Xuan blinks at me, a fluffy layer of confusion not quite shrouding the calculation beneath. “I don’t know what a Menghu is. I have spent enough time running between the City and Kamar to know Outside patrollers weren’t defending City walls against anyone from those settlements. Those Outsiders at Dazhai . . . You can smell one of them a mile away, see it in their faces, as if they gnawed the fingers off every dead soldier from here to the ocean with their own teeth. I don’t know what deals the Chairman made because of the invasion, but if those soldiers who appeared in the camp aren’t Outsiders, you can shoot me now. Whatever lines the Chairman decided to cross, they were the wrong ones.”
“Kamar settlements?” The question seems so calm and collected, as if Howl doesn’t know that Kamar is a completely fictional place, with guns and heli-planes, and soldiers created solely to make Third children and parents alike wet their beds.
Xuan nods. “Kamar’s far enough away they’ve mostly been protected from SS, and it seemed like the best direction to head.” He fiddles with the mask looped around his neck, the tubes a spray of tentacles slithering down his chest. “Neither of you are on the wrong side of the Seph line, are you?”
Howl leans closer to me, jostling my shoulder before I can respond in an unmistakable signal to wait before speaking. It’s hard to keep my mouth shut, but I comply, the questions about “Kamar” foaming up to coat my tongue. They’re not sick? And somehow this medic has been there? If it really is the same place Mother called Port North, then why does it have two names? “Kamar” sounds foreign and cold; I’d always assumed it was a phonetic translation that wasn’t supposed to mean anything but “Outside.” Different from us. Fear.
Howl keeps his eyes on Xuan, his hand sliding down to touch the knife on the floor between us. “So they just let you walk out of Dazhai. With Hong Tai-ge, who hadn’t been seen since the invasion. How did you even know Tai-ge was there? Seems like that, along with anything he spilled about plans to go north, would have been privileged information.”
I nod, remembering what Howl told me before about the reports asking for Tai-ge to be brought in from the Post. Tai-ge showing up as a traitor would deplete what little morale there is for those who were loyal to General Hong before he was killed. That is to say, the entire Second Quarter. Maybe Thirds, too, since Reds were the only thing between them and “Kamar.”
Considering the lengths to which the City goes to keep information sealed tight, the soldiers who captured Tai-ge during an Outsider attack wouldn’t have been sharing anything. Not if they wanted to keep their positions.
“No problems getting the keys to his cell?” Howl continues. “Or sneaking past the perimeter guards? No one tried to stop you on your way out of Dazhai?” Howls eyes run the medic up and down, as if looking for bruises.
“What can I say? I’m an excellent sneaker.” Xuan twiddles his fingers, staring down at them with his eyes a fraction too wide, annoyed at the question.
“No communication devices I’ve missed?” Howl prods. “I’d rather you told me about them now, so I don’t have to cut them out of you later.”
“You’ve already patted me down once. You want more than that, you’ll have to give me some kind of compensation.” Xuan starts to laugh. “I’m not the one here who knows something about escaping, though, am I? I didn’t know this excursion was going to be staffed by the great and perpetually absent Sun Yi-lai.”
“We need you to give us something, Xuan.” I kneel down next to Howl, picking up the knife and shoving it in my pocket, still holding on to the hope that it’s Xuan’s annoying personality giving these shallow answers and not a ham-handed attempt at deflecting our questions. My empty stomach twists over having such a large question mark here with us in the heli, listening, maybe even transmitting everything he hears. I don’t suppose trust was ever on the table in the first place, not with June hyperventilating in the next room, but he’s not even giving us room to make a shaky alliance. “One more chance. How did you know about Tai-ge? How did you two get out of the camp? Use short sentences. Preferably the kind that start with ‘I.’ For example: I threw up hot chili sauce all over Tai-ge’s guard, and he was so upset he didn’t notice when we walked out.”
Xuan transfers his gaze to me. “I honestly can’t figure this out. That Tai-ge would go off with you makes sense. Everyone knew he wanted you.” He looks at Howl again. “But with you here too . . . You must have expensive taste in pets, Jiang Sev.”
