Between Burning Worlds

by Jessica Brody

  “Welcome, camarades,” a commanding voice called out, immediately bringing a hush over the crowd.

  Marcellus glanced up, following the countless gazes to a woman who was now standing on top of the bar, addressing the crowd. She was dressed in a dark red coat, the hood thrown back to reveal a shaven head and fierce gray eyes.

  “You know why you’re here,” she went on, her voice grave and authoritative. “You recognize the pang in your chest that guided you out of your beds and brought you to this place. That is the pang of injustice. That is the pang of knowing you want more than this pitiful existence you’ve been given. That you deserve more.”

  Marcellus watched in awe as every person in the room stared at the mysterious woman with reverent, glassy eyes. As though just the sound of her voice had lulled them into a trance.

  “But they don’t want you to know that,” the woman went on. “They don’t want you to feel that pang, and they definitely don’t want you to listen to it. The Regime wants us to live in fear. Numb, mindless fear. They want us to stay hungry and weak. They want us to stare at our Skins all day long. They want us to collect our Ascension points and dream of living out the rest of our days high up on a hill in their precious Ledôme.”

  Murmurs broke out across the room. Some people raised their fists in the air and shouted their agreement. Marcellus noticed that, beside the speaker on the bar, a tall man with glimmering pale eyes, a high brow, and flowing, curly hair stood with his arms crossed defiantly. And, on the floor below, eight soldier-like men and women were standing rigid with their legs spread apart and their hands clasped behind their back.

  They all wore the same hooded coats as the speaker.

  Red.

  Laterre’s official color of death and mourning.

  But this was certainly no funeral.

  “They want us to work. Work and work and work. Even when they unjustly cut our wages, they still want us to make the silk dresses they wear, the satin sheets they sleep in, the cruiseurs they ride in, and the sugared treats they eat all day while we starve.” The speaker paused, letting her audience jeer and nod and shout obscenities about the Regime. More fists shot into the air in a show of solidarity.

  For a moment, Marcellus forgot why he was even here. He was too mesmerized by the woman standing on top of the bar. But try as he might, he just couldn’t manage to grasp what was so captivating about her. She had a way of pulling you in with her impassioned words and intense stares. In spite of her fierce tone and ferocious eyes, there was something delicate about her. The arch of her top lip, her high cheekbones, the curve of her hips and waist. And something vaguely familiar, even though Marcellus was certain he’d never met her before.

  “But most of all,” she continued once the shouts had died down, “they want us to stay quiet. They want us to stay docile and passive. But now is not the time to be quiet. Now is not the time to be docile or passive, is it?”

  “NO!” yelled the audience in unison.

  The woman jabbed her own fist in the air and shouted, “Now is the time to RISE UP.”

  At these words, the crowd seemed to congeal around Marcellus, as if it were one living, breathing being. He wondered if this is what it was like back in 488, before the rebellion was stamped out. He’d heard rumors that Citizen Rousseau had led rallies like this in secret, spreading her message, moving people to her cause.

  The speaker lowered her gaze and shook her head. The crowd quieted, sensing a shift. “Unlike us, however, too many of our fellow Laterrians are asleep. Too many Third Estaters are passive and docile, just as the Regime wants them to be. They do not feel the pang like you do. Like I do. They listen obediently to their Universal Alerts. They are content with their Skins, their Ascension points, their ridiculous hopes for winning a better life in Ledôme. Their apathy makes them hungry and cold, miserable and wretched.” The speaker paused and straightened her spine, her eyes suddenly glittering. “But we must show them. We must awaken our sleeping camarades. We must call them from their deadly slumber.” She raised her own fist in the air. “This is a war! And we are the first soldiers in that war.”

  Just then, Marcellus’s gaze suddenly snagged on the curly haired man who stood protectively beside the speaker. His gleaming pale eyes weren’t staring out at the crowd like his fellow guards on the ground below. Instead, they were staring straight at Marcellus.

