by Karen Bao
The crowd stirs, drowning out Murray’s voice. At first, I worry that we’ve lingered too long with Garnet’s parents, but the Odans are looking past us, at the ocean, where spots of light twinkle in the distance. They squint at the horizon, some pointing, others shaking their heads. Stern-faced parents hurry their children away to higher ground.
“A mobile city?”
“It must have already breached the Sanctuary boundary!”
I follow their gaze, dread making it harder and harder to breathe. The lights on the horizon have grown brighter. I can make out various colors—scarlet, deep violet, glassy green—even though their glow is shrouded in smoke.
The wind picks up, carries the rotting odor of sulfur to my nose.
“Everybody move inland!”
“Where is Coordinator Carlyle? Somebody call for him!”
“Are he and his boys mobilizing yet?”
They’re talking about Saint Oda’s law enforcement cohort, made up of twenty or so young men—called Sanctuarists—and led by Wes’s father. Unlike the Lunar Militia, the Sanctuarists are so unobtrusive that I sometimes forget they exist. They dress like civilians and rarely take people into custody. What’s more, the Odans love them. When Wes walks the city’s narrow footpaths, adults greet him by his first name, boys look at him in awe, and girls giggle into each other’s shoulders. But I usually stave off jealousy by convincing myself that these young women don’t really care for him. If they did, they’d know that he’d rather exchange blows with Lunar soldiers than banter with them.
But there’s no laughter now. Several boys and men within the crowd are running about, shouting, or fumbling in their pockets. The Sanctuarists are assembling, but will it do any good? The disorder reminds me of the breakout from Shelter, the Militia chasing the residents and shooting them as if for target practice.
The blood has stopped flowing to my toes. Disturbed, I shake off the memory.
“Outsiders.” Willet holds her baby closer and shields Garnet’s eyes with her hand. “Fay, we haven’t had unannounced visitors since those demons came.” Demons: the Odan word for Lunars. “God forbid someone’s here to take the rest of us.”
2
“NO,” MURRAY MUTTERS. “THIS ISN’T REAL—IT’S fake, fake, fake.” Her thundercloud eyes widen—the right only slightly, the left until I can see every white striation in the gray iris. Like lightning. Her hand clutches the oval amber locket at her throat, an ornament I’ve never seen her without.
“The last time this happened . . .” she says to no one in particular. Without warning, she runs uphill, stumbling over the stray rocks—and small children—in her path. The injury that disfigured her face also compromised the vision in her right eye, giving her poor depth perception. Above Murray’s head, Lewis flies in circles, screaming her alarm to the island.
“Murray!” I call out, stunned and terrified that she’s leaving without me. Never in the five months I’ve known her has she failed to see me home. I’m torn between fleeing uphill with her and staying to learn something, anything, about what’s going on.
Beside me, Willet argues with Larimer. “They certainly didn’t come to congratulate us,” she says. “I’m taking Garnet out of here.”
He glances worriedly at the mass exodus from the Overhang. Bodies block every exit. “She’ll get jostled. Or worse, trampled.”
“There’s a Pacifian ally only minutes from us,” Willet says through her teeth. “I will not let them ruin this day. . . .”
Upon hearing the word Pacifian, I, too, take off running. My mind’s splitting along fault lines I thought had stabilized during my recovery, and it’s terrifying, this loss of control over my own consciousness. Get away and keep it together, I order myself. Living on Base IV, I learned to slip through crowds with ease, and the familiar rhythm of dodging bodies gets my synapses firing.
This unknown city is an ally of Pacifia, the city-state Wes and I discovered is working with the Lunar Standing Committee toward some mysterious and terrifying goal. A floating metropolis with millions of inhabitants, Pacifia is the capital of the eastern hemisphere’s hegemon here on Earth. With half the planet under its control, its military could kick aside a city of Saint Oda’s size like a pebble in its path.
That wouldn’t happen if Saint Oda allied itself with Pacifia’s archenemy, the city-state of Battery Bay. But Saint Oda would never cooperate with the biggest single polluter on Earth.
