Outlier: Rebellion (26 page)

A stretch of silence goes before, to her surprise, Wick answers: “Like a nightmare every time I wake.”

Her heart hangs heavily for her baby.
You don’t have to feel alone, Wick. You’re never alone. You’ll always have us.
She closes her eyes, lays down beside the mattress and pretends to sleep, struggling to imagine a world …
It’d be a world without mud.

When the family’s making a fuss over breakfast, she’s in the kitchen giving Link a hard and knowing look before he leaves for school. Wick, his eyes heavy and his feet dragging, slings a backpack over his shoulder and pushes out the door, Lionis following. The Legacy Exam is behind them all now, she realizes. No more little ones to push, no more children.

No more children.

She sits in front of the broadcast for an hour, more and more coverage of the square and wreckage turning up by the day. She squints at the images that flick by, sure she sees Halvesand, sure she sees Aleksand, so sure … but when the person turns about, she’s proven wrong.
My sons are out there making right of it, making us proud. My big strong boys.
She still can’t see either of them in the masses.

Before leaving the house, she reaches into the top drawer for a clean pair of socks, and her hand happens on the tip of something sharp. Gasping, she pulls out the object—a dagger—and turns it over in her hand, gaping. Is this some orphaned project of Forge’s? What’s it doing in the sock drawer?
I’ll return it on the way to work,
she decides, admiring its shape.
I’ll return it to his shed, he’s likely to expect it there.

After a quiet midmorning, it’s in a dead train that Ellena eats her lunch, some car that hasn’t ridden a rail in centuries, pulled off its route for maintenance once and forgotten. It squats on a plot of gravel at the outskirts of the Greens, only minutes from her zone. She has a nice view of a street to her left through the grimy train window. She likes watching people stroll by. To the right, the wide sliding door reveals the green infinity, the muds.

Though she always eats here alone, today a fellow coworker spots her from across the field: the woman who works in the flowers—
the snob
. Ellena muses whether to finish her lettuce-and-something sandwich, or hide.

Too late. The woman’s big nose pushes into the train, sniffing. “What’s this here, what is this?”

Ellena swallows her bite, crumbs sticking to her lips, she says, “My little getaway.”

“It’ll do.” The woman, uninvited, pushes into the train and takes a creaky seat opposite Ellena. From a bag, she plucks a fruit and begins to peel its skin. The only other sound is the persistent breeze finding every fissure in the train to whistle through.

“I always wanted to work in the flowers. How’d—?”

“Don’t wanna talk,” grunts the woman, chewing. “Life’s got too much talk as it is. I came here for quiet.”

“Alright,” agrees Ellena, turns her attention back to the view. Two young lovers race by, hand-in-hand, and the boy tickles the girl and she screams, smacking him up his arm. Ellena smiles.

“My stupid boy-son,” the woman blurts, drawing Ellena’s attention. “He’s all sick over this girl from the inner circuit. Spends all his time with her and won’t come home for dinner. All the happiness I give, all this work, and the damn boy sells himself to some girl with big eyelashes. Who knows what the idiot’s Legacy is or what she’ll do with her life, no matter, all our money’s run.”

“I’m sorry.” Ellena takes another bite, crunching.

“Sorry, yeah, ‘sorry’ … aren’t we all. My dumb boy-son, all sold and sick and gone and going, but hey, all sons and daughters do that to you one day.”

Ellena smiles. “I only have sons.” Between bites, she says, “Two of them in Guardian, hardly see them at all.”

“Two boys from the ninth are in Guardian?” The woman squints at her, pops a wedge of fruit and chews, juice dribbling down her wormy fingers. “Unusual.”

“Yeah.” Ellena straightens her back, suddenly proud of her boys. “Both of them. Taylon himself took a liking to my oldest, last I heard. That’s the Marshal of Order.”

“I know who the Marshal of Order is,” says the woman flatly.

“Of course.” Ellena peers down thoughtfully at the last crescent of sandwich in her hand. “Halvesand only left a few weeks ago, moved to the dorms and all.”

“Halva-what?” The woman chortles. “What the hell kinda name is that?”

“Halvesand and Aleksand, they’re my two oldest. Named after gods of the Ancients, in fact. Or I think they are. I’m not very up with my histories. Both were named after gods of protection, only spelled different.”

