by Bella James
Julia thought, She'll find you. But she said nothing. She felt no sympathy for the killers who gathered around the seat of power. They wouldn't raise a hand to help anyone else.
She wouldn't do anything to help them.
CHAPTER 7
UTOPIA
IT TOOK NEARLY an hour to scale down the side of the cliff face, keeping the city of Utopia in front of them. Livy followed Arash, his movements careful and precise as he climbed down a ladder.
"They're easier than the stairs, really. The stairs are so steep. More than one person has taken the express route down."
Livy shivered. She held tight to the metal railing that guided her down the ladder. Her metal sleeve clanged against the metal railing time and again. She'd never been afraid of heights, but maybe that was because she'd never faced them before.
"Come on," Arash said, grinning up at her. He was saying it more than ever, now. "You're more than strong enough to hold on, but there's no shame in this." He held out a length of the reins he had been fixing in odd moments since she'd known him. "Fasten it to the hand grips. Every thirty feet or so you'll have to stop and refasten but the confidence will be more than worth it."
Livy stared at the reins lying across his palm and felt a surge of strong emotion she didn't quite understand. For the first time, Arash didn't seem to be laughing at her or belittling her, or ordering her to do something she didn't want to do.
For the first time, she thought he saw her for herself.
It made her see him for himself.
She liked what she saw.
Then Selene was beside her, tying off the reins, testing them and sending Livy down in Arash's wake, following behind both of them, and they were on their way to the underground city.
Being tied off should have made Livy feel better. It didn't. The drop still yawned beneath her, and though she expected the reins would hold if she fell, she'd still swing back and forth like a pendulum over the chasm until Arash and Selene managed to pull her up somehow, or more likely, climbed down to her and freed her enough to tie her off again and keep descending.
She thought if that happened she might not be able to take another step. Ever. She might have to live halfway down the ladder.
The thought would have made her giggle if she hadn't just then had to put her hands on the cold bars and begin her descent.
Partway down she wondered why one of the ornihopters couldn't fly up and collect them. Then she remembered the way the crafts seemed to fly like birds and changed her mind. Rather get down the ladder under her own power than trust her fate to someone else.
She didn't realize how fully her focus had changed to nothing but hands and feet working together, the feel of the reins tied securely around her like a harness, and the rock wall past her hands on the bars, until she reached the bottom and stumbled, suddenly certain she was falling when her feet didn't hit the next rolled metal bar but instead the hard soil at the bottom of the cliff.
Panicked, she flailed, her breathing rough and fast, until she felt Arash's hands on her shoulders, and looked up to see Selene hanging out over her by one hand and both feet, calling down, "You're there, Olivia. Look down!"
Look down? That was crazy! She'd been trying not to.
But when she looked down it was at her own feet on the ground, and the sight of Arash's hand on her shoulder suddenly made sense. She took a deep breath and willed herself to let go of the metal rungs and promptly fell to her knees.
What she expected was for the Centurion to jump down the rest of the way and dust herself off before saying something biting and commanding, and for Arash to tell her to straighten up and come along, nothing had happened and they had to go.
To her surprise, the Centurion climbed down every rung, and dropped promptly into a squat, both hands on the ground like she couldn't believe it was there, her staff off to one side, jutting out oddly as the base hit the dirt. When she looked up and caught Livy's eye, she gave her a goofy half smile that had nothing of the Plutarch's Centurions in it and said, "I don't like heights."
Without thinking, Livy gave a tremulous laugh. "Then we've something in common. I never even knew I didn't like them."
Arash simply waited for them until they were able to stand and face him. Then he said, "This way," and led.
THE ORNIHOPTERS PASSED OVERHEAD NEARLY SILENTLY, only the smallest sound of the gears working. Battery operated vehicles moved on the ground, everything from flatbeds to private cars to buses, which were the most prevalent. There was more than one business area, and the three of them walked together through the closest.
"Look," Livy kept saying, pointing as if Arash weren't a native and the Centurion wasn't from Pastoreum. But Pastoreum – not that Selene had ever admitted her provenance – would wonder at the city and its workings.
They passed a kinder nest for small children before school age, where they learned basic educational blocks and played for most of the day. Next to it was a school, one of many for the city, which housed children of all ages.
I'd be going there, Livy thought. School continued until age 17 and not with teachers like the persimmon mouthed math teacher at the Institute who had hit Livy.
When she commented on that, Arash laughed. "I call it Utopia. But the actual name of the city is Dawn. It's fairly old now. It was established long ago enough we might at least call it Early Afternoon."
Livy squinted, decided he was joking, and realized it was too late to laugh. The Centurion stalking behind her made a curious sound that might have been a laugh. And at any rate, Arash didn't stop talking.
"But it's not a paradise. Trust me, Livy, there are some mean, mean teachers in those buildings!"
Which made her laugh, it was so unexpected.
