by Amy Braun
Gemma ignored him, pulling out a slim, foldout lock picking kit from her belt. She bent it in half and placed both pointed edges into the keyhole. A concentrated look came over her face as she gently turned her wrist. After a couple minutes, she relaxed and pulled the lock picks away, snapping the metal case closed and standing up.
“All yours, captain.”
Sawyer lifted his flintlock until it was directly in front of him, then pulled open the door and stepped inside. Nash and Gemma followed. I started running for the door, but Riley slipped in front of me, engaging his role as my bodyguard.
I stumbled inside my old home, closing the door behind me and blocking out the howling sound of the wind. It was still cold, but now it was bearable without the gale. I turned to check on the others, and halted abruptly.
Sawyer and his marauders were fully armed now, the captain drawing out a cutlass sword with a grinning silver skull on the end of the hilt, which matched the design on the butt of his flintlock. Nash also had a pistol, though I expected he would have preferred his brass knuckles. Gemma held a smaller flintlock and a knife. Riley held onto a pair of knives Sawyer had reluctantly given him after his first month working on the Dauntless.
Yet it wouldn’t be enough against the ten armed survivors pointing blunderbusses and pistols at my crew. Kerosene lanterns illuminated them, as they stood scattered between the rooms with the stairs at their back. They were layered from head to toe in mismatched clothes, their bodies losing all shape. Most of their faces wrapped in thin cloth, but it was impossible to miss the alarm in their eyes.
“Were you expecting visitors, Firecracker?” Sawyer asked, never moving his gaze from the ten people.
“Visitors?” the tallest man in the middle echoed, his voice muffled by the homemade scarf. “This is our home, boy, and we didn’t invite you.”
“Call me ‘boy’ again, and my finger might slip on the trigger.”
The survivor sucked in a breath to rebuff Sawyer, but I shoved through the crew and put my hands up.
“Wait, wait, we aren’t going to stay,” I said. “We just need somewhere to hold out against the storm, and… I’m looking for something.”
The tall man narrowed his eyes. “We’re not sharing with strangers.”
“That’s fine, we’re not here to take your supplies.” I lowered my hands. “I’m trying to find something else. A family heirloom.”
He blinked, confused.
“This used to be my home,” I clarified.
“Convenient,” muttered a man beside the leader.
“You think we’d travel through that mess out there without a reason?” Gemma argued. “Or did the cold freeze what little brains you have left?”
The blunderbusses and flintlocks across from us were cocked back with ominous clicks. The air seemed to get even colder.
“Not helping, Gem,” muttered Nash, who moved closer to his lover’s side.
“I’m cold and have rude bastards pointing guns at my face. Forgive me if I throw away my manners.”
“You have manners?” Sawyer teased. She shot him a scathing look.
Their banter didn’t settle the gun wielding survivors like they hoped. The guns hadn’t even wavered.
“Please,” I tried again. “I’m only here for a couple journals. I promise I won’t take anything–”
“There are no journals.”
My breathing stopped as my heart began to plummet. “What do you mean?” I whispered.
“We had to make fires. What else were we gonna use?”
I couldn’t believe my ears. He had to be lying. Yes, they were cold, but burning my parents’ books and notes seemed extreme. Wouldn’t they have looked inside the journals and seen that they were important? Those notes could have helped them. What good were they in ashes?
Did they realize they could have killed everyone in Aon if they burned the notes I desperately needed to help save them?
“You seriously going to cry over some paper?” the leader said. I hadn’t even felt the tears lining my cheeks.
I hardly heard his disdainful question. My crew seemed to droop with defeat. I showed my back to the survivors and pushed my hands through my hair roughly. “This can’t be happening,” I mumbled to myself. “What am I going to do?”
“It will be okay, Claire,” said Riley, resting his hand on my shoulder.
I whirled and threw him off. “No, it won’t! You heard him! Any chance of finding the machine is gone!”
“Machine?” someone asked. “What machine?”
“No point in telling you, because odds are it’s never going to be found now,” shot Gemma. I heard her sigh and watched as she lowered her arm.
“Look, just let us stay here until the snowstorm dies down,” offered Nash. “After that we’ll leave and figure out a new plan.” He sighed and quietly muttered. “We’re going to have to anyway.”
“Not happening,” the leader snapped. “You’re not Junkers, but you could be marauders using a scheme to slit our throats and take our supplies.”
“Doesn’t sound like a bad idea right now,” Gemma said with an edge in her voice.
