Skyhunter

by Marie Lu

  29

  Our escape seems to happen in a series of still moments.

  I recall the long corridor of the lab complex, crawling with soldiers and blinded Ghosts. There is the Chief Architect and the Premier, surrounded by their bodyguards. The courtyard is a scene of Ghosts, blind and enraged, corralled by their guards.

  The world comes and goes for me. I remember Jeran helping Adena through the yard. I remember Red cutting through the soldiers, his wings extended, raining death on everyone in his path. I remember the fog, which had settled thick into the city the night before, now giving us merciful cover.

  In the heavy mist, Red comes back to me, guided by our link. Then I recall the cold air whipping past us, the shroud of fog hiding our bodies in the air.

  I remember silence, the weight of it pressing in all around me.

  Through my flickering consciousness, the Premier’s words to me repeat again and again. My bond with Red can never be wholly severed. It is the only way he could have found me through the chaos.

  The reason for our mission’s failure is the same as the reason for our survival.

  * * *

  The next time I properly wake, it’s almost dawn, and I feel the earth cool and damp beneath me. There’s a faint memory playing in my mind of my mother and father, the last remnants of a dream: My mother cuts fat slices of fruit, and my father rolls up my sleeves for me as we paint together. My father dips his brush into ink and sweeps it down the paper in an arc, and I coo under my breath, thinking it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I try to copy it, over and over, until he laughs at me. Create what you want, he tells me. It will be even better. My mother walks over with the plate of fruit and feeds a slice to me, smiling at the juice that dribbles down my chin.

  They vanish now, replaced by darkness. The cold is what must have stirred me, because I’m shivering uncontrollably. The air here is noticeably icier than what I remember from the capital. Yet it’s blissfully still. There is the sound of birds in the trees, then the splash of them fishing in some nearby stream. I let myself listen until the ache in my heart from my dream eases.

  I shift, then regret it as pain lances down my arms and legs. Grimacing, I rub my limbs and take stock of my surroundings.

  We’re out of the city—the oppressive smell of it, the throngs of people in the streets, the towering apartments and narrow alleys crowded with tents—nothing of Cardinia anywhere to be seen here. Instead, a cool mist hangs in this forest, and when I sit straighter, I glimpse a valley sloping in the distance through the trees.

  Beside me, Red sleeps, still unconscious. He is covered in blood, some his, some from the soldiers that he’d killed. Now his breathing is slow and even.

  My eyes dart around the makeshift campsite. Where are Jeran and Adena?

  Then I spot Adena up in one of the nearby trees, her back against the trunk, looking idly out at the valley. At my movement, she glances down—her hand whipping immediately to the dagger in her boot—and then she breaks into a smile. It isn’t the smile I remember, though; there’s no joy in it, only weary relief. She nods down at me, and I nod in return.

  “Sorry about the cold,” Jeran signs to me as he takes a seat beside us. “We’re about fifty miles out of Cardinia. Red helped guide us a bit on what routes to take into the forests. Try to stamp your feet a little, once you feel up to standing.” He reaches into his pocket and offers me a handful of fresh berries.

  I take one gingerly, my fingers caked in blood, but when I try to open my mouth, my tongue is so dry and my throat so parched that I cough, barely able to swallow a single berry.

  Jeran offers me some water as I run my hand along the makeshift bandages now wrapped tightly around my wounded arm, the fabric soaked through with blood. The pain that had jolted through me when the soldier cut that arm had also rippled through Red, just as his agony at the guards spearing him during the procession had coursed through me. Now, even in his sleep, he stirs slightly, scowling at the twinge of pain that comes through our link. His eyelids flutter.

  “Talin?” he whispers, not through our link, but aloud. His voice sounds hoarse from lack of use. His eyes crack open, and I find myself staring into those deep, dark irises. Then, to my surprise, I glimpse a familiar quiver of fur and whiskers emerge from inside one of his sleeves. His mouse pokes its head out to investigate its surroundings, its tiny claws gripping tightly to Red’s shirt.

