Grace

by Elizabeth Scott

  I look like I am used to hearing orders and obeying them.

  The thing is, I am.

  CHAPTER 21

  I was told what to do—what I was—so many times. I had been told what would happen to me so many times. I was raised knowing the Angels were reminders that the People would never give way. I was raised knowing my life was to be used in hopes of changing the world.

  I was to keep nothing in my heart but devotion. No love, no hate, no room for anything else but what I was to do. How I was to serve.

  So when the soldier gestures for me to follow him, I do.

  I have no other choice.

  I only had one once, and it has brought me here, to me following behind this soldier, resignation heavy in my heart.

  But the soldier surprises me.

  I expect to be dragged into their washroom—which I am—but instead of reaching under my skirt he asks about my imaginary sister, the one who has a baby due very soon.

  “Was she sick when she was first carrying the child?” he says. “Did it—did it make her ill? ”

  I nod slowly, staring at him warily and trying to hide my surprise at his question. Every woman I have ever seen with a rounded belly in the Hills spoke of being ill. Some with pride, some with resignation. But they all spoke of it. They all knew it would happen.

  He blows out a breath. “Was there . . . what did you do about it? What is there to do to fix it? ”

  I cannot picture this soldier with a family, a pregnant wife, sister, niece—anything. He is Keran Berj’s creature and no more, except here he is, talking to me.

  Asking for my help.

  I clear my throat.

  “Rest,” I say. “Bland foods. Sickness is normal. It passes.”

  He stares at me for so long I think I have said the wrong thing but after a moment he hands me his flask. He pulls it away after I take three swallows. The water is so cold it bites into my teeth. It is glorious. I want more.

  “You weren’t that helpful,” he says when I look at the flask, and then opens the door, pushes me out. His hand is heavy on my shoulder as he walks me back to my seat, and as I sit, he presses something into my hand.

  I wait until after he is gone to open my fingers.

  Sitting on my palm is a waxed packet of rice balls. The rice is fresh, the grains still puffed and not shriveled from the heat.

  “Don’t cry,” Kerr whispers, and the pinch he delivers to my arm is almost enough to mask the note of fear in his voice.

  “I’m not,” I whisper back, but there is something wet on my face, and I am.

  “Are you . . . hurt?” Kerr says, low-voiced.

  I shake my head. How can I say that three sips of water and these rice balls—gained from answering a simple question—are the most kindness I have ever gotten from anyone? How can I say that someone asking me for advice is the most I have ever been judged worthy of?

  “If you aren’t hurt, then why are you—?” Kerr says, a whisper against my ear, and I turn, look at him.

  He draws back as if I have hit him, and I know what he sees. I can’t hide my surprise now. Or my pain.

  I shove a rice ball in my mouth. I offer him the other one and wonder if his softness will make him reach for it, or if he will turn away.

  He opens the top button on his shirt instead, and as he does, I see raw red skin.

  I see why Chris told me he had a use for me.

  I am traveling with Jerusha.

  I am traveling with death itself.

  JERUSHA

  CHAPTER 22

  Once, back when I was still living with Da, some of Keran Berj’s followers thought he had too much power. They looked at his gold statues and palace and realized he cared only for himself, not them. They never made any overtures to us, but we heard of them. We knew they wrote letters and smuggled them out. We heard that faraway countries asked to send inspection teams to visit, to see if life under Keran Berj’s thumb was as sweet as he claimed.

  Keran Berj replied by saying he didn’t believe in violence, and that he and his people, his land, would not participate in any ongoing wars or in any wars that were to be. Then he sent money for “relief” or “care” or “rebuilding” to every nation that had ever questioned him. He said there were tragedies going on around the world and “we” only wanted to help. He even built a glass tower and had the word PEACE carved into it to show how much he loved everyone.

  No inspection teams came, and Keran Berj sent his Guards out to round up everyone who had spoken out against him. They say the piles of bodies in the City were so thick that entire streets were closed. In the end, rather than bury the dead, Keran Berj simply lit part of the City on fire, and built a park covered with statues of him over its remains.

  And then he passed laws. It was illegal to speak against Keran Berj or even mention him to outsiders. It was illegal to even think ill of him, and those he thought might have died in mass hangings that everyone in the City was required to attend.

  He also sent Special Instruction Units to visit every school, and each child was given a copy of stories he’d written about how Keran Berj was now both mother and father to all because his God had told him so. There was more—we had one of the booklets, and all the Angels had to read it to understand what we were facing—but the very last thing Keran Berj said was that everyone had a role to play in keeping the world safe, and that if you ever saw or heard someone say something bad about him, you should write him a letter. He said he would read each and every one because he knew he could trust his children.

  Lots of letters were written, and people—mostly older sisters and brothers, but some parents and a few aunts and uncles and grandparents—were taken in for questioning. Nothing serious was found—a few people were fined, or were reassigned to different, lesser jobs—but each child who turned in a family member got a package of sticky honey sweets and a little cap with Keran Berj’s face on it, and so more letters were written.

