Kingdom of Cages

by Sarah Zettel

  I don’t want to die, she said to the forest rising up toward her. I don’t want to die.

  Shoulder Woman let out a startled exclamation. Gray-Eyed man clicked a few new commands on the board, and Pandora got a few hundred meters closer.

  Pandora, which let the hothousers live and Mom die.

  But let Chena live, and Nan Elle live, and had let her get away, at least for a little while, to see what home had become and find out about Dad.

  And now it was bringing her back, reaching up its green arms to pull her down.

  And what are you going to do about it? she imagined it asking her. Are you going to die? Are you going to let me—let them—pack you away? Even Chena had an idea of how to get away from them. Even Chena. Are you telling me you’re not even as good as Chena?

  “No,” she whispered soundlessly. “You don’t have me yet.”

  “I hope you’re not getting ideas over there,” remarked Gray-Eyed Man. It was his favorite sentence. He didn’t even look away from the screen as he said it. It was just something he tossed out every few hours, as if Teal needed to be reminded he was watching her.

  “No, sir,” she said, narrowing her eyes toward the world that spread out at her feet. “No ideas.” Just one idea. One idea.

  You don’t have me yet.

  I am helping my family.

  Tam swayed on his feet. He smelled yeast. He smelled burning. The scents filled the blank white room he stood in, waiting for Teal Trust to arrive. Waiting to take her… somewhere.

  But this was wrong, wrong, wrong. He knew that. But how could it be wrong when Aleph, his city, told him to be here?

  I am doing as my city tells me. I am helping my family.

  That was a good thought, a right thought. It brought the smells of aloe, fresh air, mint and cloves. Good smells. Right smells. All was right. He was helping his family, and he would tell them… he would tell them.

  Tell them Dionte needs help. Go home and help Dionte. She is your sister, she needs help, his Conscience urged.

  Yes, that was right. That was what he needed to do. He swayed again as his feet tried to move him. There was something else he needed to do, though, someone else who needed help.

  Footsteps. The door in front of him opened. Two people in station superiors’ uniforms stepped through. Teal Trust walked between them.

  Teal Trust and the smell of blood, blood from Helice Trust. He was supposed to help her, help them, her daughters. Teal Trust ran away, that was wrong. Helice Trust died, that was wrong. Dionte had…

  No, no, no! Dionte is family. Must trust… Trust… trust… Trust…

  “Are you all right, Administrator?”

  Tam looked up and realized he’d been pressing his knuckles against his bandaged temple. One of the station superiors, a broad, sandy-skinned woman, reached toward him. Teal stood beside her, her face tight and her eyes wary.

  “I…” He pulled his gaze off Teal. She smelled of blood. No, he just smelled blood. Blood, guilt, Trust. “Yes.”

  “She yours?” The left-hand superior, a tall, dark man with gray eyes, nodded his head toward Teal.

  Tam licked his lips. Yes. No. She was the family’s. She had run away and needed to be brought back, but not to Dionte. Not to Dionte.

  Teal squinted at him, as if trying to see through his skin. Did she know? He wanted to help her. It was right that he help her.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m his.”

  “Okay, then,” said the woman, giving her a small shove forward. “You’d better go with him, hadn’t you?”

  Help. Helping. Trust. “Yes.” Tam managed to get the word out.

  That seemed to be all that was required. Teal Trust stepped up to his side, and the superiors exchanged a quizzical look. The left-hand one, the dark man, shrugged.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing else, Administrator?”

  Helping my family. Helping her family. Tam straightened his back. “No, nothing else.” He met the superior’s eyes.

  “Okay.” The superior shrugged. “We’re here for a couple of days to haul up some supplies, if you need anything else.”

  Helping. Helping the family. This man is doing the right thing. I can answer him. “Thank you. I don’t think there’ll be any problems.”

  Teal was still watching Tam with narrowed eyes. He wished she wouldn’t. It meant she didn’t trust him, and he couldn’t think about that. It summoned his Conscience. It threw his whole soul into confusion. He had to be sure. That was the only way to keep away the voices.