  For a moment, their gazes locked, and Marcellus immediately recognized the look that flashed across the man’s face. He’d seen that same look a thousand times in his life. It was the price he paid, the burden he bore, for being an officer of the Ministère. And not just any officer. The grandson of the general and the son of a renowned traitor.

  It was the look of recognition.

  Despite the Third Estate disguise, this man knew who he was. Which meant it wouldn’t be long until others did as well. Marcellus dropped his gaze and faded farther back into the crowd. He had to find the person he had come here to see. He had to get word to the Vangarde about the general’s weapon.

  Marcellus pushed his way through the throng, trying to reach the far end of the bar.

  “The planet is wounded,” the speaker was now saying, “and we are the new growth that has risen up around that wound. We are the scar of a corrupt regime. We are doing the work that the Vangarde failed to do.”

  A stunned hush fell over the crowd. Marcellus’s feet froze, his attention snapping back up to the speaker.

  “Yes, that’s right,” she said. “The Vangarde failed you. You heard the alert tonight. Their precious leader, Citizen Rousseau, is dead. The Vangarde are no more. They are not the hope they once were. They are not the saviors we once turned to. They are nothing. We are that hope now. We are those saviors.” She gestured to the red-hooded men and women standing guard below her. “We are the Red Scar of this crooked Regime, and we are the ones who will finally bring it to its knees.”

  The crowd started to chant, “Red Scar! Red Scar! Red Scar!”

  The speaker raised a hand to quiet them. “This a Regime of thieves. Not only do they steal our hard-earned largs and food and shelter. They steal our loved ones. Like my little sister—poor, innocent Nadette Epernay—who was executed for a crime she did not commit.”

  Sister?

  Marcellus gaped in wonder at the speaker, suddenly realizing why she felt so familiar. It was because she looked like her. Like Nadette.

  “They stole her from me. Just like they stole so many of your loved ones from you. And now we will steal something back from them. I, Maximilienne Pierre Epernay, am here to tell you that we can do this. We can awaken the people and overthrow this corrupt Regime. And we will do it by any means possible. We will take back what is rightfully ours. Our freedom. Our power. And our planet. It is time, camarades. It is time to take up whatever arms we can find and FIGHT BACK!”

  At these last words, the whole inn boiled over with a cacophony of applause and stamping feet. Soon, everyone in the room was shouting, “Fight back! Fight back!”

  Marcellus glanced uneasily around at the sea of dirty yet eager faces and then back up at the speaker and her legion of guards. A shiver of fear and trepidation shot through him. Now that Citizen Rousseau was dead, now that there was a big empty hole left in her place, was this what would fill it? This thirst for violence and war?

  The crowd continued to chatter, working their way into a frenzy. Marcellus was being shoved from all sides. He no longer felt like he had control of his own feet. He looked helplessly around him, searching for something to grab on to. An anchor in this stormy sea. And that’s when his gaze landed on a man standing at the edge of the bar. Up until now, his face had been shielded by Maximilienne and her red-hooded soldiers.

  But the moment Marcellus’s eyes landed on him—his tall, lanky frame and thick beard—Marcellus knew it was him. The man he had come here to find. The man who had once provided instructions on how to find Mabelle. This man was Marcellus’s last hope at locating the Vangarde.
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  Pushing his way through the chanting crowd, Marcellus stumbled up to the side of the bar. The man shot him a wary look and Marcellus wondered if he remembered him too.

  “Back for another beating?” the man said with a twinge of amusement.

  Yes, he definitely remembered him.

  “I need your help,” Marcellus whispered. Although he wasn’t sure why he bothered. The crowd’s excitement had reached an earsplitting peak. “My name is Marcellus. But you might remember me as Marcellou.”

  The man said nothing in response, just nodded that he was listening.

  Marcellus drew in a breath. “I’m looking for some people. People I think you might know how to find.” He gave the man a pointed look that he hoped was meaningful.

  But the man still did not speak.

  Marcellus glanced over both shoulders before leaning in closer and carefully dragging his fingertip across the surface bar. Once. Twice.

  The man glanced down at the perfectly formed V that Marcellus had etched into the layer of grime. He flinched before hurriedly collecting his features back into a stern, impassive façade. Marcellus waited, his heart squeezing in his chest.

