War of the Networks

by Katie Cross

  In the distance, a vast array of glacier-white mountaintops, interspersed with rocky peaks, filled the vista. Clouds floated near the tops of the highest mountains, blocking the sky. Not far away, a burst of snow billowed into the air in the wake of a high avalanche.

  “Just wait.” Merrick leaped on top of a boulder to gaze out over his homeland. “The view will be worth the climb.”

  The higher we ascended, the more glorious the views of the mountain ridges became. The craggy rocks split the sky in two, like combs of teeth and snow and granite. Some of the peaks spiraled into the clouds, decorated with frills of snow. Others hung just below, half-rock, half-tree.

  “Just about there,” Merrick said. “Up here it’ll even out onto a plateau.”

  He moved with a quick, easy limberness I hadn’t seen from him before. The serious, no-nonsense Merrick had disappeared, and I rather liked this more carefree, happy side of him. I drew in another breath and kept going, setting aside the tension that persisted between us.

  “It’s beautiful up here,” I said. “This road takes us to your family?’

  “Yes.”

  “Did you have to hike this often when you lived here? Or did you transport?”

  “Hiked. Northern Network witches are tied to the mountains,” he said, moving deeper into his natural burr. “It’s a point of pride in our culture that we don’t use magic to travel much in near areas. Most of us enjoy the challenge of the trail.”

  “No wonder you outrun me,” I muttered, still puffing along, the back of my throat cracking in the dry air. As promised, the steep trail leveled off onto an even plain. Buildings were clustered together off to the right, near the outer edge of the open field. Other houses spread out on the surrounding hills, which led up to even higher mountain peaks.

  “This is home, the real North,” he said, gesturing around him with open arms. “This is what I work for.”

  The Northern Network rolled around us in undulating ribbons of dark green. “I can’t believe you grew up here,” I said. We couldn’t even see Balmberg’s waterfall from this high up.

  “Come on. My family doesn’t know I’m bringin’ you. We’ll surprise them.”

  My chest tightened. Among all these natural beauties in the unknown North, I’d forgotten why we were climbing in the first place. “When was the last time you saw them?” I asked, forcing nonchalance.

  “I’ve seen them almost every day since your father sent me back.”

  His response reminded me that we had a lot of catching up to do.

  “Did you ever see them when you were in the Central Network?”

  His shoulders tightened. “Yes. Sometimes on the weekends.”

  Tracking Merrick’s schedule would have been as useful as keeping tabs on a butterfly’s path, so I had never bothered to try. But I hadn’t once thought during his unexplained absences that he was visiting his family. Nor that his family lived in the North.

  He motioned to a trail on the left that led away from the village. “That house,” he said, indicating a cottage so far away I could only see smoke rising from the chimney, “is where my mother and sister live.”

  “Mother and sister,” I repeated, glad to have some idea of whom to expect. All I’d known was that his father died when he was a teenager.

  We walked along the edge of a field and through tall grass that grew up to my thighs. I ran the tips of my fingers along the silky strands, soaking in the quiet majesty of the mountains. A small house built with crossed logs came into view. White mortar held the cottage together, insulation against what must be cold winters. A girl appeared in the doorway. She stumbled out of the house with a bucket, saw us, and called over her shoulder to someone inside.

  A graceful woman with long, slender arms and a bright smile appeared next. Like Merrick, she had sandy blonde hair with deeper brown tones. My stomach twisted in a nervous spasm.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’ll love you.”

  It frightened me more that I desperately wanted them to.

  The girl waved from the cottage door and started toward us through the field. Her blonde bun loosened, unwinding onto her shoulders as she rushed up to us.

  “Hullo! You must be Bianca!” she cried, taking my hand. “I’m so excited you came! I’m Jacqueline, Merrick’s sister.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Jacqueline,” I said with a smile.

  “Are you and Merrick just friends?” Jacqueline asked. “I mean are you his—”

  “Friend, yes. My father,” I said, clearing my throat. I tried to compose myself with a smile. “He, uh, works for my father.”

