Chain of Secrets

by Jaleta Clegg

  It was dark before the wolf stopped. I took another step, out of habit, before I stopped. The wolf pushed me with her head, urging me forward. It was too dark, I felt as if I were falling. I threw out a hand and felt stone under my hand. It was smooth, cold and slick with polishing.

  The wolf growled, low and deep, as she faded into the night of the mountain. I wanted to turn to watch her go, but I couldn't find the strength. I leaned on the carved rock of the mountain and waited for whatever was going to happen.

  I heard voices, carried on the night, accented strangely. Bobbing lights twined through dark rocks, cool blue white that spoke of artificial lights, not fire. I stayed leaning on the stone, unable to move, unable to feel fear. The lights and voices came nearer. I was dimly aware of the wolves backing away, leaving me to follow their own pursuits.

  The lights stopped at the bottom of a short slope. I stood at the top, looking down. The people there were odd, shimmering in the lights they carried. It might have been my eyes that shimmered, though. They waited for me to do something. I pushed away from the stone and walked down the short slope. They were people, and people meant a chance of food or shelter. I couldn't bring myself to hope they might help me.

  Halfway down the slope I felt a tingling, a resistance to the air itself. Impatient, I shoved it away. Blue sparks fizzed along my arms and legs and then I was through. The people with their weird lights shifted and murmured. I managed to stop in front of them without falling on my face. They lifted the lights higher, shining them in my face. I raised my hand to shield my eyes.

  "Who are you?" The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, echoing in my head and my ears.

  I couldn't answer. My head was suddenly full of snow and ice and wind and the taste of rabbit. I felt a probing at my head, feathery touches that itched inside my skull. I shoved it all out of my head and slammed down barriers.

  One of the people stepped forward, light held high. "Who are you?" she asked in a breathy voice.

  "I—" The world suddenly spun. I found myself lying on the snow, staring up at the lights hovering over me.

  "She needs help." A male voice, still light and lilting, though.

  "We cannot. You know the rules." A stuffy female voice.

  "The wolves brought her."

  "She passed the veil."

  I rolled to my side and coughed. They shuffled back, all except the man with the lilting accent to his words. He touched my shoulder.

  "Come," he said, though his mouth didn't move. "You need to see a healer."

  I didn't resist as he helped me to my feet. He had to hold me upright, I couldn't have walked or even crawled anywhere by myself. The others shuffled back, out of the way. He helped me limp past them and into a hidden pocket of a valley.

  My eyes blurred, all I saw was shadow and pools of bluish light. There was a door and more light and warmth and the smell of food. He pulled me to a stop.

  They argued wordlessly in my head.

  "Stop it!" I shouted, clutching my ears against the pain they caused. The shout came not just from my mouth, it washed away from me, a wave of silence drowning the quarreling not-voices in my head.

  They stepped away from me, even the man who had helped me here. I stood alone. My vision cleared abruptly. I was in a rough cabin, cut from logs and caulked with mud. A pot bubbled over a fire, giving off good smells. I took one fumbling step towards the food before my legs gave out. I caught myself on the back of a chair.

  They broke their stillness. I was the center of a flurry of activity. I was seated and a steaming bowl placed in front of me. Someone else took my ragged blanket and replaced it with a warm one that had hung near the fire. Hands urged me to eat while others prepared a tub of steaming water. I didn't need another invitation. I spooned down the hot broth and vegetables as fast as I could without scorching my mouth. One bowl was enough, I felt uncomfortably full and queasy when I finished.

  The whispering people left while I ate. I was alone with one young woman. She watched me with green eyes. Her hair was a mass of dark black shot through with silver. She never spoke a word, but I felt her in my mind.

  She indicated the tub, a wordless inquiry if I needed help. I shook my head. She draped clean clothing over a chair then left. I was alone in the tiny cabin.

  I was very aware how bad I smelled. I still wore the same dress. It was much worse for wear. I stripped it off, and the underclothes, then sat hunched in the small tub. The water was warm and fragrant with dried herbs. I scrubbed off what I could, stifling yawns that grew more frequent and wider.

  The water was gray and I felt much cleaner when I finally lurched out of the tub. I pulled on the clothes without looking, loose fitting pants and a long tunic. I collapsed onto the one bed in the small cabin, asleep almost before I pulled the blankets over me.

  Chapter 26

  A muffled explosion, faint with distance, echoed through the streets of Milaga. The winter rains drizzled over broken and destroyed buildings. Power was intermittent and unpredictable. The city itself had been brought to a standstill. Bullet holes and blaster char streaked walls along most streets. Those who lived in the city were in hiding.

  The government building blazed with lights and bristled with weapons and guards. Those still loyal to Potokos and his regime had retreated there, holed up with food and supplies and ammunition. The rebels hid in various warrens through the city, avoiding the concentrated attacks that had already wiped out half their number. The rest of the population had either fled or hid or died. Only a handful of stray animals crept through the streets.

  Rian stared out a shaded window, peering around a cloth barrier. She saw nothing but gray rain and shattered buildings. Another muffled boom, from across the city, rattled the window.

