“Still feel sorry for them?”
Kaja huffed. “Don’t be smug. There’s a lot you need to know, but first, they’re intending to execute you.”
“I figured.”
“There are particular plans for you, Nika. Parson Prince plans to lead his followers to New Creemore, it being the closest settlement to Feversham. They’ll kill you, then they’re going to use your body for a standard. The parson’s already got a pike picked out. The body of New Creemore’s best ranger is going to be the first thing they throw over New Creemore’s walls.”
“Guess it was too hard for them to come up with a flag.”
Kaja sighed. “Can you refrain from being flip for once in your fucking life? We’re talking about our home. Mam, Aunt C—everyone.”
“Kaja, the faithful might’ve managed to take over Feversham, but New Creemore has ten times the people. It has more rangers. I didn’t see that many faithful here. A couple hundred, perhaps? We can hightail it out of here, warn everyone, and our rangers’ll send out a nice hail of bullets for the faithful for a hello.” Briefly, I entertained the sweet thought of Parson Prince at the business end of my rifle. “Simple.”
Slowly, Kaja shook her head. “No, Nika. Not simple.”
“Why not?”
“There’s a second thing they’re aiming to throw over New Creemore’s battlements. We can’t just escape. Come on. You should see.”
KAJA LED ME OUTSIDE. I had never before been in Feversham Station proper. It was dead quiet, and it felt small and sterile, composed as it was of steel and aluminum. It didn’t feel like a place where people lived. Kaja and I passed several pits dug for the remains of Feversham’s residents. I glanced into one and didn’t dare glance into another.
There were faithful circling around, but we avoided them as Kaja brought me to the central research station, a squat building in the center of Feversham. The front doors had been torn open, ugly, like a wound in a carcass; clearly, the faithful had gone at it with bullets and hammers.
A guard was posted, but I slipped behind him and punched him in the back of the neck before he saw us.
Inside, we went underground. Rows of rooms lined the corridors. Kaja shepherded me into a small, cool chamber lined with locked cabinets. Its security door, too, had recently been pried open with rough instruments; I could tell by the scratches around the steel frame.
Kaja used the flashlight to illuminate the cabinets. Within them, protected by a layer of reinforced glass, were all manner of containers, ordered and labelled: bottles, gas canisters, sleeves of slender tubes. “Unbelievable,” Kaja said, to herself rather than to me. “What the fuck were they thinking?”
“Not sure I follow, Kaja.”
“Poisons,” she said, pointing out labels. “Sulphur mustard. Lewisite. Fucking nerve agents. The researchers at Feversham were storing—or making—the things that ruined the world.” Her fingers brushed the glass, indicating a particular canister. She glanced up at me. “This one—you’d die if you got a drop of it on your skin. There’s enough here to kill everyone in New Creemore a thousand times over.”
“Enough to kill a thousand New Creemores,” I said.
“Exactly,” Kaja said. “In bad hands—”
There wasn’t a need for her to finish her sentence. The cabinets were beat-up like the door, but it looked like the faithful hadn’t yet raided them. The larder was full, so to speak. It was unimaginable, that the cabinets’ contents could be more lethal than the combined power of New Creemore’s rangers, but Kaja knew what she was talking about.
“Here’s the prize,” I said, a chill running through me. “Here’s why Parson Prince came to Feversham. This is why the faithful started—whatever it is they’re starting—here. Not to cut our power, not to kill everyone—though I reckon that’s a nice benefit for them—but for this.”
“The parson’s not shy about it. He’s making speeches, Nika. I heard them. About how we’re at last going to understand what it’s like to suffer like they’ve suffered.”
“We have to get rid of this shit,” I said. “Now. There’s not going to be time to get home to tell of it.” I saw in Kaja’s expression that she agreed. “Can it be done?”
Kaja hesitated. “There’s no chance we can safely dispose of substances like these,” she said, sounding a bit choked up. “Do you remember how, in history, we were taught about treaties on chemical weapons? Back then, when governments agreed to destroy them—well, they needed the right people, the right equipment, the right everything. We’ve got us and what’s on our persons.”
