by Isamu Fukui
At this point Edward buried his face in his hands, his shoulders heaving with fake sobs. One of the orphanage matrons patted him gently on the back, exchanging grim looks with all the others who had gathered around Edward’s bunk as he related his tragic tale of abuse at the hands of his foster parents.
“Awful, isn’t it? I read about the gun arrest in the papers, but I didn’t recognize the name. Poor Edward. Why do all the awful things have to happen to the best children?”
“Taken down to the Enforcer station for an inquiry, were they? It must’ve been bad, that’s not something the Enforcers do every day.”
“If I’d known what those two devils were up to, I’d have marched right up there and taken Edward back myself. Those irresponsible Enforcers—I knew that they kept asking us about Edward, but they never properly told us what was going on! Outrageous, we had a right to know!”
“If you ask me, those foster parents ought to be locked up for good. Discipline is one thing, but threatening a child with a gun, I ask you . . .”
“At least you’re safe with us now, Edward. After all that’s happened to you, I think we’d better keep you here and out of foster care. Why don’t you get some rest?”
Edward stammered out his thanks, and with a final reassuring pat on the head, the matrons filed out of the room and flicked the lights off, leaving him alone in the dark, windowless dormitory. The moment the door shut, Edward’s miserable face rearranged itself into a satisfied smile, and he slid out of bed and crept over to a floorboard that he knew was loose. Lifting it up, he examined his hidden trove and was delighted to find it exactly as he had left it. There was an assortment of cash that had been acquired illicitly here and there, a scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings about his various misdeeds (none of them correctly attributed to him), a set of keys that would access every room in the orphanage, a sharp, polished knife in a sheath, and at the very bottom, a loaded handgun daringly stolen from a drunk Enforcer.
Edward smiled and dug out the scrapbook before replacing the floorboard and returning to his bed. From his suitcase, he almost lovingly drew out a fresh bundle of newspaper clippings, all collected during his time with his latest foster parents. He carefully added them to the scrapbook, pausing briefly to chuckle over the article about his foster father’s arrest. Once he finished, he plopped down on the bed and began reading through the scrapbook from beginning to end. It was a favorite pastime of his, reliving the acts of notoriety that served as a distraction from his otherwise mundane life.
The next day, Edward knew, he would have to go to school, for not even the kindly matrons who loved him so dearly would permit him to miss classes. Still, unlike most students of the City, Edward had no fear of school; its teachers were easy to please and its assignments were trivial exercises in memorization. Indeed, Edward’s teachers had often told him that he was a model student, and Edward saw no reason to correct them, for that misunderstanding made his life so much easier.
Having reached the end, Edward shut his scrapbook and carefully replaced it beneath the floorboard. Few people with power over Edward could ever guess at the contents of that book he hid so carefully, for it spoke of a nature far more dangerous than anything else under that floorboard could ever be.
Umasi awoke, and an involuntary moan forced itself out of his parched throat. His mouth was dry, his thoughts were a jumbled mess, and his body was racked with cold even as his face burned with heat. Through the muddy haze of confusion, two memories rose up into his consciousness. One was of him boasting how he’d survived the river and a blizzard without falling ill, and the other was of the last time that he had been sick, back in the comfortable Mayoral Mansion, where he’d fallen ill from nothing at all.
Zen had taken care of him then, Umasi remembered dimly. He had helped him, and then turned towards madness in the same day. But who was here to help him now? Would he be able to get better on his own?
Suddenly, he felt something cool and wet being applied to his forehead, soothing the fires in his head. Attempting to make some sense of what was going on, Umasi forced his eyes open to find that everything was a blur. Cool trickles dripped down his face, and he realized that someone had put a wet towel on his forehead. Blinking briefly to rid himself of a drop of water that had landed on his eyelid, he opened his eyes again to see a blurry shadow standing over him.
And then it hit him.
“Milady?” Umasi murmured uncertainly.
