The Watch (The Red Series Book 1)

by Amanda Witt

  He had even, I saw now, marked the cameras. Surely that was what the tiny x marks meant. Yes, there were the two in the school, and the wide-lens in the schoolyard marked with a double x; and there was the one at the slaughterhouse.

  What was I looking for? What had Rafe wanted me to see?

  I studied top to bottom and left to right. I began finding the places where things had happened to Meritt and me. I traced the lines of the streets where I'd run with him that memorable night, noted the exact spot where I'd been caught. There was the gap where the blonde warden had stopped Meritt; there was the wasteland where Rafe had been arrested.

  Something caught my eye.

  Rafe—or whoever the mapmaker had been—had drawn a tiny, almost invisible circle on the outer side of the city wall. I looked at the rest of the wall; tiny circles appeared regularly. There was one outside the eastern wall, near the slaughterhouse. But I knew that area well, had spent hours out there with Meritt, and I couldn’t remember anything there worth marking with a circle.

  Lifting the candle, I examined the map again, this time turning my attention to the inside of the city. After a little while I spotted another tiny, faint circle under the watchtower. I went on searching for the tiny circles until I thought I was going cross-eyed, and counted nine more before my stinging eyes made me stop.

  What were they? I had no idea.

  I rested my eyes for a few minutes, and then tried again. I was just on the cusp of giving up when I noticed something else, a mistake that until just recently I would have considered completely unremarkable: On Rafe’s map the wall was open between the Watcher compound and the wilderland. But I knew the wall there was unbroken—I had seen it through the telescope in the watchtower. The Watchers were walled off from the Guardians.

  My heartbeat sounded suddenly loud in my ears. I didn’t know whether it was from hope or fear.

  Rafe was careful. Rafe had drawn this map—and I was sure, now, that he had drawn it with his own hand—with incredible accuracy and care. So if the discrepancy meant what I thought it meant, at one time the wall beyond the compound had opened to the wilderland. And that made sense. The Guardians protected the Watchers, enforced their commands.

  But then something had changed, a falling out perhaps, and the openings in the walls had been filled in. And if the Guardians were no longer allies with the Watchers, there was at least a small chance that they would help us.

  There was another possibility, of course. Maybe the wall was sealed because something mad or evil out there had killed the Guardians, or the Guardians themselves had gone mad, and nothing was safe from them.

  Who would be brave enough—or foolish enough—to go into the woods to find out?

  I shivered, remembering the guttural voice from the night before, the voice from the wilderland, calling my name.

  Chapter 13

  Anxious to find Meritt and tell him what I’d discovered at Rafe’s house, I went to breakfast early. It was a misty morning, touched with pale pink light—one of those strangely delicate mornings that sometimes come just before a hard frost.

  Though I was out far earlier than usual, the streets weren’t empty. Small groups of people clustered here and there, huddling into themselves against the morning chill. A boy on the edge of the circle nearest to me surreptitiously snickered. I approached one group—cautiously, given my pariah status—in time to hear a woman say, “It’s not just this one. It’s most of them.”

  She was standing beneath a camera. I followed her gaze and saw that someone else had been slipping through the shadows on the streets of Optica the night before. Someone with access to black paint.

  The sign under the camera now read, “We Watch Because We SCare.”

  * * * *

  The cafeteria was full of gray-faced, frightened people. If they’d seen the altered signs, they were afraid to laugh at them.

  After waiting by the door for ages I went through the line and got my food, and then settled at a table with old Louie and Cline, where I could see the entrance. Two people at the table promptly got up and left, but the rest stayed put. I guess they figured they were already eating with Louie, who’d actually been put in a city meeting, so what did I matter.

  Louie patted my hand when I sat down. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, and I nodded.

  “Neither do I.”

  “Then let’s discuss a more pleasant topic. You, for instance, are getting prettier every day.” He winked. “Though that’s only to be expected, given you’re a fairy child.”

