Thorns (7 page)

I ran to the hearth and thrust my hand into the tangle of rags. My fingers brushed metal. I withdrew a locket and popped it open, and the glint of gears met my eyes.

Farther technology. It drew the monsters like bees to nectar.

My heart withered, but I smashed the locket under my shoe anyway. Our safety was more important than sentiment. I closed my eyes in silent apology, though, as I bent to pick up the pieces and put them back in the basket.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” Adam stepped close to me, reaching out a hand. He hadn’t seen the locket.

“It’s just been a long night.” His intense scrutiny threatened to overwhelm me. I pressed a hand over my eyes.

“Lia!” Ivy’s voice echoed faintly from behind the door. “What’s going on?”

Adam turned his head in the direction of her voice, and his brow furrowed. He looked back at me and caught my panicked expression. “Should I go?”

“No, wait. It’s all right if they know you’re here. I—I need to speak with you,” I said. I reached for his sleeve, but stopped before my fingers brushed against it. I didn’t quite dare to touch him.

He crossed his arms and faced me. His dark eyes pinned me in place as always, and my skin prickled as always with a sensation that was not quite fear.

“I’ve got two Farther children hidden in the barn.”

His eyes narrowed with sudden understanding.

“Lia!” Ivy shrieked. The dresser legs scraped behind the closed door as if she planned to emerge.

“We need to move them as soon as possible,” he said.

“No, wait.” I put both hands against his chest to block him from stepping toward the door. “The Frost. It’s dark. The Watchers...”

“I don’t think they’ll come back tonight. And I have methods for…avoiding them.”

I shook my head, adamant. “You’re not going out there with just a few nets of snow blossoms. I don’t know anyone who’d take that kind of risk.”

“You did, once.”

The words shut me up. I made a small noise in my throat, not quite agreement and not quite denial. Something hovered unspoken in the air between us—the memory of him standing as he waited for Gabe and me in the snow that night two months ago. That was what was in my mind. I didn’t know what was in his.

Adam hesitated. His fingers stilled against the edge of his cloak, and then he removed it and passed it to me as if resigning something. “The morning, then. They’ll be safe tonight.”

Relief flowed through me. I hung his cloak on the rack and pointed toward the bedroom door that still shielded Ivy and Jonn. “I should let them know it’s all right now.”

Ivy threw her arms around me and sobbed when I opened the door. Behind her, my brother slumped against the bed frame, his face pale and his eyes angry. I met his gaze over her head, and an ocean of wordless things passed between us. I broke eye contact first, when Adam stepped to the doorway.

“Adam Brewer,” Ivy gasped, her expression a mixture of accusation and frank curiosity. “What are you doing here?”

Jonn lifted his eyebrows and met my eyes with a firm stare that said he knew very well what Adam was doing here. I looked down at my hands.

Adam smiled faintly, assuming the diffident-Brewer-boy persona he wore so well. It made him seem benign, unthreatening, unremarkable. But I could see through it now to the intense stillness in his body and eyes that told of his strength and control.

“I only stopped by briefly to make sure you were all right. But your sister thinks it isn’t safe for me to go out again, so I’ll be staying the night,” he said with an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry to intrude.”

“You just happened to be strolling through the Frost after dark?” Jonn raised both eyebrows as if he couldn’t believe it. He grabbed his crutches and hobbled forward to the door.

Adam met his gaze squarely. “Yes.”

“Ivy, can you get some spare quilts for the floor?” I interrupted.

Jonn and Adam drew back as my sister passed between them to fetch the blankets. Adam went to the fire, and Jonn hobbled back for the bedroom. I stood in the middle of the room, my stomach twisting as I tried to think of a way to sooth my brother.

After she’d returned and we’d made a bed, Ivy peppered Adam with questions about village gossip while I went to help Jonn situate himself.

“What’s he doing here?” he demanded quietly. “Is it…is it
their
business?”

He meant the Thorns. I knew he did.

“I want to talk to him about what happened to Edmond Dyer,” I said. It was true enough.

He frowned, but we didn’t continue the conversation because his tremors were starting. I covered him in quilts and laid a damp cloth over his eyes, and he fell asleep almost immediately.

