The woman laughed, moving forward to hook a bony finger around Nadin’s necklace. “Well, that’s a tall task, kyrin.” Her voice dripped sarcasm. “And that trinket won’t get you far here. We have little use for the geroi’s castes in Elytherios.”
“Wait a moment, Marin,” another, younger woman said. “Nadin—that’s the one Gitrin said we should be expecting.”
“Gitrin?” Nadin’s voice sounded raw, almost wild.
They ignored her. The first man tugged his earlobe, looking at the woman who’d spoken. “Right. We’d better get the two of them back to the village, then.”
He took Nadin’s arm, and one of the other men grabbed mine. He glanced appraisingly at me. “Marin,” he said. “Have a look at this at this one. Doesn’t he…?”
The elderly woman came over and stared at me. Her green eyes were piercing. “Yes, he does,” she said after a minute. “Boy, can you understand me?”
I glanced nervously over at Nadin. She looked as confused as me. I said, “Um, yes. I can.”
The woman grinned, her gapped teeth magnified by the clear breathing tube over her mouth. “Excellent. You might be of some use to us, then.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, but nobody answered. The five strangers led us, gurzas trotting happily behind, up the slope of the mountain.
The five anarchists guided us some distance up the slope, winding around as we ascended to the south face of the mountain. Here the barren rockiness began to give way, and patches of scraggly shrubs, fed by the southern sun’s rays, were visible at intervals. The smooth slope became rougher, with more crags and crevices. The gurzas’ clawed feet made the going easier for them than for us humans, and they hurried on ahead of us. On the top of a ridge just over our heads, Isaak’s gurza looked over its shoulder down at us, as if to ensure that we were still following. Then it darted forward and disappeared into a clump of thick fraouloi.
The man pulled me forward by my arm and I stumbled. The slope was not overly steep, but it was still difficult to climb without the gurzas. Crude steps had been cut into the ground at intervals, but they were uneven, which did not help matters.
When we reached the ledge where the gurzas had vanished, I saw that behind the tall fraouloi there was a gash in the mountainside.
“This way,” said the man holding my arm, guiding me into the crevice.
I expected the cave to be dark, but even after the light from the entrance should have faded, the tunnel was bright. It wasn’t the neon glow of phosphorescence or even the clinical white of the artificial lights in Hope Renewed, either—this looked like real sunlight, like I remembered from my childhood, before it was filtered through a thin red sky.
“You can take off your breathing apparatuses now,” said the woman the others had called Marin. “We don’t need them from this point on.”
I stared upward, trying to find the source of the light, but the cavern’s ceiling was so far above us I could barely see it. I was so focused on what was above that I didn’t even notice the floor until I stepped on something soft and gasped. Under my feet, the stone was covered over with a carpet of green plant life. It was thick, crawling over boulders and stalagmites, climbing up the wall in places. Here and there, patches of ferns emerged from cracks in the floor and walls, covered in new, spiraling branches that curled and unfurled like a slithering anguis. Further down, a narrow channel coursed alongside the path, and thick, leafy bushes sprouted from its banks. The slow-moving stream burbled pleasantly as we passed it.
Everything was green. The black, gnarled branches that I’d become accustomed to in the citidomes were nowhere to be seen. It looked like images I’d seen on the visual indicator of Iamos decades ago, before the climate disaster.
“What is this place?” I breathed.
The man holding my arm smirked. “Elytherios.”
The tunnel was widening, growing brighter and brighter. Ahead of us, I could hear the rushing of water. Then the high ceiling disappeared entirely behind a patch of white mist, and a whole world opened out before me.
The cavern here was so massive that you could no longer see the walls of it. I wondered for a moment whether we were even inside anymore, but nowhere on Iamos’ surface looked like this. Thick clumps of trees stretched skyward, their branches—laden with new growth and small, unripe fruit—reaching toward the unknown light source. Beyond the trees, untidy rows of crops filled the landscape, tall green stalks around which climbed snaking vines. Between the rows of crops, makeshift waterspouts splashed noisily. In the distance, I could just make out the roofs of small buildings. And above our heads, wispy white clouds swirled on the hint of a breeze.
