Chapter Twenty-One #2
The driver shut the door for us, but not before giving us a long leering look.
Her cackling laughter carried through the side opening, where a flimsy curtain did little to keep the dust out.
Drawn by two horses, we started with a lurch and moved faster than I expected.
A little thrill ran through me. When I peeked out the window at the dirt and grass and sparse trees whizzing by, the tightness around my heart released a little.
Gravel kicked up, tapping like rain, and the gritty wind blew my hair into a wild puff.
Julian’s stilted voice pierced through the fleeting sense of freedom I felt with my face in the breeze. “You’ll make yourself ill like that.”
“She won’t. There’s nothing wrong with fresh air.”
“She isn’t breathing fresh air. She’s breathing dust.”
I sat back with a huff, crossing my arms. So much for freedom. With an angry flourish, I drew the curtain shut. It snapped like a flag, an apt illustration of the way I wanted to slap both of them. “We’ve not made it five minutes and you’re already bickering? I’m fine.”
Ezra’s gaze landed on my hair, and he bit back a smile.
The coach rocked and bumped. The motion was starting to grate at me, rattling my bones and chattering my teeth. Maybe this wasn’t better than walking.
“How far is it to the train station?” I asked.
“Two days,” Julian muttered.
Dread made my palms sweat. “Without stopping?”
“The coach is powered by horses, Josephine. They need to rest.”
“You don’t have to talk to her like that,” Ezra said, one arm braced against the cushion beside him and the other pressed against the door. Every time we hit a particularly deep rut, he winced.
“I don’t need defending.” My voice crackled out like a particularly hot thread of radiance. “He can talk to me any way he pleases, and I can deal with it however I please. Both of you ought to be worried I’ll kill you in your sleep.”
“There will be no sleeping in this stars-forsaken contraption,” Julian pointed out, sounding like he’d welcome death as an alternative. He held the cushion so tight, the leather dimpled, and his knuckles went bloodless.
My irritation subsided, draining like rain seeping into the ground. It left me tired. So very tired. It had only been a day since the fire. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
When Julian saw that I was speaking to him, his breath huffed with a little burst of irritation. “Why is that?”
“For …” I waved my hand in an unspecific embarrassed gesture that I hoped encapsulated not only my sympathy but my remorse for wanton behavior with Ezra in plain sight of anyone who happened to walk by, but more specifically in plain sight of Julian.
“How you conduct yourself is no longer my concern,” Julian said.
Ezra straightened, and I shot him a look that clearly communicated my lack of interest in any potential contribution from him to the conversation.
“Why is that?” I asked, anger resurfacing.
Julian’s mouth opened and then shut. His nostrils flared. “Our Mission burned. I’m not your Senior. I have no authority over you. I don’t believe I ever did,” he added.
This, somehow, disturbed me the most. I’d wanted to obey him and the tenets of the House when I’d arrived at Frostbrook. Painfully, earnestly so. Even now, when I recalled him sending me away, my insides folded in on themselves.
“I know damn well you don’t have authority over me,” I gritted out. “But you’re—you’re allowed to have an opinion. I thought.” My teeth clicked together briefly. Then I pushed past the impulse to stop talking, possibly forever, and went on. “I suppose I thought we were becoming friends.”
“Why would you think that?”
Ezra’s leg trembled. Soon, no amount of glaring was going to contain him.
“Because I care for you.” Once I said it, the words weren’t so frightening. They felt much better on the outside of my body. I sank into the lumpy cushions, a knot in my chest loosening ever so slightly. “Honestly, I don’t know precisely why. But I do. I do quite a bit.”
With his mouth set tightly, Julian stared at perhaps the only spot in the coach that wasn’t covered by one of our limbs. “We’ve got work to do, and it won’t be easy. Sentiment will get us nowhere.”
I couldn’t help but linger on his choice of words, encouraged by the fact that he’d grouped us together for better or worse.
“That’s not true. Sentiment has carried you all this way.
No matter how devoted you are to your research, you were just as devoted to Maggie Taylor.
” I went on despite his flinch. “It fueled you. I know it did. Sentiment is what makes us different from the Elders who don’t care what radiance is doing.
We have to care and keep caring, or we’ll never succeed. ”
“What influence could your feelings possibly have on our success?” Julian asked. “Rather than carrying on emotionally, you ought to keep yourself out of harm’s way.”
“Out of harm’s way?” Ezra abruptly shouted, evidently finished holding back his words.
“Do you think we’ll put you on a train to Sterling City and wish you luck before wandering into the wilderness?
” A patchy flush covered his cheekbones, and his long fingers dug into the cushion beside him.
“Get it through your incomprehensible brain that we’re staying by your side. ”
“It wouldn’t be prudent of you to do so.” Julian spoke calmly, but his voice was hoarse.
“Do you think us cowards?” I asked between clenched teeth.
Julian appeared to realize he was being ganged up on. He quickly shook his head, his voice wary. “Of course I don’t.”
“I’ll speak plainly, then. I intend to help you as best I can,” I said.
He wouldn’t look at me, so I moved, tucking myself onto the dusty boards at our feet in a crouch, my hands on both their legs for balance.
His eyes widened, but he held my gaze. “And I hope you’ll help me.
I want to stop the House of Industry from hurting anyone else.
I want to do that with you. Regardless of how cross you’re being.
And whether or not you think we’re friends. ”
“You shouldn’t do this alone,” Ezra added. He glanced at me. “She said it better.”
“I don’t think it’s wise for you to endanger yourself,” Julian murmured. “But I can’t stop either of you. We’ve more than established that.”
“Good,” I said, pushing back into my seat. “I’m glad we understand one another.”
Julian’s grip on the cushion loosened incrementally.
