Forsada: Volume II in the New Eden series (31 page)

“Thank you,” Judith says. “Although Fobrasse and the Subterran people have offered us exemplary hospitality since we ventured from Southshaw to come here three weeks ago, I do not wish to hide underground any longer.”

Fobrasse sweeps up with Tom close behind. “Lupay! My dear friend. And this is the young man Tom told me about, to be sure. Garrett, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Sir? Garrett, you fool, he’s not worth that kind of respect. He’s a buffoon, and you’re only going to feed his ego. Fobrasse puffs up like someone just filled him with hot air.

“I am Fobrasse, mayor of Subterra,” he says with a sweeping bow.

I try hard not to sigh too loud.

“And I bring news.”

I perk up at this. “Go on,” I say. I wish he would just get to the point and stop prancing around like a rooster in a yard full of hens.

“The battles are finished. I am happy to say that when my Subterran people joined with the Tawtrukkers—we can thank Tom for convincing me of that—the remaining Southshawans surrendered. Beyond the initial skirmish, there was very little bloodshed today.”

Garrett asks, “How do you know this? We left the battle an hour or two ago, and it’s miles away.”

“My dear boy, Subterran communications are quite advanced. I have scouts, and tunnels all through these hills, of course. News travels faster than you might realize.” He looks smug and superior, but who cares? If he’s telling the truth about the Southshawan surrender, he can ride on my shoulders all the way back to Lower, and I’ll personally clean and press his robe and cook him the best meal he’s ever had.

I could fly right now. It’s over.

Tom steps forward. “There’s a lot to catch you two up on. Let’s get these people to Lower and out of the cold, okay? Come down here and walk with me. We’ll talk on the way.”

I slip down off our horse to the soft ground, followed by Garrett, who then helps Judith up onto the horse.

“I can’t wait to hear it.” I kick at the snow as we walk, watching it swirl around my boots.

CHAPTER 26

My father sits at one end of the long table, Fobrasse at the other. I try to ignore all the changes Darius made to our meeting hall. This table is the biggest and most intrusive. Instead of us all sitting at the edges, equal in status and equally exposed, we now sit with this behemoth hunk of wood dividing us. It makes me tense. I can tell it frustrates my father, too.

They’ve been boring me all morning talking about dreadful things like food rationing, winter shelters, tools for building new boats. They haven’t once talked about going after Darius. Dane and Freda, Judith and Gregory, my father, Fobrasse, that officious man from Upper—they all lean on the table and shuffle papers and scribble calculations in the dim light of lanterns and candles.

Two Southshaw men have been included, but not Patrick. He appointed someone “smarter than me,” he said. The other is from the surrendered army, one of Darius’ inner circle. Why they even let him in, I have no idea. Freda said it was important, so I guess it must be. My father agreed. Whatever. In any case, they’ve already agreed to go back to Southshaw as soon as we can give them wagons and food for the trip. I wish they’d go right now. They can walk.

My father said the ones who want to stay will be welcome. I hope some day I discover that I inherited a little of his patience and forgiveness.

The windows and shutters are closed against the cold, but the roaring fire in the hearth at the far end of the table does little to warm the big room.

I stand and stretch. They could be talking about the moon, or corn seed, or raccoon pelts. Who knows? I haven’t been listening for a half hour. “I’m going to get some more firewood,” I say to no one in particular. No one in particular seems to notice.

I pull on a heavy coat and shove a knit hat down over my hair. I glance back as I open the door. My father winks. I roll my eyes at him and slip out into the white morning, smiling to myself like crazy.

The snow fell all day yesterday but stopped before nightfall, and the hills are draped in a white shawl. Gentle sounds of village life fill the square. The only sound missing is the clang of the smith’s hammer—the smith is inside the great hall, negotiating and calculating.

Garrett will be at my house, helping my mother with something. Maybe rebuilding shelves, or cleaning out rats and ivy from the neglected cellar. I wave at Ginger, who’s walking toward the lake with a group of children all bundled up in heavy coats and thick boots. Susannah walks behind them and smiles at me, her hands tucked tight into a furry muffle.

I walk the few hundred yards to my house slowly, appreciating the morning. The big tree out front is unchanged, and the house stands sturdy, even if its red paint seems dingy against the pure white of the snow in the yard and on the roof. Smoke drifts from the chimney, and the windows glow with brightness and warmth.

Even though I saw my mother last night, even though I slept in my old bed, even though I woke to the smell of fresh baked bread and frying eggs and onions—even though I was
home
last night, I can’t believe I’m walking up to my own front door again. It feels… better than anything.

