The August 5 (3 page)

“Port Kenney,” Bern said. “Come on! Let's go see what's going on.”

But Tommy hesitated. Last year, they'd stumbled across a wounded dog in the forest. Bern insisted on approaching it and almost got his hand bit off. When it came to danger, his brother was like a moth to a flame.

“Let's go tell Father,” Tommy said.

“No way, I want to see if Kate is all right!” Bern insisted. It was a short distance down Miller's Road to Port Kenney. Worried that people might need their help, Tommy sprinted after his brother.

 

 

The sky above Port Kenney was smudged with black smoke. In the final descent into the village, Tommy had a clear view of the massive fire raging near the edge of the sea. The Zunft warehouse was over a hundred yards long, easily the largest structure in the handful of buildings along the coast. The inky outline of the timbers made Tommy think of the bones of a dying animal, and the smoke from the fire made his eyes itch, even though they were still several blocks away. There were half a dozen businesses along the pier, including the Golden Standard, and they were all threatened by the inferno.

When they reached the waterfront, the boys paused in the shadow of a shuttered fish shop. A sign hanging on the door told them
Come Back Monday!
Everything was eerily quiet except for the crackle and roar of the raging fire that had completely engulfed the Zunft warehouse.

“Where is everybody?” Tommy asked.

“Maybe they cleared out?” Bern said.

“And left their homes to burn?” Tommy asked. There should have been frantic people running around the streets. In most villages, soldiers doubled as firefighters, and they should have dragged the carriage pumps into the street by now.

“Maybe they were all in the warehouse,” Bern said.

“The entire
village
wouldn't have been in the warehouse,” Tommy said. He imagined bodies inside the warehouse and his stomach turned over.

“Do you think a rover exploded?” Bern wondered. Rovers were mechanized wagons powered by the volt-cell, a new energy source invented by the Zunft. Leather seats were mounted on the chassis in front of the earthenware vat where the cell was suspended in a chemical bath. They tended to explode if they ran into anything, even at slow speeds. Tommy had overheard cottagers refer to them as boomers, which he found amusing. But cottagers had to be careful because any language that disparaged the Zunft could earn them a fine or even jail time.

“Does anyone have rovers here?” Tommy asked. As far as he knew, Colston Shore was the only man on Aeren Island who owned a rover. The army probably had a few rovers in the larger port town of Black Rock, but there were not likely to be any in this Oceanside village.

“A rover wouldn't have made such a big fire anyway,” Bern said. There was a harsh chemical smell on the wind that made Tommy's eyes water.

“What if someone did it on purpose?” Tommy said, suddenly afraid. Colston Shore had raised his sons to believe that the cottagers could rebel at any moment and the Zunftmen would be slaughtered in their beds and their property stolen. For most of his childhood, Tommy's nightmares featured the thud of cottager boots invading the corridor outside his bedroom door. But then he had realized that the Zunft had the gunpowder, the technological innovations, and control of the islands. The Zunft had the power. Why should they be scared of the cottagers? Recently, Tommy had stopped believing his father's warnings. None of the cottagers he knew seemed very angry.

“Let's go in the customs house,” Bern said, pointing down the road at the two-story brick building with a black-and-silver Zunft flag flying from the roof. “The soldiers must be there.”

“Wait, something's wrong,” Tommy warned. He tried to grab Bern's arm, but his brother shrugged him off. A gust of warm wind blew down the street, sending a shower of embers in their direction.

“Don't be such a girl, Tommy,” Bern said.

Tommy reluctantly followed Bern along the muddy road toward the customs house. Every port had an official Zunft office, which monitored shipping between the four main islands of Seahaven. In small villages like this, it was the locus of Zunft control. Soldiers were often stationed at customs houses, where they acted as the constabulary as much as the military.

“Do you know where Kate lives?” Tommy asked. “Maybe we should—”

They had reached the corner of High Street and Bern stopped abruptly, so that Tommy bumped into him, forgetting the rest of his sentence. They could see the steps of the customs house where two men waited, staring aggressively as the boys approached.

