Aeralis (7 page)

The Wanderers’ camp was several miles beyond my family’s farmstead. The tents cropped up abruptly from the forest floor like a cluster of boulders. A branch snapped beneath me as I approached, and guards materialized from behind trees. Their eyes searched my face, and they lowered their weapons.

“I’m looking for Stone,” I said, in a tone that signaled I was not someone to be trifled with, not today. My entire world was collapsing around me. I was iron and fire inside.

One of the guards melted away into the trees. The others regarded me without speaking. I stared coolly back.

After a moment, they averted their eyes.

Stone appeared at the edge of the camp. “Lia Weaver. What brings you to us?”

“We need to talk,” I said.

Stone nodded to the guards, and they returned to their posts, leaving us alone. He stretched out an arm toward the paths to indicate that we should walk. I joined him.

“And how is your brother?” he asked.

“Not good,” I said. “The Healers say he is dying.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“There’s more. Much more.” I recounted my meeting with Gordon and the report the Healers had given me. “This must remain between us,” I finished. “I can’t cause a panic in the village.”

“It will not leave my lips,” he promised.

“Stone, do you remember when your people kidnapped me and brought me to your camp, and I asked how you knew about the power of my blood?”

He nodded. “I remember.”

“You mentioned a man. You said your people called him Scar.”

“Yes,” Stone said.

“Tell me more about him.”

“There isn’t much to tell,” he said. “We came across him in the woods. He was injured and sick. We sheltered him until he’d healed, and then he left us.”

“You mentioned a companion who was with him?”

Stone inclined his head. “Yes, the man we called Scar was accompanied by a younger man with brown hair and sad eyes. He didn’t speak much. He seemed to know the land much better than his friend.”

“What happened to them?”

“I don’t know,” Stone said. “They headed for Aeralis.”

Aeralis
.

My stomach twisted. So vast and so far a place. How would I ever find him?

“They didn’t say what they were looking for, or why, but they were seeking something. We did not probe.” He hesitated. “He mentioned the capital city, Astralux.”

I thanked Stone and headed back into the Frost. I needed to think.

The world was white and blue around me. Stingweed snagged my cloak, and I freed the hem with automatic movements as my mind spun with thoughts. Far away, I saw a mothkat flap from the rotted end of a fallen tree. The sight of the carnivorous scavenger made me think of my sister—Ivy had once rescued a wounded mothkat, something only she would do—and I bit back a sob.

What was I going to do?

Darkness began to creep across the snow. I kept walking, my steps relentless and methodical as I paced the paths of the forest. Snow blossoms brushed at my ankles. Somewhere far away, I heard the snarl of a snow panther. Wind tossed my hair and bit my cheeks, and I smelled smoke.

I stopped. Smoke?

Unconsciously, I’d headed to my family’s farm. I crept forward and broke through the wall of trees into the clearing.

The farm was burning.

Orange flames licked at the sides of the buildings and swirled up toward the sky. The roar of it filled my ears as the heat seared my face. I screamed, wept, and threw snow helplessly at the conflagration.

It was no use.

The house was almost consumed. The barn was a snarling ball of fire and soot.

The former Mayor crept from the woods to meet me. “They came,” he said. “They set it on fire...I fled out a window....”

I stared into the flames. My body was numb. The blood in my veins was like ice despite the heat roasting my skin. “They?”

“People from the village,” he said. “They wore masks. I didn’t see their faces.”

I shut my eyes. I couldn’t breathe.

“I’m going to Aeralis,” Ann’s father said. “I cannot stay here.”

“No,” I agreed. “You should go at once.”

Without another word, I turned and headed for the village.

~

I flung open the door to the Assembly Hall. The sound of the knob hitting the wall reverberated through the space. Heads turned. Someone stood at the front of the room speaking. A Fisher. He paused to stare at me.

I stalked down the aisle. My clothes were sooty. My skin was blistered from the heat of the fire. My hands were clenched.

“What are you—” he began.

“Shut up,” I roared.

He shut up.

I reached the front and whirled to face the room. They were here, half the village, sitting with their hands folded and their mouths shut, looking at me in confusion and bewilderment. Some of them frowned knowingly.

