They taught us about Outsiders in school. Wood Rats. Scavengers who have defected from the City or Kamar, preying on small groups of soldiers or on one another. But why should Cas and Tian be any more dangerous than people in the City? Maybe the campaign against Outsiders is just another way to keep people inside the walls. Like Howl’s ridiculous theory that the First Circle won’t let citizens have fresh fruit or they’ll escape. Another nightmare to scare the little ones in their sleep.
“My name is Yong-Gui.” Howl jerks his head toward me. “And this is Wenli.” His tight grip on my hand is starting to pinch my fingers. “Thank you for letting us sit by your fire. It’s been so cold.”
“Are you coming from one of the farms?” I instantly regret asking as Howl tries to squeeze the bones right out of my fingers. Parhat finally glances up at us. His eyes are glazed and unfocused, darting between me and Howl before twisting back toward his bowl.
Cas turns back to the fire. “South.”
I nod. Howl pulls me around to face him. “You’ve got a bit of dirt on your neck, Wenli.” One finger runs lightly along my jaw, stopping just below my ear, sending tingles down my throat. Howl catches my eye and presses firmly just behind my jaw, under my ear, eyes flicking toward Parhat. “Is there any water nearby?”
He knows there’s water nearby. We’ve been following the river. Perhaps this is a bid to sneak away?
Looking back at Parhat, I see that just under his ear he has a scar. It looks almost carved. A cross, cut shallowly over and over again. Looking a little more closely, I see more of them. Crosses decorating the back of his neck, and one peeking out from the cuff of his jacket. Scars. Suddenly I understand why Howl is crushing the life out of my hand. He has never been around SS. I’ve known hundreds of infected kids over the years. With Mantis . . .
Parhat’s eyes move up again to look into the trees. They never seem to rest on anything in particular, just dart back and forth as though he can’t keep still. The tapping on the wooden bowl stops, and he looks at us again. Chills run up and down my spine, and I find myself returning Howl’s grip. Those eyes are feral. They’ve never even seen Mantis.
Maybe, in this case, the City wasn’t lying.
Tian sloshes a bit of water into another wooden bowl for my neck, saying, “Might as well use warm. The river’s close by, but this won’t leave you shivering.”
I take the bowl with a hesitant smile and sit with my back to the fire. Howl crouches next to me, watching as I scrub away at my face and neck with the water.
Howl brushes a wisp of hair behind my ear and leans toward me with a painted-on smile.
Lips warm against my ear, he murmurs, “They aren’t going to let us leave. I have two Mantis pills in my pocket for an emergency. If I give them to you, can you take them without anyone noticing?”
I nod slightly and slip a hand inside his jacket. The pills are in a little paper packet, like the ones Sister Shang brought to me the day I broke into the library. When they are safely hidden under my shirt, I whisper back without moving my lips, “Sure you don’t want to just spike the food?”
Howl chuckles like I told him a joke, twirling my stray lock of dark hair around his finger. “There’s no way it would be enough. It should keep you with me until we have a chance to get away, though. If they find our packs, they might just take them. Or they might kill us.”
“I would never have guessed that.” I keep my expression blank. “The gun didn’t tip me off or anything. Why didn’t you just tell them we are brother and sister so we don’t have to act like this?”
“Not plausible. You’re a Fourth. Besides, this way I can watch you jump every time I come anywhere near you.” The edges of a real smile flit across his face, but it disappears as Liming walks over to break up our chat.
Setting two bowls of food on a rock beside us, he sinks down next to us with a sigh. His eyes are sharp and expectant, pinning each of us in turn. I’m not sure what to say or what he wants, but I can’t help but break the loaded silence with a desperately empty “Hi.”
He doesn’t answer, looking over at the bowls and back to us. When we don’t move, he points to them, back at us, then to his mouth. I nod and reach for a bowl, which steams in the cold air. The brownish-yellow liquid smells sharply of rotten cabbage and dirty laundry, the aroma of tubers hiding somewhere underneath. Liming’s eyes follow as I bring the bowl to my lips, sipping to allow the arctic chill lodged in my throat to melt. Definitely spoiled cabbage.
