The Essence

by Kimberly Derting

  Students rushed past, pushing me out of their way, and I heard more shouting and more shots fired. I kept my head low, but I stayed on my feet and kept moving, trying not to trip over the debris in my path. The only thing I could see was myself, my own skin, and even the light that came from within me couldn’t penetrate the thick, black clouds that billowed everywhere. It reflected off the smoke, making the smoke look as if it were coming from me, as if I was the source of all this destruction.

  “Zafir!” My voice rasped, but it was lost in a tide of shrieks and chaos.

  I reached a door and I slid my hands over it as I slowed to peer inside the broken pane where a window had once been. The classroom beyond was choked with the same dense smoke that filled the hallways. But some light filtered in through the third-floor window on the other side of the room.

  Beneath the teacher’s desk, I could see three younger students, barely older than Angelina, huddled together. Hiding. I recognized the small black-haired boy who was coughing so hard I worried he’d swallowed too much of the roiling smoke—there seemed no more room in his lungs for real air.

  It was the first boy off the bus that morning: Phoenix.

  But it was the body of the instructor lying on the floor beside them, her eyes large and unblinking, that made me realize I couldn’t just leave them there. Half of her skull had been caved in from a fallen chunk of ceiling plaster.

  Just as I was opening the door between us—or what was left of it—another detonation jarred me, knocking me all the way to my knees. As I fell, my chin clipped the opening left by the broken window, and jagged glass, like teeth, dug into my skin. Something warm dribbled down my throat, into my collar, and I knew it was blood. But none of that mattered. Not now. Not yet.

  “What happened?” I heard a girl’s voice shout from somewhere beyond the billowing haze behind me, and instinctively I stilled. “It wasn’t supposed to happen here. Orders were to wait till she reached Capitol Hall—”

  “Orders changed,” a male voice interrupted her. “The timeline had to be moved up.”

  “So where is she? Who has eyes on her?”

  There was a moment of silence, and in that moment I was certain what it was they were saying. Me. They were talking about me. I was the reason for the attack.

  I tried to take a step backward, away from them. I needed to find Brook or Zafir, to warn them. To find help.

  But my reprieve was brief, and either because I’d moved or because the smoke around me had cleared, I heard the girl again and knew I was no longer cloaked by the thick clouds.

  “I see her!” It was the girl again, but now her words were hushed as I tried to place her voice. “Over here!” she whispered again. “She’s here.”

  That was when I realized where I’d heard her voice before: It was Delta.

  When she reached me, relief swelled inside my chest as I told myself I must have misunderstood the meaning behind her words. Clearly, she couldn’t be responsible for the attack, she was a student here—my liaison for the day. She’d been looking for me because she wanted to help me. I lifted the back of my hand to swipe self-consciously at my oozing chin. She reached down, her fingers gripping my arm as she dragged me to my feet. “Come on,” she said, and she was right, of course—we needed to keep moving.

  “The children,” I blurted out. “There are children in there.” I turned back toward the door, but her grip on my arm tightened. Too tight.

  The crunch of footsteps drew my attention as an older boy, tall with long legs, came running toward us then—stumbling, really—through the churning mass of fumes. His face was streaked with ash and sweat, and his haunted eyes were filled with unspoken horror.

  “You can’t go that way!” he warned, begging us to listen. “They’ve got guns! They’re shooting the teachers, and even some of the students.”

  I held my hand out to him, trying to formulate the right words so I could tell him it would be all right, that we’d find a way out of the school, that we’d be okay.

  And then Delta raised her hand too. But hers wasn’t empty, and the gun she held looked cold and menacing. Just like her eyes. Cold. And menacing.

  She fired once, and then once more, and the boy’s body stiffened, his eyes going wide with disbelief. Nearly as wide as my own.

  It wasn’t until he fell forward, his mouth gaping slackly, that I could move again. I lurched toward him, my fingers digging into the back of his shirt. But I knew it was too late for him when I felt his body convulse with finality beneath my fingertips.