There were people on the streets, too, not all of them at work. Some moved purposefully toward some destination but others were out enjoying each other's company. Many smiled and waved and Livy noted they wore everything from the simple shirts she herself wore under her tunic to elaborate dresses and suits. The freedom to dress as they pleased and to move around without every moment being spent working or resting from it brought a lump to her throat. Her life had changed completely. Her family's life had changed as well, though they still toiled in the fields, they had the new house.
Or had. No telling what had happened to them since Livy had been caught.
Just like that her pleasure in the journey vanished. She stopped looking around her much and caught up to Arash, moving as fast as he did. He glanced at her, and moved faster and she kept up.
The Centurion merely matched their speed without comment.
ONE OF THE centers of the city was the seat of government. Housed in one white-pillared building, there were departments to deal with everything from policing to trash collection. To Livy's amazement, members of the community came there voluntarily, asking for help with matters or even volunteering to help during their own time off.
Arash pointed out a Coliseum, huge and beautiful, built of stone from the walls as the natural cavern was hollowed farther and farther out to allow for building.
"That's where the new inductees are made," he said. "If you choose to stay, you'll take oaths of loyalty there."
Some of the joy went out of Livy. Since the magistrate had picked her out of the crowd, even after her friends and family and neighbors in Agara had tried to hide her, she'd lived moment to moment, having nightmares about possible futures and fearing them coming true, but she accepted what happened to her and reacted to what she couldn't accept.
Now the idea she could swear an oath of loyalty to this place brought a longing with it. If only she could bring her family here. They could live happily in a place that had small natural areas set aside for playing and reading and sunbathing, in a place where people worked together, even if there were the fights that Arash mentioned. Livy thought the fights were probably worth it. This was the democracy Grandfather Bane had told her about.
"Where is the army?" Selene fina
lly asked. "Are there barracks? And the police? Or are they one and the same force?" Her blue eyes searched as she asked, her pale skin flushed by their trek.
"We are all fighters," Arash answered. "We have combat masters and teachers who show us how to defend and how to work offense. From the time we're born we learn to police ourselves."
Selene snorted inelegantly, more human than any Centurion Livy had ever heard. "Pretty words, pretty boy. But people are people and sooner or later they need an intermediary."
"True!" Arash admitted with a laugh. "But we are taught offense and defense and we have a greater purpose than quarreling amongst ourselves. We have those people who drink too much and start stupid fights, and those who suddenly determine our way isn't theirs and who try to make waves. By and large, though, those people are handled by the masters who police and teach combat and warfare tactics. They each take a shift, so all the hours are covered, and if they're needed they come. We have cells to hold the unruly and hospitals to help those who are truly lost. Mostly, though, we work together, because in Dawn, we share the same goal."
Selene nodded, and crossed the street to look in the window of a bakery, but Livy threw Arash a confused and quizzical glance.
"I would have thought you knew. We seek to overthrow Arcadia, the Plutarch and his generational rule, and the leadership."
He said it so matter of factly it took Livy instants to respond. Then she all but exploded.
"You don't just throw something out because it isn't working! Or because a part of it is flawed! Some of the best peach pies in the village come from bruised fruit. It's sweeter, more ripe, and the bad parts are cut away!"
Curious pedestrians glanced at the two of them and away as they passed by.
"Arcadia is not a peach, Olivia. It's a totalitarian travesty of human nature. It's full of the most self-righteous, over-inflated egos who believe only what they believe is of any use to anyone and that only their own way is the way and who will kill to enforce that way." When she tried to speak, he went on, "Livy, they kill people for not sharing a doctrine that enslaves ninety percent of the world's population! How can you espouse support?"
Despite the people walking around them and the beauty of the city and the corruption she'd seen in Arcadia, the torture and beheadings, the sending of students to the pleasure palaces without recompense, the flogging of Vee – despite it all, Livy fought back.
"It's beautiful! It's clean. There's a splendor to it. There's always a chance to work into a better position… "
"That's enough," Arash said coldly. "I accept arguments but not outright lies. You know there's no chance within the caste system the Arcadians have devised."
When she tried to speak again, he pulled her out of the pedestrian path and onto a bench shaded by two thin trees. "There's a story we grow up hearing in the wastes. There were once rabbits who lived in the world."
"Rabbits?" Livy demanded.
"Shh, listen."
She noted the Centurion had drawn near, listening also.
"The rabbits had been seized, the property of keepers who were no more than humans but treated as gods by the rabbits who came to depend on them for food, water, shelter, safety. Though before the creatures had survived on their own, they now depended on their captors, and when food or water was scarce, they made do, assuming this was their lot. Every so often into their safe but empty existence, a shiny silver staff would appear and one of the rabbits would fall and be taken, eaten by the humans, and the remaining rabbits would band together, reduced and afraid and no more apt to act than they had ever been. They'd become accustomed to their care and their containment and they could understand nothing else."
He stopped and watched her, as if Livy would of course see the parallel – and agree.
