She slapped his shoulder, which felt like a rock. “I’d been wondering about that.”
He put a finger to his lips, withdrew it, and whispered, “You can go back if you like.”
She shook her head. “My work, too.”
Day nodded and gave her the hand signals for We can’t be seen, Stay quiet, and Follow me.
He led her and Blessing behind dark buildings. She tried to match their silence, but the toe of her shoe slipped across gravel in one place and two strides later she stepped on something plastic that emitted a large crack.
Neither man mentioned her transgressions.
As far as she could tell, they didn’t breathe. Her own breath rasped loudly in her throat.
A waxing gibbous moon offered just enough silvery light to see streets and buildings and make out the difference between sidewalk and street. At the end of the road, Day stopped. He pointed left.
They walked down a wider road now. She felt watched, though she saw no one in the shadows of the buildings or peering from windows. With the bar closed down she couldn’t imagine any excuse to explain their presence in town.
She focused on her steps, on the wind, on places where people could hide.
An animal rustled in a dry bush, and she startled, scraping her foot along the road.
Blessing glanced back at her but said nothing.
She drew her jacket closer against a cool wind.
They turned a corner and they were behind buildings again, tall concrete towers with broken windows. The lake flowed to their right—here in the end of the lake it was more like a river, the water gradually picking up speed as it made for the spillway that would send it down a fall and toward the Columbia.
Day stopped and cupped his ear. She heard the sounds of hushed conversation, too far away to make out distinct words.
Day turned them abruptly toward the water and laid down on the face of a small hill, gesturing to them to do the same. Grass tickled her nose but she held every worried muscle as still as she could.
Two men cut across the grass toward town, maybe twenty feet away from them. A tall one with light hair and a shorter one with dark hair, the exact color of their skin or eyes impossible to determine.
The men didn’t even slow as they passed. Perhaps it was the line of the dark shadows Day had chosen to conceal them in, or maybe it was that they were talking to each other. The tall one was saying “—we missed the bar.”
“Can we break in?”
“Agnes won’t allow it.”
“Bitch.”
“Don’t let any of hers hear you say that.”
Soft laughter, and then they were gone. Day motioned for Lou and Blessing to scramble up and follow him closer to the water. Lou had an easier time walking quietly on grass, and the rustle and swirl of the water created a white-noise sort of background anyway, making the night a bit more forgiving.
Day motioned them down again, only this time it was to sit. He cupped his ear as a signal to listen.
She did, hearing only water at first, and her own breath. Then, another conversation. She did her best to follow it, barely making out a few words. Nothing she could make sense of.
She glanced at Blessing, who shrugged and smiled his inimitable smile. Even though she could barely hear over the sound of the water and the night birds, the conversation clearly ensorcelled Day. She heard the word Seacouver once, a few curse words, and about ten minutes in she also realized that one of the voices belonged to a woman. Agnes? There were three voices. What she couldn’t hear specifically as words, she felt as intensity. They were excited.
Her joints began to stiffen with cold and fatigue.
The two that had passed them going the other way returned, talking more loudly than the other three. “We finished. It’s stashed.”
What was it?
Agnes’s voice, louder to match these men. “When will the next shipment arrive?”
“When it does.”
“We would be better able to help you if you delivered more regularly.”
“Just store this stuff. And drill. The best thing you can give us is men who are ready to fight.”
Agnes laughed. “I might also give you some women.”
“If they can fight.”
“Better if they’re past childbearing,” another said.
Lou stiffened.
“Hail to freedom,” Agnes said. “I’m going to bed.”
“We’re leaving early,” the other one said. She thought the shorter one.
“I’ll have someone bring you enough salvage to fill your packs at first light.”
“Good.”
Their voices shifted a little in place and then softened as they wandered off, and Lou didn’t catch any more. It was enough.
Coryn had been right. Weapons were being stored here.
They sat for a long time before getting up. The cold had crept so deeply into Lou that Blessing needed to give her a hand up. He held her close for a moment and then stepped back and chafed her arms with his work-roughened hands, whispering, “Warm up.”
She nodded, not yet trusting her voice to speak quietly after being still so long. They slipped quietly away from town and started up the hill.
The night deepened as the moon fell over the mountains, and she had to focus sharply on her footing. Halfway up, she turned and looked back at Chelan. Not a single light showed. Discipline.
“Lou,” a voice hissed.
“Valeria?”
“Are you all okay?”
“Yes.”
“What did you learn?”
She turned toward Day, but he shook his head. “Not much,” Lou replied, feeling duplicitous, and tired enough to be irritated at the necessity for the lie. “We did see the caravan, but we didn’t learn what they have.”
“Too bad.” Valeria walked beside them. “What did you think of the bar?”
“I loved your performance. I’d forgotten—maybe I never knew—the power of poetry spoken out loud. I think I might have known it once. In second grade.”
Valeria laughed so loud that Day glared at her.
Even though they didn’t sing or talk it seemed easier to make it up the hill with Valeria along. Walking warmed her up, and her pace quickened as they got closer to the house.
