by Jess Corban
Mother’s demeanor instantly changes, her warm joy silenced by cool collection. “She’s recovering. But because of all the trauma she’s endured, the baby . . .” She pauses, seemingly searching for the right words. “The baby didn’t make it. I’m here documenting the proper records.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “Was it a daughter?”
I instantly cringe at my own ingrained insensitivity, the prejudices that would make me assume losing a baby girl would be worse than losing a Gentle. It proves that my assumptions, hammered home through eighteen years of being Nedéan, run deep.
“No,” Mother assures me. “Not a daughter.”
But my comment stirs up the ocean of questions about Gentles and Brutes—the storm inside that I can barely seem to hold at bay. I need answers, and all the questions I’ve been waiting to ask threaten to spill out at once.
“Mother?”
“Yes?” She rubs my bare arms with smooth hands, taking advantage of the softening of my stone-cold demeanor toward her. I take a deep breath, lock her eyes with mine.
“I’ve been to the Jungle.”
The words hang in the air as her hands drop to her sides like heavy stones. Understanding spreads across her face like shadows at dusk.
“And what did you find there?” she asks cautiously. Her deflection irritates me. Is she still trying to protect me? Or is she protecting herself? Why won’t she just tell me what she has been hiding instead of making me go fishing for answers?
“I think you know what I found there, Mother.” I don’t mean to sound irritable, but nonetheless, old Reina makes an appearance. “I found Brutes. And one of them had your eyes. His name is Jase, and I don’t know how you’re connected, but there’s something there, and I need you to tell me what it is.” She takes so much time to answer that I throw in, “And the leader knows who you are. Why does he know who you are?”
“Keep your voice down,” she warns, not angrily. Serene, unflappable Mother ages twenty years. She presses soft fingertips to her temples, then takes a deep breath before attempting a response.
“First, you need to know I’ve kept this from you and your sisters for your own protection. What I tell you now will be for the same reason. If anything ever happened to you three because of what I’ve done . . . I could never forgive myself.” She smooths a strand of my hair made wild by a day of Arena training.
“I understand.” Of course I can’t, not really, but it sounds right to say if I’m to convince her to go on.
“Jason—Jase, as they call him—is my child, yes. Many years ago—when I was about your age, actually—I discovered what makes a Brute a Brute and a Gentle a Gentle. When I birthed Jase, I couldn’t stand the thought of him being subjected to a life of pain and servitude. So I kept him from becoming one. Then I took him to Torvus and asked him to raise Jason.”
“But how? . . . Why Torvus? How did you even know there was a Brute living in the Jungle? And why on earth would he take your baby?”
She closes her eyes, barely whispering the answer. “Because Jason was his child too.”
My mind spins with the absurdity of it—with unanswered questions and fear and awe and . . . and . . . satisfaction. I knew it. I knew Jase resembled both Torvus and Mother. But . . .
“You had a child . . . by a Brute? Like in the old world?” I ask incredulously. I’m not sure what shocks me more, that Mother and Torvus had a child, or that my virtuous mother disregarded the Articles to do so. She nods once in answer, placing a hand on the table beside us, as if the weight of all this might topple her. “Even though he and I parted ways, I knew Torvus wouldn’t refuse the child, because he loved me. And I loved him, Reina. Not in the way a mother loves a child or with the affection of a sister or a cousin. His heart and mine became intertwined with a oneness that defies explanation. I can only assume that’s how it used to be, when Brutes and women coexisted—before we gentled them.”
I don’t think she meant to say that last part. Before we gentled them. She watches me closely, almost shyly, waiting to see if I caught her meaning.
“Domus gave me the journal. I know what the foremothers did—what we continue to do.”
Is that a spark of pride lighting her eyes? “I’m glad he saw reason to show it to you, Rei of Sunshine.”
“It’s not right that they’re changed without their knowledge. But I don’t know how to help them.”
“I know exactly how you feel,” she says, and I can tell she does. “We have no right to play God, deciding what they should or shouldn’t be—whatever the danger. Brutes are meant to be Brutes. And I’ve done what little I can to make sure at least some will get that chance.”
