Shatter the Suns

by Caitlin Sangster

  Tai-ge chose a seat next to me, with June on my other side. She’s the only one of us eating. I suppose June has too recently been without to turn her nose up at stale rice. Howl has moved to lean against the elevated section of floor where he can see both the storage closet and Tai-ge. He props one booted foot on top of the other, his arms casually crossed inside his coat. Xuan knows enough to stay inside the closet, though the door remains open between us.

  If he threw up during our descent, I don’t see any signs of it now.

  “May I borrow your knife, Sevvy?” Tai-ge looks at me in a way that isn’t looking at all, his eyes focused on my shoulder. “I was going to cut up some of the dried meat.”

  My hand goes to my pocket. Empty. “Howl still has it.”

  “Right.” His voice is a touch too even, and my memory sparks over the way he froze in the Chairman’s tent, fingers running across the slash marks forming his name on the handle. “Can I use it, please?”

  Howl pulls the weapon from his coat, looking at it for a second before tossing it toward Tai-ge, the sheathed blade landing next to his knee. “What is it with you two and this knife?” he asks, his tone a little too jovial.

  I’m glad for a split second, grateful he’s willing to try to make this okay—and grateful that Howl could probably take the knife back from Tai-ge before he could properly stick it into anything he wasn’t supposed to.

  Not that Tai-ge would do that.

  I blink, hating my thoughts. Have I changed into something from Outside, like Tai-ge said? The stories they used to tell us about Outsiders are painful to think about now, and not all wrong.

  Maybe I have changed to fit into the places I’ve been standing. I stare down into my rice, stirring it around until it’s a globbed-together mess, attempting to mix it into something more appetizing and failing miserably. If I’ve changed, it’s only to stand up taller, to ask more questions. To be in charge of whether I live or die, because I don’t trust anyone else to make those decisions for me anymore. I never should have in the first place.

  “No one’s going to tell me about the knife? Is it a secret?” Howl asks. “Because I kind of get the feeling we could do with a story. Maybe one with a punchline?”

  “It’s just a knife.” I shrug off the question before Tai-ge can answer. Tai-ge picks up the knife and uncovers the blade, eyes running down its notched edge with distaste. He puts it to the dried meat, cutting it into strips.

  June, still fiddling with her pile of water purifiers, pulls one free, tossing it into Howl’s lap. “Your favorite.”

  She freezes when we all look at her, as if she’s caught in a gun sight. But then she shrugs it off, turning away from us. “Lychee.”

  I have a bite of rice halfway in my mouth and drop it all across my lap when she says the flavor, trying to choke down something between a groan and a laugh. Howl hates lychee. I used to give him lychee-flavored water purifier as retribution for . . . what was it for? Some prank. I glance at him and immediately tamp down what was left of the laugh because he’s smiling too.

  “If the knife’s not a big deal, then can I have it back when you’re done, Tai-ge?” Howl asks. “It’s been good luck.”

  “I’m still kind of lost on how it ended up in your pocket in the first place.” Tai-ge picks up the blade, looking at his own name carved into the handle before heading toward Xuan’s with a bowl full of food.

  “Finally! I’m so hungry my stomach started eating itself.” The sharp edge of sarcasm hasn’t left the medic’s voice. “If I’d known you didn’t like medics so much”—Xuan puts a hand up to accept the bowl of rice—“I would have brought a gun or a gold necklace or something. I didn’t know you traitors have to trade with one another just to get a bite of plain rice.”

  “You did bring a gun. Lucky for you, we give out food for free. Making it edible, however, is extra.” Howl cocks his head at Xuan, smiling when the medic looks down into the bowl of stale rice, a few strips of meat piled at one side. He turns his attention back to Tai-ge, pointing to the knife. “And I came by that knife honestly. She let me use it back when we first left the City. And it was up my sleeve when she taped my hands together, so I figure it’s your fault I still had it. You were the one who was supposed to search me.” He smiles at Tai-ge.

  “I thought you didn’t keep things up your sleeves,” I say innocently.

  “Not guns.” Howl cradles his rice bowl against his chest, carefully taking a bite. “We’ve already established they don’t fit. My arms are too big.”

