Bluewing (2 page)

We turned the corner and scurried like rats down another alley. The soldiers stumbled over the fallen barrels in the dark, their shouts growing fainter, but we weren’t out of danger yet. We reached the place where we’d entered the wall. I counted down with my fingers, and then we ran together, squeezing through the opening and slipping away into the night.

The Frost reached out cold arms to embrace us, and when we reached the trees I could finally breathe again. Every inch of my body felt scraped, sore, or numb. I tugged off the scarf covering my face and shook down my hair. Arla appeared from the darkness without a word. She took in our shaken expressions and bit her lip, then went to retrieve our cloaks.

“Are you all right?” I asked Gabe.

“I—I think so,” he said. His voice shook. “You? That was quick thinking back there.”

“I’m all right, too,” I managed. Shock at our almost-capture numbed me, and beneath it, disappointment at my failure to find everything I’d been looking for throbbed like a new wound. I hadn’t found anything about Ann.

I paused and wrenched the papers I’d taken from Korr’s drawer from my belt. Holding them up to the moonlight, I squinted to make out the scribbled words. Each phrase sunk like a barb into my heart.
Arrest. Treason. Detainment facility. Astralux
. Slowly, I lowered my hands to my sides.

Astralux was so far away.

Folding the paper, I slipped it back into the bag at my belt and took a deep breath. I didn’t mention the kiss back in the village, and Gabe didn’t bring it up either. Since we’d retuned through the gate and I’d discovered that Adam had been captured, we hadn’t been romantic. It was as if something inside me had gone cold. Gabe hadn’t pressed the matter. Since his friend Claire’s betrayal of us and subsequent disappearance, he had been quiet and withdrawn, too.

Arla handed me my cloak. I accepted it and threw the heavy cloth around my shoulders, and beside me, Gabe did the same. His expression, barely visible in the moonlight, was sympathetic. If anyone understood my anxiety and sorrow over my missing friends, he did. He’d lost almost his entire family. He didn’t know if they were dead or alive. The quiet solidarity of our shared pain flowed between us, and I sighed.

“Let’s go,” I said.

We traveled as fast as possible in the dark, sticking to the shadowed places where the snow was lightest, taking care not to leave evidence of our passage as we wove through the labyrinth of unmarked trails and deer paths that led to our destination. And as my panic faded, I realized that for the first time in my life, I moved through the Frost unadorned by the blue blossoms that I’d always worn to keep away the monsters, because I knew a secret about myself now.

I, Lia Weaver, was the descendent of the creator of the Watchers.

They were not living creatures, but mechanical beasts designed to be sentient and almost indestructible. They were created with an insatiable desire to protect Echlos and the former ruins of the Compound, the place that had become the Frost after the end of that world and the beginning of this new one. And these beasts were created with a failsafe. They would not attack the descendants of their creator, not if they got a whiff of their blood.

I hadn’t told anyone besides my siblings and Gabe yet, because I wasn’t sure what it meant, or what anyone else would think. Recently, the Watchers had slain two Thorns operatives—Jacob, the leader of the fugitives from the Compound, and Atticus, leader of the Thorns operatives in the Frost. The pall of their deaths still lingered in everyone’s minds.

Gabe scanned the trees. A vein throbbed in his throat, and his hands moved restlessly as he tugged at the snow blossoms he still wore around his neck for protection. Arla did the same.

“Any sign of Watchers?” she whispered. She’d never seen the monsters, but she’d heard the stories.

I shook my head. There was no hint of the blood-red glow of their eyes, no sound of their claws against the ice. But that meant little. Watchers could move like ghosts through the night. Gabe and I both knew from experience.

After almost an hour of stumbles and hissed exclamations and ragged breaths drawn in darkness, we reached the top of a hill, and the shimmer of the ruins of Echlos greeted us.

Arla let out a sigh of relief. “We made it.”

Just then, a cry split the night. I jerked around. Arla shrieked. Gabe’s hand went to the snow blossoms at his throat.

“Watchers.”

They must have been following us.

“Leave me here and go,” I said.

“What are you going to do?” Arla’s eyes were wide with terror.

I needed to try this. I hadn’t done it since we’d returned and I needed to see that it would still work.

“Go.” I pushed them both toward the ruins. “Don’t stay. Don’t look back. Just run.”

“Lia—”

“Go now!”

