There is a table here. A long wooden trestle brought from the compound, and benches and chairs. I drop into one of them. I never expected that sitting in a chair would feel like such a luxury.
Hyde sits on my left. Across the table are Reef, Marron, and Perry. They remain silent and serious as Hyde and I take turns describing what happened.
“Bold of them to show up,” Reef mutters gruffly. “They know they aren’t welcome here.”
Bold is putting it mildly. I still can’t get over Wylan’s gall.
I look at Perry, anticipating his reaction. I hate Wylan for betraying my tribe, but it’s personal for Perry. Wylan insulted him in front of the Tides. And then there’s Gray, who tried to poison Aria. But Perry seems calm. Thoughtful. Nowhere near as furious as I expected.
“He didn’t come to make amends,” he says.
I say, “He said he wanted forgiveness.”
Perry shakes his head. “That’s an excuse. A story he came up with to explain why he was here. Wylan knows I’d never forgive him. He wouldn’t have risked coming back unless he needed something.”
I press my lips together. I didn’t consider that Wylan might have trespassed onto our land with another motive in mind.
“Maybe he was trying to get to the compound,” Reef says. “There are still supplies there, and it’s unguarded. We left plenty behind that could be valuable. They could fetch a man some bartering power in the borderlands.”
It’s true. We couldn’t bring all our belongings with us into the cave. Tools. Furniture. Clothing. We had to leave most of our things behind.
Marron shakes his head. “A plausible theory, but unlikely. There were only three men on foot. Carrying away goods would be impractical and difficult. I don’t know that the effort would justify the reward.” He looks at Perry. “You don’t believe he’s motivated by revenge?”
Another long pause as Perry thinks it over. I imagine Perry has a whole host of memories with Wylan. He’s a Seer, like me, so his recollections would be strongly visual. But he’s a Scire as well. Perry would have scent memories—all the tempers he’s scented from Wylan. They would form a pattern, a reliable way to predict behavior. And, by working backward, the root of behavior: motivation.
Finally, he responds. “Wylan loves himself more than he hates me.”
Marron nods, like this statement makes all manner of sense. “Self-preservation, then. He’s driven by visceral, life-sustaining needs.”
“Shelter,” Reef says.
“The cave and the food stores we have here,” Marron says, nodding. “That’s what he’s after.”
I remember the way Wylan’s voice pulled at the word home. He’d made it sound syrupy, and now I recognize that tone as falseness. Home implies an emotional attachment, but that’s not what he wanted. What Wylan wanted was a roof over his head.
“But they were only three,” Hyde says.
“You told me that when they dispersed, they took a third of the tribe,” Marron says to Perry.
“A quarter. Almost a hundred people.”
I can’t help but remember Aria’s Marking ceremony, when Gray slipped hemlock into Aria’s tattoo ink. She almost died. Perry beat Gray to a pulp in front of everyone when he learned what Gray had done.
That attempt to poison Aria fractured my tribe. Some people sided with Perry and his right to defend Aria. Others, led by Wylan, saw it as a betrayal. They viewed Aria as a Mole, an interloper who shouldn’t have been there to begin with.
I was one of them. I didn’t want her there. But I didn’t want to see her killed, either. I stayed with the Tides that day, but dozens of people left. Their faith in Perry as a Blood Lord was shattered. They broke oath and followed Wylan out of the Tide compound. That morning I lost friends I had never spent a single day without. It was like losing Liv, but worse. Liv didn’t choose to go.
“You think the others are still with them?” I ask. “Hiding in the borderlands somewhere?”
Marron turns a ring around his finger as he replies. “Wylan was their leader when they left. He still could be. His entry into the territory could have been a scouting pass. The tip of the spear, probing for weakness.”
“You think he’s coming back with a larger attack,” Perry says.
It is more a statement than a question—he has already accepted it—but Marron replies anyway.
“Yes. We have to be prepared for it.”
5
When I finally make it to my tent, I’m crushed to find it empty.
Clara isn’t here.
I want to go search for her, but I’m too exhausted. Normally, Hyde and I would have traded shifts, two hours on watch, two hours asleep, but we’d felt it best to double up after what had happened with Wylan, both of us alert for danger. We were thrumming with adrenaline too, but now that rush has faded and my eyes won’t stay open.
I collapse onto my bed pad and barely pull my boots off before I plunge into sleep.
At some point I feel the covers shift, and I emerge from the rainbow colors of a dream to see Clara. She burrows under my blanket and nestles beside me. It’s the middle of the day, and she shouldn’t be here, but I love that she is. I love that my sister has come to find me. I pull her close and drift back to sleep, breathing in her strawberry scent.
When I finally wake, Clara is still sleeping. In my dreams I saw her standing in the rain, shaking and crying. Great big hiccups came out of her between sobs as she said, Don’t leave me, over and over.
But then I touch my shirt, feeling the dampness at my breastbone, and I know it wasn’t a dream. Not all of it, anyway.