The Duty and the Gone (The Fertility Plague Book 1)

by Claire Vale

  It wasn’t the hawk guy.

  A warden stood a foot from me, a young guy, not much more than a boy. The hand I’d shaken off my shoulder was still raised in a placating manner. “Miss? I’m not going to hurt you. Not going to stop you, either.”

  I breathed in deep and slow. Deep and slow.

  “Have you been debriefed?”

  I worked spit into my mouth. The metallic taste lingered. “Sorry?”

  “It’s just, you seem unsure and…” His gaze went past me, to the bridge, came back. “That’s not something you want to do unless you’re a hundred percent sure. Have you talked to someone about your decision?”

  I shook my head, confused, mind-numbingly lost in the freaking dark.

  “Would you like to come with me?” He lowered his hand into a small wave across the plaza, toward a glass-fronted entrance into the building. “We have a debriefing room inside. I just want to talk.”

  My gaze flickered between the entrance and his hand.

  Was this a trick?

  Did I care?

  He was a warden and he wanted to talk. He wanted to debrief me, whatever that meant, but it was more than Roman had ever offered.

  Actually…

  “Roman West,” I said. “Can I talk to Roman West? He’s here, I think…” I know.

  “You know West?” His brow lifted in surprise. “West doesn’t really do these—”

  “I’m not going inside,” I cut in, feeling stronger, braver. “I’ll only speak to Roman West.”

  “Okay.” The warden raised a hand again, as if I needed calming down. “I’ll go find West. But stay right here, okay? Wait for me. You’re safe, but I can’t do anything to help once you cross the bridge.”

  I retreated a fair distance up the paved walkway. Not too far. You’re safe, the warden had told me, and I’d take his word on it. Those predatory men had backed off when the young warden had shown interest in my situation, but I wouldn’t want any one of them to get me anywhere alone.

  What happened when I crossed that bridge, anyhow?

  Absolute lawlessness?

  26

  Roman didn’t immediately recognize me when his searching gaze tracked up the walkway to where I waited. He only saw a girl who’d asked for him by name, an unrobed girl in jeans who did not belong amongst these strange people.

  I saw the moment it happened. He slowed, stared. The tan slid off his face, unwashed surprise and shock. It didn’t last. The dark mask slid into place and he descended on me like a fury driven on a thousand storms.

  He grabbed me by the wrist without a break in momentum, swept me along with him. “What are you doing here? Who brought you?”

  “You did.”

  His grip tightened, pinching my tender skin. “You and I both know that’s not true.”

  “You’re hurting me!”

  “You don’t know what hurt is,” he said in that blistering tone. “You have no idea what it is to suffer. You’re a spoilt brat with no goddamn real world sense.”

  His grip relaxed a fraction, however, and I chose to ignore the insults. “What is this place?”

  “How did you get here?” he countered, not looking at me, still dragging me up the path toward the top of the building.

  “I stowed away in your truck,” I told him, short-step running to keep up. “Lockbox. On the back.”

  His threw me a look that could freeze the sun. “Why the hell would you do that?”

  “You seriously need to ask?” I spluttered, glaring at his rigid profile. “I wanted to see what lay outside the walls and look what I found! What is this place, Roman? Where do those Outerlanders come from?”

  He shot me another look. “Outerlanders?”

  “These people—” I cast my free hand toward the river and beyond “—are from outside the town wall.”

  And more, so much more than that.

  This was not The Smoke. Not the farms or the mines. My mind could just about fit the women into any of those places, but not the children. Not the babe strapped to that one woman’s breast.

  I added, “From outside the Eastern Coalition.”

  “The only thing you should be worrying about right now is how we get you back inside Capra before you’re seen.”

  “I’ve already been seen by at least one warden, and all these people.”

  “I can manage that.”

  “Roman!” I twisted and jerked my wrist, not getting free but he did slow the pace. “Maybe I’m not ready to go back right now. That warden, the young one who fetched you, he seemed to think it was okay for me to be here. He even seemed ready to let me cross the river, if that’s what I wanted.”

  That got Roman’s full attention. “Is that what you want?”

  Not really, if I were honest. Not with the fresh memory of those men circling me, stalking me like prey. Given the choice, I’d rather get my answers on this side of the fence.

  Roman’s heels dug in, nearly giving me whiplash as he crashed us to a dead stop and swung me around to face the river.

  “What is it you think you’re looking at?” he growled. “Freedom?”

  I didn’t know what I was looking at. Why couldn’t he understand that was the problem? Had always been my problem?

  “Those men you see,” Roman went on in a low, thin voice, “have never known any freedom. Those women are chattel, cattle for breeding. The baron will have first rights to you. You’ll be handed to him in exchange for coin or favors. If he likes you, he’ll add you to his harem, otherwise you’ll be a reward for one of his trusted men. Once you’re used up, you’ll be passed on to the dwellers for breeding which the baron will be happy to pay for. A boy means another hand in his service. A girl will be taken from birth and you’ll never set eyes on her again.”

  All these words coming at me, and I understood less and less. “What is this place?” I asked hoarsely, asked for about the hundredth time.

