Defiance: The Umbra Chronicles Book 2
Page 25
Well, she amended privately, not for the last fifteen years anyway. She’d paid the price for that infraction with her silence. There was only one person who knew. No one else knew about her daughter. There was no way, no way anyone could know about Sheya.
But if she’d been to Re-Ed, maybe she’d broken her conditions for some reason? What could possibly have made her do such a stupid thing? Now her memories had been tampered with. Re-Educators were probably specialists, but that didn’t mean that Tethia wanted her brain taken apart and put back together again.
She was so busy searching her mind she didn’t notice that the talkers had fallen quiet. In the silence, there was the sound of an odd little beep. ‘Another dose, I think.’
‘But she’ll remember!’
‘She won’t remember.’ The androgynous voice was calm. ‘The medication only makes her sleep. The memory reorganisation is carried out by skilled professionals. How else do you think we could get someone to forget specific people and events and not become a vegetable? She’s already finished the Re-Education process. Those troublesome memories are forgotten and we have a nice obedient Lieutenant on our hands again.’
‘But what if she finds out she’s been Re-Educated?’
‘So what if she does? She’d be a fool to break the Laws again. As long as she keeps the Laws, I personally don’t care what she remembers.’
Tethia told herself later she’d felt the drug go into her vein, but it was hard to be sure as was suddenly so very, very sleepy.
#
Tethia woke, bleary eyed and heavy with dreams. She looked around her room in the barracks and noticed with growing horror that the dawning lights near the ceiling were already on. She turned the other way to look through the protectively-tinted window. The nebula had already set and the sky was completely dark. Her heart pounded a frenzied rhythm from her dream, and more important than any dream – she was late!
She dressed quickly, with an efficiency born of thirteen years of military service. She didn’t hurry – that would be unseemly. As she closed the door behind her, she realised that she’d forgotten something. In sheer desperation, she pressed her forehead against the cool metal of the door. She’d forgotten the damn bird.
She hurried back inside the room – seemliness be damned! – and leaned over the table to get the bowl of feed from the windowsill. She paused.
The window was shut. Locked.
She never locked her window. She was on the fifth floor. It wasn’t as though anyone would ever come in unannounced via a fifth-floor window. And, here in New Rome, the dome protected the atmosphere from both the dangerous exposure to the nebula and from the vagaries of the weather. It was neither too hot nor too cold, so windows were more ornamental than anything. She never locked her window. If she did that, then the falcon might get trapped and as much as she loved the bird, it was still a wild thing. She loved it for its wildness, its strength and independence.
Her foot bumped something under the table. She went very still. Her heart still pounding a tattoo from her dream and her race out the door, she stepped back slowly. The falcon was on the floor, underneath the desk. She knelt, stretched out a hand. The feathers she had never dared touch before seemed almost rough. The flesh beneath them was cold and still.
Tethia snatched her hand back, a cry of disgust escaping her. She rose to her feet and shot open the window. She picked up the dead, magnificent thing and flung it out the window into the dark morning, then turned and ran from the room.
There were three separate checkpoints between the Officer’s Barracks and Tethia’s office in the Imperial Military Special Services building and at every single one she had to slow down to a respectable speed, cast her eyes down like a respectable woman and allow them to search her briefcase. At every single one she had to make a statement, as she did six times a day, every day of her working life, that the computer she carried was used solely for the purpose of work.
‘In accordance with conservation and wastage laws,’ she repeated each time, thinking irreverently that detaining her this way when she was clearly running late – look at the time! –should be against some kind of law. Wasting time was surely as bad as wasting resources? But there was no point, so she kept her eyes down and said what she was supposed to say.
The sentries looked at her closely in the amber light of the checkpoints, the lightsticks set so close that each pool of light overlapped into the next, ironically known as lovers-light. Out in the suburbs the lights were spaced further apart. Where the pools of light did not meet, they were known as stranger-light. While Tethia’s foot ached to tap impatiently where the lovers-light overlapped, she didn’t feel much like a lover, more like a vengeful ex.
And then, when she finally reached the Special Services offices, she couldn’t even get in. There was a crowd being held back by Servicemen dressed in distinctive black uniforms. Tethia wasn’t tall enough to catch a glimpse of what was happening over the shoulders of the grey-garbed Servicemen in front of her, all waiting patiently to be let into the building.
There was the sound of people making an undignified commotion – shouting and yelling, grunting from others who were probably trying to restrain the shouters. Finally, irritated beyond bearing with shifting from foot to foot waiting in the street, Tethia tapped the shoulder of the Serviceman in front of her.
‘How much longer is this going to take?’ she demanded, raising her voice so it could be heard above the hubbub.
The Serviceman turned, a look of irritation on his face that was swiftly changed to deference when he saw in the white light that surrounded the offices that she outranked him. Tethia smirked – but only on the inside because she wasn’t an idiot. Since she outranked him, she didn’t have to keep her eyes downcast and she could eyeball him properly.