  I’m here to help you, Tam. You know that.

  Yes, yes, I know, I know. His hand shook as he tried to keep it down at his side.

  “You should come with me now,” he said, not so much forcing the words out as holding the other words in.

  “Okay, then,” said the male superior. “We’ll leave you to it.”

  The superiors did not move. Tam knew he was supposed to do something. Take her home. No, not home. Not to Dionte. Blood. That brought back the smell of blood.

  “So, is it this way?” asked Teal, gesturing toward the inner door.

  “Yes.” This way. Tam found himself able to face the door and walk toward it. Teal walked beside him. He could just see her out of the corner of his eye. She was taller. Too tall. Yes, she’d gone to a tailor. He had heard that. That was wrong. He had to ask her who had done this to her, so he could tell the family.

  But he had to take her away from the family.

  The door opened in front of them onto a white room lined with workstations. Only a few interviewers and supervisors, all in white overalls, worked among the rows of monitors and chairs. The place was too bright and Tam winced, his hand straying back to his temple. They all looked up at him, questioning, measuring, looked at him like he was doing wrong. He was doing wrong. He…

  “We don’t need to talk to anybody, do we?” asked Teal. “We can just go on through?”

  Tam’s thoughts steadied. “Yes, you are with me, and we can just go on through.”

  Tam matched Teal’s pace down the room’s center aisle. When he could focus on her, even just a little, he didn’t have to think about the other eyes watching him. The other eyes and the other voices all knew what he was doing.

  With an effort, Tam broke off that thought.

  There was another door to go through. It opened onto the outside this time, and a breath of fresh summer wind touched him. He inhaled deeply, vaguely hoping the clean air would clear his mind. Two dirigibles waited on the field under a sky white and gray with clouds.

  Teal hesitated, looking around her at the broad, open field as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

  “Ours is the right-hand one?” she asked.

  No. That was not right. “The left-hand one.”

  “Okay.” Teal started across the short summer-green grass. Stumbling for a few steps on the uneven ground, Tam found a stride that allowed him to match her speed. He focused on the dirigible. That was where they had to go. That was right. That was right.

  “They got you, didn’t they?” breathed Teal, keeping her own gaze straight ahead. “They did something to you.”

  It was right; they did. Tam managed to hold those words in. “My family gave me a proper Conscience.”

  A pained expression flickered across Teal’s face. Why pain? He had no Conscience before and did not know right from wrong. Now he knew. He knew.

  “And you’re taking me to them?”

  Tam’s tongue pressed against his teeth. He could not speak such wrong words, could not do such wrong things. “I’m taking you to your family,” he managed to say.

  Two spots of color appeared on Teal’s cheeks. “In the hothouse?”

  Yes. yes. That would be right. “No.” He whispered the word as if he thought he could hide it from his Conscience. “In the village.”

  Teal’s breath hissed between her teeth and her jaw shifted. Her eyes looked left, then right. Her jaw shifted again. “Right.”
/>   Tam heard her teeth grind together. Again her gaze shifted left and right, taking in the open field around the dirigibles.

  “If you’ve lied to me, I’ll find a way to get you back; if it takes a million years, I’ll do it.”

  Teal quickened her pace, leaving Tam to struggle to catch up as she marched through the dirigible’s hatch.

  Lied to me. The words echoed through him. If you’ve lied to me…

  She did not trust him. She had never trusted him. Why should she? He had let her family down. Let the family down, and that was wrong.

  Tam ducked through the threshold, blinking as daylight changed to fluorescent. Through the carefully netted stacks of cargo containers, he saw Teal drop into one of the passenger chairs and sit there as rigid as a statue.

  His feet made no sound on the dirigible’s skidproof flooring as he walked up to the small cluster of chairs. Teal did not look up when Tam sat beside her. “I’m sorry.” He spoke the words carefully, as if trying them out to see how they sounded.