My knees wobbled, threatening to give out entirely. Only the man’s strong grip on my arm kept me upright.
“Is this the inside of the volcano?” Isaak said behind me.
Marin tugged her earlobe. “It’s a hollow dome, left from the last eruption. The magma chamber collapsed beneath it, just leaving the outer shell.”
“And it formed a microclimate?”
The other woman chuckled. “Well, it had a little help. Elytherios’ engineers are the best on Iamos.”
Isaak’s eyes widened. “You terraformed it?”
The anarchists looked at each other, murmured a few words I couldn’t quite catch. Then they prodded us forward again.
The gurzas were waiting for us further down the path, beside a large pond. The one called Tuupa lifted its head, water dripping between its front teeth. It trilled and pranced ahead, leading us down the road toward the village.
As we drew closer to the buildings, I could hear voices, snatches of conversation. Figures milled between the rows of crops, occasionally calling out greetings to our group as we went by. Eventually the sea of farmland thinned, and we reached the village. The long, squat buildings were cobbled together with mud and stone and the branches of trees. The town itself seemed to have taken on a green hue—trailing vines climbed up the sides of the walls; trees emerged from the roofs of houses, creating a thick green canopy. The buildings were clustered together in circular formations, separated at intervals by the various worn-dirt paths. Here and there, small gaps between the buildings formed miniature plazas where groups of people congregated, talking and laughing while they worked.
I hesitated as we passed an open-fronted house. Inside, a woman was grinding grain with a smooth stone, while three children ran around her, squealing noisily. As I watched, one of the bigger children chased the smallest one out from under the table she was hiding beneath, and they ran, giggling, into the road.
“Look out,” I said, throwing my hands out as the smaller one nearly ran headlong into me. The child wobbled on her heels, grabbing onto my hand to steady herself. Then she looked up at me, grinning wide enough to show me every tooth she had—and a couple of missing ones—and laughed.
The woman at the grindstone looked up. “Sasin, what do you say to her?”
The girl glanced over her shoulder, then tugged her earlobe in a playful, exaggerated way. “I’m sorry,” she said to me.
“Oh, uh,” I said, “that’s all right.”
The child grinned again and then ran off again, the older one chasing her at top speed.
I glanced at the woman at the grindstone. She smiled. “Children, right?” she said, if that were meant to explain everything. Then she called after them, “Sasin, Enros, if you’re going to play outside, watch where you’re going, please!”
“Yes, Maetrin!”
I started, staring at the children with my mouth open. Maetrin. That was a word in the old language—the word for mother. Those children… she was their mother. All three of them were her children.
Iamos didn’t have parents. None but the geroi. But Elytherios did.
“Something wrong?” Isaak asked as we continued down the track.
I shook my head like I’d seen him do before. He smiled crookedly and tugged his earlobe in reply.
We stopped in a large plaza in the
center of the village. It looked like a giant seashell, with all the roads and buildings spiraling out from the fountain in the center. Clustered around the fountain were dozens of long tables and benches, big enough to seat at least twenty people apiece. Tall trees with thick, sturdy trunks surrounded the clearing, their branches twining together like woven copper. Sunlight trickled between the leaves, creating a dappled pattern of light on the ground.
“This is our main meeting area,” said the man who had been holding my arm. “The weekly forum is tomorrow morning—you’ll need to be here for that.” He glanced at Marin. “Anything else?”
“No,” Marin said. “I’ll take them to”—she glanced over at me and smirked—“the Liberator.”
I bristled, then stood straighter, my shoulders squared. I wasn’t about to let this woman mock me. But she didn’t back down. Her green eyes locked with mine for a long moment, then she said, “Follow me.”
She led us down another spiraling road. Isaak came up beside me as we walked and, in a low voice, said, “This doesn’t exactly seem like a hive of murderous terrorists.”
“It’s just a facade,” I replied.
“Where do you think Gitrin and Ceilos are?”
