The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf (The Tribe)

by Kwaymullina, Ambelin

  “About everything.”

  Jaz slid off the bed, and I did, too, then bent down to give him one last hug. It was surprisingly hard to let go. I struggled with a crazy impulse to take him and run, to forget everything and everyone else and save this one precious life. My eyes met Connor’s over Jaz’s head, and I could see he knew what I was thinking. He shrugged, as if to say, If that’s what you want . . . And for a second, I considered it. But I knew it wouldn’t be right, even if Jaz would leave without the other detainees. Besides, there was no safety anywhere if we couldn’t stop Neville.

  I made myself release Jaz. Connor let him out the window, and he hurried across the gap into the other house. Once he was inside, he waved happily at us before pulling down his blind and vanishing from sight. I took a sharp breath as he disappeared, and another, finding it suddenly difficult to get air around the tightness in my chest. I can’t keep saying good-bye to Jaz. I can’t!

  “Connor! Tell me that we’ll save him.”

  He smiled at me.

  “Ashala Wolf. We will save them all.”

  I was alone, waiting in yet another warehouse — this time a featureless white building that was used for storage in Detention Center 3. I’d positioned myself on the upper level of the structure, an open half-floor filled with containers, and was lying flat so I could peer through the railing into the gloom below — although the only thing to see at the moment was the faint outline of more containers. Connor had left a while back to get ready for his part in the night’s events, and it felt like he’d been gone forever. I’d changed into the enforcer uniform he’d left for me, and all I’d had to do while the afternoon rolled into night was torture myself by imagining all the ways in which things could go wrong. I’d done a good job of that, too, so much so that I was now twitching with anxiety. Finally, I heard a long, piercing siren, then another. The fire alarm, at last!

  I spent a few happy minutes dwelling on the image of all Neville’s records about the Tribe — which was what Connor had used to start the fire — going up in flames. Then I focused on what would be happening outside, imagining how Neville and the remaining enforcers would be scrambling to locate the blaze. Everyone else would hurry through the center to the designated emergency gathering point outside the front entrance, and if things went right for us, the Inspectorate wouldn’t arrive there with the others. Because Connor would be waiting along the evacuation route, dressed in administrator beige so that he could mingle with the crowd. He’d draw the Inspectorate away with promises of revealing Neville’s secrets and bring them here.

  Time dragged on endlessly, and no one came. I was starting to worry when the door below swung open. The downstairs lights flicked on, and I exhaled in relief to see Connor, ushering the two members of the Inspectorate into the warehouse.

  I examined the Inspectorate. Jeremy Duoro and Belle Willis. Both were dressed in standard-issue Gull City–blue shirts and pants, but other than that, they seemed nothing alike. He was short, thin, and dark-haired, while she was tall, stout, and blond, and the differences between them didn’t end there. Duoro was youngish, maybe mid-twenties, and his bright gaze darted all over the place as he shifted from foot to foot. Willis, on the other hand, was a lot older, and she moved with a purposeful energy, scanning her surroundings in a single glance. They were each wearing small badges on their sleeves with some kind of symbol printed on them, and I had to clap my hand over my mouth to hold back a giggle when I realized I was looking at red question marks. They wore Question pins into a detention center? Neville must have been furious!

  Willis spoke in a low, powerful voice that seemed to roll out across the warehouse. “This appears to be nothing more than a storage area. What exactly are we doing here?”

  “I’ll show you,” Connor answered. He walked over to a big crate and pulled back the canvas cloth covering the top. The Inspectorate hurried after him and stared down at the mottled chunks of rock inside the crate. When I’d first seen the stuff, I hadn’t known what it was. It took a lot of time and effort to transform raw rhondarite into the smooth white material that the collars were made from.

  Belle Willis picked up one of the pieces, weighing it in her hand. “What could Chief Administrator Rose possibly want with unprocessed rhondarite?”

  “It’s not just that it’s unprocessed,” Connor explained. “That rhondarite does not come from any of the mines allowed under the Three Mines Accords.”

