Water & Storm Country (9 page)

“I know, sir,” Barney says, releasing my
arms.

“I have them sometimes.”

“We all do, Lieutenant.”

“What time of day is it?” I ask. (What day is
it?) I flex my arms, which have gone numb.

“It’s tomorrow,” Barney says with a grin.
“Morning still. Not early, not late. Breakfast is still available.
Would you like some?”

“Can you bring it to me here?” I ask,
realizing right away how that sounds. Like the spoiled son of an
admiral. Like the coward who’s scared to leave his cabin.

“Of course, sir,” Barney says, unblinking,
although I can hear it in his voice: he heard about what happened
yesterday. He knows the sort of man I am.

With a quick bow, he leaves, closing the door
behind him, leaving me to my thoughts and the strained and scared
face of my mother, which flashes in and out of my memory like a
signal beacon from a passing ship.

“Y
our father had a
vision,” Mother says, and then I remember why I ran out. My
interest, my curiosity piqued at the mention of the Soakers as my
father started to tell us about what he’d been writing on the
strips of bark. Then of course I just had to dredge up age-old
memories of Paw’s death, which led to our fight and my abrupt exit
into the storm. My run to the ships.

When I returned, they didn’t say anything, as
if I’d never left in the first place. Mother held a blanket up so I
could change my clothes, and Father prepared a warm, herbal tea.
Although I could see the question in his eyes, my father didn’t ask
me where I’d gone, probably because my mother had forbidden him
from asking it. It’s all part of her approach to my training. She
grants me a lot of independence—and based on what Remy said, more
than some of the other Riders get—and I don’t abuse it, use it only
to further my stamina and strength.

“A vision about the Soakers?” I say.

“Yes,” my father says solemnly. “There will
be a battle.”

I roll my eyes. There’s always a battle.
That’s the dramatic vision from the Man of Wisdom? I look at the
tent wall.

“Sadie!” my mother snaps, and my head jerks
back to her. She rarely raises her voice at me.

“What?” I say, knowing I’m about to tread
over the line of insolence, but not caring. “I’ve heard this all
before. His visions, scribbles on countless pieces of bark, tales
of blood and bones and how the world’s ending.” Although I won’t
look at him, at the edge of my vision I see my father’s head dip,
his eyes close. The truth is hard to hear sometimes, but that
doesn’t change that it’s the truth.

My mother’s hand flashes out so fast I don’t
even have time to flinch before it snaps across my face. My head
jolts to the side and I grimace, but don’t cry out. Showing pain is
weakness.

Slowly—ever so slowly—I turn back to face my
mother. My cheek stings and my pride feels bruised, but I don’t
cry, don’t so much as let my eyes water.

There’s hurt in her eyes, but I know it’s not
regret at having slapped me, because I can still see the anger in
her pursed lips. Anger at me. For not thinking very much of my
father, the so-called Man of Wisdom.

I pretend like I don’t see the hurt
or
the anger. “What sort of battle?” I ask grudgingly.

My father’s eyes flash open and he smiles
thinly.

“One where…” He pauses, as if searching for
the words.
There’s blood, and lots of people die, and the world
as we know it is destroyed
, I think, regurgitating my father’s
usual predictions. “…you will have a choice to make,” he
finishes.

My eyes narrow. “Me?” I say. “I’ll be stuck
here with you.” I don’t mean for it to sound so angry, but I guess
lately that’s what I am.

Father nods, but doesn’t elaborate, which
means that’s all he wants to tell me. Is it a trick? A way for him
to convince me to stay in the tent the next time there’s a
battle?

“Tell her the rest,” Mother urges.

Father looks down, clasps his hands in his
lap, runs his thumb over his forefinger. Sighs. Slumps his
shoulders. Why does he look so…is it sadness? Exhaustion? No, it’s
not one or the other—it’s both. He looks defeated.

“Father?” I say, allowing a hint of
compassion to creep into my voice. Just a hint.

He lifts his head but his eyes are closed and
he doesn’t stop at eye-level. His chin keeps tilting until he’s
facing the tent roof, and only then does he open his eyes. Almost
as if he can’t look at me when he says whatever it is my mother
wants him to say. And in his eyes…

There’s defeat.