  Then, the man gave an infinitesimal, nearly imperceptible shake of his head. “Sorry, mec. That channel’s gone dead.”

  “Dead?” Marcellus repeated in confusion. “What do you mean dead?”

  “I mean no traffic. No communication. No nothing.”

  “Do you know—” Marcellus started to ask, but just then, the crowd around him fell to a hush. The chanting had stopped, and suddenly, every pair of eyes was trained on the front of the inn where two more Red Scar guards were making their way from the door to the bar. And they were carrying something.

  No, not something. Someone.

  A girl.

  At least, Marcellus assumed it was a girl from the sound of her cries. Her head was covered by a burlap sac, but he could see she was willowy and tall, and dressed entirely in black.

  Silent and rapt, the crowd parted for the two burly guards. The girl bucked and writhed and tried to kick the tallest one in the face. “Get your hands off me! Let me go!”

  But it was all in vain. The men were too strong. They effortlessly pinned her flailing arms and legs in place. As they approached the bar, the speaker’s guard knelt down to address the approaching men. An exchange took place, before the guard on the bar nodded, stood up, and whispered something into Maximilienne’s ear.

  A smile slowly tweaked at her mouth.

  “Well, well,” she said, turning back to the crowd. “You are all in for a treat tonight. My brother, Jolras, informs me that we have caught ourselves a little fish.”

  Brother.

  Marcellus stared at the pale-eyed guard on the bar, his thoughts racing. Nadette’s sister and brother were behind this group. Exacting revenge for their sister’s unjust murder.

  The speaker smiled again. “Who would like to witness a demonstration?”

  The crowd erupted once more, and Marcellus felt his stomach turn.

  “By the sheer luck of the Sols, this girl was born into the Second Estate.” The speaker gestured to the figure under the burlap sac, who was now being hauled up onto the bar by Jolras. “She was raised with a titan spoon in her mouth and a beautiful TéléSky over her head. She has eaten more fruit and gâteau and cheeses imported from distant planets than you and I could ever begin to imagine. She has gone to sleep every night of her life certain that the Sols would rise tomorrow. She has been given every assurance of health, prosperity, and happiness that we have never had.”

  A series of boos permeated the crowd. Once again, the girl tried to shout something, but Jolras nudged an elbow into her rib cage, promptly shutting her up.

  “Would you like to see the face of your enemy?” Maximilienne asked.

  The boos quickly turned to raucous cheers as fists jabbed into the air again. Maximilienne stepped up to the girl and ceremoniously yanked the sac from her head.

  Marcellus froze, every centimètre of his body suddenly paralyzed.

  He took in the girl’s long, usually sleek, black hair, now tousled from the sac; her slender face, stained with tears; and her small, heart-shaped mouth. He blinked rapidly, struggling to make sense of what he was seeing. Who he was seeing.

  Cerise Chevalier?

  But it couldn’t be. What was she doing here? In the middle of a Third Estate protest in Montfer? Only the other day, Marcellus had seen her in the Ministère Cyborg and Technology Labs, jabbering on about borrowing her father’s TéléCom so she could secure a new dress for some fête. How on Laterre had the directeur’s daughter ended up embroiled in this mess?

  “No, listen, you have me all wrong,” Cerise insisted in that familiar petulant voice that always made it sound like she was negotiating. “I swear. I’m not like them. I want to help you. I want to change things—” A dirty cloth was stuffed into her mouth, muffling her voice.

  Maximilienne continued. “Our ancestors—the ancestors of the Third Estate—built this planet. They arrived here from a broken world and made Laterre a habitable place to live. They labored and suffered so that this girl could live out her days in blissful extravagance.”

  The crowd roared and hurled angry assaults at Cerise. She shook her head, shouting incomprehensibly into her gag.

  The speaker quieted the noise with a single raised hand. “It’s time, camarades, for the First and Second Estates to feel our pain. It’s time for them to feel the anguish of backbreaking work, unceasing hunger, needless sickness and death.”