Anger threads through me, not missing his clear evasion of my question. This is the man Tai-ge trusts? I shake my head, scooting back a few inches as Howl jerks Xuan’s feet aside to make room for the maps.
I glance toward the door, the propellers’ vibration buzzing up through the floor. Tai-ge will tell us what really happened once he’s not concentrating on flying. He’ll clear all this up, and even if we have to leave Xuan in a closet, we’ll have a solid path forward.
But then, a small voice inside me: What if Tai-ge lies too?
Pushing the worry aside, I help Howl smooth down the last of the papers, the seals forming bumps and splotches on the paper where the wax stuck. The lines and marks look almost like a maze.
Howl pulls out the key. “All right. Show us the information you promised Tai-ge. Tell me everything you know about the settlements you mentioned. Kamar. Things that might be helpful, things that won’t, and everything in between.”
“That I can do.” Xuan leans over the papers, checking some notation I don’t understand at the corners of each sheet until he finds the one he wants, then settles it on top of the others. “Get the encryption key going, and we’ll start with where to land.”
Howl looks up from the encryption key’s controls. “I think we’ll need a bit more than a landing spot.”
Xuan nods. “That’s for sure. When we land, I’ll tell you where to walk. And after we walk, I’ll tell you what to say and when to duck.”
“That doesn’t work for me.” Howl lowers the encryption key, his hand dropping down to brush my pocket where I stowed the knife, as if having this conversation unarmed is too much to ask of him.
“Yeah, well, getting shoved out of a heli doesn’t suit me.” Xuan shifts back from the maps, letting his legs stretch forward again, his boots leaving a streak of dirt across the stiff paper. “And you can’t really afford to push me, Mr. Chairman’s son. They’ll kill you the minute they hear City words on your lips. Doesn’t matter how pretty you talk. Unless Blondie out there speaks Kamari, you need me. And I’m guessing that if she did, you wouldn’t need directions to Kamar.” He presses two fingers to his lips, giving us an ugly smile.
Howl seems concentrated on smoothing the edges of the paper for a moment before he looks up again. When he does, a shiver runs down my spine at the blackness in his eyes, as if his pupils have dilated to take over his entire iris. “If you say another word about June, you’ll find out exactly how it feels to get pushed out of a heli. And if you miraculously pull a set of wings out of that dirty uniform, I’ll jump out after you and cut them off.”
I try to find someplace inside me to set myself apart from the dead promise in those words. But I can’t.
CHAPTER 30
LATER, HOWL AND I EXIT the storage closet. I spread the maps across the floor next to the cargo bay doors while Howl pads the outside of the door with sleeping bags to keep Xuan from listening. June keeps her seat at the cockpit wall farthest from the makeshift cell door, ignoring me when I call her over to look at the information Xuan gave us.
I whittle my voice down to a whisper when Howl finishes and sits down at the map across from me. “Xuan isn’t going to lead us into anything immediately dangerous. He’d get killed too. And if he wanted to turn us in, he could have done it while we were still on the ground at Dazhai.”
“That’s the problem.” Howl shrugs. “Maybe he really does want to defect. But maybe someone at Dazhai saw this as an opportunity to keep tabs on us. What if I’m right and your mother only told you abou
t the cure because you’re the only one who can get it? That has probably occurred to Dr. Yang as well.”
“You think Dr. Yang would have sent a Red medic to keep an eye on me?”
“Maybe. Xuan knows the area. Tai-ge told the Reds his plan, though, so Xuan could have been sent by someone in the Second ranks as well.” Howl sighs. “And then there’s June.”
June. I glance over at her again. She looks emptied. Xuan did that.
I coil the anger in my chest down tight, gritting my teeth as I turn back to the map.
“I need whatever Xuan’s got. Coordinates,” Tai-ge calls from the halo of lights dancing around him on the console. “And an idea of what sorts of fortifications we can expect.”