“What is wrong with you?” I demanded.

Silence.

“You burned my farm. You. Burned. My. Farm.”

The Fisher tried to speak. I cut him off.

“If you cannot stop this madness, we are all going to kill each other. We have to work together. We are free from the Farthers, but we are not free from our own fear!”

They were all very still.

“You will rebuild my family’s farm,” I snarled. “You’ll do it when I get back.”

“Get back?” someone ventured.

I left without answering.

~

I paced in my room in the house on the hill until Ivy found me. She sagged in the doorway, hair disheveled, clothing still torn and stained with her blood, face white.

“They burned the farm,” I said tonelessly. “I don’t know who did it. Villagers. Idiots. I think all of our things—Ma’s quilts, Da’s notebooks, all of it—are gone.” I looked at her. If I didn’t do something, she would be gone soon, too.

Ivy sat on the bed. Her skin was the color of bleached bone.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“Earlier, I spoke to Stone. He told me a few months ago about a man they’d helped, a man who’d known who I was. I think it might have been Borde.”

“Oh,” she said.

“But there’s a problem. Stone says Borde left for Aeralis. Astralux, maybe.”

Gabe’s words floated into my mind.
If you ever need anything, if you ever are in Aeralis and you need to find me, come to the Plaza of Horses
.

“Oh,” Ivy said again. “And?”

Resolution hardened in my gut. “I’m going to find him. I’m going to Aeralis.”

Ivy chewed her lip. She looked at me, and her eyes shimmered with apprehension and hope. “That man said I have a few weeks before I’m infected. Do you think it will be enough time?”

I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know.

SEVEN

I PACKED THE next morning before the sun had risen. One sack, filled with the plainest garments I could find.

“Most of our clothing won’t be any good in Aeralis,” I’d overheard Adam explaining to Ann days ago before they’d left. “We’ll get new clothes,” he’d told her. “So take only what you’ll need for the journey.”

I had no such luxury awaiting me, so I selected the things that would blend best with the fashions I remembered from my last trip. I brushed my fingertips over the folded garments I was leaving behind. I was not sentimental, but something tethered me to the moment, holding me in place long enough to remember the things I’d done while wearing this cloak, that dress, those shoes.

Ivy was below in the foyer of the Mayor’s house, her eyes wide and her mouth stiff against any signs of telltale emotion when she spotted me with my bag, ready to leave. She looked older than the image of her I carried in my heart as she rose and watched me descend the stairs. She smoothed both hands down her dress and lifted her shoulders like a bird about to take flight. She was hope embodied. She was an angel. She was my sister, so precious and fragile. I ached at the thought of leaving her.

“I won’t be able to write,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but an unexpected rush of emotion flooded my head and muddled my thoughts.

“Of course not,” Ivy said, and she laughed nervously. “I won’t expect letters.” She stared at my face hard. “The Thorns—?”

“What about them?”

She twisted her fingers together. “Do they know you’re coming to Aeralis? I thought you were supposed to stay here.”

“Hang the Thorns if they think I’ll sit by idly and watch you die,” I snapped, although a flicker of fear ran through me at her question. I didn’t have time to wonder about that now, though.

I looked back at the stairs, thinking of the barely-breathing young man that slept in the sickroom. “Take care of Jonn for me.”

“You should say goodbye,” Ivy said.

A tug-of-war pulled my heart in two directions, but in the end, I heeded her suggestion and climbed the stairs again, alone, to get one last glimpse. When I reached his room, the Healer said I could go in, even though he was sleeping again and might not wake. I slipped inside and approached his bed. His eyes were shut, and his chest rose and fell beneath the quilt. I reached for his hand but didn’t touch him.

“I’m going away,” I whispered. “Something’s happened. Ivy will get the Sickness if I don’t.” I chewed my lip until blood flowed over my tongue as I stared at a hole in the quilt. “If you hadn’t done this to yourself, I wouldn’t be alone,” I said.

He didn’t move.

“They burned the farm, Jonn,” I said.

Jonn stirred but didn’t wake.

