Halo (Blood and Fire Series (A Young Adult Dystopian Series)) (16 page)

“Still perfectly balanced!” he cries. “You’ve taken care of these knives, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I have. You recognise them?”

“Recognise them?” When he spins back to me, he is grinning from ear to ear. “I made them. Got a very good haul for them, too. How on earth do you have ‘em?”

“They were a gift from the Sanctuary.”

“A gift?” He nods to himself. “That’s appropriate. A gift. Some of my finest work right there.” He points at my daggers still buried in the tree, and I slip past him so I can go and get them. It takes a good, hard yank to free them from the wood, and I polish the edges of their blades on the bottom of my shirt. August’s grin hasn’t slipped an inch by the time I get back. He shakes his head like he’s just run into an old friend he never thought he’d see again.

“I understand you’re here to have your halo removed, then?” he says. There’s no beating about the bush; he comes right out with it.

“Yes, I am.”

The next twenty minutes are torture. They consist of this: August’s hacksaw banging me repeatedly in the back of the head; Ryka’s demeanour going from indifferent, to intrigued, to (vaguely) worried; burning hot metal digging into my throat; and finally a jarring shock that nearly unseats me.

 
“Okay. Tip your head slowly to the right,” August says.

I do as I’m told, and the warped arm of my halo moves across my field of vision. A soft smile pulls at the corners of Ryka’s mouth, and for a second there is no bravado on his face; he just looks pleased. I touch my fingers up to my neck and find… nothing.

“Here you are.” August slips around the chair and deposits a twist of shining silver metal into my lap. Still gripping on to the sides of the chair, I stare at it blankly. It looks slim and fragile resting on my legs. But that’s it. That bent, broken halo is the reason I’m here. Why I left. I reach out and touch it cautiously, and suddenly I can’t see. A bolt of panic rushes through me, and I blink hard. My eyes feel wet. My eyes feel
wet.
I shouldn’t feel so terrified by the fact that I’m crying, but I am. I brush the hot drops of water out of my eyes angrily with the backs of my hands and cough to try and mask the hideous occurrence.

“It’s okay,” August says, laying a hand on my shoulder. “You don’t need to be embarrassed. Anyone would be happy to have that thing off them.”

A distorted smile works its way onto my face when I look up. August thinks I’m crying because I’m happy. I don’t contradict him; it’s probably for the best that he thinks that. But from Ryka’s intense, penetrating gaze, I get the feeling he might suspect otherwise.

“You want to keep it?” August asks.
 
“Or shall I melt it down?”

I hold my hand out quickly, stopping him before he can do just that. “No, wait! Wait.” I try to ignore the hard look on Ryka’s face. “Do you think…do you think you could try to fix it?”

August stares at me like I’ve just grown another head. “Uh…sure. I can try, Kit, but I’m a smith, not an engineer. This is probably well beyond my capabilities. It’d be useless making you any promises.”

“That’s okay,” I tell him. “Whatever you can do.”

TAMJI

Another two nights pass by where I sleep in the shared tent with Aura and Melody. And when I say sleep, I mean lie absolutely still in the darkness, trying to get my mind to calm down. I am hyper-aware of everything, of my heart thumping in my chest, of the sick feeling in my stomach, and the panic I experience whenever I start thinking about my brother still trapped in the Sanctuary.

During the time I find myself alone, I watch Cai’s holostick, despite how bad it makes me feel. He doesn’t say much about how he handled the awakening of his emotions, but the recordings do reveal one thing: he really did care about me. The last file I watch makes my throat close up. Cai looks so boyish and
real
, standing at the foot of my cot.

You move like flowing water when you fight. It’s breathtaking, really. You’re so powerful. Graceful. I have to struggle not to touch you. All I want to do is reach out and run my hand through your hair. That’s weird, right? Sorry…”
he says, grinning. “
But then you usually kick me in the face and, well...it’s hard to feel romantic towards someone kicking you in the face.

I’m not calling you
you
anymore. I’ll think of something temporary until you can decide for yourself. You deserve a name. You deserve so much more than you have right now. I want to be the one to give you everything you could ever desire. I find it impossible that you’re not in there somewhere, waiting to wake up.

Maybe there’s a way. If there is, I’ll find it. I have to. For me and for you.

He looks so impossibly sad by the end. It’s funny how two days ago I’d never cried, and now I seem to make a habit of it. I’m going to put off watching any more until I feel stronger.

Today’s the first day I’m going to be working with Olivia. She cooks for the priestesses, and she’s arranged it so that I’ll be working with her from now on. Cooking is a completely new concept to me; I’ve never done it before, not once. Not that I have any idea how to clean or take care of the elderly or small children, which were the other options open to me, so working with Olivia seems like the best bet.

She’s an hour early when she comes to get me, but I’m washed and dressed already. I see her approaching through the mottled ocean of multi-coloured tents and go out to meet her. A large woven sling hangs over her shoulder, weighting her down to one side, which makes her list as she walks through the mud, her tiny bells tinkling.

“Hey!” she cries. “I brought you more clothes!”

“More cl—” I break off, take a deep breath. “I don’t need more clothes!”

“Of course you do. Ryka said it would be nice if you had something different to wear.”

“Ryka?” Inside the bag, a tangled mess of orange and green and blue and red awaits, along with the flash of silver sewn along the hems. Bells. It’s not just clothes she’s giving me. She’s giving me money, too. “I can’t take these.”

“You can and you will.” For the first time, Olivia looks a little fierce. She cracks a grin at me but I can tell she’s not going to take no for an answer. Stooping down, she plucks a sheer green slip from the sling, holding it up for me to see. I narrow my eyes at her.

“It’s a dress.”

“It is.”

“I’m not wearing a dress.”

