Shadow Fall

by Audrey Grey

  “But you might really kill me,” I say, lifting my hands, now numb with fear.

  I try to will away my horror like my other emotions, but it clings to me. Apparently even Lady March is not immune to fear.

  My mother stood right there. Welts from where the foil lashed my tender flesh crisscrossed my arms. I was begging her to stop. Please, Mother. It hurts. You’re scaring me.

  But that seemed only to make her angrier, and I fell beneath a barrage of whips, her foil slicing the air with each enraged stroke.

  Now I have made the same mistake, asking Brogue for mercy. He takes a quick, confident step toward me, his eyes shining ruthlessly. “One small misstep on the Island, you really die.” Another step. “Accidentally reveal your true identity, you die then, too.” His boot slides a foot closer. “Fail to win the Shadow Trials, well . . . you get the picture.” For his size, he has a feline grace, shifting through spaces with a quiet ease that lulls me into thinking he’s farther away than he really is. That he is my friend.

  His last step puts him a mere foot from me. “Death is all around you, Lady March. It’s the silent, phantasmal specter, breathing oh-so-quietly down your neck.” His tarry breath is hot against my cheeks. “It’ll find its way in, eventually—”

  The knife flashes as it drives toward my neck. There’s a moment right before it enters my flesh that I can actually feel the blade burning through my neck and lodging in my spine. But last second, I move and instead it carves a fiery but superficial trail from my collarbone to my jaw.

  “You stabbed me!” I scream. Panic frays my voice as the space between my breasts pools with blood.

  Suddenly I’m dead sure he’s intent on killing me.

  Brogue wipes his blade on his shirtsleeve. “I grazed you. Next time, move faster.”

  “Next time?”

  He’s coming again, stalking me. “Better yet.” A wicked smile curves his jaw. “Catch it.”

  He grasps the knife blade between thumb and forefinger, aims it at my face like a dart, and snaps his wrist.

  I fall to the ground. I’m sure the knife has impaled me. There’s no way I could have avoided it; he’s too close, his aim too sure.

  My eyes, which must have closed, snap open. Pinned between my flat palms, glinting mere centimeters from my nose, is the knife blade.

  The blade slides through my fingers and buries itself in the padded floor. I know I’m supposed to use the weapon on him, but the thought makes me ill.

  I force my body to a wobbly crouch. “I’m done,” I say, pressing my fingers to my neck to staunch the dripping blood. “This is torture.”

  This is survival, Everly, Nicolai’s excited voice says into my head. Now pick up the knife and stab him with it.

  “No.” My body is shaking. “I said I would kill Emperor Laevus, and I will. But I refuse to hurt anyone else.”

  Your reconstructed neuron pathways need to be solidified, Nicolai says. To do that, we need two things: traumatic, stress-inducing situations and repetition. We don’t want Everly March to lose her memories and skillset prematurely.

  “You should have told me you were giving me a dead girl’s memories!”

  It wasn’t pertinent.

  I pinch the bridge of my nose and close my eyes. “It was. Pertinent. To me.”

  “The girl needs a break,” Brogue interrupts. His voice is gruff and uncaring, same as always. But there’s something about it that tells me different.

  My mother’s voice whispers, Pick it up. Use it. He is weak.

  I pick up the knife. It’s surprisingly light, the steel handle cold and smooth in my palm. It feels good to hold it. Empowering.

  A quiet rage comes over me. I smile at Brogue like we’re friends again, like all’s forgiven, flick my wrist, and watch the knife arrow toward his head.

  He grunts in surprise, ducks. The knife buries into the wall behind him with a thud. It warbles back and forth a moment and then goes still.

  If he hadn’t been distracted by his emotion, he would have seen that coming. I’ve found the chink in his armor.

  Brogue touches the thin red line across his cheek where the knife grazed and regards the blood darkening his fingertips with wide eyes. “I told you,” I say, smiling, “not to call me girl.”

