Word and Breath (Wordless Chronicles)

by Susannah Noel

  That recognition just made her angry, though. She’d worked too hard to build a life for herself and her sister to let Jenson and his quixotic sense of social justice tear it all apart in one conversation.

  “I don’t want it,” she said, her voice low and rough. “It won’t do any good. This purpose, as you put it, won’t change anything about our world. All I want is to mind my own business and have people leave me alone.”

  “But they won’t leave you alone. No matter how hard you try, you can’t live an isolated life. What happens to other people matters to you—and you’re lying to yourself when you insist it doesn’t.”

  His calm voice grated on her nerves. “I’ve managed to do just fine on my own all this time. Your empty moralizing isn’t going to convince me otherwise. Besides, I don’t see the benefit to you in this. It’s risking the safety of your movement by entrusting it to yet another person—and I’m not going to give you anything you don’t already have.”

  “Yes, you are.” He reached out to touch her arm again. “You have gifts you’ve never tapped, Riana, and don’t try to persuade me you don’t. Besides, you’re a Reader, and you love the written word. The Front is the only part of society left that understands and values the power of the word.”

  Something about his statement spoke to her, and it wasn’t just the eloquence of his rhetoric.

  The rising fear overwhelmed any other feeling, however. “I don’t want this, Jenson. I never asked for this, and it’s not fair of you to drag me into it.”

  Jenson tightened his lips for a minute, as if she’d annoyed him, but he didn’t show his reaction in any other way.

  Riana sat in silence, panting and glaring at him.

  Until finally he reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and retrieved enough currency to pay for their meals. Leaving it on the table, he said, “Walk with me, Riana.”

  She just stared at him suspiciously. “Where are we going?”

  “Just onto the street. I want to show you something.”

  She didn’t trust him. She knew he’d try to get to her in any way he could, but she didn’t think she was in imminent danger from him.

  So Riana slowly got up and fell in stride with him as they left the café. They walked wordlessly to the corner of the block.

  Jenson just stood there, so Riana looked around. It was just a normal city corner—two busy streets intersecting, offices, stores, restaurants lining the block, traffic signals herding the cars and pedestrians into a semblance of order.

  After several people had pushed past her to cross the street, Riana let out a ragged breath. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

  Jenson was half a head taller than her, but he didn’t look down at her. His eyes were fixed on a small produce stand across the street—a few bins of vegetables out in front and more inside the storefront. “That business has been in the owner’s family for four generations. The current owner barely scrapes by, but she refuses to give the family business up.”

  Riana saw a tiny woman with white hair come out with a basket and start picking through the bin of apples. “Okay. I realize that’s rare—a nice kind of throwback to the past. But it’s not going to melt my heart with some kind of sentimental impulse and get me to change my mind.”

  Jenson slanted his eyes toward her for a minute. Then focused on the small woman again. “Every morning of her life, she’s gotten up at dawn to get the day’s produce.” He paused, maybe strategically or maybe because of what he was about to say. “For the last two years, she’s gotten up an hour earlier so she can hide certain messages we need to circulate in pieces of fruit.”

  Riana gaped at him. And then at the diminutive, harmless woman. “What? Why are you telling me that? I don’t want to hear—”

  Jenson ignored her and continued, “Look to your left, to the boy selling newspapers.”

  Riana turned despite herself and saw the red-headed boy—maybe eight years old—selling the day’s images of current events put out by the Union. “Jenson,” she warned, “Don’t you dare tell me—”

  He went on, as if she’d never voiced her protestations. “He’s not even nine, and both of his parents were killed in the Horai Riots. And once a week he inserts an extra page into a hundred papers—and then sells them to members of the Front.”

  Riana wanted to scream. Instead, she put her hands over her ears in a silly gesture of denial. “Stop it, Jenson. I mean it. I don’t want to know this. You’re putting these people in danger by telling me this.”

  Jenson turned to face her and wrapped his fingers around her wrists, pulling her hands down in front of her. “You’re not going to turn them in. I know you, Riana. Give it up. Find your purpose. Be who you’re intended to be.”

  At the edge of her control—trapped between crying and raging—Riana shook herself free from him and rubbed her wrists where he’d been gripping them. “Stop it!”

  When her loud voice attracted attention, she lowered it, although the fury in her tone was unabated. “How dare you, Jenson. How dare you drag me into this when you know I don’t want to get involved? All I’ve ever wanted is to be left alone. I don’t care if you think I’m a heartless coward. I’m not going jump into something that’s so much risk—not when there’s no chance of it succeeding. The Union is what it is. You and your clandestine playmates aren’t going to change that. And I’m not going to put my whole world in danger for some ideal of self-sacrifice I don’t believe in. It’s not just me I’d be risking. I have a sister. I’m the only person she has. And you’re not going to convince me to risk her life and security because you say so.”

