by K. M. Fahy
Kitieri’s hands shook as she ran her fingertips over the crystals, and she fought back the tears that sprang to her eyes.
This is real. This is happening, she told herself. How many times had she awoken from this exact dream right at this moment, just as she went to pick it up…?
With Stil and Coff’s eyes boring into her, she slid the backboard back into the leather casing and slipped her arms through the backpack straps. The weight felt good and real against her back. She truly wasn’t dreaming, this time. This was reality, and she was finally wearing a real Gadget.
She looked to Noia, who was struggling with Vina and her Gadget at the same time.
“Here.” Kitieri held out her arms for the child, holding her while her mother situated the leather case on her back.
“I’ll see you out,” Stil said, opening the door to the hallway.
“Thank you, sir,” Kitieri said to Coff, and the man waved her away with a grumble.
Stil led them back down the stairs and into the main chamber. The bright lamplight felt like a shock after the dim hallways, but the glow was welcome.
As soon as Kitieri and Noia entered the Sanctuary, Stil slammed the door behind them. A key clicked in the lock from the other side, and Kitieri glanced at Noia.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, pulling Noia down the red runner. As they stepped out into the night, Kitieri smelled the building charge in the air and grinned. For the first time in ten years, she could walk home without fear.
The officers’ eyes followed her down the stairs and Kitieri set a brisk pace across the Square, slowing only once they’d turned the corner.
“Whew,” Kitieri muttered with a quick shudder. “That was weird, right?”
“Definitely weird,” Noia agreed with a chuckle, but her smile was far brighter now. Her joy and relief was infectious, and Kitieri smiled back as she watched Noia coo to Vina, bouncing her gently. The moonlight on her dark curls was stunning, and Kitieri felt a momentary flutter in her stomach.
Noia glanced at her, grin widening. “What?”
Kitieri looked away, hoping Noia couldn’t see the pink she felt burning in her cheeks.
“Nothing,” she replied. “It’s just… good to see you happy. It’s good to feel happy.”
Noia took a deep breath, lifting her face to the starry sky. “It is, isn’t it?”
Kitieri stole another glance, eyes tracing the fine, delicate line of her jaw as the charge in the air jumped. She stopped short, hands flying to the straps of her Gadget, and Noia turned with a concerned expression.
“What’s wrong?”
Kitieri remained silent, standing perfectly still as the metallic taste of electricity almost burned her tongue. Was she supposed to still be this sensitive to the—?
The first warning sent the familiar hot pulse through her system, and Kitieri gasped as she staggered back a step.
Vina’s coos turned to a high-pitched scream, and Noia’s eyes flew wide open.
“Kitieri,” she whispered, “I thought the Gadgets protected against the warnings.”
Kitieri ground her teeth, heart racing. “They do.”
Damn it!
Kitieri whipped around, grabbing Noia’s hand as she bolted back for the Church.
“Run!”
Chapter 4
Kitieri sprinted between buildings, just reaching the Square as the second warning struck. She’d been ready for it, feeling it coil in the air, but Noia fell behind with a gasp.
“Don’t slow down!” she shouted. “We can make it!”
Though Vina screamed with all her might, Kitieri pulled Noia to her feet, forcing her onward.
“The Church?” Noia asked, breathless and wheezing under the weight of the Gadget and her baby. Kitieri didn’t answer, eyes glued to the double doors. “They won’t let us back in!”
“The hells they won’t.”
As Kitieri charged toward the central pillar, an echoing cry from across the Square caught her attention. At the corner of the stairs, two red uniforms fought back a man and woman with two small, crying children clinging to their mother’s legs.
“Let us in, Histan damn you!” the man shouted, swinging at one of the officers.
“You know the law!” one officer yelled back as the other brandished a long black bat. “Get back!”
“There are children out here!”
“You shouldn’t have your family out without protection. Get back!”
