Petra K and the Blackhearts (20 page)

The patrol appeared to be enjoying its advantage and taunted the boy. Its voices were suddenly familiar to me. I had not recognized them yet, but when I did I gasped: Sonia and Lenka flanked their commanding officer, Tatiana.

“Look at this worm,” said Tatiana.

“Don’t you know defacing property is a crime?” said Sonia.

“A crime against us,” chimed in Lenka. “The good citizens!”

“Worse,” corrected Tatiana. “It is a crime against the people, therefore it is a crime against yourself.”

“Worm!” yelled Sonia. Meanwhile the golden dragonka had cornered Abel into a smaller, tighter space, inches from him, their fangs bared and shining with razor sharp teeth. Bright, honey-colored drool spilled from their open mouths.

“Let’s take him in,” said Lenka. “A little reeducation in the camps down south will do him some good.”

“No,” said Tatiana. “You can’t
re
educate what has never been
educated
in the first place. I have a better idea.” She looked around to make sure nobody was watching. “I hate paperwork. It’s
sooo
boring. Let’s deal with him now. Nobody will know the difference. Who will miss a worm?”

“You mean …?” said Sonia, a mean, greedy glint coming to her eye.

Tatianna nodded, and as though bored, simply let her leash drop. The others followed suit. I turned away when I heard Abel’s shriek of agony as the beasts mauled him. The girls crouched down to better watch the bloodshed, encouraging their dragonka with wild, savage shouts.

Suddenly the scene froze as though it was a gory postcard. Then the postcard blew away in the wind, leaving behind only a haze saturated with gold and crimson blood.

“Everybody stand still! Don’t move!” somebody from the crowd shouted. It was a human voice, a living voice! The dream was over as suddenly as it had begun. My eyes shot open and there I was, back in that Half Not courtyard. But the scene had changed significantly. In the middle of the floor the singing dragonka was lying on its side, its song cut short by the teeth of a brute Boot wolfhound. A child rushed from the audience to the ailing dragonka. It was Margo! She grabbed the beast as though apprehending it. “Got it, Praise Number One Play Pal!” she yelled. Then it hit me: she was still an agent in the Youth Guard. Other agents began to swarm into the crowd. In the melee I could make out Tatiana, Sonia, and Bianka, all in uniform, directing.

“Grab her!” Tatiana yelled, when she spotted me, though in the mayhem no Boot heard her.

A Boot officer rushed to the middle of the crowd and began to shout orders, which meant that he was not alone. Indeed, looking around, I saw other unknown men encircling the crowd with their batons out.

I realized then that Luma was no longer in my lap. I scanned the courtyard but the dragonka was nowhere to be seen. I began to panic: Luma would not have run off by himself. It wasn’t until I looked up that I saw him. Encased in a flurry of gold, he rose into the sky, lifted by a swarm of smaller golden dragonka.

“Luma!” I cried. His head craned toward me, but it was no use. They had him corralled, and were taking him in the direction of the Pava River and the Palace.

Isobel grabbed me. “Unwrap my fazek,” she said.

“But Luma!”

“Luma is why I need your help! Undo my fazek!” she repeated calmly. “My wings. Loose them from their harness. Just tear the yarn off. Don’t hesitate.” I ripped with my fingernails and unraveled the material until Isobel’s wings were released from their restraints. She spread them out stiffly, her face creased with pain. She emitted quiet grunts of determination, as though her wings’
freedom hurt more than their binding. I stood back in awe. I had seen illustrations of winged Half Nots in the books of Pava history, but I had never seen wings as magnificent as this. They spread out like weathered sails that had been made supple by the winds of the sea, a translucent parchment held up to the autumn sun.

“Now stand back,” Isobel said. She began to flap. At first, only one wing would move properly, and she fell over in a heap on the dirt. She stood and began again. Soon her flapping became more coordinated, and she was able to rise a few feet off the ground before falling back to the earth again. There was a pause in the commotion as the crowd watched her try to take awkwardly to the sky. And then it happened: Isobel flew upward, then flapped after the swarm of golden dragonka. I watched her fly away, until a hand landed on my shoulder.

