Frozen: Heart of Dread, Book One (19 page)

T
HE NEXT MORNING, THE SLAVERS WERE
intent on discovering why their prisoners were not starving and listless as they had been. A team of guards searched every cage and stripped down every captive but found nothing. The cages were empty. Every crumb and every seed had been eaten.

Nat was worried the pirates would punish their captives, but the arrival of a new batch of pilgrims focused their attention elsewhere.

That was the routine: Every day the slavers scoured the surrounding area in a small black inflatable. Some days they returned with captives, some days, none. Nat, Wes, and the rest of the prisoners were on deck, watching as the next batch of victims arrived. From afar, the captives—a group of smallmen—looked strangely peaceful, hopeful even, but as the boat neared the slave ship, they began to react violently. One drew a dagger from his pocket, while two others attacked the slavers, kicking and punching.

The pirates quelled the little rebellion soon enough, throwing one of the smallmen overboard to drown so the rest fell into line, the sight of their sinking comrade taking the fight out of them.

Nat learned how the slavers worked; in the morning they filled the inflatable boat with food and supplies. They sent out their better-looking men, clean-shaven and decently attired. They would circle the dark ocean until they caught sight of a pilgrim boat.

The slavers would coast alongside the pilgrims, greeting them warmly, offering aid and guidance. More often than not, the pilgrims had been lost for days and were likely starving. The slavers would tell them they were from the Blue, and were there to offer them safe passage through the strait; all the pilgrims had to do was ditch their boat and climb on board theirs. The doorway was not far, they told them.

It was only when they reached the hulking slave ship that the pilgrims realized they had been lied to, and that far from finding the refuge of the Blue, they had been turned into prisoners, and enslaved. Hence the sudden violence.

The smallmen were hustled onto the ship, their faces pale and frightened, noses broken as well as their spirit. Two of them were placed in the cage on the other side of Nat and Wes’s.

Later that night, Nat knocked on the wall. There was a tentative knock back.

They knew the Layman’s Code! Just like Brendon and Roark did.

Where did you come from?
she knocked.

—We are from Upper Pangaea. There were more of us.

—
Yes. We know. We picked them up. Brendon Rimmel and Roark Goderson.

There was a long pause and then:

—Brendon is our son. Is he safe?

—
He is alive. As for safe, we do not know. He is on a different slave ship. We were separated upon capture.

—Thank you.

With new captives to torture for their entertainment, the slavers didn’t bother with the rest. “How do you think they’re doing—Donnie and Roark and Shakes?” she asked.

“Shakes will take care of them as best he can,” Wes said. “He won’t leave them.”

Nat nodded. That sounded about right.

“Another game?” He yawned.

“Sure.”

They played poker for a while, Nat beating him easily. “Your scar moves when you have a good hand,” she told him. “That’s your tell.”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “Tell me more.”

“Wes, I do have something to tell you,” she said. “I just . . . I haven’t been honest with you.” She had to do it. She had to tell him, even if it meant he would hate her, even if it meant they could never be friends again.

He rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, what is it?”

“The night your sister was taken . . .” She couldn’t do it, she thought she could, but she couldn’t tell him.

Wes raised his eyebrow. “The night my sister was taken . . . ?”

“When I worked for Bradley, I . . . I was part of a repatriate team . . . we would take things . . . without anyone knowing . . . secrets, weapons . . . but our specialty was people.”

He clenched his jaw and tossed his cards to the floor. “No. No. Don’t tell me that. You had nothing to do with Eliza!”

“I’m a monster . . . I . . . hurt people . . . your sister . . .”

He shook his head, tears coming to his eyes.

“Your sister is dead, Wes. Because of me. I killed her.”

“No!”

“The night you described, the fire that came from nowhere, the fact that there were no remains . . . Oh god, Wes, the things I used to do . . . the things they made me do . . . the things I
can
do . . .”

“NO, NAT, NO! You had nothing to do with that!” He took her hands in his fists. “Look at me. Listen to me! It wasn’t you. You had nothing to do with that!”

