by Kerstin Hall
“El? What are you doing here?” Millie squinted against the sunlight.
I wanted to say something, just something funny or light-hearted, but the words evaporated from my mind. I gestured clumsily, a kind of helpless shrug. Millie’s eyes widened.
“Come in.” She reached out and took me by the arm, ushering me into the cool darkness of her living room. The abrupt change of temperature made me feel lightheaded. “Tell me what happened.”
Her place was a mess, as usual. A stack of books lay beside her couch, and there were plates and glasses piled high in her kitchen sink. A dusty red dress draped carelessly over the pedestal table, as if she had thrown it off once and then never picked it up again. All the curtains were drawn over the windows to keep out the heat.
“El, you’re scaring me,” she said. “Please say something.”
“I’m fine,” I muttered.
She sat me down on the couch, shoving aside scatter cushions to make room.
“I’ll get you some water,” she said, and hurried to the kitchen. She found a glass and thrust it under the tap. “Did you walk here?”
“Yes.”
“You can afford to pay for a cab sometimes, you know. It’s baking out there.” She returned with the glass and pushed it into my hand. “Talk to me.”
I looked down at the water. “I was planning to work my way up to the topic.”
She sat down. “That bad?”
“Depends.” I ran my finger over the rim of the glass. “Millie?”
“Yes?”
“How do you…” I stopped. “How do…”
I could not do it. How do you feel about me? I drank from the glass, unable to look at her. If Millie turned me away, I would have no one left. The idea was intolerable.
“Hey now,” she murmured. “Calm down, it’s just us here. Everything is okay.”
I shook my head.
“Has something happened? Or is this about Finn?”
“It’s not Finn,” I said.
She rubbed my back with her fingertips. Her touch drew goose bumps over my arms, and I drank again. This was so much worse than I had anticipated. How could I possibly risk losing her friendship? Fear made it difficult to even speak.
She brushed my chin, turning my face toward her.
“Listen, I can tell you’re frightened,” she said. “And that you want to say something to me.”
“Sorry.”
“Just take your time. I’m not going anywhere, all right? I promise.”
I breathed out. Then, with care, I set the glass on the floor and folded my hands in my lap.
“How do you feel about me?” I asked.
A pause.
“I love you,” said Millie, with almost unbearable gentleness. “I should think that’s obvious.”
“As a—as a friend? Or—”
“If you’re asking whether I’m romantically attracted to you?” She sighed. “It’s more complicated. Which I think you already know.”
“Does it have to be? Complicated?” I tried to smile. “I mean, Hanna and I could probably find a way to share you. And Daje thinks I’m okay.”
“It’s not them.” She leaned back on the couch. Her expression was pained.
“Then it’s me?”
“Here’s the thing.” She picked at the loose stitching on the armrest. “I know you’re in love with Finn.”
I shook my head.
“I’m not saying that’s wrong,” she said. “Or that you ever meant for it to happen. Given the opportunity, I’m sure you would change your feelings, but you don’t get to make that choice. No one does.”
She pulled a thread and the hole in the upholstery grew wider. The stuffing peeked through. I wanted to tell her to leave it alone, but I stayed silent.
“So that’s why it’s complicated,” she said. “Because if we started something, I would always know I’m the person you settled for, instead of the one you truly wanted.” Her voice dropped. “I’m not strong enough for that, El. Please don’t ask it of me.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’m sorry, I should never have—”
My throat hitched. Instantly, Millie leaned over and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. I tried to push her away, to tell her I was fine, just being ridiculous, but she did not let go. She stroked my hair, and I felt like a child, lost and confused and overwhelmed.
“I can’t handle this alone,” I whispered.
“Hush.” She held me tighter. “I’m still here. I told you, I’m not going—”
“Millie, I’m pregnant.”
Her hand stopped moving across my hair. There it was, out in the open, out of my mouth and irrevocable. The words hung between us like they possessed a physical weight. I buried my face in my hands.
“I’m two weeks late,” I said through my fingers.
“It could be stress.”
“I’m never late.” The vision in my mother’s alcove haunted me. “I wanted so badly to be wrong, but I’m not, I know it.”
“Has the Order tested you yet?”
“Maybe it will be a boy.” I pressed my hand to my mouth, fighting a rising tide of nausea. “But the idea of it growing, all those months, only for the Sisterhood to just…”
I could not finish; it was too horrible to say aloud. And it would be no better if I bore a girl, a daughter who would grow up to suffer the same fate as me, as my mother, as all of us. Who would consume me.
Buried away in my memory was a scene from my childhood, which returned to me sometimes in dreams, sharp and clear as glass. In it, my mother stood at her bedroom window in the dark, and outside I could hear music and laughter, see the flicker of festival lights.
Why are you crying? I asked.
She turned away from the window and looked at me, and her eyes were black holes.
I wish you’d never been born, she whispered.
Those words—the way they were spoken—had broken some part of me. I could not blame my mother, I could not hate her, but the words remained, like a small creature had burrowed deep inside of me and then died, its body left to rot.
“El.” Millie’s voice intruded on my memory. Her tone was strange—distant and yet firm. “I asked you if the Order had tested you yet.”
