Frozen (3 page)

“So you’re just going to leave him here?” She’s almost shouting now. “You can’t! We can put him on a horse if pace is your concern.” My father remains quiet, refuses to make eye contact. Emma turns to me. “Tell him, Gray. Please. If anyone can talk sense into him it’s you.”

She looks even more desperate than she did when I found out about her and Craw, when she apologized to me again and again and again. I wonder if siding with her now will make our conversations come easier. They’ve been forced at best, even when we’ve been trying so hard.

But my father is right. We still have another two weeks of travel before we reach Bone Harbor, a small town that sits along a stretch of ocean cutting north through nearly half the country. A boat is waiting to ferry us closer to Group A while simultaneously keeping us out of the Order’s eye. Without the boat, there’s a domed city we’d have to pass near.
Haven
, I think Clipper called it. Either way, Aiden will slow us drastically.

I glance at the boy and his face is hopeful in the firelight, his eyes as wide as Emma’s. I don’t want to let either of them down.

“If we leave him, we’re as good as letting him starve to death,” I say to my father.

He sighs, rubs his forehead. “You’re right. You’re both right.” He looks at Aiden for a long while. Exhales again. Then finally: “You can come, but only until we find somewhere safer, a place you can settle with the living.”

“Oh, thank you,” Aiden exclaims. “Thank you! Can I bring Rusty, too?”

“Why not? It will be good to have a dog around. They’re clever creatures, good judges of character, fantastic on watch.”

Sammy frowns. “Sir, I’m honored you think so highly of me, but I’m a little offended you’ve mistaken me for a dog.”

The group dissolves into laughter.

“Bed,” Owen orders. “Everyone. Now. Breakfast is at first light and then we’re moving again.”

THREE

TONIGHT I HAVE SECOND WATCH,
which means I might actually get a decent night of uninterrupted sleep. We rotate the order and it’s the middle shifts that are the worst—I never feel rested the following day.

Outside it is cold and gusty. I have the woodworking shop at my back, blocking most of the wind, and Rusty at my side, keeping me company. He’s a good guard dog, just as my father suspected. Twice he hears something before I do, his ears perking up, and both times it is nothing but a raccoon coming to feast on the dead.

I watch the minutes go by on a wristwatch that Clipper says runs on “solar power.” He walks with it strapped to the outside of his pack each day, allowing the sun to warm its face so that it can tell time throughout each evening. When my hour’s up, I head back inside, where everyone is cramped around the makeshift fire pit, fast asleep. I find Bo, who always follows me on watch, and shake him awake. He grumbles, pulls on his jacket, and heads out.

I creep around the fire and slide into my sleeping bag. Bree is on one side of me, my father on the other.

Despite being properly warm for the first time in ages, I can’t fall asleep. In the darkness of the woodshop, all my doubts seem magnified. Group A seems so far away still, and Blaine farther behind with each day of hiking.

Bree rolls over, nudges into me for extra warmth. I can feel her pulse even with the sleeping bags between us. I smile, close my eyes, and suddenly sleep is easy.

The sound of Rusty barking jolts me awake. My father scrambles for the door, Sammy and Xavier trailing him. A moment later there is shouting outside and I know something is very wrong.

I grapple for my gear, but can’t find one of my boots and end up being the last person to sprint outside. It’s maybe an hour before dawn, still dark enough that it’s difficult to see. I can make out several things in the bouncing beams of flashlights: Rusty, still barking like mad, and Aiden trying to restrain him; my father, surrounded by the rest of the group, shouting; and two strangers, one of whom has a gun to the other’s head.

The hostage is young and lean and has a look on his face that appears more vicious than terrified. The other man is Blaine.

I skid to a stop. “How did you . . . Who is . . .” I have a million questions and they’re all overlapping to the point that I can no longer get my mouth to work.

“Hey, Gray,” Blaine says, beaming in my direction.

Sammy jerks his rifle at the hostage. “What the
hell
is going on? Someone better start talking or I’m putting bullets in you both.”

Rusty barks savagely.

“The only person you want to put bullets in is this rat,” Blaine says, pushing his handgun more firmly against the stranger’s head.

“No one is putting bullets in anyone,” my father yells. “Blaine, lower your weapon.”

My brother grits his teeth. “Can’t do that, Pa.”

“Why’s that?”