The open smile branded across Liming’s face feels genuine, but lopsided. Missing something.
Howl takes his bowl and drinks, swallowing with a choke disguised as a cough. “Thank you so much for sharing.” The words rush out of his mouth like he’s afraid if something isn’t steadily coming out, more stew will have to go in. “What is in this? It’s delicious.”
Liming nods briskly and returns to his place by the fire without answering.
I sidle up close to Howl and try to whisper out of the side of my mouth, “What was that?”
“He can’t speak.” Howl sloshes his soup around, watching closely as if something alive might crawl out of it. “He doesn’t have a tongue.”
Not even a mention of green eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he doesn’t have a tongue. Cut out, probably. You can tell by the way he moves his mouth.” The soup swirls around and around, and he lifts it again to take an exploratory sip. “I don’t think they put anything toxic in the soup, so you can go ahead and eat it.”
I glance over at Parhat, who is now absorbed in stabbing the ring of ashes around the fire with a stick, a terrible thought burrowing deeper every second. If we don’t find the mountain people Howl seems to think are out here, those scars could be my future. That blank stare with nothing but infection looking out . . . I can’t quite keep the shudder back as it ripples up my spine and down my shoulders and arms. “I’ll pass on lunch. How do we get out of this?”
“We’ll leave tonight after they all go to sleep. Circle back, get our packs, and run for it.”
“The only reason we are still alive is because they think we have Mantis or food or something valuable, right? They need us to take them back to our packs.”
“Right. Better hope Parhat doesn’t have any violent compulsions.”
I think of the wine cellar, the inescapable grip of compulsion, and shiver. Tian walks over, smile plastered across her face.
She pulls us both out of the cold, toward the fire. Where we cannot talk.
CHAPTER 11
SHADOWS JUMP AND TWIST ON the tent wall, the flickers of a dying fire dancing across the fabric. They insisted we take the tent tonight. Even the little girl—June—is sleeping outside. We caught a glimpse of the scarf tied tight around her head before Tian dragged her out of the clearing to gather more wood for the fire. Cas has been planted nearby ever since.
The dirty sweat smell is stifling trapped inside the tent walls, fogging all the way up to where the ceiling is tagged UNIT 314 in bold characters. It makes my mind sink down deep, wondering what happened to the Outside patrollers who must have been the original owners of this tent.
There’s barely enough space for Howl and me, canvas wall inches from my nose as I try to make enough room for the two of us to lie down without touching.
Howl spreads out in front of the doorway, palming my knife against his leg, Tai-ge’s name peeking out through his fingers. When I asked why they didn’t confiscate it, or at least search us for other weapons, Howl shrugged. “I don’t think they’re worried about us taking them by surprise.”
The shadow moves outside, circling around to the other side of the fire.
“What if he just stays there?” I whisper.
Howl glances back at me, shifting a little to allow us to talk, “He’s going to. And I think Liming and Parhat are probably watching the other side so we can’t cut out the back.”
We have to get out tonight. That or face the morning with no Mantis for me. “Are
you going to try to sleep?”
“No.” His voice is flat.
“Staying up won’t help if . . .”
“I won’t let anyone come in here, Sev. You’re safe with me, I promise.” His eyes are black pools in the dark, but I know he is looking at me. “Sleep. One of us should.”
Sleep? With Cas’s shadow outlined against the tent wall? But some part of me—the part that is tired and hurting from running—says that there is no point in trying to stay awake. If we are going to die, there isn’t anything Howl can do. Promises of safety don’t mean anything when SS waits outside in the dark, only feet away. And my eyes are so tired, drooping as fatigue twists tighter and tighter around my brain. . . .
That is, until a knife slits through the tent wall a foot above my head.
I roll away from the weapon slashing down toward me, crashing into Howl’s back and knocking him onto his stomach. A hand slips in through the gash and folds the flap back, Liming’s head appearing through the gap.
