Aeralis (10 page)

“Now,” Gabe said, sitting beside me on the straw. “Tell me. Why are you here? What’s going on?”

He listened gravely as I recounted the incident with Gordon and the predicament I found myself in.

“Do you remember when Stone mentioned that man who’d spoken of me the night we were captured by the Wanderers?” I asked.

“I remember,” he said, scowling. “I remember everything about that horrible night.”

“I think that man he spoke about was Borde.”

Gabe absorbed this information. He rubbed his hand across his face and looked away from me at the sky visible through the hole in the wall. “And why did you come to me?”

I took a deep breath. “I need help. I’ve already spoken to Adam, and he...” I stopped. A lump squeezed my throat, and I couldn’t breathe for a moment. Pain shot through my veins, and I felt as though I were all alone after a hard fall. “I’ve withdrawn from the Thorns,” I whispered. “They cannot help me. I’m on my own.”

Gabe was silent for a long moment. “Korr could find him, I’m sure of it. The Thorns may have cast you off, but the Restorationists have their own agenda, friends of the Thorns though we be. We might be able to do something.”

The image of that sneering, dark-haired dandy flashed through my head. I recoiled. “No.”

“Lia, he can help us.” Gabe leaned forward, his expression earnest. “Just let me talk to him. He has contacts all over this city. If anyone can find out where someone’s hiding, it’s him.”

“Absolutely not. He won’t help me. He’ll only use this against me.”

Gabe lifted his head in excitement. “If you offer him your da’s notebooks and journals—”

“They burned,” I interrupted. “There was a fire. They are gone. I have nothing to bargain with.”

“If we could just ask him—”

“No.”

I held Gabe’s gaze without comment until he looked away. I had plenty of reasons not to trust his brother, and he knew it as well as I did. I didn’t know where all this unexpected loyalty had come from, but I didn’t share it.

Gabe exhaled noisily and moved his hands restlessly against his knees. He brushed at a piece of hair hanging in his eyes and grimaced. “We’ll do what we can without involving him. You know I’ll do anything I can to help you.”

“Thank you.”

“Sleep,” Gabe said. “We’ll make more plans in the morning. We’ll figure out exactly what needs to be done. I promise.”

Exhaustion tugged at me. I lay down without another word and shut my eyes. I heard Cat return at some point, and he and Gabe conversed quietly. I fell asleep to the sound of their murmuring.

~

The world was bathed in white when I woke. The rain was gone, replaced by a faint mist that hung over everything and wrapped the buildings in gauzy tendrils. I sat up and looked around for Gabe, but he was gone. Cat stood by the fire pot, fiddling with the kettle.

“Tea?” he asked without turning around.

“Yes, please,” I said, and shoved back the blankets Gabe must have put over me. Every muscle in my body ached. A headache pounded at the back of my skull. I rose with a groan.

“It’s not the most comfortable bed in the world, but it gets the job done,” Cat remarked. He handed me a steaming cup with a smile and a flick of his eyebrows.

“Where’s Gabe?”

Cat sank down on the straw near me and blew on his tea to cool it. “He had something to attend to. I’m not sure what, but I’m on a need-to-know basis within the...” He stopped before finishing his sentence and jerked his shoulders in a shrug. “I’m supposed to be keeping you entertained until he gets back.”

Did he think I didn’t know about what Gabe was doing here?

“You’re a Restorationist like Gabe, aren’t you?”

Cat looked thoughtful. “Ah, so you know about the cause. But of course you do.”

“How’d you lose the eye?” I asked, because I got the impression that he valued directness.

Cat grinned. “They thought they could torture answers out of me. They were wrong.”

“They?”

“The Dictator’s guards.”

Footsteps clattered on the stones behind us, and Gabe appeared on the steps leading down into the courtyard. He carried a ragged bundle in his arms.

“Breakfast,” he called out, tossing it to Cat.

Cat opened the bundle and held up a loaf of bread. My stomach knotted at the fresh scent wafting from it. He broke off a piece for me, and I tore into it.

“Good morning,” Gabe said, sinking onto the straw beside me. “How did you sleep?”

“Not well,” I said. I took another bite of the bread, chewing more slowly this time. It was coarse and filling. I swallowed the last bit and licked my fingers. I was still hungry.

