by Jenny Moyer
“Somehow, I think the outpost Subpars fared better on their wedding nights,” he grumbles in my ear. An unexpected pang of longing grips my chest. For the life we might’ve had in Outpost Five—a simple caver’s cottage and little blue-eyed toddlers.
Children who would’ve grown up enslaved.
I shiver suddenly, and his arms tighten around me. “It’s all right,” he murmurs. “What’s one night, right?”
It’s everything. My eyes go to Meredith, who watches us closely. “I’ll see you in the morning,” I say tightly, pulling away.
“Rye, wait.” Dram catches my arm and draws me back. “We just married each other.” His lips twist in a grin. “For what I’m pretty sure was the second time.” He kisses me, cradling the sides of my face.
Later, the gown is lifted off me, and I’m freed from the undergarment supports. I’m left alone, and the door is not even locked. Meredith knows it wouldn’t stop me. Not now.
I struggle against the urge to run, to fight. We would be caught. There’s a better way; it’s just not the easier way. I go over the plan the Subpars devised, over generations, with coded axe handles in a memorial cavern. I conjure white flowers, one after another, until the air fills with their perfume. I breathe it in. Hope.
Then I conjure them to dust so fine no one will see it.
* * *
Dram sits up in his bed as I breeze through the door. He sucks in a breath—the movement pained him—and touches the bandaged wound around his ribs.
“Still healing?” I ask.
“Nah, beat up and bruised is my body’s new natural state.” He smirks in a way that makes him look younger than his nineteen years. I let myself absorb the view of his bare chest, marveling at how quickly Fortune’s restoring him. He pulls on his shirt as I drop a folded uniform at the end of his bed.
“What’s all this?” he asks, sorting through the pile of clothes.
“They didn’t tell you? You’re going to be made a Delver.”
“They told me, but these are…” He lifts the coat. “Fancy.”
My heart twists. I can’t tell him. Not yet. You don’t go against Meredith’s conditions—especially when you’ve asked for one of your own.
“They take commissioning very seriously around here,” I say, holding the white jacket as he slides his arm in.
“Your hands are shaking,” he says.
“Your eyes are blue again,” I say, but it’s not enough to chase the worry from his gaze.
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong is your bruises don’t match this uniform,” I murmur, buttoning his jacket.
He covers my hands. “What aren’t you telling me?”
I hate lying to Dram, but I am my mother’s daughter, and I can keep secrets when I need to.
“It’s these uniforms—the white. They remind me of how Congress dressed us for the prison cordon.” His eyes soften, and he draws me against his chest, and I know I’ve successfully evaded him.
“I know this isn’t what we dreamed of,” he says, “but we can survive down here. We can be together.”
A sound of dismay escapes my lips, muffled against his chest.
Not together. You will live here, and I’ll be in a cell 132 meters deep.
Cora pokes her head into the room. “It’s time.”
Dram takes my hand. It’s damp, my skin clammy with dread. We walk into the chamber, and the Delvers take their places at the tunnel entrances. The third quadrant—the Prime’s quadrant—is vacant. I stop before the lines painted on the ground. Dram looks at me, confused.
“Take your place, Delver,” Meredith says to him.
Dram stands rooted in place beside me. “This is Orion’s quadrant.”
“Not anymore. Step to the line.”
His eyes dart to mine. “What did you do?”
“Delver—”
“Orion, what’s happening?”
Val steps behind me and removes my Prime’s chain.
“Did you really think a Brunt could earn Fortune and become a Delver?” Meredith asks. “The only way out for a Brunt is death. Someone had to die.”
“Weeks died,” he says bleakly.
“No.” Meredith shakes her head. “Weeks is still buried inside the boy I’m looking at, beneath the veneer of civility I’ve given you.”
“Then who died?” His tone is dark. Dark as the Brunt who survived the Tomb night after night.
“Orion did.”