  “Ah,” she said, winking. “Right. Your father, the High Priest.”

  Merrick’s mother strolled down the path. She wrapped her arm around her son, inhaling a deep breath as they embraced.

  Merrick turned to me. “Bianca, this is my mother, Kalli. Mother, this is Bianca. The girl I told you about.”

  I couldn’t help but notice his use of the word girl instead of friend. Kalli smiled warmly at me and took both my hands. Her eyes gleamed a warm umber, like the deep forests of Letum Wood.

  “It’s good to finally meet you,” she said, squeezing my fingers and pulling me into a hug. “I’ve heard a lot about the High Priest’s daughter. I suppose I owe you a debt of gratitude for keepin’ my son in line.”

  The scent of roses wafted up from her clothes, and for a moment, I lost myself in the embrace of a mother again. What I wouldn’t give to have Mama to talk to right now. I returned Kalli’s soft hug, already liking her more than I had expected.

  “It’s good to meet you too,” I said, meaning every word. “In fact, it’s wonderful to finally meet someone from Merrick’s family.” I pulled away, motioning to the mountains around us. “I only just found out about all … this. It’s magnificent.”

  Jacqueline grinned with the conspiratorial smile of a little sister. “Oh, I know all about you. Merrick said that—”

  “Come, Bianca,” Kalli said, looping her arm through mine and shooting a discreet glare at her daughter over my head. “We have some talkin’ to do, and Merrick has some firewood to gather before dinner starts. Jacqueline will give you a little tour of our humble cottage. It’s not much, of course, but it’s home.”

  “This is Merrick’s old room,” Jacqueline said, bouncing onto a bed. “Merrick has the attic to himself—when he’s here, anyway—and Mother and I sleep downstairs. It’s cooler in the summer.”

  Merrick’s room reminded me vaguely of my own—sparse, functional, and utterly without decoration. Dust had settled on the floor and along the windowsills. One pane of glass had cracked. A narrow bed jutted into the middle of the room, covered with a quilt and a pillow but nothing more. I looked out a side window to see a large garden patch thriving with tomatoes and peppers.

  “It’s a very normal room.”

  “Merrick likes it.” She shrugged. “It’s not as glamorous as yours, probably, since you live in a castle and your father is the High Priest.”

  I laughed under my breath and sat next to her on the bed. “Glamour is a relative term. Not everyone enjoys it.”

  She looked dubious. “But you live in a castle. I’m sure everything is glamorous.”

  “Yes, I do live in a castle. However, your room downstairs is still more decorated than mine. My room is simple,” I said, lifting my hands. “Like this.”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re lying.”

  “No. I don’t decorate it much.”

  “Why not?” she cried, straightening. “Think of what you could do!”

  Reeves would certainly love to help me spritz the apartment up a little. I looked up at the thick rafters overhead. Cobwebs had gathered in the corner. The simplicity made me think of Grandmother, of home. This was the world that I grew up in, the one I yearned for. Not a cold, drafty castle.

  “I’d rather live in a normal house,” I said. “I grew up in a cottage a little smaller than this, and I miss it.”

&n
bsp; Jacqueline didn’t seem convinced but let it slide. She reached over and touched Viveet’s sheath. “Merrick told me you have a sword. Can I see it?”

  “Sure.”

  I stood up and unsheathed Viveet. She glowed light blue in a beam of sunlight that streamed through the four-paned window. Jacqueline’s mouth dropped open.

  “Whoa. He wasn’t kidding.”

  “Would you like to hold her?” I asked. “She’s not heavy.”

  “Can I?”

  She leaped to her feet and took it from my outstretched hand. Viveet’s carved blue ivy faded when she left my touch. She looked like just a regular sword in Jacqueline’s hands, but Jacqueline didn’t seem to care.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Has Merrick taught you to sword fight?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. He says he wants to, but I don’t really care about sword fighting. Besides, we hardly ever see him. He stops in for lunch most days now but sleeps at the castle except on the weekends. Before then, he lived in your Network.” She sighed. “We don’t see him much.”

