by Amy Ewing
“Oh, love is handsome, love is charming
Love is beauty while it’s new
But love grows old and love grows colder
And fades away like morning dew.”
A thick silence follows the song, broken only by the rhythmic pumping of the wheels beneath us. Then Lily laughs, a sort of crying-laugh, and squeezes my hand, and I realize I’ll probably never hear another Marsh-song again.
THE TRAIN SLOWS, AND I CAN HEAR THE MASSIVE IRON doors grate and screech as they retreat into the wall that separates the Farm from the Marsh. I’d learned about the Farm, of course—we learn about all the circles in history class—but seeing it is something entirely different.
The first thing that strikes me is the colors. I never knew so many shades of green existed in nature. And not just green, but reds and pale yellows and bright oranges and juicy pinks.
I think of Ochre—he must be in one of the dairies by now. I hope he’ll be able to keep working for the House of the Flame. I hate to think of him supporting our family on his own.
The other amazing thing about the Farm is the landscape. In the Marsh, everything is flat; here, the ground has a sort of rolling feel to it. The train chugs over a bridge, where a river separates two hills. On their slopes, gnarled vines are trained in neat rows, on sticks and pieces of wire. I remember that this is called a vineyard, where grapes are grown for wine. I’ve had wine a couple of times—the caretakers let us have a glass on our birthdays, and on the Longest Night celebration.
“It’s so big,” Raven says.
She’s right. The Farm seems to go on and on, and I almost forget that there is a Marsh, or a Jewel, or an Auction. I can almost pretend there is nothing except this endless expanse of nature.
AS SOON AS WE PASS THROUGH THE IRON DOORS THAT separate the Farm and the Smoke, the light dims, like the sun’s been turned down a few notches.
The train runs slowly on an elevated track through a maze of cast-iron behemoths, factories that tower over the streets, their chimneys belching smoke in a variety of colors—dark gray, white, greenish-purple, dull red. The streets are teeming with people, their faces gaunt, their backs bent. I see women and children mixed in with the men. A shrill whistle blows, and the crowd thins as the workers disappear into the factories.
My heart jumps as I realize there’s only one more circle left after this one. How much longer until we reach the Jewel? How many more minutes of freedom do I have left?
“OOOOH.” LILY SIGHS AS WE ENTER THE BANK. “IT’S SO pretty.”
The sunlight returns to a bright, buttery yellow, and I almost have to shield my eyes as it glints off the façades of the shops that line streets paved with pale stones. Arching windows with silver shutters and ornate signs wrought in gold are commonplace here. Neat rows of trees with thin trunks, their canopies trimmed into perfect green spheres, line the sidewalks, and electric stagecoaches are everywhere. Men in bowler hats and cleanly pressed suits escort women wearing dresses made of colorful silks and satins.
“Looks like Patience was right,” I say. “No pants for women here.”
Raven grumbles something unintelligible.
“Isn’t it lovely?” Lily leans her head against the glass. “Just imagine—the Exetor might have met the Electress in one of these very stores.”
Raven is shaking her head slowly. “It’s crazy. All this . . . I mean . . . we’ve seen pictures but . . . they have so much money.”
“And we haven’t even seen the Jewel yet,” I murmur.
“All right, girls, settle down,” an older caretaker named Charity says as she comes in, followed by Dr. Steele. She carries a silver tray bearing different colored tablets in neat little rows. I glance at Raven.
“What are the pills for?” I whisper, but she only shrugs.
“Curtains closed, please,” Charity says. Lily is quick to obey, but I see some of the other girls looking nervously at one another as they pull the curtains shut. The dull purple light in the carriage feels ominous.
“Now, now, don’t look so anxious,” Dr. Steele says. His voice is flat and not remotely reassuring. “This is just a little medication to relax you all before the big event. Please remain seated.”