I stop to knock, but this is where I live. I don’t need to knock. Silly.

I push open the door and hear laughter from deeper in the house echoing around the empty sitting room just inside. Although Darius took most of our things, the empty space is filled with such warmth and love I almost can’t stand it. I kick snow off my boots, step inside, close the door behind me with a soft click of the latch, and pull off the hat and coat.

The laughter and voices are indistinct in the kitchen. Maybe Garrett is helping my mother cook? Lunch will be especially good today, then.

I walk in, expecting to see my mother at the stove and Garrett cutting apples or something, but I stop dead on the threshold when I see the radiant smile of that beautiful Southshaw girl, that friend of Freda’s. Kitta. What the…

“Lupay, wonderful,” my mother exclaims, her face already a broad, beaming smile before she’d seen me. “I thought you were busy with your father.”

“I—um, I wasn’t really needed.”

“C’mon, Loop,” says Garrett, who indeed is sitting at the table cutting up apples and setting them aside next to a pie crust shell. “Tell the truth. You were bored.”

The three of them laugh again, and I instantly hate the tall, thin, beautiful, yellow-haired girl with the musical laugh. She sits across from Garrett at the table, rolling out more dough for a second pie crust shell. Flour dots her cheek in an unbelievably cute way. Garrett reaches across and, with one gentle swipe of his thumb, wipes it away.

Did she just blush? Oh my god.

“Loop,” Garrett says, and I hate the utter bliss that fills his eyes and his goofy grin. “Have you met Kitta yet? She’s a friend of Freda’s.”

“Oh, we know each other, silly,” Kitta sings, her yellow hair glowing backlit by the kitchen’s fire. “We met when Lupay was in Southshaw.” She beams at me like the summer sun.

I remember that. I thought she was one of the most charming people I ever met, that night. I guess Garrett agrees.

I should have stayed with my father and talked about blanket allocation, or laundry detail, or whatever they were moving on to next. At least I wouldn’t have to watch my best friend, my hermanito, reduced to a goofy blubbering lovestruck idiot.

My mother wipes her hands on her apron as she steps away from the pot over the fire and gives me a tight, pointed smile.
Okay, Mami, I know
, I smile back. I will be good. I will give this beauty a chance to prove she has more than just a gorgeous face, a gorgeous voice, a gorgeous body, gorgeous hair…

I have this sudden urge to grab my knives and go hunting. I feel like killing something. A rabbit, maybe. I wonder if I could find one with long, yellow hair.

I swallow back the sickness climbing up my throat, and I laugh. “How could I forget? You were so sweet to me that night.” I turn to face my mother. “Mami, what are you cooking? Smells great. Clearly, Garrett hasn’t been helping.”

“Pff,” says Garrett as he chops his knife down so hard through the apple it thunks on the table.

My mother and Kitta laugh again, and I start to thaw out. It’s hard to be upset when my mother is laughing.

Kitta really isn’t that bad. Garrett could do a lot worse. They might actually be good for each other. I just need to relax. It’s going to be hard after all we’ve been through. A lot will be hard over this winter.

“It’s a stew,” she says. “Your friend Patrick brought us some fresh venison this morning.” She looks over the work being done by the other two with an approving nod. “He was hoping you’d be here,” she says.

I try not to react, but inside I’m a mixture of happiness and anger. He came here with a gift for my mother without telling me? Who does he think he is? I wish I’d been here.

I glance at Garrett to see him staring at me intently, with a suggestive little grin on his lips. My face flushes hot and I throw him a glare like I’m trying to turn him to dust. After a second, I can’t help it. “What? Spit it, cabron.”

“He’s a good guy,” Garrett says.

“The best!” Kitta agrees. “You should have known him back home. What a nice kid he was growing up. If you’d known him before… before this whole thing started… well, you know.” Her gorgeous eyes go wide, and she looks down to her dough as she falls silent.

Remarkable girl. In another time.

The door thumps open and we listen to two people stomping snow off their boots.

Tom and Patrick come into the kitchen, crowding the room but not uncomfortably so. I smile at Patrick. It is good to see him, but his returned smile doesn’t seem happy.

“What is it?” my mother asks before either of the men can say anything.

“Tom,” Patrick says, “you tell them. I don’t know that I can.”

Whatever warmth was in the room just got sucked right up the chimney. Tom’s snow-white face is stony and grim. Patrick glances at me, then looks to the floor.

“It’s Darius,” Tom says.

“But,” I blurt before he can continue, “Darius is gone. He has no more army. We beat him.”