“My appointment is at the end of the week,” I said. “Four days.”
She stood up abruptly, and I flinched. There was a new tension in her shoulders and the set of her jaw, and her skin had paled. In the shadowy room, she had an almost ghost-like appearance. She walked over to the kitchen, then back again, as if she could not bear to be still.
“All right, I’m going to say something,” she said. “And if you don’t like it, I’m going to need you to forget this conversation ever happened. Will you promise me that?”
I nodded.
She bit her lip, unsure, and then spoke in a rush. “If you could end the pregnancy now, without the Order ever discovering it, would you?”
“What?”
“Answer me.”
I gazed at her helplessly. “Of course I would, but it’s not possible. The Sisterhood’s checks are too thorough. They’ll know if I mutilated myself. Enough Sisters have tried it, tried all sorts of—”
“Are you certain you don’t want to have the child?”
“No Sister wants to have a child.” Knowing what it cost to conceive, remembering who the father was, the constant living reminder of what I had done? I clenched my fists. “Even without martyrdom, none of us would choose that.”
Millie crouched before me, taking my hands. Her skin was cool against mine.
“There’s a way,” she said. “But if the Order ever finds out, people are going to be executed. You and I included. I’m willing to take that risk, but you have to be sure about this, El.”
Her grip was uncomfortably tight.
“You could stop it?” My voice came out faint.
She nodded. “If I asked the right people, they would find me a remedy.”
“A … remedy?”
�
��Yes. It’s vicious, but it’s also very quick and leaves no trace after a day or two. Scarcely any different from a late period.” Millie released my hands. “It’s been around for centuries, but the women who provide the herbs are very, very quiet about the practice. If the Sisterhood were to uncover the truth, the repercussions would be crushing.”
I felt dizzy. “Because the Order would have to make an example.”
“Yes. So you must understand that me telling you this, trusting you with this … No one else can ever know.”
“It’s too much of a risk for you.”
“I said I was willing. I can get the remedy, and I can hide you here for a few days. But if you want this, we need to do it now.” She touched my face.
“Millie…”
“It’s no one’s choice but yours,” she said softly. “What do you want, El?”
I told her. And once she had left, promising to return before nightfall, I sat alone on her couch and cried.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
IT TASTED SWEETER than I had expected. The paste had a grainy consistency, like poorly milled flour mixed with thick oil. I suspected it was derived from a kind of tuber or nut, grown perhaps in a remote region of Aytrium. I imagined stooped old women harvesting roots from hidden gardens and parcelling them out to scared customers who came knocking in the dead of night. Maybe that was sentimental of me; maybe the stuff was cooked up by some flint-eyed merchant—a trader who spied an opportunity to fleece the desperate with a furtive solution.
I swallowed it.
“You okay?” Millie asked.
Was I okay? Maybe. I felt guilty, to be sure, and afraid. I was worried that we would get caught, and terrified about what that would mean for Millie. A lifetime of the Sisterhood’s teachings rang in my ears, litanies about sacred duties and purpose, about the gift of motherhood.
But I also felt, for the first time in a very long time, that I was in control. And that felt like it was worth a lot.
“I think so,” I said.
I began to notice the effects after an hour. I grew shivery and restless; I paced around the kitchen, one moment cold and the next too warm. When I caught sight of my reflection in the window pane, my eyes were bloodshot. The whites had turned entirely red, and brilliant bursts of colour dyed my eyelids whenever I blinked. I drank glass after glass of water, but remained thirsty.
Then the pain set in.
I lay on the couch and gasped for air. It felt like someone was carving through my abdomen with a rusty hacksaw. I threw up, begged for water, threw it up again. Millie’s hands were freezing on my forehead when she tested my temperature. Her face shimmered like a mirage.
“This is the worst part,” she said. “After this, it gets easier.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
She stayed with me and helped me to drink. The pain abated by degrees. Eventually, I stopped vomiting and fell into an exhausted doze, wrung out and wretched. A little after nightfall, I was dimly aware of Millie speaking to me saying something about needing to talk to a friend of hers. I opened my eyes when she kissed my forehead.
“Don’t leave me,” I croaked.
She smiled. “Not for long. Just sleep, you’ll be fine.”
I did. She had not returned by the time I woke up again, but I did feel better. A little unsteady, I walked to the kitchen sink and drank straight from the faucet. Through the curtains, I could see the glow of the lamps outside. What time was it? I rubbed my eyes. My skin was sticky with old, sour sweat, but it was cooler now; the heat of the day finally broken. A moth beat against the inside of the window, powdered wings fluttering. I opened the latch and cupped my hands around the creature to usher it free.
Someone pounded on the front door.
I froze. Like I had been drenched in ice water, fear flooded my veins. The Sisterhood? How could they have found me so quickly?
The knocking grew louder still.
“Open the door, Elfreda! I know you’re in there.”
It took a second for me to recognise his voice. I breathed out shakily, then staggered over to the door and unlocked it.
“Took you long enough, you—” Osan caught sight of me and broke off, startled.
“This is not a good time,” I rasped.
“What happened to you?”
