This Savage Song

by Victoria Schwab

  The second photo was a reenactment, taken the day they returned to V-City after the truce. Together again. A family reunited, made whole. She ran her thumb over the faces. An eleven-year-old Kate with her arms around her parents, reunited after six years apart. Six years of chaos and fighting. Six years of quiet and peace.

  The changes showed on all of them. Kate was no longer a round-faced child, but a freckled youth. Her mother had tiny wrinkles, the kind you got from laughing. And her father still looked at Alice, his gaze intense, as if afraid that if he looked away, she would vanish again.

  And she had.

  “Get up, Kate. We have to go.”

  Sloan was wrong. Kate had wanted to come back to V-City, had wanted to stay.

  “I want to go home,” she’d whispered.

  “I want to go home,” she’d begged.

  It was her mother who couldn’t adjust. Her mother who dragged her from bed in the middle of the night, eyes red and lipstick smeared across her cheek.

  “Hush, hush, we have to be quiet.”

  Her mother who bundled her into the car.

  “Where are we going?”

  Her mother who drove into oncoming traffic.

  Her mother who slammed the car into the concrete rail.

  Her mother who died with her head against the wheel.

  And after the accident, it was her father who wouldn’t look at her. She would float in and out of sleep, would wake to see him standing in the doorway, only to realize it wasn’t him at all, just a monster with dark bones and red eyes and a too-sharp smile.

  And when she was finally better, it was her father who sent her away. Who buried her mother, and then buried her. Not in the ground, but in Fischer. In Dalloway. In Leighton and Pennington and Wild Prior and St. Agnes.

  At first, she’d pleaded and begged to come home, to stay home, but over time, she stopped. Not because she stopped wanting it, but because she learned that pleading didn’t work on Callum Harker. Pleading was a sign of weakness. So she learned to bury the things that made her weak. The things that made her like her mother.

  Kate returned the picture frame to the bedside table and looked down at her hands. Her lungs hurt from the smoke but her hands had stopped shaking, and she considered the black blood staining her fingers, not with horror but with grim determination.

  She was her father’s daughter. A Harker.

  And she would do whatever she had to do to prove it.

  VERSE 2

  MONSTER SEE, MONSTER DO

  “Valor, Prosperity, Fortitude, Verity,” recited the teacher, a middle-aged man named Mr. Brody, as he tapped the four central territories on the map. Combined, they took up more than half the space, the six remaining territories filling in the land on either side. “These are, of course, the four largest of the Ten Territories, with populations ranging from twenty-three to twenty-six million. Can anyone tell me the smallest?”

  Grace, thought August as he scribbled a rough map in his notebook and carved it into ten, mirroring the divisions on the board.

  “Fortune?” asked a girl, pointing to the northwest corner.

  “I’m talking about population, not landmass, so no. Fortune has almost seventeen million.”

  It also had mountains. August looked out the window, tried to imagine the blue haze of peaks in the distance. He couldn’t.

  “Charity?” guessed a boy in the back, pointing to the southeast corner, where oceans bordered two sides of the territory. Mountains. Oceans. All Verity had were plains, interrupted here and there by hills, which were little more than undulations according to the topographic map.

  “Nine point three million. Getting closer.”

  “Grace?” ventured a girl at the front, pointing to a mass on the northeast coast.

  “That is correct. Can anyone tell me how many—”

  “Six million three-hundred and fifteen thousand, at last count,” said Kate without raising her hand. She was sitting one desk over.

  Of all the classes they could have shared, they’d ended up with History. The irony wasn’t lost on him.

  “Very good, Miss Harker,” said Mr. Brody with a shit-eating grin (a term August had learned from Harris). “Luckily for the rest of you, this course will focus primarily on our own illustrious territory . . .”

  August might have found his current situation flat-out funny—being in a room with his enemy’s daughter, learning about the balance of power and politics in Verity—if he didn’t have to focus every ounce of energy on keeping his mouth shut as the teacher went on about their esteemed capital, skipping over any mention of the monsters that ran it in the light of day or the ones that roamed its streets at night. It wasn’t as if he expected the class to be objective, but it was still hard to listen to the skewed narrative. Every time the teacher referred to the city as V-City instead of North City, as if the southern half wasn’t worth mentioning, as if it didn’t exist beyond the Seam, August felt his chest tighten. People weren’t really this deluded, were they?

  The class wasn’t the only thing making him tense; he’d overheard a conversation that morning between Henry and Leo. They were talking—heatedly—about the latest incident at the Seam. A handful of Corsai had found a crack and come through, and no one knew if Harker had sent them or if the monsters on his side were getting restless. August had hovered outside the office to listen.

  “It doesn’t matter why they came,” Leo was saying. “It doesn’t matter who sent them. Either Harker did, in which case he is actively breaking the truce, or they rebelled, in which case Harker is failing to control them and the truce is forfeit.”

  “We’ve come so far,” said Henry. “I will not put this city through another war.”

  “We made a promise,” said Leo.

  “A threat.”

  “—that if Harker broke his covenant, we would see his empire razed.”

