“I was the last one seen with my uncle, so there will no doubt be those who still suspect foul play, even if I did my damnedest to convince everyone I was trying to make amends,” Derrick admitted.
“You convinced me,” Mallow muttered. “Sorry for giving you that shiner.”
Derrick laughed a little, touching his black eye gingerly. “It’s all right. It only makes our story that much more believable. I’ll make an announcement to the landmasters tonight, telling them there’s been a terrible accident with my uncle, that we went to free the raveners but his head ravener went rogue. Even if they doubt us, they shouldn’t be able to prove anything. Our amnesty is secure.”
“So that’s the plan still?” Clementine asked. “To offer ourselves up, even though McClennon’s dead?”
“That’s the plan,” Aster said. A sort of calm had come over her as she spoke. She would not call it peace—there could be no peace, where they were going—but more like the last glow of warmth a man felt before he froze to death. She would savor these last few moments before the end.
There was no longer any need to ration the food, so that night they helped themselves to the last of it. But unlike the many meals they’d shared in the meeting hall at Camp Red Claw or around a campfire on the trail, this one was somber. They sat on the floor backstage, chewing in silence, listening to the excited chatter of the landmasters just beyond the curtain. Even with news of Jerrod McClennon’s death, most of them seemed to be celebrating: tomorrow they would be free, and any one of them might take the newly empty throne.
It was all too much. As soon as she finished eating, Aster slipped away with Violet further backstage, no longer caring who saw them together. They could waste no more time with pretense. There was no place now for fear. They found a quiet, dark corner and curled into each other.
Would she have done anything differently, if she had known it would end this way? Aster could not even begin to answer that question. Her friends—her family—had been free, and she had led them back into bondage on the wild promise that they might be able to spread that freedom to others. The prison camps would be worse than the welcome house by tenfold, with all of the cruelty and none of the sick riches.
But at least, Aster thought, they would be together. At least they would have their memories of a time when they had answered to no one. And thinking of these memories, Aster fell asleep to the soft promise of Violet’s heartbeat.
Aster had not meant to sleep through the night. Clementine should have woken both of them when it was their turn to take watch. Instead, Clementine and the others must have decided to let them sleep, because when she finally did wake them up, it was already morning.
“Morning?” Aster echoed groggily, her back stiff from hours of lying on the wooden floor.
Clementine nodded. Her face was scarcely visible in the shadows, but Aster knew it well enough to see the fear there.
“Yes, Dawn, it’s—it’s … it’s time,” Clementine managed.
Time to surrender themselves to the law, time to abandon their freedom and future. Time to face their Reckoning.
Aster woke Violet gently, and they joined the others. Tansy, with her quick thinking; Mallow, with her toughness; Raven, with her wisdom; Clementine, with her hope—it had all gotten them further than any of them might have ever dreamed, once. It just wasn’t far enough.
Aster swallowed back the frightened tears that rose in her throat.
“All right, Luckers,” she told them, her voice steady. “Let’s go introduce ourselves.”
She parted the curtains and led them back onto the stage. The landmasters jeered at the sight of them.
“DIRTY LUCKERS!”
“YOU SHOULD’VE STAYED IN YOUR PLACE.”
“YOU’RE GONNA ROT IN A PRISON CAMP, THEN YOU’RE GONNA ROT IN HELL.”
Zee and Derrick, who had been on watch, fell in silently behind the girls as they strode the length of the ballroom floor, Aster’s gaze locked on the doors. She would not look at the landmasters, would not listen to their gleeful hate. She had to remain strong for her friends. She owed them that much, after everything they’d done for one another.
When they reached the ballroom doors, two armymen were waiting on the other side to escort them to their commanding officer. They were dustblood boys, not much older than Aster herself, one with pockmarks scarring his face, the other struggling to grow a moustache. Aster’s heart grew heavy at the sight of them. She remembered Sid’s lesson in history: ever since the War of the Nine, the Arkettan army had swelled its ranks with young dustblood men desperate to pay off their debts. Bought and sold by the landmasters, sent to do their dying for them. What drove these men to be so loyal to a nation that would never love them back?
The same thing that drove Aster to turn herself over to them now.
Desperation.
“Follow me,” the pockmarked boy ordered.
He led them outside. It was a cold, golden morning, the sunlight driving Aster to squint after seven days spent inside the capitol building. She shaded her eyes with her hand and looked out over Crimson Glen.
