by Kate L. Mary
The woman said nothing else, and so I turned away from her, grabbing Mira’s arm as I did. Together we hurried through the crowd, pushing forward with our sights set on the gate. We were both trembling, but the closer we got to the gate, the more the tension began to ease.
When I was sure we had left the Sovereign woman behind, I released Mira’s arm and slowed. My friend did as well, and once again we were walking side by side.
“Do you know who you are going to choose?” Mira asked after only a moment of silence.
I let out a deep breath, blowing the remaining tension from my body before saying, “I was thinking of Ronan.”
Mira’s mouth morphed into a smile, brightening her already sparkling eyes. “He would be a good choice.”
The boy was small for his age, but strong-willed and determined. He was only ten, but he had been single-handedly taking care of his mother and two young sisters since their father died last year. This job would give him a break and allow him to provide more for his family without working nearly as hard. It would mean that they would have more than most of the people in our village.
“I wish I could do more,” I whispered.
“We all do,” she said, speaking as quietly as I had, and then we both lapsed into silence.
Mira and I remained quiet the rest of the way through Sovereign City. The walk from Saffron’s house to the wall was the only time during the day that we were able to really relax. The workday was done and the city streets were clean and safe. Peaceful even.
Of course, it had felt different at first. Back when I had first come to Sovereign City, the closeness of everything and the way the buildings and walls had towered over my head made me feel trapped. Everything had felt cold to me back then, fake. Not a drop of nature was visible inside the walls. The streets and houses were made of the same gray stone as the wall, and the buildings were so close together and high that it had felt as if they were bearing down on me, threatening to crush me or trap me here. Everything in the city was clean and maintained, but it was all gray, all stone. As cold and lifeless as Saffron’s eyes. It was overwhelming to a person who had grown up in the wilds.
Once I had gotten used to it all, I found an appreciation for the buildings in this city. They were all the same gray stone, but each was ornate in its own way, with arched doors and stained glass windows that added a touch of color to the otherwise drab city. Even after hundreds of years they were solid and impressive, a remnant from a time long gone and almost forgotten.
The clouds gathering in the distance had darkened the sky enough that the streetlights flicked on as Mira and I walked, casting circles of light on the road. I looked up, still awed even after all these years by the electric lights. It was hard to imagine a life where light was provided by just a flick of a switch, where water could be warmed without starting a fire, or a hot bath drawn for no reason other than the simple pleasure of allowing water to relax you. These were luxuries unknown to my people. Unknown to anyone but the Sovereign.
Mira and I were not the only ones heading home, and when we reached the gate we discovered that the line to get out of the city was twice as long as usual. She stood on her toes, peering over the heads of those in front of us so she could get an idea of what was taking so long. Usually it had something to do with the Fortis manning the gate. Most would never risk losing their positions by causing trouble inside the city, not when there were plenty of opportunities to bother Outliers outside the walls, but occasionally the men and women at the gate decided to have a little fun. They knew they could get away with it since very few of the Sovereign would ever come this close to the gate.
“See anything?” I asked Mira, who was nearly a head taller than me.
“Not really.” She exhaled and her breath came out in a puff of steam. “I wish they would hurry.”
The clouds had thickened even more in the distance, and the air had chilled, but the sun beating down on us was still warm. A snowflake landed on the hair of the girl in front of us, melting within seconds thanks to the sun. Both Mira and I lifted our faces to the sky as more of the delicate flecks dropped from the clouds, and the bite in the air told me that it was already falling much heavier in our village.
Mira’s gaze moved to my hands. “How are they?”
“Fine.” I looked down, cringing at the welts on my skin.
My mother and Anja would be beside themselves when I got home, but I was telling the truth. The sting had lessened now that I was no longer folding laundry and scrubbing bathroom floors, and the chilly air had helped even more. My hands would still be tender tomorrow, but nothing like today. I was strong enough to work through the pain.
“By the time we get home there should be some snow,” Mira said. “That will help. And Adina will have something to take even more of the sting out.”
The line moved forward and I caught a glimpse of the Fortis guards working the gate. They opened it to let a few of their own men out, the one who had almost caught me when I stumbled included. He glanced back as he passed through and our eyes met. But I had been trained since childhood to look away, so it was only for the briefest of moments before my gaze was once again focused on the ground. It was not until I had looked down that I realized it did not matter, but by the time I looked back up he had disappeared through the gate and the doors were once again being pulled shut.
That left only five people separating Mira and me from freedom, three Fortis men and two Outlier women. They were from a different tribe, not that anyone inside the walls knew or cared, and both were older than Mira and me. Closer to my mother’s age. The Fortis barely paid attention to the women before waving for them to move on, but when the guards turned their gazes on us, the predatory light in their eyes had my defenses up.
“Come on,” the man closest to us barked.
Like all Fortis, he was large. Broad shouldered with a neck as wide as his head. His hair was as dark as the black uniform jacket he wore and had been slicked back and pulled into a tail at the base of his head. His brown, almost black, eyes zeroed in on Mira and me as we stepped forward, sweeping over us so fast that I was unsure if he was really seeing us.