This isn’t how I wanted to tell him. But I have no say in Meredith’s schemes, no say in anything at all anymore. He and Cora stare at me wide-eyed as Val whisks my Prime’s cloak away and hands it to Meredith. Next, she takes my jacket. I can’t look at Dram—this is the part I’ve been dreading. I can’t stand for him to see how much like the prison cordon this really is.
“Holy fire,” he murmurs hoarsely, staring at the collar around my neck.
Cora gasps. “Oh, no, no, Orion…”
“I won’t do this,” Dram says, striding from the Prime’s quadrant.
“It’s already done,” Meredith says. “You are now her best chance of survival.”
“She told me what you do to … Forgers.”
“We give them an opportunity to use their abilities, to serve honorably.”
“They’re nothing but slaves—prisoners in cirium cells!”
“She will be spared Tempering.”
“She’ll be a Ghost!”
“Orion is now the single most important person in our city-state, and you will be commissioned as Prime Delver only because I think you can protect her better than anyone else.” She settles the Prime’s cloak around Dram’s shoulders. “You’re not here because I need another Delver. You’re here because I need Weeks, the Brunt who stayed alive against all odds. What you will face down there with her, beneath the curtain, is nothing that anyone has lived to tell about. I believe that, maybe, for the first time, a Forger and a Prime have a chance at succeeding.”
I dare a look at Dram’s face. Tears fill his eyes. The truth in her words has won him over, and he’s grieving the loss of me, the loss of what he thought we might have had together.
“Don’t make her a prisoner.” He bites out the words. “Let her return here—”
“No. Conjurors are not permitted freedom—especially those with her capabilities.”
“Then I’ll stay down there with her.”
Meredith shakes her head. “You are my Prime. I cannot risk your well-being.”
“Then you better glenting well let me stay with her!”
Meredith signals Val. “We must proceed. The other commissaries will be joining us via com any moment. They’ve been apprised of the situation, and they expect your compliance, Dram.”
“And if I don’t comply?”
“Then you’ll return to your Brunt comrades, and Val will take your place as Prime.” And Orion will die. She doesn’t say the words. Every person here knows it.
“I’ll be your glenting Prime,” Dram says.
“Good, because you’ve already agreed to it.” Meredith holds up the contract he signed. “We don’t force people to do things here at Fortune, but I needed to be assured of your compliance.”
“That contract was about my partnership with Orion.”
“So it was. Just not the way you thought.”
The commissioning lasts half the length of our wedding ceremony and is witnessed by the council on the other end of a screencom. A recitation of words that I echo, but my mind has already moved beyond this moment, traversing tunnels, bringing plans into alignment. Even the Prime Commissary’s voice isn’t enough to pull me from my thoughts. Meredith drapes the chain of office over Dram’s neck. He glares at her.
“Dram, as Prime Delver, it’s your duty to escort your Forger to her barracks.”
“Now?”
“A reminder—you can be replaced.”
He sighs and strides into the port.
Cora pushes past Meredith and throws her arms around me. “Y
ou stupid, brave girl!” Her wet cheek slides against mine, but I can’t look at her. Her tears will bring home the horror of what I’ve chosen.
I return to the map in my head.
I push past her and step into the pod. Val latches the door. She doesn’t meet my eyes. I suppose, to her, I’m already a Ghost.
The port descends. Dram grips the rail and presses his forehead against the metal cage. It shakes, and air winds through the shaft as we drop so quickly my stomach flutters. This isn’t like the smooth tech up in Fortune. This is raw; every meter we drop is another suggestion of danger. The pod stops, and still Dram doesn’t move. I unlatch the door and step out.
“That was a long ride down,” he says. “Over a hundred meters, I’d guess.”
“You don’t have to guess. You’re wearing a depth gauge.”
He shoves away from the pod and glares at me. He checks the glowing tech on his wrist. “A hundred thirty-two meters, but I guess you already knew that. It was one of the factors in your plan—your little mind map, right? The Scout, the Hunter who knows everything and leaves everyone else in the dark!”
I don’t answer. Nothing I say can change any of this. Not yet.
He looks around at the passage entrance. “What is that sound?”
“An alert that lets us know if any of the high-frequency emitters have been damaged. They’re the only things that deter the moles from getting close enough to conjure.”