“Ripping hell,” Mallow murmured from behind her. It was the first any of them had spoken since they started this gallows walk, and it was the right reaction. If the city had seemed like an explosion in the making before, now it was the aftermath of one. The capitol building’s front lawn was packed with Reckoners camped out in tents, some of them tending to the wounded strewn out in bedrolls, others doling out water, others still cleaning their weapons. They’d boarded up the iron fence to protect themselves from the lawmen’s bullets, and several Scorpions patrolled up and down the length of it with voltric rifles.
When they saw the girls, their voices rose up in ragged cheers.
“GLORY TO THE RECKONERS!”
“WE’VE BEEN GIVING THEM HELL FOR YOU, ASTER!”
“YOU TELL THEM WE’LL NEVER SURRENDER!”
Aster had been able to maintain her composure in the face of the landmasters’ cruelty, but met with such overwhelming love and courage, she finally broke, choking up with tears.
“You were right, Aster,” Raven said, her own voice thick. “We have to do this—for them.”
Violet took Aster’s hand, the warmth and strength of her grip steadying Aster’s nerves.
The Reckoners guarding the front gates let them pass with their escorts, and on the other side stood another camp entirely: hundreds of armymen in Arketta gray, stretching down the street in both directions, some on foot, some on horseback, some perched on the rooftops with rifles at their shoulders. At the head of them stood an old armyman with dark brown skin and salt-and-pepper hair. His mouth was a hard line, and, like most of the men here, he had no shadow at his feet. There were four red stripes on his sleeve.
The commanding officer.
The armyman escorts saluted. Aster stood straighter. Her friends circled around her.
“Are you the outlaw known as Aster, former Good Luck Girl of Green Creek, leader of the Reckoners, and fugitive of the state?” the officer asked, his voice low and rumbling.
Aster swallowed and nodded. “A pleasure,” she said, and the others identified themselves as well. Clementine. Violet. Tansy. Mallow. Raven. Derrick. Zee.
“I’ve heard a lot about you girls—and boys,” the officer said once they finished. “Demanding to close the welcome houses, demanding to end the Reckoning entirely … take this lesson from an old armyman: it doesn’t matter how hard you try to fight, how clever you think you are, you’ll never win a battle if you don’t have the numbers. And you, Aster, didn’t have the numbers.” Aster felt a flash of her old anger at his words, then confusion as the old man slowly smiled, the wrinkles crinkling his face. “But now…” he continued, stepping back, to gesture to the men behind him, “… now, maybe you do.”
Understanding slowly swept over Aster. She looked at her friends. Derrick’s brow was furrowed in uncertainty, Tansy’s lips parted in sudden realization.
“You mean…?” Clementine started.
You really think a bunch of scared, desperate dustbloods are going to be enough to stop the army? McClennon had asked, cackling.
But thanks to the landmasters’ own fear, the army was a bunch of scared, desperate dustbloods. They hadn’t joined because they believed in the Reckoning. The Reckoning had left them no choice but to join.
Now they were making another choice. Now they would fight for a new Reckoning. And now, at last, the burden of that fight would no longer be Aster’s to bear.
Aster’s heart swelled warm and bright as the rising sun. The officer turned back to face her.
“Glory to the Reckoning.”
Epilogue
ONE YEAR LATER
Eli stood outside the house he and Sam had built with their own hands, shading his eyes from the afternoon sun as he watched Derrick’s coach ease up the mountain road. Inside the coach, Aster and Violet sat across from Derrick himself, who ran nervous fingers through his ginger hair. When he spoke in front of a crowd as the youngest legislant in Arkettan history, it was with all the confidence of a man who had ventured beyond the Veil and lived to tell the tale. But when it came time for a reunion with old friends, he apparently could not stop shaking like a small dog.
Aster and Violet exchanged a knowing glance.
“This isn’t going to be some room full of politicians you have to cozy up to, you know,” Violet said with a smirk, her hand resting easy on Aster’s knee. “Everyone here has already decided they like you.”
“They liked me before I joined the transitional government,” Derrick groused. “Now we find out whether or not they think I’ve been doing a good job.”
“Bold of you to assume anyone’s been thinking of you at all—”
Aster elbowed Violet in the ribs, cutting her off. “Nobody’s going to lay all the blame at your feet, Derrick, any more than they’ll lay all the credit,” Aster promised him. “We all know you’re just one of hundreds doing the work.”
