But guarding them from who?
“Don’t look at them,” Gisa mutters, grabbing onto my sleeve. She tugs me along, eager to get away from the blue soldiers. One in particular watches us go, his eyes narrowed.
“Why not? Who are they?”
She shakes her head, tugging again. “Not here.”
Naturally, I want to stop, to stare at the soldier until he realizes who and what I am. But that is a foolish, childish need. I must maintain my mask, must seem the poor girl broken by the world. I let Gisa lead on and away.
“The Colonel’s men,” she whispers as soon as we’re out of earshot. “They came down with him from the north.”
The north. “Lakelanders?” I reply, almost gasping in surprise. She nods, stoic.
Now the uniforms, the color of a cold lake, make sense. They are soldiers of another army, another king, but they’re here, with us. Norta has been at war with the Lakelands for a century, fighting over land, food, and glory. The kings of fire against the kings of winter, with both red and silver blood in between. But the dawn, it seems, is coming for them all.
“The Colonel’s a Lakelander. After what happened in Archeon”—her face pains, though she doesn’t know the half of my ordeal there—“he came to ‘sort things out,’ according to Tramy.”
There’s something wrong here, tugging at my brain like Gisa tugging on my sleeve. “Who is the Colonel, Gisa?”
It takes me a moment to realize we’ve reached the mess, a flat building just like the barracks. The din of breakfast echoes behind the doors, but we don’t pass through. Even though the smell of food makes my stomach rumble, I wait for Gisa’s answer.
“The man with the bloody eye,” she finally says, pointing to her own face. “He’s taken over.”
Command. Shade whispered the word back on the mersive, but I didn’t think much of it. Is this what he meant? Is the Colonel who he was trying to warn me about? After his sinister treatment of Cal last night, I have to think so. And to know such a man is in charge of this island, and everyone on it, is no particular comfort.
“So Farley’s out of a job.”
She shrugs. “Captain Farley failed. He didn’t like that.”
Then he’ll hate me.
She reaches for the door, one small hand outstretched. The other has healed better than I thought it would, with only her fourth and fifth fingers still oddly twisted, curled inward. Bones gone wrong, in punishment for trusting her sister in a time long ago.
“Gisa, where did they take Cal?” My voice is so low I’m afraid she doesn’t hear me. But then her hand stills.
“They talked about him last night, when you went to sleep. Kilorn didn’t know, but Tramy, he went to see him. To watch.”
A sharp pain shoots through my heart. “Watch what?”
“He said just questions for now. Nothing that would hurt.”
Deep inside, I scowl. I can think of many questions that would hurt Cal more than any wound. “Where?” I ask again, putting a bit of steel in my voice, speaking like a Silver-born princess should.
“Barracks One,” she whispers. “I heard them say Barracks One.”
As she opens the door to the mess, I look past her, to the line of barracks marching toward the trees. Their numbers are clearly painted, black against sun-bleached concrete: 2, 3, 4 …
A sudden chill runs down my spine.
There is no Barracks 1.
6
Most of the food is bland, gray porridge and lukewarm water. Only the fish is good, cod taken straight from the sea. It bites of salt and ocean, just like the air. Kilorn marvels at the fish, idly wondering what kind of nets the Guard uses. We’re in a net, you idiot, I want to shout, but the mess is no place for such words. There are Lakelanders in here as well, stoic in their dark blue. While the red-uniformed Guardsmen eat with the rest of the refugees, the Lakelanders never sit, constantly on the prowl. They remind me of Security officers, and I feel a familiar chill. Tuck is not so different from Archeon. Different factions vie for control, with me right in the middle. And Kilorn, my friend, my oldest friend, might not believe this is dangerous. Or worse, he could understand—and not care.
My silence persists, broken only by steady bites of fish. They’re watching me closely, as instructed. Mom, Dad, Kilorn, Gisa, all pretending not to stare, and failing. The boys are gone, still at Shade’s bedside. Like me, they thought him dead, and are making up for lost time.
“So how did you get here?” The words stick in my mouth, but I force them out. Better I ask the questions before they start in on me.
“Boat,” Dad says gruffly around a slurp of porridge. He chuckles at his joke, pleased with himself. I smile a little, for his sake.
Mom nudges him, clucking her tongue in exasperation. “You know what she means, Daniel.”
“I’m not stupid.” He grumbles, shoveling back another spoonful. “Two days ago, round midnight, Shade popped up on the porch. I mean actually popped.” He gestures with his hands, snapping his fingers. “You know about that, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Near gave us all a heart attack, what with the popping and him being, well, alive.”
“I can imagine,” I murmur, remembering my own reaction to seeing Shade again. I thought us both dead, in some place far beyond this madness. But like me, Shade had merely become someone—something—else to survive.
Dad continues, on a roll now, literally. His chair rocks back and forth on squeaky wheels, moving with his wild gestures. “Well, after your mom stopped crying over him, he got down to it. Started throwing stuff in a bag, useless stuff. The porch flag, the pictures, your letter box. Didn’t make no sense, really, but it’s hard to ask anything of a son come back to life. When he said we had to leave, now, right now, I could tell he wasn’t joking. So we did.”
“What about the curfew?” The Measures are still sharp in my head, nails in my skin. How could I forget them, when I was forced to announce them myself? “You could’ve been killed!”
“We had Shade and his … his …” Dad struggles for the right word, gesturing again.
Gisa rolls her eyes, bored with our father’s antics. “He calls it jumping, remember?”
“That’s it.” He nods. “Shade jumped us past the patrols and into the woods. From there, we went to the river and a boat. Cargo’s still allowed to travel at night, you see, so we ended up sitting in a crate of apples for who knows how long.”
Mom cringes at the memory. “Rotten apples,” she adds. Gisa giggles a little. Dad almost smiles. For a moment, the gray porridge is Mom’s bad stew, the concrete walls become rough-hewn wood, and it’s the Barrows at dinner. It’s home again, and I’m just Mare.
I let the seconds tick by, listening and smiling. Mom jabbers about nothing so I don’t have to speak, letting me eat in quiet peace. She even chases away the stares of the mess hall, meeting every eye that swings my way with a vicious glare I know firsthand. Gisa plays her part too, distracting Kilorn with news of the Stilts. He listens intently, and she bites her lip, pleased by his attention. I guess her little crush hasn’t gone away just yet. That leaves only Dad, glopping through his second bowl of porridge with abandon. He stares at me over the rim of his bowl, and I glimpse the man he was. Tall, strong, a proud soldier, a person I barely remember, so far from what he is now. But like me, like Shade, like the Guard, Dad is not the ruined, foolish thing he seems. Despite the chair, the missing leg, and the clicking contraption in his chest, he’s still seen more battles and survived longer than most. He lost the leg and lung only three months before a full discharge, after near twenty years of conscription. How many make it that far?