“I told you that you were catching a cold,” she chided. “Here, take this. You’ll have to drink some to swallow it, so try to sit up a bit.”
Umasi felt something being placed in his mouth, and a second later two arms propped his body up enough so that he could swallow a mouthful of water. Then the arms fluffed his pillow and laid him down again. A soft hand began petting the top of his head soothingly, and Umasi soon found himself slipping off into unconsciousness again.
From then on Umasi awoke every few hours, only to fall asleep again shortly thereafter. He only felt worse each time he opened his eyes, but his misery was allayed by the pale girl who never seemed to leave his side. Sometimes she would place a fresh wet towel on his forehead, other times she would coax more medicine or some juice down his throat. Once she added another layer of blankets on top of him. Sometimes he felt that her treatments helped, other times they didn’t seem to have any effect. But always her gestures and care alone made him feel better.
By the time the sun went down, and what little sunlight that seeped through the window had faded, Umasi’s fever was nearly unbearable. No matter how many blankets were piled on, he couldn’t stop shivering as he writhed in discomfort. His hands scrabbled all around his body, desperately trying to warm it all at once. He hadn’t eaten anything since the morning, and yet he felt no hunger. His fevered mind wondered if he could possibly die to a cold of all things.
And then, still in the throes of delirium, Umasi imagined something impossible. His blankets stirred, lifted, and a gush of cold air racked his body, causing him to shiver violently. Something heavy, soft, and warm slipped on top of him as the covers sank again to the floor. For a moment Umasi was sure that he was suffering a hallucination. Only when gentle arms wrapped around him was Umasi convinced that what was happening might be real. Forcing his eyes open, Umasi saw a pair of pale blue eyes, barely an inch away, looking back at him with unmasked concern.
“Wha . . . what are you doing?” Umasi murmured weakly.
“Shh,” the girl replied, resting her head under his chin. “I owe it to you.”
“You . . . don’t . . . owe me this,” Umasi protested feebly.
“You gave me food when I was hungry, shelter when I was weary, and friendship when I was lonely,” she whispered. “If I want to give you warmth when you’re cold, that’s my business.”
Some stubborn part of Umasi’s consciousness wanted to protest again, but the miraculous warmth melted away his chills and calmed his troubled mind. Her presence and her heat brought him such comfort that the rest of his consciousness surrendered without a fight. His heart racing, Umasi slid an arm around her back and blindly buried his face in her silver hair. He could feel her heartbeat reverberating clearly through her body, beating much more steadily than his own.
And so for one fevered night, Umasi forgot himself.
So, the Enforcers are getting serious at last,” Zen mused.
“That’s right, Z,” Gabriel agreed. “There’re only a few survivors from District 7 that got out in time, and they’re reporting that the rest are probably dead. Enforcers are swarming over the entire area like ants, checking every building.”
“I trust that the Enforcers are being made to pay for every inch of District 7 that they search?”
“Yeah, the survivors figure that the Enforcers set off all the mines.” Gabriel nodded. “And the crew themselves made one hell of a last stand at their hideout—they blew their entire remaining stock of explosives rather than come quietly. Frank sent a message saying he can see the smoke
all the way from District 13.”
“A noble sacrifice,” Zen murmured. “And Frank is attentive as always, I’ll have to visit his outpost soon. I must admit I hadn’t expected Rothenberg to be so wasteful. Something must have prompted this. The Mayor has probably put pressure on him, maybe set a deadline. If he’s willing to continue spending resources like this, he must be desperate.”
“Should we be worrying about this?” Gabriel asked.
“Perhaps. Our casualties are relatively few and their examples are valiant, but any losses at all are bad for morale. The Enforcers have a lot more men to waste than we do,” Zen reasoned, glancing out the store window and into the night. “Indeed, this type of brute force is least favorable to us.”
“So what’re we going to do about it?”