“What do we do?”
Kaja fidgeted with the strap of my satchel. “That’s why I wanted you to see, Nika,” she said slowly. “To understand how big this is. You always say Nana’s words, you know. As regards the women in our family. If you—I mean, one of us—”
Whatever Kaja had been about to say was interrupted by the lights coming on, sudden and blinding. My vision went momentarily white. Large arms pinned Kaja. My rifle was ripped from her back; my satchel from her middle. And, for the second time, I felt the barrel of a gun against my skin. This time, a pistol against my forehead.
Parson Prince stood at the door. A gang of armed faithful surrounded him. He smiled, his mouth wet and jittery, as one of his followers handed him my rifle.
“The sisters Zawisza,” the parson said. At Kaja’s startled expression, he continued, “You believed I’d be stupid enough to let you wander unwatched around Feversham? I wouldn’t suspect a little girl who claimed she’d taken down Nika Zawisza?” He took a step forward. “I wouldn’t recognize your bitch sister the second I saw her?”
“Fuck you,” I said pleasantly.
The parson’s gaze shifted to me. He was still smiling. I wanted nothing more in the world than to bash his filthy teeth in. “You’ve found the stash, I see. I imagine Kaja’s filled you in on what’s going to happen to the shithole of a settlement you come from.”
He snapped a finger, prompting his followers to seize Kaja and me.
We were dragged several corridors down and thrown into a room even tinier than the one we’d been in, bare except for a few rotting wooden crates. I scrambled up, but Kaja sat where she’d been flung, her head bent and her knees drawn up to her chest.
“Now, Sister Kaja,” Parson Prince said, “you might find that this room won’t be broke out of with a hairpin.”
Kaja stared at the floor.
“Not feeling up to a chat, eh? All right. I bet you told your sister she’s scheduled to die in the morning. I’m willing to reconsider that, if that’s what you’d like. One of you’ll be executed tomorrow, and one of you can hang on until the day after.” He turned around. Over his shoulder, he said, “Ladies’ choice.”
AFTER THE PARSON LEFT, KAJA remained curled up and silent, her forehead resting on her knees. Her hair had come undone, falling like a veil around her. But she didn’t look upset. She looked like she was thinking.
I spent a good hour checking the reinforced door and banging around the corners of the room. There was indeed no escape. Parson Prince had put a stone-faced guard out front; he opened the door once to show me he had a gun.
Finally, I slumped next to Kaja. I was good at getting out of tough situations, but this was different. This was bad. The women in our family die young, I told myself, and the time had come for Kaja and me.
I’d forever held in my heart the notion that I’d meet my death at the hands of the faithful. Just like Aunt P, just like Nana, both of whom had left the world alone, and in violence. I’d once thought there was an elegance to that: better to bow out with howl rather than a whisper. But now, with death nigh, it didn’t seem elegant. It seemed small and meaningless.
Exhausted, I leaned against a crate, nestling my head on the crook of my arm. That was when I felt the faintest of sparrow flutters, deep within me. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t been still. The baby was something I constantly forgot about—or, if I’m to be honest, somethin
g I’d decided not to remember—but there, in that cramped and fearful place, it had decided to remind me.
I must have made a surprised sound, because Kaja’s head perked up. “Nika? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Kaja’s eyes narrowed. “Nika.”
“It’s not important.”
She exhaled. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
I sat up straight. “How’d you know?”
“Goddamn.” Kaja pinched the bridge of her nose, as though she’d got a sudden headache. “You would be, of course. I was telling myself you weren’t, that I was imagining things. You fucking would be.” She sounded resigned. “How do I know? The throwing up, the not eating. The fact that you’ve sprouted a gut.”
“I didn’t want to tell you.”
“You haven’t told anyone,” Kaja said. “I can’t believe you. Going on like nothing’s changed. You shouldn’t be ranging. You shouldn’t be here. You should be getting proper care in New Creemore. God, you got in that fight—”
“I’m pregnant, not feeble.”