The woman shakes her head, interest lost. “Never liked Ancient studies. Only thing them greedy bastards gave us is felling the world, thanks. Could you imagine if it weren’t for these great walls of Atlas, keeping all that oblivion out? We’re lucky, all of us, lucky our kind isn’t extinct because of those
Ancients
…”

Ellena offers a tiny smile, then finishes her sandwich in silence. When the break is over, she bids the woman farewell, but not before asking, “What’s your name? I only just realized I don’t know what to call you.”

“No,” grunts the woman. “No, no. This isn’t a friend thing happening. I ain’t got room for another, let alone one from the ninth.”

“Fair enough,” responds Ellena simply, then pushes her way out of the train and back into the fierce yellow sunlight that paints the world. As she crosses the field, the long arm of the Lifted City stretches like a finger’s shadow across the sky, reaching for her—the fingernail still smoking from the other night’s tragic event.
Just you remember,
she thinks of the sky and the snob from sixth,
like any of us, sixth ward or ninth, even things great and golden can fall.

Every time she’s called into her boss’s main office, she feels so delicate and careful, scared to touch a thing, scared to stain an important document or form or piece of machinery with her browned fingers. Today, a trace of defiance burns in her. She stands in front of his desk and waits for eight full minutes before he finally looks up.

“Ah,” he mumbles, slapping down a leaf of paper. “Here’s the shop address. Five stacks a’ paper I need, two ink cartridges, black, and an apple mash for my lunch. Here’s eleven tens, that ought to cover it.” He slides the money to the edge of the desk nearest her, then buries his fingers and nose back in the computer.

“Why am
I
being asked to do this, sir? Where are all your assistants?”

“They’re out assisting,” he grunts. “To be frank, you’ve raked the field enough for two days’ seed-sowing, I’m like to tell you to stay home a few, for the love of the Sisters, I’m just sick a’ seein’ your face out my window.”

She spots an opportunity. “Oh, you worship the Sisters too? Three Goddess? I pray to them when—”

“Only since my mother’s shoved it down my neck my whole life. And ‘worship’ is hardly the word I’d use.” He taps the money on the desk. “Go, ninth. Day’s not getting any longer.”

“Yes, sir.” She takes the cash and leaves.

The train ride to the shop is tormenting and long.
No wonder I was sent on this tedious errand …
Crowded and smelly, the occupants of the train are traded three times fold with new and smellier occupants the further into the tenth ward it goes. Pushed to the back by the onslaught of men and women, Ellena just clasps her eyes shut and counts away the minutes as the train lurches to stops, springs ahead, lurches, springs, lurches. The smell of sweat and soiled feet never ease up, a permanent and unwanted traveling companion.

Disembarking somewhere at the south end of the tenth, she walks along a wide, foggy street in a part of town she’s never before visited. Even in daylight, every alleyway and sewer grate and rooftop seems to have eyes. Her hairs stand on end and she feels deep relief when the shop’s name is spotted ahead on a half-rotted sign.

Inside, she tediously pokes through the aisles, gathering in her arms the stacks of paper and the ink cartridges, which were particularly annoying to collect, as there were so many different varieties to choose between. Waiting in line to make her purchases, two men behind her complain to one another of a smell. “Like sewage,” one of them says. “Like fettered rats and mealworms,” the other agrees. Ellena rolls her eyes and begs for the line to move faster, knowing the scent the whiners behind her are catching is hers.
Let me at your faces,
she muses,
and you won’t smell a thing, for all the blood coming out your nose.

Hardly a second after the dark thought, the shop doors burst open, and a dozen or so boys charge in yelling commands, slinging chains and blades, hollering. There’s a scream, cursing, and a loud crack of a whip. Ellena holds the items tight to her chest, eyes wide as the invading robbers—all boys, all dressed head to toe in black, in chains, in grease—take control of the store and its customers, ordering all money be handed over else a hurt be put on anyone opposing.

“YOU!” cries one of the boys, thrusting the butt of his sword into a woman’s face. “Down! Don’t you look at me, I saw that! Down, down!”

Ellena keeps her eyes glued to the floor, her breath gone heavy, throat tight and dry.
Don’t look at them
, she begs.
Don’t look. Let them have their play and don’t look.