An announcement from the approaching city—read by a grating female voice—thunders through the still air. “Odans, remain where you are. We are the municipality of Tourmaline, and we come in peace, bearing a message for all of you. We repeat: remain where you are.”
Many Odans freeze, staring at the floating city as if down the barrel of a massive cannon. That might well be the case. Who’s to say that at this moment, Tourmaline doesn’t have metric tons of ammunition ready to fire at us?
I run faster, the back of my neck prickling. The announcement’s amplification and commanding tone sound too much like a Committee address. My past has followed me here, even though I’ve run 400,000 kilometers away from the Moon, where everything happened.
Passersby will think I’m retreating uphill, to the shelter of Wes’s family’s home; it’s what any young girl should do, for safety. But what if Tourmaline’s visit has something to do with me, a Lunar rebel’s runaway daughter? Given this island city’s connections to Pacifia and therefore to the Moon, that’s not outside the realm of possibility.
Responsibility and morbid curiosity win out over self-preservation. Instead of disappearing into the tunnels weaving through the mountain, I run behind a boulder and toward the lighthouse. Hand over hand, I climb the tower’s creaky metal ladder. Overgrown layers of rust cover the rungs, and each feels jagged against my palms.
I won’t be seen up here, fifty meters off the ground. And it’s doubtful I’ll receive an unexpected visitor. Odans avoid the observatory because they believe that the “restless souls” of those killed during the twenty-second century’s storms and the recent Lunar invasion reside there, scanning the seas for future threats to their kin. The Odans even keep away from the lighthouse’s base, as some have seen the “ghosts” of people they lost darting about there.
Earthbound myths don’t faze me—or Wes. He told me that years ago, he snuck up here with another spy-in-training, Alex, to howl and moan, to scare people and laugh at their reactions. Nostalgia amassing in my heart, I imagined the two of them were like Umbriel and me.
Umbriel was also a trickster. He’d drop worms down people’s shirts instead of tending the greenhouse plants.
I’m glad Wes had company during his training. Alex, from an immigrant family, was two years older—the only Lunar agent close to Wes in age. Wes left for Base IV three and a half years ago, when he was fifteen, and Alex set off for Base VI ten months later.
I reach the lighthouse’s tip and sneak into the back door. The observatory is octagonal and painted light yellow; old piping bulges from the walls like veins on an angry man’s forehead.
The older Sanctuarists departed for the Moon years before Wes and Alex. Camden, the former Sanctuarist on Base I, hijacked the first Hemispherical Registered Processor, or HeRP, for the Odans’ Earth-to-Moon communications system. But he struggled to connect it with a midpoint receptor in the Alps. By the time he succeeded, the Militia had detected abnormal signals from his HeRP, and they captured him. Through the weeks of torture preceding his execution, Camden held on to the secret of his home city. Ironically, his death allowed twentysomething Micah River to pursue his lifelong dream of spying for Saint Oda. Though he wasn’t ready, he begged Wesley Sr. to let him take Camden’s place. Wes thinks Micah became a Sanctuarist to distinguish himself from Larimer and his four fisherman brothers. “He wanted to be different,” Wes told me. “To be a hero, whatever the cost.”
A hero. . . . Not lik
e me. I’ve been useless, and a liability.
Shaking off the thought, I walk past a panel of defunct buttons and levers—the beacon hasn’t shone in a hundred and fifty years—and peer through a dusty window at the Overhang and the Odan harbor. I’m exhaling heavily from exertion; my breath fogs the glass, and I wipe away the condensation with my sleeve, which has a texture similar to that of human skin. My shirt’s made from yeast film. I still haven’t gotten used to the Odans’ bizarre natural products—moss carpeting, fungal medicine. But like so many traditions here, their manufactures are rooted in their faith. Odans work toward unity with all their fellow creatures. Why employ alloys and synthesized materials for any purpose, they reason, when materials from a divinely infused life form could serve just as well?