Which was true—the transitional government had not yet held an election to replace Authoritant Lockley, but dustbloods of all kinds had joined the new courts and congress, from former miners and factory workers to leaders of the Nine to Good Luck Girls who had left the welcome houses behind forever.
Aster, though, was not among this new class, as much as Derrick, and many others, had implored her. Instead, she had accepted Violet’s offer, made so long ago, to take her away from all this. They had joined Clementine and the others in their new life in Ferron. And what a life it was turning out to be: a homestead of their own in the slumbering country beyond Steelway, where they could ride into town on fine afternoons to watch Mallow try to coach her helpless batball team or to see Raven’s latest selection of sketches at the artists’ marketplace. None of them, Aster supposed, were living the lives that were expected of proper women. But there was no wrong way to be a woman. She knew that now.
Aster looked back out the window of the coach. Sam had ambled out to join his brother on the porch, a longneck bottle of root brew in one hand, the other draped on Raven’s shoulder. After months of exchanging letters, they were at each other’s sides again. Zee soon followed, his little sister balanced on his narrow shoulders. And then, finally, Tansy, Mallow, Raven and Clementine spilled out of the doorway, their grins splitting their faces as they waved the coach down.
“Hell, are we the last ones to arrive?” Aster asked, a smile ghosting at her own lips.
“Fashionably late,” Violet corrected.
Derrick gestured to the driver to stop, then smoothed the front of his shirt one final time before stepping outside and holding the door open for them. Aster stepped out after him, her boots hitting the hot, hardpacked earth, her throat catching at the fine, dry silt in the air, her skin prickling under the whispering mountain wind. It murmured her name, murmured the names of those she loved.
It told her she was home.
Acknowledgements
Every time I finish a writing project I am convinced it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but finishing The Sisters of Reckoning was, truly, the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and this book never would have been completed without the generous love and support of my family, friends, and colleagues.
First of all, I would like to thank the entire Tor Team—I could not ask for a better home for this series. Thank you so much to my editors, Melissa Frain and Ali Fisher, for your constant thoughtfulness and insight and your much-needed encouragement during the ordeal that was 2020, and to Kristin Temple, assistant editor, for keeping the whole machine running so flawlessly. Thank you also to Saraciea Fennell, Lauren Levite, Isa Caban, and Anthony Parisi and the rest of the marketing and publicity team for being the best an author could hope to work with, and for making my debut with The Good Luck Girls nothing short of a dream come true. Finally, thank you to Melanie Sanders for your infinite patience as a copyeditor—sorry I used the word “just” 400 times.
The Sisters of Reckoning also owes a great deal to the hard work of my authenticity readers, Jess Wall and Jordan Merica, and the support of my critique partners, Kristina Forest and Maya Motayne. I cannot thank you all enough for the time you spent with this book, and for helping me write the best version of it.
Finally, I’d like to thank Brent Taylor, my wonderful agent, for advocating so tirelessly for this series, and to Lynn Weingarten and Marianna Baer of Dovetail for sponsoring it.
And, to my family: Thank you so, so much for helping me survive such a difficult year and seeing me through to the end of this book. The Sisters of Reckoning is about the importance of family—the family we’re born to, the family we choose—and I feel incredibly fortunate to call you mine.
ALSO BY CHARLOTTE NICOLE DAVIS
The Good Luck Girls
About the Author
CHARLOTTE NICOLE DAVIS is the critically acclaimed author of The Good Luck Girls and loves comic book movies and books with maps in the front. A graduate of the New School’s Writing for Children M.F.A. program, she currently lives in Brooklyn.
Vist her online at charlottenicoledavis.com, or sign up for email updates here
instagram.com/cndwrites
twitter.com/cndwrites
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Charlotte Nicole Davis
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE SISTERS OF RECKONING
Copyright © 2021 by Working Partners Limited
All rights reserved.
Cover art
by Chung-Yun Yoo
Cover design by Lesley Worrell
A Tor Teen Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Davis, Charlotte Nicole, author. | Davis, Charlotte Nicole. Good Luck Girls.
Title: The sisters of reckoning / Charlotte Nicole Davis.
Description: First edition. | New York : Tor Teen, 2021. | “A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2021010733 (print) | LCCN 2021010734 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-250-29974-1 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-250-29973-4 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Social classes—Fiction. | Escapes—Fiction. | Survival—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.D358 Si 2021 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.D358 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010733
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010734
eISBN 9781250299734
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First Edition: 2021
The Sisters of Reckoning Page 35