“We need to spread out faster, and remain unfixed,” Zen said. “The crews will need to start falling back at the first sign of Enforcer approach. We clear out when they come, and when they’re finished setting off our traps we move right back in and plant them all again. We undo any progress they make. We’ll need to track their movements as best we can—every second of forewarning counts.”
“But if we’re going to scatter and hide for now, it’d be best to scrub out those Truancy symbols,” Gabriel suggested, nodding towards the one Zen had painted on the window. “Or perhaps move the real hideouts to places that don’t have one.”
“No.” Zen shook his head. “The symbols can be surprisingly hard to remove, short of painting then over. As for moving, I’ve gotten rather . . . comfortable . . . in this place. If the Enforcers approach this shop, we will give them more to worry about than a few mines.”
“So what are your orders, Z?”
“Get people out into the living districts to track Enforcer activity,” Zen said without hesitation. “Tell the crews to assume that the Enforcers might come calling at any time, and to fall back if they do. They better have escape plans prepared, and every crew should always have a lookout posted at all times. Also, tell Amal that I need to see him here in one hour. I have an important job for him.”
“All right, Z, I’ll take care of it,” Gabriel promised with a salute.
Zen frowned. Something had been bothering him and he’d just remembered what it was.
“Don’t call me ‘Z’ anymore, Gabriel,” Zen said. “The abbreviation is beginning to tire me.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow.
“Have you picked a new name for yourself already?”
“I’ll get back to you on that,” Zen promised. “Tonight,” he added, seeing the look of skepticism on Gabriel’s face.
“If you say so,” Gabriel said, spinning around to leave the shop.
Zen looked thoughtful as the Truant shut the door behind him. He had been putting off many things, and this was one of the last of them. For a while now he had felt irked by being addressed as “Z”; it was merely an abbreviation of his old name, and he hated the way it sounded. Right now the Z still stood for Zen, and he knew that people would never have died for the student Zen—and yet that day people had died for him, for the first time. It was a milestone now that he thought about it, and yet Zen still felt oddly detached from their deaths. He quickly brushed that thought aside; he did appreciate their sacrifices, sacrifices made for a person who was certainly no longer the student Zen—so what would the letter stand for now?
He began tossing ideas around in his head. Nothing came immediately to mind, and so he idly began stringing Z together with other letters of the alphabet. After several moments of this, he hit the combination ZD. Something about it felt right to him. He ran it over and over again in his head, faster and faster. ZD . . . Zeede . . . Zeed . . . Zid. Yes, that sounded sharp, unique . . . but it looked too short, like his old name. After a second of thought, he mentally slid a Y into place, and suddenly found himself with Zyid. At last, Zen thought, he could wholly abandon that last trace of his old life—his name. He would bury the boy he once was, and transform himself into more than an individual. “Zyid” would be an icon of power, a title to be feared and respected.
“Noni,” Zen said suddenly. “I’ve decided on a name you can address me by.”
“What is it, sir?” Noni asked.
Zen nodded at her steady response. He had noticed that a thin veneer of ice now seemed to form over the girl whenever she spoke. Zen found that he wasn’t unhappy about it, as he could tell that within that frosty cocoon she was changing, growing stronger. He vaguely anticipated the day when she would emerge from it.
“The name is Zyid.” Zen spoke the name aloud for the first time, eager for another opinion.
For several long seconds, Noni had none.
“If it’s all the same to you,” Noni replied at last, “I’d like to keep calling you ‘sir.’ ”
Zen looked at her for a moment, and then shrugged.
“As you wish.”
25
BEFORE THE STORM
You don’t seem very pleased to hear from me, Mayor.”
That’s because I’m not, the Mayor thought.
The cold eyes that regarded him still had that powerful presence that the Mayor remembered from years ago. It made little difference that the eyes were projected from a computer screen, and belonged to a woman thousands of miles away. The girl had grown up into a young woman who looked just as formidable, and perhaps even more dangerous, than she had at the age of eight. The Mayor suppressed a shudder, talking solace in knowing that his sons, related to this woman by blood though they might be, were not yet as perilous as she.