What? What has she done? So some will get that chance . . . The Brutes at Tree Camp, all different ages. Dead infants with abnormal blood. I still can’t connect the pieces until I remember exactly where we’re standing.
“Jonalyn’s baby—he’s not dead, is he?”
Mother’s lips part, but before she can confirm or deny my accusation, a distant commotion silences her. Our heads snap in unison toward the sound. Neither of us, I now realize, are supposed to be here.
“We have to go.” Mother slips the ledger into its place and steps quickly to the door. Pushing it outward, she peers cautiously into the hallway to be sure we are alone. “Come with me.”
Bright electric bulbs reflect off the hallway’s tiled floor as Mother leads us toward the delivery rooms.
“I know a pla—” Her words are cut short by a trio of women rounding the corner toward us, not twenty-five meters ahead.
Two Alexia, armed with swords but no bows, guard a sharp-looking woman with cropped silver hair and a flowing multicolored robe. Her mouth tilts with satisfaction.
My heart free-falls into my stomach. Thankfully Mother speaks, voicing the words too afraid to leave my own mouth.
“Mother—what are you doing here?”
Matriarch Teera lifts her chin to better look down her thin nose at her eldest daughter. “I could ask you the same, Leda. With Reina?” Her nostrils flare as she says my name, a sure sign we’re in trouble. “How interesting. Though finding you together is quite convenient. I have some questions I’d like to ask you both.” Her head dips slightly toward the guard on her left. “Take them to the cells for questioning.”
The Alexia advance with determined steps. As panic quickens my pulse, I know one thing for sure: we can’t let them take us in. There’s no telling what “questioning” Grandmother has in mind—even for her own kin. I grip Mother’s arm, swinging her around.
“Run.”
We sprint toward the glass-walled nursery at the end of the hall. We have to get around the corner and find a place to hide before the Alexia close the distance. My limited training won’t do us much good if this comes to hand-to-hand combat. I’m fast, maybe fast enough to outrun them, but Mother is already breathing hard.
Two sets of boots pound the tiles behind us, echoing like thunder through the corridor. Over their clatter, Teera yells, “Dead or alive!”
I hear the frightening slide of daggers escaping their sheaths. Just before we round the corner, the nursery’s viewing wall explodes with the impact of a weapon, raining down a shower of glass. Another step and Mother gasps, stumbles, nearly falls. She releases my hand, and I glance back, ready to yell at her to keep running. Her face twists in agony.
“Mother!” I slip my arm under hers, lifting and pulling her around the corner with every ounce of strength I possess. A bloom of red seeps through her white lab coat. The handle of a dagger protrudes from the right side of her back. No, no, no. I instinctively want to tear it from her body, use it to protect her, but that would worsen the bleeding.
Mother gives a valiant effort at stumbling on, but the Alexia will round that corner any second. This is it—we’ll die here.
Two meters ahead, a door swings open. Before I know what’s happening, Dr. Karina Novak pulls us inside.
“Come with me!” she comm
ands, quickly closing and locking the heavy metal door behind us.
Mother drops to her knees, then collapses across the floor. The doctor rushes to kneel beside her, steady fingers moving quickly to tear the fabric away and examine the wound.
“Oh, Leda,” she mutters. “This better not be about . . .”
Mother winces weakly.
The doctor turns to me, her large eyes urgent behind thin-rimmed glasses. “We don’t have much time. Did they see us come in?”
“I don’t know.” I hope Mother’s lab coat absorbed the blood. A trail would lead them right to us.
Not a second later, the doorknob rattles. I hold my breath. Please, please, please keep walking.
A distant call . . . The shadow under the door vanishes . . . Fading footsteps . . . I nearly collapse with relief.
Dr. Novak grabs a stack of cloth diapers from a cupboard and presses several around the dagger. “I need supplies. Press these here, just so, until I return.”