  Cline’s face took on a look of such pained incredulity that I almost smiled.

  Louie chatted on in the same manner, saying nothing important, but somehow steadying me just the same. And all the while, I was watching and waiting. How was I going to stand it if I had to go all day—and possibly all night—without being able to tell Meritt what I’d found?

  Eventually Louie wandered off to cheer up someone else and left me to Cline’s silence. I was finishing my toast—still keeping one eye on the door—when Farrell Dean slid into the seat between us and rolled a hardboiled egg from his tray to my own. His face was flushed and his eyes sparkling, unlike pretty much everyone else in the room.

  Maybe it was the contrast between him and all those gray-faced and cowed people, or maybe I was annoyed with Meritt for not being there when I needed him; in any case, I smiled at Farrell Dean with more warmth than I intended, and he went abruptly still and quiet.

  Cline glowered at me—he seemed to think I was an embarrassing habit Farrell Dean should have the willpower to break. I smiled sweetly at him, knowing it would irritate, and turned my attention back to Farrell Dean. If I could have told him about the map I would have—I was itching to tell someone—but there were too many people around for that sort of conversation. I settled for teasing him a little.

  “You’re looking fit this morning,” I said. “Sleep well?”

  He cast a sideways glance at me, his eyes wary. “As always,” he said.

  “Have sweet dreams?”

  “Not really, no.” He turned sideways in his chair and looked at me directly. “I dreamed about you.”

  I stuck out my tongue at him and he laughed.

  The textile worker directly across the table was smiling benevolently at us. At least we’d managed to distract one person from the stress of the day.

  “So what happened in this dream about me?” I said, rolling the egg on the table to crack its shell.

  “Actually, it was a nightmare.”

  “A nightmare? No way. Not with me in it—I’m a fairy.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since Louie said so. Ask Cline.”

  Cline made a disgusted noise.

  “Can you tell just by looking?” Farrell Dean said. He began considering me narrowly, leaning back and forth to see me from different angles, presumably looking for signs of fairy-dom. “Do fairies have wings? Fancy hair? Are they pretty?”

  Cline dropped his fork in exasperation; the textile worker flinched, startled, then recovered and smiled at us again.

  “Fairies are smart,” I informed Farrell Dean. “That’s their key characteristic—they’re smarter and braver than other people give them credit for being.”

  Farrell Dean nodded, miming deep thought. “The Red in my dream was smart,” he said slowly. “Too smart for her own good, in fact. And too brave. And too stubborn. Plus she had terrible taste in men. Does that sound like a fairy to you?”

  I frowned; Cline smirked. The textile worker looked back and forth between the three of us.

  “And in my dream this fairy—or whoever she was—kept dancing on the edge of a cliff.” Farrell Dean pointedly met my eyes. His tone was still light but his face was grave. “That’s where the nightmare came in. I knew I was too far away to catch her if she fell.”

  For a long moment the table was silent.

  “Maybe the fairy didn’t need to be caught,” I said. “Maybe she could fly.”

/>   Farrell Dean smiled, but his eyes were serious. “Maybe she thought so,” he said softly. “But it was only a dream.”

  The textile worker waited to see if I’d reply. When I didn’t, she stood up and collected her tray. “Young people are so resilient,” she remarked as she turned to go.

  I got up as well, and pushed my metal chair back up to the table.

  “I’ll be at your field sometime today,” Farrell Dean said in a low voice, every trace of joking gone. “We need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  He glanced over at Cline, who nodded, his face set and grim.

  “About Meritt.”

  “Warden,” Cline muttered.

  I turned, and found myself face to face with the scarred warden.

  “Time to go,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I tried to back away from him, but Farrell Dean had stood up and was right behind me. He put a protective hand on my shoulder.

  The warden looked at him over my head. “This has nothing to do with you,” he said. “She’s field supervisor, and she’s late.”