  “Really?”

  “He said he can’t leave his job without raising suspicion, and when he first went down, he was afraid that they’d follow his transportation magic whenever he left, so he didn’t come at all.” She handed Viveet back to me with a little smile. “Thanks for letting me look at it. My father was an expert swordsman.”

  “Has it been hard to share your brother with the Central Network?”

  Jacqueline’s nose crinkled. “I never thought of it like that. Sharing him, I mean. It was just … just what he needed, Mother said. When we see him now, he seems much better. He used to be really irritable.” She grimaced. “We argued a lot.”

  “Do you remember when your father died?” I asked, hoping to find common ground.

  “A little. I was young at the time. I remember when Ana died better. I had to go live with the neighbors for a week so I didn’t get the sickness too.”

  “Ana?” I asked. “Who was Ana?”

  Jacqueline looked puzzled. “My sister, Ana. Hasn’t Merrick told you about her?”

  I shook my head. “No, he hasn’t. He didn’t even tell me about you.”

  She rolled her eyes in true little sister fashion. “He’s weird like that. Mother says he gets it from our father.”

  “I lost a parent too,” I said. “It’s not easy. I bet you miss him and your sister a lot.”

  Jacqueline’s green eyes, so similar to Merrick’s, sobered. “Merrick told me about your Mama. I’m very sorry.”

  For a moment, she seemed much older than fifteen, and I realized that though she was still a bouncy teenage girl living in an isolated meadow, something of an old soul lived within her. She’d certainly faced a lot of loss for her age. In that moment, I felt a kindred bond with her.

  Kalli called up the stairs. “Girls! Dinner is ready!”

  I smiled to dispel the sadness in the air. “Let’s head down for dinner. I’m starving.”

  “There,” I said, releasing the end of the small scroll. “A note to tell Papa to expect me tomorrow morning.”

  The scroll disappeared when I sent it with a transportation spell. A full dinner of fresh garden vegetables, cow’s milk, and a hearty brown bread smeared with butter filled my stomach. The warm ambiance of home gave me a groggy, content feeling.

  “Come on,” Merrick said, grabbing my wrist and tugging me back up the ladder toward the attic. “I want to show you somethin’.”

  I obediently followed, held captive by the startle the heat of his skin gave me. We’d been politely distant throughout dinner. Being in his home made it abundantly clear that Merrick wasn’t a sneaky witch by nature, so I’d already forgiven him for not telling me he was from the North. The good gods knew I’d kept plenty of my own secrets in the past.

  His long fingers maintained a firm hold on my arm, distracting me as we climbed the ladder. Kalli and Jacqueline remained behind, talking about meals for the next day. Jacqueline had plagued me with questions about the Central Network throughout dinner. She asked about the war, Chatham Castle, learning sword work—anything that popped into her head. She was clever and quick-minded, just like her older brother. Kalli seemed content to observe and smile. She responded when appropriate but largely just watched. I saw a lot of Merrick in the quiet mannerisms and movements of his mother.

  “I didn’t spend a lot of time in the attic as a kid,” Merrick said, opening the side window and swinging one leg over the sill. “But I did sit out here. Come on. If you put a foot on the bottom of the window, you can shimmy onto the roof.”

  Somehow he folded his shoulders and lean body through the window. I followed his example and found him sitting at the peak of the sloping roof, one hand extended. After I slid my palm into his, he pulled me up with ease. The shingles felt warm and gritty through the thin leather of my sandals, still half-baked from the sun.

  “This was my favorite place to go at night,” he said, stretching out his legs and leaning back on his palms. “My father used to come up here with me.”

  “Just to talk?”

  He nodded, stacking his hands behind his head and lying back. He was so relaxed, so … normal. I wished I could take this Merrick back with me. Bottle him up to keep in the Central Network.

