my home—was a distant line on the horizon now. I wouldn’t even
have noticed it, if I didn’t know it was there. I looked the other way, looked
all around, and saw nothing but open sea, gray waves, gray sky.

 
“I wasn’t in danger,” I said. “Angel
wouldn’t have hurt me. He’s
Meritt’s
father. Why
would he hurt me?”

Farrell Dean was
only eighteen, but at that moment he looked ten years older.

“What?” I said.
“What is it?”

“I’m doing what’s
best, Red.”

That was too much.
“I should just trust you, is that it?”

Farrell Dean said,
evenly, “I wish you would.”

“And I wish you’d
tell me what’s going on!” My voice was shrill. “You of all people, after
accusing
Meritt
of keeping things from me.”

I hesitated a
fraction of a second, could have stopped myself, but I didn’t want to stop. I
wanted to hurt him.

“Do you know what
this looks like,
Farrell Dean? This looks like you saw a good opportunity to
get me away from
Meritt
. You saw your chance, and you
took it. But I don’t appreciate being kidnapped. I won’t forgive you. Not ever.
I hate you.”

Farrell Dean listened stoically
to my tirade, the expression in his eyes growing increasingly distant. When I
stopped he waited, eyebrows raised, as if to see whether I was truly finished.

Then he said, softly, “Hate me
if you have to. I’m doing what’s best for you, and I’ll take you back home when
it’s safe. I promise.” He took a deep ragged breath, the only sign that he
wasn’t perfectly calm. “And if
Meritt’s
with his
father, he’ll be okay. He’ll be waiting for you when you
get back.”

Cline’s angry face swam before
my eyes. The rocking of the boat made me ill, though it might have been the
turmoil inside me that did it. I shut my eyes and tried not to let the panic
in, the grief over leaving
Meritt
, the shame I felt
for the way I’d spoken to Farrell Dean.

I almost wished that I could
lose my mind.

The
waves bore us swiftly along for one hour, or two—all I knew was that
behind the screen of clouds, the sun gradually was moving west. We were in a
gray bowl, gray sky above us, gray sea
around us. I
had never seen so much open space, so much nothingness.

 
“When will
we
go back?” I finally asked.

 
“Unless we can find a boat with an
engine, we’ll have to wait until the currents shift. We’ll need the current to
help us back.”

“And when do these
currents shift? In a day? A week?”

Farrell Dean looked
away. “Around about the winter solstice,” he said.

The winter solstice?
That was more than two months away. I couldn’t believe this.

“And what if the
current, or the wind, takes us straight out into the open sea? You’ve gotten
all your information from a crazy old man.”

 
I wanted to make him admit that he might
not know what was best, wanted to punish him for taking me away from home,
wanted to make him feel as unsettled as I was feeling. Maybe I succeeded. All I
know for sure is that I ended up scaring myself, because the more I thought
about it, the more the truth of it sank in. We were trusting a crazy old man.

A crazy old man, and I was the
one who had led us to him. What if I’d chosen wrong? What if Angel was the sane
one, the good one?
After all,
Meritt
had been with Angel. And if occasionally I’d caught a glimpse of something
hard, something calculating, in Angel’s eyes, well—he’d been having to
plot and calculate for years to survive around the old man, hadn’t he? Because
he didn’t trust Sir Tom. He’d said so. And he’d said I shouldn’t trust him.

But I had. And
because I had trusted Sir Tom, Farrell Dean had trusted him, and now here we
were, out on the sea, with only Sir Tom’s words for a guide. The sea was
unending, and we had never set foot in a boat until that morning. We could die,
and the seagulls would eat our bones.

“We could die out
here,” I said aloud.

Farrell Dean
considered this. “You’ve always wanted to see the sea,” he said finally. “Why
don’t you try to enjoy it?”

* * * *

It grew cold, out on the water.
The wind was still blowing, skimming us along, and my clothes were still damp.
I felt in my pockets for my black cap.

Several packs were in the bottom
of the boat. One had dried fruit and meat. Farrell Dean tried to get me to eat
something, but I wouldn’t. Then he opened another pack, pulled out a blanket,
wrapped it around my shoulders, and turned away, clearly intending to leave me
in peace.

I didn’t do him the same favor.

