by Emily Colin
The image flashes up on the vid screen and, like everyone else, I look. And then I suck in a surprised breath.
The sinner is Instruktor Bjarki.
Aside from her show of support that long-ago day in the square, she is the sole teacher who ever showed me kindness beyond what was required, noting my affinity for comp tech and finding precious volumes on the subject in the Commonwealth’s library. She used her own book rations to let me borrow them—an act that, while not forbidden, showed a generosity bordering on preference. Looking at her image on the vid screen, my heart sinks.
The screen goes blank, the Executor’s face winking out of existence. Numb, I follow the herd to the far wall and line up at the vitamin dispensary machines. Usually the wait annoys me—not that I let it show, patience being a virtue—but today I am depending on it to distract me. I don’t want to see Instruktor Bjarki broken, reduced to the sum of her faults.
I suppose forcing us to witness her humiliation—as much as the humiliation itself—is the point. Next time, the Executor is saying, this could be you.
The line moves all too quickly this morning, and I press my hand against the outline on the dispensary’s vid screen, rewarded by the message that flashes green: Welcome, Citizen Marteinn. Your vitamins are being prepared. Please wait. The machine grumbles and clanks, spitting out a small paper cup containing the usual three pills: green, red, and yellow. Alongside them is a fourth pill I have never seen before. This one is pink.
“Excuse me,” I say to the machine, feeling foolish. “But there’s an extra pill here—I think maybe someone made a mistake—”
The machine whirrs and clicks. Then a new message appears on the screen. There is no reason for concern. Your recent metabolic analysis indicates you are suffering from an iron deficiency. This supplement will alleviate your distress.
An iron deficiency? I think back to what I know about the importance of iron in the blood. The lack of it leads to anemia, the symptoms of which are difficulty breathing, extreme fatigue, and heart palpitations. I suffer from none of these—but perhaps the symptomology has yet to manifest. I ought to be grateful the metabolic check caught the imbalance before it became a problem…but I don’t feel grateful. I feel suspicious.
Just as quickly, I dismiss my concerns. If the Commonwealth wanted to poison me, they could have done it a long time ago. I’m being ridiculous and paranoid, and I ought to be ashamed. “Thank you for your clarification,” I say and move aside so the man behind me can take his turn at the machine. I pick up a glass of water from the counter, empty the pills into my mouth, and swallow.
The dining hall is normally noisy, filled with the low hum of conversation. Today it is silent, and as I make my way to the food line to grab my tray, I see why. Behind the stainless steel counter, clad in the gray robes of the penitent, stands the tall, slender form of Instruktor Bjarki. Her pale hair is pulled back in a bun, and in the light that streams in from the large windows, she looks older than usual, the lines that bracket either side of her thin mouth more deeply cut. She is flanked on either side by bellators. One of them, a stranger to me, has sandy hair and a pointed chin. The other, to my surprise, is Ari Westergaard, the boy who met my eyes that day in the square.
I knew he’d become a bellator. I was in attendance at his Choosing two years ago. Still, I have never seen him wearing the black garb of the warriors before, with a blade at his back and a weapons belt hung low about his hips. At nineteen, he is as beautiful as I remember—except now he is deadly, too, in the manner of the prowling tigers they have shown us in the vids from before the Fall, when the world was still full of forests and beasts. There is a stillness about him, as if he is waiting for the cue that will cause him to explode into action. But what action can he possibly anticipate from poor, maligned Instruktor Bjarki?
Ari shifts his weight, as if he can feel me staring, and I glance away, searching for somewhere safe to look. My eyes fall on the counter, heaped with delicacies—apples baked with cinnamon, stacks of smoked fish, eggs scrambled with asparagus from the gardens, and skyr made with milk from the goats. Next to this bounty sit cut-glass pitchers of grape juice, harvested from the arbors the little ones tend.
The Executor must truly be concerned for the state of Instruktor Bjarki’s soul. Only on the eve of the Architect’s arrival have I seen such a spread.