Maybe it was better that Da’s journals were gone, if that was what had led to Jonn’s idea for giving himself the Sickness in the first place. Anger rose in me, squeezing my throat shut. I rose and left the room.

Ivy waited by the door, the courage in her eyes threadbare and her smile tremulous. My heart was a stone in my chest as I looked at her.

“I’ll come back to you,” I promised. “I’ll find Borde and that device. I’ll fix this, Ivy.”

“Lia...” She faltered. “But if you don’t... I mean...”

“I’ll come back,” I said firmly. “I always have before.” I hugged her, and she was brittle in my arms—bony, restless with hope and sadness, bristling with bravado. I savored the warmth of her breath against my cheek, the tickle of her hair on my hands, and her scent of wool and charcoal and snow blossoms. She smelled like our home.

We stepped away from each other. I could delay no longer, not if I wanted to get a good start on the journey today. I went to the door and opened it without looking back, but I sensed her eyes on me all the way to the porch and into the yard.

I passed beneath the bars of the Cages into the Frost as dawn broke through the trees. The path was empty, and I ran it, just like in the days when I’d been rushing to deliver quota on time. My breath escaped from my lips in puffs of white, and my heartbeat kept time with my pounding footfalls. Around me, the white wilderness trembled with uneasy silence.

By the time my sides were aching and my legs were trembling from the run, I reached the river that separated the Frost from Aeralian land. My steps slowed. I stopped and stared at the rushing black water, and memories fell over me like a mist. I had a flash of a recollection of Cole at my elbow as we lingered at the brink of this river, catching sight of Aeralian soldiers through the trees. That had been before everything had started. Before everything had changed. When he was just a young village boy who wanted to court me, and I didn’t know he’d murdered my parents. I didn’t know what my Weaver blood meant. I didn’t know how much my heart could love.

Back then, nobody dared to cross the river.

Sucking in a deep breath, I gathered my courage and stepped into the icy water. Froth swirled around the soles of my boots as I leaped from rock to rock, avoiding the deepest parts. I reached the other side, and as I scrambled up the muddy bank, my stomach plummeted. I’d officially crossed into Aeralis.

There was no turning back now.

Mist clung to the trees on this side of the river, obscuring everything but the ground right in front of me. Light lanced through the gray, and then I was breaking through the fog as I reached level ground and left the river behind. An endless sky piled with clouds and a field of broken stalks and half-melted snow stretched away for miles. There were no trees. A cold wind swept over me and made my cloak curl around me.

This was Aeralis.

I’d seen it before when Korr and I had jumped a train and traveled to Astralux to rescue Adam, but that time, the world had whirled past in a blur. Now it stretched before me, unbroken and vast, a plain of dirty brown grass and a blank gray sky.

I began walking.

The whole day passed without any change in the landscape, until finally, as the sun was sinking, a dot appeared at the place where the fields met the sky. As I grew closer, a house took shape. Straggling fence posts formed a paddock to the left, and a lone barn huddled to the right. A single light glowed in an upper window.

I stopped in a yard of packed earth. The farmhouse was large, built of thick gray timbers. The barn behind it was built of sod. I approached the house and rapped the knocker twice, with three beats of silence in between. A Thorns signal.

Footsteps rang out on the other side, and the hinges groaned as someone cracked the door and peered out. Brilliant honey-brown eyes gazed at me, and the crack widened to reveal a young woman with thick black hair and a constellation of freckles one shade darker than her tanned skin. She was young, perhaps my age, but when she frowned at me, her mouth had a curve of perception that made her look much older. She sized me up with a glance of disinterest.

“Can I help you?”

I traced the sign of the Thorns in the dirt at my feet. A twinge of guilt filled me—my orders had been to remain in the Frost, and I was misusing information meant for other agents that I shouldn’t know in the first place—but it was only a twinge. I needed her help, and this was the only way she’d trust me.

“Ah,” the girl said. “I see. And your name?”

I straightened. “Bluewing.

The girl’s eyes widened slightly, and her cynical smile faded. I felt the slightest nudge of pleasure that I’d managed to impress her.