“In a prison, no doubt.” I thought about the prison in Hope Renewed, in the highest level of the pyramid. It didn’t hold many people. It didn’t have to. Criminals were usually quickly re-educated with a System protocol, or—if they were too great of a threat—euthanized. I didn’t see any tall buildings here in Elytherios, but there had to be a prison somewhere. Every city had a prison.
Marin stopped in a small, triangular-shaped clearing between three buildings. I looked around in confusion. There was no one here except two plivoi—well, workers, anyway; I didn’t know what they called them here in Elytherios. One of them, an elderly man with age-bleached skin, was on the top of a ladder, fiddling with a large piece of glass that hung from the gnarled branches of a tree. The other was a woman. I couldn’t see her face—she had her back to us, holding the ladder steady.
“Degiim, Eos,” Marin called. “There’s someone here to see you.”
The man twisted the glass into position. There was a bright glare for a moment as the glass swung down, and then it was still. Light radiated gently off it, and I realized that this was where the sunlight was coming from: mirrors.
With the mirror secured tightly, the man turned, looking down at Marin, then at Isaak and me. He frowned. “Who are these people?” he said, climbing down from the ladder with surprising agility for someone his age.
I stepped forward. “I am Kyrin Nadin of Hope Renewed citidome. I’m here to see the Liberator.”
The confusion did not fade from the old man’s face, but at the sound of my name, the woman who was holding the ladder for him turned and gasped. “Nadin!”
At the sound of her voice, the world slammed to a stop. My mouth hung open for a long moment, before I finally managed to stammer, “Gitrin?”
I stared at her for a long, wordless moment as the man on the ladder jumped the last two steps to the ground. As soon as he was safely off the ladder, Gitrin brushed past it and raced over to me, pulling me into an embrace. My stomach clenched at her touch, and for a brief moment I forgot my anger at her and I hugged her back.
“Where did you find them?” the old man asked Marin, who had hurried over to help him take down the ladder Gitrin abandoned.
“Just outside the entrance to the city. The lookout said he spotted a group with gurzas just before the storm blew in. We thought it was the runners back from Hope Renewed.”
Gitrin clasped my face between her hands, brushing my dirt-caked forehead with soft fingers. Smiling, she said, “You understood the messages I left for you. Ah, yachin, I knew you would.” She glanced over at Marin, who was watching with bemusement. “Bright as a star, this one. I’ve always said she’s the finest student I’ve ever had. She’ll be such an asset to Elytherios—”
I threw my hands up, as if to stop the tidal flow of her chatter. An asset to Elytherios? “Gitrin,” I snapped, “what’s going on? What are you doing here?”
She looked at me, her head cocked and her expression blank. “I thought you knew,” she said. “I couldn’t stay in the citidome, not after what happened with your evaluation. The geroi already suspected me as it was, and when things turned out… well, as they did… I knew it wouldn’t be safe for me.” She smiled fondly and brushed my shoulder. “But I had faith in you, and here you are.”
“But the Liberator,” I spluttered. “He kidnapped you!”
Gitrin looked at the old man, then Marin, then back to me. “Of course not. I left the night of your evaluation. How could I have left you those messages telling you where to find me, if I’d been abducted?”
I felt like I was losing my mind. I glanced at Isaak, who shrugged helplessly. “You couldn’t have left the night of my evaluation. The medic at the hospital said that he’d spoken to you, the morning after my annual.”
“I never spoke to any medic, Nadin. I didn’t speak to anyone—I had to leave quickly.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, my temper building explosively inside me. “Stop lying to me! I’m tired of all these riddles and these evasions. I want a straight answer. Where is Ceilos?”
Gitrin blinked. “He’s not in Hope Renewed?”
“No!” I shouted at the top of my voice. “The Liberator commed me, he said he had both of you. He’d taken you. You and Ceilos. He said he wanted to meet with me, so I came. I came here to see the Liberator, and I want to see him right now.”
Gitrin frowned. “Eos?” she said. The old man stepped forward.
