The Pledge (18 page)

She glanced up, looking dazed as blood trickled down the side of her face.

The moment her head lifted I realized that I recognized her.

It was Sydney, the Counsel girl from the Academy who taunted us when we passed on our way to school each day. The one who had come into my family’s restaurant that night and mocked me, thinking I couldn’t understand what she’d said.

Before I could tell myself otherwise, I was running, racing toward her. I was jostled and bumped, shoved and pushed, in my effort to get to her, each individual on a mission to save only themselves.

By the time I reached her, I almost stepped on her myself. Body was pressed against body, and I was nearly swept past her.

I thrust myself as hard as I could through an opening in the crowd, forcing my way through. A hand reached into my hair and yanked. My scalp felt like it was on fire, yet I leaned forward, jerking my head away and crying out in pain.

No one heard me. Or even cared.

I could see Sydney, still struggling to drag herself out of their way. She looked broken. I staggered a little, but I was determined, and I reached down to grab her, gripping her
beneath her arms and hauling her backward, farther off the pathway. Farther from the punishing feet that battered her.

The wailing sirens were constant, but I didn’t have time to worry about what they meant.

I leaned down and yelled right next to her ear, hoping she could hear me. “Can you stand? Can you walk?”

She looked confused as she blinked up at me, and I wondered if she’d even understood what I’d just asked. Then slowly, almost too slowly, she nodded, reaching out her hand for me, allowing me to help her to her feet.

She was wobbly at first, swaying, and I held on to her, waiting for her to steady herself. She opened her mouth and said something, but I couldn’t hear her. The words were swallowed by the roar around us.

I shook my head and shrugged.

She stepped closer, her mouth nearly at my ear, and tried again. “Why are you doing this?” Her voice was pinched.

I wasn’t sure what to say, how to answer her question, so I didn’t try. “We have to get out of here! Where do you live?”

She just pointed east. It was where I’d suspected she would need to go, where a Counsel family would live, in the upper-class neighborhoods of the east side of the city.

But I needed to head west, toward my end of town. Toward my family. Toward Angelina.

My heart squeezed. I needed to find my sister.

“I can’t go with you!” I screamed as loud as I could. “Can you get there on your own? Do you know where to meet your family?”

Her hand shot out, grasping mine, and I realized that she
was giving me her answer. She didn’t want me to leave her. She didn’t want to be left alone to find her way.

She was coming with me.

The crowds had thinned; most of the people had already escaped into the night, in search of shelters where they could hide. We were no longer in danger of being trampled, but there was something else to fear as strange new sounds popped in the distance, one after the other, rising above the ever-present shriek of the sirens.

Holding my hand, Sydney recoiled beside me, her body shuddering after each new explosion.

I recognized these unfamiliar sounds, even though I’d never actually heard them before.

Bombs.

They were the sounds of bombs.

This wasn’t a drill, and it wasn’t a warning. The city was under attack.

I had to get to Angelina.

We hadn’t gotten far when I felt myself being yanked from behind, and before I could wonder who was pulling at me—or why—I was already stumbling backward, thrown wholly off balance.

I fell into Max’s arms for the second time that night, although this time I had no intention of pushing him away. And from the feel of his arms around me, like iron bands, I doubted he would have allowed it.

“I was looking everywhere for you!” He was yelling, but even
if he hadn’t been, I would have heard those words. “Where were you?”

I could barely breathe, so when I tried to answer it came out muffled against his chest.

He relaxed his grip so I could tilt my head back, and as soon as I saw the look on his face, any anger I still felt dissolved.

He was worried about me!
I hated that it was this moment, with the sirens threatening and the sound of weapons crashing through the night sky, that I felt my heart softening.

I reminded myself that Angelina was still out there as I squashed these new and unwelcome feelings. This wasn’t the time for infatuation.

“I need to get to my family! I need to find my sister!” I called out, wiggling free from his arms and running again, leaving them both to decide whether or not they would follow.

I couldn’t hear their footsteps, but I knew they were there with me. Max kept up easily and ran beside me. I worried about Sydney, though. I thought she might fall behind, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. And every now and then I would catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye, assuring me that she was, somehow, keeping up.

The sirens were everywhere, but I couldn’t tell which direction the explosions were coming from. At times I felt like we might be running toward them, while at others they seemed to be very far away, on the other side of the city.

Maybe it was both.

Men and women, children and the elderly, had been swarming the streets since we’d left the park. But by the time we’d reached the west end of the city, the streets were all but
abandoned. I worried that we were already too late, that my family had taken shelter somewhere and I’d be unable to find them in the night.

I didn’t allow myself to consider the other possibility . . . that the war had come too close to our home.

I almost cried with relief when we turned the final corner and all the houses on my street were still standing, unscathed by the bombs that were pummeling other neighborhoods in the city.

There was the flicker of candlelight coming from inside my house.

“Stay here!” I yelled to Max and Sydney.

Sydney’s face was creased with pain, and I knew it had been too much for her to run so far, so fast. Blood dried along her left cheek, crusting in her hair. She seemed grateful for the moment’s rest.

I rushed to the front door just as it was opening from the inside. My father nearly ran into me, carrying Angelina in his arms.

“Oh, thank heaven! Magda! Magda!”
he called to my mother as he pulled me against him.
“She’s here! She’s safe!”

He squeezed me tight, Angelina smashed between us. My mother pushed past my father, grabbing me, touching me, ensuring herself that I was all in one piece.

