by Emily Colin
It’s ridiculous, given I never wanted to be here—that I’m jealous, every second, of the comp techs who get to spend their days manipulating code, lost in the precise beauty of algorithms—but the notion I need a chemical edge to be on a par with these conscienceless savages infuriates me. Each night, I pray to the Architect to cleanse me of both emotions; jealousy is forbidden, fury an indication of weakness, a shameful lack of control. But each morning, as I gulp down my pill, the feelings are still there, churning in my belly. And finally they crystallize into a rock-solid sense of purpose that spurs me forward with every breath.
The bellators are just people. If they can do this, so can I. I will train harder than all of them put together. I will do everything Ari Westergaard demands of me and more, until no one can lay the credit for my success at the feet of those small pink pills.
So I do my best to exceed at my new life, with its hours of training, strict discipline, and daily tests of endurance. Efraím and Kilían, along with the elite group that Ari calls the Thirty, have us climb the crags that surround the Commonwealth, digging our feet into crevices and searching for handholds. They pair the two male recruits against each other and force me to fight the winner. They forbid us to sleep and make us complete an elaborate series of tasks involving memorization, physical feats, and problem-solving skills. Anyone who fails to complete their tasks in the allotted time winds up in the center of a circle of the Bellatorum as Efraím enumerates their faults, strips them of their dignity, and either uses them for target practice or hands them over to the Thirty for additional motivation, the nature of which I don’t care to discover.
And so I train until my fingers bleed and then toughen where they grip my weapons. I ignore Ari’s arrogant, annoying tone and do everything he says, on the theory he wouldn’t have been given an apprentice at such a young age if he didn’t know what he was doing. He lets me watch him fight; he is lightning-fast and graceful, never quite where his opponent expects him to be, with an ability to assess and manipulate that is on par with his physical abilities. As obnoxious as he can be, I couldn’t ask for a better mentor—not that I would ever tell him so.
I haven’t forgotten what he’d said that first night, at the Trials—the scourge of shirts and pants everywhere—or the appalled expression on his face when Efraím told him I was going to be his apprentice. He hardly looks at me unless we’re training, and then only to pin me with a scathing glare: Is that the best you can do? It’s embarrassing that a part of me wants to impress him with my progress, to earn one of his rare compliments—though even those are sheathed in admonishment, lest a word of praise go to my head.
Watching him cleave through the air, shirt off and blades in hand, driving his opponents to their knees—it rouses a peculiar feeling in me. I want to fight him myself for the pleasure of it, want to pin him to the ground and trace the silvered web of scars on his back, mapping his lithe body with my fingertips. The intensity of my desire hovers on the delicate edge of what I’m sure must be a sin.
Ari earned those scars as punishment for his pride—was chained to a pole in Clockverk Square and whipped for everyone to see. I was there. I watched his blood drip onto the ground, the High Priest striking him harder and harder when he refused to cry out. Those scars should be the mark of his mortification, a harsh reminder of what happens when citizens fail to obey the Commonwealth’s dictates. The last thing I ought to want to do is touch them. Yet he doesn’t seem ashamed of the scars as he trains, his back bared for all to see.
I do the only thing I can think of—I train harder, trying to exhaust myself, to drive the impure thoughts from my mind. To ignore the unmistakable spike of pleasure I feel when he smiles at me or tells me I’ve done well. That’s supposed to make me happy. He’s my mentor, no matter if he can’t be bothered to focus on my face for more than two seconds at a time.
Other than Kilían and Efraím—who seem indifferent to my presence—the only bellator who has treated me with anything approaching kindness is Samúel Nystaad, an older man and longtime member of the Thirty who works in the interrogation chamber. When Ari took me down to watch him interrogate a prisoner—one of two market employees suspected of plotting to acquire extra meat rations—Samúel sat behind the one-way mirror with me, explaining the intricacies of Ari’s technique.
