by Kit Rocha
But her gaze was fixed on the bar codes.
Kora had two. The first she’d received at birth—every citizen of Eden did. The second she’d gotten when she’d been granted Special Clearance.
“The marks we carry on our skin make us who we are,” Del said softly. She traced the bar codes, one at a time. “The ones given to us mark who we’ve been, and the ones we take for ourselves shape who we believe we can be. The first day Zeke came to us, he wanted his bar code gone so badly, I think he would have burned it off.”
“I like the phoenix you gave him instead,” Maricela offered.
“I’m not Zeke.” The incense made Kora feel heavy, sleepy—and loosened her tongue. “Besides, I don’t want them covered. I want them gone completely. Someday.”
“Someday.” Del stroked them again with a sigh. “I could cover them or remove them now, but it wouldn’t matter. Until you’re ready to let them go, they’ll always be there. So we’ll mark something else today.”
Kora understood how this process worked—theoretically. Del was part artist, part psychologist. The people of One didn’t request specific tattoos from her so much as they requested her insight. She would read their moods and worries like a book, then mark them with whatever images she chose.
After Ashwin’s abrupt reappearance in her life, Kora had considered cancelling this session. But a perceptive person—which Del most certainly was—would have learned even more from that than from her silence.
Instead, she deflected. “Tell me more about Gabe, Maricela.”
“Gabe?” The girl wrinkled her nose as she placed the censer on the floor beside the stone bench where Kora sat. “I don’t know, he’s...Gabe. Why?”
“No reason. He seems nice, that’s all.”
“Perfectly nice,” she confirmed. “And perfectly serious.”
Kora liked that about him. He was solid, like a rock, not just physically but mentally, as well. Reliable, easy to read, the kind of man who would never surprise you with the unexpected.
“Too serious.” Del’s long hair swung as she shook her head. “Sometimes I worry about him and all the thinking he does.”
Suddenly, Maricela dropped to the floor beside Del and peered up at Kora with suspicion. “You’re not trying to set me up with Gabe, are you? Ugh, his family’s noble. He’d get all sorts of ideas—”
“For me, Maricela.” Del was still holding both her hands, and Kora pulled them free gently but firmly. “I was asking for myself.”
Maricela’s suspicion turned to horror. “But—what about Ashwin?”
It hurt. The pain shamed Kora even as she embraced it, used it to center herself. “I hadn’t heard from him in six months. Half a year. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead, and it probably never even occurred to him to wonder the same about me. What about him?”
Maricela crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes gleaming with stubborn certainty. “He wondered. He must have.”
God save her from a Rios who’d already made up her mind. Kora sighed and looked to Del for support.
“Kora’s right to be cautious, sweetheart.” Del touched Maricela’s cheek fondly before flowing to her feet. “I’ve never met a Makhai soldier, but the record keeper before me did. She said it was the only time she ever looked into a man’s eyes and saw nothing staring back at her.”
“But…” Maricela tucked her feet beneath her and rested her chin on Kora’s knee. “You mourned him when you thought he was dead. Surely that means something.”
It did—to her. But that wasn’t enough to hang on to a dream, especially for someone who prided herself on being pragmatic. “Enough, Maricela. Please.”
“Yes, don’t unsettle her, or we’ll have to start over.” Del circled Kora and trailed her fingers down her back. “Do you know the story of the Two Princesses, Kora?”
“Which two?” She grinned at Maricela to break the tension. “This sector is overrun with them.”
“The first two.” Del picked up her sketchpad and a charcoal pencil. “Maricela’s mother, Juana. And her aunt, Adriana.”
“Only what I picked up from the murals at the palace.”
Del’s hand moved quickly, the soft scratch of her pencil as hypnotic as the way her voice sank into an easy rhythm. “Adriana was a warrior. She fought for her people, killed for them if necessary. She fell in love with her bodyguard and challenged the Prophet himself for the right to marry him. In the paintings, she holds the heart of her people in her hands...but if the occasion called for it, Adriana could tear the heart out of an enemy’s chest. Her spine was pure steel.”
