“Inviting them to board our ship is crazy,” Tarn said.
“And trying to outrun their ship is impossible,” replied Alice. “So I say we give my plan a try. Worst-case scenario, they catch us in the act and do what they planned to do to us all along.”
In the silence that followed, I looked at the worn-out faces around me and realized that they’d already resigned themselves to exactly that fate.
CHAPTER 3
Father and Ananias returned to their posts. Jerren too. “I still don’t see why those men will go below deck just because we’re not here,” I told Alice.
“Actually, you and I will be here.”
“What?”
Alice looked around to make sure we weren’t being overheard. “They know us, Thom. You were Chief’s favorite back on Sumter, and the way these men see it, you betrayed his trust. The moment they see you, they’ll be focused on revenge, which means they won’t be focused on anyone else. We’re just trying to give everyone a chance to get away, right?”
She was right. The chief of the Sumter colony had singled me out and spent a lot of time with me. It was obvious now that he’d been probing for information, but to the rest of the Sumter colonists, it must have appeared as an act of kindness. And how had I rewarded that kindness? By pushing Chief to his death.
I pursed my lips. “I thought you said that Griffin’s the bait.”
“He is. You’re just the distraction.” She gave an anxious smile. “We’ll be waiting for the men as they board. They’re going to force us to tell them where everyone’s hiding. We’ll hold out just long enough that they don’t get suspicious. Then we’ll take them below deck . . . and strike.”
“Strike?”
“Oh, come on.” She rolled her eyes. “You know what we can do when we combine elements. Your power plus my fire . . .”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“Then we’ll have given Griffin and everyone else a chance to escape. We’ll have drawn the men away from all the other weapons on that ship too.”
With the sails reefed, we were gliding to a stop. The warm southwesterly breeze fluttered the edges of the canvas like a hummingbird’s wings thrumming to hold it precisely in one place. In contrast, the Sumter ship continued to slice through the swell. The men on board were fanned out against the prow railing, each one straining for a better view of their prize.
I admired Alice’s decisiveness, but I didn’t share her optimism. What if the Sumter men fought back? What if they weren’t interested in taking prisoners at all? They could shoot us on sight.
And what about Dare? He was a seer. What if he’d already foreseen her plan?
She waited for me to say that I was in. Finally, with no alternative to offer, I did exactly that. “All right,” I said. “I’ll go tell everyone downstairs what’s happening. They’ll need time to prepare.”
“And I’ll join you in a moment.”
I ran below deck, my wounded chest throbbing with every stride. I stopped in front of the door to Griffin and Nyla’s cabin, and gathered myself. If Alice’s bravado was just an act, it was one I needed to copy.
My brother and Nyla lay side by side in the cramped cabin, nothing but a few dirty blankets between them and the dusty floor. Nyla gave a weak smile as she saw me. Griffin couldn’t even manage that.
Neither of them showed signs of Plague yet, but it was hardly a consolation. On Sumter, Griffin had been imprisoned inside a glass cube with a pack of rats—a brutally efficient way to determine if he was the mythical solution. With his hands and feet bound, he hadn’t been able to move away or fend them off, and I’d been too slow to stop the attack. Now his entire body bore the evidence of that encounter. Being deaf, he wouldn’t have heard the sound of his own cries, but they must have reverberated through his skull just as powerfully as they’d seared through me.
We. Leave. Ship, I signed to him.
To my surprise, it was Nyla who signed back: What. Is. Explosion?
For someone who’d only begun learning Griffin’s sign language a few days ago, Nyla had uncanny understanding. She was already more fluent than some of the Guardians who’d known Griffin his entire life. It was a clear sign that she cared about communicating with him more than they ever had.
Sumter. Ship. Following. Us, I signed. There wasn’t time to explain any better than that.
Where. Go. Now?
Other. Ship.
Nyla looked at me like I was crazy, which was probably justified under the circumstances. She obviously had other questions, but struggled to find the signs. As long as she was with Griffin, she preferred to sign, rather than exclude him.
Griffin rolled onto his side and met my eyes at last. He looked tired and worn, much like the tunic he wore: stretched and beaten and bloodied until it was barely recognizable as the thing it used to be. I felt tears forming, but held them back. My brother needed strength, not weakness—we all owed him that.
Where. Journals? he signed, his gestures fluid but painfully slow, as if he were signing through water.
I wasn’t sure I understood. Journals?
Journals, he repeated stubbornly. Logbooks.
Who cares? I wanted to sign. I couldn’t believe that with everything else going on, Griffin was still thinking about the logbooks we’d found in Dare’s cabin on our journey to Sumter, and the journals we’d found buried in the sand near our Hatteras Island colony. We were fighting for our future; the past had never seemed less important to me.
Where? he repeated stubbornly.
How could I tell him that the journals and logbooks were back at Fort Sumter? In our haste to escape, no one would have thought to retrieve them. Who would have been able to, in any case?
Then I remembered something. The previous evening, Alice and I had discovered our colony’s third and final journal—the one that promised to unlock our final secrets.
We. Find. Missing. Journal, I explained.