“See how he ingratiates himself with the prisoner?” he said. “Sitting to make himself less intimidating, leaning away from her to give her the illusion of control over her space? Watch how he smiles—that’s meant to put her at ease. Now he’s got her right where he wants her; she thinks he’s on her side, so she’ll relax and let something slip. You’ll see him start asking tougher questions, still with the smile so it seems like he hates to bother her this way, but he’s got to, it’s his duty. Soon enough, she’ll crack. They always do, poor doves.”
I glanced at him sharply, and he gave me a rueful smile of his own. “Ah, you don’t think I should pity her, Bellator Marteinn? Well, pity her I do. She’s no match for the likes of him in there.” He gestured towards Ari. “That citizen is a prime example of a sheep, if I ever saw one. She wants to be led, and if it’s Westergaard doing the leading, then she’ll follow, no matter where he guides her. That one wouldn’t know she was drowning until the water closed over her head. And then she’d expect Westergaard to throw her a lifeline, but he’d just let her sink.”
“Is that what being a bellator is about?” I blurted. “Lying?”
“It’s not an easy life,” Samúel said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Sometimes I think the only ones who stride a tougher road are the High Priests and the Executor himself, may the Architect forgive me if I speak in blasphemy. For we must lie, and pretend to act in good faith, and take the lives of men and women who are but the poorest sinners. We look like the citizens among whom we walk, but we’re not like them anymore. We’ve given up something of ourselves to gain much, and only now, as I come to the end of the road, do I feel the loss.”
“To the end of the road?” I said, puzzled. “What do you—”
But he held up a peremptory hand, hushing me as the woman dissolved in tears and Ari strode out of the room, giving a subtle thumbs-up to the vid camera that captured the whole thing. “Well done, Bellator Westergaard,” Samúel said, and went to escort the woman back to her cell. Two days later, I saw her covered in animal blood outside the slaughtering grounds, drenched in the remains of the creatures whose meat she’d coveted, staggering back to the City with tears cutting paths in the gore that streaked her face and flies dogging her every step. This is the Commonwealth’s justice: To take what sinners desire most and wield it as an instrument of torture. Such is the punishment of those who stray from the path of righteousness.
I’ve thought a lot about what Samúel said—about giving up part of himself to become a bellator and coming to the end of the road. Surely his words couldn’t mean what they sounded like—not just the end of his formal service, but of his life itself? Today, a month after the Choosing Ceremony, on my way down to the training room for another brutal session of fight-or-flight, I resolve to ask Ari. I’m outside the room, the question forming on my lips, when I hear Jakob Riis—the newest member of the Thirty and the other bellator who’d flanked Instruktor Bjarki the morning of Choosing Eve—giving Ari a hard time. I listen more closely, and realize he’s talking about me.
“Don’t fool yourself, Westergaard,” he’s muttering. “That little girl will never amount to anything. It’s an insult to the Bellatorum.”
I freeze, half-expecting Ari to agree. But instead he laughs, a throaty chuckle that is half amusement, half threat. “Envy is a sin, Bellator Riis.”
“I don’t take your meaning, Westergaard.”
“Oh, I think you do.” I hear Ari’s footsteps pad across the floor, hear the clash of metal on metal. “Eva’s a fighter. A damned good one, as it turns out. Give her a few months, and she’ll kick your virtueless ass to the Sins and back, Thirty or no. And with your unpleas
ant attitude, I don’t think I’ll be motivated to call her to heel.”
My mouth falls open. But before I can process that he’s actually paid me a compliment, Ari clears his throat. “You might as well come in, apprentice mine,” he says, sounding resigned. “I know you’re there.”
I edge into the room to find Riis glaring at me, blade in hand. Ari, on the other hand, is grinning. “Here she is, Riis,” he says cheerfully, gripping his sverd. “Care for a trial match?”
Riis’s glare deepens. “I know what you’re doing, Westergaard. It won’t work.”
“No?” Ari says, his expression innocent. “Seems like it’s working just fine to me.”
Riis swears and stalks out of the training room, leaving me alone with Ari, who rolls his eyes. “Don’t get any ideas, Eva. I said what I did to get under his skin. You’ve got potential, sure, but you’ve got a long way to go. Today you get your first assignment, and I’ll thank you not to screw it up. You’ve got guard duty at the gen lab. Rumor has it the Executor himself will be paying a visit today.”
