Cage had noticed me walking past the cooking fire, seen my fear of it, and couldn’t resist the opportunity to entertain himself and his friends with some casual cruelty. He grabbed me from behind, and was dangling me upside down over the flames, making jokes about someone called Blaze being scared of fire, when Donnell arrived and forcefully intervened. Cage had kept a wary distance from me ever since then, so why was he confronting me now?
The answer had to be that today was my birthday. Cage suspected that turning eighteen would change my situation. He’d come to remind me that he still held a grudge over the incident by this fire, and make it clear that losing the protection of the Resistance would leave him free to take his long awaited revenge.
I tried to reassure myself that Cage could only frighten me with words this time – he surely wouldn’t risk attacking me in full view of the whole alliance – but my panicking mind wasn’t totally convinced. I glanced round, weighing my options if Cage did make a grab for me. Flight or fight? To escape past Cage, I’d have to move perilously close to the flames, and Cage knew exactly how I’d feel about doing that. As for fighting … Cage was twice my size. I wouldn’t stand any better chance against him now than back when I was an eleven-year-old girl.
“Hello, Blaze,” Cage repeated, giving me the smug smile of a man who believed he was handsome. I thought he was fooling himself. Cage’s muscled figure and blond hair might have made him attractive ten years ago, but now he was in his mid-thirties, that blond hair was receding, and he had unflattering lines carved into his face that betrayed his bullying nature.
“Hello.” I muttered the response while studying the size of the gap between him and the fire. Was it possible to squeeze through it without getting burnt? Could I even force myself to try when my head was filled with memories of choking smoke and my mother’s dying screams?
“Now you’re eighteen, I think it’s time for us to come to an agreement,” said Cage.
I stared at him in confusion. “What agreement?”
“The obvious one.” He must have seen the bewilderment in my face, because he shook his head. “I thought you were more intelligent than this. Kasim’s death from the winter fever has left Donnell short of an officer, and I’m willing to marry you on condition I get the vacant position. The arrangement could work extremely well for both of us. You’d get a powerful husband. I’d get increased status. Think about it.”
“No!”
I said the word instinctively, stupidly, before I could stop myself. The smile vanished from Cage’s face, and he leaned forward. I could feel his angry breath against my cheek as he whispered close to my ear.
“Do you really think you’ll be able to pick and choose between a dozen offers? If you do, then I suggest you go and take a long hard look at yourself in a mirror. Donnell split up from your mother before you were born, and nobody believes you’re his daughter, not even Donnell himself.”
I backed away, but Cage instantly took a step forward to close the gap between us again. His mouth was touching my ear now, so there was no way to avoid hearing his words.
“When you arrived here with your brother and the other refugees from London, everyone could see the boy was the living image of Donnell in his youth, but there was a suspicious resemblance between you and the London division leader.”
“I look like Ice because he’s a distant cousin of my mother.”
“You look like Ice because he’s your real father,” said Cage, “but Donnell is a generous man so he publicly accepted both you and your brother as being his children. Given what happened a couple of weeks later, Donnell must have bitterly regretted that generosity. He’s not the sort of man to go back on his word, so he’s never actually denied you’re his daughter, but he’s shown no more interest in you than in any of the other Resistance children.”
Cage laughed. “Now you’re eighteen, Donnell will be eager to get rid of his embarrassing problem, but even the biggest bribe won’t tempt many men to marry the plain-faced sister of a traitor. You’d better agree to my offer before I change my mind.”
He straightened up, laughed again, then turned his back on me and stalked off. I stood there numbly for a moment, wondering if the people in the food queue had heard his words. No, surely they couldn’t have done. Cage had pitched his voice too low for that.
I forced myself to move, scurrying past the fire to the centre of the room, and the safety of the group of tables belonging to the Earth Resistance. My best friend, Hannah, was sitting at our regular table. I saw her look anxiously at me, and pat the vacant chair next to her, but I wasn’t going to endanger her by dragging her into a conflict between me and Cage.
I went to an empty table instead, put down my bowl, and spread my hands flat on the table top to stop them trembling. I’d made a dreadful mistake by the cooking fire. Agreeing to marry Cage was unthinkable, but I should have at least pretended I’d consider it. Instead, I’d flung a flat refusal in his face. Cage had already had one grudge against me, and now I’d handed him another.
I looked round for Donnell, and saw he was talking to Machico. I faced forward again. Those few moments by the fire must have really shaken me to make me consider asking Donnell for help. For over six years, Donnell and I had had a tacit agreement. I could remain a member of the Resistance, but neither of us would mention certain subjects. How my mother died. What my brother did. What I didn’t do. The issue of whether Donnell was really my father.
I couldn’t break that agreement and start making personal demands on Donnell now, especially after he’d said those ominous words about discussing my future. I’d have to find a way to deal with Cage myself.
There was a sickening moment as I wondered if Donnell’s words were connected with Cage’s offer of marriage. If Donnell knew about that and wanted me to accept Cage, then …
No! I couldn’t believe that. I wouldn’t believe that. Donnell would never push any girl into marrying a man like Cage. These two things had happened at the same time, but only because they’d both been triggered by my eighteenth birthday.
