Between Burning Worlds

by Jessica Brody

  Chatine snickered. “No one flies Marilyn but you?”

  Etienne shot her a sharp look. “Fine. What’s the number two rule of flying.”

  “There is no number two rule,” she parroted from their first flight together. “Rule number one is everything.” Chatine struggled to keep a straight face, but Etienne was too much fun to tease. And the way his jaw muscles were tensing right now just made it all that more rewarding.

  She reached over and poked his cheek. “Aha! Looks like you have some buttons of your own.”

  He swatted her hand away. “Let’s just focus on your buttons.” His face seemed to flush with embarrassment for a moment, and he quickly amended his statement. “I mean, the buttons in front of you. The ship’s buttons.”

  Chatine chuckled, keeping her hands locked on the contrôleur.

  Etienne cleared his throat and was all seriousness again. “The number three rule is to maintain altitude at all times. You can’t always rely on stealth mode. It can fail. Which is why cloud coverage is our friend. It keeps us safe and hidden.” He gave a curt nod of his head. “Or as we like to say, ‘You fly high. You stay dry.’ ”

  “Nothing on Laterre stays dry,” Chatine pointed out.

  Etienne huffed. “It means you stay hidden.”

  “Why don’t you just say, ‘You fly high. You stay hidden.’ ”

  “Because it doesn’t rhyme.”

  “Why does it have to rhyme?”

  “Because—” Etienne stopped himself and took a breath. “Just stop talking and increase altitude.”

  Chatine shrugged and wrenched another dial. The ship shot up into the air in a heartbeat, causing Etienne to yelp.

  “Too fast! Way too fast!”

  Chatine tried to compensate with the contrôleur, plunging it downward. The ship started to dive back down toward the ground.

  “Pull up! Pull up!” Etienne shouted.

  “Are you talking to me or Marilyn this time?”

  “YOU!”

  Chatine eased up on the contrôleur, leveling off the ship at three kilomètres. She couldn’t help the satisfied smile on her face. “That was a good button. I’ll have to remember where that one was.”

  “That’s it,” Etienne said, unbuckling his restraint and standing up. “Get up. You’re done. Flying lessons are over. This was a bad idea. You are not taking this seriously. You do not deserve to fly this ship.”

  “Okay, okay. Calm down.” She surrendered her hands up and the ship started to pitch forward.

  “Hands on the contrôleur!” Etienne barked.

  Chatine dove for the contrôleur. “Sorry. Sit down. I’ll stop fooling around.”

  Reluctantly, Etienne lowered back into his seat. The cockpit fell quiet, with only the soft purring sound of Marilyn’s engine between them. Chatine glanced at Etienne out of the corner of her eye. He was as still as a statue, his gaze locked on her hands guiding his precious ship.

  “Why did you agree to give me flying lessons, anyway?” Chatine asked.

  Etienne’s head snapped up, as though he were being awoken from a dream. “What?”

  Chatine kept her eyes on the seemingly endless horizon. “You could have turned me in. Or kicked me out for being a thief. But instead, you told no one about me or my parents, you helped me steal zyttrium, and then you offered to teach me to fly.”

  “Are you still a thief?” he asked.

  Chatine hesitated. Not because she didn’t want to tell Etienne the truth, but because she did want to. She just needed a few seconds to come to terms with what the truth was now. “No.”

  “Well then, there you go.”

  Chatine glanced at him again. He was no longer looking at her or her hands, he was staring out the cockpit window. “You should know,” he went on, “that we don’t judge people by what they did in the past. We judge them by who they are now.”

  “Like your maman?” Chatine asked.

  He peered at her. “What about her?”

  “This classified project she was involved in, back when she was a cyborg. You said it was … bad?”

  “Right. Yes, like that. She changed herself. More drastically than any of us, you could say. We have a lot of respect for people who can wake themselves up.”

  Chatine bit her lip, unsure if she should broach the subject she’d been desperately wanting to broach ever since Brigitte had shown her that graveyard. She took in a breath and tried to keep her voice light and casual, afraid that anything more might scare him away again. Thankfully, right now, he had nowhere to run to. “Was your papa a cyborg too?”