The scratching paused as Del glanced at Maricela, a smile curving her full lips. “But Juana was different. She married Adriana’s brother, the Prophet’s only son and heir. She and Adriana became sisters and friends. Juana had no gift for death, but there was nothing she touched that wouldn’t grow. No person she touched who wasn’t moved.” Del nudged Maricela with her foot. “No child she loved who didn’t thrive.”
Maricela nodded, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
Del went back to sketching. “Adriana’s spine was steel, but Juana’s was made of roses. And because men can be fools who only recognize one kind of strength, they underestimated her. When the wars came, Juana bent with the wind. She grew stronger and fiercer as she wrapped herself tight around the people she loved. She became a wall of thorns, and no one could touch the people she called hers without bleeding for their trouble.”
After a moment of silence, Del turned the sketchpad around. The bold design filled the page in a long vertical line—two sets of vines weaving in and around one another, with blooming flowers and tightly furled buds nestled between sharp thorns.
“I think you’re like Juana,” Del said, her voice still a husky murmur. “Your gift is life. There’s power in that.”
Kora’s fingers trembled as she reached out and touched the paper. “It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Del tore the paper free and handed it to her before moving to the table that held her tattooing equipment. “I don’t give the spine of roses often. Not many have a heart big enough to carry the burden.”
“Are you sure that I do?” The question slipped out, unbidden. There were few things in life that Kora had never second-guessed, and her care for others was the biggest. The most important. It had been more than a job, or even her life’s work. It had been a calling.
But now, she questioned everything.
“Of course I’m sure.” Del returned with a marker in her hand and tilted Kora’s chin up. “But that’s not enough for you, because you’re not a believer.”
Kora had tried to study Sector One’s concept of God. But he was nebulous, his message and character changing depending on the situation, on interpretation, even on the person writing or speaking about him. As a scientist, Kora couldn’t reconcile the wild variances, the seemingly human failings in a being who was supposed to be infallible.
But there were some things she understood without hesitation. “I believe in the Rios family, and in your abilities. If you say I deserve to wear Juana’s roses, I’ll wear them.”
Del didn’t release her chin. “You’ve looked into Ashwin’s eyes. Did you see nothingness staring back at you?”
She’d seen confusion, puzzlement. Anger. Terror. And, just once, a need so sharp that she ached to remember it. “No.”
“It takes a big heart to see past the death. I’ve always wondered what Juana would have seen in the eyes of the last Makhai soldier who came to One. Perhaps the same thing you see in Ashwin’s.” Del crouched down so they were on eye level. “And remember, Kora. There was nothing she touched that didn’t grow.”
The words played over and over in Kora’s mind as she settled into the seat Del indicated. She considered them as Del prepared her skin, as the dull buzz of the tattoo machine filled the room, even through the first angry pricks of the needle.
At one time, she would have believed Del without hesitation. If she was
talking about healing, about work, then Kora would have had no doubts at all. But emotion was trickier. People were hard to predict.
A Makhai soldier? That was impossible.
No, she had to be more careful this time. She could be polite, courteous, but she couldn’t afford to let it go beyond that, because Maricela was right. She had mourned Ashwin—longer and harder than she’d thought possible—and only a fool would put herself through that twice.
Chapter Five
The trip to the gravel pit had been little more than a formality. No one expected the deserters to be there, but Deacon had brought Ashwin and most of the Riders with him, just in case.
Instead of a fight, they’d found an abandoned camp. A sloppy camp, judging by what they could reconstruct of the way it had been set up, as well as the fact that the deserters had left behind enough information to allow reconstruction.
Ashwin honestly told Deacon that the sloppiness indicated a breakdown in discipline and dissent amongst the self-appointed leaders. There was no reason to lie. Until the Base told him otherwise, the Riders’ goals were his goals.
