Weavers (The Frost Chronicles) (13 page)

“Garrett?” I asked when she’d gone.

He shrugged. “We all get new names,
Lila
.”

His tone was momentarily teasing, lighthearted. My mouth lifted slightly.

“Come on,” he said after another moment. “I’ll walk you to your room and show you around. Juniper hasn’t done that yet, has he?”

I shook my head. “He hasn’t.”

“Come on, then.” He seemed cheered by the prospect—it was something to do, something to keep us moving, keep us from having to struggle through the sudden awkwardness.

“I...” I hesitated. “I need to speak to Jake.”

“He’s already gone,” Gabe said. “He left when I got here. He works in the Security Center, so he isn’t here in the village much.”

My stomach twisted. “When can I speak with him again?”

“Soon,” Gabe said. “Don’t worry. Let’s go.”

“My bag,” I said, remembering.

We fetched my bag and then slipped out. The others were absorbed in their meeting, glancing our way but not lingering with their gazes. I was thankful. I didn’t appreciate their scrutiny.

Our feet crunched against the gritty stone as we ascended the stairs. His hand brushed against mine, and sparks went up my arm, but we didn’t clasp hands. There was something in the air between us, a hesitancy born of months apart and a chasm of uncertainty brewing in my chest. I pushed the feeling away, because right now, how I felt was the least of my concerns. I needed to speak with Jake. Once I’d become certain that he was the Jacob Atticus had spoken about, I needed to deliver the sealed envelope to him and explain everything. And then...I had to wait for the next jump point. It would be almost two weeks, Jonn had explained.

The time seemed like an eternity to me now.

We reached the top of the stairs and stepped through a narrow door into the night. Stars glittered in a purple sky above our heads. We crossed a gravel-strewn street toward a line of low buildings huddled against the trees. The hot air enveloped me like a blanket, and I plucked at my sleeves as sweat prickled across my skin. “It’s hot.”

“The world is warmer here,” Gabe murmured. “It isn’t your Frost yet.”

His hair had grown longer in the months since I’d seen him. Curls brushed the tops of his eyebrows and curled along the collar of his garments, which were olive-colored and all one piece like mine. His eyes kept finding mine and then darting away, as if he wasn’t sure how to look at me, as if I were the sun, incapable of being gazed at.

Another question rose in my mind. “Juniper said there were no Watchers.”

“It’s true,” Gabe said. He laughed, low and short. “The monsters are things of the future, too.”

“Where do they come from?”

“I don’t know.”

We reached the buildings, and Gabe pressed his hand against the wall. The door slid open and we stepped into the cool darkness. Lights flickered on, illuminating another plain hallway. The air here chilled my skin and tickled my lungs.

“Technology makes the buildings cool,” Gabe said. He led me down the hallway and stopped at an open door. “Here. This is yours.”

I gazed inside. A small, square room with four white walls and a cot. A mirror, a window, a chair. It looked like a prison cell, and I said so.

“It’s not much,” Gabe agreed. “But it’s safe.”

“Isn’t everything in this world safe?” I murmured. No cold, no Watchers...what could be frightening here?

A shadow flickered through Gabe’s eyes and was gone. I might have imagined it, except for the words that followed. “Not quite.”

Curiosity prickled me, but he didn’t offer any more information.

I stepped into the room and set my sack by the cot. Gabe stood in the doorway, watching me with an unreadable expression. I faced him, expectant but not knowing what I was expecting. I felt exposed, a fish washed up on the bank, a turtle pried from its shell. My throat tightened. My hands brushed over the front of my strange garment.

Gabe opened his mouth to speak, but then we heard the clatter of footsteps in the hall. A pair of uniform-clad workers passed us. The moment turned awkward.

“I have so much to tell you,” I began. Thoughts swirled in my mind—Korr, Atticus...Adam. There were so many things to say.

“Korr,” I whispered finally. “He came looking for you.”

Gabe’s lips worked, but he didn’t speak. He flinched at the name
Korr
.

“He’s—he’s in Iceliss. He’s been torturing people, threatening people. Threatening me.” Other memories assailed me...Korr letting me go, Korr talking about Gabe.
His brother
. “I know who he is,” I said. “He looks just like you.”