He puts a finger to his lips and gestures for us to follow.
Howl and I look at each other. He slithers over me to the rip in the tent, his eyes locked on my face and then skittering away as he touches the rent canvas. “Stay close to me,” he whispers, lightly touching my arm. “And be ready to run.”
Liming stops us just outside the tent and breaks a quicklight, bathing us in the dim yellow light. He hands me a leaf, folded in two.
Unfolding the leaf, I accidentally tear the green waxy surface, a syrupy substance bleeding out all over my hands. In the center, dark charcoal spells out one word. REBELS?
Howl looks from the leaf to Liming, thinking hard. Then nods once.
What does that mean? Rebels?
Liming pulls us farther along so we are away from the fire, away from Cas’s ears. He gestures for us to stay, then walks around a tree, leaving us in darkness.
“What is he doing?” I don’t realize that I’ve spoken out loud until Howl puts a hand on my shoulder. Reassuring, I think. Or maybe just trying to make me be quiet.
The light returns after a few minutes, this time two shadows bobbing in its wake. The quicklight’s sickly glow gives the dirty yellow scarf tied over her head a greenish halo. June.
It’s hard to tell in the dark, but she looks about twelve, shadows under her eyes carving her face into something more than the child she should be. Her eyes stay fixed on the ground, and I can see her hands clenching and unclenching around the straps of the rucksack on her back.
Liming puts a hand on her shoulder, and then points to me. Grasping his hands together, he points again at me, then at June. Another leaf comes, the word ESCAPE scratched out in shaky strokes.
The unwavering glow of the quicklight lines Howl’s face with hard, unforgiving hollows. I can feel refusal blossoming in his throat even before his lips have time to move. The air almost boils with anticipation and violence.
I speak before Howl can shush me. “You’ll help us escape if we take her? Yes. We’ll do it.”
Howl’s arm around me tightens. His face is bland, but the whisper in my ear is clear. “We don’t know anything about her. The rest of the family will have twice the reason to come after us, even if she doesn’t kill us herself.”
Liming bows his head, his face crumpled with emotion. Anger and grief twisted in an all-too-human mask. The leaf crumbles in his hand, pieces fluttering to the ground.
June watches them fall, hardly even breathing.
“Is she infected?” I ask in a whisper.
A quick jerk of his head says no.
“Are you?”
His bright green eyes lift from the ground, yellowed and wolflike in the quicklight. A nod. After a pause, he points back to the tent and the clearing, circling his finger in the air with another quick nod.
“You all are. Except for June.”
He bows his head.
“But Parhat, he’s so much worse. . . .” Even Tian and Cas seem sane compared to Parhat, if not exactly cuddly. Wouldn’t SS have changed them, too?
“SS doesn’t progress the same way in everyone.” Howl’s voice is quiet, even for a whisper as he turns back to Liming. “Why didn’t you just follow us back to our supplies?”
Liming puts an arm around June and lifts her face with a soft touch. She looks at us for the first time, and her green eyes pierce right through me. It only lasts a second before her stare is back in the dirt.
“She’s your daughter?” The sentence cracks and splinters as it presses its way out of my mouth into the heavy air.
Liming’s arm encircling June slips down to her hand to give it a reassuring squeeze. A nod. Almost a smile. A proud smile.
Something opens up inside of me, tears burning behind my eyes as I take in that smile. Longing. Wishing for something that can never be mine. “We’ll take her with us. We’ll make sure she’s safe.” A promise I can only hope to keep. But the words are out.
Liming wraps his arms around June, pulling her tight against him. She doesn’t move, woodenly enduring the hug. When he lets her go, I can see tears on her downturned cheeks.
He nods to Howl and walks back into the trees.
It’s a tightrope walk back to the packs. I feel eyes everywhere, each attached to a gun sight trained on my back as if I’m stuck in a Liberation movie, an audience waiting for any of us to trip, for a gun’s metal voice. All we need is some dramatic background music.