So were the Riders’ hobbies. Which was how Ashwin found himself seated at the fire pit next to Deacon, watching an impromptu celebration of a clear spring evening turn into a party. Servants appeared from the direction of the palace carrying heavy metal tubs full of iced beverages, and young women dressed in bright colors trailed down the path from the temple in twos and threes.
Most of them cast looks at him and Deacon before putting their heads close together. Their laughter filled the clearing, rising over the crackle of the fire and the murmur of voices.
“New guy gets all the attention.” Reyes tromped around the pit, handed him and Deacon each a cold, open bottle of beer, then settled on the ground in the flickering light. “They don’t know you’re all work and no play.”
Ashwin rubbed his thumb over the cold, uneven glass of the bottle. It wasn’t smooth and uniform like the mass-produced bottles that came out of the factories in Sector Eight. Somewhere in Sector One, a family was blowing glass bottles by hand, the same way another cured leather, and a third wove fabric or did any one of a hundred things the rest of the sectors had forgotten—or had never known how to do to begin with.
And yet, they still found time to...play. To celebrate. Ashwin glanced toward the knot of girls and caught them staring at him. They erupted into renewed laughter, and Ashwin looked away, discomfited. “I’ve rarely had the opportunity to focus on anything but work.”
“That’s a shame,” Reyes observed, though he didn’t sound particularly sorry to hear it.
Deacon grunted. “Go be a dick somewhere else, Reyes.”
“That hurts.” But he was grinning as he rose and headed toward the cluster of acolytes. They parted to let him close and then surrounded him, laughing and flirting and blushing.
At least they weren’t looking at Ashwin anymore. He sipped the beer, certain that his metabolism would burn through anything short of the strongest hard liquor before it could compromise his judgment. “Is this something that happens often? These celebrations?”
“When the mood strikes.” Deacon swirled the beer in his bottle. “If it’s too cold even with a fire, we stick to the barracks. But outside is better. Freer.” He pinned Ashwin with a look. “It’s good to be reminded what you’re fighting for.”
Movement along the path from the palace drew Ashwin’s attention. Maricela and Kora were drifting toward the clearing, their arms linked together. Maricela’s white dress was pristine in the last sunlight, which was as much a statement as her brother’s carefully tailored humility. White fabric picked up the grime and dirt of the sectors so easily, almost no one bothered with it.
No one except princesses.
Kora was dressed more casually. She was wearing battered jeans with rips in the legs, little white fringes surrounding tantalizing glimpses of bare skin, and a modest black blouse with sleeves that ended just below her elbows.
She’d worn white once, too, crisp lab coats over subdued shirts and slacks. Sometimes she was the only clean thing he saw for weeks. He would sit in an exam room, his body battered and bruised, and feel distantly, oddly relieved that she lived a life comfortable and safe enough to allow for perfect white coats.
That was how it had started. His...fixation. His obsession. Distant, odd relief. He hadn’t recognized the warning signs until the distance had already closed and odd became normal. When relief shifted to anticipation.
This time he’d be more careful.
Two of the temple acolytes broke away and met them on the path. Kora laughed, covered her face with her hands, and turned around.
The black shirt that had seemed so modest from the front was missing its back. The fabric draped from her shoulders and crossed low across her hips, leaving the long line of her spine uncovered.
But not bare. Vivid, fresh ink climbed up her back, an elegant tangle of vines with sharp thorns and bright red roses blooming amidst them. He traced the vines with his gaze, from the small of her back up to her vulnerable nape and back down again, even though it felt like the tattoo needles were jabbing the inside of his skull.
A weak spot in the Base’s conditioning and recalibration regimen. Looking at Kora might always hurt, but pain could never be a foolproof deterrent, not for a Makhai soldier.
But he should still stop looking. Because he was being careful.
