Through the Ever Night (9 page)

Morning sunlight filtered through the open doors and windows, falling in golden shafts across the hall. People lay everywhere—in piles along the walls, beneath tables, in the aisles. The quiet seemed impossible for such a large crowd. His gaze went to Aria for the thousandth time. She slept by Willow, Flea curled into a ball between them.

Roar woke, rubbing his eyes, and then Reef climbed to his feet nearby, pushing his braids back. The rest of the Six stirred to life, sensing Perry needed them. Twig nudged Gren, who shoved back while still half-asleep. Hyde and Hayden rose, sweeping their bows across their backs in unison and abandoning Straggler, who was still pulling on his boots. Quietly they moved past the sleeping tribe and followed Perry outside.

Apart from the puddles and branches, and the broken roof tiles scattered across the clearing, the compound looked the same. Perry scanned the hills. He didn’t see any fires, but the pungent stench of smoke hung in the damp air. He’d lost more land, he was certain. He only hoped it wasn’t more farmland or pasture, and that the rain had contained the damage.

Straggler pushed his way forward and wrinkled his nose, looking up. “Did I dream that last night?”

The Aether flowed calmly, blue sheets between wispy clouds. A normal spring sky. No blanket of glowing clouds. No spools of Aether churning above.

“Was the dream about Brooke?” Gren said. “Because then the answer is yes. And me too.”

Straggler shoved him in the shoulder. “Idiot. She’s Perry’s girl.”

Gren shook his head. “Sorry, Per. I didn’t know.”

Perry cleared his throat. “It’s all right. She’s not anymore.”

“Enough, both of you,” Reef said, glaring at Strag and Gren. “Where do you want us to start, Perry?”

More people filed out of the cookhouse. Gray and Wylan. Rowan, Molly, and Bear. As they looked around the compound and up to the sky, Perry saw the worried looks on their faces. Were they safe now, or would they see another storm soon? Was this the beginning of Aether year-round? He knew the questions were on all their minds.

Perry got them moving through the compound first, assessing damage to roofs, checking the livestock in the stables, and then working out to the fields. He sent Willow and Flea in search of Cinder, regretting last night. He’d been out of his mind, and he needed to find Cinder to apologize. Then he headed northwest with Roar. An hour later they stood before a smoldering field.

“This won’t help,” Roar said.

“It’s hunting land only. Not the best we had.”

“That’s sunny of you, Per.”

Perry nodded. “Thanks. I’m trying.”

Roar’s gaze moved to the edge of the field. “Look, here comes cheerfulness himself.”

Perry spotted Reef and smiled. Only Roar could entertain him at a time like this.

Reef gave him a report of the rest of the damage. They’d lost forestland to the south, adjacent to areas leveled by fires they’d had over the winter. “It just looks like a bigger stretch of ashes now,” Reef said. Every last one of the Tides’ beehives had been destroyed, and the water from both of the wells at the compound had been tainted and now tasted like ash.

With Reef’s report finished, Perry couldn’t avoid what had happened at the jetty any longer. Roar was spinning his knife in his hand, a trick he did when he grew bored. Perry knew he could say anything in front of him, but he still had to force his next words out.

“You saved my life, Reef. I owe you—”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Reef interrupted. “An oath is an oath. Something you could stand to learn.”

Roar slid the knife back into the sheath at his belt. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Reef ignored him. “You swore to protect the Tides.”

Perry shook his head. Wasn’t Old Will part of the tribe? “That’s what I did.”

“No. What you did is almost got yourself killed.”

“Should I have let him drown?”

“Yes,” Reef said sharply. “Or let me go in after him.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Because it was suicidal! Try and understand something, Peregrine.
Your life
is worth more than an old man’s. More than mine, too. You can’t just go diving in like you did.”

Roar laughed. “You don’t know him at all, do you?”

Reef spun, pointing a finger at him. “You should be trying to talk some sense into him.”

“I’m waiting to see if you’ll ever shut up,” Roar said.

Perry shot between them, pushing Reef back. “Go.” The fury in Reef’s temper shimmered red at the edge of his vision. “Take a walk. Cool off.”

Perry watched him stride away. Beside him, Roar cursed under his breath.

If this was happening between the two people most loyal to him, what was going on with the rest of the Tides?

On the way back, Perry spotted Cinder at the edge of the woods. He was waiting by the trail, fidgeting with his cap.

Roar rolled his eyes as soon he saw him. “See you later, Per. I’ve had enough,” he said, jogging off.

Cinder was toeing the grass as Perry walked up.

“I’m glad you came back,” Perry said.

“Are you?” Cinder said bitterly, without looking up.

Perry didn’t bother replying. He crossed his arms, noticing that his shoulder felt better than it had that morning. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. It won’t happen again.”

Cinder shrugged. After a few moments, he finally looked up. “Is your shoulder …?”

“It’s fine,” Perry said.

“I didn’t know about what happened when I came to see you. The girl—Willow—she told me this morning. She was real scared. For herself and her grandfather. And for you.”

“I was scared too,” Perry said. It almost seemed unbelievable to him now. A day ago he’d been underwater, seconds away from dying. “It wasn’t my best day. I’m still here, though, so it wasn’t the worst.”

Cinder flashed a smile. “Right.”

With Cinder’s temper finally settling, Perry saw his opportunity. “What happened in the storeroom?”

“I just got hungry.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“I don’t like eating during supper. I don’t know anybody.”

“You spent the winter with Roar,” Perry said.

“Roar only cares about you and Aria.”

And Liv,
Perry thought. It was true that Roar had few loyalties, but they were unbreakable. “So you snuck into the storeroom.”