At least not until he said, “New protocol. Arms up.”
“Arms up?” Mira asked, sounding as startled as I felt.
We had just seen the two older Outlier women make it out of the city with no problem, and even though new laws were put in place all the time, we were usually informed of them. We had heard nothing about this, though.
“You heard him,” the second Fortis man barked. He was wider than the first man, with the same dark clothes that made him seem twice as large, only his hair was a disheveled mop of blond that hung loose to the middle of his back.
Mira swallowed but complied, lifting her arms and allowing the first man to pat her down.
I did the same with the second man, and as his hands moved down my body, a gust of wind swept down the street, sending a shiver shooting through me. At least I thought it was the wind. It was impossible to say for sure if it was from the cold or the situation, which was both preposterous and beyond my control. I knew as well as these men did that there were no new regulations. They were just bored and wanted to put us in our place.
The blond man started at my arms and worked his way down, patting my body so slowly and thoroughly that I felt as violated as I had that day in the pantry with Lysander. I sank my teeth into my lower lip, biting back words that were begging to get out because I knew they would get me nowhere. Causing a scene would not make the Sovereign sympathize with me. All they wanted was for their perfect little world to keep spinning undisturbed. Even worse, if I fought back this man would most likely take me into the headquarters, which was little more than a dark, windowless building. I had heard rumors of the horrors that happened within those walls whispered among the Outliers in Saffron’s house, and I refused to give this man an excuse to get me in there.
Thankfully, the ordeal was over as fast as it had begun, and th
en Mira and I were on our way out. She was shaking, and I wrapped my arms around her as we passed out of Sovereign City and into the Fortis village, hoping the hug would calm not just her, but me as well.
4
Leaving the city after a confrontation with the Fortis should have been a relief, but the sights and sounds that hit the second we stepped through the gate defied the relief escape brought.
The Fortis lived a rough and rowdy life, and their village was so close to the wall that it was a miracle the chaos did not make it into the city. The wall did its job, though. The stone structure was twenty feet high and four feet thick, and had been built to make certain that no one got in uninvited, and nothing—not man or sound—could penetrate it.
Like the Outliers, the Fortis worked hard to ensure that Sovereign City was spotless, but their efforts stopped at the gate, almost as if the wall was somehow able to trap motivation inside the city as thoroughly as it did privilege. The stench of rotting food and too many people living together was difficult, if not impossible, to ignore when passing through the Fortis village. Add to that the stink of waste, both from animals and people, and it created a perfume of human misery that never failed to make my eyes water.
Out here the streets were not paved, the houses were not ornate or maintained, and most of the people made no effort to take care of themselves despite a ready supply of water. There was a standard of living inside the walls, so those who held positions inside the city did better, but everyone else looked as if they had given up trying decades ago. Not only were they filthy, but they also reeked of body odor and had teeth that were rotten to nubs. Those who had not shaved their heads completely—either for convenience sake or to escape an infestation of some kind of vermin—had knotted hair that often went down to the middle of their backs, and the beards of the Fortis men were pretty much the same.
As far as I knew, the only thing anyone in this village ever put any effort into was training. It started in youth regardless of gender, and continued on until a person was too old or too sick to keep going. The Fortis had been charged with guarding the city for centuries, and in exchange the Sovereign rewarded them with food and other supplies. As a result, these people were mountains, their already large bodies broad and bulging with muscles. As far as I knew, the Outliers had never attempted to defy the Sovereign, but if we had, we would be no match for the men and women who lived in this village. We were too weak, too malnourished, and looked like children compared to the men and women who lived in this village.
The Outliers that worked inside the city were forced to walk through the Fortis Village to get to and from the gate, a task that was usually met with hostility and could turn dangerous if not careful. Outliers were cleaner and worked harder, and our villages were not cesspools of human garbage, but we were lower than the Fortis because we were less useful. These people kept watch over the wall and guarded the Sovereign, they hunted to provide those in the city with meat, and it made them necessary. We were too, assuming the people inside the walls wanted someone to cook and clean up after them, but there were four times as many Outliers as there were Fortis, and jobs inside were rare and nearly impossible to come by. Which meant that we were forced to scrape by if we wanted to survive.
Like every other day, Mira and I moved quickly through the Fortis Village, keeping our eyes straight ahead and ignoring the insults and suggestive comments tossed our way. The air was much chillier now, but the few flakes that managed to fall from the sky melted before they could collect on the ground. The Fortis were out in droves by the time we reached the halfway point, a section of the village that was marked by an open area and was often crowded with people. Today was no exception. If anything, the crowd appeared to be much larger than usual.
I pulled Mira closer to me when we were forced to squeeze our way through the men and women gathered in the center of the village. The stench of unwashed bodies was strong, but not strong enough to cover the scent of alcohol that wafted through the air as people laughed and flung abuse at us.
“Keep moving,” I whispered to Mira.