The children’s screams doubled as the third warning struck, and the man lunged at the officer with the bat. Kitieri kept the red officers in the corner of her eye as she launched up the awkwardly spaced stairs, dragging Noia behind her, but their attention remained glued to the desperate man and his sobbing wife as she held her children.
Though Kitieri’s heart broke for the family, she pushed ahead for the top of the stairs. She grasped the shining bronze handle with both hands and wrenched the door open, pushing Noia inside before her. The blue flash cracked outside just as the door slammed closed, and Kitieri heard the gut-wrenching scream only a mother could give.
“My baby!”
Kitieri collapsed on the cold stone floor, paralyzed other than her hard, fast breathing. She could hear Vina nearby, her cries muffled in layers of cloth, and she pushed herself up on her hands.
“Noia, are you all right?”
“That baby…” Noia choked.
“I know.” Kitieri moved closer. “I know. Is Vina okay?”
Noia sniffled, allowing Vina’s face out of the folds of her shirt so she could breathe. “Yes. I—I just don’t understand… Why didn’t the Gadgets work?”
Kitieri pushed out a loud burst of air. “I have a suspicion.”
“You do?”
“Come with me.”
Kitieri got to her feet with the heavy Gadget, taking Noia’s hand to pull her up before marching down the red runner toward Histan’s statue. Movement behind the statue caught Kitieri’s eye, and a door creaked as a man stepped out.
“Wait—halt!” he called. “Who’s there?”
Kitieri continued her fast pace down the aisle, heading straight for the man. A flicker of uncertainty registered in his eyes, and he called over his shoulder before descending the sculpture’s dais to meet her.
“I said halt!” he commanded. “What business have you in the Church of Histan at this hour? We do not welcome the homeless—”
Hot anger flowed in Kitieri’s veins, warming her body and flushing her cheeks. She ripped the leather straps off her shoulders and tossed the Gadget to the ground between them. It hit with a loud thud, cutting off the man’s pompous bullshit.
“I was just here purchasing a G—a PCR from a man named Coff,” she said. The man looked between her and the Gadget on the red carpet, a frown wrinkling his features.
“And?”
“And there was a Strike just now, and neither of these so-called PCRs worked. You sold us junk! You took our money and sent us out there to die.”
Kitieri registered more movement behind the statue, but kept her eyes locked on this man as he lifted his chin, indignant.
“Where are your licenses for these PCRs?” he asked.
Kitieri felt her jaw drop. “What in the two hells are you talking about?”
“All operators of a PCR must be able to produce a license on demand. I need to see your licenses, now.”
“Are you kidding me? I just told you they were trash! These are not real! We have been robbed!”
“Licenses!” the man boomed. Kitieri’s hands closed into tight fists, and as she considered just punching the man straight in his ugly nose, Noia’s soft voice piped up beside her.
“A man named Stil witnessed our transaction. Could you fetch him, perhaps?”
Kitieri’s eyes focused on the newcomer, who had stepped out from behind Histan’s sculpture with a group of men in red uniforms in tow.
“You!” She pointed a finger at Stil as he came to stand beside the man. “Yo
u sold us fakes!”
“Kitieri,” Noia muttered, resting a hand on her arm. “He might be able to help us.”
As much as Kitieri wanted to lunge at the man, she kept still to let Noia speak.
“Chief Advisor,” Noia said, her voice soft and sweet, “would you mind telling this man that my friend and I did, in fact, purchase two PCRs from Coff tonight?”
Stil shifted his weight to one leg, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow in that infuriating manner that Kitieri had already come to hate. “I don’t recall any such event.”
Kitieri’s heart fell to the floor.
Noia blinked, but maintained her smooth composure. “Surely you do.”
Stil turned to the short man beside him.
“Beso, I swear to you that I have never seen either of these women in my life. They are clearly a couple of beggars that picked up some fake PCRs on the black market, and are now trying to claim we owe some sort of refund for their garbage.”