“When do you get to come up?”
“I don’t.”
He stiffens, and I know he’s caught sight of the Box.
“Holy fire,” he murmurs. Tension thrums between us, like one wrong word could set off an explosion. I adopt a neutral tone.
“As Prime Delver, you have biometric access to the cell. It can’t be closed or opened from the inside.” I demonstrate, and he opens the door. “You’re not permitted inside. There are specific rules to preserve Proto—”
“Don’t you dare say that word to me.” His shoulders rise and fall, like his body is working to contain the anger expanding inside him. He steps past me into the cell. His gaze roves over the low cot in the corner, to the toilet and the shower spigot. “How could you do this?”
I don’t answer. Meredith already told him. A trade.
“This is”—he swallows—“this is brutal. Worse than anything they’ve put us in.”
It’s not worse than the Tomb, but I don’t say that. “It’s the only way to contain someone … like me.”
His eyes slide shut. “You should never have told them.”
“They were going to send you back!”
“You could’ve gotten free, Orion! This wasn’t the glenting plan!” He slams his fist against the cell wall.
“Our plan changed when they made you a Brunt!”
“I was already dead. Why didn’t you just leave me?”
“You think because I don’t wear my cuff I’m not still bonded to you? I feel your heartbeat, and I wouldn’t feel anything, ever again, if it stopped!”
“Yes,” he says brokenly. “You would.”
My collar chimes. Time’s up.
“You need to go,” I say. “Close the door so it can lock.”
“Tell me there’s more than this—tell me you’ve got some sort of plan.”
“I’m drawing maps in my head.” I force myself to smile, but I can taste my tears. I walk into the cell.
“I can’t stand this, Rye,” he says, his face pinched.
“Do it now,” I command softly. He grits his teeth, mutters a curse, and shoves the cirium barrier closed. My collar chimes. It sounds just like the prison cordon. Congress has me in a cage once more.
Dram doesn’t leave. At least once an hour, he knocks a pattern on the door just to let me know he’s still there. I barely hear it through the walls, but I feel the vibration where I’ve got my back pressed against the door.
I lose track of time, but I’m still awake when I hear him bang a new rhythm—angry and desperate—onto my cell. My breaths come shallow, and I can’t assemble my thoughts. Standing takes all my strength, and when I push myself to my feet, suddenly up feels down and down feels up. I press my hands to the wall to keep from falling. One clear thought forms from the impressions tangling in my head: they’ve cut off my air supply.
They are forcing Dram to return to Fortune.
Silence descends, heavy, with no intermittent knocking, no reassuring taps that tell me Dram’s just on the other side of this dark oblivion. Fresh air pours through my vent.
He’s gone.
I am well and truly alone.
“I am not a Ghost,” I say aloud into the void. Panic tingles along my nerves, and for the first time, I understand the fear that seizes Dram in tight spaces. I am sealed inside a metal box, one hundred and two meters beneath Fortune, which is thirty meters from the surface.
I’m not a Ghost. Not yet.
I’m just the girl that Congress buried alive.
* * *
Somehow, I fall asleep. When the cell door opens and my collar chimes, I’m curled in a ball on the cot. Dram is there before I’ve even opened my eyes. He pulls me into his arms, holding me so tight the buckles of his uniform dent my skin. He doesn’t speak, and I just soak up the feel of him, warm and alive. But we’re inside the Box.
“Get me out,” I say.
“Oh, flash me,” he murmurs, leaping to his feet. “Sorry, I didn’t think—”
I stagger out, squinting up at the bulbs. Dram presses rations into my hands, and I eat, walking, putting as much distance between me and the Box as possible.
“I need to know the plan,” Dram says. “I can’t do this, Rye—lock you in that thing and then go sleep in the Congress’s palace—”
“There is a plan. Not mine, my mom’s.”
TWENTY-SIX
7.2 km from flash curtain
EVEN DELVERS GET one day off a week, which means I spend an entire day locked in my prison. I knew this was coming, but there’s nothing that prepares a person for utter isolation in a three-meter-square cube of metal.