Rusty yelps and lunges against his rope.

“Because this piece of scum will attack us the second I do.”

“It’s not true,” the stranger says. “I wouldn’t—”

Blaine strikes him across the back of the head with his gun. “You lying piece of filth!”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Blaine so angry, so furious. It makes me fear the stranger he’s holding more than I’ve feared anyone in my life.

Rusty keeps barking.

“Will someone shut up that dog?” my father snaps.

Emma grabs Aiden and helps him guide Rusty back to the woodshop, glancing fearfully over her shoulder as they leave. My father stares at Blaine and the stranger for a moment longer, eyes narrowed, then pulls his rifle up so fast I barely see it happen.

Blaine yanks the stranger in front of him as a shield. “What are you doing?”

“What any captain would do when two men walk into his camp without explanation: I’m protecting my team. You have to understand that this looks very odd, Blaine.”

My brother stays sheltered behind his hostage’s shoulder. “I left headquarters just three days after you did,” he explains, “right around when one of our own got taken into Order custody. Ryder wanted to put Elijah on your tail, just in case the Order extracted mission details from our man and decided to send one of their own after you. Basically, Ryder wanted to send a Rebel shadow for the possible Order shadow.

“I kept telling Ryder it wasn’t right, that I was healthy enough and I should be with the team, with you and Gray. Family. Ryder ran me through a final endurance test—which I passed—and agreed to let me go in Elijah’s place. I’ve been putting in twenty-five-plus miles a day just to catch up with you guys.”

“Which means . . .” Owen’s eyes go wide as he looks at the stranger before Blaine.

“Ryder was right. Frank got some mission details out of our man, because this guy”—Blaine shakes the hostage—“is with the Order. I’ve been hiking for about an hour already today, and I caught him just outside Stonewall, loading his handgun.” Blaine tosses the extra weapon to Xavier.

“Is he the only spy?” my father asks.

“I think so. At least, he’s the only person I’ve seen between headquarters and here.”

“Your name?” my father asks the prisoner, whose skin is pale in the first light of dawn. He looks about my age and is perhaps just as reckless, because rather than answer my father’s question, he spits on his boots.

Blaine shakes him forcefully.

“Jackson,” the Order spy grunts. “My name is Jackson.”

My father raises his weapon. “Well, Jackson. Any last words?”

“You can’t kill me.”

“That’s an interesting theory. Perhaps we should test it.”

“Oh, I’ll die,” he says, smiling slyly, “but Frank will know. As soon as he loses my reading, he’ll send someone to replace me. You’re better off keeping me with you so that he thinks I’m still tailing your team.”

I frown because he’s right. Frank puts tracking technologies in all his soldiers, Order members and Heisted boys alike. One was unknowingly injected beneath my own skin last summer. Clipper removed it, living up to his nickname just moments after I met him. Once free of the device, Frank believed me dead. At least until I marched back to Taem with Harvey and Bree for the vaccine.

“I think we’ll take our chances. You dead gives us a head start. A big one.” Owen’s finger reaches for the trigger and Jackson’s face washes over with panic.

“Okay, wait-wait-wait,” he sputters. “Let’s talk this through for a minute. I don’t know what your mission is; the Order couldn’t get it out of the guy we captured. All we know is you’re heading west, so I was sent to intercept you, learn the details of your mission, and try to uncover the location of your headquarters in the process. But let’s just forget all that for a second and instead think about how useful it could be to have an Order member with you on this trek. Right? Eh?” He glances around for takers. “I can speak up for you in any Order-patrolled towns, help you avoid Frank’s eye. You can even take out my tracker if you’re willing to chance someone else being sent after the team, but don’t kill me. Okay?
Please
don’t kill me.”

The team looks around at one another, startled by Jackson’s willingness to fold.

“It’s a sign of weakness,” Owen says, weapon still poised, “betraying your kind so quickly.”

“Only if you believe your life is worth less than the success of your mission,” the spy says. “And I don’t. I put my own life above Frank knowing why a handful of Rebels are on a hiking trip. Some would say self-preservation is the very opposite of weakness.” He smiles. Wide.

“Knock him out,” Owen says to Blaine.

Blaine strikes Jackson with his gun harder this time, sending the prisoner crumpling to the ground. Xavier rushes to bind his hands and feet, but my father keeps his weapon aimed at Blaine, his finger dangerously close to the trigger.