She saw it. She did not agree. "Arcadia is not like that! It's a center of art and science, of knowledge and study. There are electric lights and cars and buses, there's plenty of food and if there's not a lot of freedom, there's at least more than what the villages offer. No one works themselves to death in Arcadia."
"Are you sure of that?" Selene asked quietly. Now she stood just behind Arash, to Livy's side. "Do you know what the Betas experience?"
Flustered, frustrated, Livy fought to her next point without answering. "I was chosen to wed the Plutarch. I'm to be his helpmeet, his advisor and wife. I'll be able to influence him. No one has to die or be beaten! I can work from the inside, help affect change, pave the way for others to come to him." Panic swept through her, leaving her dizzy. If they didn't listen, how would she ever get back to her place? Desperate, she rushed on. "The first time I ever met the ruler, it was at a dinner while we were all still in the Institute. He let us ask questions and I asked him about why Violet was beaten for running from the brothels, and he listened to me!" She was pleading now.
Selene and Arash exchanged glances that were almost amused. "And of course he changed policy?" Selene asked. "Because I do not remember that."
"No!" Livy shouted, incensed. "But he – "
She stopped. But he had done nothing but praise her spirit. And the next time she had spoken up, he had done nothing but clear the dining room and threaten to kill her should she ever humiliate him again by arguing.
Or stating her opinion.
Over the last few weeks as she learned and studied in the cave, she'd thought repeatedly of truths that seemed self evident to her and that she thought maybe the leadership and aristocracy needed to relearn.
Now she wondered what she herself had to learn. How much time she had to learn it.
And how foolish Arash must think her.
* * *
HAD LIVY HAD time to think on it, she'd have expected meeting the members of the government of the utopian city to be frightening. At the very least, she expected ceremony. In Arcadia, every step that changed one's position was met with ceremony.
In the end, she was accompanied by the ever-stoic Selene and the ever-expansive Arash. She wore her white tunic and pants. She wore her hair up in a ponytail. And she met only a handful of government members, only one of whom held a seat of any kind of importance in Livy's eyes, that being the chair of the branch of government dealing with defense.
She stayed in a dorm room, not unlike that she'd inhabited at the Institute in Arcadia, the parallels obvious and for once strangely endearing to her.
Everyone was human.
Maybe there was some way to work with that.
By day she went to school, no different than the other students in the huge school for older students in their teens. She found her education lacking in areas like reading and advanced in areas like civil planning, agriculture and law. No one was less surprised at this than Olivia herself.
A slight older man with thick glasses taught her self-defense in the evenings, complimenting her at the beginning on everything she'd learned from Simon and the instructors at the Institute, then pushing her to learn more and more new skills faster and faster. Livy learned holds and throws, how to pin an opponent and break free of his hold, how to lock a joint and break a knee, how to throw and how to land. The philosophical side of the teaching dealt with the legend of the Chosen One, thought to be a man who would rise from the wastes.
"The way the Plutarch rose from the ashes," she said. Her teacher was a reedy woman with a reedy voice that made Livy want to take deep breaths; the teacher always sounded like she was suffering an allergy attack.
"There are similarities," the teacher said. "Both good men and evil rise from great change and unrest."
THREE DAYS after they climbed down to the city of Dawn, Arash found Livy after her studies. Exiting the school, she carried her books pressed close to her chest as the other students swirled around her. They carried book bags and straps, threw their books onto the damp earth to engage in wrestling matches with friends or to chase someone for the sport of it or to kiss a chosen girl or boyfriend.
Olive Bane carried her books pressed tight against herself, and kept the
m pristine. She read in them every night. She longed for the chance that should have been hers, to show them to her grandfather. Books were precious.
After three days, she still walked out alone. In Agara she had always been surrounded by friends. In Dawn, she was respected and liked, but no one tried to get close to her.
She was relieved when she looked up and saw Arash waiting for her, Selene automatically a pace behind him, her face impassive as she waited.
Arash was anything but impassive. Always when he saw Livy coming his eyes lit and he began to grin and Livy forced down a corresponding feeling of joy, telling herself it was nothing more than someone she knew, someone who didn't treat her like she was precious and important but nonetheless, different and apart.
She was starting to suspect telling herself that was a lie. All the more irritating because Arash treated her the way her brothers might, teasing her endlessly. At least that meant she wasn't so different to him.
Sometimes he showed up to walk her back to the dorms, less than a mile away but communal, bringing together students from two different schools.
Today he had a look of excitement that translated instantly to Livy. If he'd suggested she head back to her room, she'd have been disappointed. He looked like something was happening.
"Has something happened?" Livy asked eagerly as she reached the two of them. She liked the school and loved the books, but she couldn't pretend she wasn't waiting. Something was going to happen, something that involved her, something that involved all the rebels and the Plutarch. Something that would change everything she'd ever known. It wasn't dream knowledge or superstition. It was a gut certainty she carried with her, making her impatient in classes and interrupting her sleep.
"We're going up," Arash said, his smile broad, and instantly Livy rethought everything that had just gone through her mind.