She turned her back on New Sylum and trod up the familiar path, past the places where her mother had first taught her about motherwort and where her father had taken her to pick early morning blueberries. With each step, she was closer to home, closer to all she’d left behind, and it felt like time was reversing, too. Absently, she stroked her fingers along her scarred cheek, and wondered if she would find herself in her old skin.
As she came over the last ridge out of the unlake, she saw that Sally Row was deserted.
“It’s not right,” Gaia said. “It’s too quiet.”
“This isn’t necessary, you coming up here,” Peter said.
“I have to see what happened to Munsch and Bonner. Besides, now that I’m here, I’m curious. Aren’t you?” Gaia said. “We’ll be careful.”
“Stay together,” Peter said, and motioned the others to surround Gaia.
Most of the archers were women of the cuzines who’d been shooting since they were children, though a few, like Peter, were men who’d trained daily for the past year. Now all of them nocked their arrows in readiness.
Gaia walked up the middle of the quiet dirt road. The once familiar houses looked small and dusty, so much more weather-beaten than she remembered. She wondered if they’d deteriorated, or if they’d always been this dilapidated and she only noticed now. She was nearing her family’s cottage when a clatter came from up the road.
A dozen Enclave guards marched toward them. Their black uniforms and hats stood out sharply against the mottled grays of Wharfton, and their rifles glinted in the sun.
“Gaia Stone!” called their commander.
She came to a stop. “I’m Gaia Stone,” she said. “Who are you?”
“You’re under arrest for treason,” he said. “Tell your people to stand back.”
Quicker than speech, Peter stepped in front of her and aimed his arrow at the captain with deadly precision. Will drew his sword. The rest of her guard packed in tightly around her with their arrows aimed at the Enclave force.
At the same time, the Enclave commander raised his hand in a signal to his men, who spread out to either side of him, dropped to their knees, and aimed their rifles with loud cocking noises.
“Don’t be foolish. We’ll shoot you to ribbons,” the commander said.
“Not before half of you die,” Gaia said. “You’ve lined yourselves up like target practice, and my archers don’t miss at twice this range.”
The commander stilled his hand and paused, plainly reconsidering the distance.
“What’s happened to my two scouts?” Gaia demanded. “Why haven’t they been released?”
“Come see for yourself,” he answered.
“Not unless you put your guns down,” she said. “We’ll talk.”
“You disarm first,” the commander called.
“Mlass Gaia, I have his Adam’s apple, easy,” Peter said quietly.
Thinking fast, Gaia scanned the line of Enclave soldiers with their barrels pointed toward her. She knew her archers would not hesitate to shoot, but many of her friends would die defenseless in the exchange. Her heart jumped. If she made a mistake, Will and Peter could be dead within seconds.
“Disarm,” she said quietly.
“No,” Peter said.
“Now,” she said, even more softly. “I insist.”
She heard the creaking around her as bows, taut with strain, were carefully lowered. If possible, her archers tightened in even more closely around her, providing defensive cover for her with their own bodies. She had to peek over Peter’s shoulder to see. On a command, the Enclave guards put up their rifles, and Gaia took a deep breath.
“I have to go with them,” Gaia said. “I need to talk to the Protectorat anyway. I might as well start negotiations now.”
“It’s a mistake,” Will said beside her, his sword still drawn. “Don’t be reckless, Mlass Gaia.”
“I’m not interested in exchanging bloodshed with some trigger-happy underlings,” Gaia said.
“I’m not leaving you,” Will said.
“Suit yourself. But sheathe your sword. I’m not giving them an excuse to shoot you,” Gaia said.
“I’m coming, too,” Peter said.
“Chardos,” she muttered. She glanced at the other scouts. “Tell Vlatir and the others. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Vlatir’s in charge in my absence.”
She stepped cautiously forward, with Will and Peter beside her.
“We don’t want them,” the Enclave commander said.
“It’s all three of us or nothing,” she said. “There’s nothing in your orders against bringing extra hostages, is there?”
The commander nodded curtly. “All right. But no trouble, understand?”