  “What are you doing?” I shrieked up at Delta, but I already knew that, too. Zafir had been right about her. She wasn’t to be trusted.

  I scrambled toward her, not really thinking clearly, only wanting to stop her before she could do anything like that again. Before she could kill someone else. I reached for her gun, my hands clumsily clawing at her hands. Yet despite the fact that she was younger than me, and somewhat smaller, she was strong, and she seemed to know what I planned to do even before I did. I clutched at her wrist, meaning to twist her arm, the way Zafir had taught me to do. But she easily deflected me, jerking the other way and grabbing my arm. She rotated it until I was the one whose wrist was cocked at an unnatural angle. Until I was the one who gasped. She released me then, shoving me to the ground.

  Suddenly I understood what Zafir had been trying to explain to me all those weeks we’d been training: Technique conquers power.

  Delta had technique on her side.

  That, and a sleek metal weapon that was pointed right between my eyes. The light from my skin reflected off its polished surface.

  It was then that a man came to stand beside her, seeming to materialize from the very smoke itself like a wraith.

  “In there,” she ordered in Termani, jerking her head toward the door where the children had been cowering. “She said there are children hiding inside.”

  “We were told not to harm the Counsel children,” the man countered, but Delta stopped him.

  Her lip lifted into a snarl, her eyes never leaving mine. “Then check to see if they’re Counsel or not. If not, then they don’t belong here,” she spat. “Get rid of them.”

  “No!” I shouted, even as the man spun away, obeying her order. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

  She stared down at me, and I wondered if she even realized that I’d understood her words, that I’d understood what she’d said as she pressed the steel barrel to my forehead. “We want the Vendor queen, of course.”

  And then a gunshot split the air.

  vii

  Blood. Everywhere there was blood.

  I blinked, using both hands to wipe it away, ignoring the other bits that clung to my skin and wincing as my stomach recoiled.

  Blinking again, I struggled to find my voice. “H-how did you find me?” I managed at last.

  Brooklynn cocked her head, stepping over Delta’s limp body without a second glance as she kicked the gun out of her way. She sidestepped the blood that was pooling on the floor, coming from the wound in Delta’s forehead. “You’re kidding, right? You know you glow, don’t you? You’re pretty much the only thing I could see.”

  I glanced down at myself. Of course. The glow.

  She pushed past me, keeping me at her back as she held her own gun—one I hadn’t even realized she’d been carrying—

  at the ready. “I saw someone else.” She tipped her head toward the classroom door. “Did he go in there?” she asked, and when I nodded mutely, she nudged the door open with the toe of her boot.

  I felt like I should do something. Instead I just stood there, helpless. Immobile.

  “Drop it!” I heard Brook’s unwavering voice call out.

  The little boy’s coughs reached me then, from inside the room, and I realized the children were still in there. With an armed man. A cornered man.

  I stepped closer, unable to stop myself, no matter how strongly I argued that I shouldn’t, that I should stay back . . . where
it was safe.

  I saw him then, the wraith of a man with the sharp features, a gun held to the side of Phoenix’s head. Still coughing on the thick smoke, the little boy’s eyes lifted when I peered through the doorway, and I wondered how I must look to him, to the children hiding there. Like a ghost. An apparition.

  “Get away from me,” the man sneered at Brooklynn, lifting the child higher, holding him in front of his face and using his small body as a shield, leaving only his shins and his feet exposed, and giving Brook no kill shot. Still, I watched as Brook took another step closer.

  “Move away from the door.” The man was no longer speaking in Termani but rather in Parshon as he tried to bargain with her. I’d never heard someone switch between the two languages before and it was disorienting. “Let me go, and I’ll release the kid.”

  Brook’s eyebrow ticked up as she took a step sideways. I wondered what she was doing, what her plan was, because I was certain she must have one. Brook always had a plan. “Put the boy down and I’ll let you escape with your life,” she answered in Englaise.