The doctor sprints to the other side of the large room, then exits through a small door painted to blend into the surrounding wall. It creaks on its hinges, as if neglected for ages, grating so loudly in the dead silence I fear it will alert every Alexia in the entire Center. I hold stock-still for minutes that feel like days, hands frozen against the cloths, straining to hear any other footsteps approaching the door.
“Reina,” Mother mumbles in the quiet. “I’m sorry—so sorry.”
“Shhh,” I soothe, wishing I didn’t have to press the wound so I could hold her in my arms, cradle her the way she rocked me as a child, before tucking me tight in my four-poster bed. “You’re going to be okay. We’ll get you out of here.”
Blood seeps through the cloths on her back, oozing between my fingers. Too much blood.
This can’t be happening. Not Mother. Not my mother.
My tears fall freely onto the tiles. I have to keep her alive. She can’t die—not here, not like this.
Her breaths become shallow, then stop. I shake her in a panic. “Mother! Please—don’t give up. She’ll be back soon. Stay with me!”
She sucks another breath, and relief pours from my eyes. With tremendous effort, she forces her eyes open a little.
“Rei,” she rasps. “The baby . . .” Another labored breath. “Take him . . . Torvus.”
Jonalyn’s baby. I was right—he is still alive. Torvus can give him the life he’d be robbed of in Nedé. But I was drugged on the way into the Jungle and blindfolded on the way out. I’d never find Tree Camp on my own.
“I can’t,” I say through tears. “I don’t know the way.”
Her face twists with a fresh wave of agonizing pain, splitting my soul in two. I lean down close, kissing her forehead.
With trembling, bloody fingers, she yanks her necklace free, breaking the jute cord in a final burst of strength, and forces the pendant into my palm.
“Take this . . . him.”
“I don’t know the way,” I insist again, frantic not to disappoint her, terrified to lose her.
“The song,” she forces out. “Follow . . . song.”
What is she talking about? What song? She must be losing too much blood.
“Promise,” she begs, her eyes closing with frightening resignation.
“Okay, I promise.” I’d promise her anything in this moment, no matter how impossible. I’d give her my very life if it meant she would . . .
Another creak of the narrow door and Dr. Novak is running toward us, then emptying her bulging coat pockets onto the floor next to Mother. All manner of needles, pads, scissors, string, and vials spill across the tile. I slip the pendant into my vest pocket and help her regather them.
She takes one look at Mother, and I don’t miss the fear that passes over her face. But just as quickly she barks at me, “You have to get out of here.”
“I won’t leave her.”
“You have no choice, Dom Pierce,” she snaps. “I can hide a Center worker much easier than an Alexia. You’ll endanger us all.” She cuts away the lab coat and sops up the gush of blood. Seeing I haven’t moved, she drills me with a forceful glare. “Leda is like a daughter to me. I promise I’ll take care of her. There’s nothing you can do here.”
She leaves little room for argument.
“That door leads to an emergency corridor. Follow it right to the staircase. It will lead you outside, bypassing the lobby.”
I want to ask if Mother will make it, but Dr. Novak’s frantic movements—injecting the wound with a needle, jerking the dagger free—imply my questions will only get in the way. My lower lip trembles like a child’s. Leaving her goes against my heart, but I’m sensible enough to understand Dr. Novak is right.
I kiss Mother’s forehead goodbye—for now or forever. She doesn’t stir. As I slip through the creaky door, I force myself to face reality: I will never see her again.
I stumble out of the room in a daze, through the corridor and down the abandoned narrow stairs, per Dr. Novak’s instructions.
Dr. Novak. I suspected there was something different about her during the Candidates’ tour. It wasn’t just because Mother’s codirector recognized me as Leda’s daughter. What did she say? This better not be about . . .
About what? What secrets do they share?
The stairs descend in darkness, each passing floor marked only by a nondescript door centered in another corridor. I race down, down, down, listening for trailing footsteps, and counting the levels as they pass. Seven . . . six . . . four . . . and finally, one. The bottom level looks just like the rest, and for a moment I question whether I could have counted wrong. The last thing I need is to walk into the middle of a hospital floor. But the staircase ends here—this must be the bottom. I grip the cool metal handle and twist.