  The reaction was instantaneous. Chatine didn’t even need to take her eyes off the horizon to know it was there. She could sense it. Like a noxious gas filling up the cockpit, threatening to suffocate them both. And right away, Chatine knew she wasn’t going to get an answer. The conversation would be over before it even began. He would make some critique about her altitude or speed and change the subject. He would—

  “No.”

  The one-word response came swiftly and erratically, like he was afraid that if he didn’t say it fast, he wouldn’t say it at all.

  “Was he born in a community? Like you?” Chatine could feel her hands shaking on the contrôleur, but thankfully the ship didn’t shudder in response. Maybe, for once, Marilyn was on her side, helping her along.

  “No,” Etienne repeated, and just when Chatine thought it would end there again, he added, “He was Third Estate. From Vallonay. Like you. He used to love to tell me stories about living on the grid. The Frets, the Marsh, the Ascension, the droids—or ‘bashers’ as he used to call them. I never knew why.”

  “Because they bash their way through everything,” Chatine explained bitterly. “And they can bash in your face without losing a drop of power.” She swore she felt Etienne shudder at her description. “Have you ever seen one?”

  He went silent again. Pensive. And then, “On the night of the roundup. There were hundreds. They were like monsters in the darkness. The things of nightmares.”

  “Is that what killed him?” she asked quietly. “Your father?”

  “No.” Etienne’s voice was so cold and emotionless, it could have belonged to a basher itself. “The fires killed him.”

  “The fires?” Chatine repeated, but upon noticing Etienne flinch, she realized she had been too blunt, too fast. She softened her voice. “But I thought the Ministère didn’t use fire.”

  “They don’t,” Etienne said. “We set them. To try to scare them off. It didn’t work. Turns out droids aren’t really scared of much.”

  Chatine kept her eyes trained on the sky, trying to give him privacy, and yet she yearned to turn and look at him. To see the pain on his face. Not because she could possibly fix it or erase it or even alleviate it. But because she understood it.

  “How did he—” she began to ask, but Etienne cut her off. His response sharp and stinging, like a slap.

  “Because of me.”

  Now she did turn to him. Just for an instant but an instant was all it took. His anguish was raw and fresh, as though it had happened not years ago but only yesterday. A wound that never closes but rather keeps opening wider and wider. Like a crack in the ground. The kind of crack that can suck in cities and mountains and oceans. The kind of crack Chatine knew all too well.

  Etienne continued to stare out the window. “I went back. I shouldn’t have gone back. We were safe. We were nearly away. But I went back. For a stupide toy. I thought I had left it in our chalet. The one that was burning to the ground. I let go of my father’s hand and I ran. He, of course, ran after me and …”

  He didn’t finish. They both knew he didn’t have to. Some endings didn’t need words.

  The silence returned in full force, consuming them in an instant. Chatine hadn’t known what to say back in the graveyard when Brigitte had told her the beginning of this story, but somehow, she knew what to say now that Etienne had completed it.

  “Merci.”

 
Etienne’s eyebrows pinched together. “For what?”

  “For telling me.”

  His expression softened, looking almost embarrassed. “Well, you know … I did think I was going to die in this ship with you flying it, so I figured I better unburden myself before my trip to the Sols.”

  Chatine laughed politely. “Good thinking.”

  He breathed out a heavy sigh. “I miss him. Every day.”

  Chatine nodded, whispering the same words that Dead Azelle had whispered to her last night at the linking cérémonie. “I know.”

  “He was my mother’s first patient.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. She never got to work with patients when she was a cyborg, because she was assigned to medical research. But Papa arrived at our old camp shortly after she did. And since he was Third Estate, naturally he needed a Skin removal, so Maman did it. They used to tell this funny story about how he woke up in his goldenroot haze and fell instantly in love with her. And she told him, ‘Wait until the herbs wear off, and then we’ll talk.’ ” Out of the corner of her eye, Chatine noticed a ghost of a smile on his face. “I guess it wasn’t just the goldenroot, because I was born less than a year later.”

