IN MY DREAM, I’M STANDING AT THE BASE OF the tree-dotted hill. A group of Watchers is standing at the crest. The hawk circles high above.
The trees around me shift and lose their leaves, become gleaming white bones, reaching for the twilight sky. A rush of breath whistles through their skeleton fingers.
Find us.
I turn my head and see her. Running through the trees toward me, a blur of blue among the bones, long dark hair whipping behind her.
And then I see the Watchers raising their hands to their shoulders, grabbing for their weapons. I try to tell her to go back, to hide, but my tongue is frozen and I can’t move.
Gunshot shatters the woods, and the shriek of the hawk echoes my silent scream.
In the morning I prepare for my visit to Brother Stockham. Kane said I didn’t have to tell him yes, but he’s wrong. No one’s going to be let outside the gates without Brother Stockham’s say-so, and my dreams are telling me I don’t have much time.
I watch my pa over our porridge bowls, focusing on that tremble in his hands as he scrapes his bowl. I don’t want to tell him. Can’t bear to see him full to bursting at the news when it’s not the truth. It makes me angry and sad, his joy over this thing I don’t want. This thing I’ll never accept.
But it won’t look natural if he doesn’t know first.
“Pa.”
He sets down his bowl, wiping at his whiskers with the tail of his ceinture.
“Going to see Brother Stockham.”
His eyebrows raise.
“Going to accept.” I have to look at my hands when I say it. Don’t want to see his happiness—his relief.
There’s a silence.
I glance up. He’s studying me. And the look in his eyes isn’t what I figured. It’s not relief—it’s . . . concern.
“You sure?” he asks.
Am I sure? He’s been coaxing me this way for weeks, he’s been guilting me into accepting Stockham, and now he wants to know my heart? Anger surges through me.
“Course,” I say, sharp.
He nods. “Just want to be certain it’s what you want.”
“You said yourself it’s for the best.”
“I did.”
“You said sometimes it’s hard to see what’s best.”
He nods.
“So why are you asking now?”
“I just—” He scrubs a hand through his beard. “I said those things because I didn’t want you to think you weren’t good enough for our leader.”
My wrath dies, like a candle being snuffed. “Beg pardon?”
“Because you are, Em. You’re good enough for anyone. Didn’t want you thinking you couldn’t accept on account of”—his eyes go to the table, to my foot beneath it—“anything that worries you.” He looks me in the eye. “You’re worthy, my girl.”
My heart drops into my stomach.
“But I’m real glad, if you’re sure.”
I can’t get any words out. I just nod.
He clears his throat. “I’d best get to the smoke house.” He stands and sets his bowl in the dish bucket. When he passes the table, he stops and puts a hand on my shoulder. He squeezes it real gentle, and disappears out the door.
I stand, shaky, and head to my room. My eyes are hot with tears and my thoughts are muddied. Can it be true? Was my pa just worried I wouldn’t accept even if I wanted to? All those times he was looking on me with that worried frown . . . I push it all from my mind—don’t have time for all of that now. Now, accepting Brother Stockham’s proposal is the only way back to the truth. I swallow hard, brush and rebraid my hair, put on a clean tunic and my winter cloak. I hide my grandma’am’s ring inside my ceinture. It’s strange, but I feel like having it will give me strength today.
As I approach the Council building, though, I feel a panicky sickness.
I stop a minute and think on the courting visit.
We can change things.
Brother Stockham has been hiding that journal, hiding the fact I’m not Stained, yet he practically urges me into the woods. I know agreeing to our binding will get me what I want. But that alone makes me feel like I’m missing something. Something right in front of my face. And now, with my pa telling me he doesn’t mind if I don’t accept . . .
Brother Jameson appears at the top of the steps to the Council building. I pick up my pace. Can’t be caught standing here like I don’t know my own mind.
His arms are folded over his chest, his face stony. “Sister Emmeline.”
I offer him the Peace and try to keep my voice steady. “Morning, Brother Jameson. I’m—I’m here to speak with Brother Stockham.”
“Ah, yes. The proposal.”
I nod and move to climb the stairs, but he grabs me by the arm. He pulls me close and bends low. “I suppose you believe binding to the good Brother will make people forget about your Stain?”
I swallow hard and tear my arm away. “I suppose you’ll do your best to keep reminding them.”
His voice gets deadly. “It is my duty to keep this settlement safe.”
I raise my chin and meet his ice-blue eyes.
