by Emily Colin
Before I could lose my courage, I looked away from the man, to the edge of the square, where the two bellators stood at attention. “He threatens the innocent who spares the guilty,” I said, raising my voice for everyone to hear.
The crowd breathed in again, this time in horror. These were the Priest’s words to say, words that signaled the death of the man in the square. They were a call to arms, and not for a child to utter.
I knew this. And yet I had said them, because I was suddenly certain the guilty party here was not the man, but the rest of us—the Priest, the Mothers, the bellators, the judgmental crowd. I had said them, but not with their usual intent—a trigger that would loose the blades of a bellator, severing the condemned man’s head with a single vicious downswing. I wanted the man to know that, though he might not be innocent of the charges the Priest had leveled, all of us were implicated in his death. And I wanted him to hear these final words from someone who understood.
“Eva Marteinn,” the Priest said, his voice inscrutable. “Look at me.”
And so I lifted my eyes to his.
For what felt like forever, the Priest searched my face. And then he turned toward the bellators. “Answer her call,” he said.
As one, the bellators’ gaze fixed on me. When they spoke, it was in perfect unison. “Either by meeting or by the sword.”
The Priest had made me the instrument of the man’s destruction, lent me the power to command the Bellatorum. It was a heady thing—but I knew there would be a cost.
The bellators moved into the square, prowling toward us with a pantherlike, anticipatory grace. One forced the man down to his knees and held him still; the other freed his sverd and raised it, gleaming silver in the light. The man did not struggle. He closed his eyes, the sun’s rays glinting off his dark hair, and I saw his lips move silently. “Do it,” he said.
The blade came down, unerringly finding its target. The man made a terrible noise, and then we were standing in a pool of blood. It spread around my shoes, made squelching noises when I tried to lift my feet.
The man crumpled on the stones, the life gone out of him. I couldn’t look at him anymore. So instead I looked straight ahead, at the children who had come with me from the Nursery. Their faces were as white as their uniforms, and they stared at me with big, shocked eyes. I couldn’t tell which they thought was worse—my hubris in speaking the Priest’s call, or the death of the man, which had not been the glorious, thrilling event they’d imagined. Either way, I had a sinking feeling I would be the one to pay the price.
I hadn’t been afraid when the Priest called me into the square, or when the man had died. But I was afraid now, and I despised myself for it. The world faded into the background, the only noise the roaring of my blood in my ears. And then I saw his face.
He stood behind the line of children that had come from the Nursery, with a group of other kids—a tall, lithe boy whose face looked vaguely familiar. He was wearing a green uniform, to show he was in his last year of study at the Under-School, before he turned thirteen and began his preparation to be Chosen. I studied his face—a stubborn jaw, cheekbones that were beginning to take on the sharp definition of adulthood, lips that curved upward even in repose, belying the angularity of his features. His eyes were wide and green and fixed on mine.
I could appreciate the boy’s beauty, but the notion held no significance. It was not as if I would ever be allowed to touch him. In the Commonwealth, romantic love—and, of course, lust—is forbidden. Our children are conceived in test tubes, then implanted in an unrelated carrier who gives birth to them, avoiding unnecessary attachment. From there, they go to the Nursery, where they are raised with interchangeable groups of other children their own age, supervised by a rotating group of Mothers.
So what drew me to the boy was not the hope of a future with him, however fantastic. I looked at him because he was the only one who looked back, without horror or shock or anything but a cool acceptance. Him, and one other. Standing in the second row, Instruktor Bjarki met my eyes, wearing an expression that might be interpreted as sympathy. Then she glanced down, disassociating herself from my foolishness—and how could I blame her?
But the boy did not look away. As I watched, he inclined his head toward me, and in the gesture I saw affirmation: You’ll do.
I drew a deep breath, and sound roared back around me—the murmurs of the crowd, the Priest’s benediction for the dead man. The bellators had retreated to the edge of the square, and the one who had killed the man was cleaning his blade. The other stood guard, contained and watchful.
