Weavers (The Frost Chronicles) (7 page)

I didn’t see Ann’s red cloak and hood anywhere. Usually, the bright splash of color stood out against the grays and blues like a drop of blood on a snow blossom, but today she was missing. Apprehension stirred in my stomach, but I shoved the sensation away. She didn’t meet me every time I came to the village for quota delivery or Assembly. She was fine. She was just busy—or late.

Still, I couldn’t shake the gnawing worry. So after I’d turned over the yarn to the quota master and received our pitifully small sack of supplies in return, I turned left and headed for the hill in the center of the village instead of the gate to the Frost.

The boards of the Mayor’s house gleamed the color of bleached bone in the pale sunlight, and dagger-like icicles glittered along the roof. Even the footprints left by soldiers’ boots looked like ugly scars. Everything about the house felt dangerous now.

I held my breath as I climbed the back steps and rapped three times on the door.

A servant opened it. She regarded me with a frown. “Yes?”

The password. Ann would recognize it and know I needed to see her. “I—I need to show Ann Mayor some yarn,” I said. “I’m Lia Weaver.”

The girl shook her head. “I’m sorry, but she cannot see you now. You’ll have to come back.” She shut the door in my face.

I knocked again, and this time when the girl opened the door, I pushed against it.

“Hey!” She threw up an arm to block me.

“I have something to tell Ann Mayor. She will be angry when she finds out that you wouldn’t—”

“Let the girl in,” a voice purred, and I froze.

Korr
.

The servant girl’s face smoothed, and she stepped back, allowing me entrance. I didn’t dare run. I crossed the threshold. My pulse hammered in my throat and my palms tingled with sudden sweat.

The young nobleman stood in the hall. He was tall, with striking black hair and eyes. His face was almost identical to Gabe’s, except his was crueler, and the expression he wore was far more cunning.

He was Gabe’s brother, and my enemy.

“Lia Weaver,” he said, his tone a threat sheathed in pleasantries. “What brings you here?”

“I was looking for Ann,” I said.

“Ah, she’s your friend, isn’t she? It’s a rather fascinating connection. The penniless Weaver and the wealthy Mayor girl.”

“I have things to give her. She needs yarn.” I said it frostily.

He dimpled. “Of course. But Ann is not here at the moment.”

An idea took hold in my brain. A desperate, wild, crazy idea.

“I have something you might want to discuss,” I said to him. “In your private rooms.”

“Oh?” One perfectly manicured eyebrow lifted skeptically. He smirked at me. “’Discuss?’”

My heart was pounding. My breath caught in my throat. I ignored his suggestive comment and rasped the words. “It concerns a young man named Gabe.”

Korr straightened at the mention of his brother’s name. His arms dropped to his sides, and he shot a look at the maid that clearly meant she was dismissed. She scurried away, and he beckoned to me with one crisp snap of his fingers. “Come.”

I followed him up the stairs and down the hall. Was I utterly mad? What had possessed me to do this?

This gamble had to pay off.

I was light-headed as he let me into the room. The walls were a dark maroon, and striped gold paper covered the wall behind the massive bed. A writing desk strewn with papers stood beside a window framed by drooping velvet curtains. I blinked at the furnishings. Where had all this come from? It looked fit for a palace.

“I had these things imported from Aeralis,” Korr said, noting my astonishment. “I couldn’t very well live in squalor, could I?” But he didn’t wait for whatever response I might have had to that statement. He shut the door and turned a key in the lock. The sinister click reverberated in my ears, and I shivered. Korr pocketed the key and paced to the window. He stared through the frosted pane at the street below. The sunlight lit the edges of his hair and made him look like a devil.

“Now,” he said, his voice little more than a growl. “Tell me what you know about this Gabe.”

I licked my lips to moisten them. I edged toward the writing table. “He came through here a few months ago. He was a fugitive. The Farther soldiers were looking for him. I—I saw him.” I took another step toward the table. My gaze fell on a wrinkled sheet of paper peeking out from beneath the others. My heart skipped a beat when I realized it was my father’s handwriting. Did Korr know what this was? Scribbles covered it, familiar-looking scribbles. A circle. Numbers, letters. A string of them, all together. I tried to commit them to memory.

“Yes,” Korr said, swinging around to face me. “I know—the bracelet you wear was his.”

