by Jayne Faith
If not for the protection of the overlords, we on Earthenfell would have perished many hundreds of years ago as alien races fought to claim our planet. The battles in the skies have raged for centuries, but the overlords have kept us safe, fighting our enemies so we could live in peace.
We had no deep love for the overlords and did not worship them, but we knew that without them we’d all be dead. And so we always praised them.
I shivered, imagining how vast and terrifying it must be up there beyond the shield. I sent up another prayer, one of protection for the overlord fighters who tirelessly fended off our enemies.
When we passed under the arch to enter the pavilion, I scanned the section our clan was assigned until I spotted my mother sitting in the third row.
“I see Mother,” I said to Lana. I looked up at Rand. “Thank you again for allowing her to ride with your family. I’m not sure she could have come otherwise.”
“Of course, Maya.” He gave a little bow of his head, touched my elbow, and then angled off toward his own clan’s section.
I guided Lana through the aisles, past other clan groupings. There was a charged energy in the air despite the hush, and my stomach tightened with nervous anticipation.
When we passed a clan section where a man stood with a bucket in his arms, from which his clan’s Obligate would be drawn by lottery, I shivered. I couldn’t imagine what that clan’s Obligate Elects must be feeling, knowing that after the feast, one of them would have to leave their home forever and go to Calisto with no preparation or training to compete.
Mother gave us a tired smile when we reached the section with the Clan Terra banner. I let Lana sit in between us, and I turned to wave at a couple of distant cousins farther up in the Clan Terra seating who were also wearing Obligate Elect white.
At one time, everyone in a clan was related somehow. But through the centuries, the bloodlines crossed and mixed so much it became too difficult to draw lines between them based on blood relation. The clans later became symbolic groupings rather than family groupings, though most people had at least a few relatives in the same clan.
I noticed the front-most row of our section was conspicuously empty.
“Have you seen Obligate Belinda yet?” I asked Mother in a hushed tone.
She shook her head. “Neither her nor her family,” she rasped, and then coughed a few times.
I frowned. By Clan Terra tradition, our Obligate usually arrived early to the pavilion. Before the ceremony began, all of Clan Terra’s Obligate Elects would line up and file past to offer the Obligate a prayer of thanks and strength. We did that while the lottery clans chose their Obligates by drawing.
It wouldn’t feel right to skip the traditional prayer for our Obligate.
My unease mounted as the pavilion continued to fill. All of the Obligate Elects—young men and women between the ages of eighteen and twenty—stood out from the rest in their white ceremonial garb. There were sixteen clans total, and sixteen Obligates would be offered.
But where was ours?
The sky had deepened to the violet blue of dusk, and the crowd was settling as the last few attendees found places with their clans.
Down on the pavilion’s stage the light bearers had lined up, eight on each side, one for each of the sixteen Obligates who would go to Calisto for our half-year’s Selection.
I watched as Mr. Arsen, the Clan Terra officiant for the Selection seated in our clan’s first row, twisted and scanned our section. His salt-and-pepper eyebrows were drawn together, forming a deep vertical worry crease in the center of his forehead.
I glanced at Mother. She was watching Mr. Arsen, too.
An anguished cry pulled my attention toward the section to our left. A woman about my mother’s age was clutching at a young man who was dressed in Obligate Elect white. The young man stood stiff and still, a stricken look frozen on his face. Nearby, an officiant with a lottery bucket held a slip of paper.
I swallowed hard as I watched the young man look down at the woman who was silently sobbing against his chest.
“This is my duty, Mother,” he said. His voice was strong and clear, but his expression was dazed and his eyes glassy and wide.
Lana tilted her head and then turned to me. “Who was the young man drawn for that clan?”
I squinted, trying to place him. He looked familiar. We’d been in school together; he was a year behind me if I remembered correctly. I didn’t think I’d crossed paths with him since Lana and I had graduated. “He’s younger than us. Orion, I think is his name?”
