The Earth Dwellers (20 page)

I speak over the silence. “Do people here really believe the natives are savages?” I blurt out.

Lin stares at me and I know I’ve been too obvious. “Who are you?” she says.

~~~

I wait until Lecter concludes the announcement—raising a fist and promising to eradicate the rest of the savages that threaten the good people of the New City, or some such nonsense—before answering.

“I—I’m a moon dweller,” I say, desperately trying to decide where to go from here. Can I really tell them? Can I really trust them? I said it myself: Avery and Lin are different. But are they allies? If I just leave, walk out the door, will they forget about me, that I ever existed? They know my name—my fake name, yeah, but the one that the damn chip in my arm is linked to. They could tell someone about me.

“Yeahhh…” Lin says, urging me on. “But you’re not
just
a moon dweller, are you?”

At some point, I’m going to have to trust someone, or I’ll never learn the ropes. And if I don’t know the ropes, I’ll stick out more than a star dweller in the Sun Realm.

I stare at Lin, mulling over my decision.

She rushes on. “Look, we have NO love for Lecter, for the way things are run around here. Whatever your game is, I want in. I can’t take another second of this creepy, God-forsaken city. I know Avery thinks things are worse down below, in the Star Realm, but they’re not. Not really. At least down there we can live life the way we choose. Whatever you’re hiding, tell us. You won’t regret it.”

The conviction behind her words is as hard as steel. Either Lin’s a really good actress, or she’s being honest.

I take a deep breath. This is it. My best or worst decision. My gut says I can trust these people, and I’ve learned to trust my instincts. The truth.

“I snuck into the New City because I’m helping the natives,” I say, holding my breath.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Siena

T
ristan’s staring at the prisoners and they’re staring back up at him.

And then Tristan jumps on the guy, right on top of him, like he might strangle him to death. Only he’s not strangling, he’s…well, I think he’s hugging him. “Roc,” he says. “You crazy son of a—”

The prisoner—I s’pose I hafta call him Roc now—groans and says, “My gut, you’re gonna rip it open…”

Tristan rolls off of him, shifts to the girl with the sunny hair, says, “Tawni.” She hugs him and we’re all just standing there staring at Tristan hugging the Glassies. Or, wait, if he knows ’em, then either they’re not Glassies or Tristan is, and I think we decided Tristan’s not, right? Things’re getting more wooloo than a prickler casserole made from Perry’s left arm. Sorry, Perry, but you know it’s true.

“What’s with the mask?” Roc asks Tristan.

“Like we always knew, the air’s not good up here,” Tristan says. “Especially for people like us who aren’t used to it. We’ll need to get both of you masks too.”

“What the burn is goin’ on?” Skye says. At least she and I are thinking the same way.

“These two,” Tristan says, getting up and pulling the girl, Tawni, up after him, “are my friends.” He helps Roc to his feet, too.

“I say kill ’em anyway,” Skye mutters, but no one pays her any attention, and for once I think she’s joking.

“And why are they here?” Wilde asks.

An arm ’round each of ’em, Tristan says, “Now that’s a good question.”

Roc, the one with the brown skin who almost looks like he could belong with us if not for the strange britches and shirt he’s wearing, says, “To find you. It was easy. We just spoke to the scientist you introduced us to before you left, arranged transport to the surface. You put me in charge, so he couldn’t refuse me.”

“We were worried,” Tawni adds.

Tristan shakes his head. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“What? We were just going to do nothing when you and Adele didn’t come back?” Roc says. “It took all of two days for everything to start falling apart again.”

Tristan smirks, pushes Roc’s shoulder. “So you came to get me because I’m needed below?”

Roc’s eyebrows lift and he pushes Tristan back. “Oh, wait, you didn’t think we came because we were worried about you? No, no, no, the Tri-Realms, Tristy. Personally, I was hoping you were taking an extended vacation, that maybe I could kick back, sit on the throne for a while…”

“Bastard,” Tristan says, but there’s no anger in his voice and I finally realize they’re joking, like friends do.

“
Roc
,” Tawni warns, using her eyes like weapons. Turning to Tristan, she says, “We were worried about you and Adele both, regardless of what my idiot boyfriend says. He could barely sleep when you didn’t come back.”

“That’s the last time I share my secrets with you,” Roc mutters, but he moves over and puts an arm around Tawni. Not a “friend” embrace, like the one Tristan gave her, but something more intimate. “Speaking of Adele, where is she? Not as light a sleeper as you, I guess?”

Tristan’s chin falls to his chest. His eyes close. “She’s…not here,” he says.

“What do you mean, ‘not here’?” Tawni asks, her voice about as hard as it’s been since she started speaking.

Tristan doesn’t seem as talkative all of a sudden, so I figure I can be helpful and I blurt out, “She’s in the Glass City.”

“What?” Roc says. “You don’t mean the…” He trails off.

“The earth dwellers,” Tristan says, eyes still closed, head still down. “She infiltrated the New City to try to stop them.”

“Stop them from what?” Tawni asks.

Tristan looks up. “From killing everyone who’s standing around you right now.”

~~~

We give the prisoners, who I guess ain’t really prisoners any more—except to Skye, who keeps muttering that we should at least tie their hands t’gether—water and food and a place to sleep. Wilde also manages to scrounge up a couple more masks, stolen off of dead Glassies. Tristan tells ’em ’bout all the stuff they missed, and even though he skips over the part ’bout the Icers quickly with only a few words, Skye leaves the tent and I hafta blink a few times when my vision goes all blurry. Roc and Tawni, whose eyes’ve been wide for most of the story, are suddenly interested in their hands.

“God,” Roc breathes when Tristan finishes.

