Beautiful Blue World (16 page)

I bit my lip. “I would
like
to tell you. I'll see if I can.”

IN THE MORNING, I
went to the Examiner's office.

“Come in, Mathilde. What did you want to see me about?”

“I have some questions. About Rainer.”

“Ah. Sit down.”

I sat.

“Is Rainer…a secret?”

“From whom?”

“The…others.”

“The other children, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I expect you to be discreet, but if you want to tell someone, I'm sure that you will do so in the right way, and for the right reasons.”

I nodded. “And also…I'm still not sure why you've assigned me to Rainer.”

“I had wanted to see if the two of you could relate to each other. If he would tell someone like you more than he would tell someone like me. And he has. You've gotten a picture of his mind. You've found his beliefs and hopes, their strengths and gaps. We can use things like that on him and other soldiers to win them over. Or break them.”

It was like Annevi's ships. Or Brid and Caelyn's codes. Or shooting down aerials. I'd hand over what I knew and let the grown-ups decide what to do with it.

“You mean you might use it to hurt people. Rainer, or other people like him.” My cheeks grew hot. “You're using us. You use all of us.”

The Examiner spoke gently. “You have every right to be angry.”

While I seethed, she went on. “We hope you will all see your work as part of our goals of keeping you safe, helping you survive the war.”

“But you only take kids you think will be useful to you! If you really wanted to save children, you would help everyone, whether they passed your stupid test or not!”

“If I could hide every child in Sofarende here, I would. If I could send you all to live in safety on an island far away, I would. Children have no place in war.”

“But I thought—but you've asked us to—”

She smiled. “Some of us here thought, what if that idea could play out the opposite way? What if we could get children out of the war by giving them a place in it? We don't have the resources to save everyone, Mathilde. I wish we did. For every single one of you that we take, we have to justify the choice. Your gifts have saved you, and we hope you can help us save others. We take those of you we think will be the most help to Sofarende, to everyone.”

Was this that objective thinking the way Gunnar had meant it? Or was this protecting one's own all over again, just making excuses for it?

“But you still choose to protect some people over others, for your own reasons. There were people like that at home, too; there were people like—”

“Like you?” Her eyes flashed, narrowing in on me.

The words hit the center of my chest like a punch. It hurt to breathe.

“When you begged me to let someone else take your place to come here, you asked that a specific, single person take your place. You did not ask that I take everyone, or just anyone. You were protecting the person who meant the most to you. You behaved selflessly—you almost missed the test to comfort your sister; you left the test to comfort your friend—but your sister and your best friend are not just anyone, are they?”

My heart swelled with love for Kammi and Megs, and my mind struggled to defend it as hot shame flooded my chest.

Was I as guilty as the others, the ones I'd talked to Mother about? The ones who'd shut us out when we'd needed kindness?

A tear escaped.

Could tears burn you?

Miss Markusen came around to my side of the desk. She knelt and gently wiped away the tear, and the ones that came splashing after it, with a clean, soft, baby-blue handkerchief.

“That is the best start, Mathilde, to learn to love. It will help you see that every person matters, that everyone is someone's loved one.”

Gunnar had said that to me. He was better at this than I was.

“The truth is, you already do. You think so carefully about how things affect people. That's why our work here is so hard for you. And it's why we need you.

“We all have to make difficult choices. If we make the right ones, hopefully they will allow others to make more right ones, and, one day, things will get better.”

When I finally looked back up at the Examiner, she said, “We are trying to make the world a safe place. You have to trust us, Mathilde. We trust you.”

MEGS AND I SAT
together at lunch, though we were both very quiet. It took me the whole meal to get out the sentence I needed to say.

“Come with me.”

“Okay.”

On the way out of the lunchroom, I caught Gunnar's elbow.

“Come with us?”

“Where?”

“You'll see.”

Making sure no one followed us, I led them up the stairs and along the hallway to my door to Rainer's room. I took the key in my hand, and just held it.

My friends waited.

“My assignment here…I spend time with a Tyssian soldier. It's my job to get to know him. To find out what he knows. That's all. I thought you might like to meet him?”

Megs and Gunnar looked at each other.

“I mean, maybe not
like
to.
Would
you come to meet him?”

“There's been a Tyssian here, all this time?” Gunnar asked.

“About as long as I've been here. If you come in, you can talk to him, about anything except our work, okay?”

They both nodded.

“And don't be afraid.”

I opened the door, and the three of us stepped inside.

“You brought people to stare at me?” Rainer's eyes opened wider as all three of us filed into my side of the room. He came close to the fence.

“To
meet
you.”

“Hello,” Megs said in Tyssian.

“It must be true, then, that Sofarenders do not go to school.”

“There's a war on,” Gunnar said. “We're learning plenty.”

Rainer smiled. I relaxed.

“Rainer, these are my friends, Megs and Gunnar.”

“Miss Megs. Mathilde told me about you.”

“She did?” Megs's cheeks went pink.