She nodded solemnly. “Yes. I remember the name. I think he may have ended up in machinery.”
Orion’s sleeves were tight around his biceps as he raised his hands to his mother’s shaking back and bent to touch his cheek to the top of her head. His shoulders looked well-muscled, too. If he had indeed been working on one of the machinery lines for the past year, his job had given him a very fit physique. That would help him when he went to Calisto to compete to become one of Lord Toric’s personal servants.
My heart ached for him and for his mother, who was trying to compose herself but still trembled as she wiped her eyes.
There were similar scenes in the other sections where Obligates were being drawn by lottery.
I inhaled a slow breath and trained my attention on the stage, feeling unnerved. I wasn’t sure why I felt shaken by the scene. It was my fourth Selection ceremony as an Obligate Elect, and I’d attended the Selection since the age of ten like all of the other Earthenfell children. I knew exactly what to expect. Perhaps it was the gouge in my heart left by Court’s betrayal that made everything else feel more raw.
Movement in one of the aisles caught my eye. A boy of about fourteen years old was taking the steps two at a time. He stopped, his chest heaving and sweat beading on his forehead, in front of Mr. Arsen. The boy leaned down to say something in Mr. Arsen’s ear.
Despite the evening heat, a chill swept through my body. Everything seemed to slow as I watched Mr. Arsen stand and face us. His face was pale, his jaw slack. He clamped his mouth closed, swallowed, and then held one hand up high.
“Clan Terra,” he said, his voice carrying up the tiers. “Our Obligate—” He faltered and his eyes bugged wide. He gave a slight shake of his head. “Obligate Belinda has—has died. Of a snake bite. Only an hour ago.”
My hand flew to my mouth as a chorus of gasps and cries rose around me. I turned to my mother and sister, and their faces reflected my own horror.
Being close to the front, I could see Mr. Arsen’s lips tremble as he raised his other arm and then flapped both hands, encouraging us to quiet down.
He turned and beckoned to the boy, who stood off to the side, watching. Cries and questions burst out in our section, creating an anxious cacophony.
Ignoring my mother’s distressed voice and Lana’s clutching fingers on my arm, and remained transfixed. Mr. Arsen said something to the boy and he nodded. With his head down, he sidestepped past Mr. Arsen. He went to the section to our left and tapped the shoulder of Orion’s clan officiant.
The officiant handed his clan’s lottery bucket to the boy, and the boy jogged back to Mr. Arsen.
“We have no choice,” Mr. Arsen said, taking the bucket from the boy. “We must draw our Obligate by lottery.”
3
Maya
MY THROAT WENT dry and my heart seemed to falter for a few beats. Then everything sped up, my pulse raced, and the shocked voices all around me thundered in my ears.
For a second or two, I tried to guess how many Obligate Elects there were in our clan, tried to calculate my and Lana’s odds of getting selected. There were certainly at least a couple dozen of us. But fewer than forty, maybe? My brain refused to complete the estimate.
Lana was clinging to my arm with both hands. Mother was looking around like a lost child, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
My eyes kept slipping over to Orion, the Obligate whose name had been drawn only moments ago from
the bucket that Mr. Arsen held.
Orion had moved to the bottom row of the section for his clan—Clan Cairns. He sat with his chin up, his spine straight, and a hand resting on each thigh. Some members of his clan gathered around him to offer a few words and then drifted back to their seats. Orion nodded at each one. I couldn’t quite see his full profile from where I sat, but there was an admirable dignity to his posture.
I flicked a glance back down at Mr. Arsen, who’d enlisted a few Clan Terra members to help him quickly scribble names on the backs of the pieces of paper that Clan Cairns had used for their lottery.
“How could Obligate Belinda have been bitten by a snake on Selection day of all days?” The sound of Lana’s shocked voice made me turn to her.
I shook my head slowly. “I can’t imagine,” I said, barely managing enough air to push the words out.
“What about the next Clan Terra Obligate in line? Teresa? Can’t she go in Belinda’s place?” Lana asked.