“Enough!” Riley barked. The entire room fell silent. He left my side and marched across the room to the survivors, like a soldier approaching his enemy on the battlefield. He stopped at the leader, who took a step back. The nine other survivors supporting him took two steps. The air seemed to tighten, and every eye was riveted to him.
“This is her home,” Riley snarled. “You invaded it, but it belongs to her. We’re not going to get in your way, so you will have no problem letting us stay as long as we need to. You will respect her wishes because it is the right thing to do.”
Riley’s speech captured everyone’s attention. For someone who was content with solitude and simplicity, he looked comfortable and confident establishing a peace between us.
The leader of the survivors blinked rapidly, then sighed and slumped his shoulders.
“Fine,” he grunted. He turned to the layered men and women beside him. “Find them some blankets and take them to the living room. There’s a fireplace in there.”
I nodded absently, even though I knew where it was. I was oblivious to the idea of fire, and chose not to follow them. I needed space to process what had been lost and what I would do, but an old part of me also wanted to see my old house again. This might be the last time I ever did.
As the survivors began to shuffle their way toward the living room, I walked to the stairs across the foyer. They creaked under my feet, just as they had when I used to race up them to find my mother.
Away from the dimly lit foyer, I took one of my torches from my belt and pulled the ends apart, listening to the gears click and whir as they created a dull yellow light in the glass tube. The torch cast tall shadows against the wall, but I was able to see what had become of my home.
The brocade wallpaper in the hallway was peeling and cracked, the crusty carpet covered in dust and broken glass from the smashed lanterns hanging on the wall.
All the doors in the corridor were open, but I refused to look inside. My emotions were barely under control. A single glance in one of those rooms could unravel me. I had to concentrate on finding any scrap of evidence that my parents might have left behind, something the squatters downstairs might have overlooked. The machine to close the Breach would have been an enormous project. Their notes on it would have been staggering, and they would have guarded them safely.
Even though it had been a decade, I refused to believe that everything on the machine was gone. There had to be something useful left. My mother had worn a crucial key around her neck for years until she passed it onto me. She was too cautious to leave a paper trail that would be easily seen or found.
I wandered to the door of the office and rested my hand on the fractured door. A thousand memories crashed through my head. Sneaking in here and looking for tools and gears that I could “borrow” for my own meager inventions. Snooping in drawers and
cabinets to learn my parent’s secrets. Getting caught every single time by my mother and father, who would simply smile and say, “You just needed to ask, Claire.”
The hurt of their loss drilled into my chest again. I had to close my eyes and will the memories away. My parents were dead. They wouldn’t catch me creeping into their office or smile at me again. They were gone, and their burden had become mine.
I took a breath, then pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The light from my torch revealed a sad, broken parallel to the room I used to know. I recognized the wooden worktable, though it was lying on the floor and missing its legs. The fabric from the chairs had been ripped off, only tufts of stuffing remaining. Cabinets were toppled and pulled open, shelves bare of tools. There didn’t seem to be any kind of paper visible. I hurried for the cabinets and started pulling them open, shining the torch inside and feeling around for any scrap of paper. When I found none, I looked behind the furniture, trying to see if a scrap had slipped down and was hiding under the wreckage. It wasn’t.
I searched the room from top to bottom, hunted for hidden compartments, keys, anything. I came up empty.
Feeling defeated, I dropped onto the floor and leaned against the collapsed table, putting my head in my hands.
“Want some help?”
I turned and looked at Riley and Sawyer standing in the doorway, watching my slumped form. That they were both standing there without arguing was incredible, though the sympathy in their eyes made me feel fairly pathetic.
I pushed myself off the floor and wiped away the dust from my pants. “There’s nothing here,” I mumbled.
“Maybe you just need a new set of eyes,” Riley offered, stepping into the room. He carefully lifted pieces of furniture, moving them as though they were glass and scrutinizing the floor below. I started to help, stopping when Riley lightly took my wrist. He smiled kindly and plucked the torch from my hands. “I’ll look in here if you want to check other rooms, Claire. Your parents might have moved the books around for safekeeping, right?” I nodded slowly. He offered me a gentle smile. “I’ll let you know if I find anything, I promise. You can tell me if they’re the books we need.”
I sighed, not wanting to give up the search, but agreeing with his idea. While I’d been searching the office, I looked in places I knew, hidden nooks that I’d scoured a hundred times before. It made sense that my mother or father would move their notebooks somewhere that even I wouldn’t think to look. I walked out of the room, passing Sawyer as I did. He was leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded over his chest. His body language suggested that he bored, but his eyes were sharp and alert.