And I realize he’s not looking at the tent
roof. No, he’s looking well beyond it, seeing something that we
can’t—the moon or the stars or the black-cloud-riddled sky.
Something beyond.

“It’s time to ride against the Icers,” he
says to the heavens, and for a moment I don’t comprehend any of his
words, because how can I? They’re so unexpected and make so little
sense that I have to close one eye to even get my brain headed in
the right direction.

“This must not make much sense to you,” my
mother says. It doesn’t take a Man of Wisdom to read my face. I
shake my head. “Reason it out,” she says, like she has so many
times before.

I used to get so excited when my mother would
say those words—that she had so much confidence that I could puzzle
through a problem and figure it out on my own. But now her
challenge just frustrates me, because I want to know right now. Why
the Riders would go to the Icers; why my mother seems more intense
than she normally does, so focused on my father’s vision that she’d
slap me; why my father refuses to lower his gaze from the stars,
invisible behind the cloth of our tent.

From experience, however, I know: she won’t
tell me the answer.

So I think about everything I know about the
Icers. They live in ice country, obviously. It’s really cold there,
colder than when it’s been raining in storm country for two months
straight, the wind lashing the rainwater to our clothes, to our
skin, chilling us to the bone. From what I’ve been told, the Icers
are a private people, preferring the solitude of their strongholds
in the mountains. They’ve never tried to trade with us.

And they have a secret.

Only we know about it, because our scouts
witnessed something they weren’t supposed to. A band of men,
pale-white skinned and heavily armored, carrying razor-sharp axes
and long-hilted swords, driving a group of brown-skinned children
to the sea. They were met by a landing party from the jewel of the
Soakers’ fleet, The Merman’s Daughter. The children, who we assume
were Heaters from fire country, were forced onto a boat and sent to
the ships. We can only assume they’re being used as slaves.

In exchange, the Soakers gave the Icers large
sacks that looked heavy, but which could be easily lifted and
carried by the ice country soldiers. When our scouts examined the
area where the trade had taken place, they found prints of heavy
boots and small bare feet. The prints were littered with fragments
of dried plants, the kind that sometimes wash up on our shores,
green at first, but turning brown over time. Weeds of the sea.

Why would the Icers trade children for dried
plants that are as readily attainable as blades of grass or leaves
on trees? And how did the Icers get the Heater children in the
first place? Did the Heaters sell their own offspring to the Icer
King, the man they call Goff, or did the Icers steal them away?

Not even my father knows the answers to these
questions, but ever since the scouts learned of the child
slave-trade, the tension between us and the Soakers has escalated.
Although some say the Soakers’ trade with other countries is not
our concern, the majority would have us put an end to it. My
mother’s voice has been one of the strongest in this regard.

“We cannot sit on our hands while great
injustice is carried out on the borders of storm country,” I
murmur, remembering my mother’s words from a speech she made to the
camp a day after the scouts returned with their account of the
Soakers’ treachery.

“Yes,” my mother says.

“It is time?” I say.

“It is,” Mother says. And suddenly I know why
my mother is so serious and my father so sad:

The Riders are going to war with the
Icers.