“Me either,” Gabe confessed, fiddling with his portion of the bread. He stole a glance at me as if looking for confirmation of something.

Across the room, Cat rolled his eyes and climbed to his feet. “That’s my cue to leave, I suppose,” he said, and strolled toward the door.

“Where’s Claire?” I asked Gabe. “Didn’t she come to Aeralis with you?”

Didn’t she have claim to you
? I wanted to add, but I didn’t. The memory of his goodbye kiss burned on my lips—a kiss he’d given me in front of her.

Still, I didn’t understand it. He cared for her, too. I wasn’t the only person with mixed-up feelings.

Gabe hesitated until Cat left the shelter to perch at the edge of the courtyard wall. He leaned forward and lowered his voice.

“Clara is posing as a servant in Korr’s house. I would be there as well, but as I told you before, Korr fears I’d be recognized because of my resemblance to him. Here, though...” He shrugged. “I can move freely most of the time. And when I can’t, I grubby myself up with mud and soot and then nobody looks twice at me.” Gabe hesitated, and his gaze shifted to Cat. “Korr’s involvement as a Restorationist is a secret, even from other members of the organization. Only a few know of his true loyalties. Don’t mention his name, ever. Not to anyone in the Thorns, not to any Restorationists, unless they already interact with him.”

I nodded.

Cat returned for more tea, and Gabe conversed with him quietly about messages to be delivered and supplies to be acquired. I finished my tea and stood, stretching my sore muscles.

Gabe observed me from his place on the straw. “How long do you think you’re going to stay?”

“Only until I can find Borde and this device of his,” I said with a sigh. “Don’t worry. I don’t intend to overstay my welcome.”

“You’re always welcome,” Gabe said.

Cat made a choking sound. When Gabe glared at him, he pounded his chest and coughed. “My tea went down the wrong pipe,” he said, but his eyes were laughing.

Gabe muttered something that sounded suspiciously like an insult under his breath. Cat only grinned.

“How did you two meet?” I asked.

Gabe fiddled with the straw. “We knew each other as children. We were good friends, and still are.”

“What he means to say,” Cat said, “is that I was a servant in the palace, but he doesn’t like to tell that part.”

“Well, it makes you sound...” Gabe gestured at nothing with a scowl.

“Worthless?” Cat suggested.

“No. Never that. But I think it misrepresents what you were to me. A brother, really.”

“Aw,” Cat said, his flippant grin back now. “That’s real touching.”

I was amused by their interactions, but the distraction began to thin as the pressure of my mission weighed against me. “I need to find Borde, and quickly,” I reminded Gabe. “We need a plan.”

Gabe knit his fingers together and looked at the Aeralian skyline poking through the mist like leafless tree trunks. “I think we should start with some of our usual intelligence contacts. Ask around and see if anyone knows of a man by his name or description in the city.”

I nodded.

His eyes softened as he looked at me again. “Have you eaten enough? It wasn’t much, I know.”

“We survived months of starvation together,” I said. “The bread was more than fine.”

He nodded. He reached for my hand, but his fingers stopped just above mine. I stared at them, not speaking. He sighed and turned away. “We should get going.”

I followed him without a word.

~

I observed the swath of storm clouds above us warily as we left the tunnels and entered the Plaza of Horses. It was morning, but the plaza was still in shadows. “Is it always this way here?”

“It’s not called the city of light for nothing,” Gabe said, pointing at the flickering streetlights. “They burn day and night.”

The streetlamps did little to dispel the gloom of the plaza. The carved horses rose from the fog like beasts ascending from a gray sea. The air was wet and too warm, and remnants of the rain dripped and splattered into puddles on the stones. Somewhere close, a bridle bit jingled, and a man shouted the time to his comrade.

“The plaza was built to commemorate the end of the Aeralian civil war a hundred years ago.” Gabe hesitated and dropped his voice. “The Prison District was not always so large,” he said. “This used to be a happy place. People would bring picnic lunches here. They often held concerts or had poetry readings in the evenings. I loved this place. Now look at it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, words supremely inadequate for the vastness of his sorrow. However, I understood what it was like to have a beloved place hollowed out by an occupation. That solidarity wrapped us in warm silence as we crossed the plaza.

