In A Burning Room

by TS Ward

  Careful, steady, we moved constantly forward, and with each step I prayed that this was the way down and not something that was just going to collapse and leave us trapped or dead.

  The darkness closed in so fast.

  I was blind looking down and blind looking up. I guided myself with caution and my fingertips. Percy clutched the railing behind me. Maybe this was why the others hadn’t come back yet, because it was too dark to climb up, too dangerous, too… quiet.

  I was conscious that there were doorways into different floors, some of which were closed, but I was highly aware of those that were open. The only hint that they were was a slight breeze that caught small strands of hair and brushed them against my skin to raise goosebumps.

  It was almost like sen-dep, only—there was the sound of our boots on cement, and our fingers on the rusted rail, and our quiet breaths, and the shuffle of our clothes.

  The fact that there was nothing else made me hyper-aware of every small thing.

  A tiny piece of debris fell to the ground on one of the floors, and I flinched, froze, listened for more. My own boot kicked a bit of cement onto the step in front of me and I stumbled back, heart pounding, as the static rushed through my fingertips.

  “Are you afraid of the dark?” Percy whispered.

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  I was quiet as I led him forward again. “Yes, a little.”

  And then, when I thought it was never going to end, a warm glow emanated from below and I saw the edges of the stairs and the railing and my hands and boots and hair that spilled over my shoulders.

  Relief washed over these stiff bones. I was tempted to race to the bottom, but I stayed steady, slowed the panicked breathing of my lungs, and forced myself to keep listening. I didn’t know what waited at the bottom.

  The door to the street was propped open.

  A thin layer of sand blanketed the ground like heavy dust.

  I peered around the frame of the door. Shadows danced tall and dark further down the dark road—an alley—and stretched up the buildings like smoke from the orange flames. I took a few steps toward the light and hesitated as I reached up to pull my hood over my head.

  The faint scuff of distant footsteps came down the stairs behind us. I heard my name hissed on a false breeze.

  Percy giggled, because to him this was a game and not a dangerous place and he didn’t know the guilt nestled into the pit of my stomach for endangering him. It was better than leaving him on the surface knowing that Jack would chase after me, than to leave him alone with Roam and the slinking shadow of James to sneak up in the dark.

  But now Roam was alone.

  I turned the corner, breath and Percy’s hand held tight, and walked as casually as I could down cracked pavement lined with ragged tents and camp fires and ragged people. People. Groups of people circled fires in old metal barrels. People who were thin and weedy. Some of them looked up, but they were more interested in their conversations and late-night drinks than some girl showing up in the middle of the night with a small child in tow.

  I thought maybe that it was nothing new, that women and children sought refuge here frequently, but their eyes sometimes lingered on Percy until a hint of recognition passed over deep-lined faces.

  Warren was quiet in the outer edges.

  If it were day, I imagined being jostled about by crowds that hung around what looked like boarded up market stalls, but it was late and I heard the snores of people asleep behind these ramshackle huts and inside the skyscrapers.

  Ahead there was more life.

  Life. Not robotic, not soldier-serious—actual people who laughed and murmured and snored loudly from their beds.

  It felt strange against the static.

  There was so much movement, and it was all so erratic, and the pale feeling of their electric minds brushing against my reach made them like ghosts to me.

  “Percy,” a quiet voice said. “What are you doing down here?”

  I kept walking, eyes set on the place where I hoped to find Moon Rabbit, and turned away from the person.

  Percy tugged my hand.

  A small shadow moved along next to us, a few feet away and elbow height, mostly a creature of big and curly hair. A small child, with a knife in a leather pouch slung over her shoulder by a frail string.

  I stopped and crouched down to the sandy, cracked pavement, my heart in my throat because I knew this girl. I saw her in a dream of some sort, but I couldn’t quite remember whose. Maybe it was Percy, or maybe—Arden?

  “This is Tiger,” he said proudly, and then he took his hand from mine and slapped it against my shoulder like Fitz did to Jack every so often.

