Aeralis (16 page)

He ran a hand over his face and grimaced. “I’ll live. You?”

“He isn’t the first Aeralian that’s ever slapped me.”

Adam’s eyes sparked with anger. “He will be the last, I swear it.”

I looked to the hut. “We need to hurry before he comes back.”

The inside of the hut was shadowy and smelled like rotting fish. Four bunk beds built with splintered boards lined the walls. A sleeping figure occupied one, but he was too young to be Borde.

Footsteps sounded in the doorway. Adam pressed himself against the wall, and I whirled, looking for a place to hide as a figure entered. It was an old man, but not Borde. He spotted me before I could move.

“Who are you?” he asked, wary but not alarmed. He hadn’t seen Adam, who was crouched against the wall and ready to spring if necessary.

“I’m looking for prisoner number 650,” I said, ignoring his question.

The man grunted and gestured at the sleeping figure. “He’s right there.”

I turned. “That isn’t him.”

The man snorted. “It’s him. He stepped past me for another bunk and rolled into it. Within seconds, he was asleep.

Adam stepped from the shadows and looked from me to the first man, the one who had been identified as 650. I stepped closer and peered at his face even as disappointment surged through me.

Had another man named Falcon been arrested? Was this all for nothing?

Shock sizzled through me as the man shifted and I caught a glimpse of his features. His hair, his eyes, his nose, his mouth were all as familiar to me as my own face.

The man sleeping on the bunk before me looked exactly like Jonn.

SIXTEEN

MY GASP WAS loud enough to wake the prisoner. He bolted upright, squinting at us both in the near-darkness as he raised his fists.

“Who are you?”

I tried to speak, but no sound emerged from my mouth. I looked at Adam wildly—did he see it, too? Was I hallucinating? Was I losing my mind in the tension of the moment?

“Who are you?” the prisoner repeated angrily. “I don’t have any extra money or food.”

Adam touched my arm to show that he recognized the resemblance, too. He nodded at me, urging me to speak.

“Please,” I said, turning back to the man. “We must talk to you.”

He was older than Jonn by at least twenty years, with streaks of gray hair running along the sides of his head and lines around the corners of his eyes and mouth, but there was no mistaking the astonishing similarity. I thought of my mother’s letter.

There is something you need to know, something I’ve not yet had the courage to tell you
.

My knees buckled.

“Aaron?” I whispered, and the word burned on my lips as I spoke it.

It was my father’s name. The prisoner’s eyes widened slightly at the name before closing almost into slits. He got to his feet.

“What do you want? Why did you call me that?”

Confusion spiraled through me, but there wasn’t time to think. I held up both hands to calm him. “We’re here to help you.”

He stumbled back. “Eloisa?”

Eloisa. My mother’s name. My heart thudded against my ribs. My knees trembled. My hands were numb.

“No. It’s Lia,” I managed.

“Lia?” He was confused.

“Camilla,” I said. It was the name I’d been given at birth, the name I’d been called as a baby.

He went still at my name, and I took a shuddering breath. He knew my mother’s name. He knew my name. He looked just like Jonn.

There is something you need to know
, my mother had written.

I couldn’t think, couldn’t move. I was paralyzed by the possibility smoldering painfully in my mind like a live coal, and all the emotional upheaval facing it would cause.

“We don’t have time,” Adam murmured in my ear as he touched my elbow, bringing me back to the present. “Later.” His voice was sympathetic, but the urgency in it roused me back to what must be done.

“Listen,” I said to the man I’d called Aaron, speaking fast. “We came to find Falcon. Where is he?”

The prisoner lowered his voice and looked at Adam. “Who is he?”

“He can be trusted,” I said. “Please. We have to hurry. Where’s Falcon?”

“I’m Falcon,” the prisoner said angrily.

I tried again. “Where is Meridus Borde?”

The man’s eyes hardened. He shook his head. “There’s no one by that name here.” He turned, and I caught a glimpse of the tattoo on his arm—650. He hadn’t been lying about that.

Adam touched my arm. “Lia. We’re out of time.”

Panic filled me. We hadn’t found Borde. Instead here stood a stranger who knew my mother’s name and looked exactly like my brother.

“Come with us,” I blurted. “We’ll smuggle you out of here.”