“Brother Stockham cannot see you for what you are, Emmeline. But I do. And when you repeat the mistakes of those Waywards who have gone before, I will be here. And I will set things right.”
I climb the stairs, feeling his eyes branding my back as I go.
Inside, the wooden building is quiet. But the silence here isn’t comforting like the quiet of the riverbank. Here, it feels sickly.
“Emmeline.”
I near jump from my skin at Brother Stockham’s voice. He appears in the doorway to my right. His long, dark hair gleams in the light, sharp points against his cheekbones.
“I was relieved to hear you are well.”
I swallow the fear that rises in my throat.
“I visited.”
I nod, hoping I don’t look as owl-eyed as I feel.
“At first I was very worried. But then I realized that everything is happening as it should.”
“Beg pardon?”
He smiles. “You can’t be lost to me.”
That strange look in his eyes is back, just like when we were at the ceremonial hall. I need to say my piece before I lose my nerve. I force my tongue to work.
“Brother Stockham, I’m here to discuss the proposal.”
He sweeps an arm toward the room behind him. “Come in.”
I follow him into a room that has a big table sitting before two windows. The windows have shutters but no scrapedthin rawhide to cover them, like in our quarters. I venture closer to peer out. This room overlooks the courtyard. I can see the Kitchens beyond the weapons shack.
“How is it possible you have had the fever for days, yet look just as beautiful as ever?” His speaks from behind me.
I put my fingers to my lips. They feel swollen from yesterday. From Kane. I turn, find him watching me careful. My tongue gets wooly in my mouth. I need to get this over with. But the way he’s looking on me—Almighty!
I train my eyes on the floor, hoping it looks modest, and say, “Brother Stockham—your proposal. I’m . . . I’m real glad to accept.”
The silence that follows is not what I was figuring on. When I look up, his head is tilted. My heart thuds in my throat. Twice. Three times.
“Emmeline, I—” His voice sounds caught.
I feel a wash of panic. Mayhap he doesn’t believe me. I force a slow smile at him.
His face lights, mirroring my smile. “This is very good news.”
I can’t bear to linger in this moment. “You’ll talk to my pa about the arrangements, I suppose?”
“At once. We will be the first to bind, after Affirmation.”
I look at the desk, trace a finger along it, preparing to ask my favor without seeming suspicious.
He speaks again. “You don’t know how much this means to me.” The honesty in his voice throws me. He hid the truth about my grandma’am.
I swallow.
Didn’t he? Is it possible he hasn’t been out to the woods, hasn’t seen the journal? Is it possible it was someone else out there?
I force the words out: “And me.”
He smiles. “I knew we would overcome our family burdens.” My eyes fly to his shoulder, to his clean white shirt that hides the mess of scars beneath. His father’s teachings. My insides twist.
He clears his throat. “I will spread word.”
A flash of movement on the steps catches my eye. I force another smile and turn to look out the window. Kane is standing on the steps, speaking with Brother Jameson.
I’ve seen this before. Yesterday, before I joined Tom at the ditch, Kane was with Council. And before that, when I was with Andre in the weapons shack, he was with Council then too. I was so skittered by finding the cabin I didn’t think too long on it.
I’m thinking on it now.
Why would a common south-quarter boy have Council’s ear? And Jameson’s, no less.
With effort, I force myself to turn to Brother Stockham. “Brother Stockham—”
“Please call me Gabriel.”
“Gabriel,” I say. The name feels strange on my tongue. “I’m needed at the hall for preparations.”
“Of course.” He steps back, smoothing his tunic. “I will escort you out.”
His hand is hot on the small of my back as I pass through the doorway, but my thoughts whirl. Kane on the steps, with Jameson. Brother Stockham in the woods. I don’t go to the woods. A thought bursts through the chatter in my head: the reason I’m here. “Broth—Gabriel, I have a request.”
“Of course.”
“I was wondering if I might go back to the riverbank once more, before La Prise sets in.” He stops dead. I speak quick. “I know I’ll need to be real careful, but it’ll just be the once. Just one time before I can’t see it again until the Thaw.”
When he turns to face me, that strange look is in his eyes again. “I thought you would ask,” he says.
Ice crawls up my spine. And now I know that look: it’s exhilaration. The hair on the back of my neck rises.
He presses a kiss onto the back of my hand. “Of course you may. I will alert Council.”
