by K. Makansi
But now James is looking me up and down, studying me, assessing me. His eyes flit to the pack on my back.
“Where the hell are you going?” he asks.
I hesitate.
“I don’t know.” I mouth the words silently, unable to compel sound through my chest.
The truth is, I don’t know where I’m going, tonight. I could go back to the capital, to Okaria. I want to get my hands around Philip Orleán’s neck and wring it. I want to kill him. But that’s a suicide mission, I know, and odds are I’d never succeed. Rationally, I know that’s impossible. But the alternative is to sit quietly and let them get away with it as I continue to live this excuse for a life, or to flee the Sector and become a renegade, one of the outcasts with no loyalties or allegiances. To join the Outsiders.
But the Outsiders, from what I’ve been able to tell, stay safely away from the Sector. They go about their business and let us go about ours. I want more than that.
I want revenge.
I want revenge for my parents. I want revenge for Rachel Sayyid. I want revenge for Hana Lyon and Tai Alexander. The Orleáns have a lot of blood on their hands, and I intend to wash it clean with their own.
“You’re leaving,” he whispers.
“I don’t know what I’m doing. But I can’t keep living like this.” The desperation I’ve been so anxious to conceal bleeds into my voice. James’ face, usually so hard, shows traces of pity and concern.
He suddenly turns and hobbles down the hallway. I follow him, curious. He steps into a tiny electrical closet and pulls me in with him. He shuts the door behind me and for a second we are enshrouded in blackness. Then he flips on a tiny biolight. He reaches into a pocket in his jacket and pulls out a small plasma. He swipes his finger and keys in, and then types in a quick message.
He holds the plasma out to me. “Here.”
I glance at the screen. There’s an open courriel from a sender with no name. It just says UNKNOWN. The content of the message is empty, save for two numbers.
“What is that?” I ask.
“It’s a location—they’re coordinates. Go there. Ask for the Director. She’ll take you in.”
“Who—what?”
“For once in your goddamn life, Soren, don’t ask questions. Trust me. Memorize the coordinates. Do as I say.”
“Where … is this?”
“Far away from here. You’ll need an airship or excellent skills in the Wilds.”
“I can take my parents’ hovercar.” I don’t know why I’m agreeing to this. It sounds insane. But no crazier than anything else I’ve contemplated.
He shakes his head.
“Won’t get you through the rough of the Wilds. Here.” He takes his plasma back, and brings up a new window. “Put your palm on the surface.” I obey silently. When my palm has registered, he nods. “You’re scanned into my airship now. Don’t protest—no, stop—” my mouth is open in shock “—I’ll be fine without. Don’t worry. Just go.”
“James,” I say, my voice a plea. “I don’t understand. You have to tell me why you’re doing this. What this means.”
“I’m sending you somewhere safe. Somewhere you’ll be able to help.”
“How do you know about this?”
He glares at me.
“Goddamnit, Soren. All these months, you haven’t been the only one trying to find out what’s going on. I found a contact, I can’t tell you who or how, but he put me in touch with this woman. The Director. I knew her, long ago, when she went by a different name. I don’t know much about what she’s doing there, but she’s a good woman, and she’ll help you. Now stop asking questions and do as I say.”
I bite back my doubt and uncertainty.
“You were right,” he continues. “There’s something wrong, deep in the heart of Okaria. I don’t understand it yet. All I know is that we can’t fix it from the inside. Believe me. I’ve tried. We have to fight it. Where you’re going, you can help.”
“Aren’t you coming?”
“Maybe. But first, I have to talk to an old friend.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. Don’t wait for me.”
“Please watch out for Jeremiah.”
“Did you tell him anything?”
“No.”
“Good. Better that way—for now. I’ll talk to him, if it comes to that.”
He reaches into his pocket again and this time pulls out a strange object. He hands it to me.
“Take this,” he says. “It may help.”
I stare at it. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s made of wood and metal and adorned with some hard, white substance I don’t recognize. I run my fingers over the engraving and find that it’s as smooth as the keys on a real piano. Ivory? There’s a metal piece that fans out ever so slightly, and it catches my finger. I pull on it gently, and the metal pulls away from the wood, hinged. It swings out in a full one-eighty rotation, and as I stare at it in the dim biolight, I realize: it’s a knife.
“A trinket from the Old World. Found it on my travels years ago. It’s yours.”
I stare at James, suddenly realizing how much this must be worth. A trinket. I can’t form the words to protest.
“Thank you.”
“Get the hell out of here.”
I open the door, squinting against the lights, dim as they are. Before I start down the hall, I turn back one more time.
“James,” I say. “Don’t take too long.”
He nods.
As I turn and walk away, through the dim lights of the night, a brass confidence seems to settle on my shoulders, weighing and steadying me at the same time. There’s a hole in the pit of my stomach, but the anger and bitterness that have been my constant companions these last months have settled. Instead of holding me back, now they’re buoying me, pushing me forward, giving me strength. I step into the silver-blue spring air, and let the wind wrap tendrils of fog around me. It occurs to me that walking away from everything I’ve ever known feels strangely like freedom.