  He matched her pace. Each time she moved closer, he moved away. But every step seemed to lead him nearer to the doorway. Wasn’t that what the man wanted? Didn’t he just ask for her to let him go?

  “I don’t believe you,” he hissed, foregoing Parshon now in favor of Englaise. “Your father said you were a liar. He warned us not to trust you.”

  Brook stiffened, her face becoming a wall of ice. Impenetrable. Arctic.

  And that was when I felt it . . . the hand on my shoulder.

  Zafir must have been standing there for several seconds, watching as Brook herded the man closer and closer. Inching him nearer to the royal guard’s position.

  He pushed me aside, and on feet so stealthy they made no sound at all, he slipped into the classroom.

  Behind the wraithlike man.

  And in one graceful motion, he wrapped his arm around the man’s throat while he buried his blade in the base of the man’s neck.

  “Why didn’t you just shoot him?” I asked as I clutched the coughing boy to my chest. Zafir and Brook and I were moving as quickly as we could through the hallways, the other two children in tow. I worried about the boy in my arms. Carrying him was like carrying a bird; he was tiny and fragile, as if his very bones were hollow. His frail body spasmed each time he hacked and choked. I was sure the smoke had been too much for him.

  It wasn’t just rubble that blocked our path now; there were bodies, too. It was hard to tell whether they were victims of the blasts or of Delta and her cohorts, but either way, they were a lethal reminder that we weren’t safe yet.

  Zafir remained at my side. “I couldn’t risk harming the boy,” he answered.

  As if on cue, the boy coughed into my neck, and I tightened my grip on him—a silent reassurance.

  I thought about the fragments of skull and flesh I had yet to wipe from my face. “I was right behind Delta when you shot her. Weren’t you worried about me?”

  On each side of her, Brook held a child’s hand—a girl and a boy. Unlike the boy in my arms, they were able to keep up easily, and I could see both sets of curious eyes shoot up to watch her.

  “No,” she answered.

  “No? Why not?”

  “I guess I’m just better with my weapon,” she said, grinning at Zafir.

  Zafir ignored her as he dragged me to a stop. Brook followed his lead, hauling the children into a nook at the end of the storage lockers. He lifted his hand, and we all understood what he meant: Be silent.

  It was several seconds before we heard what he had, and I felt the boy’s fingers tangle into the hair at the base of my neck. I could hear his breathing—tiny, wheezing gasps—and I worried that he might cough again, might inadvertently give away our location. I steadied my own breathing, hoping his lungs might follow my lead, hoping my calm might somehow filter into him.

  Rubble crunched coming from behind the heavy screen of smoke. It sounded like a thousand boots pulverizing the broken ceiling tiles beneath them.

  Zafir gazed down at me, and I knew what he was looking at. With my skin the way it was, there was no way we could remain hidden. . . . Even if the boy didn’t cough. Even if we remained completely silent.

  He stripped off his jacket then and draped it around me, covering as much of me as possible. . . . My arms and my hands. He buttoned it around the boy, too, closing it all the way to my neck. Then he took off his shirt and wrapped it around my head, concealing my hair and part of my face, until only my eyes were still visible.

  He was camouflaging me.

  And then he stood in front of me, using his body to barricade mine.

  We waited like that, listening for more screams or shouts. For gunfire or another round of explosives. But instead we heard only the sound of approaching feet. Inside the fabric that swathed my face, it grew harder and harder to breathe, but I didn’t complain. I didn’t even shuffle my feet. I simply kept my eyes wide and alert, straining to see.

  “Commander Maier?” A woman’s voice finally cut through the dense smoke, using Brooklynn’s formal title. “Are you in here?”

  Brook released the children’s hands. “I’m here. We’re all here.”

  Behind the woman—one of the guards who’d been in front of the school that morning—there were several more soldiers, all wearing the same uniform. All standing at attention, awaiting word from their leader . . . from Brook.

