Bluewing (23 page)

I turned to go.

“This is my fault,” Jonn said. His voice scraped the silence, barely a whisper.

I stopped, turned. “It isn’t your fault.”

“I said not to test the serum. If we had...”

“We can’t know that. She might have refused to take it. It might not have worked. We don’t know, Jonn.”

He shook his head and refused to say anything else.

~

I went alone to the village. Jullia deserved to hear of her sister’s death firsthand, and since I was with Everiss when she died, the telling was mine to bear.

She absorbed the news without speaking, and when I’d finished laying out the barest details before her, I fell silent too. The darkness curled around and between us, and I shivered as a chilly breeze touched my cheeks. I was like ice, splintering.

“She died a hero,” Jullia said, low and determined.

“Yes.”

“Her death will not be in vain. She died preparing for the liberation of the Frost.”

I nodded. My own words choked me. I thought of Jonn and his guilt. I thought of the serum. I thought of everything we had left to accomplish.

“We have a plan,” I said. “Tell the Blackcoats—I mean, the People for the Liberation of the Frost. Tell them we have a plan, a way to get around Raine’s edict about passes. Tell them the liberation will happen.”

DARKNESS SHADED ME as I crouched in the bushes. Adam was beside me, and I was aware of his warmth even though we did not touch.

Before us, in the clearing, Gabe stood holding Claire’s gun. He turned it over in his hands, and I could tell he was frightened even though he hid his emotions well.

We were waiting for a Watcher.

The wind stirred the tree branches around us and brought the scent of pine with it. Gabe shifted. His fingers played nervously with the edge of his cloak. He glanced our direction and then away.

“What if it doesn’t work?” I said to Adam in a whisper for what must have been the tenth time. Anxiety danced in my chest, a sickening rhythm of fear and dread.

“Gabe wanted to do this,” he reminded me, probably because he was tired of explaining how we’d be there to distract the monster with our own blood while Gabe threw a net of snow blossoms over himself and ran.

I chafed my hands together. In my head, I kept seeing Everiss’s lifeless body in the snow. I kept hearing her scream cut short. I raised my eyes to Gabe’s, and his gaze burned through me.

That was when we heard the distant rumble of a guttural growl.

“Got one,” Adam muttered.

The Watcher burst into the clearing at a run, eyes blazing red and mouth open to reveal a row of glittering incisors. Gabe braced himself. His arm that held the gun trembled.

“No,” Adam muttered under his breath. “Don’t shoot it. The knife, man.”

Slowly, Gabe unclenched his fingers and let the gun fall into the snow. He withdrew a knife from his belt and drew the tip across his finger. Red blossomed against his skin.

The Watcher shuddered to a halt.

Gabe didn’t move as the creature turned and vanished into the forest again.

I leaned against the tree next to me and shut my eyes.

We’d found the serum.

~

We threw ourselves into a whirlwind of plotting and planning. Adam and I tracked the movements of the Aeralian soldiers until we’d mapped all the trails they always took. We chose a clearing well away from their patrol circuit that we could use to assemble the wagons and other supplies. I continued to meet Korr at my family’s farmhouse, which now stood empty. My heart ached every time I stepped through the door, but if everything went well, it wouldn’t be long before Jonn, Ivy, and I could return to it.

Resuming contact with the Blackcoats was trickier. They did not yet know we were partnering with Korr, and I doubted they’d trust him. I had to steal into the village at night to get messages from Jullia. Along with the messages from the Blackcoats addressed to “Bluewing,” she gave me scraps of cloth for disguises, and food if she could spare it. She said little, and her eyes were always red. Everiss’s death had taken something vital from her, but she worked all the more grimly and doggedly since.

I poured over the notes from the Blackcoats with Jonn, Adam, and Ivy once I’d carried them back to the mansion ruins. We’d agreed on a time—two weeks from now. Jonn threw himself into the liberation effort with determinism shored up by grief.

“Two weeks is not much time,” he said as we sat at the table, discussing plans yet again. “We still have to assemble costumes, get the wagons, plan strategy...”

“I think we can do it,” Adam said. He looked to me. “Have you spoken to Stone?”