It doesn’t turn.
It’s supposed to turn. I try again. Nothing. I wrench the handle over and over, finally coaxing the rusted metal to budge slightly. Progress. I slam my body’s weight into the door—once, twice—then try the handle again. Slam . . . twist . . . slam. The rust-swollen hinges finally concede, and the door shimmies open.
Night air floods the doorway and fills my lungs, heavy and too warm, but living. Such a stark contrast to the sterile hallways, beakers, and records I just left behind. Fresh grief bubbles in my chest as I recall other lifeless things—precious things I’ve been forced to abandon.
Not Mother, too. First Treowe, now Mother?
I bite my thumb to hold back a choked sob. No—I can’t let myself descend into that abyss. Not here, not now. Grief will have to wait. I need to get somewhere safe.
The exit has deposited me into a screenlike alcove of tall shrubs, part of the manicured landscaping that rings the Center. With some effort, I close the door, then try to get my bearings. I’ll have to escape this green tangle before I can figure out which side of the building I’ve come out on.
I duck and squeeze through tightly woven branches, twigs scratching my arms and leaves rustling in my ears, before emerging ten meters from one of the giant archways near the front entrance. That’s unfortunate. I was hoping I’d be on the east side of the Center, nearer Callisto. I’ll have to cross the front of the building somehow.
Straightening, I brush sticky pieces of shrub from my uniform. But my hand stalls midswipe.
I’m not alone.
A contingent of Alexia stride under the arches toward the entrance, and they’ve spotted me. She has spotted me.
Trinidad’s golden eyes grow wide as a cat’s, then narrow to slits, the briefest glimmer of confusion and betrayal eliminated by the cold steel of her training.
Granted, I can see why this wouldn’t look real great.
“Trin,” I say, stepping cautiously toward her, smart enough to know running won’t work this time. “It’s not what you think.”
The dozen or so Alexia around her—some of whom I trained with just this afternoon—raise their bows and unsheathe their swords in unison, halting my approach.
“Oh,
really?” Trin mocks. “’Cause I thought you decided to be an Alexia, Candidate, not a traitor.”
INTERLUDE
LEDA PIERCE, the eldest daughter of Teera Pierce, was never meant to be a Matriarch’s daughter. At least that’s how she consoled herself when her mother forced her and her sister, Julissa, into itchy tunics to be paraded before Senators. Leda would much rather have been running barefoot along the Halcyon beachfront than forced to sit through Council meetings in the great room at Finca del Mar.
Leda’s distaste for privilege ran deeper than a child’s longing for freedom. From a very young age, she knew she and her sister were only the fulfillment of the Matriarch’s duty to have at least two offspring, as an example to Nedéans.
But appreciation for duty does little to console a young heart that longs to be loved.
The summer of her tenth year, Leda and Julissa were sent to visit Teera’s cousin, Senator Salita Pierce, in Amal Province. Salita offered to keep the girls for the summer at her large finca in the countryside. She promised Teera she would introduce the girls to advantageous senatorial connections, and with their tutor along, their studies needn’t even suffer. Leda later learned that Salita felt sorry for the sisters—ignored while Teera was home, cooped up at the finca while she was away—and hoped a few months at Bella Terra would provide a respite from that life. Leda prickled at the thought of others’ pity, but not enough to refuse the chance of escape.
Among the fields and orchards of Bella Terra, Leda’s young soul came alive. She loved to splash along the banks of the Jabiru and taught Julissa to catch frogs in the large pond by the sheep field. “Aunt” Salita, as the girls came to call her, was sometimes away on Senator business, but she allowed the girls as much freedom while she was gone.
Not surprisingly, Leda and Julissa begged to return to Bella Terra every summer thereafter. Matriarch Teera often agreed, clearly glad to be rid of the responsibility of children, free to oversee construction of the Arena or other matters. But had she known what these visits would birth in her eldest daughter, Leda knew she never would have acquiesced.
