The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (34 page)

Since my father died
and my sister disappeared—since, I can admit to myself, Bennet died
in the process of being transported here—the only time I feel half
human is when I’m around Honour. The rest of the time I’m crippled
by guilt. I know I’m becoming unpleasant and unsociable but I can’t
seem to help it. My father died and I could do nothing to save him.
My sister died and it was entirely my fault. If I had dropped the
hopeless notion that I could get my father justice, that I could
regain his faith and pride in me by finding the Lux, my sister
would still be alive.

This guilt and grief
has made me into someone I don’t like, someone who would snap at a
friend for little reason, who would ignore the presence of
acquaintances and prolong awkward silences because I can’t find it
within me to care about niceties. I’ve caught myself doing all of
these things and it makes me ashamed. But Honour has a habit of
bringing out the best of me, of making me myself again.

That’s why when he
wakes in the middle of the night with a cry and rushes from the
sleeping area of this almost-house, I follow him. I find him stood
outside, leaning against the high window-wall with his arms crossed
over his chest and a pensive expression.

“Honour?”

He starts a little,
his biceps straining against the much-too-tight sleeves of a grey
T-shirt. I don’t think I’ve seen him in it before—it’s spotless and
smells of clean cotton. It has the unexpected effect of making him
appear more put together, as if he’s put considerable effort into
his appearance when I know he hasn’t. Honour doesn’t care what he
looks like, or how the world perceives him.

“I didn’t see you much
today,” I say, leaning against the wall at his side. “Are you
alright?”

The side of his mouth
twitches, turning up very little. “Would you believe me if I said I
was?”

“No. I would not.”

“Thought so.” He turns
his head, angled down so he can meet my eyes, and I’m surprised by
how much taller than me he is. I blink up at him, a frown inching
across my face.

“Would you tell me
what’s wrong?” I don’t expect him to but my concern demands that I
ask in futile hope. Honour prefers his issues confined safely
inside him where they will do harm to no one but himself. He is
much too selfless to offer an honest look at his troubles to me, or
anyone. I watch him sometimes, and I see him struggling, but he
hides the pain before anyone can notice, before anyone can worry.
One day I fear his selflessness will get him killed.

I suppose that is the
reason I feel so protective of him, why the thought of losing him
turns my stomach tremulous, my heart seizing with an ache I’ve only
ever felt when fearing for my blood relatives. I want Honour to
realise the world will not implode if he takes a second to care for
himself. I want him to realise he is as important as everyone else,
as worthy of love and attention and protection.

The streetlight
splutters and I somersault back to reality to find myself staring
vacantly at the hollow plains of Honour’s face. Embarrassment warms
my cheeks. I don’t want him to think I was staring at him—I make an
effort not to stare openly at anyone since it’s so impolite. Then
again, I don’t suppose Honour cares much for politeness. I look at
him again. His hair is rumpled, light dusting his silhouette, brown
skin tinged silvern by the moon. His eyes are dark, watchful.

As I shake myself
fully free of my musing, Honour’s mouth twitches. It becomes a wry
twist of a smile—one I haven’t seen before. How many smiles can one
person possibly have?

“Are you here with
me,” he says, “or somewhere else?”

I can’t help smiling
back. “I think I’m elsewhere.”

“Hmm.” A cloud must
pass over the moon because the street is pitched into gloom, lit
only in misty shades of orange. Honour is in absolute shadow. “Is
the weather any better where you are?”

My breath huffs out in
a laugh, blunt and surprised. “No, it’s dreadful. Rain clouds
everywhere.”

“Shame.” There’s a
pause filled with the quiet chug of a generator somewhere
underground and a distant ring of laughter, and then Honour says,
“Thanks for asking what was wrong, by the way. I know I don’t—I’m
not good at talking but … I’m really glad I have you, y’know?”

I’m so shocked for a
second that I forget to reply, the heat pooling in my heart taking
me off guard. “I do know,” I say. I’m glad of the dubious light
because I’m sure my cheeks are burning with delighted
mortification. A smile with a life of its own wants to take over my
face but I forbid it. The silence unravelling between us is
uncomfortable. I burst out with, “I’m very glad to have you too. I
mean—not to say that I have you but—I am grateful to have you in my
life.”

