“What happened to all the people?” I ask. I can’t even imagine how many of them there would have been all in one place, to justify a settlement this huge.
“War.” Ryka shrugs, gazing up at the toppling building next to us. “Swiftly followed by his friends Disease, Famine and Death. We happened, I guess. The same crap we do to one another now, only with better technology and on a grander scale.”
He leads me from one building to another until we finally arrive at a squat, gigantic building that he declares was a version of the Colosseum, once upon a time. It’s true that when we walk through the tunnels and find ourselves in a large, open space, surrounded by thousands and thousands of seats, all looking down upon us, red and cracked and rusted, I immediately think of the Colosseum back in the Sanctuary. Except this is so much bigger. This place could literally seat every single inhabitant of the Sanctuary and then some.
“So this is where we train today,” Ryka tells me. He yanks his shirt over his head with one hand and tosses it into the knee-high grass that grows from the arena floor of this huge gathering place. “Are you ready?”
Somehow I find that I am, even though I’m completely overwhelmed by the morning we’ve had together and the things we’ve seen. We spend the next three hours lunging and parrying, learning the way the other moves. It becomes a dance after a while. Our bodies are in tune in a way that I’ve never experienced before, not even with Cai. Would Cai and I have been like this if things had been different? I’ll never know, but something deep within me suspects that this kind of alignment is something I’m only meant to share with Ryka. And the thought scares me stupid.
By the time we’re done, we have created an almost perfect circle of flattened grass where we’ve been stalking around one another. I sink to the ground, exhausted from not training for weeks, and Ryka follows, grinning. He’s not even out of breath.
“Did your last training partner run circles around you, too?” he asks brightly, propping himself up on one arm. I pull a face, but I know he’s only joking so I let the comment slide.
“We were pretty evenly matched, Cai and me,” I tell him through laboured breaths. “We both broke each other’s bones. Gave as good as we got.”
“Huh.” Ryka falls onto his back, his eyes unfocused as he stares up at the sky. “Do you think I could have beaten him?” he asks slowly.
I frown, turning to look at him. Why would he ask something like that? “I don’t know. You’re…you’re good. Maybe.”
“Mmmm.”
We lie there in silence for a while, watching the sky, such a stark hue of blue that it looks faded and washed out. The sun disappears for a moment when a teased out, wispy cloud passes over it. “I would have liked to meet him,” Ryka says softly.
“Really? Why?”
He blinks, pulling one shoulder up in a half-hearted shrug. “I don’t know. You were obviously very close, even with the halos. Seems like I can’t understand you without understanding him a little, too.”
A prickle of heat dances across my skin, burning at the base of my neck. That he’s even thinking things like that makes me feel…odd. “Well…I suppose…you could kind of meet him.”
Ryka frowns and sits up, the skin on his back still slick with sweat. “What do you mean?”
Cringing, I wonder if I should have even said anything. He looks intrigued now, intrigued and intense, and I don’t know that I can face seeing them together side by side. “Uh…forget it. It’s stupid actually.”
“No, come on, tell me. What did you mean?”
I know from the look on his face that he won’t let this go now. I really should learn to think before opening my big mouth. This is going to either be horrendous or, well…horrendous.
“I mean…this.” I hesitatingly remove the holostick out of my pocket, where it always lives when I’m not in my tent.
“Ah. The incredibly important holostick. So you’ve watched it, have you?”
“Some.”
“Let’s have it, then.” A grim set takes over Ryka’s face, like he’s bracing himself for a very unpleasant experience, and my hands tremble as I scroll through the file numbers, trying to come across one I’ve already watched that won’t make me feel too weird or embarrassed. I don’t find one. Ryka leans forward and peers over my shoulder, so close I can smell him, feel his heat burning into my arm.
“That one. Go back. I wanna see that one,” he says, pointing at the screen. File Eighteen. Play? flashes on the screen at us.
“Number eighteen? Why that one?”
“Eighteen’s as good a number as any and you’re taking forever. Here.” He reaches out and stabs at the play button with his index finger and suddenly Cai’s there, crouched along side us, looking us both in the face.
Ryka tenses and I know he’s surprised about the full-formed version of my ex-training partner staring us down. Like me, he’s probably only seen the smaller, compressed images coming from a holostick. Cai shifts, and Ryka leans back, studying him. I try to see Cai the way Ryka is seeing him, for the first time: scruffy brown hair; dark eyes; his crooked nose and serious expression. There’s power in his shoulders and a fluid, intrinsically confident vibe that comes off him in the easy way he holds himself. I try to work out if he is good looking, and I’m a little shocked when I realise that he is.
“I couldn’t explain before, but there’s no harm in it now,” Cai says. Without the small smile that always seems to be hovering over his lips in his other recordings, he looks older. Tired. “We planted a device in the technicians’ compound, and yesterday it was supposed to go off. One of Opa’s connections was supposed to arm the device so that it detonated during the matches. No real damage would have been done, but it would have created enough chaos to let them know we’re here. That we’re fighting back. Only…” he sighs and casts his eyes to the floor. Slowly, Cai’s ghostly image stands, and he scratches at the back of his neck. “It didn’t go off. Nothing happened. I won my match, waited in the tunnels for the signal that we were going ahead, but…there was nothing. Opa says his connection is dead, that we would all be dead if he was still alive. They would have slapped a working halo on him and he would have told them all about us, otherwise.”