  “Or your sleeves are too small.”

  “Bad habit, keeping knives up your sleeves,” Xuan chimes in, his mouth half-full. “Slip up and your wrists are slit. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to treat soldiers without enough brains to keep their knives in nonstupid places.” He waves his chopsticks at us, swallowing. “Boots is another one. You can’t just stick them in there. You have to have a special . . . holder? Or maybe I mean holster.”

  “Lashing?” Howl supplies, giving an infinitesimal shrug when I raise an eyebrow. “You need the proper sheath, too. Boots are stupid places to keep knives anyway. Unless you’re not planning to use them.”

  “You mean unless you’re not planning to use them on someone. Not a quick draw, like a sleeve?” Tai-ge looks at him, face a little too calm.

  Howl nods. “Right.”

  Tai-ge picks up a bowl for himself, fingering the knife thoughtfully as he sits down next to me. “I’m guessing you did this?” He points to the ugly curve of the blade. The sort a Menghu would carry, nothing like the dull blade it had when I left the City. “How did that end up happening? I didn’t think Sevvy would give it away. Especially not to someone who seems to have rubbed her a bit wrong.”

  “There was absolutely no rubbing involved.” Howl pauses midreach for the bag of dried fruit when I shoot him a dirty look. “And, at the time, that knife wouldn’t have even cut a cake. Wait, is there a story? It seems like there must be or you wouldn’t care.”

  “I’m not—” I say at the same time Tai-ge starts, “It’s kind of funny, actually—”

  Tai-ge looks at me, his lips drawing tight.

  “You know”—I smile, as if I’m returning the expression instead of trying to stave off his grimace—“I think a story is a good idea. What about the rabbit in the moon, or maybe about the time we fell out of the tree in the People’s Garden?” I sniff, looking around the room before going back to my bowl of stale rice. “I broke my arm.”

  “Great story, Sev.” Howl looks back at Tai-ge companionably, shoveling a load of rice into his mouth and talking around it. “I figured the knife was yours originally, because Sev doesn’t seem to be the type to carve her secret crush’s name into something.”

  “How long have you two known each other now? A few months at most?” Tai-ge’s tone sets Howl very carefully outside our group. As if it’s his decision who I know and how well.

  Howl glances at me, swallowing his mouthful. “Hiking Outside for weeks has a way of forcing you to get to know people, even if you don’t want to.” He points back to the knife. “That, though . . . seems like giving a knife to a Fourth would be sort of . . . treasonous.”

  I pull my bowl close to my chest, the dehydrated smell of the dried meat decorating my rice making my tongue feel parched and sandy. “June, would you pass me another potato? How about one of your star legends, Howl?” I take the potato when June passes it to me, breaking it in half in my bowl. It smells old and dank, as if it’s more dirt than potato. “Less depressing.”

  “Enough with the sidestepping,” Xuan calls from inside his room, making us all look up. “You’re blushing enough for all of us put together, Fourth. I’ve got news for you, Tai-ge: If that knife was supposed to be some kind of romantic gift, then you are the worst boyfriend ever. She probably thinks so too, since she gave it to Howl. And I think he might use it to torture people.”

  “Okay, fine.” Howl shrugs and gives me a knowing sort of smile. �
��I’ll leave it alone. I do know a good story about—”

  “I’ll tell it,” Tai-ge cuts back in, his expression when he looks at me a little too vague to be anything but a mask. As if he’s reaching out to shake me, to remind me who I’m supposed to trust the most. “It’s from when we were, what, thirteen? Fourteen?”

  I open my mouth and close it, my throat constricting. “Tai-ge, I don’t want you to tell this story.”

  “Come on, Sevvy. He wants to know. And it is a good story.” Tai-ge’s words come in long, straight lines like a math equation, every variable spelled out. He turns to Howl, tapping the knife against his palm. “Sevvy had a new roommate at the orphanage. A Third whose parents were killed in an air raid. She was infected during the raid and angry about it.”

  “Her parents being dead didn’t have anything to do with it?” Xuan calls.