  Except for cobwebs and a few cans of synthetic green beans, the pantry is empty. I scan the barren shelves, my stomach rumbling, as Bramble pokes and whirs at the few crumbs dusting the floor. That’s where the bread and pasta used to go. The flour and spices just below. The salt-bread crackers and Max’s coveted sweet raisin cakes to my left. Whole racks of dried plums, apples, and saffron-infused lamb strips near the back.

  We were luckier than most Bronzes, with my mother’s Gold rations and my father’s place in the Royalist College across the wall. I see that now, even if I didn’t then.

  I select the least rusty can. It’s heavy as I lug it to the kitchen counter, Bramble skittering by my feet. The cut on my neck protests beneath a strip of gauze and tape.

  I peel back the lid, grayish green droplets spraying the new blouse I changed into. Hopefully Nicolai has a surplus, given my current rate.

  I’m lifting the can when the rift screen above the kitchen table zaps to life. Oh goody. Given my mood I would rather not watch, but the rift screen will follow me wherever I go, so I might as well get it over with.

  Dramatic music fills the kitchen, the screen skipping over pairs of Chosen. The Match results. I swallow and focus on depositing the contents of the can into the bowl and not my blouse. They can’t force me to listen.

  But a knot forms in my belly at the thought of court. Even now, with my perfect hair and pleasing features, I still feel the sting of their taunts.

  I poke and prod the musty smelling slop with a wooden spoon. A black oily ooze bobs to the surface, and Bramble chirps suspiciously at it. Not a good sign. Hunger parts my mouth. The spoon hovers at my lips. But I literally cannot fight the congealed bite into my mouth.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I yell to the matched faces on the rift screen.

  They smile down at me. Beautiful. Healthy. Even though they cannot really see me, I feel their scorn.

  I fight the urge to chuck the bowl at their stupid Chosen faces, knowing that tampering with a rift screen carries a stiff penalty.

  Instead, I watch with grim satisfaction as the bowl sails through the air and then explodes in a gooey starburst of green against the wall.

  I regret my childish action immediately; I’m still hungry.

  I see that Flame needs to tweak your impulsive streak, Nicolai’s voice grates in my head.

  Let her try, I snap back.

  And make you more amenable—

  “I would be more amenable if I wasn’t being starved!”

  Lady March would not touch that excuse for food if she were dying of starvation. Nor would she suffer petulant outbursts.

  I deflate. “So . . . I can’t eat?”

  Not can’t. Won’t. At least, not that muck.

  Applause from the Matches shatters Nicolai’s connection. I roll my eyes at the gorgeous, elaborately draped couple accepting white roses from the crowd. They drip with rubies that catch the sun.

  Probably the children of high-ranking generals. They touch hands shyly. Tears well inside the girl’s wide blue eyes. After D-Day, after most of us have been killed, all the matched will have elaborate weddings on Hyperion. When your job is carrying on the human race, you get started early.

  For a strange, disconnected moment, the girl looks directly into the rift, and it’s as if I can see every Sleeper that has uploaded into her. Their sad, screaming gaze burns through the screen.

  Soon they’ll be inside me too.

  Sliding out the knife I pocketed from practice earlier, I notice the way its handle perfectly fills the basin of my palm. My thumb closes over the cold steel, and a primitive, euphoric feeling rushes over me.

  In this moment, I could do anything. I have no control, no moral
boundaries I cannot cross. I wonder if this is what it’s like to lose it.

  “So, let me get this straight.” My voice begins to crack as if I’m a rotten fruit about to split wide open. “I can’t eat certain foods, but I can ram this dagger into someone’s heart?”

  Exactly, Nicolai purrs into my head.

  “Stop it,” I beg. “Please. Whatever you did to me, undo it.”

  A long expanse of quiet fills my skull. I can only assume Nicolai is giving me time to collect myself.

  Impossible, he says at last. You are Lady March. From now on everything you do must reflect that.

  “But I’m hungry,” I whisper.

  Then figure something out.

  There’s a strange release inside my head as he leaves, and then I find myself slumping to the cold tile. Bramble pokes cautiously at my shoulder as I focus in and out on the dust coating the floor, watching the tiny spheres dance with my shallow breathing. I feel light, hollow, as if I can float away on the smallest breeze.