My heart is pumping in my chest and I reach out for Raven’s hand. The doctor moves calmly around the room. The tablets are coded by Lot number, and each girl sticks out her tongue while Dr. Steele drops it into her mouth with a pair of tiny silver tongs. Some of the girls cough, others lick their lips and make sour faces, but other than that, nothing dramatic happens.
He reaches Raven. “192,” he says, picking out a light blue tablet. Raven stares up at him with her deep black eyes, and for a second, I think she’s going to refuse to take it. Then she opens her mouth and he drops it onto her tongue. She keeps staring at him, and doesn’t give the slightest reaction to the tablet at all. It’s the only defiance she has.
Dr. Steele doesn’t even notice. “197,” he says to me. I open my mouth and he drops a purple tablet onto my tongue. It stings, and tastes sour, reminding me of that time I bit into the lemon. In a second, it has dissolved. I run my tongue along my teeth and swallow. The tablet leaves a tingling sensation behind.
The doctor nods his head. “Thank you, ladies.”
Charity bustles after him as he leaves the carriage.
“What was that?” Raven asks.
“Whatever it was, it didn’t taste very good,” I mutter. “I thought you weren’t going to take yours for a second.”
“Me too,” Raven says. “But it would’ve been pointless, wouldn’t it? I mean, they probably would’ve just—”
But whatever Raven thought they would have done, I never hear, because unconsciousness engulfs me suddenly, and the world goes black.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Four
WHEN I COME TO, I AM ALONE.
A bright light shines overhead—too bright, it hurts my eyes. I’m lying on something cold and flat. Straps press down on my arms and legs and I realize, with a jolt of panic, that I’m naked.
Instinctively, my body lurches, trying to free myself and cover myself at the same time. A scream builds in my throat, but before I get a chance to release it, a soft voice murmurs, “Don’t panic. I’ll take those off in a moment. They’re for your protection.”
“Where am I?” I mean to shout, but my voice comes out in a scratchy whisper.
“You’re in one of the preparation rooms. Calm down, 197. I can’t take the restraints off until you do.” The voice has a strange quality to it—too high to be a man’s but too low for a woman’s. My chest heaves and I try to relax my muscles, slow my breathing, and not think about how exposed I am.
“There. That’s better.” The voice moves closer. “I promise, 197, the very last thing I want is to harm you in any way.” I feel a pressure around my arm, and something cold presses against the inside of my elbow. The pressure tightens.
“I’m just taking your blood pressure,” the voice says calmly. The tight thing around my arm relaxes; then it’s gone. I hear the scratching of a pen on paper. “Look up for me, please?”
There’s nowhere else to look but up, and suddenly a bright light shines in my left eye, then my right. I blink furiously, but it’s like my retinas have been seared—all I can see is a green glow. The pen scratches again.
“Very good, 197. Almost done. I’m going to touch you now. I promise I will not hurt you.”
All my muscles clench into tiny fists, and I blink harder, but I still can’t see. Then I feel a gentle pressure low on my stomach, first on the left side, then the right.
“There we are,” the voice says soothingly. “All done.”
The glow fades from my eyes and the face behind the voice comes into focus.
It’s the face of a man, but it’s oddly childlike, with delicate features, a narrow nose, a thin
mouth, cream-colored skin. His head has been shaved except for a circle of chestnut hair on his crown, which is tied up into an elegant topknot, a hairstyle that I remember from my classes on royal culture and lifestyle. It means he’s a lady-in-waiting.
Ladies-in-waiting are more than just the highest of servants—they’re confidantes and advisors to their mistresses. They are selected and trained from a young age, and some of them are men, castrated so they can be considered “safe” to work so closely with royal women.
Humiliation washes over me at being naked in front of a man, and I squirm against the restraints. He waits patiently, looking only at my face, ignoring my body, and something in his expression makes me wonder if he knows how I’m feeling, what I’m thinking. I stop struggling. He smiles.
“Hello. I’m Lucien. I’m going to take the straps off now, all right?”