The heat in Kitieri’s face was starting to make her sweat. She gaped at the man’s boldfaced lies, her mind spinning in an attempt to find a way back out of this disaster.
Beso mimicked Stil’s stern posture.
“Did you acquire these mock PCRs on the black market?” he asked. “Tell the truth now, and we may not arrest you.”
Kitieri’s lungs constricted. “You’ve got this wrong,” she said. “We want nothing more than what we paid our hard-earned money for.”
Stil gestured at the leather pack that Kitieri had tossed to the floor.
“Yet you said that these do not work. Therefore, they could not have possibly been from us. The Church of Histan is not the black market, child. We deal only in the highest-quality cintra, and thus PCRs. How do you expect to demand some alleged payment back for property for which you have no proof of sale, nor a license to carry?”
Beso scoffed. “You stand in violation of several laws. In the name of our Lord Histan, you are under arrest.”
The men in the red uniforms sprang forward, seeming to materialize out of the red carpet. Two of them grabbed Kitieri’s arms, but her attention was pulled to Noia as Vina let out a deafening shriek.
“No! Not my baby!” Noia cried as one man wrenched the infant from her arms. “Please, don’t take my baby!”
The desperation in her voice moved Kitieri to action. She dropped down into a sudden crouch, twisting her body to break the officers’ hold on her arms. Her fist smashed into one man’s face with a spray of blood before she turned and kicked the other square in the stomach, knocking him to the floor.
Before they could swarm her, she plucked Vina from the officer’s awkward hold and kicked Noia’s captor hard in the shin.
“Noia, let’s go!”
Vina held tight to her chest, Kitieri sprinted down the red runner. While running for her life was nothing new, the fate of two dependents hanging on her every action gave her a new edge.
“Bar the door, bar the door!”
Kitieri heard the call behind her and caught a glimpse of more officers running down the side walls. She pushed harder, vision shaking as her boots pounded the floor. Noia’s panting assured Kitieri she was close on her heels.
She reached the doors before the officers, slamming through with her shoulders hunched and twisted into the form of a human battering ram. The door flung open as a blinding pain stopped her cold.
Kitieri’s knees buckled as the pain overwhelmed her senses, and she toppled toward the unforgiving stone stairs.
Don’t land on the baby…
She tried to twist midair, but couldn’t tell if her seizing body complied. The back of her head hit a sharp stone edge, and a flash of white engulfed the world around her.
Chapter 5
Kitieri opened her eyes to a dark stone ceiling and immediately closed them again. Agony racked her body, and the pounding in her head sent waves of nausea rolling through her.
“Kitieri?”
The soft voice came from above, and she dared to open her eyes to just a slit. Through the hazy blur, she could just make out a pale, heart-shaped face.
“Noia.” Her voice came out raspy and hoarse. A shift in position told Kitieri that her head was resting in Noia’s lap.
“Shh. Don’t talk.” Kitieri became aware of a hand stroking her hair.
“What… what happened?”
The gentle puff of air from Noia’s sigh brushed Kitieri’s cheek. “An electric element caught you,” she said. “I saw the bolt shoot from his fingers.”
Kitieri moved to push herself up on her elbow, but cried out as sharp pain blossomed across her shoulder and back.
“Stay still,” Noia said. “You fell pretty hard on the stairs. Your right shoulder is probably dislocated, and your head was bleeding badly for a while.”
Images from her last conscious moments started to flicker through her mind. She remembered the fall now. She remembered…
“Vina?” Noia’s hand stroked her hair again. “Where’s Vina? Did I fall on her?”
“No,” Noia said. “I don’t know how you managed it, but she wasn’t hurt.”
Kitieri sighed in relief, wincing at the pain in her ribs.
“You fell on your back and hit your head. I was able to hold Vina again before they caught up, and…” Kitieri heard the catch in her voice. “…They took her.”
Kitieri let her eyes close again.