  Teal blinked, seemed to reach a decision, and looked at him. “For what?”

  “For your mother, for your sister.” Tam’s head bowed under the weight of the thoughts that filled it. “For everything that has happened to you.”

  Teal waved his words away. “It’s not your fault.”

  “It is.” It felt good to confess his wrong. Teal was not his family, but she was of a family. He had done her wrong and now he would speak about it. That surely was right. “I was supposed to protect you and I did not.”

  “I said, it’s not your fault.” Teal spat the words. “You didn’t bring us down here, put us in that fishbowl, Mom did.”

  No. That was wrong. “Your mother loved you. Parents sometimes make mistakes out of love.” You’ll be special. His own mother’s voice reached him across years of memory. It will be your job to take care of the entire world.

  Teal made a rude gesture that Tam had sometimes seen used between children in the village. “What do you think you know?”

  “I watched you. It was my job. I watched you in the village, and I watched you in the hothouse. I spoke many times with your mother. She just wanted to finish her contract and take you away.” Tam rubbed his hands together. “She did her best according to what she knew, just like you and your sister did. She failed, but that was all. What happened was not her fault.”

  “Look,” said Teal, even though she kept her eyes fixed straight ahead of her. “I really don’t want to talk about my screwed and blasted family with you.”

  “I know.” Tam closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, exhausted from the effort that had brought him to this place. It was all right. He had done what he needed to, and spoken the right words. He could sleep now and for a little while hear no voices at all.

  Teal sat there watching Administrator Tam’s chest rise and fall. Even in his sleep, he twitched and sweated. She closed her own eyes, suddenly tired beyond words. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. She could not believe she was trusting him. She could have made a break for it across the field, but instead she had walked in here with him, and he might do anything. Anything.

  She had never meant to see any part of Pandora again, especially not the admission center, where the whole hideous mess had begun. The stark, straight white walls shrank her back down to a ten-year-old and her hand kept trying to reach out for Chena or Mom. Except Chena was back in Offshoot, and the person beside her wasn’t Mom.

  What’d they do to you? And you’re one of theirs, even. Teal looked away, her hands clutching her knees.

  What if it was true, what he said? What if Mom, what if Chena, had just been doing their best? Teal’s whole body clenched against the idea. Because if it was true that all Mom and Chena did was try and fail, Teal would have to find some way to forgive them, and she wasn’t sure if she could.

  “Careful with her.”

  Someone lifted Chena up. She whimpered and tried to get her body to struggle, but it just lay there, limp as an empty sack. They carried her toward the fence posts that lined the boardwalk and Chena heard someone mewl pitifully. It was her, of course, and she had enough mind left to be embarrassed. But they passed her between the posts and nothing happened. The hands rolled her body up onto the board-walk, and again there was no pain. Relief made her even weaker.

  Three people climbed up beside her. In the light of a moon just past full, Chena saw two strangers, and, she thought, the square man who had pushed her off the walk in the first place. They grabbed her shoulders and ankles again and hoisted her up. There was a confused moment before Chena realized she was being curled up into something small and stored like a bag of rice. The walls of her new prison prick-led against her skin and parted in places to let in a little light. It was a big market basket, with a tight-fitting lid.

  The basket was lifted and Chena was bumped and rocked as it moved. She didn’t care. As long as she didn’t have to move herself.

  Chena lost track of time then. Maybe she passed out again. She wasn’t sure. But now she lay on her side, her knees pressed up against her chin. The lid was being wrestled off the basket.

  “Okay, out you come.”

  One more time, someone grabbed her shoulders. They pulled on her, while someone else pulled the basket, and Chena sort of unfolded in the middle. The surface underneath her felt firm but soft. It wrinkled as she shifted. Sheets, she realized. A bed. They were friends and they had laid her out on a bed.

  “Roll her over,” said a woman’s voice. Chena opened her eyes and the effort made her groan.

