The others watched me without pretending not to as I crossed the room. After I’d stripped off the gear, a man appeared and led me back to my cell. My stomach squeezed with hunger, and I was glad to see food waiting when I arrived.
~ ~ ~
By my third day of working, I’d become less of a curiosity since I didn’t do anything to cause trouble, and the Dron laborers mostly left me alone. Myla stayed by my side, watchful, but she began to talk too.
“It’s fitting that you’re doing this work,” she observed under her breath. “We eat seaweed instead of fish thanks to your kind.”
I didn’t understand, but I didn’t ask. She kept talking, eager to spill words once she’d begun.
“We’ve had famine since the Withdrawing, because we overfished these waters. We’ve scraped and scrimped and tightened our belts while your people eat to excess in their shining cities.”
“The Withdrawing?”
She sniffed. “When we stopped trying to fight your kind twenty years ago.”
“Oh,” I said.
Famine. I thought about the lack of fish in the villages on the surface, and wondered if they were connected. Could the war beneath the sea have impacted the Village of the Rocks?
The Withdrawing. Twenty years of refusing to initiate combat with Itlantis. From everything I could gather, the Dron were unhappy with it.
“My father was a fisherman,” Myla continued. “A skilled man, with many nets and a fine ship. He used to fish all along the trenches, which is Itlantis territory now, uncontested, and now we sort through garbage to eat.” She tossed a heap of seaweed down beside me. Flecks of rank moisture splattered my face.
The trenches. Near Volcanus and Magmus. I recalled the map carved on Merelus’s study wall in his Celestrusean home, now destroyed. My throat tightened.
“It’s Nautilus’s territory now,” I said quietly.
She jerked her head up. I supposed she must have grown used to my silence, and now that I’d spoken, her eyes flashed. “What?”
“Nautilus. The man who has been killing all of us—Itlanteans and Dron alike.”
She pursed her lips. “I do not know of this Nautilus.”
“He used to be the governor of one of our cities,” I said. “Volcanus, which is near the trenches you mentioned your father fishing along. He has since declared war against the rest of Itlantis and destroyed a city.”
“He is Itlantean,” she said.
“Well, yes.”
She shrugged, as if that was sufficient. “When we hide during the drills, we hide from them all.”
“But don’t you understand?” I said, angry now. “He’s our enemy too. He isn’t the same as the rest of us.”
“Why should that matter to us? He’s Itlantean. Isn’t that enough?”
“It does matter! Nautilus is a butcher and a warmonger. The rest of the Itlanteans are hiding from him, not attacking you.”
“If he is your enemy,” she said, “then perhaps he is not ours.”
“He has killed your people too!”
A few heads lifted at my outburst. I ground my teeth together. Myla glared at me.
“The Itlanteans have been killing my people for centuries. My grandmother died in an attack. One of my cousins was taken by your scientists. Meanwhile, we pick through seaweed and fight starvation while you dine at banquets and wear silks. I’ve heard the stories. Forget this Nautilus. Your people are monsters. They have proved it true again and again.”
“But—”
“Work,” she said. “Don’t talk.”
But despite Myla’s admonition, she was soon speaking to me again. “Another thing,” she said, hurling seaweed into piles to punctuate each sentence. “You act as though we should fear this man only, because he is a danger to you. We should fear anything that bears the name Itlantean.” She shook her wrist at me, and the bracelet with the red beads rattled. “I have lost two members of my family to your people. I bear the reminder every day.”
~ ~ ~
Once back in my cell of a room, I sat on the bed and thought about Myla’s words. I thought about the Dron, with their hidden cities, their fear, and their harsh opinion of the Itlanteans. To them, we must seem impossibly glittered and sequestered away from hardship, dealing violence from on high.
If I were Dron, would I feel any differently in my fear and hate?
The door scraped as it opened. I lifted my head. It was Nol again.
