Flashtide Page 9

  “I had thought…” I search for words, difficult when all my preconceived ideas about Alara are shifting around in my head. “I used to think about girls my age in Alara. I imagined them safe.”

  “Then you were half right. The girls in the Trades, though…” He shakes his head. “Nothing safe about that. How you perform in the Trades determines your role of service to the city-state. You have three years to prove your worth.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “Then you remain in the outlier regions, which, trust me, isn’t something anyone wants to do.” He adjusts his armored glove, revealing a cirium hand.

  Dram staggers to a stop. “You’re a Conjuror?”

  “Tempered.” Greash tightens his glove. “What? You thought all Striders were Naturals?”

  “Did you choose this?”

  I’m glad Dram’s asking all the questions I have, because I’m too shocked to speak.

  “Yes. I fought for it. I earned this.” He motions to the Strider patch on his arm, the coiled snake and its Latin banner. “Some people in Alara are rich enough to purchase their commissions. The rest of us head to the Trades.” He looks out over the cordon. “The Trades are…” He shrugs. “You learn quickly that you have to fight for what you want.”

  “But you at least have a choice.”

  “Choice is relative.” The words are softly spoken, but I don’t miss his caustic tone. “I know you think you had it bad in the outposts. But there are worse places.”

  “How can you say that?” I step toward him, heedless of his charged armor. “We watched our friends and family die!”

  “So did I. How big do you think Alara is, that everyone born there gets to stay? We’re all citizens, but a place in the city must be earned.”

  “Oh, yes, I know all about earning a place in Alara!”

  “Get. Back.” He bites the words out, and I realize how close I’ve gotten. “The other Striders here won’t try to protect you. You come at them, they’ll meet you halfway—and laugh as you’re shocked.”

  “Why would you even want to be one of them?”

  “Because there’s more than this. A city full of life and technology and hope for our future, and it needs to be protected.” He directs us into a line of people. “Stay here. They’ll commission you according to your abilities.”

  “Commission,” Dram says. “That’s a grand word for sorting us into death squads.”

  “You won’t be made Brunts,” he says. “They save that for the sick or the old. Or the noncompliant.” His words tingle along my nerves, a visceral warning.

  I glance at Dram and see that he’s thinking the same thing. They move our line into a square patch of cordon sand, a pen where people are being separated into groups by Gems in gray uniforms.

  “Be good, Rye,” he murmurs. His gaze skips over the Striders lining the fence with their feet braced, guns held at the ready. My gaze travels back to them as we wait. My vision of them is overlaid by the things Greash told us. I squint, trying to see the expressions of those with their face shields up. A few are young, like Greash, and I wonder if they wear the Trades on their sleeves. If they’ve earned the viper through a choice that wasn’t really choice.

  I fought for it. I earned this.

  Who or what exactly did Greash fight in the Trades?

  Bade showed us maps, months ago, when we first arrived in the mountain provinces. The Trades border the sea. I assumed the region was named after our sanctioned trade zones with city-states like Ordinance. But maybe it’s more about trading the life you have for the one you want. I had always considered that a Subpar thing.

  We step to the front of the line and stand before a compliance regulator. The Gem examines our Radbands. “Subpars,” she murmurs. “Miners, both.” The man beside her steps forward and appraises me.

  “Are you the one they call the Scout?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I answer. “I was lead ore scout of Outpost Five.”

  “She’s not just any Subpar,” he says to the compliance regulator. “If what I’ve heard is true, she’s a Delver.” My ears prick at the word. Only Delvers can earn a place inside the underground compound.

  “I’m commissioning her as a Miner.”

  He leans in. “Meredith will want her alive.”

  “If what you’ve heard is true, she’ll survive long enough for Meredith to get here and commission the girl herself.” She lifts a pile of clothes and shoves them into my arms, followed by a satchel, canteen, and items I instinctively reel back from. A flash dust pail and sifter. “Take them,” she orders.

  I grasp the pail, staring her down with everything I feel. I can’t believe I’m back to being the Congress’s miner. I yank the sifter from her hand, but I’m not prepared for the memory that crashes into me.

