Aeralis (8 page)

“I’ve heard of your triumph in the Frost,” she said, and stepped aside to let me in.

“Are you Raven?” I asked.

She smirked at the question. “My ma and da named me Nettie, but I won’t answer to it, so don’t bother. Besides, Raven is a much more appropriate description, don’t you think?” She flipped her dark locks and turned to shut the door behind us.

The interior of the house was lit only by smoking kerosene lamps fastened to the walls. Farming equipment hung on hooks, and animal skins crowded the wood-planked walls. Old feed sacks were tacked into place in the empty place, and rusted firearms were mounted over a stone fireplace filled with smoldering coals. A haphazard stack of books dominated the corners of the room, and one stack replaced the fourth leg of a table beneath a window. The floorboards creaked beneath our boots.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“It’s an inn,” Raven said, clicking her tongue against her teeth as if disapproving of my inability to deduce that fact from the jumble of incomprehensible objects. She gestured around us. “These things are just for decoration. The visitors from the city like it. Makes it seem rustic. We keep the real goods in the barn.”

I wandered close to the fireplace. One of the guns looked like the one that had belonged to my father. I reached out a hand.

“Careful,” she said. “Those are real. I like to keep them close in case soldiers come calling.”

I pulled my hand back.

“I wasn’t expecting another operative,” she said.

Another
. Of course. Adam and Ann had passed through here only days ago.

“I’m bound for Astralux,” I said. “But I’ll need directions. I don’t know the way.”

“Of course,” she said. “I can get you a map. A horse, too.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m a Thorns operative,” Raven said. “It’s my job.” She murmured something about seeing to my room and headed for the stairs.

Loneliness tore through me as I stood alone in the dim room and thought of my family, my home. I was lost without that bright blue sky and white, wild world.

The stairs squeaked, and Raven appeared again at the top of them.

“Better come up now,” she said. “I don’t want my parents to hear and get curious. They’re old and keep to their room mostly, but they aren’t deaf. They don’t know about my, er, additional loyalties. I’ll bring you dinner in your room.”

I ascended the stairs, and she showed me to a cubbyhole of a room set beneath the rafters of the house. I tumbled into the rickety bed and shut my eyes, listening to the wail of the wind around the eaves of the house as I tried to calm myself. Raven returned after a short while, carrying a tray of dense bread and a bowl of thick, congealed stew that was mostly beets and carrots with a few slivers of meat. It seemed the Frost wasn’t the only place that had experienced lean years lately.

“We’ll leave in the morning,” she said.

“We?”

“I have a feeling you’re going to get lost on your own.”

I bristled at her implication that I wasn’t capable of finding Astralux by myself.

Raven laughed. “Relax, Frostie. I have business in Astralux myself, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t go together. Like I said, we’ll leave in the morning.”

After she left, I ate the food slowly. It was coarse but filling. When I’d finished, I lay down on the narrow bed. Exhaustion pulled at my limbs and eyelids, but my mind was restless and my blood warm with worry. When dreams came, they were filled with the Frost, and I woke with a whisper of foreboding on my lips.

I dressed in the dark and fumbled for my things. Voices sounded downstairs, and I opened the door. But when I stepped into the hall, I stopped at the harsh tenor of the words below. Sweat prickled across my back, and my heart slammed in my chest as I peeked around the corner.

Farther soldiers.

EIGHT

RAVEN’S VOICE MATCHED the soldiers’ in intensity.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she insisted.

I pressed my back to the wall and inched forward to peer over the railing. Below, three gray-coated soldiers stood in the doorway, guns in their hands and scowls on their faces. Pale morning light spilled around them, illuminating part of the room and turning Raven’s face a luminescent white. She’d drawn a wool cloak around her shoulders, and her dark hair hung in disheveled waves down her back. She seemed younger, vulnerable. When she spoke again, her tone was pleading.

“You’ll wake my da,” she said in a wheedling tone. “He’ll be angry.”

“If I find spies in this house, your da will rot in His Excellency’s prison. That should worry him more than his lack of sleep.”

“Look if you wish,” she said. “You’ll find nothing, I swear it. Go on, search all the rooms!”