Tom nods. “That’s right.”

“Then what’s wrong?” I don’t get it. And I’m not sure I want to. Why did they have to interrupt our happy moment, one of the few happy moments I’ve had in six months?

“While we were going through the houses, we found a locked cabinet in Darius’ office.”

“In Marshall Turner’s house?”

“Hush, Lupay,” my mother says. “Let him finish.”

Patrick nods. “That’s right. The potter’s house. I think Turner was his name.”

Tom looks even more grim, if that were possible. “We found some papers. Diagrams. None of us really understood them, but I’d seen something like it before in the office of a friend of mine who works in Subterra’s history vault. They looked like electricity diagrams.”

“Electricity?”

“Lupay, hush now.”

“Sorry, Mami.” Why can’t he just get to the point?

“So I had my friend look at the papers,” Tom continues. “We think Darius has figured out how to detonate the bomb you all have been keeping in Southshaw.”

Patrick doesn’t react, but Kitta throws her floury hands to her face and gasps. Her eyes fill with tears. Is she overreacting, some drama act for Garrett’s benefit? I don’t get it. “So what?”

“So,” Patrick says as he takes my hand, “that one bomb could destroy this entire valley, the lake… everything.”

“Then we have to stop him,” I say.

Patrick tugs on my hand to keep me from going to find my knives and my whip.

“It’s too late,” he says. “Darius is already back in Southshaw, and if he’s going to detonate the bomb, we think he can do it in about three days. It would take us that long to get to Southshaw. He burned the remaining boats, remember.”

“This can’t be happening,” I say. “After all this, Darius is going to win anyway?”

“What can we do?” my mother asks.

I realize that Garrett has reached across the table to hold both of Kitta’s hands in his. Tears run down her face and draw tracks in the fresh flour on her cheeks.

“We have to escape,” Tom says.

“Subterra,” I blurt out. Did I just say that? I can’t live underground the rest of my life. But I suppose it’s better than dying. I watch Garrett’s fingers massaging Kitta’s slender hands. I kind of wish Patrick would hold mine like that.

Tom shakes his head. “That bomb will irradiate everything. The lake, the air, the trees—everything it doesn’t incinerate.”

Irradiate? Incinerate? I bite my tongue so I don’t get hushed again by my mother.

Tom continues. “Subterra is powered by lake water. It pulls in air from the valley for the people to breathe.”

“We’d survive the blast, but we’d all die within a few months. Maybe weeks,” Tom finishes.

“We have to leave the valley,” Patrick says.

My mother’s calm voice shows none of the stress that fills me as she says, “Does my husband know?”

Patrick nods. “We’ve just come from the meeting hall,” he says. “We think we have two days, perhaps three, to get everyone over the hill beyond Upper.”

I remember the refugee camp where Shem Shiver had taken all the people of Upper once before. It’s not a place we can live forever.

The door opens again, and Dane clumps directly to the threshold of the kitchen, his boots still covered in snow. He is breathless and red.

He looks right at me. “You already know,” he says. It’s not a question.

I nod.

“Lupay, I am so sorry.”

“About what? It’s not your fault, Dane.”

“In a way it is,” he says. “Remember when Baddock came upon us, at that old house in the woods?”

“Of course.” How could I ever forget one of the worst days of my life? Every second of that crappy day is crystal clear in my head.

“Remember the things you found in that house and brought out for me to look at?”

“Some toys. A book, maybe? Some marbles?”

“And that music thing.”

That little box. The tune that’s haunted me all summer, the one I could never quite remember. “A little black thing,” I say, picturing it in my mind. “When we opened it in the sunlight, it made music.”

Dane nods. “The Subterran guy called it solar. He says Darius can use that to blow up the Bomb.” His breathless urgency suddenly dies. He looks completely crushed. “It’s all my fault.”

It can’t be possible.

Tom says, “I didn’t believe it at first, but my friend says the diagrams are clear. Whoever put that bomb in your chapel three hundred years ago made sure it would be easy to use. There’s a timer—a kind of clock—that just needs a bit of electricity. And they left instructions behind, too.”

“Why?” cries Kitta. “Why would they do that?”

“And where,” Dane wonders aloud, “did they keep those instructions all these years? Did my father know? He never told me.”

Patrick says one simple word: “Prophecies.”

Dane’s face pales. I know what that means. Freda told me. The third Southshawan book—Truth, Laws, and Prophecies. The same book that Darius used to justify taking over Southshaw, exiling Dane, starting his holy war against us… everything.