Firebrand

by Antony John

  “I’m sorry, Rose,” I said quietly. “We’ll make this work, though. I promise.”

  She kept her eyes closed and gave a slight nod. I couldn’t tell whether she was agreeing with me, or simply giving up fighting.

  It was only then that I became aware of Marin, still standing behind us. “Rose stopped listening to her father when he was on his deathbed. But it seems she listens to you, Thomas.” She gripped the fish tightly, face twisted in contempt. “I hope you’ll offer her sage advice now that she no longer has any use for mine.”

  CHAPTER 15

  I hadn’t meant to fall asleep. I’d just wanted to take a portion of food to my father. One moment, I was leaning over his bunk—one of only three beds in the room—listening to the steady in-and-out of his breathing, the next I was dreaming of pirates and Plague, Fort Sumter’s imposing walls and Kell’s crossbow.

  It was a relief when Rose shook me awake. “Thomas, come,” she whispered.

  I stumbled across the room after her, hoping I wouldn’t wake anyone. It was dark outside and the parade grounds were empty. Rose crouched down and pointed toward the harbor. A faint glow was coming from one of our ship’s portholes.

  “Who’d want to check it out in the middle of the night?” she asked.

  I didn’t have an answer for that.

  “Come on.” She took my hand. “We need to find out what’s going on.”

  “Wait. Not without help.”

  “You mean, more people to make noise.” She gave a dismissive snort. “I say we go alone. I’m the strongest swimmer here.”

  “But your element’s not the same—”

  “I don’t think I’ve forgotten how to swim, thanks.” Rose let go of my hand. “You said I couldn’t use my element anymore, not that I couldn’t do anything at all.”

  “I just figure we could use some help.”

  “You mean Alice, don’t you? Have you even seen her since this morning?”

  I shook my head.

  “She’s not herself, Thomas. She was crying earlier. Ananias was holding her. They’re not ready for this new world. They haven’t let go of the old one yet.”

  “And you have, I suppose?”

  Rose stared at the ship again. “If you and my mother won’t let me be who I was, then at least let me decide who I’m going to be from now on.”

  She padded along the walkway toward the steps. She didn’t even stop to see if I was following. When she got to the bottom, she headed for the main gate. No one was around to see her, and no one would be around to make sure she returned safely.

  Muttering a curse, I kept my footsteps light and quiet and followed her.

  Outside the main gate, the harbor wind felt fresh. It took the edge off the stifling, humid evening. Rose stood at the end of the jetty, watching the ship.

  “What happens if it’s someone we don’t know?” I asked.

  “I’m certain it’s someone we don’t know. But then, I’d like to know what they’re doing on our ship.”

  She dangled her legs over the side of the jetty. So did I. Before she could slip into the water, though, I touched her arm. “Why are you doing this, Rose?”

  She looked confused. “Don’t you want to know who’s out there?”

  “That’s not what I mean.” I ran my foot through the water. “What you said just now . . . about deciding who you want to be from now on. What do you mean?”

  She breathed in and out slowly. “Look, I never much liked Alice,” she began. “I always thought she made easy tasks complicated. If a Guardian said one thing, Alice would want to do the opposite. I thought . . . if only she’d be more like me, her life would be so much simpler.”

  “But not anymore.”

  She shook her head. “I made it possible for my father to lie to us, Thomas. Me. If I’d questioned him, argued . . . things might’ve turned out differently. Maybe we’d hate our parents. Maybe we’d want to escape from Hatteras. But at least we’d know who we really are.” She found my hand and squeezed it. “From now on, I want to know the truth. I want to search for it, and if that means taking risks, then I’ll live with it. Because then I’ll know I’m alive. I’ll know it’s all real.”

  She slipped into the water fully clothed and waited for me to join her.

  The truth is, I already knew it was real. I’d known it from the moment the pirates burned down our colony.

  I slipped into the water too. I couldn’t leave my tunic behind on the jetty in case someone found it. My clothes stuck to my sides, heavy and cumbersome.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Ready.”

  Even without the full use of her element, Rose swam faster than me, the water sliding around her with only a slight ripple. It was a clear night and the ship appeared larger than ever as we neared it. The only sound was the water as it lapped against the curving wooden hull.

  Rose waited for me beside the ship. We climbed the rope ladder, careful not to let it bat against the hull and alert the intruder. At the top of the ladder, I swung a leg over the rail and planted one foot noiselessly on the deck. I remembered that some of the planks in the middle of the deck squeaked, so I chose a long route to the stairway.

  We took the stairs below deck on all fours. My heart was pounding—not just because of the intruder, still moving about in the nearby cabin, but also the memories of everything that had happened on the ship. As if she sensed it, Rose reached out and touched me, fingers glancing my bare arm.

  The sounds coming from the cabin had stopped now. For a few moments, there was silence. I held my breath, wondering who it was, and how they’d react to being found.

  The movements started again.

  I shuffled forward, hugging the wall. When I got to the doorway, I took a deep breath and peered around the corner.

  Jerren sat against the far wall, eyes fixed on the door. “I thought you were going to wait out there all night,” he said.