The soldier gazed at her face as if he could peel off her skin with the sheer force of his stare. She returned it, her expression equal parts defiance and fright. The soldier sniffed once in derision. He signaled to the others with a snap of his gloved hand, turned on his heel, and left.

I exhaled in relief.

Raven’s shoulders sagged as the soldiers slammed the door behind them. She pressed one hand to her forehead and sank into a nearby chair. I heard her mutter something under her breath, and her hands trembled as she pulled the cloak tighter around her shoulders.

I stepped to the stairs, and they creaked with my weight. Raven turned as she heard me, and her expression smoothed as easily as butter across a roll. A smirk that was rapidly becoming familiar quirked on her lips as she looked up at me.

“Did the soldiers wake you? They have a knack for that. It must be one of the requirements for recruitment.”

“Were they looking for Thorns operatives?” I asked.

She snorted. “They don’t have the foresight for that. No, they were looking for Restorationists. There are rumors of them passing through this area lately—rumors planted by us, of course, to give them something to fret about. The soldiers have been combing every nook and cranny searching for them.”

Restorationists. I remembered Gabe mentioning the term. He was one of them now.

“Breakfast?” Raven said, flipping her hair over her shoulder and sauntering toward the fireplace with a swish of her hips. “I feel like breaking something. Let’s have eggs.”

~

I waited alone in the barn after we’d eaten. Raven joined me half an hour later, carrying a sack of her things.

“Shall we?” she asked, as if we were going out for a pleasure ride.

We rode out on two shaggy ponies with black and white patches. The sky was the color of dirty water. Wind whipped our hair and dragged at our cloaks. My mount snorted, lifting his nose toward the paddock. I steered him to the road, and he reluctantly picked up his feet and headed toward the horizon.

“He smells a storm,” Raven said, clucking to her pony under her breath.

I glanced at the clouds, and apprehension brewed in my stomach. “A blizzard?”

“We don’t get too much snow here,” she said. “The winds come from the south, and they’re warmer than in your Frost.”

That was a mercy, since we had a ways to go before we reached the city, but part of me ached to see a blanket of fresh white on this broken ground of churned grass and melting sludge. A crisp fall of snow could make even the cruelest visage look soft and beautiful, and there was something about the blinding blankness that centered me and helped me think.

“We should reach Astralux tomorrow before nightfall,” Raven said, breaking the silence.

I nodded calmly, but my heart thumped against my ribs and my palms tickled restlessly. I ground my teeth together and resisted the urge to fidget, instead staring straight ahead at the place where the sky and ground blurred together.

We were silent for hours, listening to the clop of the ponies’ hooves. Raven whistled tunelessly under her breath. I wrestled with thoughts of Jonn and Ivy.

When the sun began to sink below the horizon, we dismounted to eat and build a fire. Raven produced bedrolls lined with fur, and we slept by the fire.

I woke with frost on my lashes. My muscles were stiff, and my mouth tasted like ash.

Raven handed me a piece of dried meat. “We’ll eat on the road,” she said. “Let’s get going.”

The landscape slipped past as we rode. Raven said little, but she watched me out of the corner of her eye. She hummed songs beneath her breath.

Finally, a glimmer of black appeared on the far horizon. Astralux? Fear choked me, but I swallowed it back. I was a Weaver. I had faced the gate, I had faced Watchers, and I had faced Farther soldiers. I would not let this city frighten me. I’d been here before. I would not tremble and cower.

“Astralux,” Raven said, confirming what I’d seen.

As we drew closer, I could see the towers rising from the mist that clothed the city. Sunlight glittered on glass and intricate metal. A river encircled the city like a snake, its water shining like scales.

“We’ll meet a Thorns agent within the city,” Raven explained. She tossed her hair out of her eyes and flashed me a challenging smile as she nodded at the towers and bridges ahead of us. “It’s astonishing, isn’t it? Quite a change from your wilderness Frost, yes?”

“You’d be surprised what we have in the Frost,” I answered, thinking of Echlos, and she shrugged.

