“You shouldn’t eat anything heavy for at least another three days, so I just brought you some broth. I hope that’s okay.”
Ronja switched her gaze to the girl at her beside. She was so small, her voice so soft, she could easily dissolve into the curtains. Her strawberry-blond hair spiraled to her shoulders in loose curls. Her face was sweet and round behind a layer of grime, and she wore a timid smile on her pink mouth. She bore a tray laden with a steaming bowl and a perspiring glass of water.
“It’s chicken, is that okay?”
Ronja’s stomach rumbled.
The girl smiled knowingly and perched on the edge of the bed. A spoon quivered on the tray as she set it down beside her, the sound Ronja had pegged as shackles.
“Can you sit up?” her caregiver inquired.
Ronja nodded against her pillow. Wincing, she propped herself up on her elbows. Her muscles groaned in protest, uncurling from dormancy. Her head felt strangely light as she raised it.
The girl clasped Ronja’s cold hands in her own, hauling her upright. She reached around and fluffed the sweat-drenched pillow.
“Sorry,” the redhead apologized, motioning toward the dirty cushion. “I would have changed the case, but I didn’t want to disturb you. I changed your sheets a few times, though. You had some troubles.”
Ronja felt heat flare in her cheeks, but the girl appeared utterly unembarrassed. She opened her mouth to apologize, but the words dried up on her tongue. She pointed helplessly at her burning throat.
“Oh! I’m so sorry, here.”
The girl grabbed the glass of water from the tray and handed it to Ronja. Snatching it, she swallowed half the contents in one gulp.
“Slowly! You’ll make yourself sick.”
Ronja did not heed the warning, but finished the drink in three gulps. She sighed contentedly, though her stomach moaned.
“Thanks,” Ronja said hoarsely, passing the empty glass back to the girl.
She took it in a petite hand and smiled ruefully.
“Of course. It’s the least I can do. I’m Iris, by the way. Iris Harte.”
“Ronja,” Ronja replied, wiping her lips with the back of her wrist.
Iris made a noise of surprise, and her fingers flew to her lips. Ronja arched an eyebrow beneath her bandages.
“I’m sorry,” Iris apologized again, fluttering her hands dismissively. “I’m just surprised. They said you wouldn’t say.”
“Oh,” Ronja glanced down at her knees, which poked through the sheets like craggy peaks. “Guess I forgot to care.”
“No! I’m glad you told me. I don’t like not knowing people’s names. It’s like reading a book without a title.”
“How long was I out?” Ronja asked, prodding the bandages that encompassed her head gingerly.
“Four days, plus this morning. You were awake for some of it, though. I’m assuming you don’t remember?”
Ronja shook her head, unnerved.
“It’s better that way, you mostly just cussed us out and vomited. Not that I blame you. You should have seen Evie when she got her Singer off.”
Ronja itched the bridge of her nose, unsure how to respond.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” Iris went on after a pause, clasping her hands in her lap. Her skin was dry and cracked, the nails cropped short in their beds. “You have to understand that this has never happened before.”
“Which part?” Ronja asked.
“All of it,” Iris replied, shifting the spoon on the tray so it aligned with the cooling soup.
“Want to explain a little more?” Ronja asked through gritted teeth. “I’m getting really tired of being in the dark.”
Iris did not reply. She lifted the tray from the edge of the bed and set it on Ronja’s thighs delicately, as if worried she would snap under the slight weight.
“I’ll leave you to eat, then. Please go slowly, or you’ll vomit.”
Ronja let out a harsh laugh of disbelief, which Iris tactfully ignored. The slight girl stood collectedly and padded from the room on bare feet.
Ronja glowered at her murky reflection in the soup. Her gut was in tumult, but her jutting bones begged for food. Steeling herself, she lifted the utensil from the tray and plunged it into the broth.
The curtain flew aside as Ronja put the spoon to her lips.
“You,” she spat.