About the time we lose sight of the fire, a gunshot sounds through the woods. We drop to the ground, a small hand finding mine in the dirt. A larger one wraps around my other wrist, thumb running across my palm. My lungs refuse to expand, my whole body waiting for Cas’s leathery scowl to appear over us in the dark.
The hand around my wrist lifts me up. “He’s leading them away. They’re running in the other direction,” Howl whispers.
Pulling June behind us, I follow Howl to the packs. Howl holds mine up while my cold fingers fumble to clasp the straps around my hips and chest. As he grapples with his pack, I watch June. The moon is dark, but even the night can’t hide her huddled outline on the ground, shoulders shaking.
No time to talk now.
Howl grabs my hand, I grab June’s, and we run.
CHAPTER 12
MY EYES WON’T OPEN WHEN Howl shakes me awake in the morning. Taking turns watching through the night coupled with bright sunlight has pain settling across my brain in a poisonous fog. It takes a moment, even after Howl trickles freezing water across my face.
“Stop it! I’m awake!” my voice rasps out in a hoarse whisper.
Peeling my eyes open, I accept the water skin Howl is holding out toward me. He taps his cheek as I sip, studiously ignoring the new member of our group. June is perched up in a tree about ten feet above us, her sleeping bag already stuffed back down into her tiny rucksack.
June’s cheeks are pale under her tan, hands clutching her arms as if she’s cold. She lifts one hand up to the scarf around her head and pulls it off, throwing it to the ground like a piece of garbage, blond snarls falling to her shoulders.
I blink. The golden halo has been teased into a bird’s nest of tangles and dirty leaves. Still, she looks just like pictures of our enemies from the Great Wars. Like the sleeping princess trapped in her picture window. Blond like the Kamari prisoners they bring to the City for execution.
My mouth hangs open, not even sure what to say. Howl catches my eye and shakes his head. He must have seen this before. Kamari escapees. But if there is no Kamar, does that make them the Mountain people? Or just . . . people? My mind twists uncomfortably, trying to fit things together I hadn’t known could come apart.
Howl looks up at June again. “Shall we go?” he asks, lips barely moving.
I look around, trying to figure out who he thinks is watching him. “Yes. If you let me eat something on the way.”
“Fine.” He holds out a green apple. I hesitate, but I take it.
“Has she eaten?” I ask, nodding toward June.
<
br /> Howl gives a curt nod. “I tried. She took one bite of everything I offered her, then stuffed the rest down her shirt. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s holding what she did eat in her cheeks.”
A wave of pity pricks at my eyes. “She hasn’t been eating very well.”
“You don’t need to see her play chipmunk to know that.”
He’s right. June doesn’t look as if she’s seen a good meal in years. Cheekbones sharp as knives stick out underneath those downturned eyes, and her clothing is loose, hanging on her as though she stole it from an older brother.
When I climb up to sit down next to her, she doesn’t even look. I try touching her shoulder, but she just moves away.
“June?” I catch myself ducking my head, as if I can catch her eye if I try hard enough. It would probably take lying on the ground. “You okay?”
A stupid question. Which she answers in kind. Nothing.
“We aren’t going to hurt you. We promised your dad that we would take care of you.”
Her eyes flicker at this, but she doesn’t move. That stillness cuts straight to bone. Tai-ge told me the same thing, breaking my first few weeks of silence after waking up. That he’d take care of me. He’d never hurt me.
I didn’t believe him. It felt wrong, as though if what he said was true, then all the things they said about my parents were true too. That I’d never see them again.
“Are you going to run back to your family?” Howl’s voice is devoid of any accusation, his eyes up with us in the trees. “Would you be better off with them?”
Her shoulder twitches in what might be a shrug.
I climb back down to the ground. June hesitates a second, but follows. When Howl leads out, June casually stuffs a hand down her shirt, comes up with a broken cracker, and takes a bite.
I look at the apple in my hand and raise it up to my lips. It is sour in my mouth. But I like the way it tastes.
• • •
When we stop to eat lunch, June strolls away, glancing back at us once before disappearing into the trees.
Last Star Burning Page 11