  Chatine tried to match his fragile amusement. “Wow.”

  Etienne huffed out a laugh. “Yeah. I guess when you know, you know.”

  This time, when Chatine glanced at him, he was staring right at her, his gaze ready to capture hers.

  “You know?” he whispered.

  She turned away, unable to answer. Instead, she kept her gaze locked out the cockpit window and her hands wrapped tightly around the contrôleur.

  Seconds passed. Possibly even minutes. Chatine didn’t know. The sky out here seemed to consume time like a void.

  “Why do you do that?” Etienne broke the silence, his voice no longer heavy and burdened, but light and inquisitive.

  “Do what?”

  “Touch your finger like that. I’ve seen you do it a few times. Like you’re expecting something to be there.”

  Chatine peered down at the controls to see her forefinger was running up and down the side of her thumb again, searching for Marcellus’s ring. She hadn’t even realized she’d been doing it. “Oh,” she said clumsily. “I … just … I used to have a ring. I lost it somewhere when I left Bastille. It’s just … I guess I still touch the skin out of habit. It’s stupide.”

  “A ring?” Etienne asked, still staring at her finger.

  Feeling self-conscious, Chatine repositioned her hands on the contrôleur so her naked thumb was concealed. “I wouldn’t normally wear one, it’s just that this was …” she trailed off. For some reason, the thought of telling Etienne about Marcellus felt wrong. Like the two existed in separate galaxies, and should they ever be in the same one together, the whole universe might explode. Or at the very least, the universe that lived inside Chatine’s mind.

  “… It belonged to someone I used to know,” she finally finished. “And I promised to keep it safe for them.”

  There was no response, and when Chatine glanced over at the jump seat again, Etienne was no longer there. Keeping her hands firmly on the contrôleur, she looked over her shoulder to find him rummaging around in a cabinet in the rear of the cockpit. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I didn’t know what it was. I found it when I was cleaning out the ship a few days ago. I should have guessed it belonged to you. The thought just never crossed my mind.”

  Chatine held her breath as Etienne made his way back across the cockpit. She wanted to close her eyes. Forever. She wanted to disappear so she didn’t have to see or feel or hear the implosion that she knew was coming. But when Etienne appeared beside her, his hand outstretched, she forced her eyes to stay open. She forced herself to look at the tiny, silver ring.

  Marcellus’s ring.

  Cupped protectively in Etienne’s outstretched palm.

  “Sorry,” he murmured, clearly misinterpreting the conflict that was playing out on her face. “I would have given it to you sooner. I forgot it was even in here.”

  Slowly, hesitantly, Chatine reached out and prodded the ring with her fingertip. The touch of the metal burned her skin like ice and fire and snow and rain all combined into one.

  “Here,” Etienne said innocently. “Allow me.”

  And before Chatine could argue, her hand was clasped in his. The ring was pinched between his fingers. And she felt the metal slide onto her thumb, chafing against her skin like the edge of a dull knife.

  Etienne released her hand, and it plummeted to her side like it was weighed down by stones.

  “Watch the sky,” he reminded her, nudging his chin toward the horizon.

  Chatine blinked and refocused out the window, dragging her heavy, weighted hand back up to the contrôleur. As she stared into the icy abyss of the Terrain Perdu, she could feel tears pricking her eyes, but she couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out where they were coming from. Was she crying for Etienne’s lost father? Or her lost brother? Or sister? Was she crying for the ring? For the original bearer of it? Or was she crying for that look in Etienne’s eyes when he’d slipped it on her finger?

  So unassuming. So blissfully ignorant of everything. So prepared to not judge her for her past.

  But this was a part of her past that he didn’t know. That she wondered if she would ever be brave enough to tell him about.