“You made me leave Judd,” I
said. “I promised to take care of him, and you took me away.”

Farrell Dean nodded. “That’s
true. I’m sorry.”

I didn’t want to be blamed for
anything else. “That promise was mine. I’m breaking it by leaving. But you’re
the one who made me break it. If anything happens to him, it’s your fault.”

Farrell Dean looked at me for a
long moment without speaking. Then he turned,
studying
the horizon.

* * * *

The sun was visible
through a thin layer of clouds, and the waves were greener now. I stared at the
sea outside the little boat, catching glimpses now and then of strange
creatures that I knew only from
Rafe’s
descriptions
in biology class. Jellyfish. The fin of a shark. Farrell Dean hoped I didn’t
notice that, I could tell; he sat up and gazed with interest at a spot in the
distance, where absolutely nothing was, as if I’d automatically
look
where he was looking.

I watched the shark.

* * *
*

“Farrell Dean?”

We had been sitting in silence
for several hours. Now Farrell Dean leaned forward, rested his elbows on his
knees, and looked at me warily.

“I appreciate your concern,” I
said. “But please explain how your secret about why you’re taking me away is
any different from the secrets you were angry at
Meritt
for keeping from me.”

“I’m trying to protect you. His
secrets were leading you blind into danger.”

“Excuse me for saying so, but
when you gave me your mother’s stolen food, weren’t you leading me blind into
danger?”

Farrell Dean nodded. “But I had
to do that,” he said. “Do you remember that winter when you were sick all the
time? You were ten or eleven, and you were growing really fast. And one day you
weren’t in school, yet again, and
Rafe
said you
weren’t getting enough nourishment to get well
. The
Watchers weren’t killing people back then, so it seemed worth the risk,
considering.”

“Notice who did the
choosing. I didn’t choose to take that risk. You chose it for me.”

Farrell Dean stared at me for a
heartbeat, then gave a short disbelieving laugh. “You aren’t stupid,” he said.
“You knew I couldn’t magically produce extra food.”

I looked away. There wasn’t much
to look at—just the waves, the horizon. “And now you’re carrying me off
to some unknown land, all in the name of protecting me, and you won’t even tell
me what you’re supposedly protecting me from.”

“That pretty much sums it up,”
he agreed. The waves behind him were gray and cold.

“We can’t go back now, anyway,”
I said. “The die is cast. The deed is done. I can accept that. I just want to
understand it.”

His face was grim. “Understanding
it would hurt you, Red. More than you know. Best to let it go.”

I counted very slowly to ten, to
twenty. When a full minute had elapsed, I tried again.

“I am going to an unknown land,”
I said. “I want to know exactly what I’m leaving behind.”

He shook his head.

I counted to sixty.

“You’re going to an unknown
land,” I said. “As long as you don’t keep secrets from me, I promise to always
watch your back.”

Still he said nothing.

Sixty seconds.

 
“I’m sorry for what I said before,” I
said. I tried to keep my tone light, but my voice wobbled a little bit, and
Farrell Dean looked at me sharply. “I don’t hate you,” I said. “More than
anybody in the world, you always try to protect me. I know that. And I probably
will forgive you, eventually, for kidnapping me.”

Scooting to the middle seat so I
could reach him, I leaned forward, touched his knee, and looked him straight in
the eye. “But I will not forgive you if you keep secrets from me.”

Farrell Dean didn’t smile, but
the tension in his face eased. “You’re ruthless, aren’t you?” he said. But he
knew I meant the apology, even if I also intended to use it to get what I
wanted.

“Is it because
Meritt
and Angel were together?” I asked. “Because you
don’t trust Angel and you think I’d be around him because of
Meritt
?”

No reply.

“Is it Sir Tom? Did he tell
Alice something while we were asleep, something that worried her?”

No reply.

“Is it because Judd killed that
warden—did you hear the warden shouting at me? He thought I did it.”

“Those are all good reasons, Red.”

“But they aren’t the one you had
in mind. Is it  . . . is it because Cline dislikes me, and
you’re afraid he’ll yell me to death if we go back?”

“You aren’t going to stop, are
you?”

“Not ever. Not until you tell
me. You’re stubborn, Farrell Dean, but I’m more stubborn than you are. You know
that. I will never let this drop. I’m tired of
secrets.”