  Jenson’s face was intense, and he opened his mouth to reply. But she didn’t want to hear him.

  He had an answer for everything.

  She was terrified that eventually his answers would overwhelm all her doubts.

  So she turned on her heel and walked away from him—hurrying down the street, awkward because of her emotional state, almost twisting her ankle in her narrow heels.

  She didn’t know if Jenson was following her and she didn’t turn to look.

  She needed to get away from him.

  And she was afraid it was too late.

  ***

  Riana was out of breath and barely had a grip on her composure when she got back to the office. She went to the bathroom first thing to pull herself together.

  Her skin was damp with perspiration, her cheeks were deeply red, and her eyes looked huge and kind of wild. After splashing water on her face and smoothing down the flyaways in her braids, she looked only slightly better.

  She couldn’t skip out on work this afternoon. She had few enough personal days as it was, and she needed to use them to take Jannie to her doctor’s appointments.

  She took a few deep breaths and hoped no one would notice she looked like she’d been crying. Maybe Nelly, ever curious, would attribute her appearance to a passionate lunchtime liaison rather than a treasonous conversation.

  Jenson better leave her alone for the rest of the day.

  Keeping her head down, she returned to her cubicle and avoided the curious looks from Nelly. She’d want to know what happened, but Riana wasn’t up to making up innocuous answers to Nelly’s nosy questions.

  When she heard a throat clear just behind her, she recognized it as male. So she stiffened her shoulders and prepared to give Jenson a cool greeting.

  Instead, she gasped when she saw Smyde standing behind her, looking down at the text she was pretending to read.

  “Yes, sir?” she said, her voice sounding mostly natural. “Did you have a question for me?”

  “Come to my office for a few minutes,” Smyde replied, his bland expression providing no clues as to his purpose. “I’d like to have a chat.”

  Riana’s heart gave a startled lurch, and her hands and neck went cold. “Of course.” Very slowly, she stood up and followed him into his back office.

  Smyde sat down in the large chair and gestured her into the
smaller one across the desk.

  She sat ramrod straight, clasping her hands in her lap so she wouldn’t twist them. To offset any possible accusation and because she wanted to set her own terms for this conversation, she preempted him by saying, “I’m sorry again about last week—about assuming that text was harmless. I’m double-checking everything now, even if I’m sure it isn’t an anomaly.”

  “Good,” Smyde said, rather distractedly. “That’s good.” Leaning forward, he scanned her face with cool eyes. “The reason I want to speak to you privately is to ask if you’ve seen anything unusual in the office lately.”

  “Unusual?” she asked, repeating the word to give herself time to think.

  “Unusual. Strange. Suspicious. Maybe something you wouldn’t have thought to be harmful but struck you as outside the norm.”

  She drew her brows together and met his eyes without flinching. “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re not going to ask me why I ask?”

  “I figure, if you want me to know, you’ll tell me.”

  Smyde nodded thoughtfully. “A good attitude to have. We’ve started to suspect that the Underground has managed to infect one or more of our Readers.”

  “You don’t really think so? In our office?” She kept her eyes wide open. Made sure she didn’t look away.

  “It might just be rumors. But I’m taking the initiative to question a few of you I trust. You’ve always been good about staying out of trouble. After what happened to your parents, there’s no question of your ever joining the Underground. So I thought I’d see if you’d noticed anything.”

  She had to glance down when he mentioned her parents. There was no other way she could hide the painful cringe of feeling, but she managed to recover quickly and look back up with a small smile. “Thank you for your trust in me. Everything has been perfectly normal lately. Nelly’s been prying into my social life, but I don’t think there’s much danger in that.”

  “Probably not. So you can’t think of anything unusual or…or out of place in any way?”

  “No. I don’t think so. But I’ll keep my eyes open. Shall I?”

  “Yes. Do that. Thank you.”

  He stood up, her cue that she was dismissed.

  With a murmured farewell, she walked calmly out the door and back to her cubicle.

  Jenson had returned by then, and she saw him watching her discreetly.

  She wasn’t sure if it was anxiety or disappointment in his eyes. Or something else she couldn’t recognize.

  She didn’t look at or talk to him for the rest of the day. Although she didn’t get very much accomplished, she was proud of herself for acting as naturally as she did.

  As they were leaving for the evening, Jenson brushed against her on the stairs.

  Riana waited until they’d made it outside before she spoke to him.

