Radio

by Sophia Elaine Hanson

  “You aren’t here to kill us outright,” Terra stated, giving her weapon a gentle twist. Jonah flinched as the little wound widened. “That doesn’t mean we can trust you.”

  “Says the girl with a knife on me,” he panted.

  “I am not going to ask you again.”

  “I already told you, I came to get my hands on the arsenal.”

  “You said half.”

  “I was speaking in generalities … ger pris netram … ”

  Terra grasped a chunk of his thick hair and jerked his head back. He inhaled sharply, his eyes flashing to the ceiling to hide the twinge of fear that had crawled in. “What did you say?”

  “I said I was speaking in generalities,” he hissed. “You crazy mother … ”

  Terra released his head roughly and stepped back. She cleaned her blade on her pants, then slipped it into its sheath with a ringing clang. Jonah wiped away the trail of blood that had crawled down his neck.

  “You expect me to believe,” Terra said after a while. “That you came all the way across the world to get your hands on a dictator’s cache of weapons because you heard the government might be unstable.”

  “Because we heard that the rebels got their hands on a weapon that could take it down.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “A Revinian trader. Calls himself Cicada. He said … ” Jonah trailed off, blinking up at his warden. Terra had gone rigid. Her arms were stiff at her sides, her lips parted as if to scream. “You know that name.”

  “Yeah,” Terra murmured. “I know it.”

  Jonah might have said something else, but the girl was too far gone to hear. Her head was buzzing; her heart was writhing in her chest. Ignoring all she had been taught, she whipped around and wrenched open the door with a shriek of rusted hinges. “Where are you … ?”

  Terra slammed the door on his confusion. The jarring noise bounced down the hall until it faded altogether. Terra pressed her brow to the metal slab, hoping the cold would subdue her rioting thoughts.

  Cicada.

  A hand on her shoulder. Before her neurons could spark with fear, she slammed her attacker up against the door and whipped out her closest knife, pressing it to their throat. “Easy! Skitz!” the man yelped.

  “Samson,” Terra barked, stepping back quickly and sheathing her blade. She shook her long hair over her shoulder, clutching at composure. “What the hell were you thinking, sneaking up on me like that?”

  The captain glowered at her, massaging the pale pink line left behind by her knife. “I was thinking I said your name three times and you ignored me.”

  “I only have one ear, pitcher,” she grumbled. “What are you doing down here? Did Evie talk to you?”

  “I was coming to see if you wanted me to take over guard duty.” He let his hand fall from his neck. His bright eyes narrowed to slits. “Why would Evie have talked to me?”

  Dammit, Evie. She was probably upstairs begging Iris to forgive her. That was the problem with attachments. They invariably distracted from the big picture. “Never mind,” Terra muttered, glancing down and away. She kicked herself internally. She was off her game.

  “Did something happen?” Samson asked, concern inching into his voice. He peeled away from the door. His rugged face muted the false light hanging above them. His eyes cut straight through her. “Did he hurt you?”

  “No,” she snapped, glowering up at him as if he had just insulted her. “If I was a man would you be asking that?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Drop it, Sam.”

  “No.”

  Terra made a frustrated noise at the back of her throat. Samson had always been kind to her, ever since she had arrived in the Belly as a child. She had never cared for him much. He was too pure. She had made her feelings clear to him several times over the years. Nothing seemed to faze him. He was blinded by an inexplicable desire to draw her out of her shell. “Fine,” he surrendered. “I guess I’ll just tell Roark you were interrogating the prisoner after he told you to wait.”

  Terra clenched her jaw, her nostrils flaring. Well, perhaps he was not all good. “No, just … ” She dragged an exasperated hand down her face, warping her skin. “Wait.”

  Samson folded his arms over his barrel chest. “Waiting.”

  “I know how to figure out if Jonah is telling the truth,” she admitted in a low voice. The captain raised his eyebrows, his blue eyes flickering with interest. “But I need backup. I need someone to come with me to the middle ring.”