Gaia took another step nearer.
“What’s your name, Mabrother?” she asked.
Everything about the commander was medium: his height, his build, his age, his brown hair. If his intelligence was, too, she couldn’t underestimate how dangerous he might be. She’d never trusted people who followed orders to the letter.
“Sergeant Burke.” He gestured to his men. “Let’s go.”
Gaia glanced back at her archers one last time. Then she and the Chardo brothers were surrounded. They started through Wharfton. The dirt roads and small, scorched yards were empty.
“It’s not normally like this,” Gaia said in an undervoice to Peter and Will. “There are usually people out.” She couldn’t tell if they were hiding now because of her arrest, or if this was a permanent change, but she didn’t like it.
When they reached the quadrangle, several people were talking before the Tvaltar, and though they stopped when they saw the soldiers, they held their ground. At least the whole place isn’t a ghost town, she thought. A boy ran across the packed dirt, heading toward the eastern sectors of Wharfton. An upstairs shutter opened on squeaky hinges, and eyes peered from behind a rattan curtain.
They rose up the sloped road toward the south gate, and as Gaia glanced up at the new ramparts on top of the wall, a full compliment of soldiers looked down at her, rifles in hand. The south gate stood tall before her, its doors open like a great maw to expose the vacant space below the arch, and her courage began to fail her.
“Look,” Will said, nudging her arm.
Along the rooftops of Wharfton, half shielded behind crooked stovepipes and chimneys, several sturdy young men crouched. Some held stones. One had a slingshot. He nodded at Gaia and held it up defiantly toward the guards on the wall, clearly ready to risk their retaliation.
“They’ll help us,” Will said. “We can still run.”
Sergeant Burke prodded them forward. “Keep moving.”
Gaia next saw Derek Vlatir, Leon’s birth father, standing tall on a rooftop ridge. He held one knife in his hand and had a row of extra knives laid out on the chimney beside him with their hilts visible in silhouette. His solid stance and the set of his shoulders were unexpectedly familiar to her now, resembling Leon’s. Slightly behind him stood a younger, pink-cheeked woman holding a slingshot in one hand and a stone in the other.
“You say the word, Gaia Stone,” Derek called fearlessly.
A couple of the guards on the wall laughed.
Anxious for how vulnerable the rebels were, Gaia shook her head. “Don’t do it, Derek,” she called.
Sergeant Burke shoved her again.
The next instant, she stepped under the heavy shadow of the arch into the Enclave. Commotion erupted around her. The doors closed shut, and she spun back to discover Peter and Will had been blocked outside with half of the Enclave guards.
Before she could protest, rough hands grabbed her arms and she was lifted nearly off her feet by Sgt. Burke. Peter’s and Will’s voices called from the other side of the massive doors, then went silent. Half a dozen guards came running down the steps of the wall to surround Gaia.
“Search her, Jones,” Sgt. Burke said.
A tall, big-nosed guard leered as he reached for her.
“Don’t you dare touch me,” Gaia said.
But Sgt. Burke spun her to pin her arms tightly behind her and she was unable to jerk away. She remembered Jones and his leering from a long-ago morning when she was delivered to the Bastion, and it sickened her now to have him pat along her torso and legs, making no effort to handle her with respect. He pulled the dagger out of her boot and tossed it to another guard.
“She’s good,” Jones said.
The commander loosened his grip, and Gaia whipped around to face him.
She was fierce in her controlled fury. “You filthy bastard,” she said. “I’m not some friendless girl from outside the wall anymore,” she said. “I’m the Matrarc of New Sylum, and you can’t treat me this way.”
“Make no mistake. You’re a traitor and you deserve to hang,” Sgt. Burke said. “You can come nicely, or we’ll tie you and haul you along. Choose.
Still recoiling from the sensation of Jones’s rough hands, Gaia searched tensely around the entrance to the Enclave for any allies. As before, the buildings were whitewashed and clean, and warmed now by the golden light of afternoon, she had to squint. She was surrounded by gracious order: neatly cobbled streets, window boxes brimming with flowers, and awnings that cast their deep rectangles of shade on the shopping pedestrians.