  He clasped his hands behind his back, drawing out the moment before delivering the terrible truth. “The Chief Administrator has built a secret rhondarite mine in the Steeps.”

  The Inspectorate looked every bit as appalled as I’d been when Connor first told me.

  “But,” Duoro said in a stunned voice, “what about the Balance? We all know what a disaster the exhaustion of the earth’s resources was for the old world!”

  “I’m afraid the Chief Administrator believes that almost anything is justified to stop the Illegal threat.”

  Belle Willis subjected Connor to a searching stare. “I can’t imagine this is common knowledge. How did you find out about it?”

  Connor pulled open the top buttons of his administrator robes to show the black uniform beneath. “I found out because I’m an enforcer.” Duoro made an astonished noise, and Connor continued, doing a good job of sounding genuinely troubled. “It’s the enforcers who mine and process the rhondarite. They were all personally recruited by Neville Rose himself, including me. However I simply cannot condone what he is doing.”

  “I should think not!” Duoro spluttered. “The man is even more of a raving fanatic than Prime Talbot was.” Waving an arm at the rhondarite, he demanded, “What does he even imagine he’s going to do with all this?”

  “Reserves,” Connor replied. “He thinks we need much more than we have. Because rhondarite wears out.”

  Interestingly, that information didn’t seem to be news to the Inspectorate. Neither of them looked particularly surprised. “We’d heard rumors about that,” Willis said, “although it’s good to have it confirmed.”

  “Except,” Duoro put in, “according to our sources, it takes years for a collar to become ineffective, and the government’s stockpiled more than enough rhondarite to compensate for it.”

  Connor nodded. “At the current rate of detentions, yes. But Rose wants to increase detentions threefold by means of random assessments, more enforcer patrols, and fewer Exemptions. If he wins the Prime election, he’s going to start putting those measures into place.”

  Willis and Duoro exchanged worried glances, and I thought, Good. They were reacting pretty much as we’d expected them to. They also seemed to have no difficulty believing that Connor was a rebel enforcer, betraying Neville for the sake of the Balance — which was just as well, because we were hardly going to let them in on all our secrets.

  I was feeling quite smug until I noticed something coming down the side of one of the boxes to my right.

  Spider!

  I leaned to my left, trying to get away from the thing without making any noise as Duoro’s voice floated upward.

  “We’ve heard other things about Rose. Rumors of an interrogation device, and something about a girl being killed in Cambergull a few days ago?”

  My pulse skyrocketed. I swung my attention back to what was happening below. It was not part of our plan to have the Inspectorate go chasing after the machine, or me.

  “I’ve heard about the device, too,” Connor told them, “but I’ve never seen it. As to Cambergull, I don’t know. There was a prisoner here, a member of the group of runaways living in the Firstwood. She was shot while trying to escape.” The Inspectorate seemed to accept that artful mixture of truth and lie, and I relaxed.

  Then something furry brushed against my hand.

  Before I could stop myself, I scooted backward, my knees scraping against the floor.

  Willis spoke sharply. “What was that?”

  I forced myself to be still, staring at the spi
der that was meandering toward me and wondering if I could try to flick it away. Was that a yellow mark on its back? I couldn’t be sure in the dark, but if it was a yellowback, the thing was deadly poisonous. Which means coming into contact with it isn’t a good idea. . . .

  Connor answered Willis dismissively. “We’ve got an ongoing problem with rats. No need to be afraid — they rarely come out into the light.”

  “I wasn’t —”

  “And,” Connor said, interrupting him, “there is something else you need to see here.”

  I let out a breath as I heard Connor striding toward the front of the warehouse and the Inspectorate following along behind. The spider was getting closer, but I didn’t dare move, not while everything was so quiet. Except, it was almost upon me. A few seconds more and it . . . From below, there was the sound of a lid being taken off a container. Now!

  I rolled to the side until I was well away from the spider, any noise I made more than covered by the Inspectorate’s gasps of dismay.

  “There must be a hundred streakers in there,” Duoro exclaimed. “There’s only supposed to be fifty in existence anywhere. That’s all the Council of Primes approved!”