  The sticky sweets and hats made children happy and families scared, but Keran Berj wasn’t happy. He was sure there were still plots against him, but he could find nothing. He tried hanging his son for thinking badly of him, but it didn’t help him find anything. It just scared people.

  After that, he started giving long speeches about the losses he’d suffered for God and everyone who lived in his land. He even said he was praying for the People. Of course, he also called us “savage killers” and promised to bring “swift and sure” justice if we didn’t listen and obey him, but still. He spoke of us and there was talk among the People that perhaps he could be moved against. That all his killings had finally frightened his people enough to act. To rise up.

  Then Jerusha Nichola wrote a letter to Keran Berj.

  Jerusha Nichola lived in the City. He had met Keran Berj twice, and had even taken a tour of his office with a few other select children. His father, Pazi, was Chief Inspector for Factories, and his mother, Eliana, was Director of Music. Pazi made sure the factories ran the way Keran Berj wanted. He was also responsible for sending those who knew how to make the goods the factories churned out to a hot death in the desert. He made it so Keran Berj was the only choice for everything in life.

  Eliana wrote songs for Keran Berj. None of them are sung now, but Keran Berj’s “Song of Praise” was her creation, its refrain a simple chant about Keran Berj’s glory that all were once required to learn. With consequences if one didn’t.

  Pazi and Eliana did not like Keran Berj. They had both written letters to outside governments, and paid a fortune in bribes to make sure their names were never mentioned to him.

  They thought they were safe because they’d paid so much money, and because Keran Berj killed others and not them, but after Keran Berj killed his own son they worried that perhaps someone would talk about what they’d done. They decided to offer to go on a diplomatic trip to a country eager for trade with Keran Berj, and never come back.

  They kept all this secret. Not even the servants they had
working for them, raw-boned country girls whom Pazi molested in the pantry and Eliana beat for not being quick enough with dinners, knew.

  But their son knew. He heard them talking when he was supposed to be asleep. And so he wrote Keran Berj a letter.

  His parents were arrested the day they were supposed to leave.

  CHAPTER 23

  There’s a famous picture of Jerusha’s parents after their arrest, their faces crumpled with fright as Keran Berj watches with one arm around little Jerusha, who smiles proudly at the camera and doesn’t look at his parents at all.

  Keran Berj made that photo famous because he had it turned into posters that were placed everywhere. He even had soldiers nail them into the lowest lying trees in the Hills—after first killing them by pouring chemicals into the ground so their very roots would sicken and die.

  We killed all the soldiers who we caught doing that—they were not Guards, and were no match for the Rorys—and used the posters to write our own messages. I even got to do one because we had so many, and I remember carefully writing RORYS FIGHT FOR FREEDOM! in hopes of a bit of praise from Da or even one of the women watching us because I was there, trying to be what I was supposed to be. Because every child was helping out, every child was showing that the People stick together.

  There was no praise, but I liked being with everyone else, being a part of the People without question for once. I still remember how we all looked at the other side of the poster—at Jerusha smiling while his parents were being taken from him, and how all of us, even the older boys, the ones who went on to die in battle as Rorys when I was learning how to die myself—and made the sign to ward off evil.

  Jerusha’s Law was passed the day before Jerusha’s parents were hanged, and Jerusha was there when Keran Berj raised his hand and ordered the ropes dropped around their necks. He was there when their necks snapped. He was there, standing next to Keran Berj, when they died, mouth full of honey candy and a smile on his face.

  Keran Berj made a speech afterward and talked about how brave Jerusha was. He showed off Jerusha’s neck, which was red, an open sore rubbed raw by rope. Jerusha’s parents had escaped the night before they were hanged and tried to kill their own son the way they knew they would die. Keran Berj said Jerusha was lucky to have lived, and Jerusha smiled.

  Jerusha was a vision of the future, Keran Berj said, and then Jerusha himself called his parents’ death a blessing. We burned all the papers we found proclaiming that, for while Keran Berj was evil, Jerusha was beyond that. To be so young and so cruel—he was the end of the world made flesh.

  We were not the only ones horrified by Jerusha. The letters written by children slowed to a trickle when his parents were arrested, and stopped after their execution. Keran Berj and his God could claim such things were necessary, but it was easy to see that if every child became Jerusha, all would eventually die. And Keran Berj would let it happen.

  We saw that and all thought as soon as it sank in that we, the People, were the only ones strong enough to say that Keran Berj was wrong in voices other than whispers, that others would join us.

  No one did, and the only smart thing I ever heard Da say was during this time. All of the People had gathered to discuss sending Rorys to villages to try and recruit spies, and after it had been discussed for one day, then two, Da stood up, crabby from being without drink, and spat out, “Following us is certain death. We go to that willingly, but his people won’t. They’re too scared. That’s what the little monster did for Keran Berj, scared them so hard they’ll follow him no matter what. It’s hard to believe you can be free when you know Keran Berj has made it so you aren’t safe with your own family.”

  Everyone shouted Da down, but when a group went out, they were greeted with stones and whatever weapons the village they went to could find. As if Keran Berj’s loving care, with his endless demands for money and worship, and his creation of a world where a boy would happily help kill his own parents, was something worth protecting.