In Sevenna City, Zunftmen always wore tailcoats and bowlers, so it was obvious who belonged to the elite and who didn't. But here on Aeren, it wasn't always easy to tell Zunft from cottager as both groups often wore plain wool jackets and trousers. Then Tommy noticed that the two men wore flat caps and wool vests without coats. A Zunftman wouldn't deign to wear a vest without a coat, and flat caps were a badge of pride for cottagers.

“Cottagers?” Tommy whispered.

“Yep, bloody thieving bastards,” Bern whispered back.

The taller man said something to his companion, who unsheathed a knife. The taller one reached for a metal bludgeon attached to his belt.

“Bern!” Tommy warned. The men looked like fighters—mean and angry. Bern liked to tussle with the lads, maybe bloody a friend's nose, but he'd never been in a real fight. And Tommy had never thrown a punch in his life.

“Come on!” Bern said, and the boys whirled around and ran back up Miller's Road. With a rush of adrenaline, Bern easily outpaced his shorter brother. Frightened and disoriented, Tommy couldn't make his wobbly legs move very fast. His breath was ragged in his chest as he scrambled toward the top of the ridge.

“Wait!” Tommy shouted, stumbling over a rock, but Bern disappeared from sight. After a moment's panic that Bern had left him alone, Tommy realized it would be easier to lose his pursuers in the forest so he ducked into the trees along the side of the road. In his haste to get out of sight from the road, he barreled straight through the middle of a blackberry thicket. Thorns tore at his clothes and scratched his face and when he stumbled out the other side, he found himself under old-growth trees that offered little cover. Spinning wildly, he expected to see the two cottagers, but there was no sight of them.

Tommy tried to collect his thoughts. He couldn't take Miller's Road because the cottagers might be waiting for him, but he could head down the forested slope to the flatlands. No matter where he ended up, he'd be able to see Shore Manor, which was built on a tablet of rock jutting above the flatlands, the beach, and the ocean. It seemed like a good plan, but Tommy struggled to traverse the steep, rocky slope as the undergrowth grew thicker. He could hear something thrashing behind him and kept expecting cottagers to come barreling at him with knives.

He scrambled over a mossy boulder and dropped on the other side. Unexpectedly, he found himself in a sheltered grove surrounded by a dense ring of towering oak trees. At first, he thought there was a black rock in the shadows on the far edge of the grove, but with an unpleasant jolt, Tommy realized that someone was kneeling on the jade-green grass. The person was gasping for breath, and Tommy wondered if they'd been chased from Port Kenney into the forest like he had.

Stepping closer, he saw that it was a young woman, probably about his age, with long copper hair and green eyes. The skin on her throat was red and angry, as if it had been scorched. She clutched at her side, where blood stained her lavender dress. Their eyes met, and she snarled at him like a frightened animal. The girl was a cottager. He could tell by the embroidered yoke on her dress, a style that was common among cottager girls. Mrs. Trueblood sewed dresses in that style for her nieces.

“Get away from me,” she said, even though he hadn't moved any farther in her direction. She tried to crawl into the woods, but instead she crumpled and passed out on the forest floor.

Tommy wanted to help her, but she'd told him to stay away, so he remained as still as a statue. The wind rustled the leaves, but he couldn't hear anything that sounded like the cottagers who were chasing him—no shouts, no crashing in the undergrowth—only the croaking of frogs announcing the approaching storm. After a few hesitant steps, he crouched down and studied the girl. She was breathing rapidly, which worried him. He'd seen wounded animals take short shallow breaths that didn't seem to fill the lungs at all. He couldn't leave her here, breathing like a dying animal. But what if she'd been in Port Kenney? What if she'd been involved somehow?

His father's words rang in his ears.
The cottagers are thieves and liars. They don't believe in decency or honor
. In the distance, a rover rumbled along Miller's Road. The Zunft soldiers might have acquired a rover to search the forest for the rebels. If he helped the girl in the lavender dress, he might get caught. Tommy gazed at the sky, as if the darkening storm clouds would tell him what to do.
Lose a hundred honor points for leaving an injured girl in the woods?
He could turn the girl over to the soldiers, but then she'd get in trouble even if she hadn't been involved in anything illegal.
Gain a hundred honor points for reporting a possible rebel?

