“I want to trust you,” I whisper, because admitting it out loud makes it solid and scary. “I want you to be real.”
“I am real. I’m right here.” The hand under my jaw coaxes me forward, and he’s so close the words could have come from my mouth.
He waits. I could lean forward and forget everything. Reclaim the version of Howl who disintegrated the night I escaped. The only person who ever saw me as an equal, not as a tool or a traitor.
I lick my lips, staring down at his, and then somehow I’m kissing him. It’s soft, like a question, Howl barely moving as if either of us acknowledging what is happening will somehow make it disappear. When I pull back, he stares at me, and I’m not sure what to do next, what he’s thinking, just that Howl brushing up against me is like fireworks erupting inside me. He leans forward so quickly I hardly understand what’s happening, just that his lips are hard against mine, his hand is in my hair and then pressing into my neck and back. Every part of us touching seems to burn through me until I can’t remember anything except right now, Howl in everything around me, not close enough and everywhere at once, his sling an annoying barrier between us.
June groans in her sleep, rolling over to let an arm flop out of her blankets.
I freeze, Howl’s lips hot against mine as I catch sight of the scars peeking out from under her sleeves. So many scars, so many dead.
“Wait,” I whisper, but he moves to kissing my neck, behind my ear, and I’m not sure I can pull myself out of the fog. “Wait,” I say a bit louder, my hand on his shoulder pushing him away.
He does stop, forehead pressed against mine, his eyes closed. “Please, Sev. Why can’t we be fixed?”
“I . . .” I look down. When I told Tai-ge things were too complicated, it wasn’t just because I knew I didn’t want him to kiss me. It would be so easy to just lose myself in Howl right now, to forget everything that came before, but it won’t fix anything. “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
Howl leans back an inch, our eyes locked together, his hand still on my cheek.
I want to think it’s a good idea. The moment I saw him lying on the ground under the gore’s dead weight, his shoulder torn open and his eyes glassy, I knew that the world without Howl would be a few shades too dark for my liking. But this is how things got so complicated before. Howl kissed me, and I didn’t think.
“Everything is too . . . this is . . . You are one of the things I wish wasn’t so complicated.” I stumble over the words, wanting to wipe the awful confusion from Howl’s face, but the silver slice of wall clicks, cutting me off.
The door slides open, Luokai’s now familiar yellow robe appearing in the gap, a case strapped to his back and one of our packs over his shoulder. “I have some of your things and some food. . . .”
Surprise touches Luokai’s features as his eyes trace the line from Howl’s shoulder to his hand at my chin to our heads so close together. My heart is still beating so loud he could probably hear it out in the hall, and I’m both angry and relieved he came in. Luokai holds out a bundle of material toward Howl, raising one eyebrow. “I brought you a shirt. If you want it.”
Howl lets his hand fall to his lap, clearing his throat. Then he nods and holds the hand out for the shirt.
“Why are you here?” I have to grasp for the words, my head foggy. “I thought Gao Shun was done talking to us.”
“Gao Shun is not in charge of me.” Luokai hands the shirt over, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
Luokai switches to looking at me, the hint of smile gone. “I came to tell you I know where to find the things your mother left for you. I just can’t give them to you.”
CHAPTER 52
HOWL MOVES SO WE AREN’T touching anymore, staring down at the shirt as if he’s not sure how to put it on with only one functioning arm. He won’t look at me, but the fact that it takes him a moment to speak makes me think he’s still rearranging himself inside the way I am, trying to find a way to talk when just a moment ago neither of us was much interested in talking at all.
“What do you mean, you can’t give it to us? You want to?” Howl finally asks. “If this is some kind of backhanded attempt at showing me you are my brother, then you can stop. It’s clear enough to everyone in this room what’s most important to you and the rest of the people in this place.”
Luokai turns to force the door shut, ignoring Howl, then pulls the pack from his shoulder. “Most of your possessions were added to our inventory here, but I managed to save some things that I thought you might like to keep.” He settles onto the floor in front of us and pushes the pack toward me.
