by Wren Weston
Ever.
Lila sat up, rubbed her forehead, and scrolled through the rest of the messages on her palm, shaking off thoughts of children and senators and contracts. She had bigger things to worry about, like the fact that Tristan had not bothered to reply to her message.
Annoyed, she pulled up the New Bristol Times, checking if a certain column had been posted that morning. The column was famous within the city and beyond, as was its Sunday counterpart. One from Mael Faucheux, the other from Alexandre Bouchard, two columns on opposite sides of every issue, an ever-evolving conversation between two writers.
One was always just a bit more persuasive than the other.
Tristan DeLauncey penned both, not that he could use his real name—not that Tristan DeLauncey even was his real name. It always surprised her that a man as infuriating as Tristan could write so persuasively, so beautifully, and so intelligently.
Unsurprisingly, he’d chosen the Slave Bill as his topic, that piece of rumored legislation that might one day free lowborn and highborn from the consequences of business failure, allowing them to retain their mark if their businesses failed.
He’d managed to turn in his column on time, not bothering to spare two seconds to send her a message. It must have been too much for him, too taxing while he was so busy, subtly changing public opinion to his own views.
Grumbling, Lila typed his ID into one of her programs. She drummed her fingers against her knee while her computer traced his location.
East New Bristol. Shippers Lane.
Lila didn’t need the rest of the address to know exactly where Tristan had gone.
She switched off her computer, silencing her radio before leaving. The explosion had managed to drown out talk of the Slave Bill. Today the announcers had filled the air with remembrances of the train derailment years before, calling out the names of the dead and their bios, rehashing conspiracy theories that involved the Almstakers.
At least they hadn’t begun to question the gas explosion, though she doubted that Bullstow could keep a lid on it for too much longer. People liked seeing patterns, especially where there weren’t any.
She dug into her closet and changed into a pair of Kevlar jeans, throwing her leather riding jacket atop her a gray sweater, neither marked by her family’s coat of arms. Stuffing her jammer and some cash into her pocket, she wrapped a plain matching scarf around her neck and sprinted down the hall, hoping that Tristan would not leave his location before she got to him.
“Going for a ride?” Alex asked as Lila trundled down the great house stairs.
“Whenever possible.” Lila darted across the parlor and through the front door. She marched across the garden path and entered the family garage, ignoring the sports cars, antiques, and sensible vehicles inside. Instead she picked up her keys from a peg near the door and slipped her helmet onto her head, swinging her leg over her silver Firefly.
She scrolled through her snoop programs on her palm and waved it over her bike, a bike that would have cost a year’s pay if she depended only upon her militia salary. Lila would have bought it anyway, even if she didn’t have her substantial dividends to fall back on. Motorcycles were her one weakness. Before she had settled on her Firefly, she had owned four of various makes and models. But after her Firefly, Lila had been spoiled for all others. She had sold the rest within the month.
Her palm beeped. She hopped up and dug a little gray chip from the seat cowl. The device beeped again near the front fairing, and Lila picked out a GPS tracker and an audio bug. Instead of crushing them under her boot, she tossed the chips on the Firefly beside hers. Her sister had bought the red bike the same day as Lila bought hers, not out of jealously, but because she found the bike beautiful and had never ridden one before. She wanted the experience.
Of course, Jewel had not gone near it after the first week, but Senator Dubois, the man her sister had spent the last four seasons with, took great delight in it.
As did the Randolph family mechanic and her assistants.
Lila started the engine and sped through the compound, waving at Sergeant Tripp as she passed by the guard post outside the south gate. The blackcoat puffed on his pipe and waved back, leaning in to whisper something into the ear of the rookie beside him.
Lila zoomed down Leclerc Street, a block away from the capitol. The building sat at the epicenter of the city and its twelve highborn estates, with their walled and gated compounds scattered around it, their pockets of skyscrapers, high rises, and glass-domed towers. The estates shot through the mud of the lowborn and the muck of the workborn like rose bushes of varying beauty and size, sporadically planted, struggling through weeds in a large garden.
And these rose bushes towered over Bullstow.
Lila slipped briefly onto the interstate before disembarking two exits later in East New Bristol. The foot traffic moved briskly down the sidewalk on either side of the street, boots clomping on graceless feet, heads undulating like a ribboned wave. They stamped over the grit, soot, and litter on the streets, and their conversations pitched up and down like a rollercoaster depending on the topic. The bells on wire-framed bikes rang out as their riders impatiently threaded in and out of the crowd.
The road became grittier as she traveled down Wickersham, and the smell of damp, sooty air choked her nose. She cruised past the yawning gates of the Wilson-Kruger compound, its name sculpted in twisted steel. Dirty as a workborn slum, the estate stood as a cautionary tale to the rest of the highborn in the city. These days, Chairwoman Wilson abandoned more structures than she filled, leaving the skyline pockmarked and chipped and covered in grime. Vandals had shattered the windows in many buildings, sprayed the doors with paint, and even cracked the bricks in their boredom.
