An Inheritance of Ashes (23 page)

“I
know,
” I overrode her, and then reined back my panic. “But we have to bring him home. There's got to be something you can do, Ada. Please.”

Ada tore herself away from the serious task of glaring at Nat. “I'm not a miracle worker. I do research, not—extra-dimensional magic breakouts.”

“I'll give you the run of our whole shore,” I said impulsively. “You can set up research, do experiments, whatever you want—as long as you need it.”

Ada clucked her tongue. She hadn't changed that much: the one thing she couldn't resist was her curiosity. “I'll ask Rami if we're clear to travel,” she said, and leveled a finger at Nat. “Don't touch
anything.
”

Nat put her hands innocently behind her back, and took them back out the second Ada vanished around the corner.

“Don't,” Heron warned. “She's been showing me some of her research. I wouldn't lay a finger wrong in here if I were you.”

Nat stuck her hands behind her back again, sobered. Her eyes roamed the half-lit jars. I shuddered.

Ada was back inside ten minutes, brisk with energy. “Right,” she said, and swept up a handful of instruments from her desk. “You're very lucky people.”

“Yes?” I said, my heart lifting fast.

“Yes,” she said, and stuffed them into a satchel. “We have until sundown to see your spooky beach. Let's go.”

There was no magic to it. Ada measured, hummed, poked stick after branch through thin air into the Wicked God's world, and then scraped up jars of the melted, ashy ice beneath it. Heron paced back and forth under the tree line, standing watch for our little rowboat on the horizon. Nat sat beside me on a driftwood log, and we watched.

“I'll come back tomorrow,” Ada said when the sun stained the trampled snow orange. Frustration wriggled behind my rib cage; Ada looked as mild as a flower. “I'm going to need help with this one,” she said. “You didn't even
begin
to cover how big a job this'll be.”

“But you can get him out, right?” I asked through a dry throat.

Ada closed her pack. “I don't know, Hallie. There's a lot going on here. The composition of the air's really finicky, and I want to know everything we can about those chemical burns on the sand. I don't want to get it
wrong,
all right?”

I closed my hands into fists. I didn't understand half of what she'd said, except the unmistakable tinge of
no.
“Just . . . hurry, okay? Please. It's my brother in there.”

“I'll walk you to the crossroads,” Nat said dryly, and brushed snow off her hat.

Ada sized her up warily, and nodded: a sort of truce. “Fine,” she said, and they set off up the path.

Heron eyed me for a moment in that old way, the one that wouldn't meet my eye.
He's worried about me,
I realized. “Go on,” I said after a moment. “I need to talk to him. To Thom. We need to talk.”

Heron nodded silently and strode through the orchard trees, to another long, cold night in the smokehouse.

I watched him go. And then, hands shaking like dead leaves, I picked up a handful of Thom's river stones and wrote a letter about everything that'd happened this summer on Roadstead Farm.

It was dark when I followed Heron's mangled footprints up the orchard trail, to the crabbed warmth of the kitchen porch.

Our door opened before I could touch it: James Blakely, muffled in boots and coat, let himself out of our dim kitchen. “All done?” he asked, and I colored helplessly.

“I didn't know you had come by,” I said, and he smiled, a humorless sliver. My gut turned over.

Something was very, very wrong.

“Clearly not. Walk with me?” he said, and steered me off the porch.

“Sure,” I said, perplexed, and fell into step beside him. He'd brought a lamp. It cast soft marks onto the lane and over the sleeping hummocks of the fields.

We crunched silent through the snow for a few minutes. And then he asked, “What are you playing at with my niece and nephew?”

I went rock-still. His gaze was calm and steady, and I couldn't think of one good lie to tell.

“I changed diapers for all three of you, you know,” he said, casually enough. “It's pretty plain when you all start sneaking. And if it's plain to me and your sister, you'll want to consider what General de Guzman's soldiers think.”

I nearly stopped breathing. “What did they say?”