June’s smaller bag is there, with the book Howl gave to me back in the Mountain zipped inside it. The story of the sleeping princess. There are other things he saved for us: a small bag of dried pears and Tai-ge’s electric razor. The gore tooth Luokai gave to Howl before he left the Mountain. I guess the pointed end has been rubbed smooth enough that it doesn’t constitute a weapon anymore.
“So, you know where the cure is. Were you going to tell us, open the door, and let us get shot down while we looked for it?” Howl awkwardly pulls the shirt over his head, groaning as he puts his good arm through the sleeve. He waves me away when I move to help, pulling the other side of the shirt loosely over his arm in the sling. He takes the tooth from the bag, sliding it open with one hand to find the link still inside. Carefully reassembling the pieces, he loops the leather string around his neck.
Luokai pulls the case from his back, opening the clasps to reveal the erhu I heard him play in Cai Ayi’s trees. Light glints off the reptilian scales of the instrument’s belly, the two strings slack against its neck. “We have medicine here”—he gestures to Howl’s shoulder, the spicy smell still full in my nose—“but nothing for SS. No Mantis. Whatever makes up the ingredients for your mother’s cure, I doubt we have the materials or capacity to make it here. We didn’t know what it was she brought to us, and she didn’t take time to explain.”
He folds his legs underneath himself so he’s kneeling, balanced on his heels, his back almost unnaturally straight. Setting the round belly of the erhu on his thigh, Luokai twists the tuning pegs until the strings are tight. When he gives one string an experimental pluck, June’s eyes jolt open at the sound, making me wonder how long she’s been awake, the foreign sound of the erhu finally registering danger. She pushes back from Luokai, crashing into my knees, her breaths coming fast through the iron grate of her mask.
Luokai doesn’t look at her, examining his instrument with unbreakable focus until she stills, sitting with her back up against me. Once she’s settled, Luokai picks up the erhu’s bow, holding it loosely in his hand. “If quarantines fail, Port North will fall.” He looks at me. “If we give those Reds the cure, then we sign ourselves over as slaves before they even attempt to set foot on our shores.” He gives the erhu another experimental pluck, then twists one of the tuning pegs. “And I’m afraid that if there is a way to shed the manacles I’ve been bound with for most of my life, I’m not going to turn my head while it sails out the door.”
“I thought Speakers made decisions that were best for everyone.” I raise an eyebrow, even as hope roars to life inside me. He wants the cure, and Gao Shun is about to give it away. So he came to us.
“I do not think my wants and Port North’s needs are mutually exclusive, Jiang Sev.” He runs his fingers down the erhu’s strings, breathing slow. “Reds will come here eventually whether we give them those papers or not.”
Howl glances at me, the air sparking between us with the promise in his words. I lick my lips, choosing each word with care. “Anything we find in those papers, any cure we come up with, we would share with you.”
“I’d like to believe you would make a cure and bring it back to me.” Luokai’s smile presses at his cheeks, his smooth skin bending to either side of his mouth.
Howl leans forward, his eyes going hard. “What do you want, Luokai?”
“I think I’ve s
een proof enough that you’re cured.” Luokai nods to me. “I should have seen it. Here people are not so afraid of SS as they are in your mountains, but the moment I told you I was contagious, you were frightened for the other people here on the island. For your friend.” June curls in on herself even tighter, and I pull her close, wrapping my arms around her, the snarls of her mask pressing into my chest.
“But not frightened for you, Howl.” Luokai smiles his humorless smile, as if it can somehow cut the tension between the two of them. “So I assume it’s the both of you Jiang Gui-hua cured. But not her.” He points to June.
“Just tell us what you’re after. We don’t need to go into everyone’s medical history.” Howl’s shoulders are starting to sag again, as if sitting up for the last hour or more has taken all the energy he had stored inside him, only the last dregs holding him upright. He blinks, cringing as his uninjured hand cradles his arm in the sling. Guilt lances through me, remembering the way his arm was pressed into my ribs when we were kissing. I probably hurt him. Not that he was complaining. “And while we are bargaining, how much would it be to throw in a dose of Da’ard?” he asks. “Painkillers?”
