Once, I stood on the opposite side, facing them down. Now they are my allies, and I will watch them destroy everything.
As the scene finally comes to its awful end, General Caitoman turns and speaks quietly to Constantine. This time, his voice is not full of cold humor. He is annoyed.
“I will have that woman’s words investigated,” he murmurs. He means the rebel, I realize, who’d dared to speak. “They will not amass their army.”
Army. I feel Constantine’s emotions surge again, then settle into a careful tension.
And suddenly, with a start, I know the real reason why Constantine had come to witness these punishments. It isn’t because he is bored. It isn’t because he’s trying to discipline me—although I know he relishes that.
It’s because he needs to see these rebels’ lives ended before his eyes. It’s because he sees them as real threats. Because he is afraid. And that means he knows there must be some truth to the woman’s words.
I am just one of many, she had said. Your Federation will fall. It is only a matter of time.
And I realize that maybe, just maybe, the reports of unrest inside the Federation are more serious than I thought. That the cracks might run deep enough to shatter it.
2
RED
There’s a word in Maran that I like. Restitution.
Adena explained it to me yesterday, when we were stripping the bark off a tree to fashion makeshift weapon harnesses.
Restitution? Adena had said. It means the return of something lost or stolen from you. A correction of wrongs.
There’s no equivalent word in Karenese. Inside the Federation, you’re told that those capable of claiming something for themselves are the fateful owners. If you’re too weak to hold on to what you love, the thinking goes, then maybe you don’t deserve it. Maybe it belongs in the hands of someone else.
It’s nice to know that this isn’t what others believe. And I can’t help but wonder: What else do I not know?
I crouch among the bushes lining the edge of a hill, my gaze following the double steel walls ringing Newage. This is the safest vantage point, a spot hidden in thickets and trees from which the train station set up by Karensan workers is clearly visible.
Behind us is our crowded campsite. Not that there are many who survived the siege: Two dozen are uninjured, a dozen are wounded. Jeran, Aramin, Tomm, and Pira are among the Strikers I know here. Adena calls us—what was it?—a ragtag team. Not wrong, I guess—we are ragged. But everyone still keeps things tidy. Drying clothes are hung in a neat line. Shoes are lined up and polished to the best of our abilities. You have to keep morale up, right? Some sense of order.
There must be clusters of survivors in other parts of the hills sloping around the edges of Newage, although none of us can reach one another given the way the Federation has positioned its troops in the forests. Even so, we’re enough of an annoyance that the Premier is still hunting for us.
Specifically, for me. His first Skyhunter. His worst mistake. Maybe I should be proud of myself.
I try to sit as still as I can. Behind me, I can feel Adena fiddling gently with my injured wings. One of them was mangled in the last siege, leaving a deep gash in the metal and severing a few of the wires and tendons servicing it. I’ll be honest—I didn’t think these wings would hurt if they broke. But they sure do, the wound leaving a deep ache that rings through my bones. Adena has tried to stabilize them as much as she can, but I can’t open them without feeling like some goddamn knives have stabbed through my back.
“Their train’s ready to move out?” she asks me as she works.
“Tomorrow, I hear.” I point down at the tracks that wind away from Newage’s walls and out into the hills dividing Mara from the rest of the Federation. “It looks like they have what they need on the cars.”
“Cars?”
“Carriages? They are loaded,” I rephrase, trying in vain to explain it in Maran. My eyes swivel briefly to the rest of our encampment, searching for Jeran. It is always harder to be clear without him translating at my side.
Adena casts me a sidelong glance. “Your accent’s a little better.”
I shrug. “As long as you understand.”
“You still sound more formal than you need to be. You don’t have to emphasize every syllable.”
“How should I say it?”
She repeats the same phrase, and I try to concentrate on the differences. “See? I’m not straining each word the way you do.”
I say it again, struggling. In the months since the Federation’s final siege, I have learned enough Maran to communicate with the others on a basic level. But moments like these still confuse me.
Adena twists something against my back, and I feel a twinge of pain. “Tomorrow isn’t much time for us,” I continue. “But we don’t have a choice, do we?”
She sighs. “No, we don’t. That train will be carrying at least several dozen Maran prisoners of war bound for the capital. If we’re going to free those soldiers and destroy that track, we’ll need to do it by morning.”
I’m tempted to say that it’s better to leave the Maran soldiers to their fate. Even if we could free them, where would they go? You’d just delay the inevitable. General Caitoman sends more soldiers and Ghosts into the forests every day. They’d find them eventually if they continued to hide near the city. And then what?
But I don’t. What’s the point? If we’re the only ones left to fight against the Federation, to slow them down, and we don’t act, then no one else will. So I nod. “Better to do it now,” I mutter in agreement.
“Damn everything, but I wish Talin were with us right now,” Adena mutters. “She could sneak around better than the rest of us combined.”
My thoughts turn, as always, to Talin.
For a long time after we were separated, I listened for her—hoping for her presence to come through our link. Now and then, I felt stabs of pain from her, of heartbreak and anguish. I spent many of those first nights of our separation sleepless, retching, feverish, wondering what they might be doing to her. It took every last one of the others to prevent me from going off in search of her.
Over the last few months, though, there has been little from Talin. Whenever I reach out to her, I sense only her heartbeat thrumming in rhythm with mine. Still, I’m hopeful. You have to be, right?
What would I say, if I could reach her?
Be safe. Protect yourself.
I’m sorry.
I love you.
I wait and wait. But there’s nothing.
The ways they could have hurt her haunt my every nightmare. I wake each night in a sweat, whispering her name, my mind seared with the image of her left on the battlefield, when I was unable to save her. Maybe her heartbeat in our link is just a figment of my imagination. Maybe she’s already dead.
And if she is, it’s my fault.
I feel the edges of a deep, familiar panic at the recesses of my mind. The memories of my lost sister and father, their Ghosts snarling at me. If we go down to the walls of Newage right now, will I confront a Ghost with Talin’s face?
These questions are still swirling when a sharp pain suddenly lances down my back. Instinctively I whirl, knocking Adena off-balance enough to send her tumbling.