The Mayor knew that the fate of the City rested on this conversation, and that it would take every ounce of acting prowess he had to fool this woman. The Mayor’s sole comfort was that the Government couldn’t possibly know everything yet, or else armed troops would be marching through the streets of the City even as they spoke.
“I was merely a little surprised,” the Mayor said. “You must understand that this is highly irregular.”
“Well, I confess that it’s not every day that my father asks me to check up on your little experiment.”
“And for sound reasons,” the Mayor said stiffly. “I have nothing more to add to the reports that I send.”
“I am aware of that.”
“Then what’s this all about?” the Mayor demanded.
The gray eyes glinted, and the Mayor felt his stomach contract in dread. He knew what was coming next.
“My estranged brothers.”
The Mayor forced his face to remain impassive even as fear and doubt flooded his mind. They couldn’t have found out already, it was impossible. Hardly anyone in the City itself knew about it, the Mayor had made sure of that.
“What about them?” The Mayor asked mildly.
The eyes narrowed, their gaze boring into him through the screen, and the Mayor suddenly felt like a lab specimen being dissected upon a table.
“Let’s just say that my father is concerned,” she said. “Do you remember the money accounts that my father set up for the boys?”
“Yes,” the Mayor answered. As a matter of fact, he had been worrying about those ever since he discovered the cards missing along with his sons. Money was power, and who could tell what two children might do with so much of it? The accounts were outside of the City, beyond his jurisdiction, and he was powerless to do anything to shut them down or even see how much had been spent.
“Well, it just so turns out that the monthly financial reports were being reviewed the other day when an . . . anomaly was discovered,” the woman said. “My father was contacted by the treasury, of course, and was assured that it was no mistake.”
“And what was the nature of this anomaly?” the Mayor asked warily, though he suspected that he already knew the answer.
“It seems that someone has withdrawn an astounding amount of money from one of the accounts,” she replied. “The other has also withdrawn more than usual, though not nearly as much as the first. My father presumes that you h
ave a satisfactory explanation.”
The Mayor flashed a mechanical smile. This, at least, was a question that he was prepared to answer, having spent weeks of sleepless nights thinking about it.
“Oh, that, ” the Mayor said. “You almost had me afraid that there was a serious problem.”
The woman raised an eyebrow, prompting the Mayor to hurry along with his explanation.
“The boys are now of an age where they should start becoming responsible with their own money,” the Mayor said. “I have allowed them to make investments of their choice in the City. Of course, they have more money to experiment with than the typical child, but at least one of the two thinks big.”
“I see,” the young woman said, a thin smile creeping across her face. “Well, I think that my father will be satisfied with that . . . but one thing, Mayor, off the record, and just between the two of us.”
“What?”
“You don’t fool me.”
Then the screen went blank, plunging the room into darkness. The Mayor was left to sit there alone at his desk for the rest of the night, breathing heavily as his heart raced. He would return to normal only long after the sun had risen.
Zen gazed out the shopwindow as the sound of wooden clacking reached his ears. The bright early-morning sun had melted away the last of the snow that had fallen a few days ago, and the day was shaping up to be the warmest of the winter thus far. Outside in the street, a number of Truants were engaging in friendly duels with each other, wielding crude wooden swords that Zen had allowed them to make for well-deserved recreation. These Truants had accomplished a lot in a short time, and there was no doubt left in Zen’s mind that they had the potential to succeed in a way the Educators had never dreamed possible.
Zen was proud, but not of them or what they had done. To be proud of their accomplishments would be to lay some claim to them, no matter how small. Zen had decided to leave that particular brand of arrogance to the parents of the City. Instead, Zen was proud of the things that he had done himself, chief among them assembling and leading the formidable Truants before him. As if to punctuate this feeling, Zen suddenly spotted Amal approaching the shop, a look of triumph on the boy’s face.