  I almost laughed at the gesture.

  “This is Soren, Tiger.”

  I flinched at the loudness of my name in the night.

  “You look like each other,” she said to us, side stepping a little closer.

  There was something definitely familiar about her. “You’re… What’s your mum’s name?”

  The girl smiled shyly as she reached out and wrapped her hand around mine to tug me after her. “Her name is Arden, but she went away, so the soldiers wouldn’t take us. We don’t like the soldiers here, but yours are alright. Percy told me they were rescuing you. He told me all about you.”

  “He told me about you, too,” I told her.

  I let her and Percy take both of my hands as a lump climbed up from my chest.

  I hadn’t realized Arden had a daughter, and that Percy’s stories in my dreams were about her. She guided us in between tents, and I wasn’t sure where she was bringing us but I followed her. I didn’t know her motives or if she really understood what the blue in my eyes could do or what poison my name would rain used so recklessly, but I followed her.

  I trusted Arden. I needed to trust Rabbit.

  Torches were stuck in the cracked pavement. Their flames flickered up into the still air to mark our shadows on these fabric walls. People stirred on the other sides and nervousness raised my hackles.

  “I’m looking for your grandfather. Moon Rabbit,” I whispered.

  “I know,” Tiger said, “I’m taking you to him.”

  The girl stopped and held up a hand to us, her head turned as she listened to something, and then pulled us forward again to cross a wide street.

  Down between the glass walls, under a building that leaned dangerously over the pavement against the next, two people walked away from us with heavy guns held casually at their hips.

  Guns in the hands of rebels. I held my breath as we hurried across the road. Where did they get those?

  String lights hung high in an alleyway and cast a yellow glow over us—I held my breath again as we rounded a large and rusted metal bin and stepped over the sprawled legs of a man who was just skin and bones in too big clothes, passed out but breathing on a dirty bed roll.

  “He’s okay,” Tiger murmured. “He’s in the deep sleep.”

  The alleyway ended on a concrete sidewalk and another wide road, but on the opposite side—I stumbled to a standstill at the sight of the place the girl had taken us. There was a different kind of stolen breath in me this time.

  Beyond an iron fence drowned in thick ivy, trees were laden with leaves and more string lights, wrapped around trunks and boughs to make a glowing landscape. Garden boxes overflowed with plants and fruit trees on either side of a long pathway.

  Flowers and fruits glistened under the soft light, under the reach of the moonlight through a canopy of leaves, the scent sweet and strong. The smell of rich and damp earth filled my nose along with it.

  “Sparky! Percy!” Our names were hissed behind us.

  I glanced over my shoulder as Tiger tugged my hand and brought us into the garden. Jack was behind us, moving fast, catching up.

  I understood why he called it the great jewel of the wasteland. Because it shined like one. Because it was richness nestled in a bed of wet earth.

  “Uh oh,” Percy muttered.

  The two of
them tightened their grips on my hands and started running. The string lights stretched across the width of the path above and highlighted the puddles that splashed under our feet as we ran deeper into the glowing garden. It was huge, and I barely had any air left in my lungs to keep up with these kids as they effortlessly dragged me through it.

  Somewhere I felt a generator or two running.

  On either side of us, tents stitched together from large patches of colourful fabrics cropped up behind bushes and around small fires, some held up by ropes tied to the trees and others by frames that poked points through the top of them.

  This giant garden was crowded and alight with a yellow-orange haze, and in front of us, at the center of an open square, there was an old fountain. It was chipped in places but otherwise intact. The basins full of the shine of coins and clear water that spilled from the statue at the top.

  String lights were attached to the hand of the statue reaching skyward and to the trees beyond the square’s edge.

  Beyond the fountain was a larger tent, the size of four of the others from what I could see of it, surrounded by lanterns and torches and guarded by another pair of rebels with guns. I caught my breath when Tiger didn’t hesitate to drag me to them.