  Rose and I entered the cabin. A tiny lantern rested on the floor.

  “Lantern’s waterproof,” he explained. “My most valuable possession. They let me plug it into the solar panels once a month. When the charge runs out, I have to wait until the next month for it to work again. Better hope it doesn’t happen now, or we’ll be in the dark.”

  Tessa had explained solar panels to me, but I still didn’t understand the concept of an object absorbing and retaining energy. I wasn’t about to ask, either. “What are you doing here, Jerren?”

  He nudged the lantern with his foot so that it shone brighter on us, leaving him in shadow. The only part of him I could see clearly was the white of his eyes. “I’ve never seen your clan before,” he began. “And I guess you could say I’m curious.”

  “About what?”

  “About how a group as sick and disorganized as yours has stayed alive so long. And how no one seems to know anything about your colony.”

  There was a challenge in every word. He wasn’t willing to take things on trust like Chief.

  “Where’s your cutter?” asked Rose.

  He adjusted his position. “What?”

  “You’re wet,” she said. “Seems odd for you to swim out here in the middle of the night when there are cutters tethered to the jetty.”

  He smiled. His teeth were white too. “And what about you? Any reason you decided to swim?”

  Rose didn’t miss a beat. “The cutters aren’t ours. We don’t want to be accused of stealing. But you see, this ship is ours. And you still haven’t really answered Thomas’s question. So why are you here?”

  He rested his arms on his knees and clasped his hands together. “I wanted to know where you came from. The world’s a big place, what I’ve seen of it.”

  “What do you mean? What I’ve seen of it.”

  Jerren studied his hands, weighing up how much to tell us. I was surp
rised when he continued: “Word is, there’s maybe five island colonies still surviving. When I got here four years ago, there were twelve, but some of them have died out now. Normally it’s a disease—wipes everyone out real quick. Plague isn’t the only killer, you know.”

  “So where were you before you got here?” I asked.

  “Fort Dauphin, just off the coast of Alabama.” He picked up on our confused expressions. “It’s a long way away, let’s just leave it at that.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “My mother thought the other colonists were going to kill her.” He shook his head. “Scratch that. She knew the others were going to kill her.”

  Rose inhaled sharply. “How could she know that?”

  As Jerren pressed his hands tighter together, the muscles in his arms flexed. He wasn’t as tall as me, but he looked powerful. “Because they told her so. Whenever the food was about to run out, they’d make everyone draw sticks from a barrel. Whoever got the painted stick died—plain and simple. No other way to keep the colony going.” He closed his eyes and mouth, and seemed to disappear entirely. “My mother pulled out the stick.”

  The name Fort Dauphin was a mystery to me. Alabama too. “What did you do?” I asked.

  “We escaped in the middle of the night. My father stole a sailboat and we set out on the ocean with almost no food or water. I figured we’d all die the moment we got caught in a storm—earlier if the water ran out—but we were rescued by a clan ship. It was a miracle. They brought us here and we joined the refugee colony.”

  I’d thought that nothing could be worse than our journey here, but now I realized that wasn’t true. “Chief said your parents died from the Plague,” I told him.

  He nodded grimly. “Yeah. And now it’s up to me to look after Nyla. Which is why we have to—”

  He stopped speaking as Rose’s open palm shot out. Slowly she lowered her other fingers until only one finger remained pointed at the deck above us. That’s when I heard it too: the unmistakable sound of planks creaking.

  Rose closed the door silently. We shuffled across the floor until we were as far from it as possible. Jerren turned out the lantern as multiple sets of footsteps came below deck.

  I held my breath as the steps drew closer. The glow from the visitors’ lantern slipped through the gap at the bottom of the door, and grew brighter until they were standing right outside.

  Then they stopped moving.

  CHAPTER 16

  Rose found my hand and twined fingers with me, but pulled away after just a moment. My pulse was fast, energy scattered. It was our ship, but we were shaking. How could we explain why we’d swum out in the middle of the night, or why Jerren was hiding with us?

  The people in the corridor didn’t speak, and finally they moved on. Not far, though—just to the end of the corridor, and Dare’s cabin. That’s when it dawned on me that they hadn’t tried any other doors. They knew exactly which cabin they had come to see.

  They were only in there a quarter-strike at most, which surprised me. We’d had days, and still hadn’t discovered everything about the room. When they were done, they wasted no time returning to the deck and climbing down the rope ladder. It seemed like only a moment before I heard oars slicing into the water as their cutter retreated to Sumter.

  I peered through the porthole, desperate to know who was out there. I was some way from the window so that they wouldn’t see me lurking in the background even if they had been watching. They’d put out their lantern, however, and I couldn’t see faces at all. I could only just make out their figures.

  “They’ve gone,” I said.

  Jerren huffed. “We’re lucky they didn’t find us.”

  “No,” said Rose. “They knew we were here.”

  Jerren turned his lantern back on, but covered it with a fold of his tunic to keep the glare down. In the faint amber glow it was difficult to see if he was amused by Rose’s announcement or intrigued by it. “How come?”