And when I looked at him, I didn’t feel anger. I felt something else. Restlessness? The words from before were still on my tongue, begging to be spoken, but I no longer knew if they were what I wanted to say. I rose as he approached.
“Where were you?” I said it without thinking, and shut my mouth in surprise.
Nol’s eyebrows lifted. “I didn’t think you’d miss me.” He paused. “I was on patrol. We have to stay vigilant for enemy ships.”
I didn’t miss you, I wanted to say. Started to say.
It wasn’t true.
“I hear they’ve put you to work.”
“Nothing I haven’t experienced before,” I said. “I should warn you, I’m studying to escape.”
“Naturally.”
He took another step toward me. I stayed still. His expression shifted to something more vulnerable. He reached out one hand and touched my hair, and I let him.
Breaths hung between us. The air hummed, crackling with energy. My blood heated, and I could feel my heartbeat.
“You betrayed me,” I said, although the words were halfhearted, a protest to myself more than to him.
“I didn’t want to. I had a duty to fulfill.”
“You kidnapped me.”
“No,” he said.
“We are enemies...”
“Are we?” he asked, taking another step.
I was uncertain. I saw the old Nol, his face twisted with mocking humor, his hair glimmering in the sunlight beneath a blinding blue sky, his body lean and tanned. I saw him in Celestrus, that same hair plastered to his face and neck as he pressed me to the side of the garden sphere glass, shielding me from a rush of water. I saw him on the Dron ship when I’d discovered he was still alive, the way he had gone completely still, as if he’d seen something so amazing he couldn’t fathom it being real.
“Nol,” I said quietly. It was a confession. A question. Almost a plea.
“Aemi.” He pronounced my name gravely, as if making me a promise.
I sighed as the last vestiges of anger slipped from me, replaced with wistfulness. We were two people in the middle of a huge war. The conflicts and chaos swirled at the edge of my mind, vibrant memories growing dim in the face of this reality, right here and now. I didn’t know anything else but the quiet press of the walls, the tenor of Nol’s voice, and the twisted, confusing history between us. He was Dron; I was Itlantean.
“I have always wanted you to be safe,” he said. “I am bound by duty to the Dron, and I believe in what they stand for. I have placed my life in their hands. But I have never forgotten you. I have never stopped remembering you, wanting you to be safe, wanting you to be well. I...” He pressed his forehead against the top of my head. I felt the rumble of his voice in his chest. “Politics and ideologies cannot argue with that. They are powerless against it.”
Cracks appeared in the hardness that bound my emotions.
His hands slipped from my hair to my shoulders, and then to my back. I let him pull me closer into an embrace, and I pressed my face to his chest. His heart thumped against my cheek, and I felt him tremble.
“We’re still enemies,” I whispered against the fabric of his shirt. “You understand that, right? You’re still Dron. I’m still Itlantean. Nothing changes.”
His fingers squeezed my back. He didn’t respond. I shut my eyes and breathed in the scent of him, allowing myself to feel safe for the first time in this enemy city.
“You’re Aemi, and I’m Nol. When you clear everything else away, that is what remains,” he said.
Nol’s fingers hooked my chin, and he tipped my face up. Our eyes locked.
Before he could say or do anything, footsteps sounded on the stone outside the door, the stamp of guards approaching. We sprang apart before they entered, and I could hear the thud of my pulse in my ears.
I felt as though I were lost in the water and I’d forgotten which way led to the surface.
CHAPTER SIX
I WAS GETTING better at sorting seaweed. The other workers continued to either ignore me, or throw glares and insults my way. Mostly, though, they left me alone. Myla occasionally made barbed comments about Itlanteans, but after our argument before, she’d been quieter.
A towering stack of crates lined one of the walls, and some of the workers spent most of their time unpacking them, pulling out bags of salt that they then used to coat the drying seaweed with. One of the men who lifted the crates, a thin young man with long dark hair and a bracelet strung with five red beads, sneered at me every time I passed him with an armful of stinking seaweed. He reminded me of Kit, perhaps because of his dark, curly hair, because he didn’t smile like my friend, and there was no sunshine in his dark eyes.
