Fireborne

by Rosaria Munda

  My patience snaps.

  “I am aware of what happened to Annie’s family.”

  For a second we stare at each other. I hold my face rigid, impassive; Duck looks so furious that for a moment, I wonder if he’s going to hit me. I also wonder if I’ll hit him back.

  “Let me help you understand,” I say slowly. “Callipolis lost almost everything in the attack. We won’t have enough to make it through the winter, even if the collections go perfectly. People are going to starve. Right now it’s just a matter of how many. Every bushel Annie extracts, every wagon she sends back to the depot, means we’ll be able to spread resources further. We’re talking lives, Duck. Your mother’s, your brothers’ and sisters’. With stakes like that, we can’t afford to think about Annie’s feelings.”

  By the end, I know that I’ve won. All the same, my insides are knotted, riddled with the thought of Annie—not this Annie, but the one from before, the child-Annie who used to let me take care of her—leaning close to whisper: Sometimes when the nightmares get really bad, I just don’t sleep. It’s okay, really. You just get a little tired during the day—

  “Could you maybe just,” Duck says, hoarse, “give me a few hours off at the same time as her, Lee? I haven’t . . . I haven’t seen her since it started. Maybe I could convince her—”

  I’ve gone hoarse, too.

  “Of course.”

  ANNIE

  I’m emerging from the washroom when I hear a knock on the dorm room door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Me,” Duck’s voice says. “Can I come in?”

  I’ve been able to avoid Duck all week without even trying, but there seems no good way to avoid him now. I open the door and am torn between wanting to pull him to me and slamming the door closed in his face.

  “What do you want?”

  “We’ve both got the afternoon off.”

  I turn away from him, take my towel back up, and resume scrunching water out of my hair. I’ve been bathing for at least a half hour, scrubbing every inch of myself until it hurt. It’s late afternoon; the room is warm from accumulated sunlight. “You want me to do what, go for a walk with you? Enjoy the changing leaves?”

  Duck’s voice is soft, calm. “Of course not.”

  I’ve gone still, the towel bunched in my hair, staring at the contents of my dresser trays, unable to turn to him, though suddenly it’s the only thing I want to do. And then he’s taken a step closer and said my name, and I’ve spun toward him and he’s wrapped his arms around me. The pressure that’s been building in my throat and eyes mounts and reaches the breaking point.

  “I’m sorry—”

  He holds me, not speaking. It feels good, unutterably good, to have his arms around me. My face against his chest, my head cupped by his hand. As though he’s holding me together so that I can fall apart. It’s the first time we’ve embraced since the night of the Lycean Ball.

  “Duck, I’m sorry,” I blurt out. “I’m sorry—that night—I never wanted to hurt you—”

  Duck’s arms around me have gone very still.

  “You’re talking about the Lycean Ball?”

  I nod, mortified. Duck inhales, then shakes his head.

  “That doesn’t matter right now, Annie. And you shouldn’t apologize for it. Ever.”

  He speaks so forcefully, with such assurance, that it almost disguises the way his voice strains. But I’m too tired to focus on that. I sink deeper into his arms, squeeze my eyes shut, and will the world out. The dorm, the rows of crisply made beds and desks cluttered with the schoolwork of forgotten classes fade to nothing as I close my eyes.

  But then that smell comes back.

  “Can you smell it?” I whisper.

  Duck’s arms tighten around me. “Smell what?”

  “Dragonfire. I smell like dragonfire. Even after I bathe. It’s there when I eat and when I sleep and when . . .”

  The words are spilling out like they’re coming of their own accord. Duck makes a murmured noise of comfort, and there is pain in his voice, matching mine. Then he pulls away from me just enough to look me over, his tan face crinkled at the corner of his eyes with worry.

  “Annie,” he says, “you need to sleep.”

  When he takes my hand and pulls me toward my bed, I let him.

  He tosses my discarded flamesuit to the floor and pulls down the covers, and after I get into bed he pulls the blanket over me, like he’s tucking me in. And then he crawls onto the bed next to me, atop the covers. The blanket separating our bodies a message that is clear, if unspoken: I’m here as your friend, and nothing else.

  Of all the ways Duck has ever been sweet to me, this is the gesture that seems sweetest of all, and that makes my eyes fill all over again. I curl closer, rest my head against his chest, and breathe in the smell of salt air, lingering from Duck’s last sea patrol. It’s the first reprieve from dragonfire I’ve had in hours.

  “It’s almost over, Annie,” he murmurs, wrapping an arm over my shoulder. My face buried against him, my wet hair dampening his uniform, I feel the words rumble through his chest. I’ve calmed, by now, enough to let out a dull laugh.

  “It’s just begun,” I answer. Can’t he see that? “This is all there is. We’re monsters, even if they call us something else.”

  Duck’s breathing shifts. For a moment, its ragged rise and fall is all I hear. The arm he has draped over me shifts, as if, where I couldn’t see, he’s just reached up to wipe his eyes. But when he speaks, his voice remains steady.

  “Did I ever tell you the story my mother used to tell us, of the time old Aron tricked the sun into lending him its fire?”

