The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (7 page)

She pulls at her hair,
turning around with a half-grimace-half-smile that drops as soon as
she looks past me. I follow her eyes and jolt into action. Tia is
doubled over, her hands on her stomach and her forehead creased in
pain.

“Tia?
Tia, what’s wrong?”

She clenches her teeth
against a moan.

“Is it the sea? The
rain?”

She shakes her head,
gritting her teeth. A few second pass before she unfolds herself,
leaning against the railing as if nothing is wrong, as if she
hasn’t just been paralysed by pain. I touch her cheek and she turns
her face into my hand; her eyes tell me not to worry but I don’t
believe them.

“Tell me,” I say,
knowing she won’t.

A minute later she
grasps her stomach again and turns her back on me.

“Oh.” Miya slaps me on
the shoulder and drags me away from my sister. I struggle but she
has a stupidly strong grip. “I’ve got this, Honour. Go take a walk
or something.”

“What’s wrong with
her?” My voice is hoarse, my stomach roiling again. I tell myself
it’s just worry and not the exaggerated motion of the ship.

“Uh.
Just …” She gives me a pointed look. “
Y’know.
”

I shake my head, which
makes the sick feeling worse. Dizziness comes from nowhere. “No,” I
groan. “Not at all.”

“Ugh.
There’s this magical thing
that happens to a woman once a month, Honour. It’s called a period.
It hurts like a bitch. Be lucky you’re a guy.”

“Oh.” The cold rain
feels suddenly scorching.

“Yes. Now go away.”
She shoves me down the deck and strides over to Horatia, taking my
sister’s arm to tow her into the cabin Miya and her family
share.

Ignoring orders to
leave, I sink onto the wet deck outside our room. I tip my face up
against the rain, the falling water cooling my face. But my stomach
doesn’t feel any better. I’m way too conscious of the sea around
me, the creaking and tipping of the ship every two seconds.

A strong wave slams
into the boat and the meagre contents of my stomach evacuate into
the sea. The retching drains the last of my strength. Once I’m sure
the sickness has passed, I flop back onto the wooden boards, my
arms and legs spread out. I’m listless and lifeless and lacking the
energy to even hold my head up. My mind is screaming that I’m going
to die but I keep arguing that I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.

11:47. 13.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Eastlands coastline.

There’s a gentle touch
on my head and something soft against my back. It’s a while before
I remember the ship, letting go of the dream where I was home. I
peel an eye open. Horatia hovers over me, relief in her smile and a
wet cloth against my face.

“I’m okay,” I assure
her. My eyes are dying to close again but I keep them open with
effort. “Come here.”

Tia settles into my
open arms, her head resting on my shoulder like always. Her skin
against mine is a freezing shock. “You’re cold.”

When I pull the cover
closer around her shoulders, she stops me with a little shake of
her head. It takes a second to work out what she means: Tia isn’t
cold, I’m just really warm. High fever—Strains symptom. My throat
gets tight when I remember the vaccine can kill me any minute. I
might have taken it to stop the spread of infection, to stop me
killing anyone in the Guardians’ base, and I might not regret it
one bit, but I can’t even comprehend being dead. Being gone
completely. No more Honour Frie.

How
would Tia cope with losing me as well? She’d have Miya to support
her at least. They seem to be friends. And Dal and Hele. I think
she’d cope. She’s strong enough. But the thought of being wiped
out, cancelled like one of Dalmar’s computer commands … I come face
to face with the fact that I’m not just staying alive for my sister
like I thought. I don’t want to die. I really
really
do not want to
die.

I want to stay alive
for me.

I kick the covers to
the floor. “I think,” I say, “I’m sea sick.”

I feel the shape of
Horatia’s smile against my shoulder but she doesn’t let loose a
word. I understand her silence a bit better now than I did right
after we left F.L. It’s Tia’s way of protecting herself, of dealing
with her loss. I think in time she’ll speak again, when her grief
at Marrin’s death is less painful.