  “Those were your words, Leo. Not mine.”

  “We must remind him of the weapons at our disposal.”

  “People will die,” challenged Henry.

  “People are always dying.”

  August had shivered at the cold detachment in his brother’s voice.

  At the front of the room, Mr. Brody was droning on. “. . . marked forty years since the dissolution of the federal government—you should all know this—in the wake of the war in . . .” he trailed off, waiting for an answer.

  “Vietnam,” announced a boy.

  “Indeed,” said the teacher. “National unrest, a strained economy, and depleted morale resulted in the federal collapse and subsequent reconstruction of the once-United States.” He tapped the center of the map. “Now, can anyone tell me how many of the antiquated states now make up Verity? Anyone?”

  August continued to shade in his own map, the names drifting through his head. Kentucky. Missouri. Illinois. Iowa. They sounded like nonsense words.

  “And in the aftermath of these tumultuous events?”

  August was halfway through labeling the map when he felt a pair of eyes, and glanced over to find Kate staring at his paper. He hadn’t defaced the territories, but he’d started a running list in the corner of the page with other, more fitting, names for each.

  Greed, Malice, Gluttony, Violence.

  Kate frowned slightly. August held his breath. All around them, the class rambled on, but for him, the room was receding, leaving only the two of them in focus.

  “. . . states combined to form fewer, independent territories,” said a girl near the front.

  “Good.” Mr. Brody turned to write the answer on the board, and Kate reached across the aisle. He tensed, wondering what she was about to do, when she brought her pen to his paper and drew a second V beside the one at the beginning of Verity. He frowned, confused.

  By the time the teacher looked back, her hands were folded on her desk.

  “What else?”

  “States became self-governing,” added a boy.

  “And then condensed into the Ten Territo
ries.”

  “Power concentrated in the capitals.”

  “And so did the people.”

  Every time someone called out an answer, the teacher returned to the board, and every time he did, Kate leaned over and added another mark—a jagged line, a swoop, a pair of dots. It took him half the class to figure out what she was doing, and then, between one scribble and the next, it came together.

  The body. The mouth. The claws.

  Kate had turned Verity into a monster.

  He stared at her, and then, he couldn’t help it.

  He smiled.

  Kate enjoyed the sliver of time between classes, the five minutes Colton afforded its students to get from A to B. Being in class was exhausting: half the teachers treated her like she had a loaded gun, the other half like she had a crown. The walk was the only time she could really breathe, so she was more than a little annoyed when one of the girls from History looped an arm through hers on the way to Gym.

  “Hi,” chirped the girl in a voice that was way too bright for ten A.M. “I’m Rachel.”

  Kate’s stride didn’t falter, but she said nothing.

  “I heard what you did to Charlotte Chapel.”

  “I didn’t do anything to Charlotte.” Yet.

  “Hey, I think it’s great,” she said cheerfully. “That bitch totally deserved a check.”

  Kate sighed. “What do you want?”

  The girl’s smile went full wattage. “I just want to help,” she said. “I know you’re new here, and I thought you could use a friend.”

  Kate raised a single pale brow. Being liked was a perk, not a necessity. She supposed she could take a different tactic, try to conform, go out for homecoming queen, establish a more traditional form of popularity, but it all seemed so . . . juvenile. She could still feel the blood beneath her nails. How could anyone care so much about which table they sat at when Malchai were ripping out throats in the red? Then again, that’s why they lived in North City. That’s what their parents were paying for. Ignorance. “You don’t want to be my friend, Rachel.”

  The girl’s cheer settled into something colder, more calculating. “Look, Katie.”

  “Kate.”

  “Everyone needs an ally. You can go around acting invincible, but I’m willing to bet you’d rather be liked.”

  “Is that so?” asked Kate dryly.

  Rachel nodded solemnly. “We all know who your father is, but you don’t have to be like him.” She took Kate by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes, as if she was about to say something vitally important. “You’re not your father.”

  Kate tensed imperceptibly at that, then managed to draw her mouth into a small, cruel smile. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Of course,” said Rachel.

  Kate leaned in and brought her lips to the girl’s ear. “I’m much worse.”

  She pulled back, taking a moment to savor Rachel’s expression before walking away.

  The first week of Gym was supposed to be a segment on self-defense—Kate had several issues with Colton’s interpretation. The first—and biggest—of which was that there were no weapons. Kate couldn’t imagine someone stupid enough to wander the streets of V-City without at least a knife on them, but Colton insisted on a “safe” environment (she was starting to hate that word).

  She could have skipped, but watching students try to defend themselves (poorly) against imaginary attackers was more interesting, so she sat on the stands with the rest of the class and pretended to pay attention.

  “Who can tell me what S-I-N-G stands for?” asked one of the instructors.

  “Sing?” offered a girl, chewing gum. A few people snickered. Kate hoped she was joking but feared she wasn’t.

  “Um, yes,” drawled the teacher, “but I meant, what do the letters stand for?”

  Stomach. Instep. Nose. Groin.