My voice seems to have disappeared, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. As he reaches over me to undo the restraints, I notice he’s wearing a long white dress with a high lace collar and long sleeves. His fingers are manicured and his body is slim but soft, like the muscle hasn’t been toned under the skin.
“You have beautiful eyes,” he says, undoing the last strap. “Why don’t you sit up, and I’ll get you a robe?”
He disappears and I scramble into a sitting position, hugging my knees tight to hide my body. My eyes still have a hard time adjusting; I hold up my hand to block out the brilliant light overhead.
“Oh yes, let’s do something about the lighting.” Lucien’s voice drifts from the darkness. The light goes out. At first, it’s terrifying—then slowly, light seeps back into the room. Different colored globes, attached to gold fixtures on the walls, begin to glow, and their colors blend together until the room is lit in a comfortable shade of pinkish yellow.
“Here you are.” Lucien hands me a dressing gown made of ice-blue silk. I slip it on quickly, the delicate fabric soft against my skin, and try to pretend that it’s my mother’s bathrobe. He holds out his hand, an offering, not a command; I ignore it and hop off the table onto trembling legs.
“First things first. Let’s get rid of this ghastly table.” He gives me a conspiratorial smile, but the muscles in my face aren’t working—I can only stare at him blankly. He presses a button on the wall and the floor underneath the table drops down, a platform being lowered into nothing, and then another piece of wood slides over the gaping rectangular hole, clicking into place and fitting so perfectly, I would never have guessed it was there. “I don’t suppose you see many false floors in the Marsh, do you?”
I blink, and look from him to where the table used to be, and then back again. Suddenly, I feel like I’m twelve years old again, just entering Southgate, when everything seemed so new and bright and fancy.
Lucien sighs. “You don’t talk much, do you, 197?”
I clear my throat. “My name—”
He holds up a finger and shakes his head. “Sorry, honey. I can’t know your name.”
Even though I have no attachment to this man, and I’ll probably never see him again, the fact that he isn’t allowed to know my name, my name, not some number I’ve been assigned, brings tears to my eyes. My chest tightens.
“Don’t cry.” Lucien says it gently, but there is an urgency in his tone. “Please.”
I take a deep breath, willing the tears back, away from my lashes, from their precarious balance on my lids, back down into the deep well inside me. In a second, they’re gone.
Crying will be useless from now on anyway.
“All right,” I say, my voice steady. “I’m not crying.”
Lucien raises an eyebrow. “No, you’re not. Good girl.” The way he says it, it doesn’t sound condescending. He seems impressed.
“So,” I say, hoping I sound braver than I feel, “what happens now?”
“Now,” he says, “you look in a mirror.”
My heart plummets to my toes so fast it leaves my head spinning. I force myself to breathe normally as all the colors of the room blur together.
Lucien puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s all right. I promise, you’ll like what you see.”
He leads me over to a lumpy, covered thing in the corner. It’s elevated on a little platform, and Lucien indicates that I should step onto it. My legs are still shaking.
“Do you want to close your eyes first?” he asks.
“Does it help?”
“Sometimes.”
I nod and squeeze my eyes shut. In the darkness behind my lids, I remember the last time I saw my own reflection. I was twelve. I kept a little mirror on the dresser in the room Hazel and I shared, and I was brushing my hair. Everything about my face was thin and pinched. My nose, my cheekbones, my eyebrows, my lips, the little point of my chin. Everything but my eyes. Huge and violet, they seemed to take up half my face. But the memory is old; it’s been taken out and pored over so many times, like a letter, read and reread until it’s wrinkled and creased and some of the words are blurred.
There is a gust of air and a swish of fabric. “Whenever you’re ready,” Lucien says.
I hold my breath and focus on my heart as it punches against my chest. I can do this. I won’t be afraid.
I open my eyes.
I’m surrounded by three identical women. One looks directly at me, the other two at angles on either side. There is no thinness in her face, except maybe in the tiny point of her chin. Her cheeks are round, her lips full and parted slightly in surprise. Black hair cascades over her shoulders. But her eyes . . . her eyes are exactly as I remember them.