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THE REAPING
Book Two of the Seeds Trilogy
K. Makansi
Copyright © 2014 by K. Makansi
All rights reserved.
THE REAPING
Published in the United States by Layla Dog Press.
Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from the publisher. For information, contact us through our webpage at http://www.theseedstrilogy.com.
Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is merely coincidental, and names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover by K. Makansi & Kevin Wietzel
For Kathy, valiant fighter of alien invaders
Prologue
BRINN ALEXANDER
Winter 2, Sector Annum 106, 21h45
Gregorian Calendar: December 22
Blue is the color now. The bruised halo of the moon’s light against the blackened winter sky. The cobalt flash of electric fire, a single strike as it hits the man across from us. The navy of his shirt against the brown dirt and pale grasses as red blood spills from h
is chest and mouth. The deepening blue of panic as I clutch Remy’s arm, pull her to me. The blue ice in Soren’s eyes as he screams, run.
So soon a moment can change colors, so soon can it spoil, so soon can it wither.
It doesn’t matter that I hardly knew the man. Darrin Squire was his name. Was. He had a name, he was a teammate, we had laughed together. Now he is dead. So quickly a life is extinguished, so fleeting our moments of joy. I clutch Remy’s arm tighter as we run, as Gabriel and I propel her along with our momentum. She seemed so tired, so done, and yet here we are, running. Again.
It’s an inevitable experience for a doctor, watching lives fade to nothing. A daily tragedy to which we consign ourselves, hoping we can stave off death a while longer or, if not, at least alleviate the suffering. Some fade away, lingering too long, leaving relief and fatigue in their wake. Others burst like dying stars, an explosion of anger, bitterness, sadness at leaving this life too soon. The confusion, the shock, the agonizing awe of death’s absence has never dulled with exposure. Accepting death in a cosmic sense is all we can do to ease the pain of our patients’ passing.
We all die. Whether we wilt slowly from old age or instantaneously from a knife to the heart, we cannot escape it. So small are our lives in the span of universal space, so quickly they pass in the span of universal time. So fleeting are our moments of joy.
“Thank the fates you’re alive,” I’d said to Remy, just moments before, as relief washed over me, a river of joy. I was giddy at the sight of her, relieved as only a parent can be when you realize after days of worry and dread that your child is safe. I wrapped my arms around her and held her as though she was the only thing sustaining me, the only source of life. The color wasn’t blue then—it was blinding white. It was everything. It overcame me, overfilled me, spilling out into the world, my joy radiant and independent of me. Remy, safe! I felt like sunshine.
I think of Tai, my oldest daughter, as I have every day since the first moment I put my hand on my belly and felt her kick. And I think, for the millionth time, I can’t lose Remy, too. My children, my everything, put in danger by this transcendent and terrifyingly beautiful world.
It could have been different. Gabriel and I could have stayed in the Sector, stayed in safety. We could have closed our eyes, turned away from the truth. But we didn’t. We owed Tai the truth. So we brought Remy here, to the Resistance. If we had stayed, the Sector’s airships and soldiers wouldn’t be dropping down on us right now. If we had stayed, Remy wouldn’t have been taken prisoner by the Sector. If we had stayed, Remy wouldn’t be in danger.
But if we had stayed, Remy wouldn’t know justice. She wouldn’t know sacrifice. She wouldn’t know there is pain on the path to renewal. To grow, we must be pruned, bits of ourselves flayed open, cut back. In those carved-out spaces, we grow stronger.
“Recovery is painful,” I told Remy three years ago, when we mourned Tai. “We will bleed, we will swell, we will scab. It’s the same with life. It wasn’t Tai’s time to die, but she was taken from us. She would want us to heal from her absence, to feel joy again. But we don’t truly understand joy until we have known sorrow.” Joy and sorrow. Light and shadow. Life and death.
If we had stayed in Okaria, the three of us would have suffocated in the wake of Tai’s death, in the wake of our hypocrisy. Our silence would have killed us from the inside, like a cancer eating away at our bones. I was unable to protect Tai, but now, for Remy, I will do anything. Which is why, when the blue explosions of Bolt fire fill the air, Gabriel and I envelop her in our arms to shield her, even as we run.
I’m almost unsurprised when the blue flame ignites inside me. It begins in my back, where just earlier that day Gabriel’s hand rested, comforting, as he whispered that Remy would return to us, that he, like me, would do anything to bring her home. From my back, the blue spreads like ink on wet paper to my knees as I fall forward, to my head as the pain screams its arrival, to my lungs as I struggle to breathe. I try to move. I push myself using arms that don’t work. I twist away even as the fire sears into my bones.
Run, Remy! I try to tell her.