I stood there for a few seconds longer, with the scent of food making my stomach nag at me, then finally sat down at the table and began eating my soup.
Chapter Three
As I scraped the last trace of soup from my bowl, Donnell began calling out the names of those who’d be in his hunting group. I felt a stab of uncertainty as I heard him say Cage’s name, but told myself there was nothing significant about that. It was too dangerous for Donnell to let each division send out its own hunting party – the long-running feuds between them were bound to lead to one division’s group “accidentally” shooting at another – so he split the men from each division between hunting parties led by himself and his officers.
Everyone knew those hunting parties were carefully randomized daily, so each man would get his turn at having the prestige of being in Donnell’s group, but that didn’t stop the chosen ones from giving gloating looks at those less fortunate. Donnell’s officers each shouted out names in turn after that, with the exception of Luther, because he hadn’t started leading hunting groups yet.
There was the traditional mockery of the man who was last to be called, then we all fastened our coats and put on hats and gloves. The men moved towards the glass-walled entrance area at the front of Reception, collected their bows and knife belts from tables, and headed out through the side door we’d been using ever since the main doors jammed shut four years ago. The women trailed after them, collecting their own knives and mesh fish bags. We had no groups to organize, because we all had our regular fishing spots, working in pairs for safety reasons.
Behind us came the children under twelve and the elderly, who’d be scrabbling in the snow for the genetically modified wintereat that was our main vegetable supply. It would be a miserable task in the freezing cold, but they wouldn’t have to go further than the old front lawn that was our vegetable garden, and they’d be taking turns to shelter indoors. The children would h
ave a couple of hours of school lessons, while the adults either taught them or cared for the babies and those too sick to work at all.
I just hoped there was still some wintereat left for them to find. Created a couple of centuries ago from the genes of a dozen parent plants including potatoes and cabbage, wintereat was designed to grow incredibly fast all year round in a huge range of climates, but nothing could make much progress when it was buried under snow.
The second I was outside, the wind chilled me despite my thick coat and boots. Up on the roof, the snow had been less than ankle deep because the wind kept blowing it away. Down here, it came to well above my knees, and was far deeper where it had drifted against walls. A gaggle of jubilant small children, rejoicing at being outdoors again after suffering three long days of extra school lessons during the blizzard, fought their way to the half-smothered row of portals by the front wall of the building. They started weaving their way in and out of the massive, upright rings.
“Dial it! Dial it! Portal, dial it!” they chanted. “We’re ordering you by Newton. We’re commanding you by Einstein. We’re conjuring you by Thaddeus Wallam-Crane!”
I wondered how they’d react if one of those portals flared to life in response to their ritual game. It would never happen though. Two hundred years ago, Thaddeus Wallam-Crane invented portal technology. For the next century, people routinely stepped through portals to travel between neighbourhoods, between cities, even between continents, and then came interstellar portal technology. That gave humanity the stars, and started the great exodus from polluted Earth to new, unspoilt colony worlds scattered across hundreds of distant star systems.
Now Earth was semi-abandoned, and the only people left here were the few who wouldn’t or couldn’t leave. I counted as both. I was a member of the Earth Resistance, so I’d never leave Earth, and none of the new colony worlds would accept me anyway.
My parents had probably travelled by portal a thousand times during their youth. I’d used a portal only once, when fleeing from the London firestorm to the safety of New York. My memories of that were a confused mixture of unconnected fragments. The acrid scent and taste of the choking smoke. The sight of the panicking faces of the other refugees crammed into the room that would be either our escape route or our coffin. The sound of Ice’s voice shouting instructions, and my own frantic sobbing. The feel of my brother’s arms clutching me tightly against his chest as he carried me through the glowing circle.
My brother and I had made it to safety, but we’d lost our mother to the London firestorm. Two weeks after that, my brother left, and the next day the lights on every portal in New York went out. The children playing here would never see a working portal, and I’d never see my brother again.
I forced away the painful memories, turned my back on the dead portals, and watched the leading men start breaking a path through the snow. They used long poles to test the ground ahead of them before stepping on it, and the straggling line of people behind them carefully followed in their footsteps.
This whole area had been redeveloped when the Americas Parliament complex was built here, so its buildings and paths were some of the newest in New York, but they’d had no maintenance for at least five decades. Every year the paths grew worse as cracks widened and ruts deepened, but the real danger was from broken or missing maintenance covers over old drains and tunnels. We’d marked the worst of the hazards with red flags, but new ones appeared all the time.
The women were following the men now. I joined the line myself and started plodding slowly towards the river. Hannah was my fishing partner. I couldn’t see her ahead of me, so I turned to look behind, and spotted her distinctive blue hat. I edged cautiously to one side to let people walk past me, and stood waiting for her.
Hannah spoke the second she reached me. “Blaze, why didn’t you come and sit with me at breakfast?”