On the other hand, Tourmaline, the uninvited city, gleams with artificiality. Scarlet, green, and violet lights block out the indigo sky. The reflections in the black water oscillate and swirl as the massive raft parts the ocean waves. For balance, the circular city has been constructed in the shape of an upside-down mushroom; the base slopes upward into interconnected buildings, and a cluster of golden skyscrapers rises in the center. Pounding, hysterical music plays, somewhere on the near side. It sounds as if all the computers in the Lunar InfoTech Department are shorting out at once. Most Pacifian allies are destitute, I’ve learned, but this one, with its colorful lights, seems decadently wealthy. Pacifia must have designated Tourmaline as an ambassador city to intimidate other states.
A pair of silver-plated binoculars hangs above my head; I put the string around my neck, raise the lenses to my eyes, and focus them, the way Wes showed me last month. Now I can see people dancing—or rather, thrashing—to the beat, their clothing lighting up and powering down with their movements.
Tourmaline scintillates like the gemstone that shares its name, but it also proves that brilliance is best presented in small quantities. Visually, aurally, the city is too much. So is the small group that now struts across the Overhang’s stage, their footfalls accompanied by jangling metal.
The Tourmalinian soldiers are decorated in every sense: their pants are amethyst purple, their jackets emerald green, and their narrow-brimmed caps cinnabar red. Golden badges and frills cover their uniforms from their collars to their pant hems. A middle-aged brunette woman with an arrogantly arched back heads a unit of guards wearing red jackets with purple lapels. They carry meter-long muskets.
At the sight, I suck in my breath; though the guns are primitive, they’re still an unwelcome presence on an archipelago that’s pacifistic to the core.
If First Priest Luciana Pinto is affronted by Tourmaline’s militant display, she keeps the sentiment off her face. Sanctuary Coordinator Carlyle, a tall man with graying red hair and asymmetrical, skeptical eyebrows, stands four meters behind the priest, wearing his usual smart brown jacket with golden buttons.
“A lovely day,” the Tourmalinian lady says. I hear every sharp note in her voice—the sound travels all the way to the lighthouse, demonstrating the incredible acoustic properties of the Odan amphitheater. Her tone implies that the evening isn’t inherently lovely, but lovely because she says so. The vertical lines around her mouth look like cracks in dried mud.
In the sparse Odan crowd below, mostly made up of men, a copper-haired head shakes. Wes. I imagine him smiling dimly at the spectacle before us, even though I know he’d rather run straight at the newcomers to flush out the adrenaline. His fingers loop through the loose thread of his sweater and tighten it around his wrist like a handcuff. I wish I could untangle him before he cuts off his circulation. I wish he were next to me.
“Saint Oda extends to Tourmaline the hospitality of the Lord and all the creatures in his keeping.” Pinto folds her hands, resting them on the belt of her scratchy-looking wool dress. “I don’t believe we have met. My name is Luciana Pinto.”
“And I am Ambassador Everett.” The Tourmalinian wears what looks like a lime-green silk blanket wrapped around her waist and draped over her shoulder. When she moves forward to shake hands with Pinto, she takes tiny steps so that she won’t trip on the skirt.
“What brings you here?” Pinto asks. “Trade? Do you require a place to rest?”
“No. As you can see, our city provides more than adequate accommodation.” Mouth twisted in a condescending sneer, Everett sweeps her hand around, as if to contrast her glamorous city with Saint Oda’s primitivism. “We have not traveled far; we have been conducting diplomacy in Europe. Today, Tourmaline’s duty is to come here, on direct orders from the President of Pacifia.”
A shudder rattles through the Odan crowd.
“No need to fear!” Again, self-importance pervades Everett’s words. “Our visit is cause for celebration. The Pacifian alliance is welcoming Saint Oda, and allowing you to join us.”
3
THE ODAN MEN’S ANGER MATERIALIZES AT once. They puff out their chests like frigate birds and inch closer to the stage.
“How profane!”
“A military alliance? We renounced weaponry centuries ago.”
“I pray for the souls within them!”
They’re shaking their heads and glaring at Ambassador Everett. I’ve lived here only five months, yet I find that I’m offended, too. Although Saint Oda’s people have seen and felt war, they’ve never instigated it. They’ve only suffered and done their best to recover, to forgive. Joining the Pacifian alliance and taking part in the standoff with Battery Bay would run counter to the Odans’ instincts, like forcing blood to flow backward through their veins.