  “Tiger, the guards won’t be okay with me—”

  “It’s okay. They knew you were coming. I already told Papa.” The girl squeezed my hand, and looked up at me with a soft smile and dark doe eyes that were so similar to Arden’s. I had to remind myself that this girl was her daughter and by the way she spoke I was certain that they were more alike than just in looks. Arden’s daughter. “Jack is really worried, you know. His heart is loud.”

  “You can hear it,” I whispered. “Like your mother.”

  She was fearless as she walked between the men with the guns who stared me down with ice in their eyes, a small shrug to answer me.

  She growled at the guards, “Watch it, boys.”

  “How old are you again?” One of them chuckled, but the girl swung around and slammed a fist into the back of his knee. He collapsed with a grunt. “Look at that, the eight-year-old got me again.”

  Tiger pulled the door of the tent open.

  Electric lantern light greeted us, and a heated conversation bounced my name around the room. If she’s a weapon then we use her like one. She’s a human, not a weapon. She’s a Sceptre. What’s the difference?

  “Sparky!”

  Jack was out of breath and as he caught up to us and slowed as he rounded the fountain. He looked like a frazzled mess. His hair was roughed up and his chest heaved as he tried to calm his breathing. “Please, don’t go in there—stop—”

  I didn’t.

  I walked into the tent without a goddamn fear of what would happen. The argument between them came to an abrupt halt to see these two kids who held my hands, and Jack giving up to follow us in.

  It was quiet. My heart pounded in my chest like a war drum.

  Moon Rabbit was a short man dressed in flowing fabrics and old armour, decommissioned from the use of military police in the major cities. His skin was dark and he wore his hair in white, thick braids, held back by a band and decorated with shining metal beads. His beard twisted into smaller beaded braids that dangled from a strong chin. He was old, but his muscles stood out in clear definition—and so did the weapons.

  Daggers hung from a leather belt next to throwing knives that caught the electric light with a blue sheen. He had holsters under his arms with clean pistols in each of them, and under jewelled hands was a polished wooden staff topped with a crystal shard tied with thin wire. He wore a lot of sharp looking things, including the rings on his fingers, and the bracelets tied around his upper arms.

  As shiny and as sharp as he looked, he didn’t strike me as someone to be afraid of. He was Arden’s father, and she was tough but she was gentle and she could lend an ear as much as a voice.

  Jack pressed a hand to my back and leaned close, his words soft and strained in my ear. “Do you not understand how dangerous that was—is? And with Percy? By the stars, Soren.”

  The stories of the first Sceptre in the program said that Moon Rabbit’s voice boomed, that it was a drumbeat from a barrel chest.

  His eyes were made from the black of night and I tried not to look directly at them because I heard those stories. I heard them from his own daughter’s mouth. She—

  Moon Rabbit raised his hands and made a quick gesture to Tiger.

  “I punched Salt again,” she told him.

  The man faltered for a moment, and then his hands formed a series of signs as he smiled softly at the girl who giggled back at him.

  “All the stories are true,” a familiar voice cracked from the shadows. Ellie’s plump figure stepped forward, wrapped in brightly coloured linens and a blue scarf, and hooked a thumb toward Rabbit. “Except the one where he waltzed out of the Embassy like some untouchable saint. They cut out his tongue.”

  Horror washed over me.

  His tongue was his weapon, his way to wield his Sceptre blood. Arden never said a word about it. She only spoke of the great things he had done, how he had convinced countless guards to release other Sceptres to their freedom, how he had gathered an army of rebels and walked off from a caravan of soldiers with enough food to feed them all despite his face being an image plastered on every surface. Dangerous Defector: Do Not Approach.

  Tiger’s voice was far from deep and booming and hypnotic, but when she translated Rabbit’s signs for us, the room listened.

  “I remember the first time I met the Duchess, but I understand the Duchess does not remember the same. Before, you were a child diving into the deep end of the rebellion. I wonder if that place and those people have changed you for better or worse.”