“It’s personal.”
“You look like death.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but we need to go. Now.”
“Do I look like I’m going anywhere?”
“It can’t be helped. Where’s Kamillian?”
“She left earlier.” I sagged against the door frame. “What’s going on? What are you doing here?”
“The other side is making their move.” Osan’s usual laidback, unflappable demeanour had vanished; he stood taller and his face appeared grimmer than I had ever seen it. “They’re looking for you.”
“What?”
“And your friend Jesane Olberos, but we’ve already managed to hide her. I’m going to take you somewhere safe, all right?”
I held the door for support. No, I wanted to tell him, no, I’m safe here, you’re mistaken. And what about Millie? What if she were to come back and find me gone? Osan saw my reluctance.
“You have to trust me on this,” he said. “Staying here will place Kamillian at risk too.”
I ground my teeth together. “Why are you so sure they’re looking for me? What do they want?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you. Rhyanon can probably explain, but we don’t have much time to reach her. They’ve already searched the dormitories; it won’t take too long before they start asking around for your friends’ addresses.”
I shivered, my resolve wavering. Osan glanced over his shoulder, like he expected trouble at any moment.
“Okay,” I said in a small voice. “Okay, let’s go.”
The streets were quiet, and a cool breeze swept over the still-hot cobblestones. I felt feverish and weak; my muscles ached right down to the bones. A few people wandered around, stumbling home from the bar or off on some late-night escapade. Osan sized each of them up surreptitiously.
“I’ve got lace,” I muttered.
“Good to know.” He looped his arm through mine. I suppose that we must have looked unremarkable—a couple out for a midnight stroll. “Although we aren’t going too far; there’s a cab waiting four blocks from here. With luck, we’ll make it without any trouble.”
“And Rhyanon is all right? She’s recovering?”
“She’s fine. I heard you went looking for her at the San.”
A sudden wave of dizziness caused me to stumble. Osan prevented me from falling.
“You know, you’re really quite a mess,” he said, but he sounded worried.
“Just sick.”
“That came on pretty quickly if you were running around the city this morning.”
“Heatstroke,” I muttered.
He shifted his grip from my arm to my waist. I leaned on him heavily. My pulse was erratic and my chest burned.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Don’t mention it.”
We cut down the alley behind the district clinic, moving toward the industrial sector of Major West. There were fewer people here. A scrawny rat fled down a drainpipe as we passed, and the lamps guttered low and faint, the panes streaked with years of old soot. Perspiration gathered at my hairline.
“Almost there,” coaxed Osan. He guided me toward another alley. “I wanted to avoid drawing attention to Kamillian’s place. If I had known the state you were in, I would have brought the cab clos—”
He staggered as something hit his back, and we both fell hard against the brick wall of the building. I scraped my arm bloody trying to stop myself from crashing to the ground.
“Osan!” I cried.
He breathed heavily and reached up to touch his shoulder. A slender iron bolt jutted from his skin, and his hand came away red.
“Oh.” He swallowed. “Not good.”
Another bolt hissed through
the air and missed his head by inches. His knees buckled, and he slid sideways to the cobbles.
No, no, no. I wove lace around the wound. The head of the bolt had sunk deep into his shoulder, and blood seeped across his shirt. I tried to draw the skin tight, to stop the bleeding. “Osan? Oh Eater, please, Osan—”
“On the roof,” he gasped.
I turned in time to see the glint of the lamplight catch on a third bolt, just before the shooter pulled the trigger on their crossbow. I threw up a net over our heads. The bolt clattered to the ground, and the person on the roof cursed. They ducked out of my line of sight.
“Hang in there.” I tried to pull Osan’s uninjured arm over my shoulders and stand, but I couldn’t do it; he was too heavy and I was too weak. “Please, you have to help me, I need you to get up.”
My lace would only last so long; we had to find help before I ran out. Osan panted, his face screwed up with pain. He leaned on me, using my shoulder as a crutch to lever himself off the ground. Another bolt shot straight toward him. My net repelled it, the threads turning slick in my grasp, but Osan still recoiled instinctively and slipped back down.
“More than one of them up there,” he said through gritted teeth. “Can you pull them off the edge of the roof?”
“If I could see them, maybe.”
He closed his eyes. “We have to be aggressive, or they’ll just wear you down. Run for the emergency stairwell, face them up there.”
I shook my head.
“Come on, you know it’s—”
“If I leave you exposed, they’ll kill you.”
“If you don’t do anything, they’ll kill me too. And you.”
Two bolts hit my net, and I felt it buckle a little under the force. Maintaining a shield strong enough to repel the projectiles was draining my lace at a frightening rate; I did not know how much longer I could hold it up.
“Stop!” I yelled. I spread my arms wide to shield Osan. “Stop shooting!”
Silence, except for Osan’s pained breathing and the beating of my heart. I shook with anger and fear, my eyes scouring the rooftop for the shooters. But no more bolts were fired.
“They don’t want to hit you,” Osan whispered.
I could hear movement in the alleyway to the right of us. Careful to keep Osan in my shadow, I picked up a fallen bolt. The metal was cool. I coiled lace around it like a spring.