  I wasn’t. I knew exactly how much time I still had. But arguing would do no good, and I wasn’t going to drag anyone else into trouble as well.

  “He’s right,” I said hurriedly, glancing back at Farrell Dean. “I’m going.”

  “Red—” Farrell Dean began.

  “Take her tray,” the warden told him. “That’s your only role here. Clean up her mess.”

  Then he took me by the arm and started pulling me after him.

  “Hey—” Farrell Dean said. “Wait a minute—”

  I glanced back over my shoulder, casting a beseeching look at Cline. He nodded and, without a word, stepped in front of Farrell Dean, blocking the narrow aisle with his bulk.

  When I glanced back again, from the end of the aisle, Cline was gripping Farrell Dean’s shoulder and whispering something in his ear. Farrell Dean’s gaze was fixed on me, his face white.

  As for the scarred warden, I hoped he was only trying to scare me—surely he wouldn’t make me go with him now, when I really was supposed to be at work, when I’d be missed and reported.

  But I grew less hopeful as he pulled me toward the door, staying so close that I could feel his breath on my hair. I wanted to believe he was only toying with me, but with each step I felt less and less certain. If I was late to work, after all, I’d be the one in trouble; and if I blamed him, if I complained, no one would pay any attention. He only had to say that he’d taken me in for some infraction.

  What would happen if I ran for it as soon as I got outside? I was fast, though maybe not faster than he was—and anyway where could I go? Even if I escaped this time, he’d catch up to me sooner or later, and it would be worse then. Or he might pay me back by going after my friends—and Meritt and Farrell Dean certainly couldn’t stand up to malicious scrutiny, not if they’d been pulling stunts like the one that got Rafe killed.

  But if I went with him . . .

  As I reached the door, still trying to find a way out of my quandary, two figures appeared at the entrance to the kitchen. I saw them out of the corner of my eye, but didn’t pay any attention. They’d be kitchen workers, finishing up their first shift; they always came out about now, ready to take a break before starting lunch. They couldn’t help me. Nobody could help me, except maybe another warden, and why would one of them take my side against one of their own?

  I had started to push the exit turnstile, leaning into it—I had to run, I couldn’t meekly hand myself over to this man—when someone spoke.

  “Oh, Red, I’m glad I caught you,” she said. It was Marta, the kitchen worker who drove the lunch truck. “I need to talk to you about the number of Field A workers—there’s a miscount somewhere, and I don’t know if it’s on our end or yours, but your field is requiring more meals than we’ve rationed for you.”

  She looked at the warden, then, as if she’d only just noticed him.

  “I’m sorry, warden, we’re blocking your way,” she said, taking my arm and leading me around him, toward the kitchen door. That swinging metal door with its scuffed gray paint seemed like the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I didn’t look at the warden—I kept my eyes firmly on that door. Marta pushed it open and we stepped inside. The door swung shut behind us. Steamy heat from the big sinks where workers were washing pots enveloped me. It made me feel faint, or maybe I was faint from relief.

  The scarred warden hadn’t followed us. Apparently he wasn’t yet prepared to make a scene, was willing to bide his time till a more opportune moment.

  The kitchen workers were folding their aprons and filing toward the door we’d just entered. Marta eased us around the stragglers, one hand still firmly on my arm, and pulled a clipboard from the wall.

  “Here,” she said. “Look over those names, and tell me who’s missing.”

  I met her eyes. Not by so much as a flicker of an eyelash did she indicate that she knew she’d interfered with whatever the scarred warden had planned for me.

  But I had to wonder. The list had all the proper names.

  * * * *

  The day went downhill from there. Farrell Dean never came to my field, and wasn’t at supper, and Meritt didn’t come to supper either. I searched for him at the city meeting, but if he was there I never did spot him. I ended up standing with my silent bunkmate, Kari, who wasn’t really quite as silent as she seemed, at least not that night. She hummed, just barely audibly. Maybe it was a holdover from her work in the postnatal ward; maybe she hummed to the newborn babies. Or maybe she just found it comforting. In any case, she did it all through the city meeting, so quietly that sometimes I couldn’t hear it but could only sort of feel it. It didn’t bother me, but it didn’t comfort me either. I wished it did.