I recognise the spiral
of guilt and darkness before it can take hold, and stop myself from
thinking that painful thought. It makes no difference now. Even if
I’d thought of a way to get Marrin to come with us in the past, it
doesn’t change the present. He’s gone. I have to begin accepting
that. I might be to blame for his death but tormenting myself with
wishes and regrets won’t fix the gap he’s left behind. It won’t
help Tia.

I need to get a grip.
I won’t let anything break me down, not until we’re out of
danger.

I indulge myself in a
selfish hope—I hope we’re not staying on this Island. I hope the
Guardians’ big plan is to get us away from here because I don’t
feel safe anywhere in the United Kingdom. I’m not sure I’ll ever
feel safe again but I can try to, in a faraway town.

People say Forgotten
Paris is nice. Maybe we could go there.

Tia’s palm hits my forehead with a harmless pat. I smile
because for once I understand her unspoken words:
stop thinking
.

I follow her command
because she’s my sister, and I fall into a fitful sleep.

***

Branwell

13:21. 13.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Eastlands coastline.

“This is a mess,” I
say, surveying the room. Everything the Guardians salvaged from the
Forgotten London base has been dumped here. There are overflowing
cardboard boxes piled in precarious towers, random objects
scattered all over the floor, and no small number of spare Guardian
clothing. The result of this dumping ground is a dangerous obstacle
course to cross. I hop my way into the corner, losing my balance
twice, and settle there.

Marie groans loudly,
kicking things out of the way to clear a space for her to sit. “Why
is it always us?”

“I don’t know, M.”
Priya tucks her arms into her sides, squeezing through a narrow
cardboard aisle. “Maybe it’s because we’re the Guardians archivists
and this is our job.”

“Maybe I quit,” Marie
mutters, gathering her ice-white hair and tying it at the back of
her neck. Her teal eyes take in the task before us with defeat.

Priya pats her on the
head as she squeezes past. “Maybe you can’t.”

I smile to myself,
opening the box before me to rifle through the contents. Unlike the
women, I don’t have to be here. This isn’t my job. But what would I
have done otherwise? Wasted the day away staring at the smooth
silver walls of our room, contemplating my uselessness and my
misery? I’d much rather be here, doing something productive.
Besides, organising brought me a strange clarity in my father’s
attic, when everything was trashed and scattered and I had no
option but to sweep everything into order.

I’d like to feel
clarity now. Well, what I really want is to be curled up in the
window seat in Bennet’s bedroom, her shoulder resting against mine,
listening eagerly to whatever cheap paperback I’d picked up that
week. But since that’s about as possible as growing wings and
flying away from my loss, I’ll accept being in this box room with
two girls who are fast becoming my friends. I lean around a
cardboard tower to find Priya. “How exactly do we catalogue
this?”

She traps her lip
between her teeth, casting a look about her. She moves a few boxes
to make a circular space on the floor, but a skyscraper chooses
that exact moment to topple over, sending a hundred Guardian gloves
sailing across the room. Priya tucks her face low, assaulted by a
snowfall of kid leather. She laughs a quiet, hopeless laugh. “I
have no idea.”

Marie adds to the
chaos by making a loud crash. I watch her tip four boxes over,
Priya’s clear circle now entirely ruined. Intent on her task and
oblivious to mine and Priya’s bewildered stares, Marie uses the
side of her body to push a whole group of box towers all at once,
backing them against the wall. When she’s satisfied, apparently
having fulfilled her mysterious purpose, she wades back to us and
holds four empty boxes up high.

I frown, still
confused.

She explains, “One box
for books and paper, one for anything we can kill a man with, one
for medicines, and one for everything else. Well, for now at least.
When these are full, we’ll just empty others.”

Priya regards Marie
with awe.

“I know, I know.”
Marie plunks to the floor and delves into the pile of objects she
unseated. There’s a real mountain of bric-a-brac now, each of us
sat at a point of the squashed triangle of mess. I pick up a silver
metal tube with thick glass on one end, contemplating it.

