Frozen (4 page)

As soon as Sammy closes the book, Blaine escorts Jackson from the woodshop. He’s conscious now, but still bound and gagged. Blaine wrestles him to the ground and Clipper pulls the clipping device from his pack. The entire thing is over in a matter of seconds, but Jackson screams and writhes for far longer.

Watching from beyond the well, Emma is cringing. Like the rest of us, she knows the pain. She underwent a precautionary clipping when I brought her from Taem to Crevice Valley after securing the vaccine. I was surprised when Clipper found a tracker in her, but the boy pointed out that while Emma never served as a soldier in Frank’s Order, she
did
work in his hospitals, and Frank has never been one to take his security lightly.

When the clipping procedure is over, we pack our bags and ready ourselves for another day of travel. Xavier rounds up the healthiest two horses from the stables. Aiden is set to ride a dapple gray named Merlin while the second steed, a white mare called Snow, is loaded up with hay and grain for the both of them.

Sammy bursts from the woodshop, Rusty in tow. The dog is bounding playfully—at least until he spots Jackson, at which point his ears fold back, and he starts growling.

“This dog,” Sammy grunts, tugging to restrain him. “I thought the kid said he was good.”

“He is,” I say, looking between Jackson and the dog. “He doesn’t like the spy. It’s like he can sense he’s up to something.”

“I haf a name,” Jackson grunts through the handkerchief in his mouth.

“Your name’s Jackson,” Aiden says from Merlin’s back. “I heard everyone talking about you during breakfast.”

Jackson starts, staring at the small boy. “Yeah. It is.”

“Whatever,” Sammy says. “The dog hates him and I’m going to have to keep this thing leashed, and at a distance, or even a deaf man will hear us coming.” Rusty lunges, snapping, and Blaine and Jackson skirt out of the way to protect their heels.

“Great,” Blaine says. “I stand too close to the scum and the dog doesn’t trust me either.”

“Jackson,” the spy says through the gag.

“Right,” Blaine says. “Sorry.” But he doesn’t look it.

We start walking, our growing team again on the move. I glance back only once. The crows are already diving, anxious to return to their feast.

At midday we pause to give Owen, Bo, and Clipper a few minutes to discuss our route. There is a small town ahead according to Clipper’s location device, and after the fiasco Stonewall became, my father is desperate to avoid it.

From the back of his horse, Aiden has taken to playing a hand game he calls Rock, Paper, Scissors with, of all people, the Order spy. Jackson still has his mouth gagged and his arms tied behind his back, so he has to shout his selection as Aiden pushes his hand out to reveal his choice. The spy looks pretty miserable about the entire affair.

Aiden counts, bobbing a fist up and down to the numbers. “One . . . two . . . three!”

“Pahpur,” Jackson says, and at the same time, Aiden’s fist opens to form scissors. He snips them at Jackson, beaming.

“Again. One . . . two . . . three!”

“Roch!”

Aiden’s fist is now flat.

“You’re chea’in’,” Jackson mumbles through the gag.

“Nuh-uh.”

The spy frowns. “Den you’re rea’ing my mind.”

They get in one last round, Jackson again losing, before Emma pulls the boy from Merlin’s back.

“Let’s not get too fond of the prisoner, Aiden,” she says.

“But he plays with me. No one else does.”

Sammy bursts through the snow, being dragged by Rusty, who is barking at Jackson yet again. “I’d play if it wasn’t for this crazed animal. I think my forearms are going to give out.”

Emma laughs at this and Aiden relieves Sammy of the dog; the boy’s touch seems to be the only thing to calm the animal. Rusty curls up at Aiden’s feet, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the spy.

Sammy links his fingers together and pushes them into a stretch. “Who’d have thought I’d spend my twenty-first birthday like this: cold, frozen, and being tugged through the forest by a manic dog.”

“Today’s your birthday?” I ask.

“It’s the eleventh, isn’t it?”

I try to count back to when we left. The date sounds right, but I’m not positive.

“Clipper!” Sammy calls across camp. “What’s the date, genius?”

The boy doesn’t turn around to face us—he’s too deep in conversation with my father and Bo—but he holds his hands overhead, each with a pointer finger raised to the sky.

“The eleventh,” Sammy says. “Yup. Twenty-one today.”

“Another December birthday,” Bree chimes in. “I’m the twenty-third.”