These two were young—no more than twenty—and their bodies were pure muscle, honed to do battle and survive. Their faces were expressionless, identical in a bone-deep way that went beyond the differences in hair and skin and eyes. As I watched, the one who was cleaning his blade slid it back into his sheath without needing to look. If I had tried that, I’d have sliced off my braid.
There was no law saying only boys could join the Bellatorum. I didn’t know why there were no girls among their ranks. Maybe none had ever wanted it—after all, life was easier almost everywhere else. Not more certain. Just...easier. Or maybe they had wanted it, and the Executor had refused.
I had seven more years until my Choosing Ceremony, but I knew what I hoped for: a career in comp tech, the field for which I’d already shown the strongest aptitude. There had never been a female bellator, so I didn’t worry I’d be inducted into their ranks. Nonetheless, the rush that flooded me as the bellators stepped forward to do my bidding, the fleeting sensation that it was I who swung the blade, whistling through the air to cleave deep into flesh and bone—it disgusted me. How could I see the horror in such things, and yet delight in them? Surely taking pleasure in such things was a terrible sin.
There in the square, my feet soaked in blood and the sun breaking bright over the horizon, I felt cold certainty settle over me. The Priests and the Executor claimed to enforce these punishments in the name of creating a sinless society, of suppressing our base, savage instincts to prevent another Fall like the one that had destroyed the natural order of things centuries before…but staring at the body of the dead man, I doubted their convictions.
The Caretakers had always told us that the Executor held us to such strict standards to keep us safe—from our own failings as well as from the threat of the barbaric Outsiders who roamed beyond our gates—but the Priests’ punishments were far more savage than any infraction we could hope to commit. As for the Bellatorum, they were meant to be the arbiters of justice—but in that moment, standing in the square, I saw them for what they truly were: murderers whose violence was sanctioned by the authority we citizens held dear. And when I spoke the words that belonged only to the Priest, when I held the black-clad warriors’ power in my hands—I’d been just as guilty.
You are a monster, I thought, daring to glance back at the red-robed Priest, a wolf covered in blood. You’re no better than an animal. And now...neither am I.
Sickened, I squelched across the stones of the square, leaving a trail of red footprints behind.
2
Eva
Seven Years Later
When I wake up on the morning of Choosing Eve, the morning after my seventeenth birthday, I don’t expect to see a woman’s eyes sewn shut before breakfast.
I get up at six in the morning, heading for my temporary job in the comp lab. With luck, after tomorrow, the position will be permanent. Though it is forbidden for me to take pride in my work, I have excelled, solving challenges the others could not, unraveling tangled lines of code that kept machinery running for the medics and restored power more quickly during storms.
I make my white-sheeted single bed, one of nineteen others on the third floor of the Rookery. Then I rummage the communal dresser until I find clothes that will fit, walk to the bathroom, and step into one of the five white-tiled showers.
Showers are exactly three minutes in length. They are not meant for lingering. Linger
ing could lead to self-admiration, to pride in one’s appearance and even lust, to the weight of rocks sewn into the hems of one’s clothes and the scorch of flames on bare flesh. Take a step down that path and before you know it, you’re on your knees in the square with your neck bared for a bellator’s sword.
So, no lingering.
The water turns off and I dry myself with a rough white towel from the rack. I drop the towel into one bin and my nightgown into the other, adding to the growing pile of items the natural-born will deal with when they come to pick up the laundry. I am not supposed to pity their lot, but I do just the same. It’s not their fault their parents were sinners.
At six-fifteen I head downstairs, pressing my palm against the scanner to identify myself as we must do when entering or leaving the Commonwealth’s buildings. The door gives and I walk out of the Rookery and into Clockverk Square, integrating into the group on its way to breakfast: the children of the Under-School clad in white, third-formers in their olive-green uniforms, the rest of us in brown and tan. Career citizens weave among us: white clothes for medics, denim and cotton for gardeners, yellow for seamstresses, purple for the surrogate carriers, blue for teachers. Red for the High Priests. And black for the Bellators of Light.
