by Amie Kaufman
“You drugged me,” I gasp, my vision spinning away like the fog eddying around us. My body’s shaking, shivering in his grasp like I’m on the verge of hypothermia.
“I—what?” Romeo peers closer. “Why would I—Stop, calm down.” He grabs hold of my shoulders again and gives me a tiny shake, my head snapping back as though I’m too tired to lift it.
Something in my mind is screaming to be heard, something—something about his hands, gripping my arms, supporting me. Both hands.
If both hands are on my shoulders, then where is the gun?
There, on the ground by his feet. I flail out for the old-fashioned pistol, only a few inches from my fingertips. My shaking fingers fumble with the grip, clumsy with whatever drug is coursing through my system.
Romeo spots the movement. Somehow, despite drinking from the canteen himself, he’s unaffected; he gives an inarticulate cry and lunges for the weapon. “Goddammit, Jubilee—give it a rest for five seconds!”
“Never,” I gasp, dropping to the spongy, wet earth, too weak to stand without his support. Whatever he did to me, it’s getting worse.
Slowly, the sound of whispering is overtaking my hearing once more. I reach for Romeo, but I don’t know if I’m trying to get the gun back from him or hold myself up. He shoves the pistol into his waistband, out of my reach, and my vision clouds again.
It isn’t until I feel arms wrapping around my waist and a heartbeat by my ear that I realize I’m slipping out of consciousness, and Romeo’s carrying me the rest of the way back to his boat.
She’s back in the alley again, holding a burning firecracker, eyes watering with the effort of not letting go.
Beyond the ring of boys shouting and jeering at her, through the shifting clouds of smoke from the gunpowder, she sees a tiny light dancing and bobbing. It winks at her, surprised, hovering just out of reach. The girl stands frozen, staring, until the firecracker explodes in her hands, singeing her fingers. The ball of light vanishes in the flash, and the girl is too shocked and deafened to feel the pain in her hand until her father sprints into the alley to carry her away to the hospital.
THE WARM LIGHT OF OUR docking lamps welcomes me home as I coast into the harbor, the rock swallowing me up. Hidden behind the stone walls of the cavern, the lamps hang along a string, bobbing lazily like a row of will-o’-the-wisps—though these lights lead to safety rather than danger. A weight presses down on my shoulders as I ease the currach forward. A weight exactly equal to the trodaire curled up in the bottom of my boat. Jubilee is on her side, still unconscious, her hands bound once again. Whatever took her down in the swamp seems to have passed, and I can’t risk leaving her unrestrained.
Her dog tags have fallen outside her shirt, and I see the metal glint in the lamplight as she lies unmoving. Without them, you might almost forget she’s one of the trodairí. Without them, she’d look halfway human, like someone who might listen for half a second before pulling a gun on you. Until she woke up and tried to kill me, that is. But when there’s no hope to be found anywhere, even the tiniest chance is worth taking.
I can’t let McBride and his followers find her, or they’ll have her head on a spike before I can blink. But I can’t let her go either. She’s too valuable. Maybe the military will trade for her and give us resources we need, like food rations or medicine.
And maybe, just maybe, I can convince her not all of us are the lawless villains she and her kind believe us to be.
If Jubilee Chase can be convinced to stop shooting, anyone can.
The currach catches the current slowly swirling through our hidden harbor, drifting toward the dock. I stow the pole and let the water carry us the rest of the way, risking a glance away from my prisoner and up at the vaulted stone ceiling stretching high above us, stalactites hanging down. It drives the soldiers mad, trying to work out how we hide so many people right under their noses out here in the swamps.
From the air, this place looks like a couple of rocks no larger than one of their buildings on the base. From the water, only the trained eye can see we’ve disguised its size with woven camouflage, made it less prominent, rerouted the channels leading up to the base so there’s no easy way to approach by boat without knowing the way. You could get here by foot from the base if you were determined enough, but it would mean hours of slogging through mud and waist-deep water. The stone hides us from their heat detectors, and Avon’s atmosphere wreaks havoc with imaging drones and search gear. The leading theory among TerraDyn scientists is that the ionization levels interfere with their equipment, but all we know is that it forces them to search for us the old-fashioned way, with boats and spotlights. Though there are pockets of resistance all across the planet, these caves harbor a significant percentage of TerraDyn’s most-wanted list.
