The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf (The Tribe)
Read The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf (The Tribe) Online
Authors: Ambelin Kwaymullina
He was taking me to the machine.
I’d known they were going to start the interrogation today as soon as a smiling Dr. Wentworth had pronounced me “much better.” She’d sounded pleased. Proud of her work, I guessed. I suppose she had a right to be, because I’d been in bad shape when I arrived — barely conscious, and bleeding from the hole in my stomach where the blade had gone in. I’d caused that wound myself, by flinging my body onto one of their short, sharp swords when I realized I was caught. My desperate escape attempt had almost succeeded, too. I’d come close to death.
Just not quite close enough
.
I still couldn’t believe that Wentworth, of all people, could work in a detention center. Because, like me, the doctor had an ability. She was a Mender, and a powerful one, at that. Otherwise, she’d never have been able to make my gaping flesh knit back together so impossibly fast, leaving me with barely a scar. Only, unlike me, Wentworth had a tattoo on the inside of her wrist: the regular Gull City Citizenship mark of a seagull in a circle, but with a line through the middle. That tattoo meant Wentworth’s ability was considered harmless enough for her to be given an Exemption from the Citizenship Accords. Wentworth still wasn’t quite a Citizen, but she wasn’t technically an Illegal anymore, either. She was an Exempt, and that meant she could use her ability without fear of being hauled off by enforcers. Perhaps she even believed, as most Citizens did, that locking Illegals like me away was a good thing, or at least a necessary thing. But surely she
had
to realize that Detention Center 3 wasn’t the same as the other centers, not if the whispers about Neville Rose and Miriam Grey were true. And I knew better than to hope that they weren’t. There was no way I was going to be that lucky.
I turned my attention to my surroundings, tuning in to the feel of the dry air on my skin and the sound of two very different sets of footsteps along the corridor. My feet seemed to be making a muddled, shuffling sort of noise: a pathetic contrast to the clear, measured pace of the guard beside me. I wished, not for the first time, that I had access to my ability, but my Sleepwalking power was blocked. I reached up and slid my hand along the stone band that circled my throat, my fingers lingering over the metal pad at the front, which was set with nine tiny numbered buttons. I had no idea what the combination to the lock was, and as long as the rhondarite was touching my skin, I wouldn’t be able to Sleepwalk. And even if I did manage to get rid of the collar, my troublesome ability wouldn’t be much help. It took time and preparation and, oh yes, actually falling
asleep
to be able to Sleepwalk. Plus, using my ability took a lot more energy than I had right now or was likely to have anytime soon. I was only going to get steadily weaker in this place. Especially once I got to wherever I was being taken and the questions began.
We’d been walking through long white hallways for a while, so we had to be getting closer to our destination, except I didn’t know how close. This entire sprawling complex was made out of composite, a super-tough building material churned out by the recyclers. Every wall, floor, and ceiling was the same: smooth, pale, and embedded with tiny flecks of color that caught the light. I’d always thought composite was kind of pretty, but being surrounded by so much of it made me feel lost. It was difficult to tell exactly where in the detention center I was. Worse still, I wasn’t even sure I knew
who
I was anymore.
This morning I’d smiled at a fellow prisoner, a dark-haired, brown-skinned girl dressed in white detainee shirt and pants. She’d seemed so frail, so defeated, that I’d wanted to cheer her up. Then I’d realized I was looking in a mirror. It had been a dreadful shock. How could I have changed so much? They’d only caught me yesterday! Surely I wasn’t — surely I couldn’t be — that sad-eyed girl, at least not where it counted, not on the inside. Because she’d seemed terrifyingly vulnerable. As if she were the kind of girl who might tell secrets to the government. The kind who could be broken by the machine.
I stumbled, tripping over my own feet. My guard put out a hand to steady me, and I jerked away. He let his hand fall, and I gazed at him resentfully, thinking that he was every bit the ideal enforcer — dark hair brushed precisely into place, black uniform perfectly fitted to his lean, muscled body, and a rhondarite sword in a sheath at his hip. Ever since the two of us had left the hospital, I’d been half expecting him to say something, but he’d remained utterly, emotionlessly silent.