  “A trading post,” Roman finally replied.

  My nose wrinkled. “A trading post? For what?”

  “Come on,” he said, tugged me into moving again, around the top of the building and down the other side. “You need to un-hear everything you’ve heard. Un-see everything you’ve seen.”

  We were outside the garage doors and he pressed his thumb to a square patch on the paneled framework to open the one he wanted.

  “You cannot talk to anyone about any of this,” he went on, pulling me inside before he let go of my wrist so he could step up and leap onto the back of the truck. He leant over, hand stretched out to me. “You were never here. This is important, Georga. Do you understand?”

  I shook my head, no. Of course I didn’t understand. I refused the offered hand and climbed up onto the back of the truck by myself. The garage door remained opened. I guess that meant we were leaving imminently.

  Roman examined the lockbox, lifted the top, muttered a hundred curses while he did so. “You’ll have to go back in,” he said. “It’s the only way to get you through the checkpoints.”

  I looked at the lockbox in dismay. Really? And then the rest of it hit me, everything he’d been saying. He intended to push me, literally and figuratively, back into the dark.

  “I can’t just un-hear and un-see, Roman.” I glared up at him. “You’re not going to shove me in that box and pretend none of this happened. I’m not going anywhere until you start talking. What is this place? What is traded here? How are there barons and trusted men and dwellers, whatever all that is, living like the Fertility Plague never was? What the hell is going on?”

  He reached for my arm and I shrunk away, stood my ground.

  “Dammit, Georga, we don’t have time for this.”

  “Then you’d better talk fast,” I said, stubborn to the end.

  He was the one under pressure here, desperate to get me back within Capra’s walls before anyone was the wiser. I wasn’t a fool. What I’d seen and heard, what I now knew, would be dangerous to our society. If I breathed a word of it, I’d be c
harged with treason. Once Roman got what he wanted, me back inside the wall, I’d have no leverage whatsoever to pry the information loose.

  “I will tell you,” Roman conceded at last. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but we don’t have the time to do this now. Please, you have to trust me.”

  But could I?

  I stared into his eyes, not finding the answer to my soul-searching question. I wanted to trust Roman, I did trust him with my life, but it was becoming clear to me that my entire world might be based on one big lie and wasn’t Roman part of that?

  “I promise, we will talk,” he said. “You have my word.”

  And maybe I was a fool after all because I believed him.

  Just then the inner door opened, the one with the pale blue light above, and voices filtered in.

  Roman cursed, stepped in front of me, but it wasn’t enough.

  There was nowhere to hide. We were standing on the truck bed beneath the harsh neon lights.

  Three men came through. Wardens. Two younger guys, one skinny and shaven, the other taller and stockier with a buzz cut, and one much older with an air of authority about him.

  “West, hey!” the skinny warden called out as his eyes lit on us. “Are you joining us? Talk on the airwaves about a…” He trailed off as he realized what was wrong with the picture. Me.

  All three were making their way around the front of the parked vehicles, eyeing me with open curiosity.

  Buzz cut spoke. “You know she can’t be here, right?” He sniggered. “Damn, man, and aren’t you supposed to be all loved up to the townie ball and chain?”

  The older warden’s hand shot out to backhand buzz cut over the head. “Don’t forget whom you’re speaking to!”

  “Sir!” Buzz cut recovered from the slap into a pin straight posture. “Apologies, sir!”

  “Get out of here,” he barked. “Both of you.”

  They scuttled, back along the wall in front of the vehicles and out through the door.

  Roman’s head tilted down toward his shoulder. “Let me deal with this.”

  “Dammit, West,” the other man said, kept coming. “This is a secure area.”

  “We were just leaving.”

  “She changed her mind?”

  Roman grunted.

  The man reached the truck, hooked an elbow over the side, his curious gaze running over all the bits of me not hidden by Roman’s broad back.

  I gave up and stepped out, thinking it would look less suspicious.

  The man looked a moment more, then dropped his gaze. “Or had it changed for her?”

  I followed his line of sight, saw him looking at the lockbox with the lid still lifted, waiting for me to climb inside. Crap.

  “It’s not like that,” Roman said calmly.

  He’d been tense since his fellow wardens had walked in, even before, but now I could feel that tension roll off him, dissipate into casual nonchalance. That’s how I knew the situation was bad, and deteriorating.

  “Tell you what,” the man said. “I’m going that way. I’ll give her a ride.”

  “She’s with me.”

  “West.” Underlined with warning.

  “Branson.” Stained with challenge.

  The two men locked eyes.

  I had no idea what they were talking about, changing my mind, having it changed for me, but I was definitely, one hundred percent, with Roman on this. I was sticking with the devil I knew.

  The older warden, Branson, broke first. “We’re friends, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I know you, West. Hell, man, I know your history.”

  “This has nothing to do with Amelia.”

  My pulse quickened. History? Amelia?

  “Then what does it have to do with?” Branson said softly. “And don’t give me any bullshit story about a bit on the side. That’s not you…”

  Bit on the side?

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?” he asked me.

  “Don’t answer that.”

  “Georga,” I said at the same time, distracted into an automatic response, not accustomed to hiding my identity, unaware of the harm a first name could do.