“I’m so sorry.”
The hand resumed stroking her hair.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” Noia replied. “This wasn’t your fault. We were swindled, and now they can’t let us leave for fear that we’d spread it. I guess they assumed we’d either die by lightning or be arrested for not having the licenses they didn’t tell us about, and all evidence would be erased before we even knew the Gadgets were fake.”
“Fucking monsters,” Kitieri mumbled, eyes still closed. “Where are we? What happens now?”
Another soft sigh. Kitieri opened one eye to see Noia’s face turned toward a faint light source.
“Nothing good,” Noia replied, her voice sad and distant.
“Meaning?”
The kind touch of Noia’s hand stroking her hair repeatedly felt good, but Kitieri’s mind was starting to lose its fog. “Noia?”
“We’ve been accused of slander and attempted robbery of the Church of Histan.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You and I know that, but it doesn’t matter. We’re a pet case for them.”
Kitieri watched Noia’s face in the soft, blueish light—moonlight, she realized, coming in from a small window. Around her neck, a glinting silver band caught Kitieri’s eye.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“What’s what?”
“That thing on your neck. I don’t remember you wearing any jewelry.”
“The oran collar?” Noia asked, reaching up to touch the band around her throat. “All prisoners get them. You have one, too. The oran crystals around the inside prevent us from using our elements against the officers—not that it matters much for me.”
“Why not?”
“I’m just a weak air element. The most I could ever do was snuff candles from across the room. Handy enough for sweeping, though, I guess. My mother was a powerful arbor element, and we had the most beautiful gardens when I was growing up. She could make a sprout grow and produce fruit in one day, so we were never hungry.” Noia looked back to the window. “If I’d taken after her, I’d still have Vina and our home.”
Kitieri looked away, letting her gaze drift aimlessly around the dark room, contemplating the different paths her life might’ve taken if she’d been born with the power to produce fresh food on a whim. Instead, she’d developed every parent’s nightmare.
“I’m sorry, Noia.”
“For what?”
“I know you trusted the Church. I’m sorry they would do this to one of their own.”
Noia snorted, still looking toward the window.
/> “At services, they pretend to care about the city and its people. They talk about a future where everyone will have protection from the lightning, but I’ve never actually seen them help a soul. I just didn’t realize they were trying to kill us. Stil is the Baliant’s Chief Advisor, so this corruption goes up at least that far.” She shook her head. “Your parents were right to keep you away from all of this. When you first told me you were illegal, I thought you were crazy. After all, people are put to death every day for far lesser crimes. Your family must have known something mine didn’t.”
Kitieri stared up at Noia, her gaze tracing the reflective oran collar in the faint light. Church membership wasn’t a frequent topic of conversation around the mines, and she’d learned long ago not to make friends. No one had asked her Church, and she hadn’t asked theirs… until Noia.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “Whatever their motives, they died before they could tell me.”
“Yes,” Noia said. “A bit strange, isn’t it?”
Kitieri narrowed her eyes. “Strange?”
“You told me your parents left to run an errand. What was that errand?”
“What? I don’t—”
“Had they been saving money?”
Kitieri pushed herself up on one hand, avoiding the use of her throbbing right side.
“Yeah,” she said. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
Noia turned her head back from the window, and Kitieri was taken aback by the defiance in her dark eyes. She held little resemblance to that starving, terrified woman Kitieri had pulled off the street.
“You’re smart, Kitieri,” Noia said. “That leads me to believe that your parents were smart, too. The lightning has been our reality for ten years, now, and I don’t know any couple with three children that would not ensure the survival of one parent if they were caught in a Strike. They wouldn’t hold each other in their final goodbyes. They would make sure one of them made it back home.”
Kitieri blinked, trying to process Noia’s words, but already her heart was beginning to race.
“It has a familiar ring, doesn’t it?” Noia continued. “A miner and his wife, saving money to help their family, left on an errand and never came back.”
