Water & Storm Country (20 page)

I try to push past, but his arm flashes out
and stops me. “Where are you going?”

“To quarantine.”
Obviously
, I want to
add.

“Throw him overboard,” he says.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

I did hear him, all three words, like nails
pounded into the frame of a new ship being built. “I’m taking him
to quarantine,” I say more firmly.

“Are you disobeying a direct order from a
superior officer?” Hobbs says, sounding almost hopeful.

I want to disobey him.

(I do, I swear.)

But I can’t. This boy is dying, and if I
don’t do as Hobbs says, I’ll be demoted and removed from the
Mayhem, and well, that can’t happen.

(Not when she’s still on board.)

Not when the ship needs me.

(Don’t they?)

I start to push the boy’s body into Hobbs
arms, but he jumps back, as if touching any part of his skin will
immediately transfer the disease. “You do it,” he snarls.

I’m helpless as my mother slips from my
grasp.

I’m strong and evil and a murderer as I push
Webb over the side with a swift shove.

Twice it’s been my doing, and this will make
thrice. For some reason the number seems ominous.

I stride past Hobbs to the railing, the
silence broken only by the click of my boots on the deck.

(Will she ever speak to me again?)

The boy’s body, although wracked with
seizures and tortured with pain, is warm, his heart beating wildly
against my own as I clutch him to my breast, bent in my arms.
Alive, so alive, and yet…hurting, dying.

“Rest,” I whisper to him, low enough that
Hobbs won’t hear me. “Go with honor.”

He slips from my arms.

Thrice.

I march straight to my cabin, seeing only his
eyes, which flashed with recognition as he fell to the depths
below.

T
he war leader’s
tent is dark when I arrive. I start to speak but stop when the
opening twitches, shudders, and then parts, revealing Gard’s hefty
form.

“Walk with me, Rider,” he says.

I fall into step beside him as he leads us to
the center of camp, to the Big Fire, which crackles and snaps,
devouring the tangle of stumps and branches placed by the fire
tenders. One of them stands nearby, watching the flames.

“Leave us,” Gard says.

She departs with a short, reverent bow,
slipping away like a shadow.

“Have you tamed Passion?” Gard asks, when
he’s sure we’re alone.

It’s a rather mundane question that hardly
requires a midnight meeting. The fire pops.

“She will never be tame,” I say. “But yes,
I’ve ridden her.” Surely Gard already knows this.

He smiles, and I’m surprised how warm it
feels coming from a man who could break me in two. Perhaps it’s
just the heat from the fire. “That sounds like something your
mother would say,” he says.

I should feel pride at the comparison, but
all I get is a bulge of despair in my stomach.

I say nothing in response.

We stare at the fire together, watching as it
snaps a branch in half like a broken bone.

My mother’s face is in the flames, but I
don’t look away.

When I can’t look at her any longer, I turn
to him and say, “You asked me here to talk about Passion?”

He continues to stare into the fire. “No,” he
says gruffly, “but I suppose you already know that.”

There’s silence as I look away. Then
what?

Another branch disappears in the red and
orange.

“I want to talk to you about your father,” he
says, and I hold my breath, trying not to show the tremor of anger
that passes through me.

“What about him?” I ask, unable to hide the
crackle of fire in my tone.

He cocks his head to the side, as if
thinking, and then says, “Can I tell you a story?”

He’s the war leader, am I to say no? “Yes,” I
say, centering my gaze on a tuft of grass outside the stone ring,
blackened by the heat from the fire.

“You were three years old,” he says, and I
close my eyes.

No.

“Paw was four.”

Stop.

“Our battles had always taken place on the
beaches, well away from the camp. The Riders—your mother, me—we
protected the rest.”

But not on that night.

“The Soakers had a plan that night. They
wanted to cut us deeply, break our spirits. The landing party was a
diversion, only a small part of their attack. By the time we
realized it…”

“They’d reached camp,” I say, kicking the
black grass with my toe. Though brittle, the stalks don’t
break.

“Yes. The weak, the untrained, the sick, the
children: that was their goal.”