  The captain regarded her for a long moment, digging for answers in her vacant expression. She waited in the silence of his contemplation, her heart hammering in her ear. “We should wait,” Samson finally said. “Until everything is up and running. Nothing else matters if the broadcast fails.”

  Terra nodded in agreement. She appreciated how quickly he fell into step with her. He was better than all the others combined in that respect. They spent far too much time oscillating on morals, in her opinion. “We can wait a week, two at most.” She jerked her head at the storeroom. “Not like he’s going anywhere.”

  “Why the middle ring? Where are we going?” Samson inquired.

  Terra smiled hollowly. “To see my father.”

  27: The End of the Story

  They spent the better part of an hour locked in a feverish embrace. The city could have crumbled around them and they would not have noticed. Roark winced when he realized he had not packed protection. “I have another idea,” he said, his lips on the curve of her ear. “Do you trust me?”

  Ronja nodded eagerly, anticipation thrumming in her veins. It was then she learned there were other routes to pleasure. Though she had no one to compare it to, she was quite certain Roark was an unusually good lover. Eventually, they ended up side by side on their backs, crammed together like sardines on the twin bed, their chests rising and falling like pistons.

  Ronja laughed breathlessly. Roark shifted to look at her, wearing a self-satisfied smirk. “Got something to say?”

  “Not really,” she replied offhandedly, scooting over to lay her head on his chest. “I mean, it was all right, I guess.”

  Laughter rumbled in the hollows of his ribs. He reached up to stroke her damp hair. “Happy to be of service.”

  Silence settled over them like a fresh blanket of snow. The wind threw itself against the walls of the warehouse, whistling through the cracks in the foundation. They did not feel the chill.

  “Can I ask you something?” Roark asked after a while.

  Ronja nodded, her eyelids fluttering sleepily. This was a different sort of exhaustion than she was accustomed to. It was easy, sweet as honey.

  “That song you sang to get us out of the Belly, where did you hear it?”

  Ronja smiled ruefully, the muscles of her face moving against his chest. “Are you asking if I heard it on my own, or if I remember you singing it when I was under The Quiet Song?”

  “Well,” Roark sighed, his hand stilling in her curls. “I guess that answers that. I was hoping you were brain-dead by then.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “It was strange,” Ronja admitted. She traced the curve of his tattoo with her index finger, allowing the past to wash over her. “The Quiet was so loud. It felt like it was coming from everywhere, not just my Singer.” Roark slid his hand down to cup the back of her neck, as if bracing her before a fall. “But your voice helped. It grounded me.”

  “Are you saying I have your gift?” he asked with a short laugh.

  Ronja grinned. She sat up, squinting down at him teasingly. “You want a magic voice, too?”

  He reached up and plucked at one of her tight curls like a violin string. “I think sirens are typically female.”

  “Right, of course.”

  “I read somewhere they can enchant men to do their bidding,” he went on, his brown eyes shivering with mirth. Ronja laughed, an unhindered sound that almost never graced her lips.
Roark must have registered its rarity, because he crushed her to his side and continued. “In some stories, they are also devastatingly beautiful.”

  Ronja giggled, then grimaced sharply. “Ugh,” she moaned. “What the hell did you do to me?”

  Roark twisted his grin into a smirk. “Nothing you didn’t like, by the sound of it.”

  Ronja kicked him in the calf. Hard. “Where did you and Terra pick up all these fairy tales, anyway?” she asked. Roark stiffened against her. She propped herself up on her elbow, searching his face for an answer to his sudden tenseness.

  The boy forced a smile. “It was part of our training, of course. No self-respecting Anthemite goes into the field without a basic understanding of mythology.”

  “Roark.”

  Roark heaved a sigh, a divot of stress forming between his brows. He closed his eyes wearily. Ronja watched them roving behind their lids, searching for something she could not see. A birthmark no larger than the tip of a pen dotted the edge of his left eyelid. She had never noticed it before. It was usually hidden by his fringe of lashes.