I’m shocked to discover that until now, I didn’t know Bree’s birthday. How has such a basic detail never come up?

“We should do something,” Emma says. “You know, to celebrate.”

“Find a pub and I’m in,” Bree deadpans.

Sammy snorts. “Me, too, Nox. Me, too.” He jerks his head at Emma. “Have any backup plans, Link? You know, since there are no drinks in sight?”

Sammy has a habit of calling people by their last name, but for some reason, it bothers me when he refers to Emma this way. Emma and Bree both have harsh-sounding last names, but only Bree’s suits her.

“Yeah, actually. I do.” Emma grabs a small sack of grain from Snow’s back and sets it on the stump of a fallen tree about twenty paces away. “Archery match,” she says, pointing at the target. “Right now.”

Sammy’s eyes liven. “Oh, you’re on. Who else is in?”

I raise a hand. Xavier and September come join us.

“Hey, Blaine? You playing?” I call out.

He shakes a thumb at Jackson. “Have to hold this rat so he doesn’t run off.”

“I’ll watch him,” Bree says.

“You’re passing up an archery match?” I ask, shocked.

She shrugs. “A bow and arrow is not my preferred weapon of choice.”

“So you’re saying you can only fire that thing,” Emma says, eyeing the rifle in Bree’s hands.

“Is that a challenge?”

“Maybe.”

September and Xavier let out a series of
oooh
s, and Sammy starts whistling.

“Fine,” Bree snaps. “I’ll play.”

Xavier and I are the only two in the group who opted for a bow when we left Crevice Valley, so ours are passed around as the match progresses. There are six of us playing and we agree to knock off two people with each round. The first round is shot from twenty paces. To my surprise, September, who is deadly with a firearm, doesn’t even come close to hitting the target. Everyone else strikes true, including Emma. I’m proud to think that I trained her months ago in Claysoot, and I compliment her form. Sammy’s arrow ends up being the farthest from the sack’s center, so he joins September off to the side.

I fire a perfect shot in the next round. Xavier slips in the snow and shoots wide, but both Emma and Bree strike close to my arrow. Bree is a tad high, Emma a tad low.

“Not bad,” I tell Emma again. Bree snorts from behind me, but if she expects praise for
missing
a bull’s-eye, she’s crazy.

“Aiden wants to help judge!” Sammy scoops the boy onto his shoulders and comes racing through the show. Once we’re all gathered around the target, Sammy points at the two outlying arrows. “All right, Aiden. Which of these is closest to the center one?”

Aiden screws up his face in concentration and finally points at the arrow below mine.

Bree throws up her hands. “Of course he’d pick Emma’s. He hates me!”

“We didn’t tell him which arrow was hers,” Sammy points out.

“Ugh, whatever. I’d slaughter you all if this was a spear-throwing match. We didn’t use arrows much in Saltwater, you know. A spear is far more effective for catching fish.”

“But it’s
not
a spear-throwing match,” I say, nudging her with my elbow.

She scowls at me, furious, and stalks off. I should have known better than to joke with her during a competition.

“Don’t you want to see who wins?” I call after her.

“I couldn’t care less.”

“Moody thing, huh?” Xavier says. “Must be that time of the month.”

Sammy smirks. “Yeah, these next few days should be downright peachy.”

September and Emma glare at the both of them.

“What?” Sammy asks innocently. “Can’t a guy speak his mind on his birthday?” Xavier buckles with laughter. Even I can’t help smiling.

“What time of the month is it?” Aiden asks from atop Sammy’s shoulders.

“Forget it, Aiden,” Emma says. “They’re just being boys.”

“But I’m a boy! I want to know.”

“How about we finish the game? You can judge the final shot, too, if you’d like.”

“Okay,” he agrees.

But when we get back to the shooting spot, Rusty is trying to have another go at Jackson, and Blaine is somehow stuck in the middle of it. His pack is held out like a shield, protecting him from the dog’s jaws. The Order spy stands safely behind him, laughing through his gag. Aiden calls Rusty off and Blaine throws his pack in the snow.

“That dog needs to get it through his thick skull,” he snarls. “Yes, the prisoner is with the Order. Yes, he’s no good. But he’s going to be with us for a while, and I’m not okay with losing a limb because the dog feels like attacking
me
in the process of getting to
him
!”

“Blaine, are you feeling all right?” Emma asks. She reaches out to him and he shrugs away. “You’re not one to get worked up over something so small.”