The ponies’ hooves clopped loudly as we crossed a bridge of stone so tall I had to crane my neck to see the top of it. Statues of men holding guns and swords crowned the pinnacle. A shiver went through me.

A throng enclosed us as we entered the city. Men and women clothed in thick coats and hats swarmed the streets around us, and wagons and steamcoaches rumbled past, causing my pony to shy to the left. Steam filled the air and made the ends of my hair and cloak damp. We crossed another bridge and passed down a maze of cobbled streets. Houses and businesses huddled together, hanging over the streets as if about to collapse onto them. Ropes crisscrossed the sky above us, strung with drying laundry or lanterns or fluttering banners advertising shops. The air smelled of sewage and wet flowers and horsehair. Rain began to fall, and the people in the street scurried for the overhanging buildings as we pressed on.

Raven led me into an alley, and we dismounted. A figure in a black coat stepped from a shadow and took our mounts’ reins. A woman. She lifted a sputtering lantern high to dispel the gloom brought on by the rain and darkness of the alley as she peered at us suspiciously.

“Do you have business here?”

“We’re meeting an uncle,” Raven said, and the woman’s eyebrows quirked in recognition. It must be a code.

“And how was the weather on the Aeralian plain?” she asked.

Raven licked her lip and smiled her enigmatic smirk. “We saw no lightning.”

The woman nodded, satisfied. “And the sign?”

Raven flashed a Thorns brooch at her, and the woman gestured toward a door in the wall.

“You’ll find food in there, as well as clothing,” the woman said.

We went inside.

Gaslights glowed along the far wall, and a chandelier strung with cobwebs hung low over a table laid out with bread, cheese, and a pitcher of drink. A pile of clothing sat on a chair beside the table.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“It’s a code. Thorns operatives in the city are always meeting an uncle, and if we’ve seen no lightning, that means we were not followed. Then we’re free to show the brooch.”

Raven grabbed a piece of cheese with her fingers and stuffed it in her mouth while I surveyed the room more closely. Bookshelves surrounded a pair of shuttered windows. One of the titles caught my eye.
The Winter Parables
.

Shivers spidered over my skin.

I reached for the pile of clothes. Some were made of silks, velvets. I dug through them until I’d found something plain and sensible. Raven nodded toward a curtain, her mouth full of food.

“I think we are supposed to dress in there.”

I went first, peeling off my woolen cloak and dress and putting on the black cotton trousers and shirt that had been provided. The shirt tied in the back, corset-like, cinching my waist in, and the tightness on my stomach felt strange. I put on the coat next, a long gray piece studded with brass buttons. A high collar scratched against my neck and caught my braid. I tugged at the cuffs and brushed away lint, acquainting myself with the new and strange material.

I put my discarded clothing in the sack of things I’d brought. After a moment’s hesitation, I reached into the sack and found my mother’s letter. I’d brought it with me. I tucked the folded paper into my belt and stepped out from behind the curtain.

Raven sized me up, and her mouth pinched with concentration. “You look Aeralian enough, but wear your hair up.”

I reached back and twisted my braid into a knot.

She nodded, satisfied.

I ate a little bread and cheese while she took her turn behind the curtain. When she emerged, she wore a long gray coat over a wine-colored pair of loose trousers and a ruffled blouse. Gray silk gloves covered her hands, and she’d pulled up her hair in a thick, glossy bun at the nape of her neck. She looked utterly different.

“Well?” she asked, twirling.

I didn’t say anything.

Raven grinned at me. She sauntered back to the table, plucked a piece of fruit from the platter, and then reached for the pile of clothing again with the other hand. “Perhaps I should have chosen this shirt,” she mused, holding up a silken blouse to the light.

I ignored her, already thinking ahead to what I must do next. I had no idea how I was going to find Borde. I remembered Gabe’s promise. Could he possibly help me? I didn’t dare try to find Adam. He’d be furious that I was here.

Raven strolled back behind the curtain with the silk shirt in her hand. “I’m going to slip this on and see if I like it better,” she called.

The door behind me opened and shut with a slam, letting in a rush of wind and the sound of rain. I turned to look as a figure stepped into the room and took off a dripping hat.

I froze in utter astonishment.

Adam
.