The dining hall workers are wide-eyed—usually breakfast is just oatmeal and eggs, with a side of herbed lamb sausage on Idle Day—but Instruktor Bjarki is stone-faced. She ignores the bellators, ignores everyone except the person in front of her. Again and again she asks them what they’d like, ladles food onto their plates, and turns to the next person.
When breakfast is over, the dining hall workers will eat, choosing whatever they want from the cornucopia. But Instruktor Bjarki will have to stand and watch. They’ll give her a hard heel of stale bread, a cup of tepid water. They’ll make her starve in the midst of plenty as her punishment.
Rage flashes through me, shooting through my limbs, the feeling sharp as needles. Taking a few extra books—how can that be so bad? She just wanted to learn so she could be a better teacher. I cannot understand why this should be a crime.
No one else seems bothered by her presence. But me—it’s all I can do not to run behind the counter and drag her out of here. My senses ratchet up, heightening so I can parse every scent, delineate every spice, hear every whisper. The light that shines through the windows is suddenly too bright.
I breathe deeply, trying to calm myself, but it only makes things worse: The competing aromas of fish and soap fill my lungs, nauseating me. Compounding the miasma is an unfamiliar, acrid stench that evokes the sensation of pounding heartbeats and shallow breathing—as if I’m inhaling the scent of fear.
What is happening to me?
The line moves, and now I am in front of the Instruktor. I can’t bear to look at her, to see her reduced to this. Instead my eyes fall on Ari, who is standing beside her, one hand resting on his weapons belt and the other at his side, inches from Instruktor Bjarki's gray-clad elbow. A cat about to pounce, given the slightest provocation.
I stare at him, at his regulation-cut dark hair and his clear green eyes, his over-confident stance and the way his lips quirk up at the corners—he doesn’t meet the Commonwealth’s aesthetic standards, either; what he lacks in outward appearance as far as they’re concerned, he must make up for in skill—and I am furious that he’s here, playing a part in her humiliation. The strength of the emotion takes me by surprise, so that I forget to lower my gaze. And then Ari speaks to me.
“I’m not serving food today,” he says. “In case you were wondering.”
I’m so startled, I almost drop my tray. It’s a close call; my fingers loosen, and the wood slides from my grip. The tray is in free fall toward the floor when I manage to snag it, with sharp-edged reflexes that take me by surprise. I’m normally well-coordinated, but nothing like this. The water doesn’t even spill. “What are you talking about?” I manage, glaring at Ari.
He stares back, wearing an inscrutable expression—doubtless suppressing his amusement at my clumsiness. My teeth grind as he raises an eyebrow, dismissing me. “You’re looking at me like you expect me to take your order, which I assure you is not going to happen. So in the interest of time, I’d suggest you make your choice and pass it along to the appropriate party. Before you lose your grip on anything else.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard Ari’s voice before. It’s low and gravelly, skirting the edge of arrogance. And I’m not the only one who notices, because the other bellator gives him a disapproving glance. “Don’t fraternize, Westergaard,” he says.
Ari lifts one shoulder and lets it fall. “Just trying to move things along.”
“Yeah, well, don’t,” says the sandy-haired man.
“Whatever you say, Riis. Your wish is my command.”
The man snorts. “Too bad lying isn’t a sin. They’d have you strung up by sunset.” His e
yes fall on me, their expression empty, bored. “You heard the man, citizen. Move it along. You’re holding up the line.”
Controlling my temper with an effort, I look away from Instruktor Bjarki and her two guards. But that is a mistake, because my eyes fall on the cornucopia on the counter.
I know what I’m supposed to do, but I can’t manage it. Instead I gesture to the customary tub of oatmeal. Next to it sits a rare shaker of cinnamon and another of brown sugar, along with a small container of raisins.
“What can I get for you?” Instruktor Bjarki says in an unfamiliar, flat voice, her eyes fixed on the counter.
“Just oatmeal, please,” I say, louder than I should. “Plain.”
Her head jerks up and she stares at me. “Plain? You don’t want…anything else?” Next to her, I hear Ari make a small, amused sound, but when my eyes dart to him, he is standing at perfect attention, staring straight through me.