It’s rare to see a bellator at breakfast. Valentína, who has the cot next to mine, likes to joke that they probably catch small animals in the woods with their bare hands, skin them, and eat them raw. I doubt that very much. To be a member of the Bellatorum Lucis is to be disciplined in all things. It seems a waste to rob our woods of its squirrels and chipmunks, when you could sit down to a perfectly decent bowl of oatmeal and get on with your day.
The faces surrounding me are a sea of white, distinguishable mostly by the colors of their hair, eyes, and uniforms. They vary from porcelain to verging on olive—but there’s no one in the Commonwealth who could be described as dark-skinned like in some of the old books we’ve read. Rumor has it that the Outsiders who invaded from the south were darker; when I was growing up in the Nursery, the other children used to tease me for my black hair and brown eyes, saying that perhaps I was descended from the barbarians. Certainly the Caretakers always showed preference for the little girls with the fairest skin, their hair like butter and their eyes like cut-out pieces of the sky.
I have always found this to be ridiculous—not to mention hypocritical, given that the Executor himself doesn’t meet these standards. The more the other girls teased me, the more determined I became to find things to love about the way I looked—my eyes, I told myself, were the color of prized sipping chocolate; the hue of my hair matched the gleaming obsidian rock that lined the gorges. So what if I didn’t meet their standards of what was beautiful—I had something more, the ability to slip in and out of the shadows, to show the rest of the Commonwealth only what they wanted to see.
All these years—ever since that moment of realization in the Square—this is what I’ve done. Pretended to fit in, to think and feel like the rest. It is exhausting—but second nature, too.
At the dining hall, I line up between a sixth-former and a man bound for work in the cannery, shuffle forward, press my hand against the identification pad. The light above the pad flashes green and I step over the threshold, into the large, high-ceilinged room with its long wooden tables, each flanked by benches.
No sooner has the last of us made our way inside than the Executor’s face appears on the four vid screens that bracket the room and his resonant voice comes over the speakers: “Good morning, Commonwealth.”
His face takes up the entirety of each screen, dark bushy brows and deep-set black eyes, a large, hooked nose and a mouth that always frowns, even in repose. Looking at him the morning before my Choosing, I feel as if I understand. He has a lot of responsibilities, especially today. If I were him, I would probably be frowning too.
The Executor clears his throat, the camera panning out until we can see his hands, folded atop the uncluttered surface of his desk. “Please join me as I recite the Sins, that we may be empowered by their knowledge and encouraged to remain pure of soul.”
And so, together, we recite the Sins (pride, lust, sloth, envy, wrath, greed, gluttony) and after them, the Virtues (chastity, humility, diligence, temperance, kindness, patience, charity) along with their Latin translations, the language the Priests hold holy.
He regards us from the screens, his expression unchanged, as we deliver our daily recitation of the Oath of Loyalty. Save for the name of each Commonwealth, the Oath is the same for every citizen of the Empire. The other Commonwealths are scattered across the lands beyond our borders—or so the Priests and the Executor tell us. We will never have the opportunity to see for ourselves; our place is here. To leave is to die.
We pledge our loyalty to the laws of the Commonwealth of Ashes, and to the Virtues which make it strong, one Sinless society under the eye of the Architect, united through piety, discipline, and truth.
“Very well, citizens,” the Executor says when the last syllable of the Oath dies away and silence falls. “Let us recognize the core of our strength, the tenets that have allowed us to survive when so many others perished after the Fall.” He clears his throat. “With attachment comes tenderness,” he says, the first words of our catechism.
“With tenderness comes love,” we reply, our voices blending in a chorus that pleases the Executor. A smile lifts his lips.
“With love comes loss.”
“With loss comes hate.” The words are inflectionless, spoken in perfect synchrony.
“With hate comes chaos,” he prompts, his smile widening.
“Out of chaos comes order.” We stand taller, spines straight and hands at our sides, embodying the spirit of our creed, and the Executor nods with approval.