  The mountains grew cool as the sun disappeared into the horizon. Crickets chirped in the distance in a sweet symphony of summer and nighttime. I drew in a deep breath. My gaze traveled up to the dusky, velvet sky.

  “The stars,” I whispered, my head tilted all the way back. “They look different up here.”

  “They may seem so different because your position has changed.”

  His comment reminded me of Isadora. Hadn’t she alluded to something like that before? The passage of time changed what the future could be, so she often just waited to see what would happen. Maybe life was just about changing perspective in order to understand. Even though I’d looked at the stars thousands of times, seeing them from a different angle made them almost new. Kind of like glimpsing Mabel’s mind.

  “You’re probably right,” I said with a sigh, content to feel small under the vast expanse of sky. The soft breeze soothed me, and we sat together without speaking for a long time. My thoughts drifted in and out, flittering from place to place, never settling. I’d missed this most about Merrick—saying nothing because we didn’t need to say anything.

  “Thanks for comin’,” he said, startling the quiet. “To meet my family, I mean. It … it means a lot to me.”

  “I should be the one thanking you,” I replied. “Your family is wonderful. I can’t imagine why you don’t talk about them more.”

  “To protect them,” he said, and I wasn’t surprised. We fell into another easy silence until he broke it with a heavy sigh. He shifted forward, leaning his arms on his loosely bent knees and staring into the distance.

  “I owe you an explanation,” he said.

  “You don’t owe me anything.” I picked a twig off the roof and bent it in half. “But I would like to hear your story, if you want to tell it.”

  Our eyes met.

  “I do want to tell you.”

  I smiled. “Then I want to hear it.”

  “I was fifteen when my father died. My anger spiraled out of control, so Wolfgang, my father’s best friend, took me under his wing. Both of them were Masters—a lot like the Protectors for the Central Network, only we allow women in, and we’re a force of twenty instead of fifteen. My father wanted me to be a Master, and so did I, so he had been teachin’ me how to sword fight for years.”

  “So you’re basically a Protector for two different Networks?” I asked. “Impressive.”

  He smiled in a lopsided, boyish kind of way that stole my breath. The cords of muscle in his arms shifted when he moved, and I swallowed back a lump in my throat. Why did he have to be so ruggedly attractive?

  “Somethin’ like that. Anyway, once my father died, Wolfgang continued my trainin’. I
t helped a little. I wasn’t as depressed, but it didn’t fix anythin’. I had two little sisters,” he said, picking up a twig like mine and twisting it into a knot. “Jacqueline and Ana. Jacqueline is a normal little sister. She’s loud, rambunctious, and annoyin’. But Ana was different. She never spoke, not once in her entire life. She just watched everythin’.”

  His shoulders tightened, and his eyes darkened. His use of the word was made my heart ache.

  “How old was Ana when your father died?” I asked when a silence stretched between us. He shook his head.

  “Eight. She took it hard. She’d crawl into bed with me every night with tears on her cheeks. I think she had nightmares. If she did, she never made a sound. She always fell right to sleep next to me. Sometimes I found her standin’ at my father’s grave in the middle of the night, holdin’ wildflowers in her hand. They weren’t flowers that grew anywhere near our house.”

  “How did she get them?”

  Merrick shrugged. “I think she made them with magic. Although she was mute, she was smart. All I’d ever really seen her do was draw, but I think she figured out how to do silent magic without bein’ taught. She had an incredible talent with charcoal.”

  My stomach clenched even though I already knew what was coming. “Had?” I asked. The twig in his hands snapped.

  “Ana died two years after my father passed.”

  He fell quiet, into memories I had no access to, and I waited until he decided to continue.

  “She contracted a fever when she was ten. We tried everythin’. Wolfgang even requested help from the Masters who were stationed in the lower Networks, but nothin’ worked. After three days, I held her while she died.”

  My heart lurched. All the angst and turmoil of losing Mama rushed back over me. I had to sort through the emotions I felt on his behalf for a full minute before I could speak.