  June looks at the floor. Even if being with us helps her feel safer, Xuan’s presence here as part of the conversation itches. Every time he speaks, I can almost feel June shrink. I start to get up to shut the door, but Tai-ge holds on to my arm, keeping me next to him.

  “This girl was big,” he continues. “At least seventeen. I still don’t know why they put them together. Usually at the orphanage, they kept newly infected isolated until their Mantis doses were fine-tuned. But not this girl.”

  Wei was her name. And it was not a mistake that she was put in my room. But Tai-ge never believed that the nuns would do that. That the City would do that. Not on purpose. I can feel Howl’s eyes on me as if my thoughts are shouting louder than Tai-ge’s voice, but I don’t feel like looking up.

  “I had to run down to the orphanage one night after curfew. Sevvy left some of her schoolwork at my house.” Leaving something was a tradition. It was always interesting to see what his mother deemed important enough to take to me. Homework, yes. Coat, no. “But when I got there, the nuns had all disappeared. I almost left. I didn’t want to get banned for running around the girls’ floor unescorted.”

  I finally look up to catch Howl’s eye, and he goes back to staring at a package of dried fruit sitting in his lap with a tolerant sort of smile. I don’t smile back. Following rules isn’t something to be ashamed of.

  “Sevvy really did need her homework, though, and it wasn’t her fault the nuns all deserted their posts. So I went up to her room”—he pauses, laughing a little—“and opened the door to Sevvy with her roommate in a headlock.”

  June looks up with interest.

  “Now, Sevvy isn’t that big, and this girl was a monster. Completely out of control. But Sevvy just took her down. Didn’t need my help.” Tai-ge laughs again. “So after the nuns came and carted her away, I took Sev to the medics. . . .”

  “Wait, I think you missed something.” Howl chews slowly and methodically, speaking around the lump of fruit in his cheek. “I thought Sev won the fight.”

  “She finished it, but she didn’t escape completely unscathed.”

  Wei bit my arm all the way to the bone and broke my wrist. She wasn’t compulsing, either. She had a younger sister who got a full dose of SS during the attack, but she never woke up. Not everyone does.

  A new factory was going up a few streets over, building materials strewn haphazardly throughout the site. I can only imagine that some Third missed the heavy wrench in the morning, but it’s probably difficult to tell in that kind of chaos. Wei hid behind the door and waited for me to come home. It was only five years of living in an orphanage with Sephs—of being accustomed to paying attention to things that seemed a bit off—that saved me from a broken skull.

  Wei spat on the floor as they dragged her out, screaming back at me, “Someday you’ll get what you deserve, traitor!”

  It was right after Aya died. Right as I was fully realizing what it meant to be the traitor’s daughter. All of the facts and figures the City had been drilling into my head for years, the kids trapped inside their own skins in the Sanatorium and the fact that just about every person I knew set the blame at my mother’s feet . . . it meant I was worthless. Worse than that. I was a stain, an aberration that anyone living up the Steppe would be glad to see scrubbed away. No matter what I thought, or what Tai-ge thought, no one in that orphanage was going to lift a finger to help me, not even when my life was at risk. Every time they looked at me and saw my mother’s birthmark, it was reaffirmed. I was the problem. The symbol of everything we were fighting against.

  It was a new beginning. I wasn’t unhappy knowing what I was to those around me. But I knew I needed to watch myself, and to watch out for Tai-ge after that. That I should have known to watch out for Aya better than I did.

  Maybe that’s why the idea of the Mountain felt so hopeful, why I let Howl walk me there without asking the questions that seem so obvious now. Why Port North feels like the sun behind a cloud, waiting to come out. It’s a promise of something I couldn’t even admit that I wanted when the City filled up my whole world, horizon to horizon, nothing but madness and violence waiting outside of it.

  I can feel Howl’s eyes on me again, quickly darting back and forth over my arms and legs as though he’ll be able to discern what happened, but when I catch him looking, he returns his attention to Tai-ge.

  “And you’re right, Howl. Fourths aren’t allowed to have weapons.” Tai-ge sucks his cheeks in, “I don’t think infected are in general. But it was such a close call . . . I was afraid the next time something happened, Sevvy wouldn’t be ready. That she wouldn’t be able to protect herself. I snuck the knife to her the next day. Just in case. I’ve always been right behind Sev, making sure she’s okay.” His arm, which was brushing mine, settles behind me, as if he wishes he could put it around my shoulders.