He sighed and looked out over
the empty waves. After a moment he turned to me, his face weary. “Bear in mind
I could be wrong,” he said. “I hope I am.”

I waited. He looked so very
tired, and his face was filled with so much pain and dread that my heart sank
and I almost relented. Maybe he was right—maybe I didn’t want to know,
not if telling made him look like this. But how could I stand to not know?

“I can only tell you what I
heard,” he said. “The wardens in the prison were talking.” He paused.

“The wardens?” I prompted.

“Last night. Before the city
meeting. They thought I was about to die, so they weren’t being careful.” Again
he paused, and I heard the unsaid words. They thought he was about to die, and
so did he. What had that been like for him, to think—to be all but
certain—that he was moments away from execution?

I put my hand back on his knee
and absently he picked it up, traced the length of my fingers.

 
“One of the wardens said, ‘He won’t do
it. He’s fond of her.’”

My heart began beating too hard
and I felt the slow hot flush creep up my neck.

Farrell Dean went on in a low
voice, his face turned away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at me. “The other
warden said, ‘
That’s just it. He has divided
loyalties. He has to prove he’s on the Watchers’ side. What better way than
sacrificing the little redhead? Anyone can be bought if the price is right.’”

So that was what the
Watchers meant, that “one way or
another” I’d be gone soon. Either I’d
be “euthanized,” or
Meritt
would hand me over to
them.

 
“Then what?” I whispered.

“Then they took me out to the
city meeting.”

I leaned forward. “But
Meritt
would never betray his friends—not me, not
you. He’s the one who saved you from the city meeting.”

Farrell Dean nodded. “I know.
Cline told me.”

“That was a terrible risk,
Farrell Dean. We thought
Meritt
had been killed for
helping you escape. Trapped in the watchtower and killed.”

Again Farrell Dean nodded. “I
thought so, too. He saved my life and risked his own. I’m not denying that.
I’ll owe him as long as I live.”

“But.”

“I didn’t add any ‘but.’”

I laughed, a strained, ugly
sound. “I know what you want to say—that
Meritt
saved you, but you weren’t the one the Watchers wanted. You weren’t the price
they wanted him to pay. He could afford to let you go.”

Farrell Dean said nothing, sat
looking at me as if waiting for it all to sink in, and in a moment it did.

“There on the beach—just
now—you think he was coming after me. To turn me in.”

He didn’t nod, but I knew I had
read his thought.

“You think he brought the
wardens—that he came after me with wardens, with guns
 . . . you think Angel was helping him trap me.”

The windswept boat pitched and
rocked, and Farrell Dean shook his head. “I don’t know what to think, Red. But
I had to make a snap judgment, and it seemed safer to get you away. To do what
Sir Tom said. Like I said, I hope I’m wrong.”

“You are wrong.”

“I want to be. But what if I’m
not? You know
Meritt
. He plays to win.”

“This is real life, not a game.”
But I shifted uneasily, remembering things I’d said to
Meritt
,
things he’d said to me.

Farrell Dean said nothing.

A more solid defense occurred to
me. “Listen,” I said, leaning further forward, determined to make him understand,
to make him agree with me. “If
Meritt
had come out to
get me, why would he bring wardens? He didn’t need them. All he needed was
himself. I would have gone straight to him.”

Even as I spoke I
wondered—why
was
Meritt
out there with wardens? Maybe he wasn’t with them.
But if he’d been out there alone, why hadn’t he come to me on the beach? Why
had Angel come instead?

“I’d have gone to him,” I
repeated absently, my thoughts fixed on untangling the logistics. “I
would have done anything he wanted. Anything
at
all.”

Farrell Dean flinched at my
words. For a second I thought his feelings were hurt, that I had twisted the
knife again, but then I followed his thoughts and saw he was thinking something
worse.

I would have done whatever
Meritt
wanted, and
Meritt
wanted
to save the city.

A wave splashed hard against the
boat, rocking us, giving us an extra shove as if proving we were unmoored,
without foothold.

“
Meritt
could have saved all those people,” I said slowly. “All I had to do was go with
him. The Watchers would have killed me and been satisfied, and then
Meritt
could have persuaded the Watchers to spare everyone
else, could have come up with some other way to get us through the winter.”

Farrell Dean said nothing.