“It pains me to share that we have two sinners in our midst today,” he says, and the crowd murmurs. The Commonwealth sometimes goes weeks without the commission of a single sin. To have more than one, in such short order, is a terrible thing. Sins cannot go unpunished.
Around me, people have fallen silent. I’m sure they are taking the same personal inventory I am, wondering if they are about to be held accountable for mistakes they can’t remember making. Or mistakes they can, and hoped to keep hidden: a raised voice, a thrown water pitcher, an intercepted, over-long glance.
In the Commonwealth, you never know who is watching.
The vid screens go blank, and then an image appears—one of the seamstresses. It takes me a moment to recognize her, though, given the disfiguration of her face. Beneath her image, incriminating black letters scroll as the Executor speaks: “Pálhanna Lund. Guilty of the Sin of Envy. Crime: Coveting her neighbor’s promotion to supervisor. Punishment: Eyes sewn shut for a month, for we cannot covet what we cannot see.”
A shudder passes through me. The stitches are temporary, but the black thread against her white skin looks so barbaric—an accusation she cannot disguise. The fact that this woman’s trade—the needle and thread—was used against her makes it even worse.
“If I may have your attention.” The Executor’s gaze drifts over the crowd. “We have a second penitent today. Convicted of the sin of gluttony, for taking more than her weekly quota of books from the Library without permission. It can be argued that such an individual is only endeavoring to educate herself, to share her knowledge with the innocent souls we have entrusted to her charge. But here in the Commonwealth, we have learned from the mortal errors of those who lived to excess before the Fall, confusing self-glorification with the purity of spirit that can only come from living unencumbered.” His voice rises, his eyes glinting with fervor.
This is one of the Executor’s favorite topics—how, in the time leading up to the Fall, humans’ greed ran rampant, destroying the southern forests in search of timber and heating the seas so the fish choked and died. The southerners fled north, where a massive barrier was erected just in time to keep them out. They raged against it, scaling the stone and giving rise to a brutal war for
land and resources. In the end, the northerners won—but at a terrible cost. The seas flooded and retreated; the climate teetered between flame and ice.
To protect those northerners who remained, the Priests formed a series of Commonwealths in the area of the Empire where military bases were the thickest. Ours—the Commonwealth of Ashes, named such because, like the mythical Phoenix, it rose from the ashes to thrive once more—is the oldest and biggest. Legend has it that the city on whose back our Commonwealth is built contained the word “Ash,” which the Priests saw as a good omen.
The Commonwealth of Ashes is a seat of power, located high in the mountains, where it can be easily defended. Like all Commonwealths, it’s designed to keep us safe from the hordes of barbarians who prowl beyond our fences, eager to make a meal of whatever exiles are cast out from our gates. And like all Commonwealths, it is also designed to keep us safe from ourselves.
I have no idea what the world beyond our gates looks like; probably, I will never know. But one thing about this story has always troubled me. If the southern forests were destroyed, where were its inhabitants meant to go? It only makes sense that they fled north, toward safety. I’ve always seen them as desperate, rather than savage—children holding the hands of their Caretakers, thirsty and tired, wanting only safe haven…and instead, being turned away to die.
No wonder they turned to barbarity once they finally made it over the barrier, only to be defeated. They probably hate us, as the descendants of the ones that abandoned them when they needed help most.
Such thoughts are treasonous to harbor at all, much less when the Executor is speaking. I clamp down on them with an effort, focusing on his face on the screens.
“It is our duty to guard the unsullied state of your souls, for the past has shown us that only too easily can they become corrupt. So easily can mankind indulge our animal nature.” The Executor spins his chair to face us, steepling his fingers under his chin. “Citizens of the Commonwealth, it gives me no pleasure to acknowledge our final sinner, who shall be sentenced to serve you our finest food and drink today—and yet partake of none. Thus she shall experience deprivation that will return her soul to purity; thus she shall renounce her gluttony, to serve and sin no more.”
