Octavia
Working on the language took up most of their days. Once her brother got comfortable enough on his horse not to spook it every thirty seconds, he asked Octavia to help him work on words and phrases in Trigedasleng. She wasn't fully fluent herself, but she was close, and she knew Bellamy was too proud to ask Echo or even Lincoln directly, so she played along. Occasionally one of the Grounders would supply a word or a phrase if Octavia wasn't sure, but since they were starting at square one she found she could handle most of the basics.
"See, it's sort of like English," she'd said to him near the end of a particularly long day of riding. "A lot of the words are similar, right?"
"It doesn't sound much like English to me," he complained. She knew it always frustrated him when he didn't pick things up quickly, or have all the answers.
Octavia frowned for a moment, trying to think of a way to explain. "Remember when you taught me algebra?" she asked. "I hated it because it seemed so different than normal math, but then you showed me to look past the letters, that they were really just numbers in disguise. It's the same with language."
He gave her a sideways look, smiling a little. "You remember that?"
"I remember everything," she retorted with a matching smile of her own.
"You were too young to be learning algebra," he said with a rueful smile. "I should have waited until you were older."
"It's not your fault I used to steal your homework. It gave me something to do."
"You would have liked school," he said, letting out a sigh. "More than I ever did."
"Yeah, I noticed," she answered dryly. "You're not a very good student, Bell."
"Shof op," he said grumpily.
Octavia laughed. "Hey, that was good!"
"Learning 'shut up' and swear words is way more interesting than learning to count or how to ask for water," he remarked.
"Well fine, then you can just yell at everyone we meet… you'll fit right in," she said, sarcastically rolling her eyes.
"Maybe I'm an angry warrior," he teased.
"Don't say you are a warrior," Echo interjected. "You have no markings, so you cannot be a warrior."
"So what am I, then?" Bellamy asked hesitantly.
"Well, you cannot be a healer," Echo replied. "Perhaps you should be a farmer."
"A farmer?" he retorted, offended. "I don't know anything about farming."
"Then what do you know something about?" Echo asked him with a small shrug.
Bellamy thought for a moment. "I was trained as a guard on the Ark," he said. "Well, until I was ejected from the program." He exchanged a glance with Octavia.
"And then what did you do?" she enquired.
"I… was… a janitor." He gritted his teeth and Octavia winced a little, feeling sorry for him, seeing the shame on his face and hating that he was being reduced to that title, when she knew that he was so much more.
"Janitor?" Echo repeated, clearly not recognising the word.
"No," Octavia said, cutting Bellamy off before he could speak. "He was a soldier and he was my brother… he worked hard every day to keep me safe. You have no idea what that was like. And then when we came down here he kept us alive… risked his life for all of us. He's a hero."
"O," Bellamy said gently. "It's okay."
"No it's not," she fumed, her hands tightening on her reigns. "She doesn't get it." Octavia herself could tell Bellamy off, get angry at him, pick a fight, but no one else was allowed. She saw Echo's words as an attack and she wanted to protect her brother from it.
"I didn't mean to offend," Echo said, looking surprised as she glanced uncomfortably at Lincoln. He shook his head at her, giving her a reassuring smile, then reached over and gave Octavia's arm a squeeze.
She shrugged him off. "You don't get it," she said again, keeping her expression severe to stop herself from becoming emotional.
There was a long silence and then Echo said, quietly, "Then perhaps your story should be about the mountain."
"What do you mean?" Bellamy asked cautiously. "What story?"
"That you were taken for the harvest, like me," Echo said. "And that you were instrumental in freeing the prisoners of the Mountain Men." She looked at him, giving him a gentle smile. "That you're a hero."
Octavia brightened and looked at her brother, raising her eyebrows at him. "It is the truth, Bell."
He shifted uncomfortably on his horse for a moment, then gave Octavia a gentle smile and nodded. "Fine." Octavia gave him a smug look when he said that; she knew he could never deny her anything.