I pulled a face. “Because Cage cornered me by the cooking fire, and I said something that made him very angry. I couldn’t come and sit with you straight after that. If Cage is planning to take revenge on me, and I remind him you’re my friend, then he could come after you too.”
Hannah seemed more worried about me than scared for herself. “Why did he corner you, and what did you say to him?”
I was aware of the other women giving us curious looks as they went by. “I’ll tell you all about it when we’re alone.”
Hannah frowned. “I suppose that’s best, but … Are you all right?”
“I’m perfectly fine.”
“No, you aren’t. I can hear your voice shaking.”
I stepped back onto the path, and we started moving again, with Hannah behind me. “That’s just from the cold,” I called over my shoulder.
She gave a single explosive sound of disbelief. “Hah!”
We trudged on through the snow. Once we reached the river, the two women directly in front of me moved out of line. The path turned to follow the riverbank now, and more women left the line as we passed one fishing spot after another.
There were only the men, Hannah, and me left when we reached the featureless back wall of a squat, single-storey, grey building, wedged into the small gap between what had once been two matching apartment blocks. A fire last summer had reduced one of those apartment blocks to a burned out shell, and a heap of its fallen, blackened rubble had blocked access to the fishing spot I shared with Hannah. The only way to reach it now was to use a ladder to climb over the flat roof of the grey building.
The men split up into several groups, each of which headed off in a slightly different direction. Donnell was leading the first group. I thought I saw him glance back at me, but it could have been just my imagination.
I turned back to the building and found the ladder was missing. Hannah and I had left it leaning against the wall after our last fishing trip, but it must have blown over in the blizzard. We had to grope in the snowdrifts to find it and lift it back into place.
Hannah climbed the ladder first, and I tossed our bags up to her before climbing up myself. There was an awkward moment when I pulled myself up on to the snow-covered roof – I was still nervous of trusting my left arm to take my weight – but Hannah was standing ready to make sure I didn’t fall. After that, we just had to walk across the roof, step down onto first a high wall and then a rather lower concrete block, to reach a long, narrow pier jutting out into the river.
The grey building had one tiny window facing the river, and a door that sagged on its hinges but still grudgingly opened and shut. Hannah and I fetched the equipment we kept stored inside the building, baited hooks and set out our fishing lines at the end of the pier, and then put up a small tent. The moment we were sitting inside it, Hannah started questioning me.
“So what happened between you and Cage at the cooking fire?”
Hannah and I had been born within a few months of each other, and been best friends growing up in London. After we came to New York, and I’d lost both my mother and my brother, we’d become even closer than before, and I shared all my worries with her.
“Cage suggested marrying me,” I said.
Hannah gave me a wide-eyed look. “Seriously?”
“I can hardly believe it either. Donnell has an officer vacancy now that Kasim is dead, and Cage seems to think marrying me will get him the position.” I wrinkled my nose. “Chaos knows why he’d think that. Donnell’s not taken any interest in me for six years, so there’s no reason for him to hand out rewards to my husband, and he couldn’t make Cage an officer anyway. The alliance rules specifically state that Donnell can only choose his officers from among the Resistance members, because none of the other four divisions trust their rivals to help run things.”
“Cage must be planning to leave Manhattan division and join the Resistance when he marries you,” said Hannah.
I shook my head. “You know Cage can’t leave Manhattan. At least, he can’t leave Manhattan and expect to keep breathing. Donnell would never force anyone to stay in the Resist
ance against their will, but the other divisions demand absolute loyalty for life, and kill anyone who breaks their allegiance.”
“The division leaders give permission for a woman to move if she marries someone in a different division. Wall might extend the same permission to Cage if he thought Cage would stay secretly loyal to them.” Hannah’s voice had a cynical note. “Manhattan would love the idea of one of Donnell’s officers favouring them.”
I thought that over. “That’s true, but Donnell’s officer appointments have to be confirmed by two of the other division leaders. Even if Wall voted in his favour, Cage would still need to get another division leader to support him, and how could he manage that?”
I didn’t wait for Hannah to answer, just shrugged and kept talking. “Not that it matters. I’ve already told Cage I’m not marrying him.”
“You turned him down right away?” Hannah frowned. “That was a bad idea. Cage won’t react well to an instant rejection.”
I groaned. “I know it was a mistake. I should have been tactful about it, pretended to consider Cage’s offer for a while before saying no, but I instinctively blurted out a refusal. Cage was furious about it. He said …”
I hesitated, reluctant to repeat Cage’s angry words. I didn’t care about his reference to my brother and calling me plain – I knew I wasn’t one of the prettiest girls in the alliance – but I’d hated him saying that Donnell wasn’t my father.
“He said some very unpleasant things.” I skipped over the details.
Hannah lifted a hand to her mouth, and chewed nervously on her gloved forefinger. “You made Cage angry. He can be very dangerous when he’s angry. Remember the story about how he got his nickname.”
Scavenger Alliance (Exodus Book 1) Page 2