We call ourselves the Fianna. The soldiers think it has some simple meaning—“warriors” is how they usually translate it. But it’s more than that. Blood is forever, and though Earth was abandoned so long ago the generations are now uncounted, we remember our cradle. We remember Ireland, and her stories, and the bands of warriors who defended their home. And we carry on their traditions, and honor them. Avon takes care of us, hides us, and in return we fight for her.
The currach nudges up against the dock, and I yank my attention back to the present when I realize I’ve heard no challenge. The sentries are gone. The landing is empty where there should be guards, and abruptly my heart’s pounding again as panic sweeps through me. The military has discovered Jubilee missing. I shouldn’t have taken that detour—they’ve found our base and beaten me back here to rescue her.
I leave the trodaire in the currach, hands bound, and hurriedly tug a tarp up over her limp form to hide her from view. Then I scramble up onto the dock and toward the passageway. My wounded leg is aching as my mind pulls in a dozen directions all at once, tracing the path the trodairí would take, predicting which caverns they’d claim and which we’d hold, mapping a way to the weapons storage as I pull my gun from my belt.
But slowly one thing sinks in: if the trodairí had found us, this place would be swarming with copters and speedboats outside, not to mention ringing with shouts and gunfire. There’s only silence, until I make my way farther in and hear the low murmur of voices coming from the meeting cavern.
The crowd in there’s so big I can’t see my way to the front, but relief rushes through me as I recognize this noise as anger, not panic. It’s only the Fianna inside, and there are no soldiers here today except the one I left in my currach.
Our meeting place is a high-ceilinged bubble in the rock that we’ve hewn larger over time, stone softened and echoes muffled by rugs hung around the walls and crates of liberated military supplies stored along the edges. It’s almost impossible to round us up in the same place—there are always folks on patrol, on guard, asleep—but this is the biggest crowd I’ve seen in a long time.
They’re crammed in, perching on the crates, leaning against the walls and sitting on the ground. The cavern’s full, buzzing with tension. Then I hear McBride’s voice at the front, and I know what brought them together.
For ten years we’ve been hiding out in these caves, paying for the bloody rebellion my sister led. Too hungry to get organized, too sick and too bruised to care who was in charge. It’s taken a decade to come close to stability again, but the day my people could fill their bellies without fear of where the next meal would come from, there was McBride. He has the age and experience I lack, and his talk of fighting back and finishing what my sister, Orla, started makes my people itch for action.
Victory, to his faction, is beating the trodairí at any cost. Casualties are glorious sacrifices to the cause. Firepower is the only measure of strength. Because, futile though the fight might be, there’s a satisfaction in direct action that these people crave. It’s the easier path—I feel myself tugged that way too, sometimes. So did Orla. And that’s what killed her in the end.
These people remember my sister, and how she fought t
o the last and faced her execution fearlessly. Her death buys me their sympathy, and thus their attention, but every time McBride opens his mouth, I lose a few more of them. Nobody wants to listen to a teenager speaking for peace when their children are sick and their very freedoms are being bled away by TerraDyn’s harsh regulations. McBride knows it. I know it too. They all wish I were more like Orla.
Judging by the air of tension in the crowd, it seems he’s jumped on my absence to stir them up and inch ever closer to breaking the ceasefire. Only fear of retaliation and lack of resources has stopped McBride’s lieutenants from carrying out their own raids without the support of the rest of us. That, and I’ve got the key to the munitions locker—and I’m not about to let McBride get his hands on it.
I tuck my gun away and start to work toward the front of the crowd.