I dropped my eyes to the piece on my hand. I’d found it after Gabe had left and I’d wore it to remind myself of him. I hadn’t realized anyone had noticed it. It was just a plain thing.

He turned back to the window. I edged closer to the desk and scanned the paper. It was a key for some kind of code, perhaps?

“Yes,” I said. “I found him in the woods and I gave him shelter in my barn.”

Korr’s eyebrows shot up. “And where is he now?”

“I don’t know.” And it was true. I said the words simply, honestly.

Korr was silent. Sweat beaded on my forehead as I hastily committed the scribbles on the paper to memory. I didn’t dare try to touch it...

“You may go,” he said finally.

“I—”

“Go!”

I went.

~

I burst into the farmhouse, startling Jonn. I grabbed the nearest paper on the table and plucked the pencil from his hand. Bending over it, I began to empty my head of the string of numbers and letters I’d memorized in Korr’s room.

“Hey!” my brother yelped. “What are you doing?”

Ivy and Everiss looked up from their places by the fire. Ivy hurried over, curious. I ignored them all and kept writing. I had to get all this right before I forgot everything.

When I’d finished, I thrust the paper in Jonn’s face. “Here.”

“What’s that?” Ivy demanded.

Jonn looked from the scribbles to my face, his eyes wide.

“It’s the key to decode the journals.” He grabbed the paper and flattened it across the table in front of him. He fumbled for the first journal in the stack at his elbow and flipped it open, mumbling under his breath.

“Where did you find that?” Ivy said, but I shook my head and steered her back to the fire. We needed to let our brother work.

Hours passed. Impatience simmered in my blood as I occupied my fingers with weaving. Would this really help Jonn figure out how to operate the PLD? Had Korr suspected anything? What would he do with the knowledge I’d given him, the knowledge that I’d seen Gabe? Had my gamble been worth it?

Finally, Jonn dropped his pencil with a sigh. “Lia,” he whispered, and I set aside the yarn and strode across the room to his side. Before him lay a paper with a set of instructions.

“Is that it?”

“Not yet. But it’s a step in the right direction.”

“Well?” I demanded. “What now?”

“I need to go to Echlos,” Jonn said.

“ARE YOU SURE he’s strong enough to make the trip?” Adam asked. Our footsteps crunched as we moved through the forest, and all around us bits of snow drifted down like feathers. The fading light filled the Frost with a bluish glow as darkness fell, and ahead, I saw the glint of metal. One of my father’s traps.

“Jonn is stronger than anyone realizes,” I said firmly, but inside I worried. What about his seizures, his fevers? But he’d been adamant. “He said he must go. He said he has only clues, but he’ll know the hiding place when he sees it. He isn’t simply looking for an adventure.”

“I trust your brother means what he says,” Adam said.

“This might be the only way.”

He turned to study my face for a moment. “All right,” he said. “We’ll take him together.”

Silence fell between us as we continued on.

“Is Atticus...has he found a place to stay?” I asked, brushing a strand of hair from my eyes. I stepped over a fallen log after Adam.

“Yes. He’s settled in.” That seemed to be all Adam wanted to say on the subject.

I ducked beneath a branch and stepped over a cluster of icy stones. “It seems odd that he would be assigned here when he knows nothing of the Frost.”

Adam just looked at me.

“Sometimes I think you Thorns operatives are over-enamored with secrecy,” I muttered. “Not knowing every other agent in the region is one thing. Refusing to tell me what’s going on with things that concern me is another.”

“The Trio knows what they’re doing. We just have to follow orders.”

“The Trio?” For some reason, the name was oddly familiar to me, but I couldn’t place where I’d heard it.

“The Trio is what we call the group of Thorns leaders—three men or women who control everything the organization does. Their identities are shrouded in complete secrecy, and not even the rest of the organization knows their names or faces. They are the most hunted individuals in Aeralis, and they remain in hiding always.”

I remembered—Atticus had mentioned them in the barn. The way he’d said the word...he’d used it like a weapon. I frowned.

“So the Trio made the choice to send him here?”

“Yes,” Adam said. “They know what they’re doing. We just have to trust the plan.”

But I wasn’t sure that I did.