Nat was sobbing now, and Wes was holding her so tightly. “They would send us out—to do exactly what you described—to take children! When people wouldn’t give them up to the repo men, we would take them, to keep everyone in line. To remind people they couldn’t break the rules. If that guy hadn’t dropped Shakes like he had . . . they would have sent a team for him. I did it! I know it was me who took Eliza. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” she cried. “I didn’t know. But when you talked about it—it all came back . . . everything . . . we would destroy things . . . bomb things . . . the fires . . .”

“No,” he said miserably, releasing her from his grip. “No. Listen to me. It wasn’t you, Nat. You might . . . you might have done those sorts of things in the past . . . but you didn’t kill Eliza.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I know what really happened that night.” He leaned against the wall of the cage and closed his eyes. “Because the fire was Eliza’s idea. She was behind it all along,” he said quietly. “Eliza was marked. She had blue eyes, and a spiral on her arm.”

“A weaver.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“She could create illusions, couldn’t she?”

“Yeah. She . . . made this fire . . . I still don’t remember what was real and what wasn’t. But here’s the thing about Eliza . . . she wasn’t . . . she wasn’t . . .” He sighed. “She wasn’t very nice. She was . . . scary sometimes. I don’t know where she is or what happened to her, but I need to find her, Nat. So I can save her . . . from herself.”

Nat stared at Wes.

“It wasn’t you, okay? I know. Because . . . I know my sister. And all those things you did . . . they’re in the past . . . you couldn’t help it . . . you were just a kid. They used you. They use all of us,” he said.

She didn’t know what to feel then. Relief?

It didn’t seem like enough. She just felt empty. Even if she hadn’t been the cause of Eliza’s disappearance, she still felt guilty.

“Hey, come on now, don’t look like that,” he said. “Come here.”

She leaned against him and he folded her in his arms.

“So your sister was a monster,” Nat whispered, feeling safe as she leaned against him, their bodies creating a small space of warmth in the cold room.

“I didn’t say that,” he said, his nose almost in her hair, his soft breath on her ear.

“She’s a monster . . . like me.”

“You’re not a monster.”

“There’s a voice in my head, and it’s the voice of a monster.”

“You mean like the way you understand animals?” he asked, and she could feel him smiling.

“No, it’s different.”

“Do you know what it is?”

She shook her head. “All I know is that it was the voice that told me to escape, to go to New Vegas, and go to the Blue. And it sends me dreams. Dreams of fire and devastation, dreams of flying, like it’s preparing me somehow.”

“What’s it saying now?”

“Actually, it’s been quiet for a while.” Since the white bird was killed, she realized. There was something more. Since she had fallen for Wes, it had been silent, angry somehow. She remembered the anguish of the wailer, and its large shadow on the water, its anger as it tore their ship apart.

“What else can you do?” he said, hugging her closer to him.

“Not much,” she said, as she snuggled against him. “It just comes and goes. I mean, when bad things happen, it saves me—I jumped out the window at MacArthur and it carried me, but I can’t make it do anything unless . . . I feel something strongly, then it just comes out. I’ve never been able to control it. Except . . .” She hesitated, shy all of a sudden. “Except when I pulled you from the water. It was as if I could hold it, I could use it.” Crystal clear and in control, that was how she had felt, when she had saved him.

“Huh.” Wes thought it over. “I think you’re afraid to use it, and that’s why it’s unpredictable. I think you have to embrace it. You can’t fight it. Don’t resist it.”

Resist it? It was true. She had resisted it. She had tried to hide from it. Tried to outrun it. But it was there. It was always part of her.
The voice is mine. I am the monster.
Hadn’t she known that from the beginning? Why was she fighting it?

Wes spoke directly into her ear, his strong arms around her, and she had never felt safer. “You have to accept who you are, Nat. Once you do, you can do anything you want.” He chuckled softly. “Or maybe, to tap into your power, all you need to do is think of me.”

