Now I slow my walk as I reach our quarters. From the end of this muddy path, I can see the humble little home I grew up in, its door open to let in fresh air.
If I could have, I would’ve moved my mother into the Striker apartments with me years ago. But even my position isn’t enough for the Senate to let her into the Inner City. It would set a dangerous precedent, said the Speaker. Instead, my friends each gave their offerings, the limits of what they could do to make her life in the Outer City more bearable, without inviting punishment on her or me. Corian made sure her house was built better than many in the shanties. The walls are now made of solid terrywood, and our slanted metal roofs are sturdy and don’t leak. Corian helped us install a proper chimney that Adena hammered into shape in her shop, so that my mother could cook indoors, and dug a tunnel underneath the house so that she had something like a toilet instead of the public outhouses at the end of each makeshift street, places so filthy that my childhood nightmares were filled with visions of falling into their dugout troughs. Knowing my mother’s skill with plants, Jeran had brought her seeds from his family’s garden—lettuce and carrot and radish—and even climbing roses, which now hang their beautiful blooms along the walls, and pink feather grass, which sways in a ring around the house.
She’s feeding a log into the stove when I step up to the open door. I just stand there for a moment, watching her sturdy shoulders at work, unaware of my silent arrival.
The house is small but warm, the single room barely big enough to walk a few steps from one end to the other. Potted plants crowd the damp corners and leaning ledges. Lush green vines, still dewy from being watered, drape down from her rusted windowsill. A little tree with long spring-colored leaves sits by the doorway, its scent as clean and sharp as lemon.
It’s not our home. But you try your best to take your home with you, even if it’s a shack in the middle of a desperate place.
She pours a spoonful of water onto the stove’s hot surface. Steam sizzles, humidifying the space. When she finally steps away from the flames, I knock twice against the doorframe.
She turns at the sound. Her eyes widen with joy at my smile.
Every corner of my heart fills as she steps toward me and reaches up to cup my face in her calloused hands. “There’s my girl,” she signs, then runs a hand through my hair. “She doesn’t visit often enough.” She pats my cheeks and adds aloud, in Basean, “Or eat enough.”
Like my Striker companions, with whom I flip back and forth regularly between our sign language and Maran, my mother communicates with me in a mix of Maran sign language and, when she can’t quite figure out what signs to use, in Basean. I lean into the familiar rhythm of my homeland’s tongue on her lips and the coarse movements of her fingers, then hand her the bag of spice from the market. “You said you missed woodruff.”
She sighs at the dried leaves and flowers, taking a moment to inhale their aroma. “Oh, it’s perfect.” She nods toward the table. “Sit down. I’ll fix something for you.”
“Ma, I’m not hungry.”
She clicks her tongue disapprovingly at me. “Never hungry, never learned how to cook. What a daughter. Tea, then.”
I follow her to the makeshift table in the corner of the room. It’s only large enough for two people to crowd around. As I take a seat, my mother puts the dried woodruff into two tin mugs. Then she takes a pot off the fire and pours me a steaming cup of water.
“Will you stay for dinner?” she asks me.
I close my eyes and inhale the scent of tea. “Can’t. I have to be back at the mess hall.”
She smiles a little. “How are your friends?”
“Fine.” I hesitate, not sure how to begin my story of what had happened in the arena.
“Tell Adena that I appreciate her bringing over that box of ginseng for me.”
“She said you helped her prepare some samples of camifera so she could experiment with its strength as catapult rope.” I smile briefly. “She always tells me no one has steadier hands than you.”
My mother shrugs and winks at me. “Well, she’s not wrong.”
Then I reach toward my belt and unhook a pouch of coins. Half of my weekly pay. I put it on the table between us.
She smiles sadly at me. During a normal visit, she would scold me more, telling me to keep a higher portion of my wages, buy myself something nice. But she knows I’m here because I always visit before we head back to the warfront. She knows this time is harder, given Corian’s death. So she spares us her usual argument and just leans her head against her hand. “I heard the Firstblade paired you with an unconventional Shield,” she says.
The rattle of her breathing is strong tonight. I’m lucky that the Federation’s poison gas that had destroyed my vocal cords did not permanently injure my lungs. My mother wasn’t so fortunate. Her lungs have never fully healed from that attack, and Mara’s cool, damp winters haven’t helped. Every year around this time, liquid rasps in her chest, and the shack will fill with the scent of lemongrass and mint.
“Less a Shield,” I answer, “and more a punishment for me. He was a prisoner. They said he surrendered willingly at the warfront.”
“What happened?”
I sigh. The smell of dust and sweat from the arena still lingers on me. “He was due to be executed, but I got in the way.”
“You mean you saved someone’s life,” my mother signs gently. “That’s not something to be ashamed of, Talin.”
Not something to be ashamed of. A sudden memory comes to me of the night when Federation soldiers first arrived in our Basean town of Sur Kama. I’d awoken to the sound of breaking glass, the din of voices outside. Then someone, a soldier, was dragging me out of my bed and across the floor of our home. His grip around the skin of my arm burned. I yelped, my heart startled out of slow slumber into a desperate beat, my voice shouting for my mother. And my father, where was my father? What had happened to him?
The soldier forced me to stand outside my home. When I looked up, sobbing, searching for any familiar face, I’d found myself staring up into the frightened eyes of another soldier. He’d been so young, perhaps no older than twelve or thirteen—but he was pointing a gun at me, the insignia on his red sleeves shining. My memory has blurred away the details—in my mind, the emblem is now nothing but a smear of silver.
The first soldier had snapped at the second, at the boy, in Karenese. Probably telling him to hurry up and shoot me. But the boy just stared at me, his hand trembling under the weight of the gun.
Then he said something in protest, voice small and trembling. The first soldier cursed at him, and when the boy stayed frozen, he shoved me again so that I lost my balance on my hands and knees and fell to the ground, my cheek scraping the dirt.
My eyes tilted up enough to see the cut of branches over me, the sinews of the ancient tree that twisted in front of our house. And there, I saw my mother, moving along the branch like a cat, soundless. Her dark gaze met mine, and she shook her head once. I stayed silent. The boy continued to hesitate.
The first soldier lost his patience with the boy and yanked out his own gun. Then my mother moved. She leaped down from the tree, directly onto the first soldier, and snapped his neck with such a clean break that I heard the crack ring through the air. In almost the same movement, she seized the gun from him and pointed it straight at the boy.