Griffin’s face brightened. He didn’t seem as tired anymore. Where. Journal. Now?
Cabin, I answered, pointing along the corridor.
Griffin shuffled as if he was about to stand, but I raised a hand to stop him. Prepare, I said. We. Leave. Soon.
I ran along the corridor to the cabin where I’d spent the night. My closest friend, Rose, was still in there, stretched across the floor. Her cropped blond hair was matted, clothes soiled with blood from cuts on her neck and a gaping wound on her side. She’d suffered a brutal knife attack on Sumter. Seeing her now, stoic and immobile, it wasn’t difficult to imagine that she could have died.
“Dare’s catching up to us,” I said. “We have to leave the ship.”
Rose inhaled, and released the breath in a long sigh. “I can’t.”
“Didn’t you feel the explosions?”
“I just . . . can’t.”
She’d suffered so much over the past day, but there was no way I was leaving Rose on the ship.
I knelt down and slid my arms under her. It was a risky thing to do. Unless I was combining, my element seemed to work itself into people, hurting them. It was the side effect of my element—the echo, we called it—and it was what had kept everyone at arm’s length my whole life. Even now, as I lifted her up, I could feel my element pulsing lightly. The only reason Rose didn’t pull away was probably because the discomfort was negligible compared to the rest of her pain.
She ran her fingertips gently across my chest. “You look rough,” she said.
I raised an eyebrow. “We’ve both looked better.”
Smiling bravely, she coiled her arm around my neck, and rested her head against my shoulder.
I kicked the door open and stepped into the corridor. Only then did I remember the journal I’d promised to retrieve for Griffin. I turned awkwardly and peered inside. The floor was bare, except for a blanket.
There was no time to waste, but I had to find that journal. So I slipped back in and flicked the blanket away. There was nothing underneath.
“What are you doing?” Rose whispered.
“Where’s the journal? I have to find it.”
“Last time I saw it, it was right next to me.”
I wanted to leave. There wasn’t time for this. But how difficult could it be to find a journal in a cabin as small as this?
I looked again, but someone had taken it. And from experience, I knew better than to think it was an accident.
CHAPTER 4
Footsteps pounded on the stairs. Alice appeared in the doorway, but seeing Rose in my arms, she hesitated. Her expression turned unusually sympathetic. “We really need to hurry,” she said.
Rose was groaning now. Not from the pain of her injuries, I suspected, but from my element, which grew stronger as my pulse accelerated. On Sumter we’d practiced combining, so that my element channeled through her instead of into her. But there was no way that she could engage her element now, not when she was so weak. When she stopped grimacing, it was only because she saw my expression and didn’t want me to feel bad.
“Here,” said Alice. She stood with her back to me and tapped her shoulders. “I’ll carry Rose. You make sure the others get on deck.”
I wasn’t sure that Alice would be able to support Rose’s weight, but I helped Rose onto Alice’s back anyway. Alice took off up the stairs as easily as if she were carrying a sandbag across the beach.
I returned to Nyla and Griffin’s cabin as they emerged. They staggered along the corridor and paused before the stairs. I offered to help them, but Griffin waved me off.
Up on deck, I counted heads. We were all present, looking bedraggled and forlorn. Even Rose and Dennis’s mother, Marin, was there, short and stocky, her features wrenched into an all-too-familiar scowl. I hadn’t seen her caring for her daughter below deck or helping the other Guardians above; but then, it was no secret that we’d brought her on board against her will. She’d clung to the dream of a new home on Sumter, and hadn’t appreciated being rescued. Even now I wasn’t sure that she realized how vulnerable she’d been. If we’d left her there, she wouldn’t have lasted the night.
Ananias tilted his head toward the approaching ship, which was about a quarter mile behind us. “They’re watching us, so keep low. They mustn’t see what we’re doing.”
Across the deck, my father lowered a rope ladder over the port side, readying for the escape.
I scooted over to Alice. She fixed her eyes on the ship, searching for any clue that might give us an advantage. “Same five men,” she murmured.
“There might be more below deck,” I reminded her. “Maybe some injured crewmen too.”
“I don’t think so. Anyone who was injured wouldn’t have been able to make it on board—not with everything that was going down at Sumter. No, they’re operating with a small crew. And it’s our job to get those men onto this ship and trapped below deck. If we do that, there’s nothing to stop us from getting away.”
“And if we can’t?”
She peered at me from the corner of her eye. “Just think of Griffin, and Rose. You know what’s at stake.”
My father was already helping Tarn and Marin onto the rope ladder, so I crawled across the deck and joined them. When she saw me, Tarn furrowed her brows. “I don’t like this,” she said.
“We don’t have much choice,” I replied. “Dare will be here any moment.”
She exchanged a glance with my father. “How did you all escape from Sumter, Thomas?” she asked. “From what I’ve heard, you were trapped in a room. Chief and his men were armed. Dare was there too. So what happened?”
I couldn’t be sure, but her tone sounded suspicious. It annoyed me, that. With Dare closing fast, and others waiting to descend the ladder, I didn’t have time to answer, or even to consider why she’d ask me that question now. I turned my back on her and beckoned Nyla and Griffin over.