  What have you done, Graystone?

  “Not Graystone,” my new, perfect lips whisper. “Lady. Everly. March.” Every word is a struggle, but once they’re spoken, some of the panic evaporates. “You’re still you, just better. Stronger.”

  Dusting off my cheek, I rise and say, “You are Lady Everly March, and if you’re going to survive, you must think like Lady March.”

  Hysterical episode averted, I pocket the knife and spend a few minutes searching the kitchen cupboards, although I know anything near edible has already been picked from this place. Time to leave the house.

  My stomach tightens. The thought both scares and elates me. Shadow Fall isn’t for another hour. There will be sunlight and fresh air and sky. I remember the throng of people in the makeshift marketplace. I convince myself it will be safe in the daytime. That my knife and newfound skills will protect me.

  I scour the house for things to barter with. It doesn’t take long to fill a sheet full of items. A can opener, batteries, a water distiller, a half-used bar of basil and thyme soap, some cutlery from the kitchen, a dusty jar of what looks to be blackberry jam, Max’s windup flashlight.

  Right before I leave, I peer up. Caspian’s face smiles at me from the rift screen above the door. He’s older, of course. His face leaned out, his eyes more somber than I remember. He’s standing on a platform, his black fur cape wobbling around his legs as he impatiently taps his foot.

  An enormous golden crown sits sideways on his head. Cheers burst from the crowd as he gives a stiff nod, his white-gloved hands balled into fists at his side. He scans the crowd with vague indifference.

  In a word, he looks bored.

  “Are you reeeady?” the announcer drawls with grating enthusiasm. “This is it, royal watchers, the Match results we have all been waiting for. Prince Caspian Laevus, the Royal Prince Sovereign and future Emperor, third firstborn descendant of the beloved Emperor Marcus Laevus, the very reason half the crowd is near swooning—right, ladies?” There is the sound of squealing and excited laughter, overlapping with the dull buzz of applause.

  The camera pans to the massive crowd, nearly a mile deep, all dressed in white for the Matches. They are on Hyperion, deep in space, but you would never know. Not with the golden castle rising behind them and walls made to look like perfectly blue sky. “And the lucky Chosen lady, our future Empress, is none other than . . . the universally beloved Gold from House Bloodwood, daughter of the esteemed and honorable General Bloodwood, Countess Delphine Bloodwood!”

  Screams and applause roar through my eardrums. For the tiniest of seconds my brain tingles with something. An emotion.

  But then as I open the door, the sun warm on my face, the feeling evanesces like a foul odor carried away on a breeze until I can no longer remember the actual smell—just that I did not enjoy it.

  The young male Merc posted against the column jumps to attention. “My lady,” he says, jutting his shoulder into my path. “Shadow Fall is coming.”

  I meet his panicked eyes, prepared to fight, if necessary. “Then you best stay sharp.”

  A tense moment. A standoff, really. We are eye-to-eye. I notice a fine layer of blond hairs just above his upper lip. And his chest is barrel-shaped, indicative of the breathing disease. Most likely a miner from Gaul, the next Diamond City over. Not your usual Merc.

  They’re growing desperate.

  I know I’ve won when he edges back. Brogue would have stopped me.

  Or, at least, he would have tried.

  I make it to the broken wrought iron gate by the street when he calls out, “Between the fifth and sixth intercostal, my lady.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your knife. It’s how you stop a man’s heart . . . In case you get into trouble.”

  I pick up my pace. The sun is already high in the sky.

  Too high.

  I am running away. I know myself, or used to know myself enough to understand that. Running from the house that’s not my house, from the people who aren’t my friends, from the food I can’t eat and the dead girl inside my mirror.

  The rift screen above the market is active. I watch as the woman on the huge screen steps into her Casket and demonstrates how to upload, all the while a serene voice floats through the speakers. “Subjects of Cypher, your city has been ordered to upload. Failure to comply will be considered an offense against the Emperor, punishable by death.”

  The Bronzes swarming the tents ignore it. Instead, their dirty faces and glassy eyes peer up at Her, sifting through the smoke-churned sky. They are more afraid of Shadow Fall than they are the Emperor and his drones.