  My mind went straight to Astra, to James, to the Pluto Sceptres who died in training with me. I remembered nearly drowning. I remembered the wind that tore at my skin. I remembered the ice that left me frostbitten and chilled for days. I remembered the lightning that tore through my body—and I remembered Arden.

  I touched my hand to the zippered pocket of my jacket and searched for the note that was tucked away from prying eyes, stepping forward to hand it to the man. “I think either way, it’s still worse. But. There was one girl. A Sceptre called Pluto, the second Pluto of seven. She was my friend. She told me that if I wanted something, if I wanted change and it wasn’t going to come easy, then I would have to fight for it. Even if that meant dying for it. And that… that’s what—that’s what she did, Rabbit, she—it was my fault, but not me, but I wish… I wish it was, because dying at Mercury’s hands is a horrible way to go.”

  Rabbit eyed the paper, hesitant to take it. When he did, he held it tightly and close to his chest for a long moment, eyes closing.

  He exhaled and tucked his daughter’s letter into a pocket, offered a short nod of thanks as I backed away again.

  His hands moved and Tiger spoke.

  Her voice broke as she realized that I meant her mother. “You came all the way here to hand me a letter and tell me that my daughter is dead.”

  I nodded and whispered, “I promised her I would.”

  He was quiet as a muscle jumped in his cheek. “Go. There are empty beds in the mall, you can stay there again tonight. I will speak with Soren in the morning.”

  “Rabbit,” I started, but he shot me a look and I swallowed my tongue.

  What I had to say to him couldn’t be said in front of Pucks and the soldiers, and it was obvious that they didn’t know about Arden. Suspected, maybe, but the girl shook where she stood and Rabbit looked at her with pain cracked through his stern face.

  They needed time, and maybe I had bought myself some time too, putting off the discussion of fighting the Empire.

  Jack grabbed my elbow and pulled me to the door, ushering Percy out ahead of us. We were the last to leave the tent. Ellie sauntered off in the opposite direction after a word with Pucks.

  The garden outside was a dim and dull yellow com
pared to the blue of the electric lanterns inside and it made the shadows richer. It gave them a depth that unnerved me, and the mark of the glass and concrete buildings that towered above on all sides made it worse. The height of them gave me a dizzying sense of vertigo.

  “That didn’t go how you thought it would, did it, Sparky?”

  I looked to him with a sharp edge in my eyes and pulled my arm away. No, it hadn’t, but I wasn’t about to give up and let them handle this. I told Rabbit about Arden. That was one thing, one goal, that I had accomplished.

  The next would take time.

  He shot his hand up to a tree as we passed beneath it and came back with a round peach, a soft mixture of yellow and red.

  He pulled a white handled knife from his belt and slid it through the flesh of the fruit, slicing it clean in half. The point of the blade dug under the pit and popped it out. He left it in the dirt of one of the planter boxes.

  “Percy,” he said, and he passed a half of the peach to him, and then held the other out to me. “Here. Better than your spaceman food.”

  I ate the peach and felt the sweetness of it coat my throat against the bitterness that had taken root there. Tomorrow was another day to try again.

  15

  “Thank god for fight night,” Fitz muttered. He pulled back the corner of a window cover and peered out of the dirty glass to the street.

  I watched them settle in for the night from a distance.

  I sat in the corner with my arms wrapped tight around my knees and my mind set on Moon Rabbit’s reaction to the news of his daughter and the letter she passed to me.

  Did it even matter to him? Did he care, did it dig into his chest the way the image of her floating lifeless in the pool did to me? He didn’t even glance at the words. And Tiger—Tiger was solemn and resolved to it, a child already acceptant of loss, but still shattered on the inside.

  Arden carried the same weight to her shoulders. With hearing like theirs, I wasn’t entirely shocked by it, especially when secrets were whispered behind layers of walls and the sound still reached sensitive ears.