  Mere.

  Roran’s mother. My friend. The woman who took in Winn with open arms, and in the next moment gave me her only hand so I’d have a chance at surviving Cordon Four. Her appendage was just like the sifter I’m grasping now. A sound escapes my lips, a breath pulled from my chest like it was punched loose.

  “What about me?” Dram says, towing me back and stepping between me and the Gem. He darts a glance at me—a look of warning and understanding combined.

  “Can you fight?” the man asks, sizing Dram up.

  “We both can,” Dram answers.

  The man hands him a rifle and a pouch of ammunition. “Don’t try shooting Striders, Gems, or anyone else. Triggering mechanism on these only recognizes the biometric signatures of vultures, gulls, and other cordon creatures. You aim at anything else, and the Striders will take you down without a second thought.”

  Dram nods at me. “She’s better than anyone you’ve ever seen fighting the things in the cordons. If you’re passing out weapons—give one to her.”

  “We need a scout more than we need another Dodger.”

  “A … Dodger?”

  “You avoid all the dangers out there—and you help everyone else do the same.”

  Dram has the look he wears when he’s trying not to curse in someone’s face.

  “Next!” the Gem calls.

  “Wait.” I step forward, willing her to be compassionate, because I have nothing—nothing—with which to bargain. “I have a friend here,” I say quickly, my words tumbling over each other. “He was processed at the same time. A Conjie. Can you assign him to our squad?” I am the reason he is here. I don’t say those words. Perhaps my eyes do. There is a black space inside me, widening with every moment—every horrific encounter here—because I know that whatever we’re going through, it’s worse for Roran. I still have my hands.

  “I could mine extra dust, work longer—”

  “Your memorial pendant.”

  “What?”

  Her violet eyes drop to my neck. “I’ve heard that Subpars from the outposts wear them. Do you have one?”

  “Two.” My voice is a stark whisper.

  “Orion—” Dram says.

  “Wait.” I loosen my coat and reach inside my shirt, like another part of me is going through the motions. I free my glass pendants so that they hang down my chest, one blue, one yellow.

  “Don’t.” Dram bites out the word.

  I remember Roran, his hands braced against the tree he conjured, laughing as it wound upward above our heads. I remember those hands touching his mother’s arm, in the place she could still feel. When she could still feel.

  I slip Mom’s pendant over my head. Dram curses and kicks the dirt. He won’t watch me give this away because he knows it’s part of me—as much as my skin, or blood. Maybe more.

  The Gem takes it with wide eyes and a look of delight that’s out of place on her stern features. “How … quaint. We’re told your traditions, and there’s a Subpar pendant on display in the museum. It holds someone’s ashes, right?”

  “My mother’s,” I lie. Now it just holds a bit of dirt from the provinces. If it still held Mom’s ashes, I’m not sure I could’ve gi
ven even that small part of her away. With trembling fingers, I grasp Wes’s pendant and lift it over my head. I tuck my brother’s memorial glass into the Gem’s hand. “Please.” My voice breaks, which is right because I am breaking apart inside. Her fist clenches around it, and I wait to see if it will be enough.

  The Gem slips my pendants into her pocket. I wonder if she has any idea, the worth of them. They are memory and promise and hope bound together and worn as a testament. Invisible threads connecting me to the people at the other end of them, on the other side of this life. They were the last tie I had to my life before, to the girl I was.

  “Find your friend.” The Gem sweeps her hand toward the lines of Tempered Conjies. “I’ll assign him to your squad.”

  Dram doesn’t say anything as we search, but the space between us is weighted with our unspoken words.

  I can’t believe you did that.

  It was all I had to give.

  It wasn’t something you give away. Ever.

  I think of the bonding cuff I tore off my wrist and trampled in the dirt yesterday. I am losing pieces of myself all over this stretch of leached earth.

  A crowd mills around between the Striders and compliance officers, most of them cradling their arms against their chests, still coming to terms with severed limbs. Fear pushes through my veins, reminding me that I still have full circulation.