Funny. It was starting to feel like home.
Lou wished Valeria good night at the top of the wide, center stairs in the silent house. After her door closed behind her, Lou glanced meaningfully at Day. He gestured for her to follow him again, and they went into the suite that he and Blessing shared and sat in overstuffed chairs while Blessing served them all water.
The water tasted like heaven. She drained half her glass and took a breath. “So what did you learn? I could barely hear a thing.”
“I made out much of it,” Day said. “These are people John Smith and Agnes knew.”
“Who was the other person with them? Weren’t there three? A man, right?”
Day nodded. “I don’t know. Younger than Agnes. Someone from the caravan. I’ll recognize the voice if I hear it again. They’ve got weapons. They’re leaving some here and some in Wenatchee. Others are going to Cle Elum and Yakima. They’ve apparently been doing this for a few years. They’re planning a coordinated assault. They get the communities to give them goods in trade for weapons.” His voice had gone quiet and contemplative. “It’s a good deal for them. For the community? Not so much. They get guns instead of butter and actually give some of their butter away.”
“Butter?”
“Sorry. A term for things people need, like food.”
“Oh.”
“This is bad. I heard rockets once. I didn’t hear nuclear, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Conventional shoulder-fired rockets could still do a lot of damage to city buildings or bridges. But of course they all knew what was there, so they didn’t describe it. They just crowed about the power of whatever it is. I heard the phrase city-killer.”
“Coryn told me they th
ink something will happen in spring.”
“That seems right. The winter is supposed to be hard.” Blessing stood up and stretched, glancing toward the window where the sky was already lightening a bit with dawn. “We should go down and see their faces in daylight.”
“You haven’t slept,” Lou remarked.
“We’re trained for this.”
She threw a dirty shoe at him.
He caught it and laughed.
“I’m too tired to go.” She was, too. Every muscle felt heavy. If she went she’d probably do something stupid. She wanted to go, but clearly their training gave them power she lacked.
“That’s okay,” Day told her. “We have a job for you. Ask Valeria how many locals are in on this. How many recruits they made, in other words.”
She nodded. “After I wake up.”
Blessing held his hand out and she took it. He pulled her up and led her to her door.
She gave him a brief hug. “Stay safe. Find me when you get back.”
He hugged her back. “It might be a little while.”
“I know.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Late in the afternoon of the day after Blessing and Day left, a cold wind blew down from the mountains, wicked and full of the knives of winter. Lou stood inside of the newly rebuilt barn, listening as the fresh wood bore the brunt of the storm. Wind whistled between boards just above her head, behind her, and to her right. She reached into a bucket she’d hung on a peg and took out moss that Astrid had harvested for her, wedged it into knotholes and cracks where boards didn’t quite meet. Then she listened again. After about an hour, she thought she had shut most of the wind out.
Matchiko appeared, a slender silhouette in the doorway. “Are you ready for the horses?”
“Yes. Best hurry.”
Lou followed Matchiko and found that Daryl and Shuska held fractious horses on lead lines just outside. Buster stamped his big feet and shifted his weight, but his ears stayed forward. The others danced and tossed their heads, rolling their eyes, even Mouse.
She led Mouse in first. Matchiko followed with Buster and Daryl with Pal. They led them into freshly reinforced stalls. Mouse settled slowly, but Lou kept whispering and her ears eventually swiveled forward and her breathing slowed.
Only a few spears of light came into the barn through the high windows, even though it was a full hour before sunset. They threw armloads of hay into the metal feeders on the walls, and the food calmed the animals some.
“I’ll stay out here,” Daryl said.
“Me too.” Shuska grabbed a water bucket. “You shouldn’t be alone.”
They probably both preferred the company of horses to people most of the time, but nevertheless Lou suggested, “Why don’t you come up for supper first?”
Daryl eyed the roof. “This storm’s got my back up. I’d rather have tested our barn-building with a mild storm, and this one’s not that. Besides, I think the horses will want company. Maybe Felipe or someone can bring us something down after you all are done.”
It was a long speech for Daryl. Lou nodded. “Thanks.”
“It’ll be raining soon,” Matchiko said. “I’ll see what we can find now.”
“Or snowing.” Lou and Matchiko walked side by side to the big house, leaning into the wind. Matchiko put an arm briefly Lou’s waist, pulling her close. She whispered, “The barn looks great.”
“It does.” Lou stopped briefly, letting herself marvel for a cold moment, enjoying a hug so tight the wind couldn’t get through the spaces between them. She felt lucky to be here, lucky to have gotten the barn done, lucky even to have found Valeria and her family, since it had, in truth, taken all of them to get the house ready for the storm.
She felt even better when Felipe and Angel took food out to the barn, including a few late apples for the horses.
Before they returned, hail pelted the roof and windows with a startling rattle. Angel and Felipe came in soaked. “We’re going back,” Angel proclaimed. “There’s a leak in the roof.”
Lou set down the plates and straightened in alarm. “Where?”
“Above one of the stalls. It’s not bad, but better to stop it now.”