Arla ran. Gabe stopped, and I gave him a glare. He did what I said without further hesitation as I yanked a knife from my belt. The blade almost slipped from my hands, they were trembling so hard, but I caught it and drew it across my finger without hesitation. Red beaded across my skin and fell to the snow as the creature burst from the trees.

It was a big one. Powerful haunches dug into the ground as the head swiveled to look at me. Spines bristled down its back, and its teeth glittered as it opened its mouth to emit a high-pitched cry.

I held my ground, drew in a deep breath, and stretched out my hand. Every inch of my skin prickled with terror and excitement mingled together. Wind whipped my hair and snagged my cloak, flinging the fabric out as it carried my scent toward the Watcher.

The beast stiffened as it caught the smell of my blood. It stopped. It regarded me but did not charge. The jaws opened and closed, and the eyes dimmed. With a growl, the creature spun around and slunk back into the forest. The shadows rippled, and then it was gone, leaving only churned snow behind.

I exhaled as my whole body slumped in relief. Turning, I headed toward Echlos.

GABE GRABBED ME as soon as I ducked inside the darkness of the ruins. “Are you insane?” he demanded, giving my shoulders a shake. “You’re not invincible, you know.”

Beside him, Arla stood silent and trembling, her face the color of bleached bone.

“The Watcher is gone, and we’re late,” I said. “Come on. Let’s get below before Jonn starts to worry.”

“You’re sure it’s gone?” Gabe glanced at the entrance. The Watchers could enter Echlos. The walls did not keep them out. We had to use supreme caution when moving through the ruins at night.

“I’m sure,” I said, and exhaustion washed over me. I started down the hallway, my boots thudding quietly, and they followed.

We descended the staircases into the depths of the Echlos ruins. Every so often, we passed a painted mural of a blue flower with five petals—a snow blossom. These were new additions. All the debris and dust was swept away wherever they appeared. We’d made them ourselves, because the drawings kept the Watchers at bay.

When we finally reached the bottom level, the door hissed open and a figure darted down the hall toward us. I caught a glimpse of curly hair and an upturned nose—Everiss Dyer, another fugitive and former village resident. Her strained expression softened with relief as she saw it was us. Arla slipped past her into the main living area, leaving Everiss alone with Gabe and me.

Everiss and I had once been what most people would consider friends, although we’d never been close. A few months ago, she’d gotten involved with a rogue group of dissidents called the Blackcoats who’d sought to overthrow the Farthers with sabotage and vandalism, and she’d allowed my sister to join the group’s dangerous activities against my wishes. The Blackcoats had tried to steal the Portable Locomotion Device from me, and Everiss had been with them. When she’d been shot in a confrontation with Korr, she’d come to us for shelter and brought the PLD as a peace offering. But I didn’t trust her, even if she was technically on our side now.

She searched my eyes. “You didn’t find anything.”

“We found Adam Brewer’s arrest warrant. He’s in a prison in Astralux.”

Everiss frowned. She barely knew Adam. He wasn’t the one she was concerned about. She was worried about Ann Mayor, her—and my—best friend.

“What about Ann?”

I shook my head. Defeat tasted bitter on my lips as I spoke the words. “Nothing. I looked everywhere.”

Everiss conveyed her disappointment only with a jerk of her chin. “Well, then. Jonn will want to know you’re back safely.”

I moved past her and into the room that now was our main living space. The ceiling arched up like a cave, disappearing into the darkness above. Shelves lined the walls, and the formerly dusty places had been filled with animal pelts and bundles of firewood. This had once been a debris-filled shell of some ancient library or archive room, but now it had become our communal quarters. We had precious little to ensure privacy, but everyone liked being close together because there was safety in numbers, and so far the Watchers had not bothered us behind these doors as long as we kept the halls filled with dried snow blossoms and the walls painted with depictions of the blue flowers.

People slept on pallets behind hanging sheets or spoke quietly to one another around the piles of glowing fungi that lit the space enough for us to see. It was early morning now, and most were sleeping, but some had already risen to begin cooking breakfast. My gaze wandered over the faces—they were haggard, worn from worry and exhaustion and lack of food. These were the fugitives who had returned with us from the past where they’d been living in hiding. I’d brought many of them back with me, many more than Atticus had wanted, and he had almost killed me for my failure. Jacob had intervened, and they’d both been slain by a Watcher. I hadn’t forgotten Jacob’s loyalty to me. I would repay him by caring for the fugitives now that he was gone.