“Now holster that gun,” he says.

Blaine does, but even still, Owen won’t lower his. “I need proof,” he says, jabbing the barrel in Blaine’s direction. “I need it or I have to pull this trigger.”

My brother looks stunned. “What more can I give you? He admitted he’s with the Order!”

“Yes, and now I need proof that
you
aren’t with them, too.”

I know where this is headed, but it can’t be true. I’d be able to tell. This is Blaine—scared, anxious, furious at a spy who was about to attack us—but it’s him.

“Pa,” I say, taking a step toward him. “It’s Blaine. It has to be. He mentioned the conditioning test, and Ryder, and—”

“The Rebels have been deceived by Forgeries before. These are dangerous times and we can’t be too careful.” He glances back at Blaine, eyes narrowed. “Your brother has a few scars. Name them.”

Blaine stifles a small laugh. “A few? He has more than a few.”

“And if you are truly my son, you know Gray better than anyone in the world and this question will not be a problem.”

Blaine looks at me. His blue eyes, the only feature that differentiates us, seem so colorless in the poor lighting that he could be my reflection. I give him an encouraging nod, and he starts listing off scars. A nick on my upper arm from a misfired arrow—his fault—when we were kids. The line on my palm from a poorly wielded knife—my fault—when whittling. A mark on my chest from falling on a jagged branch, stitches that scarred my chin after a fight with Chalice, the line along my neck from when Clipper removed my tracking device.

“And on his forearm,” Blaine says. “Burns from the public square in Taem that scarred real bad.”

I touch my arm, remembering my trip to Taem in the fall. Bree shot me with a rubber bullet so that I didn’t have to execute Harvey on Frank’s orders, and I ended up immobilized on a burning platform until Bo dragged me to safety. My father must have been waiting for Blaine to speak of this scar—a detailed account of an injury that healed within the safety of Crevice Valley, away from Order eyes—because he finally lowers his rifle.

Owen yanks the collar of Blaine’s jacket back to reveal a small, thin scar. Clipper’s work, done the same day he tended to my tracking device. Then Owen clasps a hand on either side of Blaine’s face. “I’m sorry I had to interrogate you like that.”

Blaine winks. “Like what?”

Owen pulls him into a quick hug and then turns to address the rest of us. “The spy makes a good point. Having someone to cover for us if we stumble across the Order gives us an advantage we can’t pass up. And so long as we have his life as a bargaining chip, he should remain loyal. Soon as we clip him, Frank’s bound to send another in his place though, so let’s eat quickly and get back on the move.”

The group disbands for breakfast, and I’m left alone with Blaine, still staring in disbelief.

“You’re really here,” I say.

He flashes me a smile. “I have to look after you, don’t I? You wouldn’t last long without me.”

Almost the same words he said when he woke from his coma. The joke he makes over and over because while the two of us are perfectly self-sufficient, we both know we’re better together.

“You’re full of it,” I say, but I pull him into a hug anyway. His arms are stiff, his clasp weak. When I step back he looks exhausted. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just tired. And sore. And my chest’s been burning the last few days. Maybe Ryder was right all along. Maybe I wasn’t ready for this.”

“You absolutely weren’t.”

He shoves me and I’m sent stumbling through the shallow snow, laughing. “Stop that right now,” he says. “I’m supposed to be the big brother.”

“You’re older by a couple minutes, Blaine. Get over it.”

“Never.” He smiles and it brings some of the light back into his eyes. They momentarily look the way I remember—brilliant and bluer than a summer sky. “Now, did someone say something about food?”

“It’s only grits.”

But you’d think I’d said bacon and eggs from the look on his face.

FOUR

WHILE THERE IS NO BACON,
breakfast does end up including some luxuries. September has decided that if we are leaving the town and Aiden is coming with us, there is no need to let a stocked chicken coop go to waste. I have to admit: Grits taste far better when paired with eggs.

Emma wants to bury the deceased, or at the very least make a pyre, but my father says it would take far too much time to gather all the remains, not to mention the fact that a giant plume of smoke puts us at risk of being spotted. So Sammy retrieves a small, black book from the building where we found Aiden, and we stand around the well while he reads about giving rest to the labored. It’s odd to hear Sammy’s voice so serious, to have it stir up feelings like remorse and compassion when until now it’s drawn out only laughter.