When I was done, she didn’t ask to see her reflection in the blade. She didn’t ask me what I thought, either. She just gazed at me once more. Maybe she was deciphering my feelings from the way I gazed back.
Rose had wanted to change. Well, now she was different. And from the way she was looking at me, it was about much more than her hair.
CHAPTER 25
Alice and Jerren were rigging the catamarans in preparation for our journey to Fort Moultrie. Unlike the day before, they moved slowly, half their attention on the job and half on each other. Alice had taken to wearing a tank top that scooped low at her chest and ended a couple inches above her waist. Her tanned skin glistened with sweat. Sunlight caught the ripple of muscles in her arms and stomach.
Jerren noticed me watching him and turned away. He was embarrassed too—I could see it in the way he fought to make a simple knot—but he shouldn’t have been. Even I found it hard not to peek as Alice paused to lick the sweat off her upper lip.
Now Jerren was watching me, and I was the one turning red.
“Have you seen Griffin?” Alice asked.
Hearing her voice startled me. After what Ananias had told me, it was hard not to look at her differently. “Not since this morning.”
“He wanted to tell you something.”
That was strange. I hadn’t been hard to find. I began to walk back toward the gate when Kell emerged, Nyla beside him.
“Where’s Griffin?” I asked her.
She wouldn’t look at me. “He’s resting. Spent most of the night reading.”
“How would you know?”
She coiled a loop of hair around her ear. “I was with him.”
“What about Ananias? Why isn’t he here either?”
Kell leaned closer. “Turns out, Chief has a new favorite, Thomas. Can’t think what the old one did to offend him. Can you?”
Before I could ask him what they were doing, Rose passed through the main gate and headed toward us, a pack slung across her shoulders.
“Are you coming too?” I asked her.
“Yes. Chief wants me to fill in for Griffin.”
“Why?”
Nyla scraped her foot across the dusty ground. “I told you. He’s resting.”
Everything felt off-kilter. I wanted to see my brother, just to check that everything was all right. But Kell stopped me with an outstretched hand. “Where are you going?”
“To see Griffin.”
Kell spat on the ground. “Tell him, Alice,” he shouted. “No way Thomas will listen to me.”
Alice peered over her shoulder. “Griffin can’t come,” she said. “We’ll be using a series of shouts to let each other know if we see rats. He wouldn’t hear anything.”
“But he can sign,” I said. “Nyla had an idea for how we can work farther apart—”
“No.” Kell brushed by me and headed for the boats. “Nyla’s idea needs all of us to learn the signs. We don’t play with lives on Moultrie. He’ll get plenty of work during gathering trips to other sites, just not this one. But Rose has agreed to take his place.” He raised an eyebrow. “If that’s okay with you?”
As Rose approached her, Alice stopped what she was doing. “Interesting haircut,” she said. “Tell me who did it and I’ll get them for you.”
Rose broke out in a smile. Alice did too.
Nyla began to walk to the boats. “What are you doing?” Kell asked her.
“Going with you,” she replied. “You’re a person short. Can’t make pairs with five people.”
“It’s all right,” Jerren shouted. “She can help me. It’s time she learned the drill. Besides,” he added, fixing Kell with a stare, “something tells me she may be helpful to us.”
Kell didn’t speak for a moment. “Fair enough,” he said with a forced, icy calm. “Come on, Thomas. Time to leave.”
Again, I stared at the main gate. Through the small doorway, I noticed that the grounds were unusually empty. Children peeked above the battlements until their parents dragged them away.
Kell rejoined me. “Don’t mind them,” he said with uncharacteristic softness. “Poor things always know when we’re heading to Moultrie. They tell stories to give each other nightmares: a hundred dead. A thousand. Rat bites, snake bites, ghost bites . . . in their minds the place is a giant graveyard.” He sighed. “Heaven help them when they have to start going over.”
It wasn’t just the children watching us, though. Even the parents cast anxious looks in our direction.
“Jerren’s parents really did die, though,” I reminded him. “It’s not all make-believe.”
He grabbed my arm. “You can keep thoughts like that to yourself. This is Nyla’s first trip to Moultrie. I don’t need her panicking. Understand?”
Kell pulled a map from his pack and spread it out on the jetty. He pointed out the fort itself, and the landmarks inside its walls. He told us about the land that lay between the fort and the water, and the plants we’d find there. Once we had a mental image of the area, he folded it back up and left it in a box. He never mentioned rats, because he didn’t need to.
Jerren untethered the rope that connected us to the jetty and we pushed off. The breeze nudged the sail, but Jerren held the mainsheet fast, at least until we were twenty yards away. Then he loosed the mainsheet and the sail kicked out, driving us across open water.
The wind was stronger than the previous day and we made quick progress. Behind us, the rust-colored walls of Sumter grew smaller. I squinted at the battlements, hoping that I’d catch a glimpse of Griffin and Ananias. Neither of them was there.
Ahead of us, Alice’s boat sliced through the water. I imagined her shouting instructions to Rose and Nyla, anything to ensure that they arrived first. Jerren, on the other hand, seemed content to take things easy.
“So what’s the story with Alice’s father?” he asked me. “She hasn’t mentioned him once, and the man tried to strangle her.”
“Did Chief tell you that?”
“No. But you just did.” Jerren paused. “So who stopped him?”
“Ananias and me.”
“You killed him.”
“No. He fell overboard.”
Kell laughed. “He fell? Kind of clumsy, isn’t it?”
I didn’t know if they were working together, but it was clear they didn’t believe me. “He was surprised.”
“By what?” asked Jerren. “That you wouldn’t let him kill his own daughter? Or that you set fire to him?”
There was no use in pretending he was wrong. The real question was how he knew at all.
“There were burn marks on Alice’s tunic,” Jerren explained. “I asked her about them and she wouldn’t tell me anything. This morning, she turned up in new clothes. And I got to thinking, why would Alice and Tarn keep something like that to themselves? And if you’re responsible, why are they standing by you?”
It took all my concentration to stay calm. Jerren and Kell had chosen me for their boat deliberately. They had questions, and didn’t want Alice along to answer for me. I was already trying to second-guess what she might have said.
I expected them to press me for an answer. But neither of them spoke again. It was as if I’d already told them everything they needed to know.
CHAPTER 26
We pulled into a beachy cove, where an outcrop of rocks hid us from Sumter and protected the boats from waves. Jerren and Alice tied the catamarans to buoys instead of beaching them. “Rats’ll climb on any solid surface,” Jerren explained before I could ask. “Trust me, we don’t want them on the boats.”
We stepped into knee-deep water. Instinctively, I scanned the sandy beach, and beyond, to the trees and grass, and the fort itself. But there was nothing out there.