James stared down his scarred nose at me. “They spent an hour asking about your former hired man last night. It's too much of a coincidence: when he showed up, when he left. And how little you want to say about it.”

I swallowed. His eyes burned holes through my brain. “I gave my word,” I stuttered. “I can't tell anyone.”

“Is that how you put your sister off?” he asked mildly.

I wanted to sink into the ground and die.

“Don't bother. I just spoke with her. I know it is,” he continued. “She told me plenty about how you're haring off and dodging your chores. If your fields aren't ready for the springtime, you're not going to have a farm next summer. I'm not sure anymore that you're taking that seriously.”

“We are,” I burst out. “We're doing
everything.
”

“Such as?”

There was nowhere to start: the ghosts in Tyler's eyes, Thom's stones, Ada's endless rows of jars. In the back field, slumbering, John Balsam's knife. James shook his head and started walking again, along the land that our family had held since the cities fell; since all the machines of the world went dark.

I'd thought I wanted to die of shame before. It would have been better, now, if I never existed.

“There's a hole between our world and the world behind the Wicked God's heart,” I forced out. “On the beach, near the riverbend. That's where the Twisted Things are coming from; they're coming
out
. We were trying to fix it, but those stones in the pathway—” I stopped, swallowed hard. “James, it's Thom. He's stuck on the other side.”

James Blakely stopped mid-step.

Keep Tyler's sight out of it,
I told myself.
Keep Heron out.
“We went to the Chandlers. That's how Tyler got hurt. He was going for Ada, to find a way to bring Thom home. And she's working on it: she took measurements and samples, and there'll be a whole team with her tomorrow. But we can't let the soldiers find out that hole's there. They'll tell Pitts, and he'll force us off the farm. We'll lose Thom forever.”

James's scarred face set into pale shock lines. “You've been creeping about under our noses, trying to solve what every fighting man in the country couldn't handle.”

I nodded.

He shook his head. I couldn't tell if he was laughing or furious. “God,” he said wonderingly. “I wish I was sixteen again: totally brave and utterly stupid. What on earth,” he asked, and closed the distance between us, “made you think that you couldn't tell
us?
”

My careful lies swerved, halted, and crashed.

I didn't know. The road here had gotten so long. It was hard to even remember what I'd had, once, for reasons.
I wanted to protect Marthe; to show her I could do it. I wanted,
I thought, older and more selfish than I'd ever felt,
to save the farm.

James tilted his scar-torn chin. “Halfrida. You have to tell your sister about this. Right away.”

I shook my head wildly. “I can't—” My heart lurched to life under my ribs. “She'll kill me. She'll never speak to me again.”

“Your sister,” he said with a glance back to that dark house, “cares more about you than you realize.”

“You don't understand. I can't tell her this. Not ever.”

“Because you're afraid of her,” he said quietly.

The sound of branches rattling in the distance was suddenly very clean and sharp. “She's my
sister
.”

“When she gets angry,” he continued without mercy, “you shrug your shoulders down. You pull back into your head. You think about every single word before you speak, and your face goes flat like—there.”

I fought to keep myself from doing exactly that, forcing my chin up even though my head buzzed with the need to run . “She's my sister,” I whispered.

“Hallie, I know what happened inside that house,” he said, and my whole soul froze solid.

“Your grandfather was a hard man,” he said after a moment. “Your father did a little better, with your mother and with the both of you. Your sister does even better than they did, with some very hard choices in the mix and a lot of troubles I know she never wanted.

“Between the two of you,” he said, very serious, “I have high hopes for how much that child of hers will be loved.”

“Why are you saying this?” I said through a tight throat.

He shoved his hands into his deep coat pockets. “Because Marthe is my friend. My best friend. And you're old enough to take responsibility for your actions.” He paced a small furrow in the field and looked up. “Every child has to carve out their own place in the world. But if Thom's caught on the other side of that—whatever it is—what's at stake is Marthe's husband. And keeping that from her is cruel.”

