The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (25 page)

“Here,” I say, taking
a penknife from my pocket to cut a thin strip of fabric off my
vest. “Turn around.” He’s obviously confused but he follows my
order without question. I put the cotton between my teeth while I
gather Siah’s hair in my hands, and then use the strip to tie it
together. When I’m done, his hair sits neatly at the base of his
neck.

“Better?” I ask,
turning him by his shoulders. He still looks a little startled. He
gathers me into his arms without warning, pressing me close and
letting me go in the same breath.

“Thank you,” he says.
He clears his throat, biting his lip before he catches himself. “We
should … we should go.” He lifts a hand to run it through his hair
before remembering it’s tied back. “You can slay me in
training.”

I
think I already did
, I don’t say. Who knew
Yosiah would be more flustered by me tying up his hair than
flirting with him? I smile without meaning to.

I face our tent and
yell, “Tom!”

“No,” is his groaned
response from inside.

“Yes.
” I put as much force in my
voice as I can.

“No.”

“Yes!
”

“I don’t wanna get
up,” he whines, but I hear shuffling that suggests he’s already out
of bed.

“You don’t want me to
come in there and drag you out either, do you?”

Thomas mutters
something under his breath and shoves the tent doors apart, his
expression sulky and his T-shirt on backwards. I kneel down to turn
it the right way, getting an “Ugh, Leah,” for my efforts.

“You’re the worst
sister ever,” he grumbles.

I
take his hand and lead him through the Station. “I know.” The
warmth I’m still not used to has sunk into my gut and spread
through my body—happiness that comes from having my family with me,
my
whole
family.
“I’m awful. But lucky for you, I won’t be with you all
morning—maybe even all day.”

He peers up at me,
eyes dark in his small, pale face. “Does that mean we’re gonna stay
with Hele?”

“Probably.” Hele and
Horatia always seem happy enough to look after the kids. I get the
feeling Hele would like one of her own, but I understand why she
and Dalmar never had one. Forgotten London wasn’t the kind of place
you wanted to bring a kid into, and with the life expectancy of
twenty … what was the point of having a kid you wouldn’t see reach
even five years old? It was different for people like our mum—with
her bribes and her treatments—but normal people? They don’t live
past twenty two at the oldest, sometimes even sixteen. I wonder if
that’s any different now we’re free of the town, or whether I’ve
still got death hanging over me.

I shake my head. Of
course death is following me. None of us are safe, not even in
Manchester where nobody has seen an Official for twenty odd
years.

“Awesome!” Tom says,
stealing me from my morbid thoughts. “Hele tells us cool
stories.”

“Oh, I see how it is.”
I purse my lips. “I have some pretty cool stories to tell as well,
you know?”

Tom
rolls his eyes. “Yeah but yours are always ‘There was a bad guy, I
punched him, the end’. Hele
tells
stories, like properly.”

I
shrug. He’s right. I’m not sure I even know how to
tell
a story. I think
that’s something that comes from your mum and dad, something that’s
passed on. Hele must have had decent parents.

“Don’t worry,” Yosiah
says in my ear. “You’re still my favourite storyteller.”

I shove him away with
a glare, watching, with a bolt of pride, the quick way he falters
for balance on his right leg and steadies himself without issue.
He’s getting back to normal, the injuries he got when he jumped
from the Underground healing. He nods, like he knows exactly what
I’m thinking, and flashes me a grin.

“Game on,” he
mouths.

Adrenaline wakes up my
nerves. I’m looking forward to this morning.

10:24. 26.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Northlands, Manchester.

The training session
turns out to be bullshit.

Anna, a wiry woman
with short blonde hair and a big nose, prances about on a mat in
front of us, using a volunteer to demonstrate ‘key self-defence
techniques’. She shows us how to block a punch, in extreme slow
motion, how to aim a punch, what to do if someone catches you from
behind. This is all common sense to me. If someone grabs you, elbow
them in the gut. If someone’s trying to hit you, throw up your
hands to protect your face. This is rookie stuff we all learned in
bar fights the hard way.