For the love of
God!

I yearn to cover my
face with my hands but that would only give away my God awful
discomfort. Instead I tip my face into the light rain dripping from
the clouds and pray it will lessen the severe heat of my
cheeks.

Next time, Branwell,
do not talk. Just do not talk. It’s truly not that difficult, and
it would save everyone in the near vicinity the most complete
humiliat—

My mind just … spools
away. I’m certain each one of my bodily functions suffers from a
blip in the moment that Honour hugs me, his bare arms folding
securely around my shoulders. My face becomes yet hotter, though it
doesn’t seem possible, and the rest of my body scrambles to match
the temperature of my cheeks. The closeness of him infects me with
the strangest deliria. I freeze like a total fool. A second passes
before my limbs will move. I rest my palms on Honour’s back, his
skin scorching under the delicate cotton. It feels as if a flock of
birds has become trapped inside the cage of my ribs.

“I
do know,” Honour says, repeating the words I spoke moments before
my brain forsook all functionality. His breath whispers over the
shell of my ear. I scramble for a reply but my useless mind
suggests only
Honour smells like soap and
linen
.

When he draws away,
the cold of night hits me like a punch to the jaw. The moonlight
has resumed its ghostly brightness, illuminating better the scene
around us, but I wish it wouldn’t. I would like to hide in the
darkness for a while, maybe even for the rest of my life.

Honour is running a
hand over his hair, looking only at the empty street. I want to ask
him what that was but something about it makes me press my lips
together. It was an embrace, nothing more. I can’t possibly be
feeling … what I think I am feeling. Attraction only happens with
women and Honour is most definitely not a woman.

“You were going to
tell me what was upsetting you,” I say, to fill the heavy silence.
Upon hearing the rasp of my voice I clear my throat, which only
serves to make me that more uncomfortable.

“Yes.” Honour is
visibly grateful for a subject to talk about. “It’s my brother.
John. He’s here in Leeds.”

“Oh?
” What would be wonderful right
about now is if my voice resumed being
my
voice
instead of this foreign squeak. “And
what’s he doing here?”

“Making crazy plans.
He wants to go back in time.”

Cold shoots through
me, freezing the warmth in my veins. I’m no longer embarrassed or
nervous. “I would not recommend it. We don’t know the consequences
of time travelling yet. Anything could happen if too many people
are jumping from one time period to another. Worlds could
collapse.”

“I’d ask you to tell
him that,” he says, “but he’s already gone.”

“Gone where?”

“No idea. I looked for
him all day but he’s left. Didn’t tell anyone where he’s going,
either.” He tugs a hand through his hair. “Why does it feel like
everything’s falling apart?”

“Because,” I say, “it
likely is. The world can only take so much, and we’ve already put
it through too much.”

“So you think we’re
doomed? We can’t do anything to stop it?”

“It doesn’t matter.”
My sigh is resigned, helpless. “We might as well try to stop it.
It’s not as if we have anything better to do.”

***

Miya

00:16. 03.11.2040. The
Free Lands, Midlands.

We leave for our next
stop in the dead of night three days after we got here. No lights
guide us onto the aircraft since the Leeds people have enough
common sense to keep the town dark at night—unlike Manchester. We
stumble blindly up the plane steps, ready to be on our way. The
longer we stay in one place, the more twitchy I get, expecting
Officials to drop their bombs from the sky again.

I’m glad when the
plane hums and we lift off the ground.

Birmingham isn’t as
cocky as Manchester or as scruffy as Leeds. Its people aren’t
exactly welcoming. In the end all but three of them flat out refuse
to come with us. Saga cheerfully insists it was worth the trip
because our forces are growing. With the Birmingham trio, we’ve
added a doctor, his nurse wife, and their tech-savvy sixteen year
old daughter. I’m not sure I see the point of this recruitment.
Isn’t our whole reason for going to Bharat to gather forces and
make an army to attack States? Why do we need these strays?