  "We can't go on like this," Lief said, pounding fist against palm in a futile gesture. "We're going to starve. If we don't run out of ammunition first."

  "The bombs are getting closer," Rian added from her window. No one acknowledged her.

  "We will win," their leader, Dagon, insisted. "Our cause is just. Our devotion to our cause is absolute. We will win."

  Rian knew it was hopeless. They were going to die, like all the rebels before them. They had no resources, other than those they had stolen. The only thing they had more of than the government troops was fanaticism. Was it really so bad if they died fighting for what they believed? She didn't know anymore.

  There had been no word of Dace, or her rebellion, since the government had taken her in the raid weeks ago. Rian had so hoped that Dace would finish the rebellion her mother had started. She hoped it meant they would win. Things rarely worked out the way one hoped. She dropped the shade and turned away from the depressing grayness outside.

  "We can't win," Lief said. "Not this way. We keep raiding them, they guard their supplies better. Our stores are almost gone and we can't get more."

  "What would you do?" another man put in, one Rian didn't know. "Surrender to them? Give in and give up? Go back to living as slaves? We will fight until we are free or we are dead!"

  The ripple of agreement lacked enthusiasm. It was hard to believe when you were hungry and cold.

  "Have faith, brother," Dagon said to Lief, grasping his arm. He rose and left the small overcrowded room. The cold air smelled of defeat and fear.

  Rian sighed and picked her way from the room. They were hiding in another abandoned building. The walls sagged. Recent holes gaped where windows had been. The rest of the rebellion was scattered through the city.

  "Why don't we just attack them?" she asked as she caught up with Dagon. "Why not an all out assault? It would put an end to everything once and for all."

  "You would have us throw away our lives?" Dagon asked.

  "We are anyway," Rian objected. "I joined the rebellion because I hoped I could make a difference. You do nothing. And everything is so much worse. It was supposed to get better."

  "You must be patient." Dagon reached for her arm.

 
She stepped back, out of his reach. "You lead us into blind traps. You tell us to wait. While they pick us off one group at a time. Who do you really work for? What are your loyalties, Dagon?"

  She heard gasps behind her. Others had heard. Good, let them begin to think instead of blindly following.

  Dagon curled his hands into fists. "You question my dedication? I want freedom, just as you. An end to tyranny and oppression."

  "Is that really what you're fighting for?" Things Dace had said were beginning to ring all too true. "Or are you fighting so you can be the one on top? The one with all the privileges, while the rest of us grovel at your feet?"

  Dagon flinched, barely, but enough. Rian saw it. Dace's accusations were true.

  "What difference will it make if all we do is change who the oppressors are?" She flung that at Dagon.

  "We will prevail and life will be better for all," Dagon said loudly. His eyes warned her to back away, to keep her mouth closed.

  Rian took the hint. She dropped her gaze to the floor and shuffled away from Dagon. Her heart pounded, her throat tight with fear. What would he do to her for daring to question him? Was he the reason people disappeared at night with no trace? Those who questioned him tended to meet unpleasant ends, or just disappear.

  She went to the room where she slept on the hard floor with a dozen other women. She would have to move quickly. She dared not take her blanket, or anything but her comb. She had made Dagon suspicious enough already. She slipped out, taking the less traveled route out of the building.

  Lief waited near the exit door. He straightened from his hunched position as she approached. "Going somewhere?"

  She stopped, studying his face. She'd known him, worked with him, for almost two years. She would have said, before today, she trusted him with her life and her secrets. Now she wasn't sure.

  "We can't stay, Lief. Dagon is betraying us."

  "You have proof?" His voice was hard and angry.

  She shook her head. "But why else would he hold us back? What happens to the people who question him? Why keep us so separated? He didn't want me to work with you, or even be in the same group with you. Look what he's done to our rebellion."

  "We did it ourselves. We moved before we had the supplies and support we needed. We moved too soon. Because of that woman you found."

  She shook her head, denial of what he said. "We would have kept planning and talking and pretending for years. We would have never moved at all. There was always an excuse not to. Dace just made things happen sooner. It doesn't matter. What matters is now."

  "What are you going to do?" Lief asked. Another rattle of weapons fire sounded, several streets away, dimmed by the rain.

  "I'm going to start over if I have to. I can't stay here and watch Dagon destroy everything I've worked for. I won't have everything I've sacrificed be for nothing." She felt the familiar surge of warmth, anger and determination. "Tivor deserves better."

  "You really believe that garbage?"

  "You believed it, too, once."

  "A long time ago." His voice deepened and softened. "Rian, don't do this. Don't go."

  "Come with me, Lief."

  He shook his head and turned away. He made no move to stop her when she stepped out into the rain.

  She moved quickly away, keeping to the margins and the shadows. It was only when she had turned the corner, away from the building hiding them, that she slowed. Where could she go? Who could she trust? She paused, huddled in a dark doorway, while she thought.

  She could lead them, she believed what she was doing. Surely they would see that, they would respond and rally to her cry. They wouldn't keep supporting leaders like Dagon who kept them quiet and hiding and let the police pick them off one by one.