Justin Connor, coldly perfect, and perfectly cold
. Georgie had been more right than she knew when she had compared him to those old-world sculptures that flanked the entrance to the Gull City Museum.
But even as I thought that, unwelcome memories crowded into my mind, of times when Connor had been something very different from the aloof stranger who walked beside me now. I suddenly felt like crying, and with what was no doubt an enforcer’s instinct for weakness, he chose that exact second to glance down at me.
If he notices I’m upset, I really will die
. Taking a breath, I blurted out the first thing that came into my head, “Georgie thinks you look like an angel.”
One eyebrow soared upward. “A
what
?”
“An angel,” I repeated. My voice, to my relief, was steady, and I concentrated on pouring as much scorn as I could into it. “A human with wings, like the old-world statues. But you’re not. In fact, there’s barely anything human about you.”
“They’re not real.”
I glared at him. “What’s not real?”
“Angels.”
“Then why,” I demanded, “does Hoffman say they walked the earth during the Reckoning?”
“I didn’t think you’d read Hoffman’s
Histories of the Reckoning
.”
“Every word of the entire fifteen volumes.” Or at least, I’d had bits of the fifteen volumes recited to me by Ember, which was virtually the same thing.
“Well,” Connor said dryly, “those angels were supposed to be messengers of some kind of god. Since a lot of people thought the Reckoning was a holy judgment on humanity, it’s likely they imagined the angels. Because even if there were any gods, they didn’t cause the Reckoning. Everyone knows it was humanity’s abuse of the environment that made the life-sustaining systems of the earth collapse.”
I fell silent, wondering if he was lying about the angels. If they did still exist, the Bureau of Citizenship probably had them locked up somewhere, since the government wouldn’t be any keener on humans with wings than they were on humans with abilities. On the other hand, it had been over three hundred years since the Reckoning, so maybe the angels had died out long ago. Or maybe they cut off their wings so they could blend in and survive. Connor would do something like that. Connor would do whatever was necessary; I knew that from personal experience. He’d been so clever and convincing, first exploiting a childhood friendship with one of my Tribe members to make contact with us, and then telling endless lies, the biggest of all being that he was an administrator, a simple clerk. I should have demanded more proof that he was what he claimed to be, and I was miserably conscious of the reason why I hadn’t. Right from the start, there’d been an odd connection between Connor and me, an inexplicable bond that I couldn’t deny or explain. In secret, fanciful moments, lying beneath the night sky with the rest of the Tribe snoozing around me, I’d foolishly imagined that Connor and I might be like those binary star constellations Ember had once told me about, two stars orbiting each other. It seemed ridiculous now, and it
was
ridiculous. Only I’d felt so strongly that I’d known him — that, even though he was a Citizen, the patterns of his thoughts and emotions were akin to my own. But the truth was that he was nothing like me, and I’d never known who he was.
“So,” I sneered, “I suppose you believe in everything the government says about Illegals? That rubbish about putting the Balance in jeopardy?”
“You don’t think we need to preserve the inherent harmony between all life?”
Now he’s just trying to provoke me.
“You know I believe in the Balance. What I don’t believe is that having an ability makes me or anyone else a threat to it. How exactly is someone like Georgie supposed to be dangerous? All she can do is predict the weather!”
“Which is why,” he replied calmly, “she probably would have received an Exemption, had she not run off to join your Tribe.”
“Yeah, and spent her whole life having to apologize for being born with an ability. She’s better off with us.”
“Will you still say that when she is so busy staring at the sky that she wanders off the edge of a cliff?”
Inwardly, I flinched. I
did
worry about Georgie, who could be a little odd. But there was no way I was going to admit that to Connor. “Georgie’s fine. The Tribe watches over our own. Not that I’d expect you to understand, since it’s obvious the only person you care about is yourself.”
His blue eyes flicked to me. “You might be surprised by the people I care about.”
“Are you going to tell me that you’ve got a family somewhere? Like your Illegal cousin, for example? The one you wanted to bring to the Tribe?”
He shook his head. “As I’m sure you’ve realized, there is no such cousin. It was a ruse.”