“You’re not going to help him?” I asked.
He shrugged one of his shoulders. “Don’t think he’d want it. He muttered something behind my back about me having an ego and being a thieving pirate.” He smirked. “I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right.” Sawyer winked, and I felt heat rise to my cheeks.
I snickered and took out a second torch from my belt. I pulled it apart to start the light, then walked down the hall with Sawyer trailing behind me. I tried to think about possible hiding places, cabinets and shelves where my parents might use to keep their most important documents, but my mind was distracted. Instead, I tried to remember what the hallways looked like when all the windows were opened and the sunlight illuminated the walls with its warmth, or the voices of loving parents and the smell of fresh cooked eggs.
I hadn’t eaten eggs in almost five years. The voices I heard now belonged to new friends and strangers. I couldn’t remember a sky that wasn’t filled with grey.
I turned on instinct, walking into a room with tossed and shattered furniture that I didn’t pause to look at. I dropped onto the floor and leaned back, resting my spine against the remains of what felt like a bedframe. The metal was cool, but I welcomed it. I set the torch onto the floor, pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. Sawyer sat next to me, exhaling as he stretched out one of his long legs and propped his elbow on the other. We sat there in silence while the wind howled fiercely beyond the window.
He turned to me and gently nudged my arm with his elbow. “You okay, Firecracker?”
I nodded, too emotionally drained to glare at the name. “It’s just strange. Being back here.” I lifted my chin and looked at my surroundings. I suddenly recognized where we were. This was my old bedroom. Or rather, what was left of it.
My heart clenched as I dragged my eyes across the room that was stripped bare of anything I used to own. No sheets on the bed, no curtains on the windows. The wallpaper was flayed, revealing the cracked drywall beyond. Across from me was a heap of splintered wood, the shattered bones of my dresser and desk. The pile was smaller than I expected, and I sighed, thinking about the kindling that the squatters chose to use. I wanted to blame them for taking apart my home, but honestly, how could I? I was guilty of the same crimes. I’d stripped homes bare to find tools and materials. I wore someone else’s clothes. I stole food when I found it and burned wood to keep my sister warm. I shouldn’t have been offended that the same thing had been done to my own home.
Though it didn’t ease the raw longing in my chest.
“You really didn’t think you would come back here?” Sawyer asked softly. “Ever?”
I shook my head. “After my mother told me to take Abby and run, I never looked back. I never thought I would have to.” I looked down, clutching my knees tighter to my chest. “Guess the past catches up to you.”
“It never really leaves,” he agreed quietly. “We just blind ourselves to it.”
I looked at the young captain, watching him sit casually and stare at the floorboards. He acted carefree and content, as though nothing could touch him. But I knew differently. I’d seen the vulnerability, the cracks in the walls he put up around his heart. Like me, he was forced to take on a burden from his family that he didn’t want. Condemned to be known as the son and brother of two of the most ruthless sky pirates ever to exist. To be constantly accused of instigating whatever happened beyond the Breach. To be thought of as no better than those who were long dead, or who had been transformed into something worse. As often as I was accused of being a traitor to Westraven because of my parents, at least I could do something about it. I was an engineer, and it gave me an advantage. Sawyer was a marauder. He would never be seen as anything more.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He narrowed his eyes quizzically. “For what?”
“Treating you the way I have been,” I admitted. “I know you’re just trying to keep me safe. But I don’t think it will work out that way. Not with the Vesper, or Davin.”
Sawyer’s eyes flicked back and forth, taking in mine. My breath seemed to catch in my chest. I saw the worry in his eyes. The fear.
“Don’t apologize to me, Claire,” he said sadly. “I haven’t earned it.”
He turned away and dragged his stretched foot against the floorboards. I watched him as he did this, waiting for him to say something, anything, to me. He dragged his boot over the floor a couple more times, then stopped, and he started lightly thumping his heel against one of the boards.
I hated seeing him like this. As stubborn and difficult as he was, I cared about Sawyer. More than I should have. I wanted to help him, see him walk away from the gloom that wrapped around him like a cloak. The only way I could do that was to make him trust me and open his heart. Even if I had to force him.
He kept dragging his foot, watching it thump over the floorboards, glaring at the ground and losing himself in misery again.
“Sawyer–”
“Did you have a secret compartment in your room?”