  She moved faster, back straight and head high. She had nothing, no resources, no followers, only her conviction that what she did was right.

  She reached the abandoned orphanage as the gray evening light faded into full dark. The windows gaped, empty and shattered. The yard was muddy, dead skeletons of weeds standing silent sentinel. Dace had come here. Dace had lived here as a child, if Rian could believe what she'd said. This would work. She would use Dace, as ruthlessly as Dace had used her and the rebellion.

  She crossed the yard and entered through the broken doorway.

  Glass crunched under her feet as she made her way through the abandoned building. She stopped in the doorway of the kitchen. The shadowy outline of a man blocked the dim light from a broken window. She backed a step, feeling for the length of sharpened metal she kept tucked along her side.

  The man turned. He stood still, making no move towards her. She waited, poised to fight or run, her heart fluttering.

  "Rian," he said finally.

  She relaxed as she recognized his voice. "Tilyn."

  "I've tried to contact you. It's been difficult."

  She said nothing, her heart fluttering with uncertainty.

  "Kuran suspects everyone," Tilyn continued. "They arrested Hydos last night. He was executed this morning. Kuran said he sympathized with the rebels. The others believed him, mostly because they don't dare cross him. Kuran is dangerous. He poisoned Potokos. The Citizen Prime is dying." His voice ran down, fading to nothing.

  "Do you still believe in our cause?" Rian asked.

  "I'm afraid. No one is safe anymore. Kuran is having me watched, whenever he remembers I exist. I try not to remind him."

  "And they are hunting us through the city. Dagon does nothing. He tells us to wait, to believe, to have faith."

  "Dagon works for Kuran."

  "I suspected as much."

  "So what will you do?" Tilyn asked. "We could go to the mountains, hide there with the others."

  "Run away? It won't solve anything."

  Silence fell between them, heavy and full of unspoken words.

  "What about Dace? The woman the Patrol sent?"

  "She's dead," Tilyn said. "She was sent to Farm Twenty Seven. No one survives there long. Not even the guards. There was a breakout a couple of weeks ago. The report that came in said all were recaptured and killed."

  "Then we do it in her name, make her our martyr, like her mother."

  "Rian?" He questioned her motives, her plans, everything she was, with the sound of her name.

  "We rise up, we rebel, we make Tivor ours. We make it better, a world of true equality. Dace accused me of reaching only for power, once. It might have been true, then, but not now. I want a new world, not just different tyrants. We can make our world over into something better, something more equal for everyone. Will you help me do that, Tilyn?"

  He stepped closer, taking her arms and studying her face in the shadowy light. "You really believe we can?"

  "It has to start with someone. Why not us?"

  He slowly smiled. "What do you want me to do?"

  "Find those within the government who will join. Police, soldiers, clerks, anyone who wants to make Tivor better. I'll spread the word through the rebellion. We'll make a new start. Here," she added, looking up at the water stained ceiling.

  "I can almost believe you will succeed," Tilyn said.

  "I will succeed," she said fiercely.

  "I don't doubt you will."

  "Tell them the Shadowing has returned," she whispered. "And this time Shadowing brings more than letters."

  "You?"

  "Now, yes."

  He smiled again and released her. She listened to him leave the abandoned orphanage.

  Yes, she could do this. She would use whatever she had to in order to win. Dace and her mother, the underground hero Shadowing, Tilyn and his police connections, whatever it took.

  A new day was coming to Tivor, a day where food was plentiful and people would be free to choose their lives. And she would be at the head of it. She allowed herself a small smile, hidden in the dark. Someone had to be the leader, why shouldn't it be her?

  The distant sound of fighting died. Soon, the fighting would be done. The government,
Potokos and his Inner Congress, would be dead. And she could remake the world the way it should be, Rian's way.

  Chapter 27

  I woke slowly, warm and comfortable. For a few minutes anyway. Then my body decided since I was awake I could take care of it. My stomach rumbled and my bladder signaled urgently it was full. I rolled onto my back and let my eyes open.

  I was in the small cabin, wrapped in quilts on the narrow bed. I wasn't alone. A man and two women watched me as I moved. I glanced at them then away, their stares made me uncomfortable.

  I rolled off the bed, keeping one quilt wrapped around me. The women busied themselves tidying the cabin.

  I padded across the wooden floor in bare feet. I stopped when that registered. I was barefoot, wearing clean clothes. I vaguely remembered bathing after they brought me to the cabin. It felt like days ago. It might have been. The windows of the cabin were bright with daylight, morning or afternoon, I didn't know.

  I felt a whispering tickle of voices along the edge of my mind and shivered involuntarily at the touch. It was too strange. And then I remembered what I'd done the night before. The barriers in my mind slammed shut, closing out the voices and the wordless presence of the silently watching women.

  The bathroom wasn't as primitive as I'd feared. There was no icy draft up my backside. The water from the sink was almost warm.

  They had food waiting on a table when I came out of the bathroom. I sat and ate without speaking a word. Neither did they, in my mind or in my ears.