N
AT FELT SHY THE NEXT DAY, WHEN SHE
woke up lying next to Wes, his arm still slung across her torso. She picked it up gently, trying not to disturb him. She heard the sound of far-off gunfire and she walked to the door, to look through the slit to see what was happening. Wes woke up and stood next to her. “What’s going on?”

“More captives, it looks like. More smallkind,” she said. She moved away from the window so he could see. “And the Ear is back. His ship mustn’t be too far from ours.”

The smallmen were shivering on the deck of the ship. Their hands were unbound; they wore no chains or ropes. There was no need—the slavers had simply removed their coats, exposing them to the cold. The frozen air was its own shackle, crippling the smallmen, forcing them to obey.

There was a barrel full of ice and slurry, and it looked like the slavers were playing one of their favorite games: making Popsicles. They threatened to dunk anyone who dared to disobey their orders. At this temperature, the water would immediately freeze on the skin, and death would not take long.

Wes prayed that the smallmen would obey, and then looked away; he’d seen too much already. He tried not to listen, but there was no way to block out the Ear’s braying laughter as it carried over the sound of screaming. The bald slaver was joking with the Slob that now he had enough for a tiny circus.

The next few days were the same, and the weariness and the claustrophobia began to take its toll. There were no more new captives, and the mercenaries became restless and frustrated, taking their rage out on the prisoners. The small cups of gruel that had arrived once a day disappeared, and Wes noticed the bitter joy the slavers took in the cries of the young and old among them.

They were down to their last Bacon Fruit, Wes’s jacket was almost flat, and although he tried not to show how cold he had become since they had resorted to eating his clothing, Nat could see the blue flush on his cheek, his frostbitten fingers. He spoke less, and when he did, his words were slow and calculated as if each syllable was a struggle.

The weather had worsened as they made their way toward Olympia City, the center of the flesh markets. Sudden showers of snow poured from the sky and a constant fog filled the air. The water was rougher as they neared the outlaw territories, and trashbergs swirled around the ship.

Wes was visibly trembling and, more than once, he asked Nat if it was day or night—his eyes were bothering him. He had chosen to eat rather than to be warm. Nat tried to make him wear her coat, just for a minute, but he adamantly refused.

Nat knew she had to do something before they plunged into despair. Wes was deteriorating before her eyes. “Liannan,” she called. “Tell us a story about the Blue.”

The sylph’s voice carried over. Her voice was weaker than the last time they had spoken, and Nat knew that the imprisonment was taking its toll, the iron slowly sapping the strength from the lovely being. “It’s beautiful. Everything they say about it is true. Your throat does not burn when you inhale; the water is as clear as the air. The sun still shines in the Blue . . . and the grass is the green of emeralds.”

“How do you know? You’ve been there?” Wes challenged.

“I am from Vallonis.”

“So why are you here, then? Why leave?” he asked. Nat wondered why he was being so aggressive. He had never acted that way toward Liannan before.

“The Blue is part of this world, it has always been part of it, and once, very long ago, it
was
this world. A shining civilization: Atlantis, a world where magic and science existed peacefully together. But the promise of Atlantis died during the First Breaking, and the Blue faded into the mist, until the Second Attempt in Avalon. But Avalon died as well, and the world of magic was closed to this land. When the ice came, it is said among our people that the Return was finally upon us. That the Age of Science was over, and the Third Age of Vallonis had finally come. Our people have returned to this world, but . . .”

“But?” Nat prompted.

“Something went wrong. This world is killing our magic and killing us, causing what you call the ‘rot’ . . . and so we sent scouts out, to bring our people back to the doorway, back to the safety of Arem. But it will not be enough to hide in the Blue. Our worlds are colliding, becoming one again. The Blue must cover the land once more and magic have its proper place.”

Nat frowned. “Or . . . ?”

“Or everything will be poisoned, not only this world, but Vallonis as well . . . until everything is lost. I was sent to the gray lands to find the source of the sickness. I chanced upon the pilgrims and thought to lead them to safety first, but afterward, I must resume my search.”