The heaviness of his words presses on my
shoulders and I can taste blood in my mouth, the inside of my cheek
chewed away.

Stop
, I will him again. To speak the
word would be weakness, so I chant it over and over in my mind,
hoping he’ll hear.
Stopstopstop.

“When we struck down our foes on the beach
and reached the camp,” he continues, “the tents were on fire, our
people were dying. Many fought valiantly, but futilely, saving
lives as best they could.”

But not my father. All he could do was run
while Paw was murdered.

“Your father,” Gard says, but I don’t need to
know the rest, not when knowing cuts deeper than a knife.

“Is a coward,” I say. “Despite my mother,
it’s in my blood, I know. You want me to leave the Riders,” I say,
realizing it at the same time I speak it. My head slumps to my
chest.

“Sadie,” Gard says, but I can’t look up, not
when the only thing I have left is about to be taken away. All
because of him.

“Sadie,” he repeats, and I lift my chin with
my hand, force my head to the side. My eyes meet his, which are
dark and serious. “You’ll be a Rider for life. Doubt anything, but
not that.”

I’m at a loss, my head spinning. “What are
you saying?” I ask, probably a little too harshly.

“That your father is not a coward, not even
close to one,” he says, one of his fists tightening. “To hear you
say such a thing angers me deeply.”

His fist scares me, but not enough to stop my
refutation. “You don’t know,” I say. “He left Paw to die. He sent
Mother to die. You. Don’t. Know.”

He can hit me if he wants, and I’ll take it,
and for a moment I think he will, as his knuckles grow white from
the tension. But then his hand relaxes and he pushes out a deep
breath. “Sadie,” he says. “I was there too. Are you sure you
remember? You were very young.”

“Y-Yes,” I say, hating that my voice falters.
My mother would never show such weakness.

“What do you remember?” he asks.

I close my eyes, strain against the memories
that have been incomplete for so long. Fire. Darkness and shadows.
Shouts in the night. White-skinned men. Harsh blades, cutting down
Stormers indiscriminately. Paw’s scream.

Where was I?

My head hurts when I squeeze my eyes shut too
tight.

“Father and I were inside our tent,” I say,
remembering looking out into the night. Paw is standing alone,
crying, scared and unsure, gawking at the carnage around him.

“No,” Gard says. “
You
were inside your
tent. Your father was not.”

In my memory, I look around, searching for my
father’s cowardly expression, his huddled form.

I’m alone.

Where is he?

A log falls in the fire, kicking up sparks,
and I flinch, my eyes darting to the flames, which melt into the
inferno in my memory.

“Where?” I say.

“Look outside.”

I do, and this time Paw’s not alone. My
father tries to pick him up but it’s too late, a Soaker is upon
him, brandishing a sword.

“No!” Father screams, grabbing a branch from
the ground with one arm while using the other to push Paw behind
him.

The Soaker laughs and slashes at my father,
cutting the branch in two. My father throws the pieces at him,
while yelling for Paw to
Run!

The man slashes at Father, but misses. Paw’s
halfway to the tent, and for a moment I think he’ll make it, but
then Father’s down, his leg bleeding, his scream not for his pain,
but for us, who he’s looking toward even as the Soaker comes at
us.

And I can only cry. Because I’m scared. And
I’m weak.

And the man’s sword slashes downward. At
Paw.

He dies, not a foot from me. Not a foot.

And I’m next. The man sneers, and I hate him,
and I want to rush from the tent and punch him, kick him, bite him.
And I start to, but then Mother’s there, and she cuts the man open,
and there’s so much blood, a lot of it Paw’s. I see Gard’s massive
form behind her, watching.

Not my father’s fault.

But why?

Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t my mother
tell me? Why did they let me hate him for all these years?

My memory is incomplete.

“What happened before Mother arrived?” I ask
harshly.

“I wasn’t there,” Gard says.

Ignoring him, I ask, “Why was I in the tent
and Paw not?”

“I wasn’t there,” Gard repeats.

