Crowne Rules

by Reiss, CD

  I search for memories of my fiancé’s face, of the food fed each other in a ritual consummation. Our mutual pleasure as I was at last allowed to put my training to good use, and give my husband the body I had saved for him.

  But I come up with nothing. Instead, what surfaces is the stuff of nightmares: the line of my father’s jaw, and the cold steel in his voice when he invited the half-eared driver to shoot me. The buzz and rattle of the FDR above us, and—between my legs—the throbbing heat caused by my terror.

  It was too horrible to have been real.

  My hands continue their path down my body, checking now for blood or scars, evidence of real, serious violence—whatever happened that I wasn’t awake to remember. But it isn’t there. I am intact, I realize.

  Too intact.

  There’s no soreness between my legs, which is the final bit of proof that my memory is good. We didn’t complete the marriage ritual. Didn’t even make it to the Hollow.

  I am still a girl. A burdensome child who takes and takes from those who can provide, and the knowledge causes me almost as much pain as the realization that this means that the memories I do have—the terrifying, paralyzing ones—are very, very real.

  And now I am… where, exactly?

  Gathering my courage, I carefully open my eyes, blinking until they adjust to the blinding light, focusing it into black-outlined rectangles, squares, shapes gone rhomboid from the distortion of perspective.

  The shapes are glass and the dark outlines are the casings between them.

  Winter sunlight falls in dazzling streaks through its dusty panes. The sun is nearly directly overhead, which makes it close to noon. I’ve been dumped into a greenhouse, where I’ve been out for half a day.

  I sit up and gingerly get to my feet, but the world tips over, and I land on my hands and knees.

  So, I crawl into the direction I’m facing. The floor is cracked tile, grouted with decades of dirt. I push past a green plastic nursery pot with hairy soil stuck to the sides. A flat yellow stick with a flower genus printed on the side.

  Plant in full sun six weeks before last frost. Space seeds 4-6”.

  Sprouts will emerge in 5-17 days. Keep soil moist until 6” tall.

  My head feels like it has a brick wired to each side, pressing down against my skull, forcing blood and fluid through the veins.

  I’m alive.

  Approaching a counter with two empty shelves under it, I have to remind myself through the headache that I’m alive. I can reach for the bottom shelf. I can feel the cold steel. I can get my feet under me. I can pull myself up high enough to lean on the second shelf and when my stomach cramps from hunger and a bodice that isn’t as tightly strung as I remember. I can feel every organ in my body. I close my eyes against the pain.

  I’m alive, but why?

  For the good of all.

  My brain sings the elementary school answer out of habit, like the second line of a jingle.

  In the blessed darkness behind closed lids, I pull myself to a standing position.

  Slowly, I open my eyes, and I am flying. There’s no ground outside the windows. No street. No pavement. Nothing nearby. Only a ledge and then…nothing.

  The horizon is cracked into the geometry of the city, and from this I get my bearings. The greenhouse is on a rooftop, several stories above the rooftops of all the nearest buildings. Manhattan is spread out around me on three sides, laid out as if it’s within reach.

  Chrysler Building this way.

  Twin Towers there.

  Brooklyn, endlessly into the haze of Montauk, and the Atlantic ocean, to the place my people sailed away from like their asses were on fire.

  New Jersey.

  Central Park, wildness inside the right angles of green frame.

  I am west of Times Square and a little north.

  I am in a boiling pot, twenty stories above the grind of Hell’s Kitchen.

  The dizziness has retreated. I’m warm enough, so the place must be heated, but it doesn’t seem to be in use; a few metal shelves and racks are mostly empty, save for the occasional stack of trays or flowerpots, a stray bag of soil moldering on the tile.

  My headache is all pain now, and I can manage pain. I can even turn it into pleasure, but now it’s only a travel companion I can ignore as I push my way to the east side of the structure.

  This side is set back from the edge, leaving roofing surface between me and the drop to the street. A white plastic chair surrounded by cigarette butts is pushed against the HVAC unit.

  There’s a door to my right. It leads into the building. Solid, flush at the edges with no molding. It’s even painted the same color as the one wall as if it’s supposed to be incongruous.

  I’m not surprised when it’s locked, but I’m frustrated.

  I turn the knob. Pull. Yank. Leverage my foot against the wall as if muscle and bone could beat a deadbolt

  “Hey!” I pound the metal. “Hey! Driver guy!”

  I punch the door as hard as I can, screaming with every bit of air I can fit inside my lungs, and pound harder. Shocks of pain rattle my wrists and even with the gloves, the sides of my hand burn from the friction. I’m going to break a bone, shatter my insides, bash them to jelly before I even find out what happened.

  Maybe that’s for the best.

  Maybe that’s what needs to happen.

  Or maybe this is pointless. I push myself away from the door and go back to the east side of the greenhouse.

  I can see the building I’ve lived in since daddy was promoted.

  I lay my palms on the cold glass, but the apartment we live in faces the other way. It has its back turned to me, and I’ve just started to understand I’m a princess, trapped in a tower, and I’m completely alone.