  He’s adopted the low murmur I remember him using at bedtime with his siblings, and already I can feel my shoulders loosening, my breath lengthening. I shake my head.

  “Well then,” Duck murmurs. “Listen closely.”

  15

  THE LAST LETTER

  LEE

  There are a few days of relative calm after collections are finished. Inventories are being finalized in the depots, and in the meantime, aside from guarding the coastline, all we have to do is wait. Crissa secures leave to go home, an exception made to the usual proscription against traveling by dragon for personal reasons. Duck persuades Annie to go out to sea with him for a few patrols, and she returns looking the better for it. I catch up on sleep.

  Then, for a second time, Annie and I are summoned to the Inner Palace, this time with Cor and Power. Now that we’ve taken stock, called in debts, and borrowed what we could, it’s time to look at how distribution will work. Those sitting at the table are the same as last time, with an addition: Callipolis’s chief physician is present, and the meeting begins with his presentation.

  The physician describes the project he’s been working on over the past week: finalizing a formula to predict survival rates based on ration amounts, fitted to the population of Callipolis. All of this seems fairly straightforward, until the physician explains the further way in which his formula works.

  “As requested by the Council,” he says, looking uncomfortable for the first time, “it can be broken down into—categories.”

  He rolls back a sheet of paper on the board he’s been working on, and four numbers appear. If they were summed up, they look as though they would fit the population of Callipolis. But the smallest number is barely a tenth of the sum, and the largest is about half. I realize what they signify about the same time Annie does; next to me, she inhales sharply.

  “This is the population of Callipolis broken down by class metal,” the physician says, now looking decidedly hesitant.

  Cor, who has been sitting on my other side taking notes until this point, freezes. His pen, poised on the next line, begins to bleed ink onto his notebook. Power glances at him and then past him, at me. Like he’s challenging me.

  The physician con
tinues to explain, his voice becoming hoarse.

  “Class Gold, the smallest, followed by Bronze and Silver at roughly twenty-five percent each, and then the Iron population rounding out at around forty. It’s a foregone conclusion that full rations for all members of Callipolis, for the whole winter, will be untenable. And if resources are spread equally, the survival rates will be . . . undesirable. However, if variation in ration size is permitted, the figures change.”

  Atreus prompts coolly: “In other words, if some are given more food than others?”

  “Yes. Large numbers of people can be saved . . . and heaviest losses can be contained within certain populations.”

  Certain populations.

  I feel the horror of it rising like a tide, until I have to crane my neck to stay above it and breathe deep. No, no, surely I misunderstand—

  Surely they’re not going to base ration amounts on the metals test—

  Surely we didn’t just spend two weeks shaking down village after village for their harvests only to serve this further horror—

  But though the faces around the table are grim, they show little sign of surprise. Only Power, Cor, Annie, and I, it seems, were not prepared. Atreus is particularly calm. “And what would those losses look like?”

  The pen in Cor’s hand is beginning to puncture his notebook.

  “Well,” the physician says, wiping his forehead. “That depends on how you adjust the numbers.”

  He flips to the next page. On it, at the top, his formula is written out, and below it, different numbers are plugged in. Power’s expression is slowly filling with something like delight, while Cor remains frozen, staring at the inkblot spreading from his pen. Annie’s hand begins to speed across her notebook as she copies the formula down.

  “Here are a few of the proposed solutions.”

  The first gives full rations to classes Gold, Bronze, and Silver, and only one-eighth rations to Iron—for every full meal a Gold would be given, an Iron would be given an eighth the amount of food. Such distribution predicts survival rate for class-irons at around fifty percent.

  “Less than ideal,” Atreus observes, in the same calm voice.

  “As thought I,” says the physician, looking relieved. “As per your—aforementioned priorities—I have calculated a few other scenarios . . .”

  He shows the second proposal, with Bronze and Silver receiving slightly less than full rations, Gold still at full rations, and Iron bumped up to quarter rations. Atreus dislikes this one, too, so the physician keeps showing him lower ration levels for Bronze and Silver, at eighty and then seventy percent of full fare, but even there the survival rate for the Iron class gets only up to around seventy percent.

  Which looks better until you start doing that math: the number of weak and sick and young and elderly of the Iron population who would not be able to survive on such small fare.

  But then the pull of the logic takes hold, even as it makes me feel ill with myself:

  If losses are inevitable, where would it be better for them to occur? From skilled labor, upon whose farmers and craftsmen we rely? From the military, whose defense we need in a time of crisis? From the Gold elite, who govern our country?

  Unskilled laborers—service workers, textiles and smelting, mining, quarrying—these would be the easiest workers to replace, the least-skilled contributors to lose—

  No, no, no—I’ve had rounds among Iron workers, interviewed them privately to make sure they were well-treated, spent years attending their welfare, Cor’s sister is an Iron worker—

  I don’t want these thoughts. I don’t want to be weighing these choices. I don’t want this logic—

  Holmes speaks. “My soldiers need to eat, Atreus.”

  Atreus frowns, considering, and then nods. “Bring Silver back up,” he tells the physician.

  Which pushes the survival rate of Iron down again.