  “He was asking if I’d seen anything unusual or suspicious. They suspect the Front has placed a spy among the Readers.” When she saw Jenson listening alertly, she continued in a harsh whisper. “I told him nothing. I’ll keep your secrets. But I’m not going to get involved.”

  Jenson opened his mouth to reply.

  “That’s my final decision. Now leave me alone.” With that, she walked away from him. Not hurrying this time but making a point to not look back.

  He didn’t follow her. She was relieved, a little surprised and—completely irrationally—just the tiniest bit disappointed.

  ***

  Riana went home after work to change clothes before her dinner with Mikel, and she chatted with Jannie as her sister ate an early dinner.

  Jannie was more excited about the date then Riana was.

  Riana wasn’t quite sure what she felt.

  For the first time in years, she spent time thinking about her appearance. She kept her braids—since she felt weird and unnatural without them—but she wore a skirt and a flattering top instead of the plain pants and cardigans she typically wore.

  Mikel was waiting at the coffee shop, dressed in all black again, and they walked to a nice restaurant a couple of blocks away.

  Despite Riana’s nerves, dinner was as comfortable as all of their other encounters had been. Mikel even told her about his parents—his mother had died when he was very young and his father had been a workaholic Union administrator. She asked him about his job as a human resource consultant, and he answered without hesitation. He was good at it, he said, but he didn’t always like moving people around like pawns.

  They talked until almost midnight, when Riana realized she needed to get back to Jannie.

  Mikel walked her to her door, and Riana waited for her kiss.

  She wasn’t disappointed.

  He took her face in his hands as he had the day before, and she felt the surge of excitement even before their lips connected.

  He was gentle at first, almost questioning, breaking off as he leaned his forehead against hers.

  Riana gasped for a moment, dizzy with feeling, and then wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back.

  Sensation roared in her head as the kiss deepened, and he slid one hand down to the small of her back. Mikel was all that existed, and she surrendered to the feeling. It was more than physical—it felt like they were connected spirit-deep. Ending the kiss would tear something inside her.

  He was the one who broke the kiss at last, breathing raggedly as he pulled her into a hug. “We better stop,” he rasped, sounding just as affected as she was. “Unless you want to invite me upstairs.”

  “No,” she admitted. She wanted to, but that wasn’t something she was going to do. He might be annoyed. After all, accepting an invitation for a date usually meant agreeing to recreational sex, but the idea of this experience turning into an empty, Union-approved activity made her vaguely ill. “I better not. I should get back home and check on my sister.”

  He must be the most understanding, patient man in the world because he didn’t sound the slightest bit frustrated. “Okay.” He kissed her hair a few times and released her. “Can I see you tomorrow?”

  “Of course.”

  As she walked up the stairs, too hot and too breathless, she realized Mikel had made her forget the stress of the day. He’d made her forget the trouble Jenson was trying to bring upon her, forget all the guilt and terror she’d been struggling with all afternoon, forget the dry nature of her days before she’d met him.

  When she reached the loft, she unlocked it and wondered if Jannie was asleep.

  “Jannie,” she called out, softly so she wouldn’t wake her if she was already in bed. “I’m home.”

  There was no answer as she put down her keys and bag.

  Riana glanced in her sister’s bedroom and was surprised to find it empty. The bed was still made. She walked through the rest of the loft quickly. “Jannie?”

  A prickle of fear awoke in her chest. There was no note on the entry table, which was where they always left them.

  “Jannie!”

  Where had her sister gone? She couldn’t travel on her own, and she never would have gone somewhere without letting Riana know first.

  Going back into the living room, Riana looked around carefully. Jannie’s books were piled up next to the comfortable chair, and the lamp on the side table was lit.

  But one of the pillows had fallen on the floor. Then Riana noticed a glass of water had overturned. It must have been sitting on the table next to the chair. Now there was a pool of water on the wood floor, and the cracked glass had rolled under the table.

  There was no way Jannie would have left the loft like this willingly.

  Something was wrong.

  Riana experienced a wave of terror so intense it made her physically ill.

  Jannie was gone.

  Four

  Mikel wondered what was wrong with him.

  He should have had the information he needed a few days ago. Riana was opening up to him, willingly sharing personal information on her background and family, but he still didn
’t have anything useful to report to Largan.

  He kept getting distracted. Caught up in their conversations and genuinely wanting to know her better, rather than focusing on his job.

  He shouldn’t have kissed her. Only rarely would kissing provide him useful information. If someone wasn’t thinking about the information he needed, the Soul-Breather connection couldn’t access it.

  But he’d wanted to kiss her anyway.

  Now he was dizzy with her delicious spirit—the pleasure and intimacy she’d been feeling on top of what he’d been feeling himself.