And it’s my father who’s sending them.

~~~

I rise early because I can’t sleep. My
father’s still in bed, snoring, as I dress in my training gear:
dark pants, my thin, light boots, and a light black shirt that will
allow my skin to breathe if I sweat. Training almost always means
sweat, especially when my mother’s involved.

We didn’t schedule training for today, but
given the fact that my mother’s not in the tent, an impromptu early
morning session is a good bet.

I step out into a dark, brooding morning,
intent on finding her.

Fog rises from the ground in cloud-like
waves, as if the rain from yesterday is returning to its sky
masters high above the earth. There’s a chill in the air, and for a
moment I stop and consider dressing in something warmer. I shake my
head to myself. Regardless of the temperature or what I’m wearing,
at the end of a training session with my mother I’m always hot and
wishing I was wearing less.

This early, the camp is quiet. There’s
activity, yes—a few cook fires glow warmly, shining off black pots
hovering over them, emitting the mouthwatering smell of cooked
coney; a black-robed rider strides across the camp on his way to
the stables; one of the fire-tenders carries a bundle of wood to
the Big Fire, which has dwindled to a few crackling flames—but it’s
quiet activity. If anyone speaks, it’s in dull murmurs or low
whispers. Until sunup, we respect those sleeping.

My mother will likely be one of three places:
the stables; beyond the northern edge of the camp, doing her own
training while she waits for me to join her; or on the seaside,
waiting for the sun to rise. She says the sunrise is Mother Earth’s
most beautiful gift to us.

But today it’s too foggy for a good sunrise.
That leaves the stables or training grounds. I head for the
stables, where I can at least see Shadow, even if Mother’s already
passed through.

I move across the dark camp, careful not to
step on anything that could turn my ankle, a rock or a stick or a
swathe of uneven ground.
Every step must be perfect. The feet
are the key to a fight.
Two of my mother’s favorite sayings,
hammered into my skull so that even a normal walk across camp turns
into training. When I realize, I groan inwardly and try to
relax.

As I walk toward the Big Fire—which is
growing already as the fire-tender adds sticks of wood one at a
time, positioning each one carefully, delicately, like the
placement is a matter of life or death—I admire the symmetry of the
camp. Everything is ordered, even, mirror images of each other.
From the fire, the tents radiate outward in concentric circles,
each successive ring growing larger and containing more tents. The
tents of the Riders and the Men of Wisdom, of whom my father is
head, make up the innermost circle, while the circle furthest from
the fire is for the camp watchmen, those with keen eyes and stout
hearts. There are ten rings in all, over two thousand Stormers.

Neither the fire-tender nor I speak as I
pass, content to let our brief eye contact convey a well-mannered
good morning.

I pause as I reach the edge of the first ring
of tents opposite ours, because I sense movement in one of the
shelters, one I know too well, because a red flag flutters wildly
above it. Gard’s tent. The Rider war leader. My leader. It’s not
Gard, however, who steps out.

Remy.

His black skin’s a shadow against the brown
of his tent. Through the fog I catch his smile.

Moving on.

I turn to continue on to the stables, angry
at the clutch of embarrassment I feel in my gut after running from
him yesterday.

His hand on my arm stops me. “Let go,” I
hiss.

His hand darts back and his smile fades, but
then reappears seconds later. “Heading to the stables?” he
asks.

“No.” Yes. Argh. Why does he continue to
follow me around? “Sorry, I really don’t have time to talk,” I
say.

“Let me guess, training,” he says, the warmth
of his smile quirking into a smirk.

I frown. “Yeah, so,” I say. “Riders may be
born, but great Riders are made.” Another of my mother’s sayings,
one I’ve always loved, have always believed in, but which now
sounds ridiculous on my lips.

Remy raises an eyebrow. He thinks I’m
ridiculous. “Don’t you ever stop training, you know, to just be a
girl?”

My frown deepens into a scowl. “No…and I’m
not a girl, I’m a Rider.”

He laughs loudly, breaking the code of
morning silence just as the edge of the sun breaks the horizon,
spreading pink to the east and graying the dark clouds
overhead.

Instinctively, we both look up. When we drop
our gaze once more, he says, “Trust me, you’re a girl, too.” I
don’t like the way my hands sweat when he looks me up and down.

“I’ve got to find my mother,” I say, turning
away from Remy and toward the stables, striding away quickly.

“I thought you weren’t going to the stables,”
Remy says, pulling up alongside me.

Right. So much for my sharp mind. “I’m not,”
I lie. “Not really. I’m just seeing if my mother’s there.”

“Well, Sadie-who’s-not-going-to-the-stables,
I’ll walk with you while you don’t go to the stables,” Remy says,
flashing that annoying smirk of his once more.

“Fine,” I say, “as long as you don’t
speak.”

Ignoring me, he says, “What do you think
about your father’s vision?”

I can’t stop myself from flinching. Was I the
last to know? Probably, considering the first time my father tried
to tell me, I started a fight with him and ran away.