After a moment of watching his chest rise and fall in even, quiet breaths, I rose and went out to the main room. Ivy had vanished, and Adam sat alone by the hearth, his legs drawn up to his chest and his face half in shadow. The firelight flickered over the points of his hair and turned the edges of his lashes to gold. He smelled like wood smoke and forest pine, and the scent had mingled with the smoky smell of the room, tuning my senses to his presence in a subtle but insistent way. I stopped in the doorway, leaning against it. He turned to face me, and for a moment the silence stretched and thickened between us.

“She went to bed,” he said of Ivy, jerking his chin at the stairs.

I nodded but didn’t speak.

Adam’s eyes slid back to me, and he watched me with an intensity that made my stomach twist.

“I—I found them in the woods. They had a makeshift Thorns sign of twigs.” I hesitated. “They’re covered in cuts and bruises. The girl can’t be a day older than ten. The boy is half her age.”

Adam’s jaw twitched. “The Aeralian government has sunk to new depths if they’re arresting children.”

“They didn’t tell me anything,” I said. “They didn’t say anything, really.”

“They’re in shock.”

Our eyes met again, and I took a deep breath. “And you’ll take them to the gate yourself?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “At first light.”

The air in the room seemed to grow thicker. I moved across the room and settled down by the hearth. My eyes dropped to the quilts Ivy had brought, and I ran my hand over the top one.

“My mother made this for me,” I said slowly, tracing the blue and white edges of the quilt with my forefinger. “It’s a map of the whole Frost, made from bits of our old clothing and sewn together with our quota leftovers. She used to say it was the only time the Frost would keep me warm.” My laugh stuck in my throat, and I grabbed some of the wool by Jonn’s chair and began twisting it between my fingers. When in doubt, always work on quota.

“Your mother was a remarkable woman,” Adam said quietly, still gazing at me steadily.

I nodded.

Silence fell between us, and it might have been companionable except for the undercurrent of unspoken things that set me on edge.

“Adam.”

“Yes?”

“Some young people stopped me in the village a few days ago.”

One of Adam’s eyebrows rose. He picked up some of the wool from Jonn’s basket and joined me in my work. His fingers were unusually long, and they deftly worked the material. I stopped, staring. “What are you doing?”

“Helping you.” He kept twisting.

“Nobody does that,” I said. “You don’t help other families with their quota. It just isn’t done.” He knew this. There were other Weaver families in our village, but they did not share our burden. We each carried our quota load alone.

He tipped his head to one side. “Maybe if more people helped each other, then we’d have fewer problems with shortages and hunger. Some are overworked, some are underworked.”

“Problems?” I asked, although I wasn’t surprised.

“Half the village is struggling to meet their quota. The Elder families sew pillows and embroider sashes and call it quota. And some families work their fingers to the bone and neglect their own chores.” He shook his head in disgust. “This Farther occupation has only exposed the problem, but it didn’t create it. Things are not shared equally here, although we boast as much.”

I flushed, shamed because he thought we couldn’t handle our own quota but equally touched that he cared enough to lend a hand, even if it embarrassed me. “Adam,” I said quietly. “It’s fine, really.”

“Let me help.”

He looked determined, so I quit protesting. I watched silently a moment as he worked, and something in me prickled with curiosity. “I would never have taken you for someone who’d push for change.”

“No? Why do you think I joined an organization like the Thorns, then?”

“Oh.”

“So what about these villagers who stopped you?” he asked, pointedly steering the conversation away from himself.

I wet my lips with the tip of my tongue. “They called themselves the Blackcoats, and they said they were going to drive out the Farthers.”

Adam laughed, low and disbelieving. “Are they insane?”

“Their plans seemed foolish, but after what happened to Edmond Dyer, I…I almost want to join them.”

His hands went still. “And what’s stopping you?”

The words I needed to say were crowded on my tongue. My chest constricted. This was important, and I wanted to make sure it came out right. I wasn’t the kind of person who made lots of pretty speeches, but I wanted him to know exactly where I stood. “Well, their foolish ideas aside…they threatened Ann. They were blaming her for the Farther occupation and saying she needs to be taught a lesson.”

He scowled. “Such misplaced fervor will get them nowhere. The Mayor’s daughter is not to blame for the mistakes of the town.”