Olivia flashes her teeth at me in an entertained smile. “And why not?”

“Because I won’t be able to move properly. I won’t be able to run.” Automatically, my thumbs move to my knife belt.

“What do you think you’re going to have to run from here?” she laughs.

Everything
, I think, but I don’t say it. “It’s just not going to happen.”

Olivia pushes past me and staggers through the open doorway to the tent, dumping the sling onto my cot. She flexes out her hands and turns to give me a hard glance. “My brother said you’d say that. He also said I had to make you see sense. I know you haven’t exactly been out wandering though town, Kit, but people are still talking. They know there’s a girl walking around with a knife belt, and they don’t like it. If it were up to me, you’d be able to arm yourself to the teeth and have at it. But there are a lot of people here who follow the Faith and the old ways, and
―
”

“And?”

“And women don’t carry knives. Not here. Jack said you knew about the changes you’d have to make in order to stay?”

“Jack said I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t lose my temper. He didn’t say anything about not wearing my knives.” Ryka may have told me it was a bad idea out in the woods, but I’ve decided that his advice doesn’t count. The concept of stepping foot into Freetown without a weapon makes a cold sweat break out across my shoulder blades. It wouldn’t feel right.

Olivia’s eyebrows draw together in a tight knit line, a comically frustrated look on her. “It’s for the best, Kit. You can’t come to work wearing them. You have to be a little flexible. Please? Can you just wear this to the kitchens with me? You can change back afterwards, I swear.”

The green dress hanging from her outstretched hand looks like something Miranda would wear. Long and flowing. I stare at it for a full minute before I reach out and take it from Olivia’s hand. “Ugh, fine.”

“Thank you!” she squeals, launching herself at me. No one’s ever hugged me before, not really, and for a moment I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. With my arms pinned to my sides there’s not much I
can
do, anyway. Olivia’s eyes are bright when she pulls back, studying me intensely. “I’m so glad.” Her face screws up. “I’m going to enjoy telling him how wrong he was.”

“Who?”

Her facial expression levels out, back to bright and happy. “My stupid brother. He said you were more stubborn than me. What was the other word he used? Yes, that’s right, indoctrinated. He said you’d never do as you were told.”

I hold my breath for a moment, because I feel strange. It literally seems like I have to push down a swell of hot pressure in my throat. It doesn’t really subside, just gets a little less intense, until I can eventually talk around it. Why the hell do I care what Ryka says to his sister about me? I only met him three days ago and during that time he’s miraculously managed to get under my skin. “Where does he train?”

Olivia blinks, clearly reading the hard look on my face. She turns away and runs her fingers over the green dress lying over my cot. “Over on the river bank close to the Holy Walk. But Kit, don’t pay attention to anything he says. He acts like a fool half the time. The other half, he’s saying stupid things he doesn’t really mean.”

I stare down at the dress and clench my jaw. “Oh, I’m sure he means it. Will you come with me?”

“Where?”

“I want to talk to him.”

Olivia sighs and picks up the dress. “I don’t suppose you’re going to wear this anymore, are you?”

I look at it and all I see is Ryka laughing at me. “No.”

******

The sound of small children squealing reaches us before we turn the corner on the path following the river to the Keep. “Hey. Hey, Kit—” Olivia reaches out and pulls me back to her side. “You can’t storm over there and start giving him hell, okay? He’s only going to react badly in front of the others. Just wait until he comes to us, all right?”

If Ryka wants to react badly then that is fine by me, but I get the feeling Olivia is going out on a limb for me right now, and if I make a scene it would definitely reflect poorly on her. I screw my mouth up and give her a begrudging nod.

“Okay. Come on.” She leads me around the narrow, rocky finger of claystone, which shelters the fighter’s training ground, and suddenly we’re on a beach. Or at least I think it’s a beach. I’ve never exactly been on one before, but I know what sand looks like and there’s an awful lot of it lying around. White and powdery with speckles of black through it. The knoll that shields the Keep, grassed on the side facing Freetown, turns into a sheer cliff face where it fronts the river, creating a sort of cove.

Fifty feet away, a group of men parry and lunge around one another, their bare feet kicking up sand as they move. Sunlight gleams off their naked shoulders, slick with sweat. As we approach, a group of small children come running out of the river, their skinny, naked bodies drenched, screaming and laughing. They don’t seem remotely fazed by the fact that thirty men are fighting only feet away. The flash of metal in the fighters’ hands means only one thing: they are using real weapons to train with, and worryingly there is a lot of bare skin on show. Olivia points over to the farthest group of fighters closest to the water’s edge. “He’s over there.”

I had already spied him. Ryka’s bright blond hair is unmistakeable, especially as we draw closer and I see that it has mostly fallen loose from his ponytail. Stupid to have hair that length when you are a fighter. Too long to keep out of your eyes, yet too short to successfully keep back. At least I can tie mine back tight. I’m still thinking about this as the first men on the beach notice our arrival.
 
Three of them stop what they are doing and pause to stare as Olivia leads me to a low, flat boulder that breaches the sand at the very base of the rock face behind them. She tugs on my arm and sits, gesturing for me to do the same.

“He’ll know we’re here for him. We’ll just wait.”

There’s an awkward look in her eye, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the reason. Over half the men have stopped training and are catching their breath, causally shooting glances at us as they talk amongst themselves and flick their knives into the sand. Nearly all of them are muscular and tall, and absolutely every single one of them wears the same tattoos tracing up the backs of their arms. The majority of the stacked lines stop mid-tricep, but some of the fighters have lines that travel all the way to the tops of their shoulders.

Olivia notices me studying them. “They’re counters,” she says, arranging her skirt so it covers her knees. The bells jangle against her shins and make bright metallic sounds where they
tink
against the rock. “They get a line either side for every fight they win.”