I’m putting them both in danger by falling here, I know, where the color blue rains down on us like death.
Tai, I think, distantly, as if I am speaking to myself from far away. Hush, child. I’m almost there. I’m almost there with you. Just a little longer. We all must die, after all. Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. It is our mortal curse and our mortal privilege that we are returned to earth. My transformation from Brinn to earth begins now. Even as a part of me hopes I might recover, that I could fight, that I could survive this, a bigger part knows it is over. My time as Brinn Alexander is over. I am ready to return to where I was made.
The screams of my family and those around me hurt more than the pain. I am conscious now of more than mere sight and sound. Gabriel cradles me to him and I am filled with wonder at the joy I have known in his embrace. The skin of my daughter’s hands, her grip fierce on my fingers. I feel nothing but the two people I love most in the world.
“You’ll die if you stay here,” I hear. Distantly I recognize the voice. Valerian Orleán. My brain functions just enough to register mild surprise that he is here with us. He is the enemy, a part of me says, but another part soothes and calms me. He will protect them. I watch through heavy lidded eyes as he looks at Remy. Her reaction is fierce, eyes narrowed, and she returns his gaze evenly.
“I don’t care,” she whispers. Three words from her lips a thousand times more terrifying than death.
Go, I try to speak. It’s my time, not yours. You will live.
Gabriel nods at Vale, some unspoken communication I can’t fathom, and lifts me up. I watch the world from my love’s arms as he carries me away from the unguarded air. Vale runs alongside me for a moment and I thank him with as much strength as I can muster, words that I speak aloud and words that will not come, that could never fill this space. He nods, but his eyes are fixed on the skies, his weapon up, guarding me, protecting my family.
In the clarity of death, my surprise at Vale’s presence fades. How could I be surprised? Three years ago, Vale looked at Remy like she was a new world, infinite with delight and passion. He tried to hide it when I was around, his budding love, but a mother can sense these things. One who has loved can sense these things.
Now, he looks at her like she is his salvation.
Gabriel sets me down on the ground. Remy kneels over me. I grasp for her hand, lean into Gabriel, my love, my loves. The explosions in the distance become faint as I focus on Remy’s touch and Gabriel’s voice. The blue fades. White fills me up as all other colors and emotions combine and blur into emptiness. I see a face I recognize, but distantly, and I struggle to focus.
Gabriel’s voice, the poetry, the resonance that vibrates in my chest: “I love you, I love you, I love you….”
I close my eyes and see Tai, laughing, beckoning, and I take her hand and go.
The Reaping
by Gabriel Alexander
Poet Laureate, Okarian Sector
Brushstrokes from my daughter’s pen
Carve nascent shadows in the dawn
Carve dripping moonlight on a sea she’s never seen
Carve little spaces where we may sleep at night
Carve little spaces in me.
Brushstrokes from the reaper’s scythe
Carve hollows in these golden fields
Carve fruiting canes in the green vines
Carve little spaces where we may find our seeds
Carve little spaces in me.
Brushstrokes from the butcher’s knife
Carve canyons in the calf’s throat
Carve life from the lamb’s heart
Carve little spaces where we may sate our needs
Carve little spaces in me.
Brushstrokes from the wind in the trees
Brushstrokes from the pen that’s never seen the sea
Brushstrokes from the scythe w
hose scars give life
Carve little spaces where we may plant our seeds
Carve little spaces in me.
1 - VALE
Winter 27, Sector Annum 106, 08h45
Gregorian Calendar: January 16
My fingers press into the hare’s neck, and the animal whimpers and twitches, caught in the terror of death. I spare a moment to marvel at its silken fur, its taut, sinewy muscles, the delicate bones. I close my eyes and whisper my penitence.
“I’m sorry.”
With a wrench, I feel the sick crack as the spine breaks. I open my eyes. The whimpering stops, the hare’s breath cut short. The muscles twitch for a second, and then everything is still. I let out the breath that had ballooned inside my chest.
Crunching leaves and stomping feet sound behind me. Firestone. I haven’t the slightest idea how he survived out in the Wilds all those months before the Resistance found him—he sounds like a wild boar rampaging through the underbrush. The idea of him creeping stealthily through the trees, hunting, or hiding, is laughable. It was his traps and seemingly endless knowledge of edible plants that saved him, I guess. I thought I had a good handle on all that with my Sector “wilderness” training, but I’d probably get pretty hungry out here without him. He’s been teaching the rest of us how to set the traps and forage for winter plants since we got to the safe house.
“Got something?” he asks, his voice rough, his long black hair tangled and droopy against his forehead. He hasn’t slept much lately. None of us have.
“Big, fat rabbit.”
“Good. Mine was empty.”
“The student becomes the master,” I say, bowing deeply as I stand to face him.
“Master, yes. And don’t forget it.” He flashes a grin. “Your traps been getting better, true. Better than Soren’s, at least. For a pianist, his fingers don’t seem to work that well.”