He hasn’t noticed me yet. His square, shadowed jaw is tense, brows crowding together as he calls out in impassioned tones, “How many times are we going to hide in our caves, watching while they take our loved ones away? How much longer are we going to wait for change?” He’s pacing back and forth at the front of the cavern, the nervous energy of his steps infecting the crowd, making them all shift on their feet and itch for action. “On one thing, Flynn Cormac and I agree: violence must only ever be a last resort. We are not the trodairí with their so-called Fury, their imaginary disease, their excuse for the shows of violence supposed to keep us cowed. But I say today we are past our last resort, and we are past the point of no return.”
My own heart beats hard as I listen in spite of myself. He sounds like my sister, except Orla’s eyes never carried that feverish gleam. When she spoke of last resorts, she meant it. But these people don’t see McBride as I do. They’re too desperate for change to recognize the madness behind his words.
“But what about Flynn, you’re saying. He wouldn’t want this. He’d tell us to talk to them, reason with them—but look where reasoning has gotten him! No sign, no word; I’ll tell you where it’s gotten him, why he hasn’t come back. This very moment he’s in a trodairí prison cell. They’ve got Orla’s little brother bound and bloodied, no doubt trying to beat our location out of him. We would betray the memory of his sister if we let them take him without getting an answer from us.”
I stop in my tracks. He’s trying to lead our people in an attack on the trodairí to free me. McBride’s only guessing as to where I am, but all he needs is one spark to ignite my people. And what better to win over the reluctant ones, those who’ve been listening to me, than a mission of rescue? Because rescue or no, once open war breaks out, all of the Fianna will have no choice but to fight for their lives.
The anger that surges up in me would impress even Jubilee Chase. I bow my head, letting my fists curl, riding it out. Waiting until I can be sure my voice will be strong and steady before I call out.
“McBride, I’m touched. I had no idea you cared so much.”
The heads nearest me snap around, voices rising in shock and relief. I push my way into the free space in front of McBride’s platform. He’s stopped in his tracks, staring blankly at me for a half a beat too long. Then relief floods his strong features, and he jumps down off the platform to approach me. “You’re alive!” he exclaims, and though he claps a hand to my shoulder, the eyes that meet mine are anything but warm. “I’d been imagining the worst.”
I’ll bet you were.
I reach for calm. “I had an opportunity to do some information-gathering, and I took it. No way to get a signal back without risking discovery.”
McBride’s brows lift a little. “Taking action, Cormac,” he replies, lips curling. From a distance, it might look like a smile. “Glad to hear it. What’d you learn?”
I can’t tell them I saw a facility that was gone a few hours later; they’ll think I’ve lost my mind. “Nothing concrete yet.” I try not to wince at the weight of his hand on my shoulder. He’s a head taller than I am, and strongly built. If he ever wanted to take me out once and for all, he’d have the upper hand and then some. “But as long as we know nothing’s changed on the base, we know they’re not coming for us. And we can keep looking for a way out of this.”
McBride squeezes my shoulder. “Sometimes the only way out is through,” he replies, raising his voice a little to make it carry farther.
I turn away, using the movement to wrench my shoulder free of his bruising grip. It’s not the time to dance this dance with him, the same steps, the same push and pull. I have a bigger problem in the form of the trodaire in my currach, who I need to move before she wakes up under that tarp and makes a noise. Because one thing is certain: if McBride’s people find her, Captain Chase will be dead by tomorrow.
The energy in the crowd has shifted—with me standing here, the immediate need to fight is gone, but they’re slow to come down, not sure where to turn. I can’t let them latch on to me, not until the trodaire is stashed somewhere safe.
I catch Turlough Doyle’s eye, then jerk my gaze toward McBride, who’s regrouping and turning back for the platform, no doubt figuring out a way to use my return in his rhetoric.
Turlough steps forward before he can get there. “While we’re all here,” he says pleasantly, “perhaps we can talk about the sleeping quarters.” He uses that same encouraging tone when he’s teaching new Fianna how to lay tripwires.
I ghost back into the crowd, slipping out the back to go in search of my cousin Sean.