  Stepping back from the edge, I search for a door in the glass and find it, but it’s locked tight. I yank the cast iron lever anyway. It’s that move that makes me realize how loose my dress is around me, the corseted top that should be sculpted against my ribs now a loose raft of fabric and boning. I reach for the laces that should be keeping me secure and realize with a start that they were taken while I was unconscious. No wonder it’s so easy to breathe.

  And suicide will be that much harder.

  I have spent my life being educated in the womanly arts, being trained to spatchcock birds and knead dough, wield a sewing needle and calm any man’s flaring temper, but they never covered escaping kidnappings. Luckily, I know how windows work. I take another step back and pick up one of the pots, a terracotta thing with some heft to it, and throw it against the greenhouse’s wall with all my might.

  It shatters on impact, and the glass absorbs the blow with a dull, disinterested thud.

  I throw another, and then another, watching them explode, splintering uselessly into fragments and dust. I shriek out a sob of rage and fear, and the sound startles me—I clap my hands over my mouth.

  You will not speak.

  My father told me to be silent.

  Or scream.

  I’d forgotten.

  Or do anything to show them you feel fear.

  No one comes, and for a moment, it seems like a mercy.

  Then I am confronted with the cyclops gaze of a camera I hadn’t noticed before. It’s mounted in a corner, too high to reach, its lens shiny and black, as menacing as the view down the barrel of a gun. Next to it, a red light blinks. I turn in a slow circle, wary, now, and see another camera, and then another, and another, each one aimed so that there are no blind spots in the greenhouse. They can see every angle.

  Whoever they are, they’re watching me closely.

  I’ve always known the Colony had enemies, but until now that concept was vague and shadowy—as I got older, I started to think of them as nothing more than bogeymen Dows used to keep little girls in line.

  Of course the Outside People would destroy our way of life if they knew about it—but they don’t know about it. How could they? We are stealthy and smart. Law-abiding citizens, fully i
ntegrated into the system for generations. We’re nothing more than a web of invisible connections.

  The cameras creep me out, and I instinctively hide my face behind my hand, then look for something to hide under—a table, a chair, a pile of burlap, anything to shield me from that impassive, all-seeing gaze. But there’s nothing: just empty racks and broken pots and my ruined dress hovering inches from my yet-unruined body.

  The camera can see down my top. I press the neckline to the skin and look right at the camera.

  “Are you just a pervert?” I ask it. “Pathetic.”

  The door to the greenhouse bangs open. I whirl around to find myself once again face-to-face with the half-eared driver, now dressed in plain clothes: dark pants and a white button-down, open at the throat. The sleeves are rolled up to reveal his forearms; though he’s thin, I can see that he is corded with muscle, his body coiled like a whip. He’s tall, too, and surprisingly broad-shouldered; despite his being slender, I don’t think I stand a chance if I attack him outright. Especially since the cold façade he presented in the car has cracked open to reveal a simmering cruelty that scares me more than anything I’ve seen yet today.

  “Sarah Antoine,” he says without an ounce of emotion. He’s stating a fact and I am that fact.

  You will not speak.

  My voice catches in my throat, but he doesn’t seem interested in what I have to say.

  “Only daughter of Petyr Antoine, six-term New York state senator and one of the most powerful Watchers in the Colony.”

  I had known he knew about us—when he’d asked my father for a list of our elders in the car, there had been no mistaking what he meant. But still, it’s a shock to hear someone from outside the Colony say its name. And mine.

  One of the first things a Colony child learns is how to deny her world if Outsiders ask. I respond automatically, my voice surprisingly proud for someone who’s shaking in her skin.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  His laugh is mirthless. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not—“

  “Sarah,” he says, and the way he says it, I remember the feeling of the gun at my head, his look of determination, the way a potential for violence seeped from his pores, making me feel terrified and alive.

  He knows about us, and he means us harm.

  And yet, the force of him is like a vaccine, inoculating me against fear by giving me a dose of it.

  I bow my head.

  “Do you feel pathetic?” he asks. “You should,” he continues with an audible sneer, like the name itself is a curse, “you’re neither as powerful, nor as pure as you think.”

  I remain silent.

  “You think your little group, your secret society, will protect you. That it cares about you. You believe that it matters to be among the chosen.”

  He’s drawn close to me, but he doesn’t reach out and touch me. The malice radiating off of him is as palpable to me as his body heat.

  “You were wrong

  “It is my wedding day,” I say to the floor.

  “I don’t have any sympathies,” he assures me. “So if you’re trying to appeal to them, you can save your energy. You’ll need it.”

  My eyes settle on the hollow of his throat, near where his pulse pounds, and I think: okay. He can claim that he had no human side, but he is still a man. I have been trained to please men. Perhaps that will work to my advantage.

  “Why don’t you ask me the names? You have me. Just ask me who the *elders are.”

  “And you’ll tell me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re quick to promise what you can’t deliver.”

  When I try to put my gaze back on the floor, he takes me by the chin and points it up until I’m looking right into the dark emptiness of his eyes.

  “Don’t they teach you to keep your chin up for everyone but your husband? Chin up, legs open. Right?”