  That night, the Watchers put Judd and Petey in the circle.

  “One of these boys stole a pair of boots,” the Voice, echoing out of the darkness, announced. “Our surveillance team caught both of them at the relevant place in the relevant time frame. But which boy was it?”

  They looked so young, standing there in the glare of the spotlight. Judd was shaking his head. Though the night was chilly, his face was red and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. Petey looked petrified with fear.

  “Each boy has two choices,” the Voice said. “He can confess and ask for mercy; or he can stay silent and maintain his innocence. But there are consequences. If one boy confesses and the other stays silent, then the one who confesses will be executed for stealing. If neither boy confesses, or if both boys confess, they’ll both be executed.”

  A wave of nausea hit me. They were so young, they were best friends, and they would both die unless one volunteered to die alone.

  Rain began to fall, not heavily, but each separate drop cold and sharp, stinging my face. I didn’t raise a hand to protect myself; no one did. In the harsh glare of the spotlight we stood frozen, appalled, watching Petey and Judd sort through the dilemma. Their faces fell into expressions of despair as they realized there was no way out, no way for them both to survive.

  “Time is up,” the Voice announced. “I will count to five. At five, your decision has been made.” Two wardens stood behind the boys, guns at the ready. Judd turned his head and looked at his younger friend. Petey was terrified, all skinny arms and legs and big frightened eyes. He was staring fixedly straight ahead, as if he couldn’t believe this was happening to him.

  “One,” said the Voice.

  “This is stupid,” Judd said loudly, indignantly. “Nobody stole any boots.”

  “Two.”

  “We’re friends,” he said to the crowd, to all us voiceless, useless people.

  “Three.”

  “They’re trying to make us enemies.” He wasn’t talking to us anymore. He was talking to the universe, pleading for someone, anyone, to be fair, to put this impossible situation right again.

  “Four.”

  Petey’s lips moved. “Shut up, Judd,”
he said.

  “Five.”

  Petey stepped forward. “It was me,” he said. “It was only me.”

  Then the bullet hit him and he fell, the single shot all but swallowing Judd’s cry.

  The spotlight went off. “Stay in your places,” the Voice said.

  Uneasily people shifted; we’d never been made to stay before.

  After several tense minutes the spotlight came back on. Judd and Petey were gone. Instead Ronnie, a cook who had been badly burned in a kitchen accident some years before, was standing in front of a bucket of water. On one side of her lay a full crate of candles. On her other side stood Opal, a laundress in her late fifties, a gentle, quiet woman everybody loved.

  “A double city meeting,” someone behind me breathed, her throat sounding thick with dread.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the bucket of water. This was the way Louie’s city meeting had started—the city meeting in which Petey’s father, Stuart, had died.

  Sure enough, the warden lit the crate of candles and then touched his match to Opal’s shirt.

  Ronnie didn’t hesitate. She threw the water over the candles, and within seconds Laundress Opal was a mass of shrieking flames. She dropped to the ground and rolled, trying to put out the fire, but it wouldn’t go out. Around the circle people were crying out, pressing their hands over their mouths in horror. In the front row a man stepped forward, tearing off his shirt, and I knew he intended to smother the flames.

  Before he could reach the writhing woman, however, the warden raised his gun and shot her. He must have made that decision on his own, to spare Opal the agony of burning to death, because after he did it he looked around nervously as if expecting to be condemned himself.

  “Congratulations, Warden Eli,” the Voice said. “You have shown compassion. Cook Ronnie has not, though she herself has suffered burns and knows how painful they can be.”

  “No,” Ronnie said, backing away from the warden. “No!”