“No. Teresa won’t be of age until the next Selection.” Teresa was slated to go to Calisto as Clan Terra’s Obligate in her first Selection next spring. She was still only seventeen and thus still ineligible for that evening’s the Selection.
I glanced again at my twin. If we’d allowed the overlords to classify Lana as a disabled citizen, she would have been taken from our home and placed in special housing. But she also would have been safely ineligible for the Selection. I’d always believed that we’d made the right choice, that she was better off at home with us, and truth be told, I couldn’t imagine sending her away. I couldn’t imagine life without her.
But as I watched Mr. Arsen and the others drop pieces of paper into the lottery bucket, my heart contracted, tightening into a tiny hard pebble of fear in my chest. Had we made the right choice with Lana . . . ?
Mr. Arsen held the lip of the bucket in one hand and shook it back and forth a little. Clan Terra had gone so silent I could hear the quiet rustling of the pieces of paper.
He held the bucket up at shoulder height and nodded at the boy who had delivered the news of Belinda’s death. The boy reached up and his hand disappeared into the bucket. He pulled it out and passed a piece of paper to Mr. Arsen.
Mr. Arsen set the bucket down and then gripped the piece of paper in both hands as if it weighed as much as a brick. His lips parted and his chest rose and fell once before he looked up.
“Maya Calderon.” He held up the piece of paper.
A roar rose in my ears, the internal sound of my own disbelief and horror. But even through the roar, a thread of relief laced through my heart. At least it was not Lana.
“Maya, no!” Lana’s panic was a visceral shot to my heart, but her voice unfroze my limbs.
Mother was gasping, her mouth opening and closing as if she were drowning. She half-rose to her feet and started to cry out, but her words dissolved into a fit of violent coughing and she sank back down.
“Stay right here with Mother,” I said softly right next to Lana’s ear as calmly as I could manage. I peeled her fingers from my arm and stood, stepping out of the range of her reaching hands.
On clumsy-weak legs, I side-stepped to the aisle and went down to Mr. Arsen. He watched me with huge eyes.
I stiffly moved to stand beside him and face my clan. The weight of their shocked stares seemed to hit me right in the middle of my chest, and I couldn’t draw enough breath.
“Maya Calderon,” he called out loud enough for the whole section to hear, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat. “Maya Calderon has been selected as Clan Terra’s Obligate.”
Low words passed through the crowd, like a chill breeze rattling dry limbs, spreading from the lower rows to the upper rows.
I could hear the sounds of my mother and twin weeping and tried to keep my gaze averted, but I couldn’t help looking at them. They clung to each other, their faces twisted in unchecked misery.
“Maya,” Lana sobbed, as if she could feel my eyes on her.
The anguish in her voice ripped through me, snatching away my resolve with sharp claws. Hands reached out to steady me before I even realized I’d nearly fallen. I tried to hold myself up, but my knees refused to support me.
The hands on my arms and around my waist turned me and lowered me to the center of the front bench of Clan Terra’s section, sitting me in the place where Obligate Belinda was supposed to be.
Ahead, the light bearers walked in synchronized steps from each side of the stage to the row of candelabra at the back, marking the beginning of the Selection ceremony. One light bearer for each of the sixteen candles.
One of those candles was for me.
The light bearers filed off the stage, and the Selection Controller, a round woman with gray-streaked hair pulled up in a tight bun at the crown of her head, walked up the five steps from the pit in front of the stage. From there I could just make out the dot of the implant at the back of her neck. Like the man who took our bergamine collections every workday, she was an Earthen but also a direct underling of the overlords. She stood under the rusted iron ceremonial arch, a relic from before the overlords returned to protect Earthenfell, and turned to face the crowd.
Even when the Controller began to speak, the misery of Mother’s and Lana’s soft sobs still filled my ears, blotting out all other sounds.