A girl in a yellow dress, half hidden behind her mother’s white skirt, poked up her hat to watch Gaia, and then craned her neck as her mother hurried her into a shop. Others were likewise backing away, as cautious as ever. Gaia was on her own.
“Just don’t touch me again,” Gaia said, detangling her hair from her necklace and straightening her blouse.
“Right this way, then,” said Sgt. Burke, and her escort closed in around her.
The broad street rose steadily between the rows of shops and eventually opened into the Square of the Bastion, where the obelisk rose high against the blue sky, and the tower of the Bastion, where her mother had been kept, rose on the right. A gallows was set up before the terraced steps of the stately Bastion, which implied that someone had been hanged lately, or was due to be.
A vision of an executed pregnant criminal surfaced from the dregs of Gaia’s mind, along with her old outrage at the injustice. Yet now her dread of the gallows was overlaid with a strange guilt, a weird sympathy for those in power, because she, as Matrarc, had sentenced her share of criminals to the stocks back in Sylum. On which side of a gavel did she belong?
A group of young women dressed in vivid red crossed the square diagonally. Other memories of people who had once helped her flooded back: the sloe-eyed, lively maid Rita, and the Jackson family who had owned a bakery around the corner.
“Here we go,” Sgt. Burke said, and veered toward the prison.
When she saw the arch that led to the heavy doors, she instinctively recoiled. She had too many memories of her bleak existence in Q cell, and her instincts told her that if she entered again, she would never come out.
“I don’t belong in there,” she said. “I want to see the Protecorat. Take me to the Bastion.”
“Grab her,” the sergeant said.
“I’m not—!” Gaia screamed.
Jones grabbed her unceremoniously from behind and clamped a heavy hand over her mouth. She lodged her heels in the cobblestones, struggling, and bit down on his hand.
“Let me go!” she yelled. “Help!”
Two guards lifted her off her feet, and she twisted, trying to get free, as they maneuvered her under the arch toward the prison.
“I can’t go in there,” she said, her voice breaking. “Please!”
“Gaia Stone?” asked a loud, feminine voice.
Gaia stopped struggling for a second. The guards caught her more securely between them, but Gaia craned around to see Leon’s sister Evelyn peering through the arch.
“Stop!” the girl called.
Evelyn had grown taller, more slender, and her candid eyes appraised Gaia with genuine surprise. Gaia tried to escape from the guards, but they held her tightly and her right shoulder wrenched with pain.
“Evelyn, help me!” Gaia said.
“What are you doing here?” Evelyn asked. “Is Leon with you?”
Gaia decided impulsively that it was better to tell than to keep his arrival secret.
“He’s with the caravan in the unlake,” Gaia said. When the girl looked confused, Gaia wondered how many in the Enclave had not yet realized that hundreds of refugees were amassing just below Wharfton. She hadn’t thought such oblivion could be possible. “Haven’t you seen us outside the wall? You have to help me. I need to talk to your father, now!”
Evelyn took a step closer, her white dress and bright hair dimming as she passed under the arch. “Sergeant Burke, what on earth are you doing? Bring her to the Bastion at once.”
“I have my orders from Mabrother Iris directly,” Sgt. Burke said.
“Iris,” Evelyn said, almost on a hiss, though the man’s name had an obvious impact. Evelyn paused, biting her lips in a cautious line. “Don’t worry. I’ll speak to my mother.”
“No, please!” Gaia said, resisting again. “Don’t let them take me!”
But the guards lifted her bodily and swept her into the prison.
CHAPTER 7
the vessel institute
SERGEANT BURKE AND HIS men delivered Gaia to a small office, strapped her to an examining table, gagged her, and shoved up her right sleeve. A young doctor entered with a tray. Wordless, he pushed her sleeve up a bit more, swabbed the skin at the crease of her elbow, and inserted a needle into her vein, flicking a little glass vial as it filled with her blood. When she tried to protest, he ignored her and, with indifferent efficiency, fit another vial to the needle in her arm. She watched the purple blood gush into it, and then, with quick fingers, he capped off the vial, pulled the needle from her vein, and put a cotton swab and bandage over the wound.