  Roman cursed under his breath.

  “Jesu,” Branson dragged through his teeth, his brow spearing deeper and deeper as he watched me.

  His gaze dropped to my hands.

  To my ring finger.

  He knows.

  I clenched that hand, shoved it behind me, breath rattling in my lungs. He knew the name, my name. It seemed ridiculous, incredulous, that Roman would discuss his marriage, his wife, with anyone outside of town. He was always so dogmatic about the unmovable line, black and white, inside and outside.

  Branson’s eyes went back to Roman. “She’s your wife? A townie?”

  Roman ran a hand through his hair. “This isn’t what it looks like, Branson.”

  Oh, the irony. It was laughable, really it was. Except I wasn’t laughing. I was a mile from even thinking about laughing. And this was exactly what it looked like.

  Branson placed both hands firmly on the side of the truck, looked ready to heave himself up and arrest me on the spot. His eyes stayed glued to Roman. “I’ll have to take her in for processing.”

  “I can’t allow that.” Roman made the universal sign to stop, to stop Branson, to stop everything. “She hid in the back of my truck,” he said. “In the lockbox. That’s where I just found her. She’d locked herself in and couldn’t get out. I heard her thumping. She hasn’t been off this truck, out of this parking garage, you understand? If you take her out for processing, through the building, that changes everything. I’ll handle this, okay?”

  Branson looked at him a long time. “Okay,” he finally said, with a slow shake of his head, as if he thoroughly disagreed with himself and what he was saying. “Just make sure you do.”

  “Like you said,” Roman murmured. “You know me.”

  Branson backed away from the truck, but he didn’t leave. He stood there, and I was forced to tuck myself into the cramped compartment as he watched. The indignity of my mode of travel hadn’t really struck me until this moment, with two pairs of eyes on me. It was mortifying.

  “Remember everything I told you,” Roman said, a quiet, rapid fire of commands as he leant in to close the top. “You were locked inside this box. You never left the truck. You never saw outside this garage. You have no idea you were outside Capra.”

  The lid closed without so much as a goodbye, see you on the other side, and it was just me and the blackness. He’d removed the wooden spatula. I was locked in for real without my sliver of light.

  The return journey, however, wasn’t nearly as bad. I knew where I was going, I knew the trip wouldn’t be never-ending, and my head was bursting at the seams with too many thoughts to contain in one brain.

  One rose above all the other, stood out like a towering monster.

  My world was built on a foundation of lies and deceit.

  Was the Fertility Plague even a real thing?

  It had to be. Sexual relations were encouraged in marriages, mandated. And there were hundreds of married couples, thousands over the years. Natural conception on that scale could not be kept a secret.

  But the world out there was not dead.

  Babies were being born.

  Women were being bred? Like cattle, Roman had said. Is that what Sector Five traded? Our precious store of frozen eggs? Was that another lie? Was our precious store not so precious after all, but an unlimited supply that we could waste and trade with Outerlanders?

  Lies upon lies upon lies.

  And here I was, stuffed and cramped and rattling around in a tin can so I could go back into the thick of it all.

  Was I completely insane?

  But I was always coming back. There was my mother and father. Jessie. There was everyone I’d ever known. I wasn’t that girl, the girl who could walk away from everyone and everything she knew into the great unknown. I’d never been that bra
ve.

  And then there was Roman.

  He wouldn’t have been so hell-bent on sneaking me back inside Capra if he believed for one moment I’d be better off out there.

  I trusted him.

  I did.

  I trusted Roman with my life.

  The first checkpoint came upon us suddenly, so wrapped up was I in my head. Checkpoints, Roman had said, which made sense now. The Guard didn’t know about Sector Five, about trading posts and Outerlanders. That’s the kind of knowledge that would have filtered through over the years, decades.

  This checkpoint, the outer one, was probably under the jurisdiction of the wardens.

  Same as last time, Roman left the engine running but climbed out. I heard the door slam behind him.

  A short while later, we were on our way again and my thoughts rumbled on to what Branson had let slip about Roman’s history and Amelia. Was that the name of his artist? It was a nice name. A pretty sounding name.

  But even Amelia couldn’t distract me for too long.

  Why was the world out there kept hidden from us? Or were we the ones kept hidden from them? If it was so bad out there, as horrendous as Roman made out, then surely that would’ve been enough to keep us inside our walls. More than enough. I’d be more inclined to escape into a dead world than into the world Roman described.

  Why lie when the truth did the same job, and better?

  And inside Capra’s walls, how many people knew the truth?

  The wardens, obviously.

  The council, almost definitely.

  We were slowing again, stopping for the final checkpoint.

  The wall.

  I breathed in, out. Soon. Roman had promised he’d tell me everything, answer all my questions. I’d know. I’d understand.

  The engine cut out.

  I went absolutely still, mind and body. Maybe I’d missed the second checkpoint. Were we home already?

  “Who’s the officer on duty?” I heard Roman say.

  “Sergeant Mackintosh.”

  “I need to see him.”

  “Trouble out there?”

  “Not at all.”

  The door slammed.