She is a stranger. She is me.
I try to reconcile those two thoughts, and as I move my hand to touch my face, I start laughing. I can’t help it. The girl in the mirror moves with me exactly, and for some reason I find this funny.
“That’s not the usual reaction,” Lucien says, “but it’s better than screaming.”
That brings me up short. “Some girls scream?”
He purses his lips. “Well, now, we don’t have all day. Let’s get you ready. Please, sit.”
He gestures to a chair beside a table littered with makeup. I take one last look at the stranger in the mirror, then step off the podium and sit down. There are so many tubes and creams and powders, I can’t imagine what they’re all for or that they could possibly be used on just one person. Three hourglasses sit on a small shelf above the table, in different sizes with different colored sand.
Lucien dips his hands into a basin of sweet-scented water, drying them on a fluffy white towel. Then, very carefully, he turns over the first hourglass, the largest one, full of pale green sand.
“All right,” he says. “Let’s get started.”
WHENEVER I’D IMAGINED THE PREP PROCESS, I ALWAYS thought it might be the only fun part of the Auction. Someone doing your hair and makeup and all that.
It’s actually incredibly boring.
I can’t see anything Lucien’s doing, except when he manicures my hands and polishes my toenails, or covers me from head to toe in a fine silver dust—I have to take my robe off for that part, and I put it back on as quickly as I can. But for the most part, I just sit in the chair. I wonder how Raven is faring, and who is prepping her. She must be hating this.
“Where are the other prep rooms?” I ask, as Lucien applies a thin layer of translucent powder over my neck and shoulders.
“They’re all on this level, or the one below it,” he replies, frowning at some imperfection on my collarbone.
“When does the Auction start?” I hope I sound casual.
“It’s already started.”
I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. I have no idea how long I was unconscious; I have no idea what time it is. “How long?”
Lucien mixes some powders together on a little palette. “A long while,” he says softly.
My fingers dig into the leather-covered arms of the chair, and I try to keep my face smooth, but all I can think is, Lily has been sold by now.
/> Lily’s gone.
“I’m going to work on your face,” Lucien says. “Try to keep as still as possible. And close your eyes.”
It’s like he’s giving me a little gift, shutting out the world for a while and staying in darkness. I think about my mother, and Hazel, and Ochre. I see our house in my head and picture Mother knitting by the fire. Ochre is at work. Hazel is in school. I wonder if she’s found my lemon yet.
I think about Raven, and the first time we met. She was thirteen and had been at Southgate for a year already, but she kept failing her Augury tests (on purpose, she later told me). I was learning the first Augury, Color, and she was in my class. I tried and tried but I couldn’t turn my building block from blue to yellow—they start you off with one block, and you can’t advance to another level until you’ve changed it. I didn’t understand what they wanted from me. I didn’t know how I was supposed to do it. Raven helped me. She taught me how to relax my mind and then focus it, how to see it before it happened, and she held the bucket for me when I coughed up blood. She gave me her handkerchief to stanch my nosebleeds, and showed me how to pinch the bridge of my nose to help them stop, and she promised me it wouldn’t always be this bad. My head was pounding and my body ached, but by the end of the day, that block was yellow.
I have no idea what Lucien’s doing to my face, and I hope I still look like myself after this. Layer after layer after layer is applied to my cheeks, my lips, my eyelids, my eyebrows, even my ears. He spends a lot of time on my eyes, and uses soft powders and cold creams and something thick and hard, like a pencil.
“Done,” he says at long last. “You have incredible patience, 197.”
“What’s next?”
“Hair.”
I watch the hourglass, the tiny trickle of green sand that has been slowly filling the lower bulb. Lucien’s fingers are gentle and deft, and he uses hot irons and steam curlers to manipulate my hair. I hope I don’t lose it when I see myself again. Maybe I won’t have to look in the mirror. Maybe I’ll just go straight to the Auction.