Then my father handed his squirming bundle over to me; Angelina tangled her fingers into my hair, wrapping her arms around my neck.

“No!” I shouted, understanding his intentions. “You have to come with us! You can’t make us go alone!” My voice was hoarse from yelling, but I needed him to listen to me.

The crushing sound of a bomb rattled the air nearby and I jolted, ducking my head without thinking. The explosions seemed to be growing louder. And closer.

He shook his head, and I could see his answer written on his face. He’d already made up his mind. “We’re staying. You girls are better off without us.” This time he spoke in Englaise . . . so unusual for my father, so out of character. I wasn’t sure which surprised me more, that he was casting his daughters out into the war-torn streets of the city, or that he’d not spoken in Parshon.

My mother handed me a pack and I took it, slinging it over my shoulder.
“There’s food inside. And some water!”
She was yelling her words at the same time my father was pushing me down the front step.
“When this is over, we’ll come for you. Until then, protect your sister, Charlaina.”
She stepped onto the street, gripping my shoulders and staring me hard in the eye, serious in a way that I’d never seen her before. Her words were tough—harsh.
“And don’t come back to the house until you know, without a doubt, that it’s completely safe.”
She shook me once.
“I mean it, Charlie. Stay away from here and avoid the troops—on both sides. And whatever you do, never, ever reveal to anyone what you can do.”
When her hands tightened, they conveyed something else—something softer—as her face contorted, her eyes welling with tears.

She kissed each one of us on our foreheads, taking just a moment to breathe us in, to memorize our smells.

Then my father shoved me, forcing me to take the first step away from them. I turned, clutching Angelina to my chest as
I ran back to the corner where Max and Sydney awaited us. Bitter tears stung my eyes as I obeyed.

It felt wrong. All of it.

I worried for my parents and for my sister. But worse than that, I worried for myself, and I felt selfish for it.

x

Max took the pack filled with food and offered to take Angelina as well, but she clung to me. It was just as well; I needed her as much as she needed me.

“We can go to the mines!” I called above the constant wail. “We can hide there until the fighting ends.” I led the way, wondering which was the right way to go. Above the tops of buildings in the distance, I could see intermittent flashes that could only mean the ruin of homes, businesses, and schools. Flames beat at the sky, smoke darkening the night.

And, still, the sirens screamed.

Almost no one ventured out now; the streets were desolate. The power grids had fallen, and as we ran, the lights flickered and then vanished all around us. I didn’t know how the sirens continued, but I guessed that they were tied to another system—some sort of emergency backup power—that kept them operating even when the rest of the power failed.

The blackness felt like it was reaching down into my lungs, suffocating me.

Angelina must have felt it too, because she dropped her face to my neck and refused to look up.

I envied her. I wished that I could hide my eyes, bury my face, and choose
not
to see the world crumbling around me.

Thankfully, Max had a battery-operated pocket light. It wasn’t much, but when he turned it on, we could at least see the ground at our feet so we wouldn’t stumble as we ran.

My legs were already burning, and my arms quivered from the weight of my sister, but hugging Angelina to me made me feel safer. And as much as I hated to admit it, having Max at my side made me feel better as well.

Sydney didn’t slow us down, and that, at the moment, felt like a minor miracle in itself.

But that was when everything changed, and my plan of making it to the safety of the mines disintegrated, like so many pieces of a written promise set to flame.

Ahead of us, the white flash of an explosion, followed by an earsplitting crash, rippled through the air. I could practically taste the concussive shock wave as it rattled the night.

Angelina jolted in my arms as I stopped running and curled myself around her, doing my best to protect her. Her fingernails dug into me. Max grabbed my arm and dragged me closer to the cover of a building at the other side of the street, away from the blast.

My ears were ringing, and I could no longer distinguish the sound of the sirens from the humming that came from inside my own head. The two became one, and I knew it wasn’t just me as my sister reached her hands up and stuffed her tiny index fingers into her ears. She was shaking all over,
and I squeezed her tighter, trying, without words, to comfort her.

A second explosion detonated somewhere close to the first one.

But Max was already pulling us in the opposite direction. Away from the mines, and away from the latest assaults on the city.

I wondered briefly how long it would be before the blast of bombs would not be our only concern. How long until enemy ground troops marched into the streets, wreaking their own brand of havoc and killing with reckless abandon.

How much longer until none of us was safe?

For some reason the words of the Pledge drifted through my head at that moment, and I tried to find the line that spoke of protecting the people, of keeping one another from harm. But of course, there was no such line. The Pledge was meant only to safeguard the queen.

Max’s grip on my arm tightened, and I realized he was speaking to me. I tried to focus, concentrating on his lips and the muffled voice that made its way through the buzzing in my head. His eyes were focused and intense, his black eyebrows drawn together as he leaned closer to me, his breath warm.

“Where is the nearest shelter?” he was yelling.

I looked over and saw that the fingers of his other hand were laced together with those of Sydney, who cowered beside him.

I told myself that it didn’t matter. Not now. I just needed to get Angelina to safety. Max, and his hands, were not my concern.

I tried to think, to remember all the places we’d been told
to go during the countless drills. Churches and schools. But all of them were above ground, and they all seemed too exposed, too at risk during the bombings.

Another explosion ricocheted through the air, and this time I felt the ground rumble as I dropped to my knees, covering Angelina’s head with my arms. I heard her whimper—or maybe I only felt it—and I made sounds to soothe her, although I doubted she could hear them.