One by one, the elementals slid first one foot and then the other onto the ladder. The rope was strong, but the ladder shifted from side to side as the ship rocked in the swell. The healthiest of our crew—Tarn, Marin, Dennis—treaded water, waiting to assist the injured.
When it was my father’s turn to go down, he paused. “I’m staying with you,” he said.
Alice, who was on the other side of the deck, spun around. “No. Only Thomas and me. Dare has a history with you, Ordyn,” she reminded my father. “We need him to believe he’ll get no resistance from us.”
Still my father hesitated. Then, as the Sumter ship sailed toward our starboard side, he followed the others into the water.
I raised the rope ladder and untied it, hiding all evidence of what we’d done.
“May as well throw it in the water,” said Alice, joining me. “We won’t be needing it anymore.”
“How are we going to get onto the other ship?”
“The deck’s lower than this one. We’ll jump.”
I tossed the ladder over the side. It floated for a moment, and then sank. When I turned around, Alice was crouched beside the hatch door that led below deck. “Once the men are trapped down there, you get out, hear me? Even if I don’t make it, you bolt that door and board the other ship.”
“I won’t leave without you, Alice.”
“Yes, you will. And if I have to, I’ll leave without you too. Because this is bigger than either one of us, you hear? This is everything.”
The Sumter ship pulled alongside us. The sails had been reefed, allowing the vessel to glide to a halt. As Alice had said, it was lower in the water, so I couldn’t see anything except the masts, but I could just make out the men’s faces peeking at us over our ship’s railing. Each of them held a gun.
An object flew onto our deck and landed with a clatter. Before I could get a good look at it, it was dragged backward, scraping angry lines in the wooden planks. With a clang, it anchored against the railing—a hook, tethering the ships together.
Instinctively I edged closer to Alice. “You ready?” she asked.
I didn’t even know for sure what was about to happen. “Yes,” I lied.
A hand appeared on the railing. Then an arm. For a moment, I considered attacking him before he had a chance to get on board, but Alice gripped my sleeve and held me back, forcing me to stick to the plan.
We edged toward the Sumter ship, close enough to see a sliver of the deck. Close enough that when, with a twitch of her head, Alice directed my attention to the water, I made out the heads of the elementals as they slid to the far side of the ship. None of the men was paying any attention to the ocean, though.
My father was watching me. Ananias was as well. They were waiting for a nod, the signal that they were clear to board the Sumter ship. Neither Alice nor I could give it yet, though.
The first Sumter colonist slid over the rail and landed on the deck. Someone tossed a rifle up to him. He pointed it at us, hands shaking, and yelled, “Ship’s secure.”
Alice had the appearance of a cat poised to pounce.
Another man labored to climb aboard. He was older, bald. As he took up position beside the first man, he rubbed his leg and frowned.
A third man joined them. Even older. Even slower. When he caught his rifle, he took several moments to aim it.
I wanted to ask Alice if she’d noticed the men’s condition when she’d spied the ship. Was this why she wanted them to board—because they were possibly even weaker than us?
As the fourth man joined the others I afforded myself another glance at the deck of the Sumter ship. I feared Dare more than all the rest of the men combined, but he wasn’t climbing the rope. I couldn’t see him at all.
“Where’s Dare?” Alice demanded.
“Preparing,” replied the first of the men.
“For what?”
&n
bsp; “You know why we’re here. Now where’s the solution?”
Alice took a small step forward. Immediately, the men jammed the rifles against their shoulders, arms rigid, eyes wide. From their body language it was obvious that they were wary of us. Maybe even afraid. Alice shuffled back again at the sight of four restless trigger fingers. Whether or not they intended to harm us, it seemed all too possible that one of them might accidentally fire his weapon.
“The others are below deck,” said Alice.
“Then bring them up.”
“So you can take the solution and kill the rest of us, you mean?”
The man glanced over his shoulder. “We have other weapons than rifles. Less lethal, but possibly even more painful. Would you prefer it if we used those?”
“Actually, I’d prefer it if Dare came on board to bully us himself. He’s one of us, you know.”
The man laughed. “An elemental, yes. And we can see how much he likes you. Enough to lure you to Sumter. Enough to watch you die—”
He broke off at the sound of footsteps from the Sumter ship. Dare emerged from the stairwell, and regarded the men coolly. “What’s going on?” he demanded, voice smooth yet menacing.
“The solution’s hiding out below,” answered the man, sounding less confident than before.
“So what’s stopping you? You have guns. They are children. Get him now.”
“What about our ship?”
“I’ll guard this ship. Just make sure you take those two below deck to guide you. And if they resist or refuse,” Dare added, like it was an afterthought, “just burn the ship. Fire has a tendency to make even the smallest creatures scatter.”
CHAPTER 5
You heard Dare,” the man told us. “Lead on.”
When Alice held her ground, he stepped forward and jabbed his rifle into her stomach. She stumbled and fell. Instinctively I reached for the barrel, but before I could pour my element along the metal shaft, shocking the man, Alice grabbed my ankle. “Don’t do it, Thom,” she muttered. “Think of the others.”