The gen lab is an important place—it’s where they keep our digitized medical information and complete the artificial insemination procedures. Everything is protected not just by handprints but also by key codes, as a fail-safe. The guard I’m assigned to shadow makes a big deal of positioning his body between me and the keypad, as if my secret goal in life is to break into the lab and make more little citizens. “Don’t touch anything,” he warns as the door swings open. “Not a thing.”
I give him the look the instruction deserves and step through, hands resting on my weapons belt. Over my time in the comp lab, I grew to be one of their most talented code-breakers—not that there’s much cause for such things; the supervisors assigned such hypothetical tasks to us as a measurement of skill. It’s not pride but a simple fact to say that if I wanted to decipher the keypad’s code, I could do so without undue effort—not that it would do me any good without the handprint to match.
Inside the gen lab, white-coated medics bend over microscopes, petri dishes, and other equipment I don’t recognize, muttering about splicing and mutations and other medical lingo. They glance upward at the intrusion—and then stare, ogling me. One of them even goes so far as to elbow another who’s looked back down at his work.
I stare back, feeling like more of a freak than ever. Yes, I’m a girl. Yes, I’m an apprentice bellator. They were doubtless all at my Choosing; this shouldn’t be news.
It’s one thing to know someone has sworn an oath to the Bellatorum, though, and another to see them dressed in black and bristling with blades. I’m an anomaly, and I know it. Still, I don’t enjoy being stared at like one of the Bastarour’s gotten loose and stormed their stupid lab.
In desperation, I’m about to ask the guard when we might expect the Executor to arrive when there is a commotion at the end of the hallway—the sound of multiple people, moving our way. With them comes a barrage of scents: I can smell the oil the Bellatorum use on our blades, the dull scent of regulation soap, and an undertone of fried sausage.
The group moves closer, and beneath the sound of their feet on the wooden floor, I hear their heartbeats—one slower than the rest, one whose rhythm is uneven, the remainder marching along in a staggered but steady tandem. I snap to attention, hands at my sides, as they come abreast of the doorway where the guard and I stand. Efraím has taken point.
“Bellator Marteinn,” he says to me by way of greeting.
“Sir.”
“Ah.” It’s the Executor’s voice, as resonant as usual. “Our most unusual recruit. Step aside, and let me greet her properly.”
Efraím’s eyebrows creep upward, but he jerks his head and the bellators part like water, leaving me face to face with the Executor. He stares at me, dark eyes beetle-black underneath the caterpillars of his eyebrows. I can hear the pound of his heart, with its too-long space between beats.
“How is the Bellatorum treating you, child?” he says.
I am so stunned at being addressed directly by the Executor—not to mention his apparent concern for my well-being—that at first I don’t reply. After a moment I stammer, “Very well, sir. That is—I’ve been training hard. I’m grateful to you for the opportunity.”
His thin mouth curves upward in what appears to be a genuine smile. I’ve never seen such an expression on his face before. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Efraím twitch—a movement he stills when the Executor turns his way. “I’ve been speaking with Bellator Stinar about your progress. He seems satisfied—am I right, Efraím?”
“Yes, sir,” Efraím says, staring straight ahead.
“I’ve been curious about your training,” the Executor muses. “Most curious indeed.” He squints at me, peering down his hooked nose, and I have to fight the instinct to squirm. It feels as if his eyes crawl over every inch of my skin. At last he sighs and steps back.
“Ah, well,” he says, “I suppose it’s of no consequence. Time will tell.”
“Sir?” I ask, but he has already dismissed me. Motioning to his entourage, he sweeps past me and into the lab, bending over the comp at the front. Efraím stands by the desk, flanked by Daníel Eleazar—the best climber we have; he puts Ari to shame when we race up the crags—and Jakob, who cuts his eyes at me in a disgusted look he wipes off his face as soon as Efraím’s gaze flicks in his direction. With the bellators blocking the windows and the door, they form a solid wall of black that protects the Executor from any possible threat.