For an aching moment, she just stared at me. Then, her voice cracking, she said, “Oh, fuck you, Nika. That’s not the point and you know it.”
“Kaja—”
“Do you even know that my last baby was born alive? She was too tiny, but she breathed, my last one. Little nothing breaths like death rattling around in her, and then nothing at all. She didn’t open her eyes. And here you are—out here—not even caring when I had my poor baby what never got to open her eyes.”
“Kaja—”
“And, Nika, you weren’t there when it happened. You weren’t there. You got back from ranging. I was walking with a cane; you didn’t even ask about it.”
“Oh, Kaja—” I reached for her, but she pushed my fingers away so furiously I was surprised none of them snapped.
“Don’t you dare,” Kaja said. She was crying now, but not noisily. Her tears were so under control that I wondered how often she’d cried them. “Sometimes I can’t stand you. You’re Mam’s favorite. You’re everyone’s favorite. You’re the goddamn scion, and I’m the just the little sister. The afterthought.”
“That’s not right.”
She dropped her forehead back on her knees. “Don’t pretend it’s not.”
Though I itched to hug her, I let her be for a long time. I couldn’t recall ever having felt so guilty. As kids, we’d been close, Kaja and me. I couldn’t say when things had broken apart between us. It hadn’t been sudden; it was more like the listless way land changes over time, and you don’t notice until one day you pay attention and it looks altogether like unfamiliar terrain. I yearned to pull time back, to restitch it, to pull Kaja through her grief. I pictured her at eight, ten, twelve: cheerful, relentless, full to the brim. Then I’d become a ranger; then I’d left her behind.
“Kaja,” I said finally. “I’m sorry. I should have been there. For your baby—and for a thousand other times. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t think.”
“I know you didn’t,” Kaja said.
“Sometimes I’m envious of you,” I added. I knew my words, though true, would ring hollow to her, but I had to tell her something. “How bright you are. How you can just read something and remember it and use it. That’s nothing I could ever do.”
Another silence stretched between us, then, in a tired tone, Kaja said, “You’re going first.”
“Hm?”
“Tomorrow,” she clarified. “When the parson comes back.”
Oh. She meant I was going to die first. I should have been suspicious, then, but so keen was my regret that whatever few precious hours of life we had left to divvy up between us, I wanted Kaja to have them. “If that’s what you want,” I said.
She didn’t respond. I draped an arm around her shoulders—this time, she didn’t push me away—and guided the both of us to lay down on the ground. Her eyes shining with tears, she turned around and snuggled against me. It reminded me of when we were kids, when we shared a pile of threadbare blankets between us.
“Kaja,” I whispered. “I know we haven’t talked proper, not in a long time. If I’m going to leave the world tomorrow, I’d prefer to leave it without you hating me.”
I felt her smile against my collarbone. “I don’t hate you, Nika,” she said. “You’re a pain in my ass, but I don’t hate you. I couldn’t ever.”
EVEN THOUGH I WAS BONE-TIRED, I figured that if I was going to die, I was going to use my last hours. Kaja and I talked through the night. She told me things like how when she’d first started apprenticing with Alvaro she’d screwed up a solution and turned her hands orange for a month; he’d nearly fired her then, but now it was a joke between them. Or how she had to go to the library at night because the librarian who worked mornings forever hated her for accidentally tearing a page in a schoolbook. Or how she missed Aunt P, too, but for different reasons; in quiet moments away from me and Mam, unknown to me, Aunt P had taught Kaja to draw and sew and make jam. A hundred tiny things, the sum of which made up the Kaja I hadn’t bothered to learn.
As promised, Parson Prince arrived in the morning. By then both of us were falling asleep. The door clanged open against the wall, and, startled, I disentangled myself from Kaja and sat up, while Kaja groaned and opened her eyes.
“Morning!” the parson greeted. He held up a pair of manacles. Behind him were, again, his armed followers. “Well, sisters, have we decided?”
I rose and stood between him and Kaja. Immediately, a dozen guns were pointed at me. The faint hope I’d had that I’d be able to punch my way through disappeared. I’d have been riddled with bullets in seconds if I’d tried.