  “Sigrun.”

  His voice was so soft she thought she might have imagined it. She leaned toward him. “What?”

  Roark opened his eyes. He looked haunted around the edges. “Her name was Sigrun.”

  “Like your violin,” Ronja said with a nod, struggling to make the connection. Her stomach clenched. “Were you two … I mean … who was she?”

  “She was my sister.”

  “Oh.” Embarrassment took root in Ronja as she studied him. His expression was pinched, as if he were straining beneath a heavy burden. She knew the answer to her next question before it left her tongue. “What happened to her?”

  “She died.” Roark rolled his head to the side to face the wall. He traced the uneven terrain of the plaster with his pointer finger. “She was my half-sister, really. She was five years older than me.” He rapped his knuckle against a clump of whitewash with a hollow crack. “She was everything to me.”

  “How did it happen?” Ronja heard herself ask. She reached down unconsciously and brushed a strand of hair off his forehead. If he felt it, he did not react.

  “My father shot her.”

  Ronja stared at him dumbfounded, her blood stilling in her veins. She knew she should not be surprised. Victor was a monster. Both she and Roark bore the scars of his abuse. Still, to murder his own child, that was something entirely different. After he shot Layla off the ladder to the airship, Victor had told Ronja he had been aiming for Roark. Despite everything, she had assumed that shot was not intended to be fatal. Now, she was not so sure.

  “She was the first person to ever say ‘no’ to him,” Roark went on quietly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It started small,” he murmured.

  His voice was almost inaudible. Ronja had to bend forward to hear him properly. Her shadow poured over his regal features, blanketing them in gray.

  “He would order her to speak at an event, she would refuse. She started disappearing. I asked her where she was going and she told me it was a secret. One night, I caught her sneaking out her window. She tried to bribe me.”

  He pinched the coin he wore on a cord around his neck, holding it up for her to see. Ronja had always wondered about the strange token, but had never asked. It seemed private, somehow. Evidently, she was right. Roark continued.

  “It didn’t work, I told her I would shout if she didn’t take me with her.” Roark laughed softly. There was no joy in the sound. “I swear she almost decked me right there, but she took me with her in the end.”

  “Where was she going?”

  “To the cottage.”

  “The one you took us to?”

  Roark nodded, his thick hair whispering against the mattress. He blinked sluggishly, still refusing to meet her eyes.

  “What was she doing there?” Ronja prompted gently.

  Roark gave a ghost of a smile. “Falling in love.”

  “With who?”

  “An Anthemite named Parker.”

  Ronja’s eyes widened as a chill settled over her. Her free hand drifted up to her mouth. “Sigrun was an Anthemite,” she whispered through her fingers.

  Roark shifted his head side to side, weighing her words. “Yes and no. She never went to the Belly, never got her tattoo. She was less of an agent and more of an informant, providing information and advice where she could. Mostly, I think she just wanted to be with Parker, and to make music.”

  A thousand questions sparked in Ronja, but she bit them back. Roark was not finished. She could see more words building behind his eyes.

  “The cottage belonged to Parker,” he said. “I have no idea how he got his hands on it. I don’t even know how he and my sister met, only that they spent as much time as they could there, listening to records and making music. When Sigrun took me to the cottage that night, that was the first time I heard real music.” His mouth quirked upward at the memory. “They sang a lullaby called Shoreline.”

  Cast your troubles off the shore …

  Ronja inhaled sharply. Of course. That was the song. It had to be. Guilt wove through her. She had subjected Roark to hearing it over and over on full blast.

  “I had no idea what the pitch was going on, but I loved it,” Roark continued. He shifted to look at her, but his eyes cut straight through her, seeking the past. “It was the first and last song I ever heard her sing. She had a beautiful voice, like you.”

