Bluewing

Kate Avery Ellison

Copyright © 2013 Kate Avery Ellison

All Rights Reserved

Do not distribute or make copies of this book, electronically or otherwise, in part or in whole, without the written consent of the author.

For Paul and Sam

BLUEWING: THE FROST CHRONICLES #4

Lia Weaver is a fugitive. Her family's farm has been confiscated by Farther soldiers, her sister has been reassigned to a new family in the village, and her official status is "missing." Now, Lia and a band of fugitive followers must make their home in the harsh wilderness of the Frost. Food is scarce, and hope is scarcer still as Lia tries to find information about the whereabouts of her missing friends. She is determined to rescue them, but when a surprising ally steps forth with an offer that will both return her friends and expel the Farthers from the Frost in exchange for something precious, Lia must make a choice.

DARKNESS CLOTHED ME. Branches scratched my face. The wind tugged at tendrils of my hair that hung around my face. Somewhere to my left, an owl hooted.

Gabe moved beside me, his breathing loud in the stillness. His feet were clumsier than mine on the rocks, but he kept up with me as we slipped through the trees. A few paces behind us, a dark-haired fugitive named Arla followed. She matched Gabe for clumsiness, but she made no noise even when she stumbled and scraped her knee on a riverbed rock. But that didn’t surprise me—she had scars on her arms and back where she’d been beaten by Farther soldiers before she’d escaped an Aeralian prison. I knew she was strong.

As we crested the final hill, I threw out a hand, signaling them both to stop. Below us, snow-lined roofs sparkled in the light of the moon, and the metal of the Farther gates and walls around them gleamed like a row of knives.

Iceliss.

I unfastened my cloak and rolled it into a ball to store at the roots of one of the trees. Gabe copied my movements. The night air stole my warmth, but now I was free to move without hindrance. I wore a black shirt and trousers like a boy, my long hair was caught up in braids and tucked beneath a hat, and a dark scarf obscured my nose and mouth. If anyone saw me, they wouldn’t recognize me. Nothing I wore identified me as a Weaver, or even as a female. I was as anonymous as the night.

“Stay here,” I murmured to Arla. “We’ll be back soon.”

We’d returned to the Frost only two weeks ago, and when we’d arrived, I’d discovered that my friends, Adam Brewer and Ann Mayor, were both gone. Adam had been arrested for his involvement with the Thorns, and Ann was being held somewhere in Astralux, accused of the same thing. I didn’t know where either one of them was, but I was determined to find out.

Arla chafed her hands together for warmth as she stepped back into the shadow of the trees, and together Gabe and I crept toward the town.

A guard paced the length of the wall before us, and I could see the ugly shape of his gun by the faint light of the moon and stars. We skulked past him toward the artisans’ quarter of the village where, we’d been told, there was a place where we could safely cross in and out of the town without detection from the soldiers.

I spotted the place where shadows pooled at the corner of the wall, making it too dark to see clearly from the top. The rise and intersection of three oddly shaped roofs blocked us from any soldier’s view, just as Ivy had described.

As we watched, the soldier disappeared from sight.

My heart pounded in my chest, and my lungs ached with every shallow breath I took. Every sense in my body strained to detect a hint of danger. I raised a hand to signal to Gabe, and he nodded to show he’d seen.

We ran together across the narrow boundary of open ground between the trees and the wall, and the sound of our crossing was as loud as a shout to my ears. We reached the wall and pressed against it, looking up to see if we’d been seen.

We hadn’t.

I held my breath as I slipped through the widest slit in the metal crossings. My hips scraped steel, but I wriggled through. A chill slid down my skin as my feet touched cobblestones on the other side. Gabe followed.

We were inside the village.

The slightest hiss of breath made me freeze. I looked—the soldier on the wall had returned. His body was an outline against the night sky, black shadow against almost black. I saw his rifle move, and my heart stuttered. Shivers slid down my arms. I went still as a dead rabbit.

The soldier continued on without stopping, and Gabe and I exhaled as one.

We didn’t speak, but I nodded to show I was ready to continue. We moved house by house through the artisans’ quarter and toward the center of the village. Every street was empty, a consequence of Officer Raine’s curfew that he’d imposed on the entire community. Nothing stirred except us and the wind.

Gabe stumbled in the dark of an alley. He put his hand against a stack of small barrels lining the wall to steady himself.

“Careful,” I whispered, because the barrels were piled precariously and looked almost ready to fall.

We crept through the market, which stood empty in the darkness, the banners fluttering halfheartedly in the wind and the stalls standing bare. We passed the base of the hill crowned by the Mayor’s house, and I didn’t turn my head to look, because looking at it only sent a stab of pain straight to my heart. We passed the Quota Yard, the Meeting House, and finally, we reached the place we sought.

The Farther offices.

The building gleamed unnaturally in the moonlight, crouched between two buildings of stone, an ugly metal interloper amid the ancient architecture. I stole around the side, taking care not to make any noise that might alert the soldiers dozing at the front. Ivy had given us explicit instructions about how we might enter. At the back, a rain barrel sat just below a narrow window. The glass gleamed like ice.

Gabe held out one hand to steady me as I climbed from the barrel to the lip of the windowpane. I pressed my fingers to the glass. The seams creaked, and I froze, counting my breaths, waiting for soldiers to come running.

No one came.

I produced the tools I needed from my belt and began stripping away the paste that held the glass in place. It was a narrow opening, probably deemed too small to be a security concern, but I would be able to squeeze through. Near starvation had its benefits after all, I supposed.

