by L. J. Hatton
But me? I was more determined than ever. Perhaps this was why the coat brought me to this place, first to that office, and then to Birch. It showed me what I needed. I wasn’t brought here to stay safe; I was here to save as many as possible.
This flying atrocity wasn’t solely my father’s design, but his fingerprints were everywhere. The Celestine daughter of Magnus Roma might be the only one qualified to dismantle the Center and wrest it from the clouds. And if Warden Nye was keeping tabs on all of his contemporaries the way he was Arcineaux, then that office was the key to finding my family.
If Birch returned, which I was sure he would, I would pull as much information from him as possible at whatever rate he was willing to provide it. Until then, I’d make use of the uniform he’d given me and acquaint myself with the layout of the Center. I’d hone the gift I’d been taught to suppress, and when I was ready, I would repay Warden Nye for the destruction of my home by taking his.
CHAPTER 24
I barely slept that night. I spent hours inside my hutch composing lists with a stick for a pencil and spilled dirt for paper. I made myself walk through the trip to the wheel and back over and over to pull out every detail I could remember, and marked it down. I chewed a lot of bark to shore myself up, and when the bell chimed for breakfast, I was ready.
This time, I went toward the ascending numbers. Enormous glass tanks had been placed against the walls, tall enough to reach my chin. Someone was stenciling letters above them, but all I could make out was the word “RAIN.”
After ten minutes, I turned back. So long as I went in short bursts, I could create a decent map in my head. Then I could add the new details to my dirt drawing.
“You’re going the wrong way.”
My plan did not include unexpected intrusions. The voice was behind me, and definitely not Birch or Warden Nye. I was certain that it was the less caustic of the men I’d overheard the night before.
I turned around.
“What?” I asked, maybe with a bit too much of his own voice in my mimic because he looked startled.
“If you’re answering the call for extra hands on the rings, you’re going the wrong way,” he said. “You’re headed for the wheel, not the exit.”
“Oh.” I set my expression to something that was hopefully more confusion than fear. “All these halls look alike.”
“I’ve been here three weeks, and still get turned around. Blame the painters,” he said, with a laugh and a smile that clashed horribly with his choice of profession. “What’s your name?”
“Jermay Baán,” I lied, speaking Jermay’s name for luck, then tried to get his attention onto something else. “When do they put in the fish?” I nodded to the tanks.
“How long have you been here?” the man asked suspiciously.
I was past the twenty minutes I’d allotted for this excursion, and the desire to panic was sitting heavy on my chest. I ducked my head a little. It was easy to pass for male at a distance, but up close, sometimes too many of the features I shared with Vesper bled through. I should have used a girl’s name.
“I came on board yesterday.”
The man pointed down the hall I’d just walked. “Find the first crossway and go left, then do the same again. Signs should take you the rest of the way.”
He moved aside so I could follow his instructions.
“Thank you,” I said, mentally kicking myself.
“And Baán—” the man called.
I stopped.
“Yes, sir?”
“We don’t call them fish up here.”
“Sorry, sir,” I choked, throat suddenly dry.
I hurried off down the hall at an imitation march, but stopped at a juncture, and waited for a two-minute count before I risked trying to get back to the greenhouse. I’d have no plausible excuse if I ran into that man again, which would mean a reprimand or being asked who my direct superior was. As the only name I knew was Nye’s, that wasn’t a pleasant thought. Thankfully, the man was gone when I returned.
I never imagined that all my years as guide for The Show would be necessary training to survive outside it, but they had just saved my life.
I made my way back to the greenhouse, unstopped. Once safely inside, I leaned against the nearest wall, pressing my head into the ivy cascade that covered it. Everything sounded strange, mixed with my frantic breathing and too-fast thoughts. Rustling leaves blown about by the ventilation system clacked together in mumbled voices that whispered about me behind my back. The air was too thick and too damp, coated in perfume as though a shop had spilled its inventory.
“You went out, again.”
“Hello, Birch,” I said, still with my head in the ivy. “Did you have a nice breakfast?”
He shoved a squashed croissant under my nose. Half a piece of bacon stuck out of the side.
“Is being overly reckless a habit from living with wild animals?” he asked. “Because I don’t see how you survive it.”
“Is being overly cautious a habit from living under a warden’s thumb? Because I know I couldn’t survive that.” I tore off a piece of breakfast with my teeth and found that Birch had stashed some banana in it, too. Very odd combination. “I refuse to stay in here and rot like a mulched leaf. And you can stop worrying—the disguise worked.”
“You were seen?”
“Jermay Baán was seen. Penn kept hidden. I’m fairly good at it.” I took another bite. Still odd, but not unpalatable. “What are those tanks for?”
I started walking; Birch fell in step beside me, and together we followed the guardrail’s curve around the room while we both stewed for different reasons. The rest of my bacon-and-banana sandwich gave me a good excuse not to talk for a while.