  A brawny boy raised his hand. “Stomach, instep, nose, groin?”

  “Very good!”

  Kate wanted to point out that Corsai didn’t have stomachs, insteps, noses, or groins, and if you got close enough to hit a Malchai, it would probably rip your throat out. But she kept the observations to herself, and focused on the second most frustrating thing about this alleged self-defense course, which was the fact that the teachers were doing it wrong.

  The moves they demonstrated likely wouldn’t stop a human, let alone a monster. Their form was off, as if they didn’t really want to teach the Colton students how to fight. It was just a performance, all for show, something to make the children—or probably the parents—feel safer.

  Five of Kate’s six schools—St. Agnes excluded—had taught self-defense courses, since many of the students who boarded there were sons and daughters of influential people—territory ambassadors, big-business owners, some old money and others new—the kind of people whose kids make good targets. No one had ever had the guts to try and kidnap Kate, but over time she’d amassed an arsenal of defensive techniques—as well as a few offensive ones—which just made the current display of ineptitude even more annoying.

  When one teacher demonstrated how to disarm an attacker, it was so slow and clumsy that Kate actually laughed. Not loudly, but the gym was basically an echo chamber, and the sound carried far enough for an instructor to hear.

  “Is something funny?” he asked, scanning the students. He wouldn’t have known she was responsible if everyone near her hadn’t leaned away.

  Kate sighed. “No,” she said, speaking up. “But your form’s all wrong.”

  “Well, then, missy,” he said, pointing at her. “Why don’t you come down and give us a proper demonstration?”

  A murmur ran through the class. The instructor clearly didn’t know who she was. One of the other teachers shot him a look, but Kate only smiled and got to her feet.

  Ten minutes later, Kate was sitting in the counselor’s office. Not for laughing at the instructor, but for breaking his collarbone. She hadn’t tried to hurt him. Not badly. It wasn’t her fault he had poor stance and an inflated sense of ability.

  “Miss Harker,” said the counselor, a round man named Dr. Landry, with glasses and a spreading bald spot. “Here at Colton we try to provide a safe learning environment.” There was that word again. “We have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to violence.”

  Kate choked back another laugh. Landry pursed his lips. She coughed, swallowed.

  “It was a self-defense segment,” she said. “And he asked me to participate.”

  “You were asked to demonstrate a defensive maneuver, and in so doing you accidentally fractured the instructor’s collarbone?”

  “That’s correct.”

  Landry sighed. “I’ve read your file, Miss Harker. This isn’t an isolated incident.” Kate sat back, half expecting him to read the list of her offenses, the way they did in movies, but he didn’t. Instead he took off his glasses and began to polish them. “Where do you think this aggression is coming from?” he asked.

  Kate met his gaze. “Is that a joke?” But Landry didn’t seem to be the joking type. If anything he seemed painfully sincere. He opened his drawer and slid a vial of small, white pills across the table. She didn’t reach for them.

  “What are those for?”

  “Anxiety.”

  Kate sat up straighter, making sure her shoulders were level, her face even. “I don’t have anxiety,” she said stiffly.

  Landry gave her a strangely weighted look. “Miss Harker, you’ve been rapping your fingers on your knees since the moment you sat down.” Kate pressed her hands flat on her thighs. “You’re tense. Irritable. Defensive. Intentionally distancing.”

  Kate offered a very cold smile. “I live in a world where shadows have teeth. It’s not a particularly relaxing environment.”

  “I know who your father is—”

  “So does everyone.”

  “—and I’ve read about your mother. About the accident.”

  Her mother’s face flashed in her mind, lit by the on
coming car, those wide hazel eyes, the screeching tires, the crunching metal—Kate dug her nails into her slacks, and resisted the urge to let him talk into her bad ear. “So?”

  “So I know it must be hard. Suffering that kind of loss. The subsequent alienation. And now this: a new school, a fresh start, but also what I have to imagine is a great deal of stress.” He nodded to the pills. “You don’t have to use them. But take them with you. They’re less harmful than cigarettes, and you never know, they might actually help.”

  Kate considered the vial. How many of the students were on these pills? How many of the citizens in North City? Did the medicated calm keep them from fanning the flames of violence? Did it help them pretend the world was safe? Did it hold them together? Did it help them sleep?

  Kate frowned but reached for the pills. She doubted anything would help, but if the gesture got the good Dr. Landry off her back and kept the incident off the school record (and her father’s radar), it was worth it.

  “Am I free to go?” she asked. Landry nodded, and she escaped out from under his gaze and into the empty hall.

  Kate shook a white tablet into her palm. She looked down at the pill, hesitated.

  Where are you? she asked herself.

  Away. Whole. Sane. Happy. A dozen different selves with a dozen different lives, but she wasn’t living any of those. She had to be here. Had to be strong. And if Dr. Landry saw the fraying edges, then so would her father.

  Kate swallowed the tablet dry.

  She looked around the empty hall. Too late to go back to class. Too early to go anywhere else. Through the nearest set of doors, the bleachers stood, soaked invitingly in sun. She pocketed the pills and went to get some air.