At one time the noise from the plants had been deafening, but the sound of the machines had decreased year after year, traded for the squeals and shouts of the idle. The last time Lila had been inside the compound, half-drunken groups had milled inside like hordes of zombies, for there wasn’t enough money to keep all the plants open and there wasn’t enough sense in the chairwoman’s head to find them other employment. There would be even more people now, in want and in need of something to do. She did not envy the woman’s chief of security for having to deal with the fallout.
There might not be anything left of the estate after Chairwoman Wilson died, except for the land underneath it. Fortunately, Beatrice Randolph was very fond of land and considered the investment worth it. If Lila’s mother did not raze the plants and erect skyscrapers in their place, then she would likely rent out the property to lowborn businesses. On the day of the transfer, every highborn inside would become members of the workborn, dividends cut off, bank accounts slashed to pay the Randolphs for their marks. They’d have no prospects until they bound themselves in service to another family through contract, picking up their old roles for pay as doctors, architects, programmers, or perhaps clerks and landscapers if they could not find better. Many would move for new opportunities and anonymity, starting fresh elsewhere.
Lila emerged on Shippers Lane after changing her license plate to a fake one in an alley. The street sat on the border of East New Bristol, the poorest section of the capital. The buildings looked little different than the Wilson estate, except that there were no walls surrounding them to keep anyone in or out.
She parked her bike in front of a worn, yet well cared for, Chinese restaurant. Smells leaked out of the Plum Luck Dragon: fried rice, chicken teriyaki, sweet and sour pork, beef lo mein, barbecue ribs. People stood outside chatting with one another, shaking hands, and laughing. Lila knew the restaurant’s name well, even by its Chinese characters. It had been spelled out on every takeout packet in the old hotel.
She glanced at her palm, which had continued to trace Tristan during her ride.
He had not moved from his spot.
Circling around the restaurant, Lila crossed into th
e alley and wrinkled her nose at the smell of piss and rotting food. Her stomach lurched, and she thought she might be sick.
Behind PLD. Now, she messaged Tristan.
Her nose had just begun to adjust to the stench when a rangy man stepped into the alley, casting his dark, wary eyes over her. His long brown leather coat smelled faintly of smoke and gasoline, a welcome relief from the odors in the alley, and his white scarf was gray from soot. It smeared onto his face as he unwrapped it from his jaw. The ends dropped around his neck like a loosened tie, exposing his slave’s incision and a deeper scar where it had been cut out.
Lila thought, not for the first time, that Tristan would have fit in well in High House if his mother had not been born a slave. Even with his low birth, he might have made something of himself. Instead, he had run away from his masters at seventeen and had taken out his slave chip six months too early. It was much too late for him to claim respectability now.
Even still, Lila wondered how he’d look in a burgundy coat and black breeches.
“I’m not a member of your militia to be ordered about, chief,” he grumbled. His words hung in the air, wrapped in the remains of an accent from the western state of Bordeaux, infused with the rolling waves of the sea. He thrust his sooty knit cap into his pocket, and his close-cropped dark hair stuck up oddly, so unlike the long locks of the proper senators of Bullstow. He mussed it, furthering its disarray. “How’d you find me?”
“I traced your palm. I shouldn’t have had to.”
“Reaper said it couldn’t be traced.”
“Your hacker isn’t as good as I am. You neglected to answer my message.”
Tristan’s mud-caked work boots scratched against the ground as he backed away to the opposite side of the alley, only three paces wide. “I’ve been busy today.” He studied her from head to toe with his dark eyes. “What do you want?”
“What do I— What do you think I want? I want to know what in the world you were thinking last night.” She slipped her hand into her breast pocket and turned on her jammer.
Tristan eyed her pocket.
“The AAS?” She rolled her eyes. “Why didn’t you just call it the Anti-Slavery Society?”
“A-S-S. ASS? You think we should call ourselves ASS?”
“It fits you better.”
“Dixon said you were limping last night. Are you hurt?”
“Do you care?”
“I asked, didn’t I? Dixon lost track of you, and the others never saw you cross their checkpoints. I figured you were okay when you finally sent me that message, vague as it was.”
“Why’d you ignore it, then? Is typing out a few letters so strenuous?”
“I could say the same thing.” He prowled across the alley and rested his hands on either side of her head. His breath smelled of whiskey, and warmed her cheek. “How am I supposed to reply to a damn question mark? Would it have killed you to type out ‘I’m okay’? Now you’ve pulled me from my dinner and ordered me into this putrid alley like I’m some sort of criminal—”
Lila drew her Colt and pressed the barrel under his chin. “You are a criminal, Tristan, and you’ll want to step away from me with that temper.”
Tristan scowled and shoved himself off the wall. “Of course, chief. Very well, chief. I forgot how much you love to order everyone around, chief. Wouldn’t do to get too close to the riffraff, would it?”
Lila holstered her gun. “You could have killed people, Tristan. Do you even care?”
“No one was hurt. You weren’t, were you? Shirley said that you’d be fine.”