“Those are the kinds of questions I don’t ask,” he said at the quarter-point. “But the tanks make the technicians nervous. Two days ago, we received an entire shipment of extra safety equipment attached to them. Another’s due soon.”
“So they’re dangerous.”
“To be hidden up here, they’d have to be.”
We were at the halfway point.
“Who’s Jermay Baán?” he asked.
“A boy I grew up with. His name was the only one I could think of besides yours.”
“Is he one of the people you lost?”
“Only until I find him.”
And I would find him.
We walked another quarter round, with Birch skimming leaves over the rail as we went. The vines wrapped around the railing bloomed with red and orange trumpets at the touch of his hand.
“You’re not even doing that on purpose, are you?” I asked him.
He glanced at his hand and pulled it away. No more flowers grew.
“Force of habit,” he said. “I like color.”
“I can tell. This doesn’t look like a government facility at all—secret or otherwise.”
It looked like the hidden garden from a storybook. All it needed were a few sculptures from a forgotten pantheon and a fountain or two. Birds would have been nice.
“Why no scary tanks in here?” I asked.
“I told the warden I don’t like them. He’s not as bad as you think,” Birch said.
So much for the fantasy . . .
“He pointed a gun at my face, destroyed my home, and threatened to murder a girl half our age, so I’d say he’s exactly as bad as I think.”
“It’s for show.”
“Then his act needs work.”
The leaves nearest to us started to curl and wither.
“You don’t know—”
“I know he put those bands on you, and that he wants to do the same to me. You’re his prisoner, and the only reason to build a place like this is so no one down below knows they should protest its existence. How can you say he’s not bad?”
“Because he di
dn’t put these on me. And because I used to have a collar that matched them before he took it off. He’s protected me every day of my life, and he’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father. If I hadn’t been given to him—”
“You were given to Warden Nye? Like a reward?”
“Harvested,” he said bitterly. Tiny thorns popped up along the rail. Nettle plants sprang up on the bottom edge. “Not all of us had the luxury of being raised outside a center.”
“That other place—the one on the ground that I sort of took apart. People were there, regular people. Were you an experiment like them?”
The thorns popped up on the floor now, appearing in uncurling vines that stretched into our path.
“My parents were caught after their daughter was born. The baby had a nightmare or something, and set the house on fire. A neighbor saw it. They tried to relocate, but the Commission was waiting for them. All three were taken.”
“They kept your parents?” I asked, not mentioning that he never once referred to the girl he spoke of as his own sister. She was a stranger. A story.
“How do you think they breed so many hounds?” he asked. “It’s hit-or-miss, unless you know that the base pair both carry touched genes.”
“They made them have more kids?”
“Them and others like them. It’s mix and match, all done in a lab for optimum results. After enough tries, the Commission ended up with me. I’m a twin. My sister’s like you. That makes me interesting to certain people.”
Birch squinted, wincing at a pain I didn’t mean to cause.
He hopped onto the top of the rail, arms out like it was a tightrope and he was one of the Jesek boys practicing a new routine.
“Want to see a magic trick?” he asked, then dropped into the center of the room.
“Birch!” I shouted, grabbing for him, but he was already out of reach.
A second later, he came zooming back into view, sitting astride the branches of a tall tree that hadn’t been there before. He was laughing—the creep. Trying to catch him had hurt!
“Don’t do that!”
“Sorry,” he said, still laughing.
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I can.” He shrugged.
I tried to storm off, but Birch kept up easily, moving treetop to treetop, strolling along as though we’d never stopped our trip around the room. More trees popped up under his feet, the way Anise ran pistons in her act.
“You’re insane,” I told him. “Being locked up all this time has scrambled your brains, or you’ve been chewing on the wrong plants.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Which was a lie.”
“Not anymore. I thought it would make you laugh, not get angry.” He and Jermay looked nothing alike, but they could both make the same pitiful face. I hated that face; I had no defense against it. “I only wanted to show you something.”
He held his hand out, offering to help me over the rail.
“And let you drop me on my head?”
“Never,” he said.
Birch kept his hand exactly where it was—more olive branch than arm. He stood balanced at the top of the palm tree, and it was tempting to see how long he’d hold out, but his expression had too much Jermay in it for me to make him suffer. I took his hand and climbed onto the rail. When I stepped across, Birch’s tree leaned in closer.
“Hang on,” he said, then we were shooting toward the ceiling, where tiny bubble protrusions poked out from the wall. We came to a stop in front of one. “Take a look.”
This section of the facility was taller than the wheel and provided a more expansive view. The complex operated as a gargantuan gyroscope, balanced on nothing but hope, and we were at the center point of a series of great rings. Ships pulled straight out of a sci-fi movie floated at the edge, moored to the outermost ring. The front of one opened, and a small army of men tromped out in formation, headed for the facility’s main entrance. The walkway swayed beneath them, but they never broke stride.
“They look like military,” I murmured. What was the Commission doing with an army?