“Do we understand one another?” Ezra asked, eyeing Julian.
As soon as Ezra spoke, Julian started strangling the cushion again. “What are you getting at?”
“Do you understand that I’m trying to understand what you’re doing? I know I didn’t—I didn’t try to understand you before. It was easier to give up.”
Julian was barely audible over the sound of the coach’s wheels against the hard-packed trail. “Give up on my ‘bloodless theoretical plans’?” he asked, throwing Ezra’s angry words back at him with painful solemnity.
“Why do you have such a keen memory?” Ezra muttered, scratching the back of his neck. “Yes. No. Give up on you. On this.”
“It was easier to give up,” Julian conceded. His fingertips found a crack in the leather, and he traced it restlessly.
Ezra turned to me, squinting. “What are you smiling about?”
My fingers rose to my lips self-consciously. I hadn’t realized that I was.
“Nothing,” I mumbled, pinching his leg and muffling a laugh when he pretended like it actually hurt.
It was them. Their obnoxious bickering. The way they both talked around the fact that they cared, in a strange and prickly way, for each other. I wondered if this was what having a family felt like. Hurt and devotion all at once.
The coach rocked back and forth as if nodding in agreement, and we fell into a contemplative sort of silence.
My leg pressed against Julian’s, and my arm rested against his side.
Only yesterday I’d stroked his hair, held him.
Surely I could sit beside him, close and comfortable in a way I didn’t have words to articulate.
“You know, it’s not like we’re not already in danger,” Ezra said, fidgeting with the curtain.
He’d been glancing out the window occasionally, craning a look at the monotonous landscape.
“The House thought the Taylors were enough of a threat to not only kill them but destroy all their work. We’d be fools to think they’d stop there.
The House will be hunting for collaborators. ”
“I’m already dead, remember?” Julian said. “If they manage to tie me to the Taylors’ research, I’m one less collaborator to worry about.”
“That’s not funny,” I muttered, recalling how horrific it had been to think he was dead, to believe I’d contributed to his death. By the look on Ezra’s face, he appreciated Julian’s flippant tone even less.
“At any rate, I imagine they’ll be focused on hunting for Nikola,” Julian said. “I can only hope they don’t find her before we do.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but he clenched his jaw and watched the other curtain sway.
Julian’s tension was no surprise. It had not even been a full day since he’d buried his mentor. His guide in all this. I took his hand, and when I glanced at Ezra, he nodded almost imperceptibly, with quiet encouragement.
Julian’s fingers twitched, but he didn’t pull his hand away from mine. “We have so much work to do. I don’t know what was destroyed or what she took with her. I don’t know if she has a working prototype. I don’t even know if she’s alive.”
“Maggie believed she was,” I reminded him. “And she believed we could help her.”
“Why don’t you tell us about Nikola?” Ezra asked, giving Julian’s knee a small nudge with his own. “It will help pass the time.”
“We’ve only corresponded,” Julian said hesitantly.
He flinched when I squeezed his hand with encouragement, then let out a breathy laugh at his own jumpy reaction.
“Nikola is a gifted scientist. She was born in Sterling City, but Maggie brought her to Cascade when she was very young. Her home situation had not been … ideal.” His tone wavered between protective and admiring.
“She’s been dreaming up inventions since she was a child.
Maggie thought synthetic radiance was folly at first. But with what I knew of conducting, we were able to work together on a prototype.
She’s an excellent collaborator. Curious.
Confident. To lose her … it would be more than a setback. I don’t know what I’d do.”
Julian was downplaying his role in the future they were building. For all his arrogant behavior, he didn’t seem to understand how important he was. His plans and his vision had to be protected. The world needed Julian, and I needed him, too. I didn’t think he was ready to hear that, though.
Ezra put his hand on Julian’s thigh, nothing provocative in his gaze. All I could see there was understanding. “We’ll keep her safe, Julian. Soon, you’ll be able to work alongside her.”
“It will be easier together,” Julian said, something in his voice relenting—making a little space for hope.
“We’ll make headway much faster. The more we can accomplish, the more leverage we’ll have to show the world that radiance isn’t the only path forward.
That stopping the wasting doesn’t mean sacrificing industry itself. ”
I exchanged a brief look with Ezra and found him mirroring my relief. This was Julian at his best—grounded in his convictions.
“It feels strange to be returning to Sterling City,” I admitted. For the first time since I’d left, I almost missed the hulking cacophony of it. I could practically taste the grit and grease, the familiar stink of the river. “We’ll be in arm’s reach of the House.”
“We never have to go back there,” Julian said quietly. “They can’t take away what we believe.”
I dropped my head against his shoulder, letting his words wash over me. Only a week ago, I’d believed in Progress. I’d believed in my calling. Now I felt scrubbed raw and new, a tender leaf unfurling in the spring.
Julian was narrowly focused on debuting his alternative to radiance, but that didn’t mean we’d avoid the House forever.
The other Children of Industry deserved to feel the way I did now.
Awakened. Somehow, I’d reach them and open their eyes.
I’d give every last one of them the chance to think for themselves, from the wide-eyed first years to the Generators in the catacombs.
It wasn’t the power of the House that made me anxious about returning to Sterling City.
It was the magnitude of my rage toward what they’d done to all of us, to the world.
Even now, it simmered inside me, molten fury waiting to be released.
I wasn’t sure there’d be anything left of me if I let that happen.
“Wait,” I said, following the winding path of my thoughts to a concerning conclusion. “Sterling City is massive.”
Ezra blinked his eyes open sleepily. “Even I know that.”
“How will we ever find Nikola?” I asked.
Julian let out a weary sigh. “Unfortunately, I know precisely where she’ll be.”