“Call off your hounds,” I said to Parson Prince. “We have decided.” I held out my hands, wrists up. “Go ahead, you unhinged shit. Restrain me.”
For the first time, the parson’s mouth formed into a pout. He’d obviously expected Kaja and I to fight. He glanced at Kaja, who had got up, too, and said, “Say your farewells, then.”
I turned around and embraced Kaja.
“Love you, Nika,” she said.
“Love you.” The words were heavy in my throat.
Then Kaja tilted her head back and smiled up at me. Her smile was so sad and so knowing that I got confused. In the second before the parson’s followers ripped me away from her, she shifted my hand from beneath her shoulders to just above her belt. I felt something there: small and hard and familiar.
“When you can, Nika, run,” Kaja murmured, softly, so only I could hear.
My lighter fluid, I realized. My matches. She had to have retrieved the little pack from my satchel before the faithful confiscated it. She’d kept it on her the entire night and she hadn’t said a thing about it.
No, I mouthed, but by then it was too late. “No,” I said out loud, as I was manacled, as the door slammed closed. “No!” I shouted. “No! Kaja! Goddamn it, no!”
Parson Prince got the spectacle he wanted. He laughed as his followers crowded me and marching me up the stairs of the central research station. I became a wild thing. I flailed against the faithful. But a hand clamped over my collarbone, a pair of arms encircled my ankles, a blindfold was forced over my eyes. Something that tasted like cotton dipped in mud was jammed into my mouth.
Kaja’d had a plan. She had to have known I wouldn’t have gone along with it, if I’d known. A helpless anger surged within me. She hadn’t given me a choice. I wouldn’t have let her, I thought. I wouldn’t have let her.
She’d taken my fate from me, and I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t demand to go back, I couldn’t give her up. I could only try to buy her time.
So I struggled so hard that the faithful had to carry me outside and to the gates like they were hauling an enraged log. I was dropped four times, and each time I fell I managed to kick several of them. I even spit out the wad in my mouth to bite a leg. But there was only one of me, and so I was forced up on Parson Prince’s platform. My blindfold was torn away, leaving me s
hackled and standing. The pile of bodies hadn’t been cleaned up. There were more faithful than there had been yesterday, or perhaps they looked different because I was facing them: a sea of mad and hungry faces raring for my blood.
Parson Prince climbed up beside me. He put on a show, giving a sweeping bow as he brought out his knife. He opened his mouth to announce my name, but he got out only “Ni—” before an alarm sounded, loud like a scream, from within Feversham’s walls.
The parson looked back. So did most of faithful guarding the platform. I took my chance. Kaja, I thought, as I rammed my body full-force into the parson’s. Kaja, I thought, as I drove a knee into his back. Kaja, I thought, as I brought the chain between my hands around his throat and pulled up as hard as I could. “Kaja!” I screamed, as his head turned and clunked against platform and the life vanished from his eyes.
Everything went to shit. Some faithful did come after me, but I was possessed of such a rage that none of them managed to keep hold of me, and they were distracted by Feversham fast growing engulfed in smoke. I was shot at, but I couldn’t be sure from where: all I felt was a bullet entering my thigh and another grazing my shoulder.
I ran toward the gates, toward Kaja, for a few frantic seconds. The smoke assaulted me. It smelled sour, not like smoke from a normal fire, and the memory of the neat cabinets of biochem agents Kaja had shown me flared up. Within the gates, people had fallen to the ground, their limbs spasming.
Kaja hadn’t a chance. She was gone. The fire spread, black columns of smoke spiraled high into the sky, and I did what hundreds of faithful were doing. I did as Kaja told.
I ran.
I HAVEN’T GOT MUCH MEMORY of how I got back to New Creemore. It’s a wonder I didn’t die. Driven more by instinct than intent, I stumbled home in forty-eight hours, still manacled, coughing and bleeding and sleepless and starving. I got to Nana’s and Aunt P’s graves and collapsed before them.
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