The solitary light died a flickering death. Now I sit, my body aching from too many hours on the hard cot, holding the last of Dram’s flares. The candle he stole for me burned down to a puddle of wax hours ago. And I was only lighting it when I felt I would go mad from the darkness—when it felt so heavy, pressing on me like a living thing, slowly suffocating me. I stare at the red flame, gold at the center, with a sort of manic affection. In a matter of days, I have come to love fire, when once I hated everything that reminded me of Burning Days. Now each flame is a gift beating back impenetrable darkness. Sparks hit my skin, and I cherish the sting that tells me I’m alive. Smoke fills the Box, but I pretend the ache in my lungs is from standing too close to a fire pit on a Friday night at Outpost Five. The flare burns out, and panic rushes in, the darkness presses …
I close my eyes to better imagine a mug of ale, held in one hand, my other warming above the fire. Voices spill from the Rig as cavers ditch their gear and join the raucous laughter of Subpars gathered on Friday night. Graham is there, telling stories in his graveled voice, calling me girlie and pouring me too much ale. My heart aches with a sudden stab of loss, but I push it away, back to memories of a time before he gave his life in the burnt sands.
The thrum of the flash curtain stirs inside me, raising goose bumps along my arms. I shut it out, imagining Roland tuning his fiddle, and the nervous feeling I’d get wondering if Dram would ask me to dance.
I open my eyes, and I can’t see—I’m blind! No, it’s like I’m dead. Buried. It’s my day off. Dram’s not coming. I’ve got thirty-six hours to go.
Thirty-six hours of nothing but the flash curtain whispering across my senses. My scout’s instincts magnify the cirium on every side, so that I feel like the curtain has me contained in hands made of its elements. Hands surrounding me, squeezing me—
“Ugh!” I surge to my feet, hands pressed over my ears. I yell again, until I’m l
ouder than the stirrings of the flashfall. I sway, my hands lift, and I turn to the patterns the cavers taught me. My feet tap to a rhythm Owen pounded on a barrel, a bawdy song about women and brew, with words Dram explained with a red face when we first became caving partners. I was twelve, and he fourteen, and the memory of it makes me smile and sing louder. I twirl and stomp and dance, with nothing to hinder me in this empty Box. I sing until my voice grows hoarse, until I’ve filled the Box with memories so vivid, I no longer feel alone.
* * *
My collar chimes, waking me from a restless sleep. The door slides open, but something’s off—it’s not time for Dram to be here. The tunnel lights are still at night-dim. I rise from my cot, tense.
“Ore scout? You awake?”
I leap for the figure pushing his way into the Box. Dram catches me against his chest with a soft laugh.
“What are you doing here?”
“I decided I was through being a compliant Prime.”
Laughter bubbles up inside me, but it’s tempered with worry. No one goes against Meredith. “How are you here?” My collar lets out a warning chime. “If you’re caught—”
“It will be worth it.” Dram slips a pack off his shoulders.
“We can’t close the door from the inside.” Red light blinks from the tech circling my throat.
“I worked that out,” Dram says. He turns and speaks to someone outside the door. In the faint light, I can just make out her features. Cora.
“Be well, Orion.” She nods to Dram. “We’ll only get away with this once. Make it count.” She shuts the door, and Dram grabs hold of me. He’s kissing me when my collar chimes.
“Fire, I hate that sound,” he murmurs. I catch his face between my hands and guide his mouth back to mine. He smiles against my lips, and his hands leave me long enough to pull something from his pocket. I recognize the cracking sound from a light stick just before the glow illuminates my prison. He tosses it onto my cot and draws me back into his arms.
I unfasten the buckles at his neck and waist, and our hands bump as we work his coat off. His Prime’s chain hits the floor with a clank. He kisses my neck, and I pull his shirt free, throwing it aside along with everything else that marks him as a Delver. His mouth skims along my collarbones, and my head tips back. His lips bump my collar, and I want to scream at the reminder that I am not free, I am not my own.