“He agreed to meet me two weeks following my release from their camp. It should be tomorrow,” I said. “When he comes, I’ll make our offer to him.”

“Good. Then let’s get to work,” he said.

~

I waited for Stone in the greenhouse with the supplies we’d promised to give his people. I settled on a chunk of rock that lay behind a cluster of fruit trees and let myself relax for the first time in days. The rays of sunlight scattered light through the glass, and I watched condensation gather and drip on the edges of leaves. It was so hot I removed my cloak.

The door hissed. I straightened and reached for my knife, but instead of Stone, Gabe parted the vegetation and stepped onto the path.

“Jonn said I’d find you here,” he said, his tone cautious. He strode over and dropped down beside me. I scooted over to give him some room to sit.

He settled himself and drummed his hands against his knees. They were small, princely hands, but they’d always fit mine perfectly. A place in my chest throbbed with pain, and I drew in a shaky breath.

“We’ve had a lot of additions to our group, haven’t we?” he said finally. “Ivy, Ann, Clara...”

Adam
, I finished for him silently.

He was waiting for me to comment. “We’ve had some subtractions, too.”

He nodded. We were both silent, waiting for the pain to pass.

“It’s changed the dynamic,” he continued. “It’s no longer you and me going on missions anymore, is it? You go off with him, because that’s how it was before.” He paused. “You’re glad he’s back.”

A statement of fact, not an accusation. Perhaps it was a question, too, but an unspoken one that hid between the things he’d said.

I turned my head to study his expression. He was squinting at the sun through the glass. With my eyes I traced the curve of his cheekbone, the dark slash of his lashes against his skin, the way his hair fell over his forehead, long and untrimmed. He was handsome, and even after months of rough living, he had a refined way of moving, sitting, speaking. Something brimmed in my heart—care, concern...love. I joined him in gazing at the light that glittered through the ceiling instead of speaking.

“You and Claire have been keeping close.”

“Clara,” he corrected softly.

I shrugged.

“I’m glad she’s here,” he said. “We were friends in the other time.” He turned to me, his expression beseeching. “She’s a good person, whatever her mistakes were. I want you to know that.”

“Gabe...”

“I know you don’t trust her now, but—”

I snorted. “I certainly don’t trust her.”

“Well shoot me, Lia, is there anyone you do trust?”

Adam
. His was the first name that came to mind. I blinked.

Another hiss of the door distracted us. Stone. I stood as he approached, and Gabe warily rose to his feet beside me.

Stone stopped and spread his hands in a show of nonaggression. He wasn’t wearing his ghostly white mask this time, only a thick cloak.

“I see you survived your run through the Compound after you escaped our camp,” he said to Gabe.

“I did,” Gabe responded, crossing his arms.

Stone sized him up in a way that might have come across as a challenge, and I laid a hand on Gabe’s arm as he stiffened. We were here for purposes of collaboration, not argument or threats.

“Please,” I said quietly.

Gabe muttered something about having business elsewhere, and after a dark glance at Stone, he left us alone.

“Lia Weaver,” Stone said. “You have the supplies and information you promised us?”

“Yes. And it turns out that we have more to discuss than you know.”

“Oh?”

I took a deep breath. Selling people on ideas was hardly my greatest strength. I wished Ivy or Ann was here to do it instead, but they weren’t, and they couldn’t. They were strangers to him. I was not.

“We plan to expel the Farthers from the Frost in two weeks’ time, and we need your help.”

I paused, expecting an objection, but he didn’t say anything.

I continued, “If your people join us, we might have a chance.”

“Join you?”

“We need manpower. We need numbers to stand and fight with us.”

His face hardened a little at the word
fight
. He looked pleased, but I could not be sure. I had not convinced him yet.

“And in return?” he asked. “What do we receive in exchange for this costly gesture?” His gaze strayed to my arm.

“Not my blood,” I said. “Something far better.”

~

The deal I made with Stone and his people secured us the numbers we needed. But still, other things remained to be accomplished, and the deadline was rapidly approaching. We spent hours at the table—Jonn, Ivy, Ann, Gabe, Adam, and me—discussing, plotting, planning.