  “Yes,” Willis agreed, “and since anyone who produces more is in violation of the Advanced Weaponry Accords, it begs the question, how did Rose even get these manufactured?”

  The spider went scuttling past, unaware of the disaster it had almost caused. Connor imparted the conclusion that we had all reached weeks ago. “I don’t believe the Chief Administrator is doing this alone. He must have allies, similarly minded people who are also willing to break accords.”

  There was shocked silence. It was broken by Duoro pronouncing excitedly, “I knew there were conspiracies in the government! Didn’t I tell you, Belle? Didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did, and it seems that you were right. Although I have to believe it’s the work of a few malcontents. Surely there couldn’t be that many Citizens willing to risk endangering the Balance.”

  The spider disappeared into the dark beyond me. I started to creep forward, wanting to see what was happening, as Connor spoke again. “What I’m worried about is what the Chief Administrator and his friends might do with these weapons if he doesn’t win the Prime election. There’s a chance he might try to take over the government by force.”

  “It would never work!” Duoro objected. “The people wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “If the circumstances were right,” Willis responded thoughtfully, “the people might not even notice it was happening. Do you remember a few months back, when the whole of Gull City panicked over those snake-shaped clouds?”

  “Yes, and it was ridiculous. They were just clouds!”

  “Jeremy, there were enforcers everywhere for those few weeks, and no one made a fuss because everyone wanted to be protected from the Serpent. If Rose could manufacture some looming Illegal threat, Citizens would beg him to bring his enforcers to the city to protect them. Once he was there, it might prove very difficult to get him to leave again.”

  Wow. She’d put that scenario together as quickly as Ember had when we’d first learned of the weapons stash. I reached the railing in time to see Duoro start to pace back and forth. “We have to find a way to stop him, Belle!”

  “If you took a piece of rhondarite back to the city,” Connor said, offering them the suggestion we’d worked out beforehand, “a simple composition test would show that it didn’t come from any of the mines allowed under the Three Mines Accords. That should be enough to prove some of what’s going on here.”

  “It’s a good start,” Willis agreed. “But if Neville’s got allies in the government who could cover this up, we might need more. Some publicity would be useful. I think Friends of Detainees would help, don’t you, Jeremy?”

  He stopped pacing, his face lighting up. “Yes, and the smaller groups, too. We’ll contact them all — Citizens against Detention, Mothers of Illegals, Free the Children — and by the time we’re through, there’ll be such an outcry that the government will have to take action against Rose.” Turning to Connor, he added, “You can come with us. Let people know what you’ve seen in this place.”

  No, he can’t! But Connor was already shaking his head. “I can’t be seen with you tonight. I’ll make my own way out once you’re gone. Before then, Neville must have no reason to suspect that anyone has given you any information.”

  Willis frowned. “He’s sure to know something’s wrong. We’ve been missing for a while now.”

  “Yes, but it would have been very difficult for you to stumble across any of this on your own, and provided his suspicions are not raised, the Chief Administrator is going to be anxious to evacuate you before you ask questions about the source of the fire.” She looked questioningly at him, and he said, “It started in the rhondarite processing plant.”

  A delighted smile spread across Jeremy Duoro’s face. “In that case, he’ll hustle us back to Cambergull as quickly as he can. All we need to do is act dumb. Fortunately, I’m quite good at that.”

  Belle Willis stifled a laugh and held out her hand to Connor. “Thank you.”

  He shook it firmly while Duoro clapped him on the shoulder. “Come and find us once you get out of here.”

  “I will,” Connor lied.

  The little group broke apart. Willis walked over to the rhondarite, grabbed a small piece and concealed it in her pocket, then made her way to the door with Duoro beside her. Connor was the last to leave, and before he followed the Inspectorate out, he paused, staring up at where he knew I was hidden. I reached through the railing to give him a quick thumbs-up signal, letting him know I was okay.

  He nodded in relieved acknowledgment. Then he shut the door, and I was alone.