I scoffed. “You? I’m supposed to believe that you’re the Liberator?”
He folded his arms. “I am… in a manner of speaking. There is no one Liberator. That is an identity that all of us in Elytherios share. It’s the name we adopt when we go on missions to the citidomes, to deliver supplies or help refugees who need a safe haven. Most people associate it with me, since I was the first runner.” Something about his voice sounded wistful. Marin slipped her hand into his, an oddly affectionate gesture for someone who had seemed so cold on the mountainside. Eos smiled. Then he looked at me again. “But it’s been a long, long time since I’ve left Elytherios.”
“Well, someone must have done it,” I snapped. “I spoke to a man who called himself the Liberator. He said he wanted to meet with me. He said that he had taken you and Ceilos, and that if I wanted to see you again, I would have to come here. Now I am tired of playing your guessing games. You tell me where Ceilos is right now, or I am going to tell the geroi exactly where they can find your little nest of rebels.”
Eos stepped forward, straightening his back and rising to his full height. Despite his age, he was very tall—and he looked very strong. His voice was like ice as he said, “I will see you dead before you bring any harm to the people of this city, kyrin.” He spat the word out like it was dirty. “This village is a sanctuary. It is the only free place on Iamos. We will not allow the geroi to taint it with their poison.”
“Eos, please,” Gitrin said, inserting herself between me and him. “She is only a child, and she has lost much. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
I bristled. She had no right to call me a child—I was enilin. I was about to say as much when Isaak put his hand on my shoulder.
“Nadin, come on,” he said. “Be rational. Gitrin is right here, telling you she wasn’t kidnapped. And Eos says he never commed you. Think about it—why would he lie? We’re totally at their mercy right now. They could throw us in the dungeon, but they haven’t. They don’t even have any torquing weapons pulled on us.”
I glared at him. “So, what? Are you accusing me of being mad now? You heard the comm the same as I did!”
His eyebrows knitted. “Of course that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just telling you to use some reason here.”
My temples throbbed. I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand, trying to c
alm my temper. “Then where is Ceilos?” I asked. “Who commed me?”
“The geroi?” said Isaak. “I mean, I think we’ve basically confirmed at this point that they’re pretty shady.”
“But why would the geroi patch me in to a private session of the gerotus, specifically for the purpose of making me distrust the geroi?”
“Maybe someone else,” Gitrin broke in. She turned to Eos, saying something quickly in the old language. I only caught snatches of it—without the System boosting my memory, I had to struggle to think of every word.
“Yes, it could be,” Eos said. “We’ve heard rumors from the runners recently, when they come back from missions. Attacks on the System… and on the citidomes themselves. Things that we had no part of, but have been attributed to the Liberator. We assumed that it was just the geroi spreading more of their lies, trying to turn the people against Elytherios, but—”
Attacks on the System. Like the one Melusin told me about. “It’s true,” I said. “Someone hacked the System’s early warning protocol on Ascendant Dawn, and an earthquake hit the citidome with no warning. Several people were killed, and their gerouin was seriously injured.”
Eos frowned. “I was not aware of that. I refuse to believe anyone in Elytherios could have done such a thing, though. Our society is built on principles of non-violence. We would never wish harm to anyone, not even the geroi. Besides, our access to the System is extremely limited—mostly small hacks to create illusions to steer System-users away from the city. I don’t think anyone here has the capability to perform a high-scale hack like that. Someone is trying to implicate us in something that we have no part in.”
“So, wait,” Isaak said, thoughtfully running a hand through his dark hair. “You mean there’s another band of separatists out there besides you guys? Who also call themselves ‘Liberator’? And they’re the ones who have Ceilos?”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Marin said. “How could all of this have escaped our notice?”
My voice faltered. “And how am I supposed to find Ceilos now?” He couldn’t just be gone. I had to find him—had to save him. I couldn’t leave him on his own, not after what had happened. I’m your partner, he’d said. He had never abandoned me, never turned against me, even after Tibros ordered him to. I couldn’t lose him now. Not before…
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