"So should we get back to Trigedasleng?" she asked him. In response, Bellamy let out a groan that made her laugh. "Okay, fine, we'll give it a rest for now," she promised, and continued to chuckle as his expression turned to gratitude. She looked to Echo. "Tell us more about the Ice Nation?"
"The storytellers say that the Ice Nation was once lush and green," Echo replied. "But after the Dark Times, it stayed colder than even the oldest elders could remember… we have a summer, but it's brief. Even spring and autumn mornings are frosty and cold, and our growing season is short. Many travelers die in our lands because they are unprepared for how quickly it can go from warm to freezing… but we rely on the ice. We melt it for water, we hunt the animals that live beneath it, and we use it to build some of our shelters." She smiled a little. "The ice has a personality that must be respected."
"So why did it get colder?" Octavia asked, her brow furrowing a little. She only had a basic understanding of Earth Skills, and now she wished she'd paid better attention to Bellamy's lessons. But of all the homework she'd steal or the books she'd devour, the ones that taught the reader how to survive the Earth seemed the least relevant to her. If only she'd known.
"The bombs," Bellamy said thoughtfully. "The war, it did that- nuclear winter. It won't last forever."
"Every year it gets a little warmer," Echo agreed with a shrug. "But for now, the ice is home."
"I went there once as a very young boy, with my father," Lincoln spoke up. "It was a beautiful place. I remember how it glinted in the sun as we approached, but very little else."
"It is beautiful," Echo agreed with a soft smile. "But you should know, it can be very dangerous."
"We'll make sure to dress warmly," Octavia said with a nod.
"That's not what I mean," Echo answered, shaking her head.
"The queen is a formidable enemy, right?" Bellamy said, remembering Lincoln's warning from that morning.
"She is," Echo agreed. "And she does not like unexpected guests. As soon as we reach the outermost border of her territory, we will have an escort."
Octavia exchanged a glance with Bellamy before asking, "Why do I get the feeling that an escort is a worse than it sounds?"
"We will be watched from the moment we enter Ice Nation territory," Echo continued. "When they determine our course, that we mean to travel to the capital and speak with the queen, they will assign us a shadow child."
Bellamy blinked at her. "A what?"
"Shadow child," Lincoln said, and Octavia couldn't help but notice the stricken expression on his face. "I thought they were a myth."
"No," Echo answered. "They're very real."
"Legend says that in the Ice Nation, a baby will occasionally be taken from its mother's breast to be raised as an assassin," Lincoln said. "They're said to be more lethal than the most fearsome of warriors, and they have the power to be invisible."
"Invisible?" Octavia repeated skeptically.
"They can kill you without you ever knowing they were there," Lincoln insisted.
"He's right," Echo said. "All of that is true."
"So why would they assign one to us?" Bellamy asked, shifting uncomfortably on his horse, clearly very unhappy about this. Octavia knew that would partly be because Bellamy didn't like not knowing what was coming, but also because he had a soft spot for kids and would have trouble imagining one as a murderer. That was why Charlotte had been so difficult for him, and Octavia knew that the way he'd behaved with her was because of how he felt about Octavia herself. But from the looks on Lincoln and Echo's faces, this was very different.
"The shadow child will ensure that though we may request an audience with the queen, we will not harm her," Echo explained. "They are more than assassins, more than bodyguards, even… they keep the peace by removing those who would create unrest before they become a problem. Lincoln, you believe they are a myth because their deeds are not meant to be remembered."
"They sound pretty scary," Octavia remarked nervously.
"Yes," Echo replied, looking at her with a serious expression on her face. "They can be absolutely terrifying. Pray you never end up on the wrong side of one."
Bellamy swallowed. "Okay then," he said, not sounding happy about it at all. "Let's add that to our list of things to avoid."
Echo shook her head. "There is no avoiding a shadow child," she said. "If we are to have one, then we will have one. We can only be sure to give it no reason to kill us all." Fixing them with a grim expression, she urged her horse forward.