A cold rain began to fall. The girl was hurt and Aeren storms could be unexpectedly vicious. Father would punish Tommy severely if he were caught helping a cottager, especially if the rebellion he'd always warned about was finally at hand. But Mrs. Trueblood would say that all life was precious, no matter if you were born in a molehill or a mansion. As the sound of the rover engine grew louder, Tommy crossed the grove to the girl. He could take the girl to one of the nearby cottages and his father would never have to know.

Tommy lifted the girl in his arms. He wasn't much taller than she was, but she weighed less than he expected her to. She didn't wake up, not even when he jostled her as he tried to navigate through the trees and around the blackberry thickets. Through a gap in the canopy of leaves, he could see wisps of chimney smoke rising into the air. Finally, he reached a white-stone cottage nestled in a glen of oak trees. His arms were aching, but he stayed in the shadows and watched the cottage. Someone was definitely inside because he could see the flicker of firelight dancing through the shutters. In the distance, he heard the rover engine roar to life again, rumbling down the road. With a sudden burst of speed, Tommy crossed the open ground in front of the cottage and laid the girl on the wooden bench under the porch roof where she would be dry. He knocked loudly on the door and ran toward Miller's Road. Terrified of being caught, he never looked back.

3

TO AVOID SUSPICION,
Tommy made himself stop running when he reached Miller's Road. He reminded himself that he had every right to be here if he wanted to—it was his father's land. He rehearsed what he would say if the soldiers stopped him.
I'm going for a hike. I was heading up to Giant's Ridge, but the storm set in.
He wondered where Bern was, and if he'd already made it home. Tommy walked quickly, splashing through the puddles that formed in the deep ruts made by wagon wheels. As he approached the bend near Harrow Trailhead, Tommy raised his arm to wipe his eyes and was horrified to see blood on his sleeve. He realized his clothes were covered with the cottager girl's blood. He imagined what the soldiers would say:
Going for a hike, huh
?
Then who bled all over you?

His gray sweater was completely ruined, but the stain wasn't too noticeable on his dark jacket. With numb fingers, he was trying to close the brass buttons when he heard the engine of a fast-moving rover approaching from behind. Tommy dove into the undergrowth just as the vehicle came into view. It was a newer model with the clay vats holding the volt-cells mounted in a padded box at the rear. The driver's platform was on the same level as the spoke-wheels, but unlike the standard model, there was a boxy passenger compartment fastened in the middle of the extended chassis. It looked exactly like the rover that Colston had had shipped to Aeren at the beginning of the summer holiday.

The rover stopped a few feet away from where Tommy was hiding in the bushes. The engine sputtered off, which was a surprise. Rovers were notoriously hard to start, and it was often a two-person job to crank the wheel and flip the appropriate levers. Usually, the driver would keep the machine running unless he was certain that it was done being driven for the day. When the door to the passenger compartment opened, Tommy could see the golden Shore crest that his father had affixed to all his machines. It
was
his father's rover. But why was it up here, in the middle of nowhere? The rover had been driving up and down this stretch of Miller's Road as if the occupants were searching for something, but what? Rebels? Him and Bern? The girl? What if they'd seen him with her?

Frozen with fear, Tommy huddled in the bushes, expecting to see his father. Instead, a Zunft soldier emerged from the rover. The driver hopped down and waited while two more men climbed out. With a sigh of relief, Tommy saw that
none
of these men were Colston Shore. The three men crossed behind the rover, then headed for the entrance to the Harrow Trail. From his hiding place, he watched the men closely as they passed by him. The two soldiers were dressed in silver-and-black uniforms with green patches on their lapels. He'd seen one of the men, the one with the curly blond hair, with Colston at the manor. He hadn't seen the other soldier before. The third man was tall and wearing clothes that were more appropriate for a Zunftman in Sevenna City than in the wilds of Aeren. Tommy didn't see his face clearly, but he wore a long black coat over a bright purple silk vest and he had a bowler pulled low over his forehead.