  If I could laugh, I would. Somehow, against all odds, this damn mouse has managed to survive Mara’s prison, the warfront, the Federation, the labs, the fighting. Just like Red.

  Red smiles at me while his hand goes instinctively to pet the mouse’s head. “Hello,” he murmurs to me in his rough Maran.

  Before I know it, there are tears on my cheeks. Maybe it’s because the mouse is still alive. Maybe it’s the relief of seeing Red awake, of feeling the bond pulling strong between us, of the certainty that I hadn’t lost another Shield. Or maybe it’s because we have failed in our mission. That all of Mara’s hopes had rested on our shoulders, and yet here we are, returning empty-handed. That my mother may never again live in a free land.

  Red props himself painfully into a sitting position. Then he reaches into his pocket and takes the mouse out, lowering his hand gently to the ground. The creature sniffs the air eagerly, lured toward the scent of berries nearby.

  “Go,” Red tells it gently.

  The mouse doesn’t look at him, but when it catches sight of bushes of berries off in the distance, it hurries off toward them.

  A long moment of silence passes. As he watches it go, I can tell he’s thinking about his little sister.

  The light around us strengthens, touching the distant hills. Somewhere far beyond them lies Maran territory. None of us speak. What is there to say to one another now, anyway? So Jeran, Red, and I just sit, startling at every breeze through the trees, quietly eating berries until they’re gone. I bite my lip, trying to ignore the raging hunger that this meager meal has awoken in me. It brings back memories of darker years, when my mother and I first settled in the Outer City.

  Dark circles haunt Jeran’s eyes. His shirt is also splattered with old blood, but he seems mostly unharmed. None of us bring up the miracle that we are still, somehow, alive after our failed mission.

  Failed. My heart twists as the memory of everything that had happened now comes flooding back.

  After a while, Adena comes, picking her way along the forest floor. “I see a train track running to the west,” she signs to us. “We should steer clear of it.”

  She sits down and immediately pulls out her two daggers, then rubs the back of one against the other to sharpen it. For a while, all we do is listen to the sound of water and birds nearby.

  “What do we do now?” Jeran signs in the silence. His eyes stay on the valley peeking through the trees, in the direction of Mara, and his jaw stays set in stone.

  I know he doesn’t mean what route we take next, but what happens when we arrive home. “I don’t know,” I sign.

  “If we return,” Adena signs, “they’ll arrest us.”

  It’s more than that. If we return to Mara now, not only will the Firstblade be forced to put us in chains, but they will probably execute us in the arena, in the same fashion Red almost was, for our treason to the country. Killed for trying in vain to save us all.

  The thought is almost comical to me, and I have to force a bitter laugh away. Treason. Mara has suffered a worse betrayal at the hands of its very own Speaker.

  “What do you want to do?” I sign to her.

  Adena leans back slowly, wincing. She must be just as sore as I am. Her eyes fall on Red, and her lips move in silence for a moment, trying to find the right thing to say.

  Finally, she looks at me. “Do you think the Federation’s Premier is right?” she signs.

  “About what?”

  “About the Speaker.”

  I’m still for a moment as Constantine’s words to me return. You are too good,
he had said. He’d meant I was too good to fight for such a leader.

  “We don’t have to go back, you know.” I take a deep breath. “I can get my mother. We can flee. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again.”

  “To where?” Jeran signs.

  There are no choices left, but Adena still tightens her lips. “Into the woods, maybe,” she signs back. “We know more than anyone how to survive. I can make everything we need. I might even be able to sneak into the Grid for some of my tools. Then, when the Federation finally breaks through the warfront—as they will in weeks, maybe days—we’ll be safe in the trees, hiding. They won’t know to look for us. We can stay there, even strike back later, when they’re least suspecting it.”

  Red looks questioningly at me, understanding only some of her signs, and I turn my focus to him, translating briefly to him through our bond.