“We . . .” The words die in my mouth. What does Tai-ge really know about Xuan? And underneath that question, the one Howl asked me back by the tree. How much do you trust Tai-ge?
With everything. But that doesn’t mean I don’t see his weaknesses. “Before we do that, could you tell me how the two of you got out of the camp so easily?” I ask. “The whole place was locked down.”
He doesn’t look up from the controls. “I told you. Xuan let me out. I’ve known him for years—he used to work with my father. Don’t you remember him from after the bombing, Sevvy? He’s the one who fixed you up.”
“Tai-ge, I want to know how. Did you sneak out through the fields? Steal uniforms? Hide in a pile of dead soldiers? How did you get out?”
Tai-ge’s just an outline against the cockpit window, the sun’s light painfully sharp where it touches him. “It isn’t that complicated, Sev. He snuck into the prison, told me he could help me, and we ducked past the patrols.”
Howl’s eyebrows are cocked, his lips pressed so tight together his mouth has disappeared. When he looks at me, I raise my eyebrows in question, and he shakes his head, long and slow, dismissing the bullet-point list of an explanation.
“Did you get coordinates?” Tai-ge’s shoulders relax as he lets go of the controls, then twists around in the captain’s chair to look at me. “You were in there long enough to have charted us a course the whole way there and back again.”
Howl looks back down at the map, his shoulders tense. I don’t want to give in to doubt just yet. Tai-ge is flying. Distracted. Maybe there’s still an explanation for everything. Maybe.
“We’re . . . discussing what Xuan told us,” I finally call back. “Give us a minute.”
Not exactly a lie, but I hate the way it tastes, speaking less than the truth to my best friend. I don’t much like Howl’s approving nod at my closed mouth either.
Tai-ge looks toward the closet, getting up from his chair. “Are you still worried that Xuan is going to hurt us . . . ?”
“Is there a reason we should trust him, Tai-ge?” I slide between him and the closet door.
He cocks his eyebrows. “Because I do?”
I nod, trying to swallow but nothing will go down. “We need some room, Tai-ge. Just to . . . make sure.” Howl looks up, his lips pressed together tight. His mind is already made up about who needs what information. “Anything you can add about how you two met and how you got out would be very helpful.”
Tai-ge gives Howl’s bowed head a long look before answering. “I don’t think there’s much to add.” There’s a ruddy sort of undertone creeping up in Tai-ge’s cheeks, the last semblance of good humor slipping from his face. “Are we really keeping him in there?”
“For now.” Maybe if I approach him later, he’ll share more. We’ve spent so much time not talking in front of Howl, perhaps Tai-ge isn’t comfortable saying anything now.
Tai-ge gives the closet another long look, disapproval unfolding across his features. I pull him around to where Howl has already spread the maps down over the ground, not exactly sure how to proceed. Howl sets the encryption key down in the center of the map, a frown puckering the skin between his eyebrows, as if he isn’t comfortable with Tai-ge here listening.
It makes me want to knock their heads together, to create a safe space where we can all just talk through what needs to happen without worrying what the other will do. I can’t, though, because I know why both of them have sealed their mouths shut. I’m watching every word I say too. It used to be easy to trust what people said. I spent my whole life doing what I was told, believing what I was told. Living the way I was told.
It was built from lies.
Then I met Howl, believed Howl. About a new life, a place where even City traitors could be safe, if only they knew the way. He was at the center of it, the one leading me into this new beginning, which turned out to be an end in disguise. Now believing anything is like some past life, a whole other girl who didn’t think very hard about anything because it was easier to tell jokes and play pranks than deal with the world squashing her down into the ground.
A soft purple light blooms under Howl’s fingers as he turns on the encryption key, still not looking up.
I hate this. I hate that there’s a shadow of doubt in my mind about Tai-ge intentions. That I almost feel more comfortable talking through things with Howl because I’m pretty sure I know what he is and what he wants. I hate not trusting people, looking sideways at everyone and everything they say. I hate that I should have been doing it all along. That there isn’t a place in this world the girl I was before could survive.