  Cor clears his throat and murmurs, “Excuse me.”

  For a moment, I think he has something to say, but then I realize he’s pushing back his chair to leave the room. Power’s eyes follow him, lit with amusement; Atreus watches his departure impassively. Then he tells the physician, as though there were no interruption, “Bronze should also be as functional as possible. We can’t afford to go below two-thirds.”

  Annie silently pushes her notebook toward me, on which, below the formula, she has scribbled the word Gold? For a second longer we look at each other, and I wonder whether my face has gone as white as hers.

  I nod, because I had been thinking it, too. She stares at me, hard, like she’s daring me to say it. I give in, turn to the physician, and ask, “Why is Class Gold at full rations?”

  The physician glances at Atreus, and in the second that he does, I notice the gold wristband glinting on his arm. Around the room, others are shifting uncomfortably, glancing at each other. We’re all Gold here, except for Holmes.

  “The First Protector requested that we ensure maximum survival rate for Class Gold,” the physician tells me. He looks embarrassed, but determined nonetheless, like this is one part of the plan he backs wholeheartedly. “They are, after all, the nation’s most valuable citizens.”

  Annie speaks up, her voice quiet. “Surely they don’t need full rations. Their work isn’t usually physical, is it?”

  The physician stares at her, like he doesn’t quite believe a second underage person is volunteering out of turn. “Well, that varies by individual, but—”

  “Lo Teiran does not need a full stomach to write poetry,” I point out.

  The physician is scowling at the two of us, like we’re being smart-asses, but he seems unwilling to call us out on it. After all, as far as anyone here knows, Annie and I were poor and close to starving during the last famine—unlike any of them. This fact alone seems to lend legitimacy to our criticism. The physician looks at Atreus, as if asking him to speak for the class-golds, but Atreus does not. He and I are staring at each other.

  “There are so few class-golds,” the physician says, “it hardly makes a difference what they get. Statistically.”

  Atreus drops his eyes from mine. “Lower Gold to eighty percent full-ration fare and reset that as the baseline.”

  The physician swallows and nods.

  We take a break around noon, though Atreus doesn’t say what the break is for, as if the word lunch would be indecent to utter right now. For the last hour, the numbers have been fiddled with, manipulated, haggled over like a deal at the market.

  Annie and I don’t discuss where we’re going when we leave the Council Room, but we seem to have one mind as we take the fastest route out of the Inner Palace. Outside, I exhale the breath I’ve been half holding and Annie puts her hands over her mouth. Then she screams aloud. It’s muffled against her hand, and it only goes on for about two seconds, but it still makes me aware of open windows around us.

  “Come on,” I say, grabbing her by the arm.

  I lead the way down the arcade, into the next courtyard that opens onto the Hall of Plenty. The leaves on the oaks have turned; the empty courtyard bursts with color. The sky hangs heavy with stratocumulus and the smell of coming rain.

  “Did you know?” she asks me, spinning to face me when she sees that we’re alone.

  “No. But I should have.”

  It seems, now that I know, that I should have known all along. Of course there was more to the metals test than a free ride up the social ladder. After the thousands of ways I’ve seen the state act against Iron workers—in pay and labor and rights and information—should I really be surprised we came to this in the end?

  Julia’s words from our last meeting: You believe his regime is better than what came before, just because it calls serfs by another name and teaches them to read?

  “I should have, too,” Annie says.

  This is what it was all for. These last two wee
ks of hell, of providing the muscle the state required, the dragonfire, the traditional methods—this was what we did it for. To give Silver three-quarters of Gold rations, Bronze half, and Iron a fourth.

  Power has caught up with us, hands thrust deep in his uniform pockets. He takes in our faces and smiles.

  “Good day to be Gold,” he remarks.

  Annie looks past him and points past me across the courtyard: “Cor.”

  He’s hunched amid the fallen leaves at the base of a tree. His face has turned in our direction, but he makes no move to rise.

  “Didn’t his sister test Iron?” Power asks, with that same idle amusement.

  Annie pushes past him, then cuts across the leaf-strewn grass toward Cor. After hesitating for only a moment, I follow. I’m pretty sure Cor doesn’t want to talk to us, but I want to be in Power’s company even less.

  “She’ll be okay, Cor,” Annie says without preamble, when she reaches him. “We’ll make sure of it.”

  “No offense, Annie,” Cor says, sounding tired and not looking up from his knees, “but piss off.”

  For a second, nobody says anything.

  He raises his eyes to us. “Neither of you even questioned it.”

  Annie glances at me, a mixture of confusion and shame on her face.

  “It must be nice, not having a family,” Cor goes on. He gets to his feet, brushing dried leaves off his hands, turning away. “Bet it makes this job a lot easier.”

  Annie seizes Cor by the arm. “Don’t do this. You know I care about your family, they’re the closest—”

  But she seems too angry, or too embarrassed, to finish the sentence, and she gulps and stops. Then she just stands there, the line of her mouth rippling, as she holds his arm.

  Cor’s eyes travel down to her hand on his arm and he sneers. “You care about them? So that’s what it looks like for you, caring about someone—assigning them a percentage chance of survival based on their wristband—”