“What? How?”

“No time to explain. You’ll have to trust me. Do you trust me?”

The prisoner nodded. He was gazing at my face, a dazed expression on his own.

“Stay close, follow us, and do what we say,” I said. “Your life will depend on it. Understand?”

“I understand.”

“We’ve got to get back to the kitchen,” I told him. “We’ve got a cart there. My friends are waiting for us.”

“The guards—”

“There’s a secret compartment under the cart,” I explained.

He licked his lips and nodded after a pause. His eyes shifted from me to Adam. “Who’s he?” he asked again.

“Someone you can trust,” I said firmly. I felt Adam’s eyes on me when I said it, but I didn’t look at him. I kept my gaze fixed on the prisoner.

“I suppose I don’t have much choice,” he said.

Adam and I exchanged a glance. We darted across the alley to the adjacent row of huts with the prisoner at our heels. We moved from row to row, avoiding the patrolling guards as we slipped toward the front of the camp where Korr, Raven, and the cart waited. When we reached the place where Adam and I had stored our masks and caps, I stopped to retrieve them. After slipping them back on, we continued toward the kitchen.

Raven’s voice carried clearly through the stillness. Korr’s answering rumble simmered with impatience. They were arguing.

I turned to face the prisoner when we reached the corner of the kitchen that was closest to the yard. “We’ll go out first,” I said. “Keep your eyes on me. I’ll motion for you to come when the guards are occupied, and you’ll go under the cart. There is a compartment there that you can climb into and lie flat inside of. Remain there until we tell you to come out, and don’t make a sound.”

He nodded.

Adam and I rounded the corner together. Korr and Raven stood in the middle of the yard, face-to-face, arguing. Raven had both hands on her hips. Korr’s arms were crossed, and he hissed commands at her. I couldn’t make out their words, but it seemed they were disagreeing about whether she should be allowed to speak to the soldiers.

The guards were watching the fight with undisguised enjoyment. They looked at us as we appeared, and then their gazes returned to the more interesting argument as Raven’s tone rose to a squeal.

Every muscle in my body was screaming with tension. I didn’t take my eyes off the guards as I approached the cart. I motioned to the prisoner behind my back. I heard the squish of his feet in the mud, and then the creak of the cart as he slipped beneath it and climbed into the compartment we’d fixed there earlier in the day.

One of the guards straightened and approached.

“You there,” he said to me.

I couldn’t breathe. Korr and Raven fell silent. They turned. Korr’s face was impassive, but Raven’s eyes were wide with sudden fear as the guard stopped before the cart.

“What took you so long?” he asked me.

My throat was dry. My lips were numb. “I...we...we had to—”

The guard laughed, interrupting my explanation. He spat in the mud. “Next time, do it again. These two are more entertaining than a night at the theater.”

I sagged against the cart as he returned to his post. Adam and I climbed into the back of the cart, while Korr and Raven situated themselves on the driver’s bench, still bickering. I didn’t relax until we’d passed through the gate and crossed the bridge to Astralux.

~

When we reached the end of the industrial side of the city, Korr pulled the cart into an alley and jumped down from the driver’s seat.

“Hurry,” he barked. “We don’t have much time before nightfall, and this section of the city has a curfew.”

A steamcoach pulled up in the street with a wheeze of mist. The coach was plain gray, not Korr’s usual gleaming black one.

I crouched on the ground beside the cart and peered at the underside. “Come out. We have to change vehicles now.”

The prisoner’s hands appeared, then his head. He emerged from the compartment with a groan, tumbling to the ground and scrambling up immediately, as if he expected one of us to grab him and put a gun to his head.

“Are you all right?” Adam asked him quietly.

One corner of the prisoner’s mouth slid up in a grimace of a smile. “I’m alive.” He scanned our faces until he found mine, and he stared at me. “Lia,” he said, testing the word on his tongue. He spoke with a mixture of disbelief and awe.

Raven and Korr both looked at him, their attention snagged by the tone of his voice.

My throat squeezed as I saw him again in the light of day. The tilt of his nose, the squint of his eyes, the way his hair swirled over his left ear—it was all Jonn.

Who was this man who answered to my father’s name? Who looked like a Weaver?