She nodded and walked with me as I tried to move faster, elbowing my way through the crowd. Avoiding eye contact was the only defense I had against drawing more attention our way, but there were so many people that it felt like an impossible feat. I had to look up to see where I was going because the ground had been blocked from my view, and when I did I spotted the guard from Saffron’s house again. For just a moment, his face was there amongst the crowd, and then he was gone, disappearing into a sea of Fortis men and women.
I searched for him for a beat before I realized there was no reason for me to look for him, and then I kept moving, pulling Mira with me until we had surfaced from the crowd. Then we began to run, the sound of laughter chasing us until we had made it to the edge of the Fortis Village where the wastelands and Lygan Cliffs stretched out before us.
Mira and I were out of breath when we stopped. The echoes of the Fortis still reached us from the village, but we knew none of them would bother to come after us. Still, I found myself looking back as Mira knelt down and tipped over the rock in front of her. Under it, in a shallow hole that had been dug centuries ago, were our weapons. We were prohibited from carrying them into the city, but traveling unarmed through the borderland that separated the wastelands from the Lygan Cliffs was dangerous, so we stashed the weapons here every morning on our way to work, collecting them again before making our long trek home. Mira and I had only had to use the knives a handful of times over the years, but they were instances that would have left us dead if we had been caught unarmed.
She passed me a knife, the hilt of which was rough against my sensitive palm, and then flipped the rock back over, covering the weapons the other people from our village had left. Then she stood, and together we did a quick survey of the area.
To our left the wastelands stretched on as far as the eye could see, the dry, cracked dirt only broken up by the occasional mound of boulders or skeleton tree. Their trunks were bleached white from the sun, and their limbs stretched up toward the sky as if begging God to save them from their desolate existence. The wastelands were less dangerous during the day since most of the creatures that inhabited them hunted at night in hopes of avoiding the oppressive heat from the sun, but with the chill in the air from the impending snow, anything was possible and it was better to be prepared than caught by surprise.
The Lygan Cliffs to our right held the greater threat, though. The cliffs were named for the creatures that lived there: scaly animals that were no bigger than a toddler but had teeth and claws sharp enough to slice a person open in seconds. Lygan were beautiful, their scales shades of purple and red that reflected the sun as they moved, but they were quick and deadly as well. They hunted both day and night, and had been known to work in packs. We had encountered them only a few times during my three years of working in Sovereign City, one of which had left Mira with a long scar on her left arm and in debt to Saffron for the replacement of her uniform, but we were always on the lookout. Thankfully, the arrival of a lygan was usually announced by the clicking of its claws against the very rocks it lived on.
The stone that made up the cliffs was jagged and sharp, and as black as night. They towered over us and dropped off in a steep cliff on the other side that ended in a valley. It was the same valley that Sovereign River ran through, starting in the wilds and ending in a large lake just outside the city. The river thrived with fish and other water creatures, which was why we were safer walking home this way, between the cliffs and the wastelands. When the lygan ventured from the rocks, it was usually to the river to hunt.
“It seems clear,” I told Mira, still looking around.
The wastelands were as brown as usual, the snow melting too quickly once it landed on the hot ground to collect there, but the Lygan Cliffs were already peaked in the stuff. The black stone contrasted with the white that had collected there, telling me that by the time we had made the long journey home, the
wilds would be covered in snow.
“We should get moving,” Mira said.
She lifted her gaze to the sky, scanning the dark clouds that had collected over the wilds. The trees that indicated Outlier land were visible from here, their branches as bare now during winter as the skeleton trees’ branches were. In the spring the greenery of the wilds was blinding compared to the desolate nothingness of the wastelands, and when they were covered in snow the sight was just as brilliant, but at the moment they looked very similar to the long dead trees to our left.
We remained alert as we started for home, my right hand aching every step of the way thanks to the way the knife rubbed against my palm, but I held onto it. At my right Mira blocked me from the Lygan Cliffs, which I knew was intentional. I appreciated her efforts more than I could ever tell her, knowing that if one of the creatures that inhabited those rocks decided to come down now I would have a difficult time defending myself thanks to the welts on my hands.
Before long the trail curled west, leading us further from the cliffs and allowing us to breathe a little easier. Then we were passing out of the wastelands and moving into Outlier territory and what was known as the wilds. The trees may have shed their leaves for the winter, but the grass was still green under the dusting of snow now covering the ground, and there was other foliage everywhere, like pines and bushes that clung to their leaves despite the cold.
The forest thickened and we once again found ourselves in familiar territory, but we still had a ways to walk before we reached home. Our tribe, the Winta, lived deep in the wilds.
There were four Outlier tribes, each of us numbering in the hundreds, but we were staggered throughout the wilds. Mira and I had already passed the Mountari territory at the edge of the Lygan Cliffs, and the Huni, who lived where the wastelands met the wilds. As Winta, our tribe interacted with the members of these tribes only in the city where it was unavoidable, but we had a little more contact with the fourth tribe, the Trelite, who lived the furthest from Sovereign City and shared more of our customs. Even that, however, was limited. Inside the wall we may have all been labeled Outliers, but in the wilds we had our own lives and customs, and the four tribes rarely, if ever, mixed.