“I’m brilliant,” Marie
goes on, flicking curls out of her face with unique flair. “A real
genius. You can repay me in kind.” She tosses a fork into the box
for miscellany and looks up suddenly. “Not you, Branwell. I desire
no ‘kind’ from you.”

“Okay? I think?”

She grins. “That’s the
spirit.”

I hold up the strange
object. “Could this kill a man?”

Priya shuffles around
to me, laughing through her nose when she catches the hopeless
expression I wear. “That’s a torch, sweetheart.”

“It’s fairly
heavy.”

She
hides her smile behind her hair. “In an emergency it
could
hurt someone, but
usually we use it for light.”

“Does it work?” Marie
asks without looking up. She’s sorting things at a fast pace.
“Won’t the battery be dead?”

Priya checks. The
battery does indeed turn out to be dead, which sparks a question in
me. “Does this ship not run on a battery of some kind?” Everything
seems to be fuelled by electricity here.

Marie makes a neutral
noise. It sounds very much like ‘meh’ and comes with the
one-shoulder-shrug she does often. “It was dead when we found it,”
she tells us, her head in the depths of a brown box. “It had to be
jumpstarted. I heard Liss complaining about it yesterday.”

“Who’s Liss?” I ask.
It’s impossible to remember everyone’s names, no matter how hard I
try. There are just too many new faces, new names, and new people
to keep track of. I’m doing the best I can but sometimes it doesn’t
feel enough.

“The loud one,” Priya
and Marie answer in unison, startling a laugh from deep within
me.

Ah. That one. She’s
rather hard to miss, even by an impossibly old boy with bad memory.
“Is she good with machines?”

Priya gives me a
handful of cardboard files, directing me to the paper box. I peek
at its contents, seeing nothing but small print on the documents
before Priya takes them back with a little shake of her head.
“She’s an engineer.”

“Our best,” Marie
agrees.

I take initiative and
put several more document folders with the other papers. “Engineer.
Archivist. How many more jobs are available to a Guardian?”

“It’s basically
unlimited. Cook, fighter, electrician … The Guardians are for every
kind of person.”

“I thought you were
all warriors.”

The boat gives a lurch
several times stronger than the gentle movement I’ve become
accustomed to. The bare bulb swinging overhead blinks off, and then
on again, and then off completely. I clutch the floor
uselessly.

The ship steadies.
Eventually the light returns, illuminating the strained expression
written across Marie’s face and the way the two girls cling to each
other. I push away a bout of jealously. How special it must be to
have someone to cling onto when uncertain fear claims you.

“
We
are
warriors” Priya says softly, picking up a conversation I’d
forgotten starting.

I frown at the sad
tone of her voice. “But that’s not all you are.”

“Isn’t it? I came to
the Guardians as a librarian, but now I’m a killer, a warrior just
like any Guardian fighter.”

“Priya.” Marie’s eyes
are wide. She finds Priya’s brown face beneath the sheets of dark
hair, taking hold of her chin. I turn my eyes down, an imposter in
their personal moment. “You didn’t have a choice.”

“I did.”

“No you did not.”

I
recognise Priya’s words and emotions because they match my own. I
haven’t forgotten the men I injured and killed in the vault of
Underground London Zone. They may have been Officials that were
intending to harm me but they were still men. I’m still responsible
for their deaths. My regret of that has been overshadowed by my
loss of Bennet but it’s still there. I suspect it will be a ghost
that will follow me for the rest of my existence, branded into my
subconscious like a pirate’s mark. An angry red
K
for killer.

“None of us had a
choice.” My throat is tight but I force the words out. I pick up a
spoon and stare at my warped reflection. “This situation doesn’t
give us choices. We are all made killers at some point in our
lives.”

19:02. 13.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Eastlands coastline.

The rocky shore
outside the dining room window is dwarfed by grey, angry waves. The
water rushes up the cliff face, staining the light rock a darker
colour to match the sky. To match my mood.

“The storm isn’t going
anywhere, is it?” murmurs Priya. She’s hunched over the yellow
tablecloth, her chin propped on her hand and a weary look about
her.