The prisoner looked at Korr and Raven with open curiosity.

“Who are you?” he asked Korr, his voice thorny with hostility. “You look familiar. You have the stink of nobility.”

The skin around Korr’s eyes tightened. “I’ll ask the questions,” he said. “You’re in our debt. Remember that.”

Aaron crossed his arms and straightened his stance. Tension filled the air. I swallowed. I hadn’t thought we might be dealing with an uncooperative rescuee. I stepped forward and put a hand on his arm.

“Let’s get going, shall we?” I said.

“Yes,” Korr said with a flick of his eyebrow. “Unless you want us to leave you here? You’ll be found within hours, I can assure you.”

“And if I come with you?” the prisoner demanded.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Korr said. “At least not as long as you behave yourself. We have need of you—”

“You can trust us,” I said, cutting off Korr’s less-than-reassuring reassurance. I didn’t want Korr spilling our plans to this prisoner, not when he wasn’t the real man we needed. Korr couldn’t know that yet, not until I’d figured out what to do.

The prisoner looked at the waiting coach, then back at me. Slowly, he uncrossed his arms and nodded, and I breathed out with relief.

“Let’s get out of here.”

~

Adam and I waited together in the library as the prisoner bathed and ate. Adam sat in the window, one leg drawn up to his chest, his chin cupped in his hand as he stared at the darkened street below. I paced, trying to make sense of everything and failing. The words of my mother’s letter circled in my mind like birds. In my hand, clenched between my fingers and my palm, was the tattered bit of letter she’d left me. I had the words memorized by now, but I read them again anyway. This man. His appearance. The letter. And my mission. Borde. It was all too much. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath.

“Where is Borde?” I muttered. “And why did the prisoner take his name?” I opened my eyes and stared at nothing, trying to think.

Adam looked at me but didn’t say anything.

“Do you think...do you think he’s dead?” Horror pierced me as I spoke the words.

“Don’t make assumptions yet,” Adam said. He rose and stood in front of me, blocking me from pacing another circuit around the room. “Let’s talk to him first.”

My eyes burned. “Why does he look like Jonn?”

Adam said nothing, but his eyes softened. He reached out and touched my cheek with one hand, and I let him. The brush of his fingers sent a chill over my skin, but it was oddly comforting.

A knock at the door startled us.

I turned away from Adam to open it. The prisoner stood in the hall, flanked by two of Korr’s men. His hair was damp and he smelled like soap. He wore a fresh set of clothing that was slightly too large for his emaciated frame.

I nodded at the guards, and they left us. “Come in,” I said to him.

“So, I take it I’m still a prisoner?” he observed, glancing behind him at the retreating men.

“Korr is taking no chances at the moment. Don’t take it to mean more than what it does. He is a cautious man.”

“Korr,” he said. “I know that name.” His forehead wrinkled as he thought, and he blanched. “He’s one of the favorites of the Dictator.”

“He’s a Restorationist,” I said. “He can be”—I winced at the word—“trusted. At least, he is not our direct enemy.”

The prisoner nodded at the word
Restorationist
. I wondered how much he knew about them, but didn’t ask. There were more pressing questions on my mind.

“Where’s Borde?”

The prisoner’s eyes darted from me to Adam. “Tell me who he is first,” he demanded.

“Adam Brewer,” Adam said, introducing himself. “I’m a Frost dweller like Lia. Like you.”

“Frost dweller,” the prisoner said. “I no longer take that title.”

Silence swept over the room, heavy with unspoken things.

So he was from the Frost.

I took a deep breath. “In the prison, you called me Eloisa.”

“Yes.” He paused. “My wife’s name. And you called me Aaron, which is mine.”

My stomach fell like a stone. I held out the remnant of my mother’s letter, and he took the letter as if it were a baby bird, impossibly fragile but somehow infinitely precious, too. His lips moved as he read the words, but he didn’t make a sound. I waited. His eyes reddened, and his posture slowly slumped as he absorbed the words. Finally, he raised his gaze to mine.

“You’re my daughter,” he said.

I shivered at the admission uttered so plainly.

“How?”

“I fell through the gate,” he said. “I discovered how to activate it, and it ate me alive. I ended up in the past, and I was trapped there.”