“But my father would’ve told you,” I say.

“He refused.”

“But he would’ve told my mother,” I push,
“and she would’ve told you.”

“She refused.”

None of it makes any sense. Why such a big
secret? What could hiding the truth possibly accomplish?

“And what of my mother?” I say, frustrated
with my missing memory despite having been only three years
old.

“Do you mean the mission to ice country?”
Gard asks.

I nod, running a hand through my hair. “Did
my father know she would die?”

“Yes,” Gard says.

The anger swarms back through me, washing
away my confusion. The world is right again, my father still to
blame.

“Did you know?” I ask, my words burning with
accusation.

“Yes,” he admits.

I’m afraid of myself, that I’ll hit him. I
tuck my hands underneath me as a safeguard, take a deep breath.
“And you did nothing?”

“No,” he says. “Your father came to me first,
told me about his vision before he told even your mother. Begged me
to forbid her from riding with the others. Said he’d ride in her
stead.”

“But you refused him?” Another accusation,
hurled like a stone.

“No.” Again, the answer surprises me. “I
agreed, except for the part about him riding. Neither of them would
go.”

I frown. “Then what happened? Why did she
go?”

“We couldn’t stop her. She knew the truth and
still she went. She said if we refused her she’d take her own life
anyway. The threat was real in her voice. Your mother could
be…stubborn.”

I have to close my eyes to stop my head from
spinning. My father did everything in his power to stop my mother
from riding to her death. He tried to sacrifice his own life to
save Paw’s.

“I think I’ve made a grave mistake,” I say,
my voice quivering as much as the dancing flames.

“It’s not your fault,” Gard says. “You didn’t
know and no one told you.”

Which again begs the question: why?

“I have to go,” I say, standing quickly.
“Thank you for telling me.”

“You needed to know. Now more than ever.”

Gard saw the anger eating me away and was
worried it would affect my performance as a Rider, is that it? Is
that why he’s telling me? Something tells me there’s more.

I stomp on the blackened blades of grass as I
walk away, feeling them crumble beneath my trod.

H
eavy. That’s the
only word to describe the feeling inside me. There are so many eyes
in my sleep. Mother’s. Webb’s. The bilge rat boy’s. All staring,
staring, burning holes of accusation through my skin. “He’s the
one!” they say. “He killed us!”

Although the Scurve seems to be under control
again, Jade won’t talk to me, just clambers up the mast each
morning, dead set on repairing every last tear in the sails without
further assistance from me. I could go up, work alongside her, but
why force something that’s not there?

As I eat alone in my cabin in a silence
broken only by the intermittent creaking of the ship, I mull over
what to do. More pointedly, I consider the information Jade gave me
just before we stopped speaking. Fire country. The bilge rats’
home. Taken, abducted, tricked: brought to a place where they’re
dogs—no, less than dogs: rats—forced to slave away, day in and day
out, obeying orders from men who can barely look at them.

Was she lying, trying to gain my sympathy? In
some ways I hope she was, so my father’s not a monster, so the
world can become right again. But in other ways I’ll be sadder if
she was lying, because that means I’m nothing to her, just a boy to
be manipulated.

There’s a knock on my door and I look up,
surprised. I asked not to be disturbed, choosing to take my evening
meal in my cabin, rather than with the men, needing time to
think.

“Yes?” I say, stabbing a potato with my
fork.

Barney pushes open the door, a strange
expression on his face. It’s one I’ve never seen before, a mix of
what appears to be glee, embarrassment, and concern. The glee is in
his eyes, wide and dancing; the embarrassment is in the
extraordinarily crimson flush of his cheeks; and the concern is in
his bent eyebrows and pursed lips.

“I asked not to be—”

“I apologize, sir, but I was sure you’d want
to hear this.”

I raise the potato to my mouth, think better
of it, and set my fork down with a clink, uneaten starch still
stuck to it. “Go on.”

“You should help repair the sails tomorrow,”
Barney says uncertainly.

I stare at him. “Are you giving me an
order?”

“More like a message,” Barney says, turning
to go.