  If I ever found solace that he couldn’t know us inside and out, those comforts are no longer. He knows everything about what I know, and what I’m not permitted to know.

  “What do you want then?” I ask. “You know I can’t give you names I don’t know. You know I don’t own anything. You know I’m useless.”

  His hand falls away from my chin, and I make an effort to point it upward without his help.

  “Maybe I just want a forbidden plaything.”

  “They’ll find you and kill you.”

  He points his index finger at the ceiling and wags it once.

  “Correct. They’ll let me torture and abuse you before I kill you, as long as they’re little hive isn’t disrupted. They’ll let you die for the good of the group. But if I stick one piece of me inside one of your well-trained holes, they’ll erase me from God’s memory.” He shakes his head and takes one step back. I suddenly feel air on my breasts where the loosened bodice falls away. The man isn’t baited. “If, in your Colony education,” he says, “they taught you the world was fair, they lied to you then, too.”

  I look up, and look him in the eye. I will not reveal anything to him, I vow. Not one drop of information.

  “At least,” I say. “Tell me your name.”

  “Darius.”

  “Darius, I—”

  “Be quiet, princess.”

  My jaw snaps shut. He circles me, taking in my dusty dress and tear-streaked face, making it clear that he’d just as soon spit on me as have to keep looking at me.

  “You’ve always thought you were special, so much better than other people, haven’t you?”

  I look down again. He’s managed to hit a sore spot—I have always been prideful about my sewing, no matter how hard I tried to avoid it. I was congratulating myself on my gown just this morning. And my father’s position of power, both within the Colony and in the Outside, has certainly shielded me from certain harms. I always knew I’d marry. I’d never have to give my body as a quean. None of the girls in my cohort could be as sure.

  “I’m not a princess,” I insist. “I’m not special. You see it from the outside. You think you know who we are, but you’re just another pathetic Outsider who doesn’t get it. No one is special. No individual is greater than the group. If you want to abuse me, go ahead. If the council needs to kill you to protect us, they will. If my death protects all of us, then my life is forfeit. Proudly. I have no name. I have no face. I am one of many and we are one.”

  Darius looks at me and doesn’t say anything, stretching the silence between us until his attention is so taut I squirm.

  “I know that’s what they teach you,” he says before breaking his gaze to come behind me. I feel him there. I feel how my dress hovers away from my body. Feel his eyes probe in the space between, looking for the place the shadows cast my body into mystery. “But I never met anyone who believed it.”

  I feel his breath on my skin, and I want him to touch me so badly I have to swallow back a plea.

  The Dows told us horror stories when we were little—tales of what depraved Outsider men have done to Colony women who thought they were too important, too special to stay under the group’s protection. Seduced by promises of love or money or freedom, as if having no place in the world was a blessing and not a curse.

  The men lived for nothing besides themselves, using them and threw them away, leaving their soft parts consumed and discarding the husks on the street.

  Every lurid detail rises around me in vivid Technicolor, Darius’ threat so vivid that when I try to breathe, my lungs fail me again.

  “How do you know so much about us?” I ask, distracting myself from the heat of his body and his animal scent. I’m facing east, in the direction of the apartment building that has its back turned on me. If I can keep my attention there, I won’t fall to my knees.

  “How I know?” His voice and breath move from one shoulder to the next as if he’s stroking me with a fingertip. “Irrelevant. Ask me what I know, and I can spend all day telling you about you.”

  “You
don’t know us.”

  “No?” He pauses, and I’m convinced he’s going to touch me. “I know that you haven’t had anything to eat or drink since sundown yesterday. And I know why.”

  The afternoon sunlight is starting to make me sweat, a clammy thing that spreads at the backs of my knees and my neck as my pulse hammers too hard in my wrists.

  “Good for you.” I whisper. I know why I’m hungry and dehydrated and I don’t need him to recite it.

  He does anyway.

  “Because after the wedding is the Intercession.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “Where he tells you what he expects you to submit to. Before he takes you to the bridal chamber of the Hollow. He leaves his mark in an empty vessel. No food. No water. Just his filthy leavings inside you.”

  “You’re ignorant and you’re a prude.”

  “Have you ever wondered why the Intercession is after the wedding? When it’s too late to refuse?”

  “No,” I lie.

  He steps away. A piece of clay pot crackles under his heel, and I start at the sound. For the first time since I broke the pots, I realize that the pieces are sharp enough to shear skin and soft, vascular tissue.

  Darius stands to my right and pushes a shard away with the toe of his shoe.

  I could kill myself. End it all. Remove the possibility of him finding my weaknesses. Whatever Darius wants from us, he wants badly enough to kidnap me. If I’m his only leverage and I remove myself from the equation, he won’t get what he wants.

  “You broke the pot you were supposed to shit in.” He flicks the shard away. It skips and clicks a few feet, landing on top of another one and transferring its energy until they both take off in opposite directions.

  “I need water,” I say.

  “I know.” He’s in profile—not fully turned to me when he says it—and I can see where the top of his ear ends in a surgically straight line.

  Turning away, he opens the door just enough for me to see light on the other side, then slips through and closes it behind him.