I listen, horrified, as Cai explains their failed plan to incite disorder, knowing that he’s right. The man who was supposed to trip their device, whoever he was, is now almost certainly dead. Ryka listens, too. He studies every inch of Cai—his face, his clothes, the way he moves. Carefully, he gets to his feet and circles around the hologram figure—as different as night and day, the two of them only have one thing in common: their solemnity. The sun comes back out and lances down through Cai, scattering the image for a second. Ryka frowns and stops, fixed solely on Cai.
“If only you were free of your halo, Kit. This would all be so much easier if I had you here with me. I get nervous sometimes. I panic about what will happen when you’re free and can make decisions of your own. Will you want the name I’ve selfishly given you? Will you still want to sit on the riverbank and dip your toes in the water? Will you want…will you want me?” Sorrow fills Cai face, and I know that when he recorded this, he really could have used a friend. I feel horrible that I wasn’t there for him in the way he needed me to be. I also feel horrible about the awkward look on Ryka’s face. He runs his hands through his hair, exhaling deeply as the recording ends and Cai disappears. I don’t say anything. I wouldn’t have a clue where to start. Ryka paces quietly in the trodden down grass for a moment before crouching down beside me. He reaches out and curls my hand closed around the holostick, giving me a lop-sided smile. My heart burns in my chest when his fingers linger over mine.
“I think I would have liked him,” he says softly. “I’m sorry that he’s gone.”
PRIVACY
Olivia finds me in the next morning, exhausted from arriving home so late after my day with Ryka, but strangely happy. She kidnaps me and delivers me to my new home, a relatively large tent set back from th
e bustle of Freetown proper. It sits right next to the river, completely secluded and hidden from prying eyes. I have no neighbours bar one other tent, the one Olivia shares with Jack and Ryka. It is a monstrous thing, all oranges and browns and greens, and sits across a small wooded clearing, fifty metres away. She insists on holding her small hands over my eyes as she walks me into the place I will now sleep every night. Giggling, she pulls me inside, and I see that my things are already here. Fresh pine and woodsy smells tickle my sinuses. A small table and a chair sit against one side of the canvas, and in the corner a small hollow has been dug, presumably for a fire. I smile to myself, knowing I’m never going to light a fire in here no matter how cold it gets. To the right, lovely white voile material hangs from the highest point of the domed tent, creating a divide. When Olivia pulls it back, there is an actual bed. A real wooden frame with a mattress and soft blankets, finished off with pillows that are piled high. My jaw falls open.
“You like it, don’t you?” Olivia grins.
“I—I love it.” I walk into the room and trace my fingers over the smooth surface of the headboard, which has been carved with delicate looking flowers. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”
“I knew it!” Olivia tackles me from behind and bear hugs me. “I’m sorry this place took so long to organise but the bed was a while in the making. The men have to split their work between the workshops and the fields, and they had to find the perfect materials for it first.” She throws herself back on my new bed, bouncing.
My eyes sting like crazy as I grin back at her. “No one’s ever done anything like this for me before.”
“Get used to it. I like doing nice things for people. It’s a simple joy in life, making others happy.”
I go and sit down on the bed next to her, staring down at my hands. I could literally cry, but for the very first time it isn’t because I’m angry or it feels like my heart has been ripped out of my chest.
“Well, you have.” I tell her quietly. “You’ve made me really happy. Thank you.”
She leaves after that, promising to return later, and I decide that since my new tent is now hidden from the rest of the town, I have very little excuse for not washing properly. My hair is disgusting and my skin feels like I have ten layers of grime caked on it, to boot. Fifteen minutes later, the frigid water of the river is rushing around my shoulders when I notice I’m not alone. Four men stand on the bank, each with a strange glint in his eye.
“Little Warrior!” a balding man calls out. The tatty leather waistcoat he’s wearing looks like it might have been stained red once upon a time, but now it’s a dirty brown colour. His teeth are an unfortunate shade of yellow. “I see you do take your blades off for some things?” He reaches down and plucks up my knife belt, which looks tragically empty with just two daggers sheathed in it.
“Put that down!” I twist in the water, unsure what to do. I want to charge out of the river and grab them straight out of his grubby-looking hands, but I can’t. The fact that I’m naked― well, there’s no way I’m getting out of the water naked. I don’t want these leering freaks to see me without any clothes on. I do the only thing I can think of, hoping she will hear me. “’Livia! Olivia!”
The balding man laughs, pulling one of my daggers from my belt. “Oh, come on. She’s not going to hear you, not over the sound of all this rushing water. I barely heard that pathetic scream.”
The three men standing around him guffaw at his remark, which makes me hate them. They’re as rough as their leader, but none of them seem quite as ready to taunt me.