  Da took me off to be an Angel soon after that, and Jerusha seemed to disappear. Once in a while he’d show up on posters the Rorys would bring back from fighting, and they were put in Angel House for us to study. The picture was always the same, the little boy with the honeyed smile as his parents died, but we all learned Jerusha went to the Keran Berj Academy and spent his summers as a Keran Berj Junior Volunteer Soldier. He was an example to be watched and every year, on the anniversary of his parents’ death, he and the Minister of Defense would visit Keran Berj and sing the new True Song of Praise.

  Some of Keran Berj’s followers whispered that Jerusha was dead, but we knew better. Keran Berj only showed pictures of himself when he was young and first came to power. He tried to freeze himself as he was, to act as if he would never age, and he needed Jerusha to be forever young too, because the moment he stood for—the deaths he willingly caused—still struck people cold.

  And with Jerusha kept forever young in everyone’s eyes, Keran Berj could use him again. Older and unseen, Jerusha could again do what he had all those years ago. He could be sent out to destroy. He could even come to us, claiming to be a simple soldier wanting a new, true life. And as he reached an age where that was possible, the Rorys killed any young men who came to us claiming they wanted to escape Keran Berj’s world.

  It wasn’t enough, and so then an Angel was chosen to find him, to stop him.

  Mary was sent.

  And she failed.

  CHAPTER 24

  I make the signs to ward off evil at Jerusha, not caring if anyone sees, and he grabs my hand. His hand is soft, the skin smooth like a child’s. Pampered from killing for Keran Berj, from being in his care. It makes my stomach roll, a lazy flip that sends the rice I just ate rolling up into my throat.

  “I’m not—I’m—” he says, and I pull my hand away.

  “You are.” I cannot touch Jerusha. Even I am not that soured in the eyes of the Saints.

  And yet I am with him. I am with Jerusha. Jerusha, who killed his parents. Jerusha, who lives in one of Keran Berj’s many palaces, who lives closer to Keran Berj than someone like the Minister of Culture could ever dream.

  If I get up now and run, I may be able to throw myself off the train before anyone can stop me. Death would be quick. Maybe.

  And even if it wasn’t, even if I somehow landed safely and ended up slowly dying in the desert, it would be better than whatever Jerusha has planned for me.

  “Stay still before you get us both killed,” Jerusha hisses, and he is holding my hand again, his grip surprisingly strong. His voice is so cold.

  He is Death, and he is here. He has come for me.

  I stay still.

  I wait for what I’ve always been told is my fate.

  CHAPTER 25

  The train lets out a low, piercing scream as it rounds a corner, and there is still nothing to see but sand. The wind blows it like dust up against the windows.

  I look at Jerusha.

  I have seen death many times but when it came for me, I did not want it. I turned away. I ran.

  And now it has caught up to me again, sits wearing the face of a pale, hollow-eyed boy with a red scar around his neck from where his own parents tried to stop him and failed. With a raw wound on top of it, a gift from an Angel.

  From Mary.

  I touch my own throat and Jerusha smiles at me. It is a cold smile.

  I look away, shaking.

  “We can’t all be loved,” he says. “Some of us are just . . . wrong. Keran Berj used to tell me that somewhere two souls were crying because they had a little boy who said he loved them.”

  “He lied,” I say, trying to keep my voice strong. To be strong even now. “Why would they cry for you?”

  “Why would they? ” he mutters, and then looks at me. “They wouldn’t, of course. They don’t.”

  “I won’t tell you where the People are.”

  He shrugs. “I don’t care about that.”

  “You’ll never find t
hem. They don’t leave paths, don’t need trails. They’re like ghosts, they’re—”

  “Silent warriors, the Rorys protected by the Saints, I know,” he says. “The People, beloved by the Hills and all that. If you care for them so much, why did you leave? What did you do? Draw maps in the dirt for Guards in order to get enough food to make your stomach stop shrieking in protest for a day or two? ”

  I stare at him.

  “It happens at times, and besides, we all know you’re starving,” he says. “How can you not, living around all those trees? No proper ground to plant, no spaces to stay in and work the soil, make it your own.”

  “The earth belongs to itself, and I would never—I’m not like you.”

  “But you’re here, aren’t you? ” he says, and leans forward, looks into my eyes. I draw back, but not before I see they are brown, like I wish my own were.

  “I wouldn’t—if I’d known you were—”

  “What? If you’d known I was to travel with you, you’d have stayed behind?”

  “Yes.”

  He blinks. “You could have . . . . you could have gone home? ”

  I swallow. “The People . . . we don’t take life or those of others lightly, for we are not to judge anyone’s path or worth. We are not like you.”

  He grins, laughter stretching his mouth wide, though he holds the sound inside, muting it to a silent push of air. His breath smells like mint.

  “No?” he says, and I think of the Rorys discussing their fights, their kills. Of how the People would sing the numbers of the dead. Of how I learned the best ways to kill my target and as many of those around him as I could.

  “We believe in what we fight for,” I say. “We fight for freedom, to live as we will. All else must be set aside for that.”

  “Freedom depends on setting aside everything in its name,” he says.