  She saw a small jungle of stands with laser-tipped armature. She saw a tray neatly arrayed with scalpels and clamps. She saw cabinets, boxes, and metal kegs. She saw a woman bending forward with white gloves on her hands.

  Chena screamed. She wouldn’t have thought she had the strength, but she knew where she was and she screamed until her lungs emptied out.

  “Easy! Easy!” shouted the woman. “I’m just making sure there’s no nerve damage! Look!” She held up a pair of sensor patches. “You took two hits on that damn fence. If something’s burned out, we’re going to have to fix it fast.”

  “Tailor.” Chena didn’t so much speak as let the word fall out.

  “Poisoner,” responded the woman. “Lie still.”

  Chena had no choice. The hands rolled her over yet again and stripped off her shirt. The patches made cold circles where they pressed against her back. Her whole skin tingled briefly. Flashes of fire shot across her back, and all her muscles clenched against the feeling.

  Then it was over, and the woman pulled the patches off. “You’re in one piece,” she announced. “Avert your eyes, Willie. Dans, roll her back over.”

  Dans, a second woman, shorter and slighter than the tailor, rolled Chena onto her back and pulled a sheet up to her chin. The man, Willie, had both hands thrust into his pockets and he rocked back and forth from toe to heel as he stared at the glass-fronted cabinets against the far wall.

  Regan wasn’t there. She couldn’t see any hothousers either.

  Am I safe?

  “Thank you,” she croaked.

  “Thank Willie.” The tailor nodded toward the man. “Turn around and take your thanks, Willie.”

  Willie obeyed, smiling as he did. “It’ll be worth it, Lopera. She’s the other Trust.”

  “I can see that.”

  Chena swallowed hard. Her body was beginning to tingle with pins and needles. She seemed to feel the connections between her limbs and her mind coming back on-line. “What do you mean, the other Trust?”

  Lopera didn’t answer. She just turned away and busied herself with something Chena couldn’t see. Then she leaned back over and pushed a straw toward Chena’s mouth.

  “Drink,” she ordered.

  Chena didn’t even try to refuse. She just took the straw between her lips and sucked on it. The liquid that poured down her throat was cool, sweet, and salty. She’d never tasted anything so good. She sucked it down
as fast as she could swallow. When there was no more, her head dropped back onto the pillow. The tingling increased, growing painful, but Chena didn’t care. She felt strength ebbing back with the pain. She was becoming whole again, and if that hurt, she could take it.

  “She’ll sleep now,” said Lopera over the top of her head. “Dans, first thing in the morning, you’ll get word to the hothouse and tell them we’ve got information.”

  What?

  “Don’t tell them we’ve actually got her yet, just say we know where she is and she’s being watched. I’m going to see what kind of terms they’ll give.”

  “No!” shrieked Chena. “You can’t! Not…” But a wave of dizziness washed away her words.

  Not after everything I’ve done. Not after I came so far. Not after I killed a man. Not now. She felt herself falling backward and all she could see was Basante crumpled on the floor, twitching with pain while she leaned over him and demanded that he tell her who murdered Mom. She saw Mom lying on her back, butchered and bloody. She saw Teal on the bridge of a ship right beside Dad, sliced open just like Mom.

  Then there was only more darkness.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Pursuit

  From his post in the back of Wilseck Valerlie’s shop, Farin heard the lock rattle. The front door opened just a crack. A squat figure slipped in and closed the door behind itself.

  “Hello, Willie.” Farin’s eyes had long since adjusted to the darkness, so he got to watch Willie jump and spin around to face him. “You’re out late.” Farin stepped into the thin sliver of moonlight that the shutters let through.

  Now Willie identified his voice and shape. He relaxed instantly and Farin suppressed a smile. Willie knew he had nothing to fear from such a puppy as Farin.

  “Well, Farin Shas.” Willie felt his way along the wall to the closed window and turned the knob on the base of the small battery lamp sitting on the sill. Dim gold light took the edge of darkness off the room, showing up its dirt floor and piles of crates and baskets. “Who paid you to be here?”