“Sent in advance of the wardens and Commission reps,” Birch said. “The rings can’t support more than two large carriers at a time. They have to unload in shifts, and they have been unloading for over a week. See? You have to stay here. There are too many.”
“Is that why you wanted me to see this? So I’d get scared and stay put?”
Seeing the odds as people in my way, rather than numbers in my head, was daunting, but not impossible. I was impossible, and that made me the greater force.
“They’ll be at every door. I’m not letting you get caught because you think being special makes you invincible. I couldn’t protect my family, but I can keep you from sharing their fate. Either listen to reason, or I’ll make you.”
He stepped sideways, off our palm tree and onto another, which shrank down by several feet. All of the trees nearby did the same. The ivies slithered away from the walls.
“Birch!”
I tried to go after him, but his tree leaned away, out of reach unless I wanted to hop the gap, and with my ribs the way they were, I couldn’t.
“Get back here, Root-rot!”
“Promise me you’ll stay put.”
“I can’t.”
“Then I can’t let you down.”
“Birch!”
“It’s for your own safety, Penelope. You’ll thank me later.”
No, I was going to kill him later. The only question was whether it would be death by stinging nettle or by hanging with a sumac noose.
“He’s turned me into a coconut,” I said to no one.
I thought by now I’d seen every surreal thing imaginable, but nothing had prepared me for being stranded atop a giant palm tree that stretched over the greenhouse like an umbrella. I peeked over the edge to find fruit and pine trees growing dwarfed in the shadow of my settee.
Birch was smart. He’d picked a tree with only top branches, so there were no foot- or handholds for me to grasp and climb down. There were gaps between the trees, each a dark abyss among the green that made it impossible to see the floor. Straight brown trunks created a funnel effect, pulling my attention down to nothing and nowhere.
The lunch chimes sounded, and still I was left to myself. I passed the time by tearing off bits of frond and pretending they were Birch until they caught fire. When the flames reached my fingers, I asked the irrigation system to put them out, and a thin mist doused the flames from an overhead nozzle. The more control I gained, the more elaborate an end I planned for Birch.
Why would he do this to me?
If he knew what I could do—what Xerxes could do at full power—he’d be helping me, but all he knew was the tainted reality of a life in custody. If I could make him see . . .
Wait. Why couldn’t I?
I stood up on the treetop and brushed the soot from my fingers. If Anise’s gift was willing to oblige another use—
“Dirt,” I said into the chasm. “I need dirt.”
I thought of Arcineaux’s facility, and the mound that overran the fence. I needed the same beneath my palm tree.
“Dirt. Rocks. Come on—pile up!” Hopefully the world had gone haywire enough for this to work.
A sound like rain drummed against the palm’s trunk.
I crouched, hanging on to the stem of a large frond for balance. A tide of grainy bits slammed into the side of my perch and washed over every guardrail in a waterfall torrent, but the power didn’t come as easily as I’d expected. I felt the weight like the ghost pains of imaginary muscles that were unused to being flexed. Sandbags heavy enough to drag me down, whether I wanted to go or not. How did Anise live with this during performances? She never said a word.
The pile-on stopped several feet short of what I needed, but
I was out of raw materials. I was going to have to jump, or, since I couldn’t manage that—drop.
I let my legs dangle, shifting my weight from the tree to my hands, but as soon as I lost the support under my ribs, I couldn’t hang on. Down I went, onto my back, hard enough to knock a tirade of Nagendra’s forbidden, unladylike words right out of me.
My body took lying on the heap as permission to shut down. My eyes grew heavy. Who was I to argue?
CHAPTER 25
I woke to the sound of chiming shift bells. I was disoriented, and in pain, and still on my back, and seriously tired of conking out every time I tried to use my abilities. None of my sisters had that problem.
The mound had shifted while I was unconscious, putting me near the main floor. It was a miracle I wasn’t buried alive.
“Move,” I snarled, slinging my hand; the dirtslide nudged me toward the guardrail.
If only Birch had been able to see it.
I turned to congratulate myself, basking in the proof of my control, and cringed. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of soil filled the lower levels in towering columns that would require heavy equipment to move.
Leaving a mess would have served Birch right, but it would mean his explaining how it happened to anyone who saw it. I was going to have to put every grain back where it belonged.
I honestly didn’t know how to do that.
With simple machines, the trick was to use short, clear commands. Maybe that would work here.
“Go away,” I said, shooing at the mound. “Out of sight, and off the floor.”
The whole thing rose, hovering in a loose-packed ball. Dirt and rock threw themselves over the railings, diving for cover beneath leaves and filling empty containers. When I was finished, there was no dust to settle; the greenhouse was spotless as an operating room.
My arms and legs felt weak, though I hadn’t physically lifted a thing. My ribs had reached the point of healing where they felt worse than when they were first broken. All my aches and pains conspired to steal my strength so that I could barely manage a crawl. I retreated to my hutch and pulled the door shut behind me.