Tears are making tracks down the tops of Tawni’s cheeks, disappearing beneath her mask. These two ain’t Glassies. Glassies’d be cheering right ’bout now, wetting their britches with delight.

“The sun goddess only watches us, gives us hope,” I say. “But we hafta make our own choices. The Glassies made theirs today.”

“The Glassies?” Roc says. “You all kept calling us that. You thought we were from the New City?”

“Yes,” Wilde says. “Before Tristan and Adele, anyone that looked like you were Glassies. The enemy.”

“That’s why that crazy girl who was here earlier wanted to kill us,” Roc says.

“I’m pretty sure she
still
wants to kill you,” I say. “And watch what you say ’bout her. She’s my sister and she’s grieving something awful right now. Looking for revenge.”

“Because of the…Ice—Icers?” Tawni says.

I nod. “They were our friends,” I say. “But one of ’em was more’n a friend to Skye, and she doesn’t let people in very often.”

“That’s horrible,” Tawni says. “The earth dwellers are horrible. Like ten times worse than the sun dwellers.” She looks at Tristan. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Tristan says. “I want things to change as much as anyone. That’s why I didn’t come back. I have to do what I can to help these people, the Tri-Tribes. We can’t let Lecter get away with mass murder.”

Skye steps back in. She’s been listening the whole time and her eyes are on me, softer’n ’fore, but still twice as hard as the canyon walls. “Now yer talkin’,” she says. “If I don’t get to kill you all, then I wanna kill Lecter.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Tristan

I
still can’t believe Roc and Tawni are sitting in front of me, lifting their masks to sip water out of a skin and eat prickler, and learning all about what’s happening up here. They’ve been asking questions, just like Adele and I did, for near on an hour now, and Skye and the rest of them have been answering every single one, taking them through the situation. There’s a bloodthirsty gleam in Skye’s eyes every time Lecter’s name comes up. I don’t blame her.

“Without the…”—Skye’s voice cracks slightly, and she takes a deep breath—“…our friends to the north, even if Adele can take care of things on the inside, we still don’t have the numbers to beat ’em.”

She’s right. Adele could assassinate Lecter and it probably wouldn’t make one bit of difference. The soldiers would get orders from some other follower of Lecter and do the killing just the same. We simply need more bodies.

“Roc,” I say. “Tell me about below.”

Under the torchlight, what I can see of my half-brother’s face looks orange. “The generals have been asking to meet with you since the moment you left. Their troops are angry, frustrated. They were winning the battles in the Moon Realm when you ordered them to withdraw. They want the green light to start the bombing again. The generals say the delay is giving the rebels time to regroup, to refortify.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That you decided to become a hermit and live the rest of your days in a cave, letting your hair and beard grow to your knees,” Roc says with a straight face. I give him a look. “What do you think I told them? I lied, held them off as best as I could, said you were dealing with a lot right now, in talks with the leader of the Resistance, General Rose.”

“And that worked?”

“Hell no. They left me alone for an hour, maybe two, and then they were back on me like a bad hair day.” Roc’s still cracking jokes, but his eyes are grim. He’s stressed. “They finally said they’d take matters into their own hands if they had to. We caught the first scary-box-rocket thing to the surface, fell outside the cave like a couple of newborn babes, and wandered the desert for almost a day before we ran into your new ‘friends,’ who immediately began discussing whether to kill us now or later.”

“They tend to do that,” I say, trying a smile but not quite getting there. Crap. The Glass City is the rock and the Tri-Realms is the hard place. I’m stuck.

But there’s really no choice. “We’ve got to go back,” I say.

“Yer leavin’ us?” Skye says, her eyes eating me alive.

“No…yes…it’s not like that.”

“I knew you were a baggard. Yer woman’s probably burnin’ us ’round too.”

“No. Skye, no.” She seems surprised that I said her name, like I know her; her face lights up for a second before returning to a dark frown. “Skye. Seriously, I’m with you.” Her hands are clenched at her sides and I can see the hurt on her face. There’s a person beneath the hard shell she’s built around herself. Human feelings. Pain and loss. I can almost see the goodness seeping out through her pores. “Skye,” I say again, pulling my thoughts together. “I have a plan. No one’s abandoning you.”

She purses her lips, breathes deeply through her nose, slowly unclenches her fists. “Spill it, dweller,” she says.

Looking right into her eyes, I say, “In three days’ time, we attack the Glass City.”

~~~

Even Skye seems satisfied now. Everyone’s happy, or at least as happy as possible given there’s a good chance we’ll all be dead in less than a week.

After some rest, Hawk and Lara will escort Roc, Tawni, and I back to the cave, where we’ll return to the Sun Realm. Our mission: to convince as many soldiers as possible from the Tri-Realms to accompany us back to the surface to fight with the Tri-Tribes. We’ll be counting on Adele to help find us a way into the New City by then, or at least create a disruption in the earth dweller chain of command.

Skye and Wilde will lead their own forces northward, toward ice country, looping around the edge of fire country and then moving south. While the Glassies are searching to the west, they’ll be northeast.

If all goes according to plan, we’ll converge on the New City in three days, from the two places they’ll least expect to be attacked from. There are a million variables in the plan that could go against us, but Skye’s right about one thing: we have to act first, not wait for Lecter’s army to hunt us down and massacre us like they did to the Icers.

With Roc already snoring softly beside me, his arm draped around Tawni, I finally stop staring at the tent roof, which is turning from black to brown with the rising sun.

~~~

“Git up you lazy, wooloo baggard!” a voice says, shoving me out of a dreamless sleep. The voice sounds familiar, but the words don’t make sense coming from his mouth.

Someone shoves me for real, and I grab at the arm, blinking my eyes open. I pull Roc hard, throwing him off balance. He tumbles over me, cracking his head on one of the tent poles.