  The audience let out a low, ominous hiss.

  “And so,” Maximilienne went on, her gray eyes glimmering with something that made Marcellus’s throat go dry—something dark and vengeful, “we will brand this girl the way they have branded us for centuries. We will give her the scar that we, the Third Estate, all wear. The Red Scar of oppression and subjugation and, most of all, humiliation.”

  Suddenly, the speaker’s face glowed blue as a small laser hummed in her hand. Marcellus recognized it as a scalpel that the médecins used for operations in the med centers of Ledôme. How had the Red Scar gotten ahold of one?

  Jolras grabbed Cerise’s slender, bound wrists and pushed them toward Maximilienne.

  “We already hindered their ability to enslave us when we attacked their Skin fabrique,” she yelled, pushing the laser closer. “But it is not enough.”

  Comprehension smashed into Marcellus. These people were responsible for the explosif in the TéléSkin fabrique. These “first soldiers” dressed in red had stolen the lives of twelve innocent workers, including Chatine’s sister.

  “Now we are the chainmakers,” Maximilienne announced. “We are the builders of the manacles.” The blue light of the laser glowed on the inside of Cerise’s wrist. Cerise thrashed harder, screaming into her gag, until one of her captors slapped her hard across the face and she finally stopped fighting. Tears of resignation filled her eyes as she watched the speaker push the humming laser closer to her flesh.

  The breath hitched in Marcellus’s chest as he realized that this was not a charade. That this woman—with her fierce, familiar gray eyes and shaven head—was actually going to brand Cerise.

  Marcellus knew he had to do something. He could not let this happen. But he was a lone, unarmed man in an inn full of angry Third Estaters. What could he possibly—

  Suddenly, he caught sight of something near one of the front windows. A towering stack of furniture was pushed up against the wall, obviously having been piled away to make room for all the people.

  Tables and chairs and barstools. All made entirely of wood.

  Adrenaline spiked through Marcellus as he reached into the bag strapped across his chest and rooted around in the pocket of his Ministère uniform.

  Sols, please tell me I still have it.

  His fist closed around the small, unmarked container, and his hopes soared.

  Pushing his way through the crowd, Marcellus moved toward the front c
orner. Behind him, he heard the crowd start to chant something new. It was low and garbled at first, getting clearer with each iteration: “Skin her! Skin her! Skin her!”

  Marcellus reached the stack of furniture, and with desperate, trembling hands, he yanked at the hem of Monsieur Renard’s tattered coat. The garment was so old and threadbare that a big chunk of the fabric ripped off easily. He placed the scrap at the base of the tower, positioning it carefully between two wooden legs of an old chair.

  “You will feel the burn of our burden,” Maximilienne shouted from the bar. “You will feel the scar of our enslavement!”

  Marcellus’s fingers fumbled to open the container in his hand. The slim piece of wood felt splintery and dangerous between his fingertips. The smallest weapon he’d ever held.

  The crowd fell silent, the sizzle of the blue laser the only sound for kilomètres.

  Marcellus struck the match. The small flame ignited instantly. Cerise shouted through her gag again. He held the match to the piece of fabric. Just as he intended, the threadbare material caught light straightaway. But then, a second later, Marcellus watched in shock and confusion as the entire tower of wood exploded into flames. Bigger and wilder than Marcellus had ever seen before.

  What on Laterre … ?

  He’d barely had time to form the question in his mind before the blow sent him flying backward and crashing into a support beam. His head hit the wood with a crack that sent the room spinning and his vision spiraling into darkness.

  - CHAPTER 24 - ALOUETTE

  RAIN DRIZZLED SOFTLY FROM THE dark skies over Montfer as Alouette and Gabriel hurried through a maze of crumbling shacks and makeshift shelters that looked like they were sinking into the mud below. Alouette had seen poverty in the Frets, but nothing could have prepared her for this. Hungry eyes looked out at her from shadowy doorways, and a few shoeless children ran up, yanked on her coat, and pleaded for chou bread. But she’d traded her last piece to Dahlia hours ago.