He pushed her sleeve up still farther, swabbed a new area, and injected her arm with a syringe. What are you giving me? she tried to ask, despite the gag. He simply bandaged that place, too. He set his thumb on her chin. Curiously, clinically, he inspected her scar without ever meeting her eye. Then he loosened the neckline of her blouse, set the cold circle of a stethoscope to her chest, and tilted his head, listening. Gaia tried again to protest, but as before, her words were muffled.
One of the guards laughed. “She’s a chatty thing.”
“Enough of that,” the doctor said, and the guard went silent.
The doctor listened another long moment, moving the stethoscope twice more, then he twitched her blouse back into position, picked up his tray and left.
“That’s one way to handle her,” said Jones, grinning.
“You’re a sick one, Jones,” Sgt. Burke said.
Sergeant Burke and his guards released her from the examining table only to bind her hands together before her and carry her struggling down the dim hallways of the prison. At the end of a short corridor stood a thick wooden door, with a large V carved into its heavily bolted surface.
She recalled sharply that V cell was where Leon had been tortured, and her eyes rounded with fear. She turned desperately to Sgt. Burke, but he signaled for the men to dump her inside.
“I don’t know how long you’ll be here,” Sgt. Burke said. “It could be a minute, or weeks. When they want you, they’ll send for you.”
As the door closed behind him and the lock clicked, Gaia scrambled to her feet and backed against the cold masonry of the wall. With her tied hands, she clawed to pull her gag loose so she could suck in a big breath. She bit the strap that contained her wrists, ripping at it until it came loose, and then she hugged her arms around herself, panting, breathless.
It was a stone-walled room with no furniture, and at first, she thought it was empty. A drain, covered with a black grate, lay in the center of the floor, which was damp from recent washing. The air smelled faintly of wet stone and cleanser. Above, two barred windows let in the cool light of the late afternoon, and
she saw, hanging from the ceiling, a long black chain, ending in a pair of cuffs just below her eye level. On the far wall, loosely coiled on a hook, was a black whip.
The chilling simplicity of the cell pierced to some primal, unreasoning core of her and ignited vicarious pain: this was the exact place where Leon had been whipped, where they’d cut off the upper knuckle of his ring finger. She pressed back to the farthest corner of the cell, but there was no escaping the nightmare.
As silent echoes of Leon’s pain barraged her and she heard the whip sting into his back, she covered her ears and crouched down on her heels, curling into a tight ball. Not Leon, she pleaded, and flinched. He’d never fully told her. He’d never explained the details of how he’d gotten his scars. So how did she know, how could she feel it now herself?
She lifted her chin for a big breath and in the top corner of the cell, she saw a small white box with a red pinpoint of light. A camera. She was being watched, just as Leon once must have been watched, and even at this moment, someone knew she was sitting here, unglued, prey to her own imagination.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she whispered. “I haven’t done anything wrong.” If the Protectorat could treat her like this, knowing she was the ruler of her people, which he must have learned from her scouts, there was nothing to stop him from being even worse to her people. I’ve already failed, she thought.
She folded her fingers over the bandage on her arm, squeezing. Why did they take her blood? What had they injected into her? Her gaze returned to the chains, black and motionless, and a fly buzzed slowly around the metal, circling higher, as if seeking a trace of old meat. Again Gaia pictured Leon there, suffering because he’d protected her. Because his father hated him and could hurt him again. She cringed, pressing her hands to her face.
“He’s all right,” she said aloud, to make it true. “He’s not here. He’s all right.”
She struggled to remind herself that no one was hurting her right now. No one was wielding the whip. Her only torture was her own terror, and that was all in her mind, if she could only stop it. She took a deep, ragged breath and tried to draw on the inner strength she’d learned as the Matrarc. She strove to visualize the marsh back in Sylum with its calming blues and soothing greens, and the sweetness of the wind on her lips.
Promised Page 6