“Plain will be fine,” I say firmly, and am rewarded with a twitch of her mouth that, under other circumstances, might have been the beginning of a smile. “My stomach’s upset,” I add for the benefit of whoever might be listening, lest they accuse me of sedition.
But Instruktor Bjarki knows better. She heaps the plain oatmeal in a bowl and hands it to me, and I don’t think I’m imagining the fact that her spine straightens ever so slightly. Gratified, I take the tray and make my way over to the closest table, doing my best to ignore the assault on my senses, the buzzing in my limbs.
Maybe there was something peculiar in that pill after all.
3
Ari
I finish my shift in the dining hall, guarding that misbegotten soul of an Instruktor while trying to ignore the distraction that is Eva Marteinn, and make my way to the bellators’ weapons gallery to sharpen my blades for tonight. I have no idea what will happen at the Trials, but it’s best to be prepared. Efraím would have my neck under his knife if I wasn’t, and the Architect alone knows what punishment he would devise. Of course, Efraím has never had to reprimand me for failing to rise to a fight. I am never happier than I am with a weapon in my hand and an enemy to defeat. I won’t fail him tonight.
But honing my blades on the whetstone is mindless work, and my thoughts stray to the way Eva looked in the dining hall, spitting mad on the sinner’s behalf and doing her best to conceal it. She was as alluring as she’d been on the first, fateful morning I laid eyes on her—in Clockverk Square, seven years ago. Her gaze met mine that day, part pleading, part defiance, and in it I saw myself. Try as I might, I wasn’t able to look away.
Nor have I been able to look away in the years since, when I’ve stolen glimpses of her every chance I get. We are not supposed to notice girls, not to think of them unless we must on Donation Day, when we make our contribution to ensure the Commonwealth’s survival. But I have always noticed her.
Pride aside, thoughts of Eva are my besetting sin.
Her beauty is a weapon, the only one that has ever been able to bring me low. It has as much to do with the fierce intelligence in her eyes as it does with that thick fall of black hair, always bound in its braid, and the opalescent sheen of her skin. In my darker moments, I’ve imagined what it might feel like to tug her hair loose from its bindings, if it would run like water through my fingers. If her touch would burn.
She might not resemble the abstract ideals of appearance we are meant to prize—but I have always found her to be singularly lovely. Every time she looks at me, it’s like a barbed net sinks its hooks deeper into my heart—and the virtueless truth is, part of me wants to be caught.
When she’d lost her grip on her tray, I’d almost reached out to grab it. I’d imagined the contraband brush of her fingers against mine—a moment I could pass off as an accident and hoard in secret, polished to a fine, forbidden sheen. But then, with sinfully quick reflexes, she’d recovered the tray herself, righting it without spilling so much as a drop of water. It was all I could do not to gape. I’ve rarely seen an untrained citizen move that way.
I test the point of my dagur with a fingertip, trying not to think of how Eva’s back had stiffened as she approached the Instruktor in the food line, of the flash of pity in her dark eyes. For an instant those eyes rested on me, and I saw fury in their depths, shot through with glacial contempt. You are nothing, that look said. Nothing and no one. You guard this woman like it’s your right. But she’s innocent, and you’re the one who has sinned.
No one looked directly at Instruktor Bjarki the way Eva did. Certainly no one requested plain oatmeal and stared me down as if they’d like to gut me with my own blade.
I was simply carrying out orders. How could she hate me for that?
The question puzzles me, and so I do as I’ve been trained—slipping into the skin of those I hunt, the better to perceive the world as they do. Through Eva’s eyes, I see Instruktor Bjarki diminished, silenced, subservient. Made to suffer, while those around her reveled in excess, oblivious. Did I blindly inflict punishment on an innocent woman who only wanted to do the best job she could?
I tighten my hand on the hilt of my knife, gripping hard to center myself. Questioning a sinner’s punishment is ridiculous. The Executor’s word is law. The woman sinned.