When Howl sets the key down on the map, the purple light washes over the unintelligible lines, seeming to lift them an inch or so, forming a rippling landscape of mountains and valleys suspended above the paper. I can’t help the lurch of excitement as I look over the rise and fall of the terrain. This is where Mother told me to go.
Where she told me I’d find family. They’re down there somewhere, hidden in the swirls of light.
Toward the edge of the map, the land ends in a crescent, like the moon peeking around the corner of the Earth’s shadow. Beyond that, the topographical representation slumps into flatness that continues to the edge of the map. Hovering inside the crescent of land, there’s a craggy circle poking up through the flat expanse, as if the map forgot what was all around it.
Tai-ge’s eyes flick over the map, and he blinks at the flat portion. “Is it still encrypted? That area needs an extra level of clearance?”
“Xuan says it’s water.” An ocean, like all the rivers, rain, and snow I’ve ever seen poured into the same container. I go up on my knees, all of me sore and hurting after Dazhai, looking down at the map. I know about oceans, but the flatness on the map just seems wrong. The smell of the encryption key fills my nose, a sort of chemical tang that smells like heat, though the device itself is cold.
“He’s right.” June’s voice jerks my attention up. She’s crept closer while we were talking, stopping just outside our triangle around the map.
“Can you tell us more about the area?” I ask. “Anything about their military? Walls? Populated places?”
June kneels in response, her fingers marching across the land’s curved edge, disrupting the key’s beams of light wherever she touches. But then she shakes her head.
Tai-ge sits next to me, his arm brushing mine. I slide to the other side of the map so I’m between him and Howl, June across from me so we can all see. “So?” Tai-ge asks. “What did he say? What are we looking at?”
“This is supposed to be some kind of settlement. Towns and cities.” I draw my finger along the crescent of land, the light rippling wherever I touch until I come to rest on the craggy circle out in the water. “And this is the island where the main city is.”
Howl points to notations made in a Red’s spiky hand well south of the crescent of land, a knobby outcropping along the coast with hills between it and the settlements. “That’s a City helifield for sure. And that”—he points to an X scratched into the space between the helifield and the hills blocking the populated area—“looks like some kind of staging area. But why would they need it?” He looks over at me, the purple light from the key catching under his cheekbones. “I don’t l
ike this. We have no idea what we’re flying into.”
“Kamar wasn’t supposed to be real.” My eyes feel dry as I explore the blazing lines, as if with so much to look at, I’ve forgotten to blink. “It was just a story to distract everyone in the City from who it was they were actually fighting so defection wouldn’t be a problem. Wasn’t it?”
“No one knows about this place.” Howl looks at Tai-ge. “And between the two of us, it seems like it should have come up. Who are they, do you think? How have they managed to stay stable out here by themselves for so long?”
“Maybe they aren’t as stable as the City or Mountain?” I sit back and cross my legs, leaning forward against my knees, unable to keep still. “Less of a threat. Or maybe they’re too far away.”
“Cities mean stability. You all have to live together.” Tai-ge points at the island. “Get enough food. Have people who can fix your roof when it starts to leak.”
“And,” Howl adds, scratching at his stubbly chin, “if Xuan is right and SS isn’t a problem there, that sounds significantly more stable than where we’re coming from.” He looks at me. “A good place to run if defecting is your plan. But the rest of what he said sounds like it came straight from the propaganda pamphlets the First Circle used to feed the Third Quarter. ‘The invaders who destroyed our country speak a different language. They’ll kill us as soon as they realize where we’re from.’ ” He sits forward. “But why would they? The City hasn’t been fighting them so far as I know.”
Tai-ge clears his throat in the silence that follows. June’s lips seem to be sewn shut, her knees drawn up close to her chin. She looks up at me, her eyes narrowed.
“Do you know if he’s telling the truth, June?” I ask. “Reds took your mother. From where?” I gesture helplessly toward the pile of maps, spread across the floor.
“They do speak different.” She raises one finger, pointing at the land that cups around the island. “I would never have known how to find my way back. Left too little.”
Shatter the Suns Page 20