Cinder nodded. “It was dark in there, and so quiet. Then all of a sudden I saw this beast with yellow eyes. It scared me so bad I dropped the lamp I was holding, and next thing I knew there was fire burning across the floor. I tried to put it out, but I was only making it worse, so I ran.”

Perry was stuck on the first part of the story. “You saw a
beast
?”

“Well, I thought so. But it was just the stupid dog, Flea. In the dark he looks like a demon.”

Perry’s mouth twitched. “You saw Flea.”

“It’s not funny,” Cinder said, but he was fighting a smile too.

“So Flea, the demon dog, scared you, and the lamp was what made that fire? It wasn’t … what you do with the Aether?”

Cinder shook his head. “No.”

Perry waited for him to say more. There were a hundred things he wanted to know about Cinder’s ability. About who he was. But Cinder would speak when he was ready.

“Are you going to make me leave?”

“No,” Perry said immediately. “I want you here. But if you’re going to be part of things, you need to be a part of
all
of it. You can’t run off whenever something goes wrong, or take food in the middle of the night. And you need to earn your way like everyone else.”

“I don’t know how,” Cinder said.

“How to what?”

“Earn my way. I don’t know how to do anything.”

Perry studied him. He didn’t know how to do
anything
? It wasn’t the first time Cinder had said something peculiar like that.

“Then we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. I’ll have Brooke get you a bow and start you on lessons. And I’ll talk to Bear tomorrow. He needs all the help he can get. One last thing, Cinder. When you’re ready, I want to hear everything you have to say.”

Cinder frowned. “Everything I have to say about what?”

“You,” Perry said.

Y
ou have a good way with pain,” Molly said.

Aria looked up from the bandage in her hand. “Thank you. Butter is a good patient.”

The mare blinked lazily in response to her name. Last night’s storm had triggered her flight instinct. Butter had kicked her stall in panic and suffered a gash along her front leg. To help Molly, whose hands were bothering her, Aria had already cleaned the wound and applied an antiseptic paste that smelled like mint.

Aria resumed rolling the bandage around Butter’s leg. “My mother was a doctor. A researcher, actually. She didn’t work with people often. Or with horses … ever.”

Molly scratched the white star at Butter’s forelock with fingers as gnarled as roots. Aria couldn’t help but think of Reverie, where ailments like arthritis had been cured through genetics long ago. She wished there were something she could do.

“Was?” Molly said, peering down.

“Yes … she died five months ago.”

Molly nodded thoughtfully, watching her with warm, soulful eyes the same color as Butter’s chestnut hair. “And now you’re here, away from your home.”

Aria looked around, seeing mud and straw everywhere. The smell of manure hung in the air. Her hands were cold and reeking of horse and mint. Butter, for the tenth time, nuzzled the top of her hair. This couldn’t have been more different from Reverie. “I’m here. But I don’t know where home is anymore.”

“What of your father?”

“He was an Aud.” Aria shrugged. “That’s all I know.”

She waited for Molly to say something fantastic, like,
I know exactly who your father is, and he’s right over here, hiding behind this stall
. She shook her head at her own silliness. Would that even help? Would finding her father take away the airy, gossamer feeling inside her?

“Shame to not have family at your Marking Ceremony tonight,” Molly said.

“Tonight?” Aria asked, glancing up. She was surprised Perry had scheduled it, right in the aftermath of the storm.

Butter gave an irritated snort as Wylan walked into the stable.

“Look at this. Molly and the Mole,” he said, leaning back against the stall. “You put on a good show last night, Dweller.”

“What do you need, Wylan?” Molly asked.

He ignored her, his focus locked on Aria. “You’re wasting your time going north, Dweller. The Still Blue’s nothing more than a rumor spread by desperate people. Better watch yourself, though. Sable’s a mean bastard. Cunning as a fox. He’s not sharing the Still Blue with anyone, let alone a Mole. He
hates
Moles.”

Aria stood. “How do you know that—from rumors spread by desperate people?”

Wylan stepped closer. “As a matter of fact, yes. They say it goes back to the Unity. Sable’s ancestors were Chosen. They were called into one of the Pods, but they were double-crossed and left outside.”

In school, Aria had studied the history of the Unity, the period after the massive solar flare that had corroded the earth’s protective magnetosphere, spreading Aether across the globe. The devastation in the first years had been catastrophic. The polarity of the Earth had reversed over and over again. The world was consumed by fires. Floods. Riots. Disease. Governments had rushed to build the Pods as the Aether storms intensified, striking constantly.
Other
, scientists had called the alien atmosphere when it first appeared, because it defied scientific explanation—an electromagnetic field of unknown chemical composition that behaved and looked like water, and struck with a potency never seen before. The term evolved to
Aether
, a word borrowed from ancient philosophers who’d spoken of a similar element.

Aria had seen footage of smiling families, walking through Pods just like Reverie, admiring their new homes. She’d seen their ecstatic expressions when they’d first worn Smarteyes and experienced the Realms. But she’d never seen footage of what had happened outside. Until a few a months ago, Aether
was
something other to her—as foreign as the world beyond the safety of Reverie’s walls.

“You’re saying Sable hates Dwellers because of something that happened three hundred years ago?” she said. “Everyone couldn’t fit in the Pods. The Lottery was the only way they could make it fair.”

Wylan snorted. “It wasn’t fair. People were left to die, Mole. You really believe in fairness when the world is ending?”

Aria hesitated. She’d seen the survival instinct enough times now, and she’d felt it herself. A force that had pushed her to kill—something she’d never thought she’d do. She remembered Hess tossing her out of the Pod to die in order to protect Soren, his son. She could imagine that in the Unity, fairness wouldn’t have counted for much. What had happened
wasn’t
fair, she realized, but she still believed in it. Believed that fairness was something worth fighting for.