  A spark of anger ignites inside me. How could Tai-ge have ever thought handing me a dull knife would be enough?

  Why did I ever think it was enough?

  June’s eyes are in her bowl, uninterested in a story that doesn’t end with a good fight. Xuan is against the far wall in his room, bent knees and boots all I can see through the door. Only Howl’s eyes are on Tai-ge, the heli’s soft lights sinking into the spaces between his knuckles and fingers as he eats one slow bite at a time.

  CHAPTER 36

  HOWL AND I CLEAN UP the dishes as June sets herself up at the base of the ladder to take the first watch. Xuan makes a show of stretching his legs, then sits back against the wall with his head propped up against his two hands. “Do you eat anything other than dried-out rice around here? Let prisoners use the facilities?”

  Tai-ge moves toward the door. “You’re not a prisoner. I’ll take you out.”

  “No, Tai-ge . . .”

  He stops, crossing his arms as he looks at me. “Are you going to do it?”

  “I’d rather she didn’t.” Xuan coughs again, crawling to the closet’s doorway. “And I wouldn’t mind keeping the Chairman’s gorish son away while I have anything valuable out.”

  “I don’t want you to . . .” There isn’t anything to finish that sentence that won’t make Tai-ge more angry. Not to mention the gores we heard calling outside. But I don’t care for the idea of cleaning out the storage closet if bathroom breaks are off.

  So, I stop talking. Go to the pile of supplies and dig until I find the heavy tape we used to restrain Howl. I dart to intercept Tai-ge as he extends a hand to help Xuan up and hold out the tape. Tai-ge takes a deep breath, patience and annoyance a grieved swirl across his face, but then he shakes his head, brushing the tape away. The air inside the little room tastes toxic. Not the smell itself, just the lack of space between me and someone who did . . . whatever it was that happened to June’s family, with Tai-ge so firmly on the wrong side.

  “We can’t just let him out without taking precautions, Tai-ge,” I whisper, discomforted by Xuan’s chipper expression as he listens. “We . . . need him. He said he wanted to escape. This could be a good time.”

  “Fine.” Tai-ge thinks for a second, then walks over to his pack and unzips it to reveal a set
of handcuffs. “Will this be good enough? More comfortable than tape. And easier to remove once we’re back inside.”

  “Where did those come from?” I ask. The metal swings from his hand in a smooth arc, the keys dangling from the locking mechanism. They look scratched and worn, as if they’ve had more than their share of use.

  “They were mine, back in the camp. Complimentary jewelry for lodging in the prison. Kept me nice and close to the bars of my cell. Xuan charmed the keys out of the guard.” He walks over to Xuan’s door, opening one of the bracelets. “Seemed smart to keep them.”

  That would have been useful earlier, when we first found Xuan urinating next to the heli ladder, but saying that out loud isn’t going to help anything. “Stay close enough for June to see you, okay? The sun is already down and I’d rather not have another close look at gores.”

  Tai-ge rolls his eyes. “Are you serious? Didn’t we used to joke that gores . . . ?” He raises his hands at my serious expression. “Fine. I’ll watch out for the gores.” He holds a hand out again to help Xuan up from the ground. “Shall we?”

  Xuan pulls himself up, then smooths his shaggily cut hair down across his forehead before letting Tai-ge pull his hands together in front of him, then lock the handcuffs over his wrists. “Don’t worry, Jiang Sev. If I get too feisty, Tai-ge can just push me into the ocean. I never was much for swimming.”

  I hold my hand out for the key, tucking it into my pocket when Tai-ge hands it over. No point in sending Xuan out shackled if the key is within reach. “If you try anything, I’m just going to yell for help as loud as I can and hope that whoever comes shoots you first.”

  Xuan wrinkles his nose. “You aren’t very good at threatening people, Jiang Sev. It’ll do you good to trust someone. Maybe we’ll even part as friends, with you running headfirst into whatever trouble you have cooked up and me headed toward a hot beverage.”