Gabe’s eyelids flickered. “He’s my older brother.”

“I know.”

He looked away, and a vein pulsed in his throat. He shifted against the door. “He’s a terrible person.”

“I know.”

Gabe’s lips flexed in a smile that quickly faded. “What is he doing in the Frost?”

“Looking for the device that brought me here...and looking for you.”

He scowled. “For me?”

I nodded.

Gabe shoved his hands though his hair, pondering this, but he didn’t comment on it. Instead he chewed his lip and asked, “When will we be able to go back to our own time?”

“Two weeks,” I said. “That’s when the next window of opportunity will be open, according to the journal my brother decoded.”

More footsteps. Gabe looked over his shoulder and back at me. “I need to go,” he said. “But we’ll talk again soon.”

“Soon,” I promised, and then he was gone.

I took out the list Atticus had given me and opened it. I probably wasn’t supposed to be looking at this, but I had to know if Gabe was coming back with us. Adam had assured me he was, but Adam wasn’t in charge anymore.

My heart thudded with relief as I spotted his name. Gabriel. The only Gabe on the list. It had to be him.

I sank onto the bed in relief.

~

I woke abruptly, bathed in sweat. My consciousness clawed its way from the sleep that imprisoned me, and I sat up as I remembered.

The gate. The jump. The new world that was really just the old, only younger and hotter. Gabe. The PLD and my mission, hanging over my head like a freshly sharpened sword.

I threw back the blankets and reached for my clothes.

A sharp-faced woman with thick black hair and skin the color of amber stopped me in the hall. “You’re the newest girl. Lila, right?” The square piece of metal dangling from her garment gave her name as Maida. Her hair bobbed when she spoke, and a thick silver cuff on her wrist made a clinking sound as she pointed at me.

I nodded. I wasn’t sure of so many things in this strange world, so I supposed it would be better to keep my mouth shut and say as little as possible until I had a better sense of my bearings.

“You’re late for breakfast,” she said. “The commons building is that way.” She pointed at the door with another jangle of her wrist, and I must have looked confused, for she sighed loudly. “You don’t know where it is, do you?”

“No,” I admitted, sticking to monosyllables.

She rubbed the space between her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. “Claire? Hey, Claire!”

Summoned by her named, a slender, red-haired girl emerged from one of the nearby rooms and sauntered toward us. I recognized her—she’d been in the secret meeting last night. She was one of the fugitives, the one who’d talked to Gabe.

If she recognized me, she gave no indication. Her face was a study in disinterest.

“Take Lila to the commons building and make sure she finds some breakfast,” Maida said, and then she turned on her heel and disappeared down the hall.

I looked at Claire. She looked away. “Let’s go,” she said.

We didn’t speak as we exited the building and crossed the gravel road together. Our feet crunched on the stones beneath our shoes. I tasted the hot, muggy air. Sweat prickled between my shoulders. I watched Claire carefully out of the corner of my eye. She walked easily, her arms swinging at her sides, her eyes scanning the streets as if she were looking for something or someone. She didn’t look at me.

“So,” she said eventually, with an air of studied casualness. “You’re an old friend of Garrett’s?”

She meant Gabe; it was his new name here. My scalp prickled. I glanced at her sideways.
An old friend
?

I wanted to laugh. In my mind’s eye I saw Gabe crumpled in the snow, his blood seeping into his shirt and his hair wet with melting ice. I saw him huddled beneath a cover of straw in the barn, sweat prickling his upper lip and pain sharp and bright in his eyes. I saw him delirious with fever, screaming at the memories as he clutched my hand. I saw him standing, waiting to go through the gate, faith burning on his face and love on his lips.

“We were...” I began, and then stopped. I didn’t know how to explain what we had been. We had not been betrothed. We had not been courting. We had not been declared as anything, and I didn’t know how he felt now. He had loved me once, I believed that, but love was like a vine. It could wind into the cracks of your heart and bind you to another like chains, or if left untended, it could wither at the roots into something cold and lifeless and brittle.

I hadn’t seen Gabe in months. He’d felt passion before, but I didn’t know how he felt now. How could I fight for something if I was so uncertain about it? And what about Adam? My chest ached like a bruise just thinking his name.