I’d thought Efraím or the Executor might want to assess my skill—but so far, all I’ve done is stand on display. Is that why I’m here today—not to demonstrate my abilities, but for the Executor to observe the progress of his experiment? Does he think I’m not good enough? Does he plan to drug me some more? Maybe my induction to the Bellatorum is a joke he and Efraím have devised at my expense—an elaborate ruse to test the mettle of the true bellators, to see how they’ll react to the presence of a girl in their midst.
Fuming in silence—given wrath is a sin—I glance upward to hide any hint of emotion that might show on my face. Above me is a mirror, designed to reflect the activities of the lab and stem the possibility of malfeasance. In it I see the Executor’s profile, bent over the comp—and something else.
I can see his hands.
All the bellators, even Efraím, are facing outward to protect the Executor’s privacy. None of them are looking at him, or at me. But I am perfectly positioned to decipher the forbidden information they have turned around to conceal: The Executor’s password.
Far away as I am, I shouldn’t be able to see the reflection of the individual keys in the mirror. But see them I can.
It’s not like I can do anything with that information, without his fingerprint. Still less should I want to. But knowledge is power—Efraím reminds us of that often enough.
I’m not useless, I think, narrowing my eyes to bring the keyboard into sharper focus. I’m not an experiment or a joke. And I deserved to be a comp tech. I earned it.
He hits the final key of the sequence, clearing his throat to cue Efraím, who swivels to face him. The head bellator’s gaze skates over me, and I drop my eyes, resentment churning inside me like the whitewater of the Trials’ rapids. I fume during the rest of my shadow shift, as the guard shows me his route through the building, the blueprints of the Lab and the network of ventilation tunnels that run throughout the Commonwealth, and his routine for double-checking the entrances and exits. I am still fuming hours later, when I am dismissed and wind my way back through Marketor Square, through the alley that cuts between the market and the garment workshop, leading to Wunderstrand Square and the way home.
My mood does not improve when I find Ari sitting on my bed, flipping his knife over his knuckles. He doesn’t look up when I come in, as if no more mesmerizing task exists in all the universe. “How was it?” he says.
“What are you doing on my bed?”
“Sitting. Did you acquit yourself nobl
y?”
“I did fine. Get off my bed.”
“Why?” he drawls, glancing up at me. “Do you have a pressing desire to sleep?”
“No!” I say irritably. “But it’s my bed. Go sit on your own, if you must sit somewhere and have convinced yourself nothing but a mattress will do.”
Ari’s eyes narrow. Then he rises to his feet in one fluid motion and stalks toward me. I dodge, but he anticipates me and gets there first, pinning me to the wall with a knife through the sleeve of my shirt. His hands go above my head, caging me in. “Ah, Eva,” he purrs, “I think your day was more difficult than you’re letting on. Still, that’s no way to talk to your mentor, is it?”
Pinioned to the wall as I am, I have little choice but to pay attention to him. “Let me go,” I say, but it’s a pro forma protest. I know he won’t do a thing until he’s gotten what he wants.
“I don’t think I will,” he says, confirming my suspicions. “It seems to me you need to be taught a lesson, apprentice mine. I’ll ask again—is this any way to address your mentor?”
“No,” I say, eyes on the ground.
“Look at me, Eva.” It’s a command, and like the day of the Choosing, I can’t help but comply. I raise my head and see him looking at me from inches away, green eyes boring into mine. After so many weeks of avoidance, the intensity is painful. It’s all I can do not to look away—but I’ll be damned if I give him the satisfaction.
When he speaks again, his breath gusts warm against my face. It smells of rosemary and mint, herbs from the culinary gardens. “That’s better,” he says. “Now. No, what?”
“No, sir,” I say, and he laughs.
“You say all the right things when you’re suitably motivated, apprentice mine. But why do I have the feeling what you’re really saying is, Pull your virtueless knife out of my sleeve and get the hell out of my room?”