  “The army arrived shortly after the first bomb was detonated,” the soldier stated as she stepped forward, her stance formal and stiff. I released a breath and hugged the boy, relief swelling through me as I unraveled Zafir’s shirt from my face as I listened. “We lost a lot of civilians in the blasts, even more in the gun battle.”

  The use of the word “civilians” made my stomach tighten. Children, I thought. She meant children.

  “Once the terrorists realized they were outnumbered, they fled. The ones our forces didn’t get, the snipers took care of on their way out of the buildings. Unfortunately, we didn’t take a single one of them alive, so we have no way of knowing who, exactly, was responsible for the attack here today.”

  Brooklynn sighed, and there was nothing rigid about her posture. She looked deflated, defeated. “Yes we do,” she said simply, running her hand through her tangled curls. “It was my father.”

  When we exited the building, the sunlight nearly blinded me and I had to shield my eyes until they’d adjusted.

  I heard a woman screaming, but not in the same way the students inside the walls of the Academy had screamed. Her voice, the woman’s, was filled with so much relief it nearly undid her. The little boy in my arms wiggled and struggled against me, and I had no choice but to release him the moment his feet hit the ground.

  I glanced up in time to see the woman break free from the crowd, still shouting, and I realized she was calling out a name: “Phoenix!” she cried as the boy raced down the steps and jumped into her outstretched arms. She swallowed him up, hugging him ferociously. “Phoenix . . . Phoenix . . . my sweet baby Phoenix . . .” Her last words trailed into Parshon, and I wondered if it were simply habit, if she’d even realized she’d done it at all.

  It had been easier inside, where the confusion and ugliness of the attacks had been concealed behind a thick veil of smoke. Out here, the destruction was all too clear, far too apparent. We could all see just how much damage had been done. How many lives had been lost.

  I gazed down at my feet as I walked, trying not to look at the bodies that littered the wreckage, trying not to remember how I’d once envied those who walked upon these gleaming, polished steps.

  It was the halo of golden hair I saw from the corner of my eye that caught my attention, making my steps falter. I froze midstep. My breath caught in my throat as I blinked hard, telling myself it wasn’t her. . . . It couldn’t be her.

  But as I moved closer, something in my gut told me I was wrong.

  I stopped in front of the girl lying
facedown on the stairs, her limbs at odd, unnatural angles. There was a single bloodstain square between her shoulder blades. She’d been shot while she was trying to escape.

  With trembling fingers, I brushed aside her hair, needing to see the truth for myself, needing to be certain.

  Beneath the golden curtain, her face, turned to the side, was ashen, and her wide eyes were vacant.

  My heart ached as I lifted her hand, clutching her cold fingers. . . . Fingers I’d held not so long ago during a riot in the park, a day that I’d decided to save her life, when we’d gone from being rivals to friends.

  And suddenly I wished I’d listened to Brook when she’d warned me about her father. When she’d warned me he’d made threats against me.

  Except she got it wrong.

  I wasn’t the one in danger by being here today. I wasn’t the one who’d been injured.

  It was everyone else.

  Somewhere below me I heard a strange clicking sound, and I set Sydney’s hand down reverently, once more brushing my fingertips over her cheek. A final farewell.

  Zafir reached for my arm. “We have to go,” he insisted, ushering me down the steps.

  I heard another click, this time closer, and I glanced up to see a man, just a few steps below me, holding a camera. It wasn’t something most people owned, the camera. It had been a luxury item even before the days of Sabara’s rule, and seeing it here, in the streets, seemed odd and out of place.

  I thought Zafir might take it from the man since he was pointing its lens right at me, snapping photo after photo. Instead, the guard moved to stand in front of me, signaling to one of the soldiers near the top of the steps who rushed down and escorted the man away from us. I didn’t know if they’d let the man keep his images, or his photography equipment. It wasn’t my concern at the moment.

  When we reached the bottom of the steps, the woman who’d been screaming the boy’s name—Phoenix—stopped us.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” she said weepily, still forgetting to speak in Englaise as she clutched her small boy to her heart. “Thank you for saving my son.”