I am about to turn away when he takes my arm. “Emmeline, this will change everything.” He holds my gaze. “Thank you.”
I nod, my breath tight. Then I turn and hobble down the steps. Brother Jameson is gone; Kane is disappearing around the side of the weapons shack.
I risk a glance behind me, but Brother Stockham has shut the doors.
Walking as brisk as my leg allows, I head for the shack. I don’t want to be in view from the Council building windows. I let out a near shout when I get round the corner. “Kane!”
He’s halfway across the courtyard already, but when he turns, his eyes go wide. He crosses back toward me.
“The barns,” I say, when he gets near. “Make an excuse to leave chores.”
I don’t hear Kane approach, but his shadow stretches onto the wall in front of me. My heart thuds in my throat.
I turn. He approaches with a sure stride, but I hold up a hand to stop him. “You’re with Council an awful lot.”
He looks around the courtyard quick, then he grabs me by the arm and pulls me into the barn. It’s empty; the sheep are out for tick grooming before La Prise.
In the dim light, Kane turns to me. He rubs a hand over his head. “Em—”
“Just tell me why.”
“I was trying to tell you in Storages. But Sister Lucy came in.”
I wait. The barn creaks.
He takes a deep breath. “He . . . They’re—they’re watching you.”
“Who?”
“Brother Stockham. Council.”
I stare at Kane. Watching me? How would he know they’re watching—
“Been watching you for near a month. Ever since you tied those threads to the trees.”
I frown. “I never told you about the threads.”
“I know.” Kane holds my gaze.
My insides freeze over.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Council has been watching you for the past month . . . through”—he closes his eyes a moment—“through me.”
My mouth opens. Closes. When I find my voice, it’s hoarse. “What exactly are you speaking on?”
“Weeks ago, Brother Stockham paid a visit. He had a task for me. He . . . he wanted me to watch you.”
“For what?”
“Wayward acts.”
My thoughts are numb. I stare at him.
“It was the only way I could keep you safe.”
“By watching me for Wayward acts?”
“They were going to anyway. I thought this way . . .” He fumbles for the words. “I thought this way at least they’d wait for me to report. And if I didn’t, they’d have nothing on you.”
I back up a step, catching my bad foot on a board and sending searing pain into my leg.
His eyes widen. “Em—”
But my mind is whirling. The threads. The day in the woods I heard footsteps following me. Kane’s been watching me—listening to me—for weeks.
“What have you told them?”
“Nothing!”
I stare into his wide eyes. Images come like a flood: Kane finding me in the grove, looking at me strange during Jameson’s talks, that day he happened on me at the river.
Oh, bleeding Almighty.
“Why should I believe you?”
He steps back like I’ve slapped him, but my thoughts are running now. All that talk about finding new things, going out where I shouldn’t be; was he just trying to find out what I’d been up to?
You can trust me.
And I did. I did because he—
My stomach hollows out.
Because he saved me during the false attack.
I came after you because I wanted to.
What if Brother Stockham rang the alarm and told Kane to come after me to win my trust? What if . . . what if standing up for me against Charlie Jameson, telling me that story about the crippled girl and the piper—what if it was all to win my trust?
His eyes are searching my face. His shoulders slump. “I’d never do anything to hurt you,” he says soft. “You have to know that.”
But it’s not an answer, not truly. “Why didn’t you tell me straightaway?”
“Because I—I thought you were just being your daydreaming self, running off to the riverbank and woods. But there’s something bigger than all that—I see that now.” His voice has a note of hysteria in it.
I look away from his tortured face.
“Em, please. It wasn’t worth telling at first. But now . . . now with things the way they are . . .” He reaches for my arm.
Now. Now I’m on the verge of proving Discovery, now I’m not just some daydreamer with a bad leg. I’m worth the truth now. Hurt and rage fuel my tongue. I want to hurt him back. “Did Council promise a reward for watching the Stained cripple?” I tear away from his grasp.
“Em—”
“Or did you just like pretending to be one of them for a few sorry weeks?”
“Course not!”
“Because you sure looked comfortable consorting—”
“What choice did I have?” he shouts.
I lunge forward and shove at his chest with both hands. Hard. He stumbles away, doesn’t fight back. My voice is hoarse, accusing. “Don’t talk to me about choices.”
We stare at one another. The eyes that were verging on panic are now so lost I want to die.
“Em,” he says. “I made a mistake. I thought I was protecting you.”