“Only a few of us have to convincingly pass as members of a traveling caravan,” Jonn reminded me. “The rest will be hiding in the wagons. And the Blackcoats will be waiting in the village to come out and fight with us.”

“Fight?” Ann asked from her place at the table. Astonishment colored her voice.

“Of course,” Ivy said. “What did you think we were going to do, hold hands and dance?”

“It’s not going to be a full-out battle,” Jonn said. “But we have to get to Raine somehow, and he’ll be heavily guarded. If we can take him captive, then we’ll be able to force them to agree to our demands. We’ll force them to leave Iceliss.”

“I thought...” She shook her head. “I mean, fight with what? Capture him with what? Sticks and stones?”

“We have arrows,” Jonn said. “Knives. Some firearms...” He looked at me as if for help reassuring her, and I spread my hands helplessly. I’d been so busy focusing on rescuing people and finding food and securing alliances that I had not put a great deal of thought into
how
we’d be liberating the Frost. That kind of thing was Jonn’s department.

“What else do we have, Lia?” Jonn asked.

I glanced around the room. “We have cans and cans of supplies, most of them worthless. We have the books and all the other junk I found in Borde’s laboratory. We have cots and rags and a lot of hungry people.”

Ann knit her fingers together. Her nails were dirty—something I’d never thought I would see. She’d always been so clean, so proper, so stately. “I’ve seen the soldiers training in Astralux. We will be no match for them. Look at us. We have less than twenty people total, half of whom are either two old or too young for combat. And how many of the Blackcoats do you think will be prepared to fight? How many Wanderers?”

She was right. I looked at Adam and then at all the people I loved in the room. Did we really think we could be any match for trained soldiers, even with the help of the Wanderers?

Adam caught my eye. “What are you thinking?”

I shook my head because I didn’t know yet. My feet itched to pace, but I stayed in my seat and listened to the others bicker about strategy and method. Ann fell silent again. Adam traced the map with his fingers, his forehead knit with thought. And suddenly the walls of the room were too close, and the air too dark and dank, and the candlelight too dim. I shoved back my chair and headed for the stairs.

I heard the soft pad of footsteps behind me, and when I looked, Adam had followed. I stopped to see what he wanted.

“Keep going,” he murmured. “I want to clear my head, too. We need a little of the Frost in our lungs, I think.”

Together we climbed the stairs and went out through the kitchen to the back porch of the mansion ruin. Shadows painted the world purple, and a milky spread of stars glittered overhead like a crust of freshly fallen snow. The air was crisp against my cheeks and nose, but the edge had gone out of the cold with the coming Thaw. I smelled the scent of snow blossoms on the wind, a faint and reassuring perfume that sent a thousand memories cascading through my mind. I inhaled it deeply, savoring one moment of comfort.

“Ann is right,” I said finally. “We don’t have the firepower to force them to do what we want, not if we’re being realistic.”

“Perhaps not if we try to go in and face them head-on,” Adam said. “But there might be another way.”

“But what?” My mind spun as I gazed across the shadow-riddled landscape. I inhaled another lungful of snow blossom scent and closed my eyes. The wind stirred my hair. In the distance, I heard the crunch of some animal rustling in the underbrush.

And the inkling of inspiration—insane inspiration—began to take shape. My stomach churned, and my heart beat fast as I pondered it. It was crazy. It was absolutely mad.

But it might work.

What had Jonn asked me downstairs?

What else do we have, Lia
?

We had more than we realized. Much, much more.

I opened my eyes and turned to Adam. The inkling of a plan was taking root.

Footsteps clattered behind me, and Ivy appeared in the doorway.

“Lia. I have an idea.”

“So do I,” I said, and smiled.

WE MOVED THROUGH the forest, traveling as silently as a group of almost twenty people could. We were heading for the clearing where the four wagons waited, covered in canvas. Black cloaks clothed our backs and hid our faces, and we carried packs of supplies—rags and paints that would transform us from skinny fugitives into colorful, mysterious caravan people. My brother rode at the front of the group on the gelding; Adam and I brought up the rear on foot.