Most of the adults began sliding on the parkas, coats, and boots that Alondra had set by the door earlier. Lou started toward the melee, but Valeria but a hand on her arm. “Stay with me. It won’t take ten people.”
“I should help.”
“I’d like to share a glass of wine with you. Welcome the storm in.”
Valeria looked so solemn that Lou swallowed her objections and went to the kitchen for wine.
They settled into Valeria’s suite, the dark red wine looking almost black in the low light of a few fat candles. Even though neither wall faced directly into the wind, the windows rattled anyway and something outside banged repeatedly. Valeria spoke more loudly than usual, and still Lou had to strain to hear her. “What did you find, that night? When you stayed in town?”
The question startled Lou a bit. She sipped her wine, her thoughts as rattled as the windows for a moment. She took a deep breath. “You know we work for the city, or at least for people in the city? I don’t mean directly. Wilding itself is for the land. For the grass and the rabbits and the wolves. But it’s also for the city.”
“I know you believe that.”
“I care whether or not the city survives.” A great sound-drowning gust of wind blew something hard against the house, probably a tree branch that had snapped free. Lou stood, but sat again. It didn’t make sense to stand by the window. “There are people and things in the city that I care about greatly. My sister, for one. And many of the resources that you now freely enjoy come from there as well. The lumber to fix up the big barn, the new nails, those all came from the cities.”
Even in the dim light it was easy to see the slightly mocking smile on Valeria’s face. “The nails came from Wenatchee.”
Lou returned the smile. “The money for them came from the foundation.”
“I did not need the barn. You did.”
Lou bit back an exasperated sigh. “But you did ride in to intercept us, including our horses and our robots. You wanted muscle up here. I’m pretty sure that was to strengthen your hand against the likes of John Smith and his family, in spite of your truce with them.”
Valeria raised her glass, her face gone slightly more serious. Her hair fell loose around her face, cascading over her shoulders in a soft wave of dark threaded with silver. She spoke softly. “I did seek you out. The new people in town have mostly been bad influences. They’ve made our people, my people, make bad choices. Ever since the taking, the town has stunk of patriarchy.”
Lou wondered if Valeria was referring to her neighbors or her children. Was this the moment to ask her how many people in town had gone bad? Before Lou could decide how to frame her question, Valeria continued, “I knew you led the ecobots—we’d been told that. A woman. I wanted to see. What are strong women to do but stick together?”
Was that an offer of friendship? Or a challenge? Lou raised her glass, and Valeria did the same and then leaned toward Lou. “But I cannot afford for you to turn the town against me. You must be careful. Let me advise you. There are many things you cannot know.”
Lou knew it mattered to find the right relationship with this exasperating, fascinating woman. But one that wasn’t subordinate to her. Never that.
Coryn had urged her to keep secrets from Valeria, but instinct suggested that she trust her. Maybe not to support everything Lou believed in, but surely she could trust Valeria to be kind and quiet? “I don’t trust the people I’ve met in town, not any of them. Except you. I don’t want a fight. What I want most is to get settled, find the wolves and an elk herd or two, and to work on the science I’m supposed to be doing. I came out here to restore a scarred world, not to spend my energy on a difficult town.”
“Leaders don’t get to choose what they work on.” Valeria smiled. “Not often, anyway. You have all of the
choices, and yet you really don’t.” Valeria took a long slow sip of her wine, looking lost in thought. “If you get caught spying on these people, we could all die.”
“We needed to know what that caravan carried. We have reason to believe there are a lot of weapons stored here.” Lou stood and paced the room. The conversation and the storm—now gone from hail to hard rain—made her nervous. “I can’t ignore threats to Seacouver.”
“You can’t fight these people. There are more of them than of you, and more of them than all of us.”
Now she could ask. “Do you know how many? How many people came in from Outside and are influencing the people who were here before?”
Valeria pursed her lips. “Half?”
“How many is that?”
“Fifty?”
That was a lot. Still. “I’m sure there are more than a hundred people in town.”
Another burst of wind rattled the windows harder, and Valeria stared at them. “I should have boarded those up, too. I’m counting the people in John Smith’s group. Some were here before, but there were only a little trouble then. I could tell a few stories, though . . .”
Lou laughed.
“But you should not spy too hard. It could put us all in danger.”
“I’m being careful.”
Valeria grunted. “I have protected my family for a very long time. I admire what you are doing here, the wilding part. I admire looking after wolves and counting deer and restoring streams. At first I wasn’t sure you were really going to do that at all. I thought it might be a story you told us just to spy. But I know better now that I’ve watched you. In fact, I’m sure you’d rather just do that.”
Lou smiled. “I would.”
“But now your two spies have left.”
“Blessing worked with me on a farm in the Palouse. For a long time. He knows the Outside.”
“That doesn’t mean he isn’t a spy. And the small one with him is only that. He has no love for the wild or for the horses.”
Day had done the work that needed to be done. Still, Valeria was right. She raised her glass, tipped it toward the other woman in salute. “Day does love action. Wilding is as much watching and learning as doing.”
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