"If I were spying on you, I wouldn't have been caught that easily. As I told you before, I was eating a vinefruit. I would've shared some if you'd asked." Or dropped it on his head.
"If you weren't spying, why didn't you announce you
r presence?"
"Why didn't you announce yours? You were on our lands, not the other way around." I shrugged. "The warden who dragged Weevil's father off to die at sea looked a lot like you. For all we know, it was you."
"That wasn't me." Brogg scuffed his boot on the ground. "You should've announced yourself," he mumbled. "I'll come back for you in the morning."
As soon as he had gone, I sat on the bed to take the weight off my ankle.
Weevil immediately turned to me. "Whatever secret you've been keeping from me, it's time to say it. Do you have the Scourge?"
I ignored the fierce itch on my leg so he wouldn't bother me about that too. "I told you already, I don't have a single symptom!"
"That's not what I asked. You're hiding something, Ani, and obviously worried about how this Scourge test will come out."
"No, I'm not."
Yes, I was, and he knew it.
"Who exposed you to it? If any of the River People are sick, you can't keep that a secret, for everyone's sake. Once the symptoms appear, you're contagious. As soon as we get back, we have to warn the others."
"It's none of them!"
"Then who?"
I turned away and began massaging my foot. To do a proper job, I should've removed the boot first, but I didn't dare. I worried that with the swelling, I'd never get the boot back on.
"Let me check it." Weevil's tone turned sympathetic now.
"It isn't that bad," I said. "You saw that I can walk on it."
"You were limping."
"I can walk."
"Fine. Now tell me again, do you have the Scourge?"
I sighed, wishing these questions would end. Or better yet, that there was no need to ask them. "If I thought I did, do you really think I'd expose my family, or any of the River People? Or you? I'm not sick, Weevil. I only want to go home."
He hesitated a moment and looked around, making sure we were alone. "Then that's what we'll do." Weevil reached into his own boot and pulled out a long quilting needle. "For this, I need your knife."
Most people considered Weevil's and my friendship as unlikely as a deer voluntarily spending time with a wild boar. He and I had fixed reputations--everyone knew which of us was the deer and which was the boar.
Weevil was often asked how we could be friends, as if he was only nice to me out of the goodness of his heart, or maybe because my mother paid him on the side. Nobody ever asked why I was friends with Weevil. I was considered to be on the receiving end of his charity.
However, they didn't know Weevil like I did. He was every bit as stubborn as me, if not worse. He loved the jokes we played on people, though he was more clever about getting away with them. He had plenty of other flaws that only I knew about, such as his pride, which he clung to like it was life itself. And ... well, he probably had even more faults that I could think of if given enough time. But above all, Weevil had a talent that neither of his parents knew about. Nobody knew, because if anyone suspected him of anything, the blame was laid at my feet instead and I never disputed it.
Weevil could pick a lock faster than a scalded cat runs.
He carried two long quilting needles everywhere with him, just for those times when he encountered a lock that needed opening. He never stole from anyone--Weevil was too good a person for that. But he used to borrow blankets or firewood from the pinchworms in town, just over the winter, then return whatever was left in the springtime. Of course, he didn't borrow things anymore, not since the Scourge. But the lack of practice hadn't dulled his skills with those needles. He would've already used them in the isolation wagon except that lock was on the outside of the doors.
This cell had a fat lock on the door, though, one just begging for him to open.
"It's a long way back home," I said to Weevil. "As soon as they notice we're gone, they'll start searching for us."
"Every town has a river," Weevil said. "We'll find it and move upstream. Once we get home, there are plenty of places to disappear until the wardens forget about us."