14: Compensation
Trip stood in the gap, robed again in his overcoat. His muddied riding goggles ringed his neck, and dark circles rimmed his eyes. The smirk he had worn in the subtrain station had evaporated.
“Me,” he replied mildly.
He let the curtain fall and strode into the room, his hands deep in his pockets.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“You skitzing son of a bitch!” Ronja bellowed.
She launched the tray from her legs and it landed on the floor with a deafening crash. Ronja gasped as the sound ricocheted off the walls of her skull.
As the pounding in her head receded, she shoved back the linens. Bracing herself with quaking arms, she swung her legs off the bed and planted them firmly on the floor.
“Don’t—”
Ronja shot to her feet and immediately cascaded to the ground, knocking into the coatrack with a thwack. The wooden stand and accompanying bag of hydration teetered. Trip lunged forward and steadied them.
He knelt next to Ronja cautiously. She tried to scramble away, but was tugged back by the needle in her arm.
“Here,” Trip said, moving to take her wrist. “Iris told me I could take this out.”
Ronja flinched away, her face pinched into a snarl and her arm curled to her chest. Trip held her caustic gaze as he took her wrist with gentle hands. Slowly, he unwound the gauze that held the needle in place and slid the catheter from her vein. A dome of blood bubbled up on the soft tissue, but he stoppered it with a fresh wad of linen.
“Better?” he asked.
Ronja nodded blackly.
“Let’s get you back to bed.”
Ronja moved to stand, but in one swift motion Trip’s arms were around her, and she was swept from the ground like a child. Even through his jacket, she could feel the warmth of his skin radiating, his heart thumping in his ribs.
Trip placed her on the bed and shook out her sheets, which were miraculously dry. Most of the soup had splattered against the far curtain. The boy tucked the linens up to her chin, then unfolded the extra blanket at the foot of the cot and smoothed it over her. Ronja was not cold, but did not protest. Trip stepped back, his arms hanging loosely at his sides.
“Why did you do this to me?” Ronja whispered after a pause.
“It was a mistake.”
“A mistake?” Ronja said, hysteria creeping into her voice. “A mistake? Kidnapping me and torturing me was a mistake? Cutting off my Singer was a mistake?”
“Please,” Trip spread his hands before him. “Let me explain.”
“Please, give it a go.”
“You saw me without my Singer that night in the station,” he began, running an anxious hand through his black hair. “I was worried of course, but you didn’t seem to know who I was. Even if you brought it to the Offs, as I assumed you would, you didn’t have my name, or any means of finding me. Then you showed up with my parcel.”
“You thought I was following you,” Ronja interjected.
Trip bobbed his head.
“Why not take me out right away?”
“I wasn’t sure, until you mentioned the rec . . . our emblem.”
“If you’re so pitching secretive about this symbol, why the hell would you put it on a package?”
“Because nobody with a Singer can see it.”
Ronja’s brow wrinkled beneath her bandages. She opened her mouth to reply, but her words froze on her tongue. Trip went on.
“Well,” he said, dropping onto the foot of her bed with an exhausted sigh. “They can see it, but they think nothing of it—at least, that’s what usually happens. Obviously,
that wasn’t true in your case.”
“What do you mean they think nothing of it?” Ronja asked carefully.
Trip craned his head back to view the ceiling. His eyes flicked from stone to stone as he considered her question. He snapped his gaze back to her abruptly.
“Do you remember what your third grade instructor looked like?”
“Wha . . . vaguely. Why?”
Ronja’s third grade instructor was a spindly old man with salt and pepper muttonchops and a stiff knee. He walked with a gnarled cane, which doubled as an instrument of punishment.
“Can you tell me what color their eyes were? If their ears were large or small? How long their nose was?”
“Uh, no.”
“Exactly, because it doesn’t really matter what your third grade teacher looked like.”
“Do you have a point, or is this a new form of torture?”
Trip smiled grimly.