Then again, Horatia
seems to be eagerly taking it in. I guess she never had to
fight—Honour probably fought twice as often so she’d stay
sheltered. Shame that didn’t work out. Those kinds of things never
do. The more you try to protect someone, the harder it hits them
when the bad things come knocking. And the bad things always come
with a loaded gun. That’s just the way the world works.

So I’m putting up with
the slow, boring demonstrations because it’s helping Horatia and a
few of the other beginners in here with us—people I don’t recognise
who must be family of Guardians. There’s a twelve year old girl
with a thin stature and a shock of dark hair called Allie that I’m
almost certain is Timofei’s sister. But where did she come
from?

“They’ve been
harbouring her here,” Yosiah says, noticing my attention on the
girl.

“How do you know
that?” I hiss, looking at him from the corner of my eye as I fake
punch the space in front of me.

“I asked.”

“Oh.” I chance a full
look at him and am almost blinded by a beam on sunlight. It’s too
bright in this room—I can see the dust floating through the air.
“Why don’t I ever think of that?”

“Because you don’t do
subtle.”

I make a face,
accepting the truth of his words, and adjust my stance to mirror
the instructor.

“You’re being very
patient with this,” Siah says. “That’s unlike you.”

I shrug. “It’s helping
people. I don’t wanna be an asshole about it when it might save
their lives.”

He doesn’t answer. I
turn to him again, shielding my eyes this time. There’s a look on
his face I can only describe as ‘soft’. It does this awful thing to
my insides, makes it feel like my bones are turning to gloopy tar.
I look away. This has to stop, this bizarre soppy mess Yosiah keeps
reducing me to. I’m Miya, street hardened and world hating. But he
keeps making me into some naïve, heartsick thirteen year old.

I’m relieved when Anna
decides we can move onto basic gun handling. Guns I can deal
with.

I cross the floor,
squinting against the light. The sun is getting higher in the sky,
streaming through the double row of windows in the ceiling to make
molten squares on the old wood floor. The building doesn’t look
like it gets much use and excessive dust is proof of it. Someone
must have run a mop over the floor before we came in, though,
because Livy and Tom and a handful of other kids are using the
shine of the floorboards to propel themselves across the room. They
skid right into the wood-panelled wall and let out loud whoops at
each collision. Tom hits his head pretty hard and fear shoots
through my veins, but he pumps his arms triumphantly, totally
carefree.

Kids are weird.

I roll my eyes,
turning my back on them. Anna is lining up antiquated guns on a
bench, her movements assured. They’re bulky and look heavy, like
the ones Honour and I found in that storeroom in Hull.

“Will those work?” I ask Siah. “They look
old
.”

“Only if they’ve got
shells.” At my look he says, “Probably.”

“Yeah, but will they
work properly?” I scuff a shoe on the floorboards. “They won’t just
go off on their own will they?”

“No.” A light touch on
my elbow makes me look up. “I can show you how to work one, if you
don’t feel comfortable enough with them after this. I’ve used these
old models before.” His lips quirk into a smile. “Not for a very
long time, but I remember it well.”

“It’s okay.” The look
in Yosiah’s eye is the one he gets when he thinks about his history
as an Official. I don’t know what he had to do back then, since he
was only a medic, but I don’t reckon it was good. He’s seen a lot
of people die, I know that. Maybe even killed a lot of them
himself. I’m sure it’s the shadow of a killer I see in him. “If you
don’t want to, it’s fine.”

“I don’t mind. I was
just remembering when I first handled one.” He laughs through his
nose. “I nearly shot myself.”

“What happened?” I ask
too quickly. I want to know about his past so badly, but even now
I’m not sure if Siah would be okay with that. He must know I’m
desperate to know because his smile warms.

“If you want to know
something about me, you can just ask. I think we’re past keeping
secrets.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No.” His thumb moves
over my arm and only now do I realise he hasn’t dropped his hand
from my elbow. His touch is unthinking, familiar. Too familiar for
the short time I’ve been letting him closer, which makes me wonder:
how long has he been holding back? Is this how he is with friends
when they’re not distant like me—tactile and affectionate? “No,” he
repeats.