  He frowns. They’ll find us eventually, he tells me, his gaze falling on Adena. I sign his words to her, but she just grimaces, not wanting to believe it.

  “The Federation stretches in every direction,” Jeran signs. His lips have stretched as tight as a string. “They’ll find us.”

  I can hear the warning in it, but Adena plunges on anyway, too exhausted to care. “Well, maybe the Federation will even treat us better than they do in Mara. What are we going to do—sit in prison cells until they come?”

  Jeran glares at her. “Because we’ll soon be under Federation rule, anyway?”

  “It doesn’t matter either way, does it?” she signs. “If we stay or if we flee.”

  “Then why did we do any of this?” he hisses aloud, his voice low and angry. Fury rolls off him like mist, and it is so sudden and dark that both Adena and I pause. “Risk our lives? Give up our honor and our standing and go barreling into the heart of the Federation on a fool’s mission? What was the reason? Why do this?”

  “Why, indeed!” Adena is furious now too, her eyes flashing, her voice a sharp whisper. “You think it doesn’t affect me? I tried. I tried, Jeran.” Then her voice catches, and she stops herself, too embarrassed to let out a sob in the middle of her argument. She looks away so that we don’t see the well of tears in her eyes. “It’s all the same,” she signs. “They’ll come for us in the end.”

  I can feel the way this has broken us, deep in our bones. Maybe we are all too good for Mara. Would I be a fool for stepping back into their territory, to be the one arrested when the true criminal is our Speaker? Why do I still feel a pull to return?

  “We have to go back,” Jeran signs.

  “Why, Jeran?” Adena signs, leaning toward her Shield’s face in anger and anguish. “Why do we need to go back?”

  “The Firstblade would stay and fight,” he signs. “Even after what the Speaker has done.”

  And then I finally understand Jeran’s reason. Back before we fled into the Federation, when we were gathered around my mother’s table, he had told us that he fought as a Striker in order to prove himself to his father. Then he told us he fought because of his brother, because he wanted to learn how to defend himself from Gabrien’s vicious attacks. These must all be true reasons—but they are not the final one. They’re not the reason why he went into the Federation with us, why he fought so hard to get out, and why, even after the knowledge of what the Speaker had done, he wants to return.

  It’s because of the Firstblade. Because Jeran, young and kind and forever loyal, would rather return and give his life alongside Aramin than live knowing he had turned his back on the man he loves.

  Isn’t that why I fight too? Because of Jeran. And Adena. And Corian. It’s because of that dinner at my mother’s table, with everyone’s faces reflecting warm in the evening light. It’s because of the children I see running through Mara’s Inner City, their bones sharp and jutting from all the years of war. Someone has to stand for them.

  “I’m going back,” I sign. I look at Red and repeat it through our link. I’m going back.

  Red taps his fist to his chest in the Striker salute. If you go back, so will I, he tells me.

  I look at him, feeling that tug between us, knowing I would kill for him, and that he would for me. How strange it is that the Federation had given us this gift, the bond that cannot be broken.

  “For Mara?” Adena signs.

  “For the idea of Mara,” Jeran replies.

  “Ideas are nothing but air,” Adena mutters.

  “Then we’re truly lost,” I sign.

  We don’t say anything after that. The sun shifts until its light spills warm over us through the forest canopy, then blankets the valley in pink and purple. After the last rays vanish over the horizon, we pack up our campsite in the twilight and move on, using the night to protect us.

  It is evening on the fifth day of our flight from Cardinia when we finally cross the warfront from the Federation into Mara, our hands up, weapons sheathed away. The Maran soldiers who fetch us from their defense compounds come bearing rope, shouting between one another, and I know they already recognize us.

  Strikers. The deadliest fighters in the land, the pride of Mara, the only thing standing between freedom and annihilation.

  It doesn’t matter. We are still led back to our country as criminals.

  NEWAGE

  THE NATION OF MARA

  30

  Our return to Mara is a somber, silent one.

  We are all wounded and exhausted, shadows of ourselves from when we’d first left the country.