  Fighting through a wall of elbows and shoulders, I clutch my sack to my chest and lose myself for a moment, ignoring the pockets of chaos around me.

  Two boys my age beat a limp pile of rags on the ground with clubs. Thunk. Thunk. A foot twitches beneath it.

  Look away. Run.

  A young girl offers herself to the man to my left. To me.

  Look away.

  I nearly trip over two women fighting in the dirt where the beautiful rose garden used to be, before the fires reduced them to ash. The larger woman on top has the smaller woman’s long brown hair twirled around her fist and is grinding her face into the ground. Jeers rise from a ring of men circling them.

  Look away. Keep going.

  An elbow glances off my ribs and rips me from my daze. I’m under the makeshift row of tents. The smell of burnt meat mixes with acrid sweat and rotting garbage. Just where I need to be.

  I choose a stall near the back. The meat hanging from the racks doesn’t resemble Max’s cat, at least, and the frail, stooped woman standing at the counter appears clean.

  A small part of me admits I’ve targeted her because she looks nice. Weak. I should feel pity for her, but I feel nothing.

  Well, except hunger.

  The woman’s faded eyes peer behind large glasses at the goods I set out. Her gaze flits greedily to the silverware, a pearl-engraved knife and fork, two delicate silver spoons. A toothless smile splits her face.

  Something crawls just below my skin.

  I meet the old woman’s eyes. She’s no longer the weak, smiling grandmother. An image flashes inside her glasses, and I go cold.

  I turn just in time to meet them: three men, each one bigger than the last; each one clutching a nail-studded baton. They have sadistic smiles and dead eyes.

  In the pit, I know which category they would fall into.

  Predator.

  And that puts me squarely with the prey.

  Chapter Twelve

  Bait. The woman was bait. I don’t have to turn around to know the woman has fled. Just like I don’t have to look up to see the fiery ring in the sky is fading.

  This was a huge mistake. Huge. Of epic, I’m-screwed proportions.

  “So, you’re the three idiots I have to barter with,” I say, proud that my voice doesn’t shake at all. My hand, though, trembles uncontrollably as it snakes into the bag and
clutches Max’s flashlight.

  I pray to the gods the gears are still working.

  My fearless voice makes my tormentors halt a few steps from me. Their putrid stench cuts through the foulness of the spoiled meat swaying just above my head.

  A quick glance tells me the crowd has disappeared with the fading light.

  I am alone.

  “She’s got a smart mouth on her,” the largest man says. He has burnt-orange hair, lanky limbs, and large hands, and he looks to the middle man—obviously the leader—as he talks.

  A rictus grin splits the leader’s face. “Drake, Mathias, why don’t you show her what we do to the smart ones?”

  This is not going as planned. If this were the pit, I would already be running mindlessly, my mind flooded with the Doom.

  I briefly wonder what Lady Everly March would do. Before I can think further, my body reacts and I drop and roll. Sharp rocks from the crumbling cobblestone sidewalk scrape my cheeks and elbows.

  Sky, ground, sky. Over and over I roll, beneath two stalls, under a table. I finally wedge against a wooden chair.

  I spring to my feet. Shadow murk chokes the air so I can hardly make out my hand in front of me. My ragged breath aligns with my footsteps. I trip over a stall. Knock into an iron rack overflowing with dried herbs.

  Before I know it, thick gray trees surround me. A path opens up. My father and I used to stroll this part of the forest, collecting rocks and leaves.

  Other things use these woods now. I remember the sound of the window breaking at the house across the street, the screams as the children funneled inside.

  Not children. Not anymore.

  The footpath disappears. Tree limbs scratch my face as I fight my way through dense foliage, kicking and punching my own path. But I am too loud, and soon the forest fills with the sounds of snapping branches and heavy breathing—not my own.

  That’s good because I have a desperate, lunatic plan. And it requires that my attackers and I make as much noise as possible.

  I enter a clearing just as a shadow breaks off from one of the trees. Then another. Now there are three. Their height and stench tell me they are the cretins from the market.