“Yes. You have been good friends for a very long time. I have not heard of you, Gunnar.”

“I'm…new. We met here.”

“The mysterious ‘here.' Where are we?”

All three of us pressed our lips tight.

“Right. The place no one talks about.”

Megs looked at me, and I nodded at her to go ahead.

“What do you want most? To win the war?”

“To go home. I have had enough of the war.”

“Us too,” Gunnar said.

“But I cannot go home.”

“Why not?” Megs asked.

“It is not honorable to have been caught by the enemy. My family will be ashamed of me. If the army found me…”

Gunnar, Megs, and I all looked at each other. I could guess by the looks on their faces that, like me, neither of them had thought about not being welcomed home if we got to go back.

Rainer wasn't welcome on either side. He never would be, ever again.

“I'm sorry,” Megs said.

“You were captured in Sofarende?” Gunnar asked.

“Yes.”

“What were you doing here?”

Rainer looked from one of us to the next. “There's a war on.”

Gunnar stared back at him and crossed his arms over his chest, but then he shrugged.

“You go ahead,” I said to Megs and Gunnar. “I'll come down soon.”

“Goodbye, Miss Megs and Mr. Gunnar. Be glad you Sofarenders do not go to school.”

Megs and Gunnar didn't know Rainer well enough to see the change that came over his eyes as he said that. It happened so quickly.

After they left, Rainer looked at me.

“Do Sofarenders seem like people who have stolen from you?” I asked.

“Your friends seemed…nice.”

“The whole world is not there for you to take. You have to let other people have a part of it.”

Rainer sighed. We both sat down in our usual spots. We were quiet for a little while.

“What did you mean, about ‘be glad' we don't go to school?”

At first, Rainer did nothing. Then he covered his face with his hands.

“What is it?”

I waited.

Finally he said, “In the Skaven lands…they made us burn down a school.”

I stared at him. He didn't move. He kept his face covered.

“Why?”

“The schoolmaster, he would not follow the rules. He would not conduct the school day in Tyssian. He would not teach our Tyssian history. We received orders to make an example of him….”

My heart was pounding. “But, the school was empty, right? Everyone had gone home, right?”

Covering my ears didn't block out his crying. It would echo in my dreams. My nightmares. They rose in my mind again, like when your throat warns you before you throw up.

The nightmares I shared with
him.

I didn't want to share anything with him!

I scooched backward, pressing against the wall, to get as far away from him as I could.

When I couldn't feel my hands anymore, I dropped them, letting the blood trickle back on pins and needles. I twisted my cardigan in my lap. Mother always told us not to do that; we'd stretch our sweaters out.

I wanted to lie down. But not in the cell. I needed to get out of the cell.

“You must hate me.”

What did he care if I hated him? What did he care about one Sofarender girl?

I didn't know that it was possible for my heart to beat so fast. “What
were
you doing in Sofarende?”

After a while, he said, “Looking for gaps in your border defenses in the mountains. We made it in, but not too far. As you know.”

That should have been reassuring, but…

“What were you supposed to do after that? After you got in and told others how to get in?”

It was my job to find out.

But wasn't that what Rainer had been doing? His job?

I didn't want to know any more.

I was late for playtime.

I went down the steps, looking around for my friends. No Tyssia Tag. Again.

Gunnar waved. I waved back. We would talk later.

Megs stood waiting for me, hands in her skirt pockets. I headed over to her.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I had no idea. I understand why you had to keep that secret.”

“It's all right. The war pulled us apart once already. I wasn't going to let one more soldier come between us.”

Megs smiled, but the gentle look in her eyes disappeared quickly. “Mathilde—what's wrong? You're shaking.”

I pulled my sweater around me as tight as I could.

“It's not cold out. Did something happen? Did Rainer upset you after we left?”

I nodded, but I couldn't tell her.

He had done that terrible thing. And he lived right here in the building with us, where we ate and slept and played.

Megs squeezed her arm through mine. We walked around the wooded area of Faetre's enclosure.

I could almost pretend we were back home.

As we came out to the clearing again, we could hear it. A low, low rumble at first, then distinct.

My stomach tightened.

We all looked up as a team of tiger-striped aerials zoomed overhead.

For a moment, we all stood still. Then most of the children raced to go back inside.

The Examiner halted us on the steps.

“Stay outside. Keep playing.”

A couple of girls gasped.

“They're not bombers,” Hamlin explained. “We're okay.”

“But where are
our
aerials? Aren't they going to chase them?”

“We need to help!”

“We've given word of these sightings to the right people, but we need your protection now more than ever. Make us look like a school from the air. Annevi, you're it.”

Annevi nodded. She hit the girl next to her.

At the same time, Gunnar and Megs declared themselves it, too, Megs hitting me and Gunnar chasing after someone else. Brid slammed into Caelyn. Hamlin was also it somehow, running in the direction of Annevi to make her it again. I took off. Maybe I could get Hamlin after he got Annevi.

Suddenly we were playing the most furious game of tag in the history of the world.