I find him in the classroom, which is little more than a cavern softened by handmade rugs to sit on and a chest containing some toys and a few precious, battered textbooks from a time when we were still allowed to barter with traders. It’s Sean’s domain—he teaches when he’s not out on patrol or helping plan a raid. I knew he’d be here, keeping the children away from McBride’s anger and the talk of violence in the main cavern. He’s in one corner with his five-year-old nephew, Fergal, in his lap. He’s surrounded by a gaggle of children—and a couple of girls far too old for story time, but the right age for Sean—faces turned up to him.
“Now, as you know, Tír na nÓg was the land of eternal youth, which most people think sounds like a fine thing. But Oisín wasn’t so sure. Do you know how many times you have to tidy your room when you live forever? His girlfriend, Niamh, lived there, and she was the one who’d invited him to stay. He’d moved in pretty quickly, and a decision like that, well…He should have asked a few more questions before he jumped on in. Turns out their gravball teams were arch-enemies, and they both hated doing laundry.”
I recognize the tale, if not Sean’s unique embellishments. We were told these stories as kids by our parents, who heard them from our grandparents. I bet Jubilee would be surprised to find out we hand down our myths and legends, Scheherazade and Shakespeare and stories from a time before men left Earth. The suits from TerraDyn and their trodairí lackeys think we’re all illiterate and uneducated. I only have hazy memories of comscreens and the bright, dancing colors of shows on the HV from my childhood, and it pains me that these children can’t even imagine modern technology. We may not have the books and holovids anymore, or the official schools the off-worlders have, but the stories themselves never go. Right now, I want nothing more than to linger in the shadows and listen.
But instead, I step forward and catch his eye before tilting my head toward the corridor. Wrap it up, I need you.
His mouth drops open, the relief clear on his face. Even some part of Sean thought McBride might be right and I might be in danger. He nods, and I lean against the wall to rest my leg while I listen to the end of the tale. “So Oisín slips away home on a shuttle to Ireland for a quick visit, and Niamh warns him that if he gets out of his ship and touches the ground, he can never come back. It’s the only thing he has to do, is make sure he doesn’t touch the ground. So what does the fool do? He might be too lazy to pick up his own laundry, but he can’t resist showing off. He forgets—or he wasn’t listening, like some people we know, right, Cabhan?—and he jumps out of the shuttle
to help these guys move a rock. The second he hits the grass…” He pauses, and the kids lean in, then jerk back when he claps his hands. “Bam! Three hundred years catch up with him, and he’s dead as a soldier on a solo patrol. So the moral of the story is, never pick up after yourself, and certainly never pick up after anyone else. It could be fatal. Now, off with the lot of you, before I ask who’s done their homework.” They scatter, and he hoists Fergal up into his arms with casual confidence to wade free of them all. He’s had him a year and a half now, since his brother and sister-in-law died in a raid.
“I’m almost sure that wasn’t the moral when we learned it,” I say.
He grins, unrepentant. That’s Sean—always grinning, smooth as silk. “Should have been. I take it you ruined McBride’s latest tactic?” Fergal reaches up to grab at Sean’s face, trying with great determination to inspect the inside of his nostrils.
“For now.”
Sean leans down to pick up his nephew’s favorite toy, a strange, pudgy creature with wings and a tail called Tomás. I’ve never been sure what Tomás is, but I know he’s sewn from one of Sean’s brother’s old shirts, and Fergal won’t go anywhere without him. Placated, Fergal rests his head on Sean’s shoulder as his uncle speaks. “I tried to hail you, but you didn’t answer. Figured there was too much interference today.”
Our radios almost never work due to Avon’s atmosphere, but that wasn’t why I didn’t answer. “Thanks for trying. Don’t worry, I can handle McBride.”
“Clear skies, cousin.” Good luck, he means. There are never clear skies on Avon, no blue, no stars. But we don’t give up hope, and we use those words to remind ourselves. Clear skies will come, one day.
I turn a little so he won’t see the bloody bandage over my pants leg from Lee Chase’s hot-pink souvenir; I’ll get him to pull it out later, but for now we’ve got a more pressing concern. “Forget good fortune. We don’t have time to wait for clear skies.” I duck my head to catch his nephew’s eye. “Fergal, go get into bed for your nap, and we’ll come and tuck you in soon. I need your uncle’s help.”