On the stage, Wesley Carlyle Sr. moves swiftly to Pinto’s side. In the audience, his son raises a narrow tube to his lips, hiding it from view with his other hand. It’s a blowgun, used to fire hardened pine needles dipped in toxic wolfsbane—one of the only hunting tools permitted in Saint Oda. Blowguns are excellent weapons for Sanctuarists: small, all-natural, nonlethal. Should a Tourmalinian show aggression toward Pinto or his father, Wes can knock the stranger unconscious with a puff.
Several other young men cover their mouths with their hands, among them Finley, Wes’s fifteen-year-old cousin, and Maurice, a nineteen-year-old Sanctuarist who’ll leave soon for the Moon.
“Matters of state are outside my concern, Ambassador.” Pinto’s speech remains dignified, as does her posture. But through the binoculars, I see the skin beneath her left eye twitch. “I can help in the realm of spirituality, even hospitality—but never hostility. Please redirect your inquiry to Sanctuary Coordinator Carlyle.”
With that, Pinto turns her back on Ambassador Everett and shuffles off the stage. The Odans look bewildered. I’ve seen Pinto act graciously to fussing toddlers, but today she insulted a lady dressed like an ancient Earthbound queen. It takes a lot to infuriate Pinto, and the Tourmalinians have done it in a matter of minutes.
Wes’s father takes Pinto’s place at center stage and brushes something invisible off his shoulder before speaking. “You seem to have forgotten, Tourmalinian, that we have not communicated with another state in nearly a century. It will pain me to give you a lesson in Odan international affairs in front of my people, but it seems to be necessary. Do you remember the incident ninety years ago with New Joudo, your fellow Pacifian ally? And the oil wells at the border of Odan’s waters?”
My stomach lurches. Saint Oda wasn’t always isolationist? No one mentioned that to me.
“Of course I know the story.” Everett glares sideways at Priest Pinto. “What do you take me for, an uneducated Luddite?”
Hissing from the Odans.
“New Joudo tried to negotiate with your . . . tribe,” Everett continues. “When you didn’t cooperate, they utilized the oil wells—”
“Seized,” says Wesley Sr.
“Battery Bay swooped in, assaulted New Joudo, offered you an alliance—”
“Which we rejected.”
“—and took over the oil
wells—”
“Which we had never used!” Wesley Sr.’s face is the color of a blood orange.
“And you let them, because in return, Battery Bay declared that . . .”
The two finish together: “No state shall violate the sovereignty of the International Sanctuary of Saint Oda.”
So Saint Oda benefited from Battery Bay’s help, even though its residents claim that they ignore the outside world, and always have? Do Odans play the international affairs game like everyone else? I rub my eyes, feeling cold disappointment in my gut. They have no other choice, I tell myself.
“No matter. Pacifia knew that the cost of a war with the Batterers was not worth some xenophobic tribe’s oil.” Everett sniffs, staring down her wide-eyed Odan audience. “Now that your history has been so tiresomely elucidated, let me warn you: your ‘sanctuary’ is about to become an inferno. The cold war between Battery Bay and Pacifia is getting hot. And it will move here. Has Battery Bay helped you prepare? Has it warned you about what is to come? No. The Batterers are not your friends, as you might think. We in the Pacifian alliance will place you under our protection. We will modernize Saint Oda and give its people a fighting chance. Trust us—you will need to fight.”
In the audience, several people nod, but the majority shake their heads. Wes practices aiming his blowgun, his eyes narrowed at Everett.
“You are purely self-interested,” Wesley Sr. says. “The Odan archipelago is strategically located in the center of the North Channel. If we joined you, you would control the Irish Sea and the British Isles, where you have factories, reserve corps—”
“Your city would never again be defenseless!” Everett cries, cutting him off. “Not even from Lunars. Pacifian intelligence has learned that the ‘demons,’ as you call them, mean to increase the frequency of their Earth invasions, which will endanger every city on this planet—even Pacifia, our great benefactor. Of course, this has escaped your notice.”