  “There,” Dram says, pointing at Roran. His back is to us, his dark hair still woven with twigs, tangled now. I can’t see his hands. Or whatever the Congress has replaced his hands with.

  “Roran!” I call.

  “Rye, maybe it’s better if I talk to him—”

  But I’m steps ahead, pushing past Tempered Conjies to get to him, to—

  He knows me at once. I’m so relieved that he’s still inside there—that the horror of processing didn’t destroy him—that I’m even glad to see the resentment banked in his dark eyes. Hate is better than hollow.

  “You’re going to be in our squad. We’ll look after you—” My words stop. They’ve hit the wall of Roran’s bloodshot gaze. It tells me not to come any closer, that I’ve already trespassed too much.

  Dram clasps his shoulder. “If we’re going to fight our way out of this, we need to stick together.”

  “Step in my steps,” Roran mutters.

  I’ve earned it: the mocking tone, those words thrown back in my face. I’ve led Roran straight into his worst nightmare.

  ELEVEN

  7.4 km from flash curtain

  THE COMPLIANCE REGULATOR eyes Roran over her screencom. “Dodger,” she announces flatly. Her assistant hands Roran a rifle and a stack of gear, tossing a pair of crude hinged hands atop the pile. Dram steps in to fasten Roran’s appendages, which is good because the kid looks like he’s eager to try driving his metal fingers into their eye sockets.

  “Your squad leader is Reuder.” She points to a Dodger leaning against the side of a squat metal building, his rifle slung across his chest. “Check in with him. He’ll show you to your barracks and rations.”

  Dram carries Roran’s gear and meets my eyes over the top of his head. He’s staring down at the things now attached to his body. Dented, twisted metal that has been worn by countless Conjies before him. He unfolds his arms, tries to let them hang at his sides, but these are not hands. And these are not the arms he knows.

  A shudder of revulsion rolls through his body. The free Conjie who laughed and spun petals from his hands is gone. In his place stands a Dodger with hands that are tools made for killing cordon creatures. Everything a boy was, cut down and fitted for a solitary purpose. A person whittled into a weapon.

  “You gave away your pendants for me?” he asks.

  “I traded the memory of my brother for the one who’s still alive.”

  I wait for him to acknowledge what I’ve said: that he is a brother to me—as much as Wes was. More, in some ways, because Wes was just a baby, and Roran and I have fought and bled for each other. But the anger in his eyes remains, and he doesn’t say any of it.

  “You don’t need a piece of glass to remember someone,” he says. He turns and walks into the barracks.

  I press my hand over my heart, where I used to feel glass, warm where it touched my skin.

  * * *

  Our squad leader speaks to us with a grumbling reluctance. I barely make out the words rations and follow before he shoves away from the side of the barracks like it was the one thing keeping him upright.

  His hands aren’t crude appendages but the perfect, carefully formed cirium prosthetics given to Conjies in Alara.

  We descend a set of wooden steps into a rectangular space. The building is windowless, half underground. Even down here, I feel particles tickle my throat, like the feeling just before a sneeze. A few of the squad members lift their heads as we near; most barely look up from their beds.

  I have to squint, my eyes adjusting to the murky half-light as we make our way toward a row of bunk beds lining one side of the barracks. Three rows of narrow beds, with gray blankets and flat pillows. There’s a rack for Dodgers’ weapons, but no space for personal belongings. Probably because nothing here belongs to us.

  Still, it could be worse. It could be a cage.

  “You’re Subpars,” Reuder says. It’s not a question, but I nod anyway. “You’re a long way from home.”

  I feel the familiar ache at the thought of Outpost Five. My eyes flick to his hands. “So are you,” I answer.

  He squints, like he’s trying to see me through a lens. Dirt and dried blood crack in the creases of his skin. “Name?”

  “Orion. This is Dram.”

  “Your other names?”

  I hesitate. It’s possible he means our last names. But his dark eyes bore into me, and I know he means the names that have stories attached to them. By now, most of the squad sits watching, listening to our exchange.