But what if she didn’t?
I’m jolted from my inappropriate thoughts by the sound of Efraím’s footfalls, soft but unmistakable on the wooden boards of the hallway connecting the weapons gallery to the training room. He’d never walk straight into a room where I’m sitting if he can attempt to take me by surprise. Still, I know the way he moves—slightly more weight on his left foot, steps as clipped as his speech—as well as I know the pound of my own heartbeat. I grab my shirt from the floor—they keep the training rooms hot as the nine hells to build our endurance—and yank it over my head. The shirt covers the marks on my back, courtesy of a public whipping the High Priests gave me three years ago, punishment for my chronic inability to curb my prideful tongue.
The Mothers tried to cure me of my arrogance, coating my tongue with soap, lecturing me about self-abnegation, making me do penance for hours on the cold stones of the chapel floor—to no avail. Disgusted, they handed me over to the Priests for punishment.
Tied shirtless to the whipping post, I felt the lash come down again and again, my lips pressed tight to keep the mounting screams inside. I can still feel it—the bite of the lash, the warm trickle of blood running down my skin. And the Priest’s harsh whisper: “Why do you not cry out, boy? Why do you cling so tightly to your pride? It gives me no pleasure to mark you this way. Only show some humility, and all of this will be over.”
I shook my head, hands gripping the post to support my weight. “This isn’t pride,” I managed. “It’s discipline. Whip me if you must. I’ll not beg for you.”
And so he had, each stroke harder than the one before. By the time he was done, I had my arms wrapped around the post to keep myself upright. Sweat ran down my face in rivulets, and my back was a bloody, fiery mess. But I never made a sound, aside from a grunt when the lash drove the air from my body, and I never begged the Priest to stop.
I wasn’t a bellator three years ago—just a sixteen-year-old citizen—but to this day I believe the way I refused to buckle under the lash, how I stood steady despite the pain, led to my Choosing. The Bellatorum Chose me despite myself, and Efraím never lets me forget it. The Architect knows he uses every virtueless opportunity to remind me of my scars. He considers them to be my shame, and it’s clear enough he thinks I should, too.
When Efraím’s not around, I train with my shirt off every chance I get, as a not-so-subtle reminder to the other bellators of what I withstood when they were still mewling supplicants in the Nursery. But I’m not stupid enough to flaunt my defiance in front of Efraím, so the moment I hear his footfalls nearing the weapons room, I clothe myself and merge into the darkness.
It’s not hard to conceal myself. While the rest of the Commonwealth benefits from wind turbine-powered electricity, bellators
enjoy no such luxury. Our rooms are lit by candles and torches, training us to operate in ascetic circumstances. I’m standing in the shadows, clothed and silent, when he comes, my sharpened knife in my hand and a smile on my face.
He pauses at the doorway. “Very good, Westergaard,” he says to the empty space where I used to be.
I grin wider, employing the misdirection that’s made me such a formidable opponent in training—whether Efraím cares to admit it or not. “Did you want to speak with me, sir?” I say, making my voice issue from the far corner, beneath the display of scimitars. Efraím sighs.
“You’ve made your point. Kindly come out of wherever you’ve secreted yourself this time. I’ve something to say.”
I know better than to try him any further. Sliding the knife back into its sheath, I step out of the shadows. “Sir,” I say.
He gives a grunt of amusement. “Well, at least you can hide when you need to. That’s something. Even if you’re a piss-poor swordsman.”
My spine stiffens at the insult. When it comes to bladework, I’m the best we have, and Efraím knows it. But part of my training is to learn how to swallow these comments, and so I restrain myself, inclining my head in acknowledgment. “My apologies, sir. I’ll endeavor to improve.”
He grunts again, louder this time. “You do that, Westergaard. In the meantime, I’ve got a reconnaissance and retrieval mission for you.”
“Recon, sir?” I say, my interest piqued. “For one of the new recruits?” We’re not allowed to know anything about the Bellatorum candidates until we face them in the Trials—it’s an unfair advantage, given their lack of training.