Luokai’s smile warms a degree or two. “I can put something in your tea, but it would make you sleep. You should sleep. I’m afraid you probably shouldn’t be up and talking quite this much yet. However, I didn’t want to make you sleep without asking first.”
Howl blinks, as if he’s surprised. But then nods. “Thank you.”
“So you’re willing to help us get Mother’s papers in exchange for . . . something.” I pull my eyes away from Howl. “Tell us. We don’t have time to dance around this.”
Luokai’s eyes draw away from me, slow like a dribble of water falling from an icicle. “I can’t survive on hope, Jiang Sev. I need to know without a doubt you’ll come back here, and that you’d bring the cure. For the others afflicted by this disease. Against the chance that SS does spread, leaving us caged underground with no way to escape. But, most especially, I want to know you’ll bring back the cure for me. I need there to be a reason for you to come back that both of us believe in.” His gaze drips down onto June where she lies against my chest.
Her head comes up, the mask cloudy over her mouth as she stares at me. Green eyes glazed, she gulps down what sounds like a sob.
“You want June . . .” Howl sounds hollow. “June infected? Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s not an option.” I wrap my arms around June, chin on her frizzy head. She doesn’t move, her stillness sending flickers of alarm up and down my chest. She twists away from me, her gaze a tight beam of focus on Luokai so intense, it must be only moments before he starts to burn. Her breaths wheeze further and further apart, calm overtaking her as she burrows down inside herself.
Howl inches forward until he’s a few inches in front of me, as if he can block June from Luokai. “We won’t leave her here.”
“If I fall Asleep . . .” June’s whisper is rough. “If I stay, you’ll give them the cure?”
Luokai inclines his head, sadness etched into the lines of his face. “Yes.”
“We aren’t going to leave you here. If he won’t help us, I know where my mother’s papers must be. If Gao Shun means to hand them over to the Reds, she’ll have them with her,” I cut in.
She pulls away from me, meeting Luokai’s eyes. “I would be safe?” The strain in her voice is palpable, even behind the metallic aftertaste of filters.
“We expect helis to start toward us within the next twenty-four hours, so we’ll have to move you . . .” He glances at me. “. . . all of you to a safer place. If Gao Shun has to shake the helis from the sky, we don’t know exactly what else will shake apart while they’re falling. We’d have people take care of you, June. The way they take care of me.”
I try to hold back the awful growl building in my throat, as if being so close to the gores Outside left some part of them inside me, waiting to take a bite of any threat, no matter how placid Luokai looks on the outside. There’s no one taking care of him now. No one to stop him if SS decides it wants our teeth making pretty lines on the ground.
Howl touches her shoulder with his good hand, looking toward Luokai. “Leaving June is an exchange we can’t make. There are other ways we might be able to offer—”
June slaps Howl’s hand away, and he breaks off in surprise. Her bright head bows down, blinking wetness from her eyes, the tear tracks gleaming against her pale skin. She reaches up to brush them away.
And rips her mask off instead.
CHAPTER 53
“NO, JUNE!” I GRAPPLE FOR the mask, hampered when June sits back against me, her weight heavy against my chest. When my fingers finally close around the mask’s rigid curls, Howl’s grabbed hold of it too, both of us shoving it toward her face, the thin plastic feeling as though it might break.
June rolls out of my lap, scrambling to the edge of the room, with her eyes wide on both me and Howl, as if we were the ones who took the mask off, not the people trying to put it back on. The skin around her nose and mouth is lighter, underexposed after wearing the mask so frequently in the weeks since the new strain of SS broke loose.
“You get the cure. I’m not your sacrifice.” She sucks in a deep breath and chokes as if she can feel the poison spreading out from her lungs. “You come back or I’ll find you both and kill you.”
Howl’s grip on the mask drags my hand to the ground when he lets his arm drop. I wrench it away from him and stand, taking slow steps toward June. “You don’t have to do this. I don’t want you to do this. I’ll stay here if Luokai needs a hostage. It’s not like anyone needs me anymore. You’re both better at running . . . hiding. Howl knows where Sole is. . . .”