We haven’t been in
Birmingham an hour and we’re already gathered to leave, waiting for
Cell to be done with his barely-civil goodbye to the locals.

Yosiah goes deadly
still. He’s fixated on something in the corner of his eye. I’ve
seen him this way before and it always leads to trouble. “What is
it?” I ask. When his eyes dart behind me—he always gives himself
away in the end—I follow his gaze to a plain brunette girl in her
twenties.

Siah clenches his jaw
and I don’t think he’s going to answer, but then he does. “Someone
from my past,” he says. It’s painfully clear he’s not going to
explain anymore but I’m pathetically humbled by him telling me
anything at all. The look in his eyes tells me this is something
big, something important, maybe even dangerous.

I take his wrist in my
hand, putting my thumb to his pulse. Yosiah shudders.

In the middle of our
flight to the next town—Cardiff—bright lights sneak out of the
night sky and our aircraft spirals to the ground for a terrifying
five seconds before righting itself. People start yelling. We’ve
been hit. States planes. Guardians order Timofei to return fire but
he doesn’t know how to work the weapon controls.

The mysterious
brunette from Siah’s past marches down the aisle and drops into the
chair beside Timofei. She takes over the gun controls, her fingers
becoming a blur. Within four minutes she’s shot the Official
aircraft right out of the sky.

Definitely
military.

“We need to get off
this island,” Yosiah says. “They’re tracking us.”

“How?” I look at him
for answers but my heart comes to a standstill. He’s blocked off
his emotions. My hands become fists. Why is he hiding things from
me?

“I don’t know,” he
says, making an effort to strip all feeling from his voice. “The
Manchester spy could have planted a tracking device on any of us
and we wouldn’t know—they’re only tiny.”

Honour leans across
the aisle. “But they can’t track us all the way to Bharat,
right?”

“Never heard of a
private conversation, Honour?” I quip.

Siah shoots me a weak
glare and answers Honour. “They can. They can track us anywhere.
But I don’t think they’d follow us to Bharat. They wouldn’t risk
Bharat’s weaponry and armies.”

“I like the ‘I don’t
think’. Very reassuring.”

“I thought you wanted
the truth.”

Honour glances out the
window, at the black smoke coming from the plane. He says, “I kind
of hate the truth.”

There’s something
wrong with our left wing. Or the fan under the left wing. Or three
of the blades in the fan under the—

I rub my eyes,
blocking out the rambling of Liss, the Guardians’ resident fixer.
She’s got a colourful vocabulary and a vicious mouth—aspects of a
personality I’d wholeheartedly approve of if it weren’t keeping us
out in the open in a field of cheerful daisies.

We all watch the inky
sky, expecting to be shot.

Liss spends half an
hour alternating between arguing with Guardian technologists and
arguing with the techy girl we just picked up, and three hours
after that doing her job—fixing the aircraft. Two and a half hours
of surprisingly steady flight later, we land in Cardiff, cranky and
tired.

From what I can see in
the dark, Cardiff is a replica of Leeds—rubble, half broken
buildings, damp, and more rubble.

When we arrive, nobody
official comes to meet us so we have to seek the important people
ourselves. Cardiff’s leaders, we’re told, are an old woman called
Vivienne Cynwrig and her nephew Noah. We find them in a cozy
building that smells sweet and musty—the flashes of my torch over
the sign above the door say it used to be a tea room, whatever that
is.

Vivienne stomps out of
a back room, squinting into our torchlight. She rests heavily on a
stick but looks like she could easily use it to carve out my heart
if she really wanted to. If I ever get old, I want to be as
daunting as this silver haired woman.

A teenage boy stumbles
into the room after her, shirtless and wide eyed. Noah, I
presume.

“You’re them, then?”
Vivienne asks, pursing her mouth. “That rebellious lot from
London?”

“That’s us.” Cell
looks apprehensive, probably thinking she won’t trust us like the
people of Birmingham didn’t, that she’ll refuse to leave.

“Right.” She makes a noise halfway between a grunt and
a
hmm
. “I’ll get
my bags.”