“See? She’s not giving up,” Wes said, finally a ghost of his former smirk appearing on his drawn, handsome face. “So you don’t either.”

She smiled back at him, but the smiles left their faces when the door to their cage opened with a bang and the guard pointed to Nat. “You’re up.”

“Hold on!” Wes said, sticking his foot through the door before the man could slam it closed. “What’s going on?”

“What do you think?” The guard smirked. “Traders are here. Shopping. Get ready.”

Nat glanced at Wes.

“No, hold on, hold on now,” Wes said. “Avo said he wouldn’t harm my people in any way . . .”

The guard laughed. “And you believe that, lover boy?” He kicked away Wes’s foot and slammed the door. “They’ll be here in five!”

Wes clenched his hands into fists. “When he comes back—listen, when he opens the door, I’ll hide behind the shadows, and I can deck him from behind, then we’ll get out of here, get Liannan out, get to the lifeboats. I think I know where we are—we can’t be far from the port at New Crete.”

“No, Wes,” she said slowly. “It’s too dangerous. There are too many men out there. You don’t have a gun, we don’t have a ship—if you fight him, they’ll kill you.”

Wes shook his head. “No—listen to
me,
Nat. I’m not going to let them take you!”

“It will be all right,” she said bravely. “Maybe . . . maybe they won’t want me.”

“NO!”

The guard opened the door and handed her a metal collar linked to a chain. “Put it around your neck, just in case you try anything funny.”

The collar was tight against her skin; it was made of iron, dull and heavy.

“Come on now,” the guard said, tugging at her chain. “Come on, get a move on. Say good-bye to your boyfriend.”

Good-bye? Then she realized—if the traders took her—this was it. She would never see him again. This might be their last moment together. It came upon her so suddenly, and seeing the stricken look in his eyes, she couldn’t help but tear up as well. But what could they do—they were trapped here. She didn’t want him to fight them, she didn’t want him to get hurt, and so she would go quietly and say good-bye. “Well, I guess . . . good luck, then?” she said, trying to appear nonchalant even as she swallowed the lump in her throat and walked toward the door.

“Nat, wait . . . ,” Wes said, and before she could take another step, she felt Wes’s hand reach for hers. He turned her toward him, his dark eyes burning.

Without a word, he leaned over and kissed her.

Nat was startled, but she raised her mouth to meet his, and as his lips pressed on hers, she felt his arm encircle her waist, pulling her close, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if they fit together and always had. She could feel his heart beating in his chest, the heat between them—and the desperation. She ran her fingers through his soft hair—something she had yearned to do since they’d met. His kisses turned hard, passionate, and as she inhaled his sweet scent—felt his body against hers, she felt the strength in him. She could keep kissing him forever, she thought . . .

Why had they waited so long for this? There was so much she wanted to say but so little time to say it. She fluttered her eyes open.

Wes had a hand on her cheek, looking at her with so much feeling. “Nat—” he said, in a strangled voice.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Whatever happens, I can take care of myself.”

“So you keep telling me,” Wes said, his voice strained and hoarse, as the guard pulled her away. “But see, the thing is, it doesn’t matter that you don’t need me, because . . . I need—”

But before he could finish his sentence, the guard pulled her away from him. With a great roar and a look of deep and unfathomable anger on his face, Wes kicked the gun from the slaver’s hand and pummeled him with his fists, sending him sprawling to the ground.

“Nat, run!” Wes yelled.

A group of slavers were upon him, and Wes fought ferociously—ten of them were heaped on the deck, bloody and bruised, but he couldn’t take on the whole ship, and as strong as he was, they outnumbered him until he was lying in on the floor, blood streaming from his eyes, nose, his face raw.

Nat screamed but there was nothing she could do, and so she continued screaming all the way through the length of the ship. Even as he lay broken and bloodied in the cage, Wes could hear her cries.