“Despite what you might think, The Conductor is not all powerful. He can’t reach into your mind and obliterate a thought. But,” Trip held up a long finger, “He can make that thought seem obsolete. If He determines something is . . . ” he trailed off, weighing his words “ . . . troublesome, He writes it into The Music. People unconsciously begin to avoid that thing like the plague.”
“Like mutts,” Ronja muttered under her breath.
“Sorry?”
“Never mind. So, He wanted people to forget the symbol existed?”
“Precisely. But if they do notice it, they tend to believe it’s an alternate take on His crest.”
“Yeah, that’s what—”
Ronja caught herself before she spilled Henry’s name. She could not involve him in this. Trip was watching her expectantly, but she fluttered her hands dismissively.
“So, what about any of this made you think I was an Off? Wouldn’t they be more prone to ignoring your symbol?”
Trip beamed and leaned toward her. Ronja felt her heart stutter in her chest. She could scarcely hear its damp palpitations now, which she took as a good sign.
“Well spotted. Off Singers are even more powerful than common ones. Clever girl. That also means that they run on a different frequency. And who controls all these Singers? Those without. The Conductor and his shinys. People who can see our symbol.”
The bed frame creaked as Ronja reclined against it, considering the claim.
“Oh,” she exclaimed after a moment, sitting up. “You thought they changed the frequency.”
“And that they were attempting to infiltrate our ranks, yes,” Trip replied.
Ronja could not smother a dark chuckle. Trip arched a questioning brow.
“I’m sorry, it’s just so ridiculous,” she said, whisking away her humor. “Anyone can see I’m not an Off.”
“How?”
“Your doctor friend had it right when she said I was underweight. Off rations are way higher than ours. Half of them are twenty pounds overweight, the other half are thirty.”
“True enough, but it could have easily been a ruse.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t wearing an Off Singer.”
Trip’s other eyebrow followed its mirror up his forehead. He appeared to be fighting a smile, or more likely a grimace.
“They’re a bit bigger than common ones,” Ronja explained. “Come on, you didn’t know? Typical shiny.”
Trip barked a laugh. Ronja’s sensitive ear throbbed, but she could not resist a smug smile.
“Shiny? What gave me away?”
“Where should I start? For starters, you talk too pretty. You cleaned your face not long ago,” Ronja said, gesturing at his spotless, if drained features. “Anyone who lives in the outer ring knows as soon as you clean up, you’re dirty again. But mostly it’s your name. Trip. Stands for ‘the third,’ if I remember right. You’re named after your father and his, which means two things. One, your family has been together more than a gen. More importantly, it means your father was an honorable man, worth remembering. Put it all together? You’ve got a pitch ton of cash.”
Trip was silent for a long time. His eyes were as flat and unreflective as dry bricks. His jaw worked beneath his skin, and Ronja wondered if she had gone too far.
Suddenly, the boy brightened. He shook his escaped hair from his face. A black feather was twined with the cord that gathered it at the base of his skull.
“Not bad,” Trip commended. “Only, I’d call my father more memorable than honorable.”
“I see,” Ronja said.
She rubbed her nose with her index finger and stared at her knees, abruptly apprehensive. She was in no position to insult these people. Trip said her capture had been a mistake, but did that mean she could trust him? Her Singer was gone, along with her ear and her migraines. For anyone to be found without a Singer was a severe crime, but for a mutt, even a second gen, it meant certain death.
“I don’t have a Singer,” Ronja murmured, as if it had only just occurred to her.
“You’re quite welcome.”
“No, they’ll kill me,” Ronja said, panic squeezing her voice into a higher octave. “They’ll kill you. My family . . . what have . . . what have you done?”
The ceiling pressed down on her from above, the floor up from below. Cold sweat beaded on her skin, tracing patterns down her spine. The lights were too bright. The world was pounding on the door of her mind. If she let it in, she was lost. Ronja buried her face in her knees.
A hand on her shoulder. Ronja gasped and jerked backward, abruptly alert.
Trip shifted away and threw his hands up, as if she were a wild animal.
“Your family will be fine, okay? We’ve brought people in from the outside before and removed their Singers. Granted their experiences are generally less traumatic, but same concept. Some had families.”