‘I said, how much longer is this going to take, Corporal?’
‘Salve, sir! I can’t say for sure, sir! It only started a few minutes ago, sir.’
‘Well, what’s going on then?’ She kept her voice sharp. It made her easier to hear.
‘Deviants, sir! Audited and found to be committing infractions against the Laws, sir.’
Tethia ground her teeth together. Deviants were the province of the Auditors and the Re-Educators. They had nothing to do with her and therefore there was nothing she could do to influence the situation.
The corporal went on. ‘I don’t know which Laws they broke, sir.’
‘Did I ask you which Laws they broke?’ Tethia snapped. ‘What do I care what a bunch of Deviants do? I just want to get to work like a good little Lieutenant. Now clear me a path to the front. If I’m not the first person through those doors, even an Auditor won’t be able to help you!’
‘Sir!’ He saluted smartly, if awkwardly, to avoid hitting another Serviceman in the crush around them. He turned and grabbed the man next to him, muttering frantically. In a moment, the two of them were shoving their way to the front, Tethia trailing behind. It took a few minutes but, by the time the doors were re-opened, Tethia was among the first to shove her way through. She didn’t cast another look at the two corporals who had cleared her way.
She hurried – respectably – into her office then drew a deep breath in, solely for the joy of letting it out. Her heart still pounded, and the rapid breathing fostered by sheer panic hadn’t helped.
‘Kela,’ she whispered to the woman sitting at one of the desks, ‘did I make it on time?’
Kela looked up sharply, her blue eyes serious. ‘No one could get in, Lu. They were removing the Deviants. No one would hold being late against you today.’
‘I’m never late.’
‘No, you’re never late.’ Kela’s voice made Tethia look up. She wasn’t sure if her assistant was trying to be soothing or sarcastic.
‘How did you get here on time?’ Tethia asked.
‘I have no life outside this place,’ Kela said drily. ‘Come on. Get to your desk. You’ll draw attention standing like that.’
&nb
sp; Kela was right. Tethia sat down and spent a few minutes rifling through the papers on her desk to gain control of herself. She drew the computer out of her briefcase.
‘Is there anything interesting out there today?’
Kela quirked an eyebrow but didn’t pause in her typing. ‘On your desk, Lu. My handwriting.’
‘One day someone’s going to hear you call me that,’ Tethia warned, finding the envelope with Kela’s obsessively tidy writing on it. ‘They’ll haul you away for being too familiar with your superior.’
‘And I’ll tell them I meant to say “Lieutenant” only I’ve got this awful frog in my throat.’ Kela finally stopped typing, looked up and grinned. She coughed a few times, experimentally. ‘It’s your fault. Here I am a dusty old maid and it’s your fault.’
‘UnTied is not the same as an old maid. Being unTied is a choice and a privilege.’
‘It wasn’t my choice... Lu. I’ve been working for you for the last five years, watching the best years of my youth slip away, all because you won’t introduce me to your brother.’ She smoothed a strand of short, pale hair past her ear and looked haughty.
Tethia laughed. Kela had been her assistant for five years and by now it was an old joke. ‘He’s not your type. You have a sense of humour and the capacity for independent thought. He has neither of those.’
‘But he’s the best boxer in New Rome.’
‘So I hear. I don’t much like sports, but people keep telling me about them. I’ve never understood what was so amazing about two men bludgeoning one another.’
‘He is amazing, Lu. I saw him in the arena the other day. He took his shirt off in front of the crowd before the match and I swear the whole arena sighed.’ Kela rested her head on her hand dreamily. ‘I don’t want much. Just let him wrap me in those big muscular arms just once and I’ll die happy.’
‘You would die, so be sure you’ve made out a will. You’d smother. He’s got an awful stink after a match.’
Kela wrinkled her nose. ‘You know that’s disgusting, right?’
‘He’s my brother. Of course I know he’s disgusting.’
The door of the office was safely closed, protecting the quiet giggles of the two unTied people. It also muffled Tethia’s gasp when she opened the envelope.
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About the Author
Grace Martin writes fantasy novels and loves to read. Her favourite authors are Sarah J. Maas, Anne McCaffrey and Suzanne Collins. She finds endless inspiration in the world around her and lives in Sydney with an obsessive, abusive and adoring mini cat. Connect with Grace via her website where you can sign up for her newsletter for exclusive notifications about coming promotions and new releases, or you can follow her on Instagram or Facebook.
Coming soon from Grace Martin
• Resistance: The Umbra Chronicles Book 3
Other works by Grace Martin
• Daughter of a Captive God, Book 1 in The Author’s Daughter Series
• The Night Princess
• A Game of Starlight and Secrets
• Vengeance: The Umbra Chronicles Book 1
Copyright Page
Defiance: The Umbra Chronicles Book 2
Copyright (c) by Grace Martin.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and events are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.