“We were friends,” I agreed.

Claire grunted, acknowledging my answer.

Silence blanketed us as we crossed the road and reached a cluster of simple stone buildings huddled against the trees. The town.

I was struck anew at how clean and unscarred everything looked. The familiar bones of stone were there—walls, streets, buildings—but they all gleamed fresh in the early morning sunlight, like a collection of newly crafted pots straight from the kiln, with no lichen or stains to mar their surfaces. No cracks or fissures birthed from years of suffering in wind and cold laced the walls or veined the streets. New bronzed metal sparkled on doors, windows, steps. A veneer of glitter seemed to infuse everything, like magic. This younger age wore its technology like gaudy jewelry. Sounds of machinery hummed faintly in the distance. Birdcalls mingled with the grind of gears. Somewhere, I heard a burst of tinkling music, and then a glass door slid open and a stream of robe-clad young men and women emerged, laughing. They headed for the path into the forest.

“Students,” Claire said. “They are here to study the gate, and the technology it uses.”

Walking through the buildings seemed like a dream. I recognized the quota yard only from its position. Strange vehicles filled it, glittering in the sunlight. A man dressed in a flowing blue garment walked between them. He didn’t look at us. We moved on.

We passed what would one day become the Meeting Hall in my village. The elaborate carvings were missing, as well as the wooden doors painted blue. Instead, I saw plain walls of shimmering glass material and an elegant, curving roof. Ivy grew wild and dripped over the sides.

“That’s the library,” Claire said, seeing me looking at it.

A gold-colored vehicle with panels like furled wings swished past us, horseless and swift as wind. I backed up fast, the backs of my heels hitting the wall behind me. Claire’s eyes darted to mine.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said, but I could tell she thought her words would make no difference. I could tell she expected me to cower anyway.

I wouldn’t do it. I was a Weaver. I walked the Frost at night. I smuggled fugitives from the frozen forests to the gate in Echlos. I had looked Watchers in the face and not died. I had kept my family from starvation.

I lifted my chin and stepped forward again without hesitation. Surprise crossed her face, and then she smiled a little. She followed me toward our destination.

But before we reached the buildings, Claire reached out and snagged my arm. I stopped and looked at her, ready for anything. My heart stuttered. Would she threaten me, make me her enemy, stake a claim on Gabe’s affections?

But her gaze was not unfriendly. “About my comment before,” she said, biting her lip. “Garrett and I are friends,” she said. “But nothing more. If he is your young man—”

“He isn’t spoken for,” I said, speaking hastily, almost sharply. “I...he isn’t mine.”

“I understand. I just didn’t want you to think anything of my question.”

I nodded once and we dropped it. The silence felt easier after that, and her shoulders were less rigid as she walked beside me.

We reached the door of the first building in the cluster, and she opened it. We stepped inside into a cloud of cool air and scents of breakfast. As the smell of food hit me, my mouth watered and my stomach pinched with sudden, violent hunger. I hadn’t eaten since the afternoon before, and now my legs shook.

I’d been hungry for so long.

The room was filled with sunlight. Windows sparkled along the walls and ceiling. Tables and chairs of metal filled the center floor. Mounds of steaming meats and breads filled a row of tubs along one wall. It was a feast, a veritable mound of food. I hadn’t seen such excess except in my dreams. I reached out a hand to steady myself against the wall as excitement raced down my arms and whipped my stomach into a riot of nervous delight.

“Try not to eat too much,” Claire advised from her place beside me. “We’re all hungry when we come, but this food is rich. They aren’t accustomed to hunger here.”

We piled plates high with food and sat at a metal table by the windows. I closed my eyes as I took the first bite of something that was shaped in cubes but tasted like sausage. The flavor exploded on my tongue, and I sighed.

When I opened them, Claire was watching me again.

“Did you know Garrett in Astralux?” she asked.

I wondered—had he told her anything of his past? I blinked, not knowing how to answer. Instead, I took another bite, and she must have interpreted my silence as reticence to talk about my origins.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to pry. We aren’t supposed to ask unless the other person brings it up first. It’s one of our biggest rules.”