~

We rode the horses into the Frost the next afternoon. Jonn sat behind me on the gelding that I jokingly referred to as Officer Raine, and Adam rode the mare. The snow absorbed the sound of the hoofbeats, and silence shrouded us as it always did when venturing into the Frost. Unease simmered in my stomach as we put more distance between ourselves and the farm. I hadn’t told Everiss anything about where we were going or what we were up to, but obviously Jonn never left the house, so she couldn’t help but notice and wonder. Ivy was missing again, a pattern which was beginning to concern me. I made a mental note to talk to her about it later.

The horses crested the final hill and the forest fell away. A field of snow and ice stretched before us to the river, and the mountains rose up to the sky in the distance in a haze of purple. “Echlos,” Adam said under his breath.

“I don’t see anything...” Jonn began, his face knit with confusion.

“Just wait,” I said. I kicked the gelding into a trot as we crossed the field.

“Lia, I don’t...
oh
.” Jonn’s fingers tightened with astonishment on my shoulders as the shield shimmered and evaporated, revealing the ancient buildings. Smooth, rounded white roofs rose like giant eggshells from the ground. Vines and trees crowded the architecture and choked the dark hole that used to be the door.

We dismounted. Adam pulled Jonn off the horse with a grunt and carried him bride-style. I followed, watching them both for any signs of fatigue. Jonn slung an arm around Adam’s neck and twisted around, trying to see everything as we approached the ruins.

“This is incredible,” he murmured again and again, staring at the sloping roofs, the crumbling columns, and the iridescent shimmer of the visible walls.

“Wait till you see inside,” I said.

We entered the gaping hole that used to be the entrance and descended the staircase. Adam went first, still carrying Jonn. I paused before entering and took a deep breath. The closeness of the tunnels always made my throat squeeze and my heart beat too fast.

After I’d taken a moment to clear my head and steel my nerves, I stepped after them into the darkness. The scent of dusty air met my nose, and a shiver ran up my spine at the memories that filled my head.
Gabe. Lantern-light dancing on the ground. Adam and his brother, their faces grim and unmoving as they slipped through the depths ahead of us
...

Jonn’s voice echoed ahead of me, around a corner. “Unbelievable.”

I hurried to join them. They were by the curving staircase. Adam had set Jonn down, and he was staring up at the ceiling and the lights that had come on, flickering like captured lightning.

“Well,” I said, after we’d stood in silence a moment. “What now?”

My brother looked down the corridor, and he sighed as if gathering strength for an arduous task. “Take me to the gate.”

We made the climb into the bowels of the ruins slowly, taking care with the hundreds of stairs and ramps strewn with dirt and debris. Each step carried a memory of the last night I’d made this journey, almost four months ago now. Every time I blinked, I saw Gabe. My breathing rasped in my lungs and my eyes burned at the feelings that washed over me. But I pushed them away. Now was not the time to get emotional.

Finally, we reached the room where the gate waited.

Light broke over us as we stepped through the gaping hole where a massive door had once been. The ceiling stretched up to a point hundreds of feet away, and sunlight flooded down through a splintered gap in the roof. Snow and ice covered the stone floor, and dead vines dangled in brown strands from scaffolding-like structures that crowded the corners and walls of the room. Far away, through the hole in the roof, I could see a patch of blue sky and wisps of storm clouds. At the far end of the room, the gate waited for us like the blind eye of a sleeping monster, illuminated by daylight and flecked with dappled shadow. I shivered as the wind rushed through the hole and across our bare faces.

“This is it,” Adam said, and his voice was just a whisper in the vastness of the room.

Jonn looked up, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. He turned his head, drinking in the sight, and I stared along with him. “Take me closer, please.”

Our footsteps scuffled as we crossed the chamber. The wind rustled across the ice and made the metal structures creak and groan. Adam scanned the room with the eye of a hunter looking for other hunters, and Jonn craned his neck and muttered under his breath, absorbed in a stream of symbols along the wall.

But I couldn’t take my eyes off the portal as we drew closer.

Before, I’d only seen the gate in the dead of night, the same night we’d delivered Gabe to safety months ago. I’d been back to Echlos since, but never to the portal itself. It looked different now, illuminated by sunlight and flickering shadow. Faded, almost dismal. The gray circle was splattered with stains from hundreds of years of snow and ice, and dried lichen clung to the sides. The faintest outline of markings straggled up one side like the faded remnants of bird droppings. They looked as though they’d once been words, but whatever they had said had been scraped away by the elements long ago.