“Butcher,” he whispered under his breath, and I flinched away at the venom in his voice. Once, he tried to trip me as I passed. I stumbled but didn’t fall, although I dropped the food I carried. Behind me, I heard Myla sigh.
“Don’t be wasteful,” she scolded when I returned. “We work hard for this slop.”
Surely she’d seen that I was tripped, yet still it was my fault. I ground my teeth together and didn’t answer.
But despite Myla’s snappish comments, she had begun to regard me with less hostility. The simple act of completing hard labor together seemed to smooth way some of the resentment. She mostly grunted at me.
Some of the Dron sang while they worked, haunting melodies that sounded like mermaid song as they echoed quietly through the chamber. Nobody made too much noise, and even the music was muffled to a mere whisper. The sound of it danced along my skin, giving me chills. The words were all about Cataclysms and missing children, mournful melodies that made me want to be alone and thoughtful. Myla hummed to them, but never sang. Sometimes her gaze turned wistful, and she’d pause a moment to stare at nothing.
~ ~ ~
After I’d been with the Dron for a week, Myla asked my name.
“Aemi,” I said, surprised.
“Here, Aemi.” She shoved a pile of seaweed into my arms. “Take this to the drying racks.”
I crossed the room to the racks with the dripping bundle cradled in my arms, passing the young man with the sneering face. I tensed, expecting him to try to trip me as he’d done before, but he was lifting a crate of salt and didn’t turn.
Movement caught my eye above his head. A crate at the top of the stack wobbled precariously. I didn’t have time to think. I shouted a warning and shoved him hard, knocking him to the side as the crate smashed to the ground, scattering salt and broken wood everywhere. The Dron stared at me over the broken pieces where his body would have been, and I gazed down in dismay at my dropped seaweed, dimly aware that my arm was throbbing from a piece of debris that had struck it as the crate shattered.
After a moment, I realized everyone was staring silently. I scurried back to Myla, rubbing my arm.
“I’m sorry about the seaweed,” I said breathlessly.
She blinked at me. “You could have let it fall on his head,” she said. “He has been unkind to you. Everyone’s witnessed it.”
“It could have killed him!”
She nodded. “But he is Dron and you are Itlantean.”
“I wouldn’t just stand there and let someone else die like that.”
She made a thoughtful sound, and we resumed working without speaking.
At the end of the shift, as the workers departed, the Dron man nodded at me once. He didn’t smile or speak, but I understood him.
He wouldn’t try to trip me again.
~ ~ ~
Nol came to see me as I was eating my third meal of the day after the shift. “Are you all right? I heard there was an incident.”
“I pushed a worker out of the way of a falling crate. That’s all.”
He examined my hand. “You’re bruised. There’s a cut.”
“I’m fine.” The touch of his fingers on my skin made me blush.
Nol retrieved the basin and began to wash my arm. He didn’t look at me as he worked, and I sat still, feeling embarrassed and oddly pleased at the same time.
The door screeched on its hinges, and we both looked up as Garren entered the room. He scowled at Nol for being there, and then addressed me.
“Come,” he said. “It’s time that we got some information from you.”
My stomach dropped. “What kind of information?”
Garren cracked his knuckles. “Quiet. Just come.”
Nol stepped in front of me. “I’m coming too.”
Garren shrugged and motioned to the guards behind him. They approached me, and Nol let them, although his shoulders were strung tight and his jaw flexed.
The guards snapped restraints around my wrists and then pulled me toward the door.
I looked at Garren as I passed him. “Surely by now these are unnecessary.” I jangled the restraints at him.
He grinned. “I like to see an Itlantean in chains.”