  “Scout,” Dram answers. “She was lead ore scout in Outpost Five. I was her marker. We were Fourth Ray cavers.”

  Silence greets his explanation. I’m not sure how much of it they understand.

  Reuder leans against a wooden support beam. I’m beginning to suspect he has an injury he’s trying to ease. “I’m not sure why they allowed you to live and why you’re not both headed on a hover to Cordon Two, but I will tell you this: compliance is the key to our survival. It is all that matters. If you step out of line, I will turn you in myself.” Reuder apparently believes in using all his words at once, firing them at us like the bullets of an automatic gun. I feel them land, the concussive impact. Anger blooms inside me.

  I step toward our squad leader, and Dram catches hold of my arm. “Compliance,” Dram says loudly. “Got it.” He steps on my toes until I stop pulling away.

  There are a few things I’d like to say to Reuder of the shiny Alaran hands. But I have a role to play here. If I’m to gain an opportunity to become a Delver and earn Fortune, then I have to bury my resentment deep as a vein of ore.

  “Tomorrow you begin your service to the city-state,” Reuder says, and I catch an edge of bitterness in his tone. He may be compliant, but he’s not happy about it. “This is your gear.” His muscles strain as he lifts two packs from hooks behind him. As he crosses the uneven stone and dirt floor, I notice his limp. I take the pack he shoves into my hands. “These contain your canteens, nutri-pacs, medkits, flash blankets, clothes. Armor’s over there.”

  Dram and I exchange a glance. This is more than they gave us in the cordons of Westfall. We might actually have a chance here.

  “We need another pack,” I say. “For Roran.” I motion to the eleven-year-old sulking in the corner.

  “If he wants supplies, he’ll have to speak up for himself,” Reuder says.

  Roran peels himself away from the shadows and saunters toward Reuder as if he’d like to test his spit in the man’s face. “Roran. You haven’t heard of me. My family’s dead. I can’t promise compliance, but I’ll fight the glenting vultures.”

 
Reuder studies the boy. “Three days, and the swelling will stop making you feel like your arm’s about to burst.” He pulls one of Roran’s folded arms free and adjusts the straps and pulleys of his appendage. “You’ve got to loosen these every hour. Helps with the swelling. You’ve got the fever. That’s a normal reaction to the cirium. Sleep it off.” He loops the pack over Roran’s shoulder. “I’m not going to say you’ll get used to it. But it gets easier.

  “We take our meals as a squad, at the table. Twice daily, cordon rations.” Pouches line the shelves, just like the ones King and his men ate from in Cordon Three. Real food, instead of nutri-pacs. “Fridays off,” Reuder continues, “curfew’s at ten, and, of course you must be deconned before you enter the barracks—”

  “Deconned?” Dram asks.

  “Decontaminated.” Reuder stares at us blankly. “Did you not have decon units in Westfall?”

  “We didn’t have meals there, either,” I mutter.

  He shakes his head. “How did you Subpars protect yourselves from exposure?”

  Dram shoves his sleeve up past his Radband. “We didn’t.”

  “Well, I guess the stories about you in the Honor Hall are true. The hardy and brave Subpars, who need nothing but their pickaxes and cavers’ creed.”

  “If only I had my axe right now,” Dram says.

  Reuder grins. “Welcome to the squad, Subpars.” He turns away. “You missed mealtime. You’ll find nutri-pacs in your gear bags.” He joins other squad members at the table, where they’re playing a dice game.

  “Glenting skant,” Dram mutters.

  Roran vaults into the nearest vacant bunk and stretches out, one leg dangling over the side. He’s not fooling me. I know he’s terrified.

  Whatever we face tomorrow in the cordons, it includes a guaranteed march closer to the flash curtain and its creatures. He will have heard all about it from Mere, but stories about the cordons pale in comparison to actually experiencing the burnt sands.

  Dram and I choose our bunks, and as I run my hand over the thin blanket, I try to imagine what Mere would tell her son. I want to assure him that the worst is over. Can there really be anything worse than having your hands cut off, your abilities taken?