Though my ears refused to listen, I knew, more or less, the script the Controller recited. The story of a perilous time before the overlords, back when Earthenfell was called Earth. The near extinction of humans at the hands of violent alien races vying for control of our planet. The arrival of the Calistan overlords, their promise of protection, the raising of the shield, and the battles in the sky.
And the price they demanded: sixteen human Obligates twice a year.
Suddenly the Controller’s words cut through the buzzing in my ears and the sounds of mother’s and Lana’s grief.
“And so we make this offering twice a year,” the Controller said. “We offer sixteen of our own who are in their prime at the command of the overlords and for the pleasure of Lord Toric.”
A violent tremor passed through me.
For the pleasure of Lord Toric.
One of the female Obligates would serve the alien lord’s pleasure. I realized with a jolt that I did not know for sure what that meant. We would be competing for a position in Lord Toric’s harem, of course, but I did not know exactly what it meant to serve him.
There were rumors of Lord Toric’s enormous sexual appetites. But what kinds of acts did he expect—demand—from his harem?
The uncertainty of what lay ahead and the horrible ripping in my heart at the prospect of leaving my home, my family, seemed to be trying to turn me inside out.
My stomach constricted but my lungs felt too wide. My breath hitched as if the muscles around my chest and throat had gone out of sync. I gasped as my pulse raced at a sickening pace.
I looked around wildly for help.
Was I dying like Belinda? Was it a cursed position that would continue to claim Clan Terra Obligates one by one?
Someone laid a hand on my arm and asked me a question, but I couldn’t focus. My breath was hitching so violently I couldn’t have responded anyway.
I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out.
Flinging concerned hands away, I rose and pitched forward, aiming to run. I made it only a few steps before my feet tangled.
“Easy.” A low, soothing voice and a strong arm around my waist cut through my panic.
I looked up into Orion’s eyes. He was bent over me with a mix of concern and sympathy on his face. Even in my anguish, I thought how remarkable it was that he could be so kind when he’d learned of his own fate only moments before I’d learned of mine.
With a light touch of one hand on the small of my back and his other hand under my elbow, he guided me back to my clan.
“Slow breaths in through your nose,” he whispered.
I did as he instructed. It was a tiny relief just to have something to fo
cus on.
“Your mother and sister need you to be strong. You can do this, Maya.” His hand slipped from my elbow, down the underside of my forearm, and squeezed my fingers with gentle pressure before he stepped back and returned to his own clan.
I tried to thank him, but all that came out was a wheezy whisper. The Controller was still speaking. I tried to focus on her words, to pull myself together.
Orion was right. Falling apart would not help Mother and Lana. I took a steady breath and tried to relax my clenched hands in my lap. My family would need every bit as much strength as I would to survive after I was gone.
My heart lurched with a sickening thump. Lana. Who would fulfill her quota each day?
Just as the new, deep worry began to fill me, someone was pushing at the back of my shoulder.
“You must go down there now.” Mr. Arsen was urging me to rise.
I started to stand so I could go join the other Obligates who were descending through the aisles to gather in the pit in front of the stage, but my knees gave out.
“Maya.” A hand appeared. I knew from the voice that it was Orion.
I grasped his hand and let him haul me to my feet. I stood there a moment, making sure my legs would hold me. Then I nodded to Orion.
“Thank you.” I pulled my shoulders back and lifted my chin, and he let go.
He held out one palm, indicating that I should go ahead of him in the aisle that led to steps down the side of the pavilion seating.
My first few breaths were shaky and constricted as I left my clan and my family behind. But as I walked, I concentrated every bit of strength on steeling myself. I wanted Mother and Lana to see how steadily I moved, how calm I was.
The steps down to the stage seemed to stretch out forever, but I focused on one at a time. It helped to know that Orion was right behind me. Two other Obligates walked down the steps ahead of me, and I wondered if they’d spent the past couple of years preparing for such a moment, or if they were like me and Orion.
“Maya?” Someone in the seats exclaimed. It was a familiar voice.