My tears blur his perfect face.
“And I want to protect you because . . . because I love you.”
A hot wind blows through my head, muddying my thoughts. I look down. We stand there a long while, me staring at the dirt floor, Kane staring at me. The boy with the eyes that drink me in and drown me, the boy whose skin lights mine on fire.
When he speaks, his voice is broken. “I’m going to get the book back. Tomorrow you can head for the riverbank; Council will think I’m following you to watch you. You stay in sight of the Watchtower and I’ll head for the cabin. Will you let me do that? Get the book back for you?”
My secret heart is tearing at the edges. I don’t know up from down anymore.
Brother Stockham knows I’m not Stained but hid the proof. He proposed and watched me for Wayward acts. And when I accepted, he acted like I was the Almighty Himself bestowing a blessing.
Kane kept this from me. And now he says he . . . loves me?
I want it to be true. I want to be back in Storages pressed tight to him, kissing his mouth raw. But . . . who knows what Kane loves? The thrill of breaking rules and Discovering things? Me? I don’t know, and I don’t have time to figure it. So I do what I’m getting real good at. I lie.
“All right.”
The look on his face is sunlight glimmering through tree boughs, tearing my heart to bits.
“I’ll get it, Em.”
I can’t look at him as he turns and leaves the barn. I let my head fill up with pounding feet and winter death winds.
A bunch of women are bustling around the hall setting tables when I arrive that afternoon. Tomorrow, the first day of Affirmation, there’ll be a meal to give thanks. The second day, Brother Stockham will lead a ritual where everyone affirms their commitment to their virtues. The third day, bindings are declared. My binding to Brother Stockham.
Two Councilmen hover in a corner of the hall, overseeing the women. I see Kane enter from a side door and clasp arms with one of them.
My stomach churns.
I bow my head and help Sister Ann lay wreaths of sage. Then I tell her I’m needed back at Soeur Manon’s for something, and hurry out.
At our quarters I bundle up real warm, tuck my grandma’am’s ring in my ceinture and draw my cloak tight to my chin. I head across the courtyard for the east gates. Each step, I have to force myself not to run—it takes an excruciating long time to get there.
People are shuttering their windows tight, bringing in loads of wood from their woodsheds. They’ve got a worry to their brow; they can feel La Prise coming in.
Brother Jameson is standing at the gates with his arms folded. He raises a hand to stop me. “No one leaves the fortification,” he says firm.
I draw back my hood.
“Ah. Sister Emmeline.”
“I have Brother Stockham’s say-so to go to the river a short while.”
“I heard.” I expect him to look upset, but he looks smug. It’s his usual look, sure, but today it sets a chill to my spine. He jerks his head to the high walls of the fortification. There are four Watchers patrolling this side of the wall. “Don’t go far now.”
It’s starting to snow, tiny flecks of silver. I walk calm as I can manage across the Watch flats and down the incline to the river. I find a rock and sit in full sight of the Watchtower. The chunks of ice are giant snowflakes on the water, spiraling lazy as they drift downstream. Soon the whole surface will freeze and a solid ribbon will remain—glinting in the winter sun. It will look serene, but it will be deadly, with unpredictable ice and water beneath so cold it could stop your heart.
I risk a look back at the silent walls of the fortification. After a few moments, I get up and venture close to the water. I stay there awhile, my heart pounding. Then I wander a few steps downstream.
When I get to the bend in the river where the bank gets high, I dart in close to the wall. There’s no space here to walk along the river, but I’m out of sight of the Watchtower. With any amount of grace, Watch will think I’m at the water’s edge.
I scramble along the steep bank, grasping at roots and clumps of sage, praying to the Almighty I don’t slip. Frozen chunks of river drift past silent behind me. It’s slow going, but I only have to make it a little ways—until the willows above me along the bank get thick. There’s going to be a heartbeat in time when Watch can see me if they’re looking this far along the bank; I pray they’re looking elsewhere.
I go up, my leg screaming in protest as I push against the crumbling soil, digging at the bank with my hands. I grasp the willow stems at the top and scramble, hauling my bad leg, pulling myself over the side and rolling into the brush.
I draw my hood and crawl forward, worming along the deadfall on my belly, tugging my cloak from the underbrush every now and again. When I get far enough into the woods where I’m sure Watch can’t see, I clamber to my feet. Then I head west for the grove.
I am not Honesty. I am not Bravery.
Please let me be Discovery.