“What . . . what happened to them?” Ronja croaked.
Trip smiled gently.
“They were questioned by the Offs, just questioned, not tortured. Then they were sent on their way. No one can lie to an Off under The Music. Your family knows nothing of your circumstances. They may be worried, but they are safe. I promise.”
“My family isn’t . . . ”
Normal.
That was the word she was looking for. But she could not tell Trip her mother was a mutt. That by all accounts, she should be one as well. Genetics went beyond The Music. What if she told him, and he did not accept her? He did not seem to have an inkling as to her true identity, unlike the rest of Revinia.
She wanted to keep it that way.
“We’ve had some trouble with the law in the past,” Ronja finally said. “What if they were . . . taken?”
To prison. Or to be made into mutts. Or to their deaths.
Trip snorted.
“A rebellious streak, huh? That might explain your ability to overcome The Music. Regardless, that shouldn’t affect this kind of issue.”
Ronja breathed a sigh of relief. She felt the walls recede slightly as her breaths lengthened and slowed.
“Why did you do it?” she asked when she could speak again.
“You were dying, I had to—”
“No,” Ronja cut him off. “Why did you take off your Singer?”
Humor flared in Trip’s gaze, igniting his easy grin.
“Now that is a very complicated and fascinating question, one that I am not at liberty to answer.”
“Oh, come on,” Ronja groaned, flopping back against the bed frame dramatically. She crossed her arms over her hospital gown. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am,” Trip replied dryly. “You’ll have your questions answered soon, though. My superiors will want to speak with you.”
Ronja chuckled bitterly and rubbed her sore eyes with the heels of her palms.
“I’m sorry.”
Ronja dropped her hands. Technicolor splotches pulsated in her vision. She blinked them away to find Trip regarding her earnestly.
“I’m sorry for the burn, for your ear, for taking you fr
om your family, and for the pain of these last days. I don’t expect your forgiveness, but I do have something to offer you as a means of compensation.”
“What?” Ronja asked blackly.
“Freedom.”
Ronja opened her mouth to reply, but the boy had risen and was making his way toward the exit.
“Wait,” she called, stretching out her arm as if to pull him back.
Trip halted and peered back over his shoulder.
“What’s your real name?”
The boy smiled crookedly. “I don’t use my first name,” he said after a moment. “But if you don’t want to call me Trip, you can use my middle name.”
“Which is?”
“Roark.”
“Roark,” Ronja repeated, testing the name on her tongue. It was an old, wealthy name, certainly not native to the outer ring. “I’m Ronja.”
“Ronja,” Roark echoed softly. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”
Roark turned from her without another word and disappeared through the curtained door. The fabric swayed in his wake. Ronja watched it until it was utterly still, turning the name over and over in her mind.
15: Knots
Curiosity coaxed her to step beyond the curtains, but fear kept her rooted on the spot. Ronja did not know if she was truly a prisoner, but got the sense that she would be stopped if she attempted to leave.
She felt as if she had slept for months, though her limbs remained numb and cumbersome. Her joints twanged and popped like those of an old woman as she threw back her sheets and hefted her legs from dormancy. Wincing, she twisted her body and let them droop to the cool floor.
It took several frustrating minutes and the assistance of the coat rack for her to stand, but eventually she managed to stay on her feet without swaying. Walking was even more trying. Her muscles burned as she worked the knots from them, but in a way, she welcomed the pain. It meant she was healing.
Ronja staggered back and forth across the room half a dozen times, rolling the kinks from her neck and kneading her shoulders. The exercise worked the hitches from her mind. For the first time in her life, her thoughts were bitingly clear.
Everything that had happened over the course of the last few days was impossible. A shiny without a Singer. A makeshift hospital underground. A symbol invisible to an entire city that she alone could see. Her Singer, ripped from her skull just before The Quiet Song could drag her under.
Vinyl: Book One of the Vinyl Trilogy Page 8