“Hurry, let’s get out while we can.” It was Abel at my side. “It’s a setup. We only have this one chance or we will be arrested.” I stood and followed. Fortunately for us, the rest of the crowd was not going peacefully either. The Boot had misjudged them and soon they were overrunning the agents who tried to block the gate. Fights broke out and I could hear the barking of more red wolfhounds from the entrance.

Abel and I scampered toward the barking, for there was no other option. Our only hope of escape was to duck under the chaos of the rioting. While the Boot officers were busy with other, more serious threats, Abel was able to dart through a hole in the crowd and out the door, but when I tried to pass I felt a hand reach down and grab me by the collar of my coat. I looked up and saw a bald-headed officer holding me firm. He pushed me down to the floor, then put his forearm across my throat. I struggled to break away but his grip was too tight. I began to choke.

Then suddenly I was free again. Looking up, I saw Jasper clinging to the back of the agent, like a spider that had dropped from the ceiling—he was holding a vial under the agent’s nose,
causing the man’s strength to wane. He looked at me, as if in apology. I gave a quick nod of gratitude and tried to scamper under the legs of the crowd, but at this point the Boot had fully blocked the entrance and were brutally beating all those who made any attempt at escape. Suddenly I heard an ear-piercing shriek come from behind me. And then the room went silent. Everybody turned to look, as if what had happened was unimaginable, even to the most cold-hearted of us.

There, on the floor, was Jasper. Over him stood the Boot officer he had tried to sedate. He was bending over Jasper’s unmoving body. The look of pain—or perhaps not pain, more like awakening—on the Boot officer’s face was the first thing I registered, then the fact that Jasper had still not moved. I, and everybody else in the room, knew Jasper would not move again, that he was dead, that he had been killed by a blow from the Boot. It was as if when his spirit left his body it had sucked all the energy from the room along with him. Only that it shook me the hardest, because he had died for me, to save me.

Then, a shout broke the silence. The sound pierced my ears like a shattering glass. More surprising, the scream had come from me. I charged the Boot officer, flailing him with my fists. He stood motionless, absorbing my feeble blows. After a moment of this, I was dragged off him from behind by a pair of arms. It was Deklyn, who whispered in my ear: “Come, let’s go. We have to get away, now!”

I
was told later that Deklyn led me out of the courtyard with no interference from anybody. I understood that the Boot then resumed their raid, after a troop of reinforcements showed up. Deklyn used a sleeping potion to keep me pacified through the night. I guess caring for me gave him something to do in his mourning.

“Where is Luma?” I said with a start, once I woke.

“Relax,” said Deklyn.

“But where is he?”

“Taken by the swarm of golden dragonka,” he said. “Isobel has not returned, either.”

“And Jasper?” I said. “Was that real, or was that part of my dream?”

“That is real,” he said gently.

“Then he is dead?” I asked, though I knew the answer. Deklyn merely nodded. “Where is he now?”

“His body was removed by the Boot. To hide their crime, I suppose.” He looked away.

I kept quiet regarding Jasper after that, seeing the look that had passed over Deklyn’s face. With Jasper and Isobel gone, there was only me, Abel, and Deklyn. All I wanted was to fall asleep and think about it no more. But Luma was also gone. After all that, the Haints got what they wanted. A full-grown heart for Archibald.

“When I get some messages out to the resistance in other parts of the city, we will be able to better regroup,” said Deklyn.

“They are cutting the dragonka up in the basement,” I said. “For their hearts. Or, for a heart. Luma’s.” But I had said it too late.

“What do you mean?” he said.

I explained what I had seen in the Palace. As I did, I could sense thoughts racing behind Deklyn’s calm expression.

“Luma is the one, isn’t he?” Deklyn finally said.

“Which one?” I asked.

“The one that can save Archibald. The one with Archibald’s new heart growing inside him. We heard about it from our spies, but we hear a lot. I thought that was just a silly Half Not rumor.”

“No,” I said. “It is true. It is why Isobel risked her life to follow them.”

“We have to get into the Palace,” Deklyn said.

“But how? They already know me by sight there. Besides, you can’t just walk straight into the Palace, what with the Boot everywhere.”

“We won’t,” said Deklyn, thinking out loud. “We won’t walk straight in. We will walk straight
under
.”

“Under? How?”

“With this!” Deklyn said, holding up the map I had given him. “Of course, the Palace has a pneumatic station. All we have to do is follow the tubes, according to the map.”