I nodded. “But they had a point. People are being hurt. Terrible injustices are occurring…and nobody seems to be doing anything.” Memories of the bruises on the children’s bodies flashed through my mind.

He waited for me to continue.

“I can’t join the Blackcoats, because I can’t agree with their methods. But those children…Edmond Dyer’s arrest…I must do something.” I put down the wool and slid one hand into my pocket. As Adam watched, I reached out and uncurled my fingers. The brooch sat in the middle of my palm, glittering in the light of the fire.

“I want to join the Thorns.”

The fire crackled, and the air seemed to buzz with the silence that followed. My fingers trembled, but I felt a strange exhilaration, too. I’d said it. I’d had the courage. A dizzying lightness filled me.

Adam spoke. “The goals of the Thorns are not necessarily the same as the goals of—”

“I know,” I interrupted. “I know your prerogatives aren’t necessarily mine. You’re from beyond the Frost, and the Thorns are Aeralian, and I am a Frost dweller. But I think there’s more at stake here than just my people’s safety, Adam. Aeralians are people, too.” I thought of Gabe. “But if what’s happening here is wrong, then what’s happening in Aeralis is just as wrong. My parents understood this. It’s why they risked everything to help people. And I…I want to do the same thing.”

“As long as you understand,” he said, “the Thorns have bigger goals than the liberation of the Frost.”

I held his gaze steadily. “I understand.”

“It will be dangerous.”

“I understand,” I repeated.

“It will be difficult,” he warned. “You will have difficult tasks to complete, secrets to keep.”

Still, I held out the brooch.

“Well, then,” he said, and a ghost of a smile graced his lips. He put his hand over mine, and his fingers were warm as he closed my hand around the brooch for the second time. “Welcome to the cause.”

~

I lay in bed, drifting in the gray area between sleep and wakefulness, listening to Ivy’s steady breathing and straining for the scrape of claws against the walls again even in my dreams. True rest was impossible. The air was too dark, too close, too stifling. The night was too silent. An ache of unspoken emotion squeezed me like a band of rope tied too tight—half excitement, half terror.

My chest rose and fell with uneven breaths as I twisted beneath the sheets. The presence of the Watchers brought back memories of my parents’ deaths, and the fugitives in my barn made me think of Gabe.

Gabe
…

My chest squeezed with sudden pain as I pictured his face.

I rolled over on my side and shut my eyes. Fatigue clung to my eyelids like grit, but my thoughts squirmed and scrabbled in my head, refusing to let me rest.

A heavy silence blanketed the house. Adam slept below by the fire, and Jonn slept in my parents’ old bed. It might have been mine and Ivy’s after my parents died, since there were two of us and only one of him, but I liked sleeping upstairs in the loft. I usually felt as secure as a bird tucked in a nest high above the forest floor, but tonight any illusions of safety eluded me. We were more like rabbits in a cage here in this farmhouse, surrounded by the snow and wind and forest and Watchers pawing at the sides. The Frost had us all by the throat, its icy fingers choking tighter and tighter. Now the Farthers were squeezing, too. Someday, maybe one of them would succeed in killing us all.

These morbid thoughts kept me company until the bluish glow of dawn began to leak through the curtains. I threw off the quilt and dressed quickly, pulling on my thick undergarments and then my ragged woolen dress. As I dug into the top drawer of my bureau, my fingers brushed the Thorns brooch. A shiver of icy anticipation passed over me. I pushed it back behind a pile of socks and shut the drawer.

Downstairs, the floorboards creaked, and the faintest squeak of a shoe met my ears. I hurried to the stairs and tiptoed down them, careful to not wake my sister. But when I reached the bottom, the room was empty. A brown leather cuff etched with a snow blossom lay on my chair.

I grabbed the cuff and ran to the door. I wrenched it open. Pale light poured over me.

He was already halfway across the yard, heading for the barn. His cloak fluttered in the wind, and his footprints scarred the freshly fallen whiteness.

“Adam!”

He heard me and turned.

I shoved my feet into my boots and went out into the yard without my cloak. The snow brushing my face like wet feathers had already half-filled the Watcher tracks that circled the house, and the lantern still burned at the edge of the woods, the light casting a halo amid the snowfall and the gloom of daybreak.