We reached the wall, and Gabe motioned to where a stone arch opened onto a street. “This way.”

We slipped through the streets, moving from one streetlamp to the next as a faint mist drifted down from the sky and made my coat and hair damp. Moisture gathered in Gabe’s hair and beaded on his lashes. He looked at me often, but he didn’t say anything else.

We entered a part of the city crowded with pedestrians and carriages. Children darted in the streets, and sellers hawked wares from shops crowded under low-hanging roofs that shielded them from rain. Gabe grabbed my hand and tugged me forward into the chaos. My fingers tingled against his, and I considered pulling away, but I didn’t want to lose him in the crowd. I let him lead me until we’d reached the corner of the street, and then he looked at me and dropped my hand.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Habit.”

“Where are we?”

“I have a contact here,” he said. “He can find out anything I need to know. I’ll ask him to find Borde, and he’ll do it. He can find anything.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Gabe said.

We entered an alley. At the back, next to where rainwater poured through a spout into a barrel, was a crooked blue door. As we approached it, the knob rattled, and then it creaked open. Half of a face peered out. I caught a glimpse of a tangle of long, dark hair, a flash of teeth as crooked as the door, and a thin and shrewd face. The young man couldn’t have been any older than Adam, I decided, and pain shot through me like a knife at the thought of him.

“Gabe,” the young man said. “And someone I don’t know.” He said it like it was an accomplishment that he’d identified me as such.

“Ferris,” Gabe greeted him. “This is Lia.”

“A pleasure,” Ferris said, turning in my direction.

That was when I realized he was blind.

ELEVEN

“HOW CAN HE work if he’s blind?” I asked Gabe as we left the alley. We entered the stream of people in the street, and I grabbed Gabe’s arm to keep from being separated. Gabe looked at my hand out of the corner of his eye, and his arm tensed, but he didn’t comment on our contact.

“Ferris hears things others do not,” he said. “The soldiers ignore him because of his blindness, and because of that, he has freedom to move and listen. He is clever and quick, and his ears are sharp. You’ll forget that he cannot see after a while, once you get to know him. It doesn’t matter, really. He doesn’t let it matter.”

The subject matter made me think of Jonn, and my chest clenched. He had been willing to risk death to change his condition, and the Sickness had not healed him as he’d hoped. And Ivy...

I could not think of it now. It took all my strength to focus on the scene before me.

We rounded the corner and reached a plaza that reminded me of the Plaza of Horses, except this one was smaller and the statues were all of men.

“The Plaza of Poets,” Gabe explained when he saw me looking around. “These are all famous Aeralian writers. Gerraris, Simalade...”

I didn’t know any of the poets he was listing, but that hardly mattered. What use did I have for poets?

A dry fountain sat in the middle of the plaza. Leaves and debris filled the place that had once held water. I stopped beside it and looked down. A few inches of brackish rainwater puddled in the lowest places. My reflection stared back at me. I looked Aeralian, with my long dark coat with the brass buttons and my knotted hair.

“Come on,” Gabe said. “I know a few more places where we can inquire.”

I followed him down the street. A cloud of steam enveloped us, and as we crossed the street, I thought I saw the flutter of a coat disappearing around a corner. My heartbeat spiked, but when I looked again, there was no one there.

We searched up and down the streets, looking for the white-haired scientist, asking for a man called Meridus Borde. People shook their heads at our description and made blank faces at his name.

“Meridus?” One shopkeeper scratched his chin and stared off at the rainy sky above us. “I seem to recall a fellow by that name. Older man. Last name was Falcon. But I don’t know where he went. He didn’t stay in this area long.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled. Who knew how many Meriduses might live in this city?

After hours of fruitless searching, we rested our weary feet in a crowded tavern at the edge of the prison sector, near the Plaza of Horses and Gabe’s makeshift home. Rowdy patrons pushed around us, yelling for songs from the performing minstrel and spilling drinks.

“Don’t worry,” Gabe said, watching my expression as he took a sip of his drink. “Ferris will find something. I’m sure of it.”

I stared at the mug before me. There was still time, but it was rapidly slipping away. Anxiety tightened its cold fingers around my heart and squeezed. I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to look calm.