“Let’s do it!”

We looked excitedly at each other for a moment.

“We may get Luma, but nothing will bring Jasper back,” I said suddenly.

“Nobody said it would,” he responded. I fell silent. Deklyn was the most alone person I had ever met.

W
E AGREED TO LEAVE
that very night. But before we embarked on our mission, we needed a few things, like torches and food. I thought the supplies would be hard to find, now that we were implicated with illegal dragonka racing, but as soon as we left the underground, shopkeepers were beckoning us over, offering us what they had.

“Killing a child, it’s not right,” one said.

“A child of Jozseftown, moreover,” said another.

“Anything you need,” said one more, “just come to us. There is a lot of anger here. People have been letting this kind of thing go on too long. And who pays for our complacence? A child.”

Abel came up to us. “Didn’t you hear? The numbers of the Resistance Movement are swelling. No way the Boot would come back now.”

“It is too late for the Resistance Movement,” said Deklyn.

“What do you mean? Now we can have as many races as we want.”

“You don’t understand,” said Deklyn. “There is more at work here than just the dragonka races! Grow up a little!” Abel looked stunned. He walked away, hiding his hurt under the brim of his hat.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said to Deklyn.

“I know, but he has to learn.”

“But you don’t have to teach him. Let the world ruin his dreams, if they have to be ruined.”

Deklyn looked away. “Come on,” he finally said. “We need to get moving. Heaven knows what they are doing with Luma right now.”

“He is OK,” I said with confidence. “For now.” Deklyn nodded, conceding that I could feel things that he could not, regarding Luma. For now, I knew, we were bound by an invisible string.

Later that evening, when we had everything we needed, we departed through the sewer grate. Deklyn unfolded the map and guided the way, but not before he summoned a glow cloud to help us. The sewers under Jozseftown had never felt so spooky yet so familiar to me. I had grown accustomed to dark, forbidden spaces. We started off hesitantly. There could be no making mistakes or getting lost. That might mean certain death, as the sewers were so mazelike. Somewhere under the Pava River, Deklyn hushed me.

“Do you hear that?”

At first I did not know what he was talking about, but after a moment, I heard it, too. The whoosh got loud, then whooshed right past us, like the sound of a stone being thrown past your head. It was the pneumatic system. Somebody was sending mail!

“We have to get moving,” he said. “That letter looked like it was heading to the Palace.”

“But we are going in the wrong direction,” I said. Deklyn had started out down a dark corridor that we had just moments ago passed.

“No,” he said. “This is the way.”

“You got mixed up,” I said. “We were going the other way.” But the truth is that the tunnels all looked so alike, even I had become confused.

Indeed, it wasn’t long before we realized the layout didn’t match with the map. We were lost in the sewers under the Pava River. We bent over the map, studying it.

“I think we are here!” he said, pointing at a coordinate.

“Shhh!” I said. “Do you hear something?”

The sound grew louder.
Feet sloshing through the water
. Lots of feet, like an army of rats were approaching.

“We have to hide!” Deklyn said, looking around.

But there was nowhere to hide, so we fled down the dark tunnel again. But before long came sounds of more rushing feet. Then a glowing appeared from the darkness in front of us. No,
they weren’t rats, they were tiny golden dragonka, their mouths open, baring their fangs. The discarded, untrainable dragonka that had been so mercilessly cast down the plumbing by the Ministry—grown fierce and bloodthirsty. There was no time, we had to turn and flee in the direction of the other footsteps. Only ahead of us we saw a troop of Boot officers, with a map that looked similar to ours. Their torchlight did not reach us, so for a few moments, we would remain out of view.

Deklyn looked at me and smiled. He put his hand on my shoulder to comfort me. We had tried. Then suddenly I was pulled backward. I toppled through a maintenance shaft and saw Deklyn leap in after me, shutting the gate behind him. I looked up. It was Sytia, the Kubikula.

She hugged me, and I hugged back. Then she beckoned us to follow her, until we arrived at another artery that aligned with the map. She pointed and gestured. We had escaped the Boot once more. Sytia waved goodbye as we continued on our way, her sweet grunts following us as we went. Soon we had crossed under the entire Pava River and headed toward the Palace.