“Oh, so now you’re worried about me?”
“I worry about all my people.” He sniffed and retreated to his side of the alley.
“I’m not one of your people.”
“Clearly.”
“That’s a good thing, since you don’t give two shits about the highborn. Where were you this morning? Your one job was to watch my back. Instead you left Dixon in your place. You nearly got me arrested and blown into tiny pieces while you were doing gods’ know what, and now—”
Tristan’s dark eyes narrowed. “No one was nearly blown into tiny pieces. We were careful. You were far enough away from the blast when we detonated. I had to get you free from those blackcoats somehow, didn’t I? Here you are, instead of a holding cell in Bullstow. I held up my end of the bargain. You should be thanking me.”
“The only reason why I got caught was because you triggered the alarm in—”
“What alarm?”
“The fire alarm inside the Bullstow compound,” she explained, keeping the details to herself. She only told Tristan what he needed to know, and her purpose in Bullstow was not part of that.
“None of my people triggered an alarm. We weren’t even inside Bullstow when the bomb exploded, so don’t blame me and mine for your mistakes.”
“And before?”
“No.”
“I suspect that’s the truth. Most of them were probably still moving your things from the hotel, is that it?”
“You went back there,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. “That’s why we couldn’t find you. I can explain—”
“No. I don’t want to hear it. You’re too sloppy, Tristan. This was our last job together. Do you understand me? You went too far this time.” She had hoped he’d apologize, or at least say something, anything to make her understand. But her father was right. She wouldn’t turn his name in to Shaw, but they couldn’t work together anymore. Not after this.
“What do you mean this is our last job? Who else are you going to use if not me? Hawk? Natalie? Someone—”
“Someone competent? Maybe someone who won’t use me as a distraction to cover up his own aims? Someone who won’t put my back in danger when he’s supposed to be looking out for it? I’m not one of your people, Tristan. Don’t act like I am.”
“You got pinched. I acted. That was the job, chief.”
“No, the job was to make sure I didn’t get arrested, not blow up a building. Don’t talk like you did this for me. You’d planned it out already.”
“Why would—”
She held up her hand quickly, silencing his rebuttal. “You wouldn’t have moved out of your safe house unless you knew there’d be a need for it. You wouldn’t have had thousands of flyers ready and waiting to rain down on the streets unless you had a reason for them. That wasn’t a backup plan. You don’t go to that much effort. You used me, and what I can’t figure out is who you think you’re going to work with after this.”
“What do you mean?” Tristan cocked his head to the side. “With you, of course.”
“You’re serious right now? You just shrugged off potential casualties like we were talking about the weather, and you think I can still work with you? You think I can trust you?”
She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, to acknowledge she had trusted him before the bombing no matter what her brain had told her.
But she had, and Tristan didn’t even seem to notice. “I had half a dozen people watching you the entire—”
“Do you have any idea the heat this will generate for you and your people? How much heat it already has—”
“How is it different than anything else we’ve done for the past few years? Breaking into Bullstow? Sneaking into highborn estates? Fine, you didn’t like how we handled this job. We’ll be more careful next time. We’re in this together, both of us against the—”
“Tristan, take it down a notch. You and I aren’t locked in some war against the highborn and the government. At least I’m not. You know why I do the things I do.”
“You think it’s any different for me? We’re on the same side, whether you admit to it or not. This is our war.”
“It’s not a war, Tristan.”
“It should be. One day soon, slavery will be abolished in—”
“Slavery isn’t going to be abolished, and you know it. Not for your kind, anyway.”
Tristan’s jaw clenched.
Lila didn’t care. “Your kind fall into slavery because they broke the law. The Slave Bill will never apply to you. Pardon me if I don’t have much sympathy for murders, thieves, and rapists. Few in the country do.”
“Few of my kind, as you so elegantly put it, are any of those things. They’re not criminals, not unless you count crossing the street in the wrong place as a crime, or looking at the militia in the wrong way, or sleeping in the park because you don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Lila leaned against the wall, settling in for another of Tristan’s rants. “If you don’t have money for your fines, then you have to pay them off somehow.”
“Do children have fines to work off?”
“They do chores to pay for their room and board, their medical fees, and their schooling until they age out. What else should we do with them? Take them away from their parents? We’re not animals, Tristan. A child only stays with a slave if they don’t have another parent available. It’s the best of a bad situation.”
“They shouldn’t stay there at all.”
“Well, we disagree on that point,” she muttered. “Yes, a few slaves here and there have been unjustly sentenced, but it’s no reason to throw out a system that works. It just means you clean up the system. You don’t abandon it.”
“Of course you’d say that. It takes a lot of slaves to drill all that oil. How convenient that the council rubber-stamps it, a council you sit on.”
“Don’t be naïve, Tristan. What else are we to do with criminals? Execute them? Stick them in little cages like they do in the Holy Roman Empire, letting people rot and drain the government coffers? Slaves get experience that can help them land a better job when they complete their sentence. It’s cheaper and more efficient to let the matrons deal with them.”