We went out onto the stone path, and again, we went up the winding steps. Nol stayed by my side, saying nothing, matching my pace. Garren strode ahead, his chest puffed out and his arms swinging.
The path forked, the left side continuing up toward the seaweed sorting room and the right heading straight, a bridge across the basin. Garren led us across the bridge. I looked down, my stomach twisting at the height. Light from the walls played over the rough metal, making it beautiful, staining my hands and arms gold.
We stopped before a door of rusted green. Garren rapped three times, and when it opened, I took a step back. A guard planted his hand between my shoulder blades, and pushed me inside the room. It was round and dark and bathed in shadows. Maps covered the walls, and a table in the center glowed with light.
I stumbled, uncertain, and then moved forward when no one said anything. The light coming from the table made me squint as I approached.
It was a map.
I gazed down at it, my breath catching. Here were all the Dron cities, spread out in glittering points along the seaboard. One city glowed red, a pulsing mark hovering over it. I assumed this was Basin.
The Itlantean cities were also marked. We were not too far from Volcanus. I reached out a finger, and the map blinked.
A shadow stirred farther into the room. I recognized one of the Dron leaders from my unsuccessful petition earlier, the Battalia leader. He wore his uniform today. He stood tall, his back straight and his shoulders taut, and he oozed authority. Beside him, a second uniformed woman mimicked his posture, but this one’s eyes were kinder, and she wore a different color uniform that marked her as Sagessor. A scholar. She looked curious rather than fierce.
“I am going to ask you questions,” the Battalia leader barked. “Speak when spoken to.” He tapped the map in an empty area, near a string of underwater volcanos. “What is located here?”
“I... don’t know.” I shook my head. “No Itlantean cities.”
His lips thinned. “There has been a great deal of Arctusean activity directed toward these islands in the past several decades.”
“I don’t know anything about that. There’s nothing on the map.”
“Of course not,” he said. “Whatever is going on, it’s a deeply guarded Itlantean secret.”
He leaned forward and touched the map. It brightened and the images enlarged to show the volcanos, the tips gray where they pierced the surface of the water. “This area is of great interest to us,” he said. “We believe it has something to do with the kidnapped children we lost.”
The kidnapped children. Garren’s story. The Arctus scientists. I look
ed closer. “I know nothing about this,” I said, but curiosity and foreboding prickled in my stomach.
A great deal of Arctusean activity?
Did Azure have something to do with this?
The woman spoke quietly. “Are you familiar with the name Perilous?”
“Don’t start that ridiculous line of questioning again, Tilya,” the Battalia leader said, even as my head jerked up. Chills rippled over my skin.
Perilous.
The place the woman I’d known as Mother had told me stories about. The place my father had painted pictures depicting. A secret. A whispered word with no explanation, now coming from the lips of this Dron leader.
Tilya’s eyes widened. “You have heard of it,” she breathed, leaning forward and gripping the edge of the table. “I can tell by the look on your face. What do you know?”
My lungs were squeezing. This had something to do with my father. With my abduction.
She was speaking again, but her words were drowned out by the sudden scream of an alarm. The room filled with red light. Everyone straightened, gazing upward.
Another drill, or an attack?
The guards hustled me out of the room. In the main basin, people scurried in orderly lines up and down the paths, closing shops and windows.
The guards hustled me to my cell and shoved me unceremoniously inside. I turned in time to see the door swinging shut.
Nol’s voice came through the slit. “Aemi?”
“Is it an attack?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Just stay calm. I’ll come back for you. I have to report to my station.”
I drew in a ragged breath, resisting the urge to ask him to stay. Then he was gone, and I was alone, crouched on the floor beside the cold metal with my fingers stuck through the slit and the alarms blaring. I looked around the room, but there were no good places to hide. The bed was carved into the stone. Other than the chair and hanging tapestries, the room was bare.
The sound of someone approaching dragged my attention back to the door. I drew away as the lock rattled. “Nol?” I whispered, breathless.
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