  “What on Laterre?” Etienne was suddenly leaning over the console, staring out the window. Chatine followed his gaze to the left, where she saw what had snagged his attention. Off in the distance—far below—in the vanishing light of the late afternoon, a small fire blazed. At least, that’s what it appeared to be. Chatine had very little experience with fires. But before she could make sense of the strange spectacle, Etienne started yelling in her ear. “Increase altitude. Now!”

  Chatine’s hands dove for the controls, ready to blast them upward. But she stopped herself when she noticed something on the ground a short distance from the fire. A small, glimmering, oval-shaped craft with a giant blue cloth spread out around it that was snapping and billowing in the harsh Terrain Perdu winds.

  “What is that?” Chatine asked, squinting through the window.

  “Whatever it is, it’s not our concern,” Etienne replied hurriedly. “Increase altitude right now and turn this ship around.”

  But Chatine ignored him, pushing the ship closer to the ground so she could get a better look. “I think it might be a crash site.”

  Etienne let out an angry puff of air. “Even more reason to get out of here. Anyone flying over the Terrain Perdu is Ministère or at the very least Second Estate, and we’re staying away from both of those. Now get up and hand over the controls. You’re done.”

  “No!” Chatine fired back. “They might need help.”

  “Then they can call for a gridder to come help them. Now get up before I physically remove you from that seat.”

  Chatine held tight to the controls, continuing her steady descent toward the ground. “The code says if we can help without getting killed, then we help.”

  “And if we go down there, we’ll probably be killed.”

  “You don’t know that,” Chatine pointed out.

  “And you don’t know it’s safe. When in doubt, don’t help.”

  Chatine shot him a glance. “Is that the community’s code, or yours?”

  That shut him up. If only for a moment. “We don’t get involved! That’s a rule!”

  “Well, then, good thing you Défecteurs are really good at breaking rules,” Chatine snapped, and guided the ship swiftly and steadily toward the ground.

  - CHAPTER 57 - MARCELLUS

  AT FIRST, MARCELLUS SAW NOTHING except endless gray clouds. But the sound was getting louder. It rattled the air around them. It shook the ground beneath their feet. It plunged his heart into a frenzied panic.

  Combatteurs.

  They had found him. His grandfather had tracked the ship, tracked th
e escape pod, and now he was going to end it all in a rain of fiery, scorching explosifs from the sky.

  And they were an easy target. Sitting in wide-open terrain with their blue parachute flapping in the wind like a homing beacon.

  Marcellus turned to Alouette and then to Cerise. The fear in both their eyes told him they’d heard it too. They all looked to the sky with puzzled and terrified expressions. But still, there was nothing. Where was that sound coming from? No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t pinpoint its origins. But there was one thing for certain: It was getting closer.

  “What is it?” Alouette asked.

  Marcellus shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Should we move?” Cerise asked, her eyes darting anxiously to Gabriel. Marcellus knew what she was thinking. How would they possibly move him without injuring him more?

  “Where would we go?” Marcellus asked. “If it’s a craft, it’ll move faster than we could ever travel by foot. And if it’s already spotted us, then there’s no hope.”

  “But if it’s a craft,” Alouette said, craning her neck, “why can’t we see it? Is it concealed by the clouds?”

  “I don’t know,” Marcellus said again, this time with a shudder.

  A second later, the air around them started to whip and thrash, battering against Marcellus’s ears until he couldn’t decipher the sound from the mysterious rumble of what he knew to be engines. Their chute flapped violently, locked in place only by the tethers that were still secured to the abandoned pod.

  It’s landing, Marcellus thought, desperately scanning the horizon.

  And then he saw it. The faintest shadow on the ground. Something blocking the afternoon light from the three Sols hidden behind the clouds.

  “How is it … ,” Alouette began to ask, but her question drifted into the wind when suddenly, as if carved right into the air, a door emerged and hissed open.

  Cerise gasped. Alouette sucked in a sharp breath. Gabriel let out another groan. And Marcellus could only stare. Speechlessly. Incredulously. Breathlessly.

  A figure stepped out of the invisible ship, dressed in strange clothing flecked with white and gray that was almost camouflage against the backdrop of the Terrain Perdu.