I frown up at him.
“No, what?”

“I kept secrets from
you because it was safer in Forgotten London. I didn’t want my past
coming after me, and for you to be harmed because of it. But nobody
can come after me now. Even if they do, they can’t hurt me as
badly. It’s different now.” He gives me a long look, fondness and
something that’s too quick for me to catch it. “I’m not hiding from
you anymore, Miya. Anything you want to know, I’ll tell you.”

“How did you get your
limp?”

Siah’s laugh is sharp
and loud. “That’s the first thing you ask?”

“I want to know. I’ve
always wanted to know.”

He takes his hand from
my elbow to touch my jaw, a barely there brush of fingertips. “I
was shot by a civilian with a revenge agenda against Officials. He
broke into the medic tent and shot me before any soldiers could
stop him. Took out two others and my patient too. I was lucky.”

A dark mood rolls
through me. “What happened to not hiding from me?”

“What?” He steps back,
a flash of shock in his eyes, his mouth open. “I don’t know—”

“Bullshit.” I roll
onto my tiptoes to get right in his face. I keep my voice down,
conscious of the people around us. “You’re lying to me, Yosiah. I
know you, and don’t ever forget it, because I can see through every
lie you tell.”

He draws a ragged
breath, covers his eyes with a scarred hand. “Can I think of how to
tell you? It’s not something I can say in a room like this. And I
don’t know how to explain. But I’ll figure it out.” He lowers his
hand, meets my eyes. “I promise. I just … I need time.”

I can’t refuse the raw
plea in his voice, the nervous twitch in his hand. He notices it
the moment I do and makes a fist. I cover his hand with my own,
giving him time to pull out of my reach. He doesn’t. “Okay,” I say.
“But you have to tell me. At some point.”

He nods—a promise.

I take my hand away
and look at the ceiling, the wooden beams and dirty windows, as I
think. My fingers feel warm, itchy. I’m aware of every place they
touched Siah’s knuckles, the scratches and gouges and old cuts that
clutter the back of his hand. I can let Siah have this secret
because I’m harbouring one of my own. I can be fair.

I can at least try to
be.

I sigh, lowering my
gaze. “Then tell me about your sister. I know your mum and dad
kicked you out but I don’t know anything about Kari.”

The instructor calls
us to attention then, done with whatever she was wasting time with.
Siah doesn’t have chance to answer me, since we have to pay
attention to the firearm demonstration. This time I actually watch,
since I know fuck all about shooting people or—as it turns
out—actually handling a gun.

Anna waves us over
after the tutorial and tells us each to pick up a gun—“Exactly as I
showed you!”—and just hold it, promising none of them are loaded or
harmful.

Naturally, I go for
the biggest. Yosiah snickers behind me, his breath blowing sweaty
strands of hair from the back of my neck. I turn to give him a dark
glare—which has no affect. I’ve lost the ability to intimidate
Siah, if I even had it in the first place. Something tells me he’s
been humouring me for the past two years.

I want to know when he
stopped.

At some point Yosiah
dropped all his walls around me, and I never even noticed. It must
have been just after the Fall of Forgotten London. I was too
overwhelmed by having my brother and sister back, by losing my home
and my mother, to notice anything.

Have
I
let
my guard drop, too? I hope not. God knows what he’d be able to read
in me if he was paying attention. I flick my eyes up to him,
tightening my hold on the black gun reflexively when I see that
he’s paying attention now. Did he see everything I just thought?
Are all my feelings written in permanent marker across my face? I
swallow against a sudden tightness in my throat.

“What?” Yosiah closes
the small distance between us, his head lowered and voice urgent.
“What is it, Miya?”

I wipe every
expression off my face. “It’s nothing.”

“No, it’s something.
Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it.”

“Siah, chill.” I step
around him. “I just thought of something that … reminded me of my
mum. It’s gone now.”

The tension leaves him
but he’s still alert, his eyes watchful. He starts at the sound of
another idiot kid slamming into the wall, flipping around like he’s
ready to attack.