  I counted to two hundred, giving Connor time to get the Inspectorate out of the area. Then I ran downstairs, pausing to take a streaker from the tub. I hated the things, but I’d promised Connor not to go out unarmed. So, exactly like he’d showed me, I checked that the safety switch was on, making sure the weapon couldn’t go off by accident, before shoving it into my pocket and slipping into the night.

  Outside was another world, one of eerily empty spaces, hazy air, and the far-off screeches of saurs. The sky was all lit up with the angry glow of the fire, and I could smell the acrid tang of the smoke. It had a nasty odor to it, which was no doubt due to the small store of chemicals in the processing plant. Ember had warned us that some of them were toxic, though she said they shouldn’t hurt us, not in low quantities. Still, it was making me feel queasy, and I tried to take shallow breaths as I hurried through the center. The composite buildings around me seemed to shine faintly orange, reflecting the flames, and that, plus the soft night lighting, was the only illumination I had to guide me. But I’d spent weeks memorizing the plans of this place, and I moved without hesitation, darting from one shadow to the next.

  It felt strange to be drifting around here without being collared and watched. I had a sudden, insane desire to do something silly, like go running into an open space and twirl in circles, just because I could. Instead, I skulked onward, until I was entering a familiar building. My chest immediately went tight and my mouth dry, as if my body remembered how I’d suffered in this place. Stop it, Ash! You put yourself into that chair. That didn’t seem to make any difference, so I tried to focus on what I had to do.

  We’d always planned to take the machine, both to prevent it from being used on anyone else and because Ember wanted to take it apart to see how it worked. But that had been before I knew the machine was really a dog, and I had other plans now. It seemed terrible to think of a dog-spirit being confined to a motionless box. Ember had made Georgie a mechanical spider once, which was still clicking creepily around the caves somewhere, so I didn’t see why she couldn’t build a mechanical canine body to match a canine soul. I think I’ll call him Blackie. Or maybe Howler. Or Tooth.

  When I reached the machine room, I gave the box a reassuring pat and pulled out the
cords that shackled it to the silver hoop and the screen. I hugged it to me as I raced it back through the building, feeling giddy with relief to be leaving this part of the center behind me forever.

  Then I rounded a corner, and came face-to-face with Miriam Grey.

  For an airless second, the two of us stared at each other. She spotted the box, and her face went red with rage. “That’s mine!” Grey leaped and grabbed hold of the machine, trying to wrest it from my grasp. I clung on, and we struggled wildly, careening back and forth across the corridor. She shoved me against the wall, and I shoved right back, jerking the box sideways to shake her loose. Something went clattering across the floor. The streaker! We both lunged for it. But I’d had to drop the box, putting me a precious second behind her, and Grey reached it first. She snatched it up, flicked the safety switch off, then swung around and pointed it at my head. I froze, gazing into her empty green eyes as she hissed in her high-pitched, whiny voice, “You tried to steal my machine!” She sounded like a kid who’d had her toy taken away, and I knew that without Neville here to control her, she was unstable enough to be capable of anything.

  This woman is crazy, and I am dead.

  Somebody came barreling down the corridor behind her. Grey started to turn toward the approaching footsteps, and I saw my chance. I charged forward and grabbed her wrist just as the new person got to her. Grey collapsed, and I tore the weapon from her nerveless fingers, then scuttled backward and pointed it at — Wentworth!

  I stared, gaping in astonished disbelief as Rae Wentworth lowered an unconscious Miriam Grey to the ground.

  “Wh-what . . .?” I stuttered. “I mean, how . . .? What did you do to her?”

  “I used my ability to make her sleep.”

  “I didn’t know Menders could do that!”

  Wentworth shrugged. She wasn’t looking so good: her nut-brown complexion was sallow, and her dark eyes had lost their cheery sparkle. “I don’t know if all Menders can do it, either,” she answered. “But I can Mend whatever requires healing, short of death. And you’ll find that almost everyone needs more sleep.” Her gaze dropped to the streaker. “Are you going to shoot me, Ashala?”