He forced himself to avert his gaze, and the pain eased. Unfortunately, it was replaced by the sharp taste of displeasure when he noticed Gabe had joined them—and was staring at Kora with entirely too much familiarity.
Gabe whistled softly. “Roses along the spine from Del. That’s a statement, all right.”
Even Deacon was watching as the acolytes congratulated Kora and admired her ink. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“Wonder what?” Ashwin asked.
“What she sees for Kora.” Gabe settled on the bench next to Ashwin and tilted his head toward the temple. “Del sees into people. I don’t know whether it’s training or psychology or something more, but she marks the truth of who they are on their skin. Or the truth of who they can become.”
“And the roses mean something?”
“They’re for people who fight against the darkness by dealing in life instead of death.” Gabe glanced at Kora again. “I have a cousin with the roses on her spine. She’s spent the last fifteen years raising orphans from other sectors. It’s a difficult fight. Giving in to cynicism and revenge is easy. But hope? Hope is hard.”
Not for Kora. Ashwin would be surprised if the woman knew how to do anything but hope. “Then it suits her.”
Maricela was laughing as she and Kora reached the brash glow of the fire. “Deacon,” she said with mock severity. “You’re not dancing.”
“No, I’m not.” His features softened into a rare smile as he set aside his beer and rose. “Help me rectify that?”
“Gladly.”
Kora grinned after them as they left, then slid her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “Good evening.”
Ashwin inclined his head. “Dr. Bellamy.”
He regretted the formality when Gabe smiled. “Kora. We were just admiring your ink. Congratulations.”
She blushed. “Thank you, but the praise is really Del’s.”
“You’ll have to share it.” Gabe rose and gestured to the spot next to Ashwin. “Can I get you a drink?”
“No thanks, I’m good.”
Gabe squeezed her shoulder before leaving. Ashwin watched him go and imagined breaking his fingers. Not all of them, just a pinky. They snapped so easily, and no one really needed them for anything vital—
“May I?” Kora asked quietly.
Letting her sit next to him wasn’t being careful. But offending her when Gideon considered her a sister ran counter to his mission. “Of course.”
The music changed over into another, faster song as she settled beside him. “So. How do you like Sect
or One?”
Three inches of empty air separated their bodies. Ashwin calculated their respective heights, and then the volume of emptiness between them. Converted to milliliters, it was a soothingly high number. “It’s different.”
“From the Base, or from the city?”
He let his gaze drift over the crowd. The Riders were dancing and laughing, as if their arms weren’t full of ravens marking the deaths they’d dealt. As if the religion they fought for didn’t curse them for taking those lives. They were walking dead men, martyrs who had embraced damnation.
And they still laughed. Danced. And talked about hope. “From everywhere.”
“That’s fair.” She shifted, and her arm brushed his, setting off a cascade of delicately painful prickles. “I’m always glad I left the city. But on nights like this, the feeling gets a little stronger.”
He knew why she’d left the city, perhaps better than she ever could, because he knew where she came from. What she was. But he still wanted to ask, because the answer might reveal the one thing Ashwin had never been able to predict—what went on in her quick, agile brain. “Why did you leave?”
“I didn’t plan to,” she confessed. “When the Council ordered the strike on Sector Two, I packed up some supplies and headed that way. I knew that it didn’t matter how many doctors or medics were there, they’d still need help. But when I got to the checkpoint, I covered my bar codes and bribed the guard.” She met his eyes. “That’s when I realized I’d already decided I wasn’t going back. Ever.”
He glanced down, where her twin bar codes marred the smooth skin inside her wrist. “You haven’t gotten rid of them yet?”
Kora followed his gaze, then covered the dark lines with her other hand. “It seems silly, doesn’t it? But I don’t think I’m ready to forget.”
“Why would it be silly?” He curled his hand around the rough stone seat until the sharp edges dug into his palm. “We all need reminders sometimes. Of where we’re from. Of why we left.”