“He would have killed me just to get at the spy, Emma. I swear it,” he says. “That’s no small matter.”

“All right!” my father calls out. “Clipper got us straightened away. We need to cut south for a few miles.”

“But the match,” Sammy says. “Emma and Gray have to play the final round.”

My father looks between us. “Gray would win—no offense, Emma—and we have a pace to maintain. This is not negotiable.”

We start walking again, but tensions are high. Clipper’s worried about the nearby town; my father, our pace. Sammy’s sullen and Blaine, suspicious. He keeps glaring at Rusty and holding the spy in front of him as protection. And Bree’s ill temper is transmitting in waves so thick it could knock a person over.

When I ask her if she’s okay, she rolls her eyes and walks faster.

Somehow, I feel like I’m at fault, even though I obviously have no control over any arrow fired but my own.

FIVE

THAT NIGHT AFTER DINNER, WE
disperse into smaller groups around the fire. My father and Clipper are deep in conversation, likely discussing our path. Again. Xavier is hard at work drying out his socks—he’s stuck them on the end of a forked stick so he can dangle them over the fire like roasted meat—and Aiden is back to playing Rock, Paper, Scissors with the spy.

Someone removed Jackson’s gag and retied his hands in his lap so that he could eat, and he’s now able to make hand gestures back at the boy. He has a look on his face that almost appears big-brotherly as he plays with Aiden, not at all like the blood-hungry Order-spy-on-a-mission that we know he is. Blaine hovers nearby, watchful. Rusty, too, while not barking, hasn’t stopped snarling in Jackson’s direction. If I were the spy, I wouldn’t make a single sudden move with that dog around.

I’m sitting with everyone else, listening to Sammy ramble about his childhood in Taem. Bree, who hasn’t said a word to me since the archery match, has taken especial interest in his story. Mostly, I think, so she has an excuse to not make eye contact with me. Emma, on the other hand, seems to have zero interest in Sammy’s words. She keeps twisting around to check on Aiden, her shoulder knocking against mine each time.

“He’s fine,” I whisper to her. Blaine’s been looking at the boy the same way he looked at his daughter, Kale, back in Claysoot. Like he wants to show him the world and teach him everything he knows and protect him with his own life if it comes to it. I don’t understand how Blaine can care so much for a person he’s only recently met. More proof that he’s a better person than me.

“I just worry about him,” Emma says, as if I didn’t already know this. She hasn’t taken her eyes off Aiden since he joined our group, and he hasn’t wandered far from her side either. The fact that he’s sitting with Jackson—farther than an arm’s length from Emma—is a small miracle in itself.

“Well, you’re wasting your energy. He’s with Blaine. He’s as safe as he’ll ever be.”

Emma gives me a look that seems to say,
You know I can’t help worrying.

“. . . I was barely six when he died,” Sammy says, and we’re both pulled back to the conversation happening beside us.

“Who died?” Emma asks.

“My great-grandfather. He lived through the Second Civil War and watched Frank come into power nearly fifty years ago. Man, the stories he would tell.”

“Like?” I prompt.

“They’re not really fireside material.”

“And this isn’t a typical campfire in the woods,” Bree points out.

“Fair enough, Nox,” Sammy says. “Fair enough.” He tosses snow at the fire for a moment, listening to it sizzle.

“He used to talk about how chaotic things were in the years between the Continental Quake and the Second Civil War. That was his favorite word for it all—
chaotic.
”

“Well, it fits,” September chimes in. “We learned about it all in middle school. Decades before the Quake, scientists were predicting massive shifts in the Earth’s plates. Plus, the climate was changing. Getting hotter, drier. There was less rain and more droughts, and the ocean levels were rising like crazy. A lot of major cities were in jeopardy of flooding. That’s where Robert Taem came in.”

“Taem like the city?” Bree asks.

“People forget it was named after him,” Bo says. He starts tapping on his knee, his fingers unable to stay still, and September nods in agreement.

“Taem was the engineer behind the domed design—nearly indestructible, safe from harsh suns, better air quality. The government contracted him to make it, and then the capital ended up beneath it, farther inland and safe from the rising ocean. Voilà! The city of Taem.”

“My great-grandfather used to joke that Robert Taem knew what was coming, but he couldn’t have,” Sammy says. “Not really. Taem died young, long before the War.”