I spotted my twin brother sitting at a table at the end of the room, and I headed toward him. He lifted his head and smiled at the sight of me, but his pleased expression faded when I reached him.

“What went wrong?” he asked.

I dropped into one of the chairs. It wobbled beneath my weight; the legs were uneven. “We found an arrest report for Adam, but nothing for Ann.” I pulled the paper from the bag at my belt and set it on the table between us.

Jonn reached for it with one hand, smoothing away the crinkles. His forehead pinched as he scanned the information I’d already absorbed out in the forest.

“According to this paper,” I said, “he was sent to a detainment facility in Astralux.”

Astralux was the capital city of Aeralis, the Farther nation. I had never been there, but I’d heard stories about the dark, dank fog that constantly encompassed the city and swathed everything in moist gray, about the soldiers who paced the streets looking for dissidents, about the harsh laws and harsher people with their steam-powered machines and airships and guns. In my head I saw a place of smoke, cogs, and cruelty. And Adam was there—a prisoner, helpless, hopeless. I’d been holding out for information saying he was at a camp just beyond the Frost border, perhaps. Something that we actually might have been able to access, something we could reach. Astralux? He might as well be on the moon.

Jonn reached across the paper to grab my hand. He squeezed my fingers, and the pressure dragged me back to reality. I raised my eyes to his.

“We’ll find out exactly where he is, Lia. We’ll rescue him.”

“I just...” I stopped. I didn’t know what I wanted to say, so I clamped my lips shut and shook my head. Instead of finishing my thought, I rose and stalked across the room.

The fugitives who were awake fell silent as I passed. The ones who made eye contact with me offered tentative smiles, but nobody spoke to me. I was learning their names slowly, but I had been busy since our return, and I wasn’t exactly in the most sociable mood. Honestly, I had far too much to worry about to waste any time on making small talk with them.

I spotted Juniper, the burly, bearded fugitive who’d found me when I passed through the gate. He sat beside a fire, stirring a pot of what looked like squirrel stew. The unappetizing smell of grease and burned meat wafted my direction, but I was hungry enough that my stomach rumbled anyway. Lately, we’d been eating anything we could get our hands on. We’d brought some supplies of canned goods and dried meats with us when we made the jump back to the Frost, but those things hadn’t lasted us more than a week. Now, we relied on whatever we could trap or gather—or whatever my sister, Ivy, could bring us from the bag of food supplies she received each week in exchange for attending the Farther school in the village.

Juniper glanced up as I approached.

“Mothkat,” he said, gesturing at the pot with a snort as he caught a glimpse of my expression.

I raised both eyebrows and bit back a sound of disgust. “Mothkat?” The scavengers—they essentially amounted to winged, vicious rats—were pests that preyed on dead animals and infested caverns and tree stumps. They had sharp teeth and were dangerous in large packs if provoked, but mostly they eschewed the living in favor of things that were already rotting. “Is it safe to eat that?”

“It’s this or nothing,” he said.

I didn’t respond.

“How did your mission go?” he asked after a moment of silence. He stirred the bubbling pot and didn’t look at me.

“It was not as successful as I’d hoped. We found no mention of one of my friends.”

“Ann Mayor is her name?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“If she was suspected of the same things as your other friend, why are they not imprisoned together?”

A fair question. “I don’t know. I heard only that she was suspected of involvement, and that she had been sent to Astralux. But it is a massive city. I have no idea where to find her in it.”

“Surely her father knows?” Juniper asked.

I sighed. “He knows nothing. No one does, except that Farther noble, Korr, and he’s gone.”

Juniper grunted in disappointment that his idea was not helpful.

Fatigue pulled at my eyelids and made my bones ache, but I couldn’t sleep until I’d seen my sister. Ivy, who was almost fifteen and the youngest in my family, lived among the enemy now. She attended the Farther school by day and lived with the family of Bakers she’d been reassigned to, helping with their quota in the evenings. She learned whatever she could and stole away to meet with us at least once a week, and we expected her this morning. As a Weaver, her blood kept her safe in the forest just like mine kept me safe, and so I did not object to her making the long trek through the woods in the early hours of the morning for fear of Watchers. Still, I worried every time I knew she was coming, because there were many other dangers besides Watchers. Snow panthers, mothkats, bears, or even a Hunter or Trapper might run across her.