  The Strikers who ride back with us don’t talk as we go. Their eyes shift uneasily in Red’s direction as he rides in silence, and they leave a wide berth between him and the rest of us, a circle of guns pointed in his direction should he so much as make a single unexpected movement. Adena, Jeran, and I are transported with our hands and feet bound, escorted on our own horses. It’s impossible to ignore the weight in the air, as if we’re less Marans and more enemy soldiers.

  None of us utter a word to the other Strikers about what we know of the Speaker. Saying so here, now, as criminals arrested for treason, will only make us sound like liars. Who would believe such a claim? They would just tell the Speaker, who might have us assassinated before we can even stand trial in the arena.

  Red’s eyes stay forward, but I can sense his attention on me. He’s wondering if we should try to break free. I wait until he glances in my direction, then shake my head once subtly. Even Red, who can slaughter an entire battlefield, can’t survive a bullet to the head. There are so many guns trained on him. Besides—if we killed Strikers in an attempt to free ourselves, then they can no longer protect Mara.

  As we crest a hill and the familiar sight of Newage comes into view, one of them turns to me. She’s a girl I’d trained with since the beginning, and one of the few who seems willing to communicate with us.

  “Did you see what the Federation does to their prisoners?” she signs hesitantly to me.

  Her eyes are wide, the expression in them almost desperate in their hunger. I realize immediately that she’s asking because she knows someone who had been captured once and never heard from again. My mind skips to the Ghost I’d seen in transition at the labs, with eyes so piercing I’d mistaken him at first for Corian. I think of the parade of Ghosts on display at their national fair.

  Instead, I just shake my head. My hands twist in vain against their bonds.

  Like any good Striker, the only real fear she shows is a tightening of her jaw. She nods back at me and returns to concentrating on the city ahead.

  The Speaker is waiting for us at the entrance to the gates with the other Senators. I meet his eyes as we go and notice that he tries to avert his own gaze by nodding with approval at the other Strikers bringing us in. Along either side of the gates are a cluster of people all craning their necks for a look at us. Inner City citizens gather, searching our faces for some sign of hope. Refugees from the Outer City watch us with their hollow eyes.

  After a while, they turn their eyes away. Perhaps it is better not to know the trut
h.

  Suddenly, I spot my mother in the crowd. She has her hands together, wringing them unconsciously, and her gaze stays on mine without wavering. I can tell from the mud splattered on the hem of her pants that she ran all the way here from her home the instant she heard of our approach.

  She looks like she wants to say something, but her words catch in her throat. The chains on my wrists feel unbearably heavy. When the Federation comes over our border, who will protect her without me there? What will happen to her?

  As we enter the Inner City, I expect to hear a round of jeers, something loud and mocking from people who have always wanted to see me fall. But to my surprise, they greet us only with silence. A few bow their heads in our direction as we pass by. Some still refuse to meet my gaze with anything but sneers—but most look somber, even respectful. Many of them know Jeran and Adena. They recognize all of us, and it occurs to me that perhaps they are grateful for our return, even in the face of certain imprisonment.

  Our procession continues to the National Plaza, where the Firstblade is waiting for us at the entrance to the prison.

  There is no satisfaction on his face. At the sight of Jeran, his eyes soften, but he doesn’t move as we are helped off our horses and made to stand before him. I sneak a glance at Jeran. He’s careful to keep his head down, but his body seems to lean instinctively in the Firstblade’s direction, as drawn to the man as he’s been since the days when Aramin used to train with him.

  The Firstblade studies each of us in turn. I wait, wondering if he’ll cut us down right here.

  Then he bows his head to us, long and low. “I’m glad you’re alive,” he says.

  “Glad enough to imprison us?” Adena speaks up, and the rest of the Strikers go still.

  But Aramin doesn’t look angry. He seems exhausted, worn down by decisions out of his control. He looks at Adena without saying a word, because there’s simply no good reply to her question. Adena just stays where she is, staring the Firstblade down defiantly.