  Roark opened and closed his mouth several times. He was wavering. Ronja took her hand from her lips and rested it on his chest. His heartbeat tickled her nerves. The unspoken words were choking him. She could almost see the noose. He had never told anyone what happened. She knew because she saw the same look in her eyes every time she passed a mirror. The weight of unspoken horrors was suffocating.

  “Tell me how it happened.”

  Roark swallowed, his throat glistening with sweat. He was trembling, yet his voice remained steady. “When Sigrun and I got home, our father was waiting. I remember it so clearly. I know what he was wearing. He was smoking. I had a rock in the toe of my boot. I … ”

  Ronja reached across his body and grabbed his hand, anchoring him. He screwed his eyes shut. “He asked us where we had been. We said nothing, so he called me forward and told me to roll up my sleeve.”

  Ronja clenched her teeth against the bile building in her mouth. She wanted nothing more than to kiss the story from his lips, to make it disappear, but she could not. He needed to talk, she needed to listen.

  “Sigrun stepped in front of me. She told him to go to hell. He hit her so hard her tooth came out.” Roark opened his eyes. Ronja knew, for him, the story was playing on the underside of the bunk like a moving picture. She could feel it hanging over her, as present as the sky. “I can still hear it bouncing across the marble. She told me to run, so I did. I was so scared.”

  “You were a child,” Ronja whispered. “He was a monster. There was nothing you could have done.”

  Roark did not seem to hear her.

  “I heard them shouting, but I just kept running. Then I heard the gunshot. I must have passed out. I woke up in my bedroom with the door locked. No one came to let me out for a week. I drank water from the tap. I kept some candies in my desk drawer, I ate those. When my father finally came to get me, I was half dead.”

  Roark paused here, as if catching his breath. Ronja waited patiently for him to resume. Each second felt like a thousand. When the boy finally spoke again, she felt as if the sun had risen and set twice.

  “He dragged me down the stairs. Her body was still on the floor, the smell was … ” He bit his lip until it turned white. “He forced me to my knees and made me look at her. Just look. Then he told me this was what happened when people disobeyed him.”

  Roark fell silent again. Ronja knew that was the end of the story, but it seemed unfinished, like some sort of retribution should have capped the end. There was none, of course. Sigrun
was dead. Victor was dead. Roark would never have his sister back any more than he would have his revenge. The girl struggled to find something to say. She laid her head back on his chest, listening to the echo of his blood charging through his veins. She reached for the coin, covering the cold metal with her warm palm.

  “May your song guide you home.” The phrase fell from her lips before she could stop it. She winced, knowing she was not using it properly.

  Roark pressed his warm hand to the space between her shoulder blades, pulling her closer. He planted a kiss on top of her curls. “I am home.”

  28: Cold Star

  Ronja did not remember falling asleep. One moment she was talking to Roark, the next, he was shaking her awake with gentle hands. “Hey,” he coaxed her as she blinked up at him blearily. “Time to get up.”

  “Why?”

  “We have to dismantle a government and free several million people from mental slavery, or something along those lines.”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now. Evie says the radio station is ready.”

  Ronja sat up, raking her fingers through her short hair. Roark smiled down at her, amusement sparking in his onyx eyes. He was already dressed in his knit navy sweater and black pants, his long hair pulled into a knot at the base of his skull. Sigrun’s coin rested against his sternum, glittering dully in the electric light.

  Yawning, Ronja reached up an expectant hand. Roark grasped it and pulled her to her feet. Rather than letting her go, he drew her into a tight embrace. She sighed contentedly, slipping her bare arms around his waist as she breathed in his familiar scent.

  “You should probably get dressed before we go downstairs,” he said after a long moment, his chin resting on the top of her head.

  “Mmm,” she hummed. For the first time since she could remember, she did not feel self-conscious about her body. They were both scarred, after all. She pulled back so she could see his face. They continued to grip each other by their forearms. Neither wanted to admit they were afraid to let go. “Too bad.”