“Just put that down and leave,” I hiss.
“And where would be the fun in that? I think you should come and get them. What do you think, boys? Should our little hellion come and take her knives back?”
“Joshua!” Before any of his friends can answer, another figure emerges through the trees. For a second I think it’s Ryka and my stomach drops through the floor, but it isn’t him. James, the man who was with Grandfather Jack the night I arrived in Freetown, the man who fought Ryka on the beach, appears. His dark hair falls into his face as he surveys the scene in front of him: Joshua and his buddies on the bank, my knife belt in his hand, and me, shivering in the water like a coward.
“What are you doing?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at Joshua.
“We—we were just having some fun,” the other man stammers. “We didn’t mean anything by it.”
“That’s fortunate.” James steps forward and takes my dagger out of his hand. “Because you were told Grandfather Jack wants this one left alone. I’d hate to see you breaking Freetown’s rules. You voted Grandfather Jack in as our leader, did you not?”
Joshua looks around at his friends, but they all seem to be looking elsewhere. “Yes, I voted for him.”
“So it really wouldn’t make any sense to be disobeying him now, would it?”
Joshua shakes his head, making his double chin wobble from side to side. “No. No sense at all.”
“Good.” James takes a step forward and the group of men react, moving backwards as one.
“We have fields to tend,” Joshua announces, and all four of them turn and hurry off into the trees. I’m positive I must be blue by the time James turns and looks at me.
“Come here,” he says.
I stare at him for a moment, unsure what he means.
“Come here,” he repeats, his voice a little harder this time. Suddenly I’m not sure what just happened. Did James come and save me from those creeps, or was he just getting rid of them so he could…I don’t know what?
“I’m not wearing anything,” I say through chattering teeth.
James’ eyes flash as he walks towards the riverbank. A startled shout erupts out of my mouth when he wades into the water, fully clothed, and comes for me. My dagger is still in his hand, and there’s a cold expression on his face. I spend half a second trying to come up with a way to disarm him and defend myself, but I remember Olivia telling me that James is Kansho, the highest level of fighter here. I’m chilled to the bone and naked, and he’s an undefeated warrior. Instead of lashing out when he reaches me, I do something I’ve never done before: I freeze with panic.
“You are making life hard for yourself,” James hisses, grabbing hold of my wrist. “You think I haven’t seen a naked girl before?”
In an awkward second, he’s dragging me out of the water and up the side of the embankment. He lets go as soon as I’m back beside my pile of clothes and spins to face me. “You’ll give yourself hypothermia protecting your modesty around here.”
“I’d rather get hypothermia!” My hands are shaking as I scrabble to pick up my clothes. I’m welled up with so much embarrassment and pure fury that I fumble, and James reaches down and snatches my shirt out of my hand.
“You can’t carry on like this,” he tells me. “It’ll only continue. People around here like a little sport, in case you haven’t noticed. They’re going to keep coming, keep finding ways of getting you alone, unless you do something about it.”
I eye my balled up shirt in his hand, calculating whether I’d be able to grab it from him. Probably not. “What would you have me do?”
“What you’re told,” he snaps, shaking his head. “You think you have a right to be walking around with these?” He holds my dagger in the air, pinching the blade between his fingers.
“As much right as you!”
“Well, then, prove it. Change yourself. Don’t ever back down.” Quicker than I had imagined, James rushes forwards and grabs hold of my hair. I kick out at him, hard, landing a solid strike on his thigh. He pushes his leg out in the same direction as the strike, the way I was taught to when blocking a kick.
“What are you doing?” I yell. My heart starts thumping so hard in my chest that it feels like it’s trying to burst through my ribcage.
“If you don’t want to act like a girl in this town, you can’t afford to look like one.” He strikes out quickly, slashing at my hair with my o
wn dagger. There’s a tearing sound, like silk being quickly ripped apart, and a startling weightlessness on my neck. When James lets me go again, he throws my dagger and a seven-inch-long knot of my hair down at my filthy feet. I suck in a surprised gasp and stare down at it, not brave enough to reach up and find out what he’s done.
“Do you know what happens to men in Freetown if someone takes their knives?” James asks quietly. His eyes never leave mine, never once slip over my naked body. I swallow and clench my hands into fists.
“Yes, they’re cast out.”
“Good. The next time someone takes your weapon from you, think about that.”
“It won’t happen again,” I spit.
“Yes,” he says. “It will.”
He turns and marches off into the forest before I can say or do anything else. Instead of trying to tug my scrunched up clothes over my damp skin, I gather them up and run into my tent, fighting down the urge to sob.
CUT
By nightfall I’m starving but too ashamed to come out of my tent. If only I could hole myself away back here for the next few weeks, the horror of being so defenceless might subside and I could face the world again. But there’s Olivia, of course. It’s not really possible to knock on a tent; instead, she sings when she lets herself in, hallooing to announce her presence. I consider throwing myself under the beautiful covers of my new bed and hiding, but what would that accomplish?
Halo (Blood and Fire Series (A Young Adult Dystopian Series)) Page 16