But there’s one that catches her eye, despite all her restraint. “Money, gold, and that fine choker you got,” he tells an old lady ahead in the line, his voice slippery as silk. Eighteen years old maybe, messy hair black as pitch, greasy gunk smeared around two hungry eyes. His smile is sweet as a wolf’s on the prowl.

“This man’s being smart,” a boy calls from the back.

The eighteen-year-old looks up coolly, responds, “So make him unsmart.” A thump of some weapon against flesh answers back, one shriek, then silence again. The boy calmly turns back to the old lady. “Tell me, is this fine choker of yours my birthday present?” She says something about just taking the damn thing and being on his way. “Thank you. No kinder words have kissed my ears.” He makes a sidelong glance, his eyes moving down the line.

His gaze meets Ellena’s. She looks down at once, items clasped tighter to her chest.
Look away, look away.

Then he’s standing next to her, eclipsing the sunlight from the front glass of the shop. “Hey, pretty.”

Ellena doesn’t look up, doesn’t even flinch a finger.
Just say nothing, say nothing and don’t look. He will ignore you as everyone does. Just another flower in the garden. Just another clot of dirt.
She clenches her jaw and stares at the shoes of the person in front of her.

“Hey, pretty,” he repeats gently, right into her ear.

It may anger him not to respond. “Hi.”

“Making yourself a paper castle?”

After a second of confusion, her eyes flick down, reminded of what she carries. “The paper’s for my boss.”

The boy with blackened eyes gracefully fetches a bag from one of the others, flings it open, presents it to Ellena. “Perhaps a boy needs paper and—is that ink?—for his eighteenth year of life. Don’t you agree?”

Eighteen
, she thinks bitterly.
I’m good as Forge with my guesses.
“It’s for my boss,” she repeats quietly.

“I imagine so’s that cash you have in your hand.” Ellena clenches the cash tighter in the cage of her fingers. It crinkles. Her life in mortal peril, and her last dying thought will be:
My boss will be so, so angry …
“A boy needs cash too. A fistful of tens, is that?”

“So take it,” Ellena says calmly.

“Might you kindly put it in my … sack?”

Her fingers open, the eleven crinkled tens drop to the ground, not in the sack. Despite his dark and unblinking stare, the boy seems to take no insult. Instead, he smiles and slowly lowers himself to her feet to fetch the money.
I could kick him right now in the teeth. But instead of just his anger, I’d then invite the dozen of theirs on me. I wouldn’t flee this store alive—just another lowborn name the night broadcast fails to mention.
He seems to linger below, and she does not dare inspect what it is that keeps his attention. Then, ever so leisurely, he rises, and she knows his eyes run up her body like greasy black spiders. She doesn’t care. Her heart is racing and tiny muscles twitch as she wrestles her face into submission—
no fear, no panic, no crying.

And then: “Please,” she finds herself saying. “Please, the money belongs to my boss. It was only lent to me to get these supplies. Please, I’ll lose my job, my only job.”

The boy’s risen, his lips hovering at her ear. Almost politely, he says, “There are necessary evils in the world, and then there are just evils.” The boy tilts his head, and she feels his cool breath on her neck. “Which one’s your boss, and which one am I?”

Gently slipping the paper and the ink from her arms, they drop into the sack. Everything she’d come here for, taken in one cool swipe of his pale hand.

It’s only now that Ellena remembers the dagger stowed away in her back pocket.
I forgot to deposit it at Forge’s shed … I still have it.
Her mouth is dry and her fingers shake.
I could give him a good cut, the door is only right there. I’d make it out easy and—

When he slings the sack over a shoulder, that’s when she sees it: an ugly wound running like a snake down his forearm, to the wrist.
He’s already been cut
. A fresh wound too, she can tell.

Is it the mother in her that inspires her next action? Or the reckless fool?

Ellena grabs that wrist. The boy with blackened eyes lifts a brow, his dark gaze meeting hers again—but he does not pull away. He only watches. Carefully, she turns his wrist over, studying the wound with just a look.

“Occupational hazard,” the boy murmurs, the trace of a smile playing on his long lips.

I won’t give you a cut,
she decides.
I’ll take you a cut.

Then she works her talent. Before their eyes, the wound transfers like data between disks, like breath between a kiss, undrawing itself down the length of his arm and drawing up hers. For a brief moment, the boy seems genuinely amazed, all the coolness and savvy of a man robbing a store replaced with boyish wonder.