I wake up screaming in the dark. The hut is cold and quiet. The temperature fell sharply as I slept. The hearth holds only the faintest embers. I shuffle to the door and step outside.
The bare dirt around me looks like the surface of the moon, soft gray in the starlight. I stare up at the countless pricks of light. I see no bats. I wonder...
Emma, are you there?
I send the thought up, remembering how we spoke through the stars in the Green Tower. She knew her father was going to put the collar around my neck. She led me right into it. But she’s still Emma. This was the only way, she said. Can I still trust her?
Emma...
I call out for her many times, focusing on the stars, but eventually shiver with cold and give up. I return into the hut and summon the air to move three logs from the stack of wood onto the coals. Breaths of wind bring the fire to life, flames licking up the logs. Warmth drifts out. I curl up on the bare dirt floor and sleep again.
A distant hammering sound wakes me. Morning light gathers in the room, spilling through cracks in the wooden door and the single window on the opposite wall. Cold lingers along the ground. I put three more logs on the coals and drag the table closer to the hearth. The last of the cornbread breaks the night’s fast. There’s no milk left to wash it down.
They do not feed them in Green, said the boy-king, William.
Maybe not, but the forest had food some of the time. And the Green Tower had the Jubilee feast. All I have now is a jar of corn kernels. Joan said the animals would bring what I needed. I imagine mice scurrying into the hut and depositing cheese on the table, but the thought only makes me laugh. I search the hut and find nothing new, so I go outside.
The three suns have crested the horizon. For the first time I see others out on the surrounding fields. The hammering sound comes from a hut set amidst a field of high, golden grains. I go to the border between the fields, studying the crop. Their tassels are thick and ripe at the end of each grain. Wheat, maybe. I reach forward slowly but my hand hits the invisible wall. For good measure, I try the wind and get the same result as the day before: nothing.
“Hello?” I shout. “Is anyone there?”
The hammering stops.
There is no motion from the field of golden wheat, but to my left a boy approaches and stands at the corner of his plot of dirt. He watches me as I walk toward him. His black hair hangs straight. His eyes are narrow and hard, just as they were in Blue, Red, and Black.
“Cipher,” he grunts.
My fists clench. “Max.”
3
“AND I THOUGHT it couldn’t get worse...” Max glares at me. We stand within reach of each other at the corners of our fields, wearing the same soft Yellow garb.
I’m wielding the wind, ready for anything, but the blue threads can’t pass through the invisible wall between us. Neither can Max. The barrier meets here at a square angle, marking the separation of our fields. Dirt is under my feet. Small green shoots under Max’s. The rising suns cast shadows so long that his figure and mine seem to meet in the distance.
The last time I saw him was when Emma and I went to the Black Tower’s land to save my mother. Black had captured Max from Red, after I’d taken his place as Alpha. He had been with Kiyo in Black, in a small village. She had called him Lord. He’d remembered nothing of what had happened in Red. The look in his eyes tells me he remembers now.
“How did you get here?” I ask.
“You...” The word leaves his lips like venom.
“What about me?”
“I was the Alpha. You let Black catch me.”
“We had a deal,” I say. “We divided Red’s Scouring team fair and square. You picked your six. You got caught.”
“You’re the reason I’m stuck here.” The muscles of his jaw, unbearded as he was in Black, tense and strain like he’s chewing a lemon. “You have no idea how many days I’ve wasted away in this place.”
“It seems better than that Black village. How’d you get here?”
He shakes his head. “I see you haven’t changed.”
“But I have,” I tell him, as if he cared. “It hasn’t been easy for me either. I got caught by Green. I got killed, and wiped, twice.” My hand goes to the collar at my neck. “Emma tricked me.”
Max’s clenched jaw turns into a grin. “Serves you right.”
Taking a deep breath, I remember the blade at my neck in the dark room on Black’s land. This boy wanted to kill me. He would try again if he could get through the wall, but I could take him. I defeated Baron, who was stronger in Green than Max ever was in Red. But I have changed... Max must have something in his past worth discovering, like Baron and his giving, like me and my research.
I make my voice as calm as I can. “How did you get here, Max?”
“Betrayed, like you,” he says. “Kiyo did it.”
“Kiyo?”
“Your friends are not as reliable as you thought. Or maybe they’re just as selfish as you are.”
“There must be a reason,” I say, but it comes out weak, unsure. Emma couldn’t betray me. She said it was the only way...
Max leans forward with his hands pressed against the invisible wall. “There’s one nice thing about you being my neighbor.”
Something in his face, his closeness, makes me step back.
He bends down and uproots a tender green shoot from the soil beneath him, then slaps his hand to the wall, pressing the green shoot to it. “This is rye. You need nine grains, and this is one of them. I will see to it, personally, that you never get it. Better get used to being a serf.”
He drops the green shoot on the ground, then turns and walks off. The uprooted plant is only a foot away, but the wall stops my hand. I call after him. He doesn’t slow or glance back. I sink to the ground, feeling confused and defeated.
“Hey!” someone shouts. “You!”
A boy approaches from the left, plodding along slowly. Like Max and me, he wears a yellow tunic—though his shows dirt and sweat stains. I stand and watch him carefully, wondering if I’ll recognize him, too, but I don’t. His eyes look tired and his hair is a short stubble.
He stops five paces short of the line between our lots. He leans on the staff of a hoe, pressed against the dirt. There are only a few grains around him, growing at different heights and in different places with no obvious pattern. He smiles slightly, which makes his ears protrude from the sides of his head and gives him a playful, goofy look.
“I’m Drew,” he says. “I’d shake your hand, but you know...”
“Right, the wall. I’m Cipher.”
“Max don’t like ya much.” The boy yawns. “Ya alright?”
“Not exactly.” I point along the line of the invisible wall. “I don’t like being trapped.”
“Eh, ya get used to it. Whoa, where’d ya get that scar?”
I lower my hand. “It’s a long story.”
“Ya got one on ya foot, too. And ya other hand. They all look the same.” He studies me curiously. “Most folks wake up clean and healthy here. Ain’t much room for pain, or scars...”
“How long have you been here?” I ask.
He starts counting on his fingers. “One, two, three—” Then he laughs like it’s some big joke. “Who knows? Maybe fifty years?”