I let my gaze rove between Archie and my brother.
Conrad’s face had flushed, two bright flowers in his cheeks that had nothing to do with the wind. “You want me to what, do a trick?”
“I want to see your Weird,” Archie said evenly. “If there’s a problem there, then there’s a much bigger problem with this whole plan. If we’re going back into the city in a few weeks to take another crack at finding survivors, I need you both in fighting form.”
Of course I’d wondered when I’d found out Conrad had used slipstreamers to get himself into the Mists. I’d wondered when he hadn’t offered to open the Gate back to the Iron Land. But he had to have a Weird—he was the firstborn Grayson of our generation, the only son. Heck, my father was only Gateminder at all because his older brother, our uncle Ian, had died young. I didn’t know how I was able to manipulate the Gates. There hadn’t been time to really think about it when the Proctors had chased us, or when Tremaine had been watching me, threatening to hurt my family. I might have thought of myself as a Gateminder in my lighter moments, but I wasn’t really sure what I was.
But either both of us were Gateminders or Conrad had been skipped and it was me. Had always been meant for me.
I wrapped my arms around myself and prayed that Conrad was just a late bloomer.
“There’s no problem,” Conrad said evenly, but all his muscles were tense. He looked like he did right before he was going to fight somebody, a kid at school who’d made a remark or a foster sibling who’d gotten too pushy with me. I sincerely hoped he and Archie weren’t about to come to blows, because then I’d have to jump between them, and nobody wants to break up a fistfight between members of their own family.
“Then do it.” Archie took a step closer to him. “Show me, son.”
Conrad looked at the ground, looked back at Archie. Veins stuck out in his neck and at his temples, and his face turned crimson. I took a step toward him, to try to calm him down, but he beat me back with a glare.
Archie sighed and then went over and patted Conrad on the back. “That’s enough. Don’t hurt yourself.”
Conrad let out his breath in a rush, white mist meeting the freezing air. “I can’t do it, all right?” he shouted. “I’ve waited and waited and tried every damn thing—fire, water, wind, even machines, like Aoife—and I can’t do it. I’m useless.”
He stormed past us and back toward the house. I ran after him without thinking. “Conrad, wait!”
I caught him by the arm as he reached the steps, and he shook me off. “Why should you care?” he growled. “You’re the one he wants, aren’t you? You’ve got the gift.”
I reminded myself he was angry and probably didn’t mean it as cruelly as it came across. I grabbed his arm when he tried to run off again, harder. “You think this is a gift?” I whispered. I could barely hear myself over the wind. “Conrad, all it means is I have something in my blood that can kill me, that can split my skull apart if I try to control it, and that makes me a target for everyone in the Thorn and Iron Lands who wants a pet Gateminder. It doesn’t make me better. It doesn’t make me not your sister. Forget about what Archie thinks. You’re my family. You’re the only one I’ve known until now.” I stopped talking, but held on. I wanted the distance between us to stop. I wanted this painful chasm of bad feeling and resentment to close.
Conrad snarled for a moment, looking for all the world as if he was going to slap me across the face, but then he collapsed, wrapping his arms around me so tightly I couldn’t breathe.
I hugged him back, as hard as I could. Relief flooded through me. This was the Conrad I knew, the one I’d grown up with.
I realized amid my pounding heart and the wind that Conrad was saying something to me, and I pulled back to listen. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry, Aoife.”
“For what?” I said, confused. “Neither of us has been very nice lately, but that’s not—”
“No.” Conrad tugged my scarf down. I flinched when he touched my scar but squeezed his hand between my own.
“It wasn’t your fault. The iron madness—”
“Nothing will make my attacking you all right, Aoife,” he said. “Not the fact that I was crazy, not the fact that I’m in remission. Nothing will make this mess with me making you come find me all right. Just let me say I’m sorry.”
I dropped his hand and nodded, pulling off my scarf on my own. “I forgive you, Conrad.” After everything that had happened, the words that had once stuck in my throat at merely thinking them came without any effort at all.
Conrad didn’t say anything; he just buried his face against my shoulder. We stayed that way for a minute, until Archie came up and coughed softly. He looked almost ashamed to be intruding, and I thought it sort of served him right. He was trying to teach Conrad to be a survivor, but calling him out had been cruel. I held on to my brother protectively as Archie spoke.
“I think that’s enough for today, son. You can go on back to the house.” He gave Conrad an awkward tap on the shoulder, the sort of male gesture that somehow conveyed it was all right, that he wasn’t really mad.
Once my brother had gone out of earshot, Archie turned to me and shook his head. “This is going to cause an epic uproar, I hope you know. There has never been a female Gateminder, not in the hundred and twenty years since Tesla made the damn things in the first place. If you turn out to be my heir with the Weird—and let’s face it, we both know it’s likely after your brother’s performance just now … Well. There’s going to be some hurt feelings in the Brotherhood.”
I didn’t particularly care what sort of uproar I’d cause. By now, I was pretty used to being the one who made everything go sideways for the people in charge. “Are you mad at me?” I asked my father. He gave me a look as if I were going crazier than I already was.
“Of course not. I’m damn proud of you. You’re smart, and your Weird is something to behold. Once we toughen you up, you’re going to do a much better job of this whole thing than me.”
I blushed a little. Inspiring pride in Archie was a new sensation, and I liked it. “But without the Brotherhood, what good are the Gateminders?” I asked. “What will it matter if it passes to me?”
“We’re still the only humans who can open Gates,” Archie said. “In this world or any other. As long as that’s the case, we have a duty to police what comes through, whether or not those fat cats who’ve taken over the Brotherhood have a say.”
I kicked a furrow in the sand with my foot. It was a lot of responsibility. But it certainly wasn’t more than what I’d already decided to shoulder myself: to find the nightmare clock. That was what I had to do, above all else.
“I’ll do my best,” I said to my father. I felt lousier than I admitted about lying to him, even partially. But his falling-out with the Brotherhood wasn’t mine, and I needed a look at the Iron Codex, now more than ever. I needed a way to find the nightmare clock and use it, and Archie couldn’t do that for me.
I was as ready as I was ever going to be, I realized. And I was going to have to disobey my father to do what I needed to do—only, now there was at least the small hope that he’d forgive me after the fact for running off on my own.
Archie pulled me in with one arm and gave me a squeeze. “Thank you,” he said.
I frowned in confusion. “For what, Dad?”
“Trusting me,” he said. “I know it was a lot to ask. All I ask now is that you keep being smart, and strong, and trust yourself.” He held me at arm’s length, and for the first time the expression in his eyes softened when he looked at me. I wouldn’t have called it fatherly, but it was no longer calculating. “Trust yourself, Aoife. And never stop fighting.”
Trusting other people doesn’t come easily to you when you’ve never had someone who trusts you. But I had to tell someone about my dreams of the dark figure and the spinning worlds beyond his glass prison, someone who wouldn’t tell Archie or Valentina in turn. Or let it slip to the girl he was infatuated with.