I'd thought
childish
was a punch to the gut. It was nothing compared to this. I knew what cruel was: Papa's acid tongue, his elaborate punishments. They'd grown terrible once Uncle Matthias wasn't here to stop them. I closed my eyes, and the sound of his shouting rose up, always just a thought away: curse words shoving through the floor, around the corners, under the solid wood of my bedroom door.

Through Marthe's arms and Marthe's hands clamped stubbornly over my ears.

My sister.
Not much older, then, than I was now. Telling me in an endless monotone that she'd keep me safe forever.

“I'm not like that,” I burst out. “I'm not
him
.”

“I'm glad you're not a fan of the idea,” James said calmly. “But Marthe's seen you pull away from her. She's caught every lie you've told. She has years of reasons to be afraid right now.”

“Marthe's not afraid of me,” I protested. I couldn't even conceive of it. “She's
Marthe
. There's nothing I can do to her.”

James looked down his nose at me sadly. “There's plenty our children can do, or be, that makes us afraid we've failed them.”

“Failed?” As if Marthe could fail
me
: Marthe, who'd shielded me from Papa's temper through the long, lonely, hard years; who came home from Windstown with his will unproven and swore in the most frightening voice I'd ever heard that no one would tear this family apart.

I'd spent years trying to repay her, run myself dry trying to live up to her.

Marthe could never even
touch
the word
failure.

I clamped my gloves over my mouth, and the sobs escaped anyway, wrenching slaps of grief that curled me around them like a beating. “Hey, hey—” James Blakely said, and reached out. I shrugged his arms off viciously. I couldn't be touched right now, couldn't be held. I had to keep myself from flying apart.

“I can't do it,” I said, gulping, gasping. “All I do is disappoint her. I'll never be as good, as strong, as fast, and she'll send me away. There's a baby coming. She'll get tired of putting up with me, with pretending I
earned
my half share of Roadstead, and she'll push me off the farm.”

“That's not true—”

“Don't
say that!
” I shouted. “Uncle Matthias told me the truth: she'll only let me stay here if I'm good to her. If I'm
good
. He was the younger son; I'm the youngest daughter, and Papa made Uncle Matthias go. Opa made Great-aunt Millie go. Nobody wanted me to inherit anyway—nobody wanted Papa's will. I've always known it was her or me, okay? So don't tell me
lies
.”

James Blakely stood back in the snowlit field, his mouth wide open. “That is bullshit,” he said darkly. “That is shit from start to finish.”

“I
saw
Uncle Matthias go—”

“Because of his stupid pride,” he snapped. “Pride's the Hoffmann failing. Not one person who worked this dirt has ever known when to just
apologize
.” James shook his head. His face smoldered. “I hate them both right now, you know that? And I didn't think, when your father died, I could've hated him more. I hated him when we were children. I hated him every time I had to wipe your sister's eyes and make her go back to that house.”

It shocked me right into breathing.

He smiled bitterly and dug a handkerchief out of his pocket.

I took it, crushed it small inside my fist. “I don't need your handkerchief,” I whispered.

He smiled awfully at me. “You're Matthias to the bones, too. Never a second after he learned to talk that he wasn't saying ‘I can do it myself.' I followed him around like a lost kitten when we were kids. I wanted to
be
him, and now I hate him too.”

“Don't you dare,” I managed. Uncle Matthias had been kind to us. He was the last kindness, until Thom came, that I'd had.

“You're old enough,” James said almost gently. “And don't say I don't understand somehow. It was almost easier on me when Matthias left than when I realized he wasn't powerful and perfect.” James Blakely smiled the crookedest smile I'd ever seen. “He left, Halfrida. He decided he could do it himself. He planted something that festered until it drove you and Marthe apart, and then he walked off down the south road, and hasn't been back in eight years.

“Don't be your father,” James said softly. “But damn it all,
don't
be Matthias.”

I stood there, hugging James Blakely's handkerchief, and felt my rib cage shatter and strew bone shards into my lungs, my heart.