Luokai’s chin rises in an unexpected lurch at Sole’s name that makes my fists ball. All of us are silent for a moment, watching the Speaker, as if this moment might be our last, waiting for the compulsion to come. But he doesn’t rise from his seat on the ground. He only takes a deep breath, then goes back to staring at the floor.
June’s arms fold around my ribs in a hug. I hold her, Howl’s good arm snaking around June’s spine, his side nudging into mine as he presses in close to us, the three of us crushed together like the night June’s father lay dead in the snow, as if somehow we can hold one another together. I can’t let go of the mask, can’t let go of June, wanting to stop each of the deep breaths ballooning in her chest. To keep SS from going inside her. I promised to take care of her, promised everything was going to be okay.
But my decisions have all been the ones that made it not okay. I sent June to signal our getaway in the camp, in clear sight of a Menghu who almost killed her. I trusted Tai-ge. I fought with him instead of looking outside the heli window, instead of watching for the people we knew were going to come for us. I let Xuan go, the man who stole her mother.
Xuan. The words trip out of my mouth, eager to escape even as I’m not sure they’re right to say. “June, before Xuan left, he told me about what must have happened to your mother. That he was there when they took her away, like you said.” She looks up at me, her eyes wide. “She was probably sent to one of the southern farms. You can’t . . .” I bite my lip. We can’t do any of this without June. Even if she weren’t family, I don’t know how to get back to the Post without her as a guide. How to find Lihua and Peishan and the others. The idea of of leaving her here alone sends spirals of anxiety washing down my whole body, as if I’m leaving a child just outside a gore hutch and hoping she’ll survive.
But June isn’t a child. She made her own decision. And now I have to do my part to make it all right.
“After we get the cure, we’re going to find your mother. Find out what happened to her,” I whisper into her hair. “I love you, June. You’re my sister.” My brow feels crinkled, lined forever. How long do we have before she Sleeps? The new strain moves fast. Mei was asleep within an hour when she was infected.
If only I could.
Was the
re ever anything I could do? Everything inside me is hollow, made of bird bones and rotted grass, the control I thought I had nothing but a shell.
That doesn’t mean we’ve lost, though. I take a deep breath, inhaling June’s dirty-hair scent, the rough sandpaper scratch of her clothes, the crinkle of crumbs where she must have hidden something down her shirt. I will make her safe. No matter what it takes.
June buries her head in my stomach, her arms ratcheted so tight around me, my bones creak. “Will you tell me a story?” she asks, the words muffled against my shirt.
“A story?” My brain is full of sick and death and the metal taste of blood. “I . . .”
Howl hugs us both closer. “I will.”
Luokai picks up his bow. “I brought this because it often makes me feel calm.” He swallows, takes a deep breath, then looks at her, kindness in his eyes that she cannot see with her face pressed into my stomach. “Would you like me to play?”
June doesn’t move for a moment, but then she nods.
Howl’s hand on June’s shoulder tightens as the first notes slip through the air. “My mother used to tell me this story. It’s old, older than SS or wars or whatever this country was before. Older than the mountains or the trees. It starts with a girl.”
The slow drawl of his voice familiar and comforting. It’s like the story he told me about stars and qilin when there was a gore howling at our feet, every word meant to smooth down fear.
“This girl lived under the sky and slept under the stars. No man or woman could touch her because she could leap from shadow to shadow, hiding as if she were darkness itself.”
June looks up at him, her eyes narrowed. “Darkness?”
“The people of the Earth feared her because she could flit from the highest of trees down to the ground to shelter under the smallest leaf. She could find food anywhere, shooting it down with her bow. They feared her because she didn’t need them. All she needed was the sky and the ground, the trees and their shade, and her bow by her side. She kept company of the wind, made friends of the birds and the rivers, tracked each of the ten suns as they took turns sailing across the sky.”
Shatter the Suns Page 38