The glass finally gave, and I passed the sheet down to Gabe before swinging my legs up and twisting my body to fit inside. The edges of the window scraped a layer of skin from my arms, but then I was free and I dropped to the floor below.

All was still quiet.

I reached into the pouch at my belt and produced a few of the glowing fungi that grew in the deepest regions of the Frost. Their faint light illuminated a desk, a chair, and a row of cabinets. I was in Korr’s office. The same room he’d once interrogated me about Echlos’ location.

I crossed the floor to the desk and fumbled with the drawers. My fingers brushed over papers—arrest records, prisoner processing documents. I ran my thumb down the names. A...B...

Brewer
.

I pulled the papers from the drawer and set them on the desk before returning to the file. I looked under M, for Mayor, but there was nothing.

Ann was not recorded as being arrested for anything.

I muttered a curse and shut the drawer. There must be some record of where she’d gone, what had happened to her.

A faint rasp reached my ears from outside, the whisper of a foot against stone, and the urgency of what I was doing spurred me to action. I gathered up the papers for Adam and stuffed them into my belt. Lifting the glowing fungi, I crossed to the other side of the room to scan the shelves. I didn’t know what I was looking for—anything that might give me a clue, I supposed. I saw books, a case of knives, the map of the Frost. A knife was embedded in the center of the map. Goose bumps rippled over my skin when I realized the point pierced the location of my family’s farm.

Footsteps sounded in the hall. I dropped the fungi back into the pouch at my belt and scurried for the window. I hoisted myself up onto the sill with the aid of a chair and wriggled out, gasping at the pain as I forced myself through the tiny space once more. Then I was out, crouched on the window ledge, and Gabe was handing me the plate of glass, the whites of his eyes visible in the darkness. I wedged it against the frame, close enough to not be noticed, and then I scrambled down with Gabe’s help.

As soon as my feet touched the cobbled stones of the alley below, I was already running. Gabe kept pace beside me, and we didn’t stop until we’d passed the Meeting House and the walls of the Quota Yard. We caught our breath in a shadow below the new Farther clock tower.

“Did you get it?” he demanded, the first words he’d spoken since we’d left Echlos an hour ago.

I jerked my head in a nod even as my chest tightened at my failure to find everything. “I found Adam’s file. There was nothing for Ann.”

The admission filled me with despair. Gabe opened his mouth to reply, but there was a shout behind us.

“You there! Stop!”

We ran.

Lights flared, and we were flying over the cobblestones and through the darkness on unsteady legs. My heart pounded against my ribs as our pursuers drew closer. We couldn’t outrun them. We had to hide.

Gabe pulled me behind a stack of firewood, and the soldiers ran past.

We stayed there, wedged between wood and stone for what felt like an eternity, the seconds and minutes measured by my heartbeat. Slowly, my panic eased. The wind whistled between the cracks in the wood. A mouse scratched in the wall behind us. Gabe’s breath was soft against my shoulder.

When all had been silent for some time, we moved again.

The scuff of footsteps tore through the silence. A shout rang out. They’d been waiting for us to move.

There was no time to think, only to act. We needed an explanation for why we were out in the darkness. I grabbed the lapels of Gabe’s shirt and pulled him close for a kiss. His lips parted under mine in surprise.

A light flared, illuminating our bodies, blinding me, and I heard the click of a gun.

“Don’t move,” a voice snarled.

We were trapped. There was nowhere to run. Slowly, I released Gabe’s shirt.

They approached us, congealing into human form out of the darkness like nightmares. The tallest one stepped in front of us and ripped away my scarf. His expression didn’t change; he didn’t recognize me. Of course not. I was just one face among hundreds of villagers that he probably never glanced twice at.

“You’ve broken curfew,” he said, glaring into my eyes. His gaze slid to Gabe, who was adjusting his scarf to cover his face again after our kiss.

Sweat prickled across my back. If the soldier removed Gabe’s scarf, all would be lost, because Gabe resembled his brother, Korr, almost identically. The soldiers would recognize his face immediately, and they would know we were not ordinary villagers out for a midnight rendezvous.

The soldier reached up to tear the scarf away.

“I’m sorry,” I stuttered out, desperate to distract him. “We didn’t mean to—”

The soldier swung around to address me. “You people never do. A more inept bunch of backwater hicks, I’ve never encountered.”

Rage curled in my stomach along with my fear, but I pushed it away. “Haven’t you ever been in love?”

The soldier laughed in derision.

I didn’t say anything else. I reached for Gabe’s hand. Maybe he would think that’s all we were, two foolish youngsters sneaking out past curfew to steal kisses.

Gabe’s scarf forgotten, the soldier crossed his arms and eyed us both.

“Come,” he commanded. “A flogging and a night in a cell will teach you to remember curfew next time.”

Gabe and I exchanged a glance. We stepped away from the wall. My heart thudded in triple-time.

We needed to get out of here.

We came easily, docile, and the soldiers relaxed. They were tired; it was late. I could see them checking the path of the moon, muttering about their bunks. They weren’t paying close attention, not when it came to a pair of village brats destined for a night in a cell to teach them a lesson about the foolishness of romance in the middle of a war.

We reached the main street. Ahead was the dark alley we’d come through before, the one lined with precarious stacks of barrels...barrels that might be easily dislodged.

I squeezed Gabe’s hand to get his attention. I looked at the alley and nodded.

Now
.

We ran. The soldiers shouted. When we reached the end of the alley, I whirled and shoved at the base of the stack of barrels. The whole wall of them crumbled behind us.