  “If Thomas and I could see the glow of your lantern in the window, it figures they could too, right?” she murmured. She tugged at her tunic, which hung tight against her chest. “Anyway, we’re wet, so we must’ve left footprints along the corridor.”

  I hadn’t considered our tracks. But she was right: Even now we were dripping onto the wooden floor.

  “Then why didn’t they come in here?” demanded Jerren.

  “Maybe for the same reason they didn’t speak. Because they didn’t want us knowing who they were.”

  “They only went into one cabin,” I pointed out. “And last time I checked, the door to it was locked.”

  Jerren clicked his tongue. “The men in this colony can open anything they want. Some of them used to be craftsmen. They know how to make things, fix things, and destroy them real effectively.” He made for the door. “As for that cabin, it’s the only one they haven’t seen. They might’ve been worried about what was inside.”

  “Then why come at night? Why hide?”

  Rose moved to the window and tried to spy the retreating cutter. “What are you thinking, Thomas?”

  I was thinking about Dare’s logbooks, and the pages explaining that he was attacking Hatteras as a way to get to the solution. Most likely, the Sumter colonists had never heard of a solution, and wouldn’t know it was a person in any case. They probably hadn’t even read the books. But instead, I said, “I’m thinking we need to get back to Sumter and hope that no one sees us.”

  Jerren nodded. “Then we agree on something for once. Problem is, if Rose is right and they saw us, there’ll be a welcoming crew at the main gate. We don’t stand a chance of getting in without being noticed.”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “We swim back by a different route.” He tapped the porthole. “Head to the nearest point of Sumter—the northern side. It’s rocky at the base of the walls, so we can stop there. If there are no guards, we use the main entrance. If there are guards, we go the long way around to the animal enclosures. It’ll take a while, but it’s our best shot.”

  “Are you sure you can get us in from there?” asked Rose.

  “No. But I’m sure I can’t get you in any other way.”

  He turned off his lantern and we were swallowed by darkness. I led the way along the corridor, every plank and panel burned into my memory. We trod carefully across the deck and climbed down the ladder.

  The water was calm. Quiet too, which meant that we’d have to worry about our strokes being heard. At least the breeze was blowing toward us from Sumter.

  Jerren led the way, his powerful strokes easy to follow. When we were halfway across, he took an eastward turn. I wasn’t sure why until I treaded water and caught a glimpse of the men standing atop the northernmost battlements, keeping watch. I hoped they were the same ones who’d ventured on board. Otherwise, we’d have even more people to avoid.

  When we reached the rocky edge of the island, we climbed out and pressed ourselves against the fort’s perimeter wall. It was slow going, but at least we were difficult to see.

  “You do this often?” I whispered.

  Jerren paused. “More than you’d think.”

  No wonder he felt a connection with Alice.

  Finally we turned a corner. Rock gave way to a paved path that ran beside the southernmost wall. The peninsula stretched into the darkness to our left. I could just see the outline of the enclosure, though the goats didn’t stir as we stalked by.

  After several yards, Jerren ran his hands across the wall. “There’s a couple gaps in the brick here,” he said. “Good footholds. Then you grab the bolts in the wooden planks up there and . . .”

  “And what?” I whispered.

  He looked from Rose to me. “There’s no way you’re getting up here. Not in the dark. I know where to put my hands and feet, but you don’t. And if you fall, well . . . getting c
aught would be the least of our worries.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  He hesitated. “Okay, look, I’m going to climb over and create a diversion. Just something to distract the guards. Go around to the main gate and when the guards leave, get in quick. And I mean quick, understand? Head for the barracks. The ruins, you know? No one ever goes there at night. There should be stuff hanging up there too—maybe even blankets.”

  Rose took my hand. “How will we get back to our room?”

  “You won’t. Not for a while anyway. Once the guards have given up, make a move. But not before.”

  Jerren began to climb. He made it look easy, but I wasn’t fooled. He was stronger than us, and knew where to put his hands and feet. When he reached the top, we approached the main gate. I didn’t recognize the men keeping guard.

  We lay on the grass, partly to keep low and out of sight and also to conserve energy. Now that we’d stopped moving, I felt tired and cold. Rose squeezed my hand tightly, eyes trained on the gate. For what seemed like an eternity, the guards remained still.

  What if Jerren had double-crossed us? What if he was alerting the guards? My mind swam with possibilities.

  Suddenly the guards looked over their shoulders. A moment later, they ran into the fort.

  “Let’s go,” Rose whispered.

  We sprinted to the main gate. Luckily the guards had left it open. Once we were sure that no one was around, we headed for the barracks. We staggered through the maze-like crumbling walls, avoiding boxes and tools and clothes hung from crisscrossing lines. By the time we were safely hidden in one of the ruined rooms, the guards were returning to their post.

  Rose pulled a few blankets from a drying line and spread them across the dusty ground. “We need to get these wet clothes off,” she said. “If we hang them up, they might dry by morning.”

  We were shivering now, and I wasn’t sure it was just because of the cold. I began to take off my tunic, and Rose turned away. But only for a moment. Then she was standing next to me, helping me. My tunic fell in a heap beside us.