The Pledge (5 page)

I didn’t want to be nervous. Just the opposite, in fact. I’d passed those arrogant Counsel kids—
her
among them—every day for the past twelve years, and I was tired of pretending that I couldn’t hear the contempt in their voices. Or the words behind it.

Sydney didn’t bother answering me directly, which made my skin itch all the way down to my bones, in places I would never be able to scratch.

She looked to her mother, dressed in an impeccable white suit—a color rarely found among the Vendor class. It was too impractical, it stained too easily. She was a doctor probably,
or an attorney, or possibly even a politician. And the moment Sydney opened her mouth to relay her words through her mother, the world around me vibrated, a familiar warning that I should no longer be capable of understanding them.
“Tell her I’ll just have the water.”
I could feel Sydney’s glare fall upon me.
“Wait! First ask if they serve clean water.”
The smooth dialect of her foreign tongue slithered from her mouth and felt greasy to my ears.

I forced my eyes downward while they spoke among themselves.

“Thank you,” the woman answered, her voice absent of the oily feel as she slipped back into Englaise for my benefit. “We’ll just have some water.”

When I heard the universal language once more, I tipped my head back up. “I’ll give you a few minutes to look at the menu,” I answered as blandly as I could, trying to mimic the mother’s diplomatic tone.
Politician, for sure,
I thought. “I’ll be back with your drinks.”

I hid for as long as I could behind the wall of the serving station, slowly pouring water into three glasses. As much as I wanted to do unsavory things to their drinks, I knew my father’s heart would stop beating in his chest if he caught me, and I didn’t want to be responsible for widowing my mother or leaving my little sister fatherless. I considered it a sign of monumental willpower that I was able to resist, and I was more than a little proud of myself.

I took several breaths as I looked around the restaurant. I thought about asking Brooklynn if she’d be willing to trade tables with me, just this once, but I knew that would be
considered offensive—an insult to the Counsel family at my table. And Brook was happy with her table—men she could flirt with and flatter, trying to pad her tips. Besides, she hated the Counsel kids almost as much as I did.

She would hate them more if she could hear what I heard.

When I realized I had no other option, I gathered the glasses and went back into the crowded dining room.

“Have you decided what you’d like yet?” I asked in smooth Englaise.

Again, Sydney didn’t bother disguising her toxic tone, and I felt my resolve slipping.
“I’d like to eat somewhere else. I don’t know why we can’t eat somewhere less . . .”
She looked up at me before I had the chance to drop my gaze, and our eyes locked momentarily.
“Shabby.”

My cheeks burned, and I tried to tell myself to look away from her, but I couldn’t. It was the right thing to do. It was respectful. And it was the law. She wasn’t speaking to me; I wasn’t even supposed to understand what she was saying.

But I did.

My hands were shaking as I set the glasses on the table. Water sloshed over the sides, splashing the candle’s flame and making it sizzle and then sputter out.

Sydney squealed theatrically and jumped up from her chair as if I’d just thrown the entire glass of water in her face. She glared at me, her mouth gaping in disbelief, and when I glanced down, I could see tiny water droplets on her snowy white blouse.

“Idiot!” she shrieked, and this time I understood perfectly. Everyone did. “She looked at me,” she accused, making her
statement not
to
me but
about
me in a voice so loud that the entire restaurant could hear her now. “Did you see that? She was looking right at me when I was speaking Termani!”

Her father—the man with the smiling eyes—tried to calm her, slipping into the Counsel tongue of Termani to soothe his daughter.
“Sydney, calm down—”

“Don’t tell me to calm down, that moron practically assaulted me! Something needs to be done. She broke the law. I can’t believe you’re not outraged. I can’t believe you’re not already calling for a hanging.”
She dabbed frantically at the nearly invisible splash marks with her napkin.
“Mother, do something! Tell them that this—this imbecile should be turned in!”

This time I
did
gaze downward while I pretended not to listen to things she was saying about me, most of which should never have been spoken aloud in any language.

Panic paralyzed me, and my throat squeezed shut. I dared a quick look around me, with only my eyes. Brooklynn stood frozen, staring back at me, and behind her, all three of the men sitting at her table were watching me. For a moment, my gaze locked with that of the third man—the one Brooklynn had been intent on making notice her. His eyes were dark and intense, focused solely on me as he leaned forward now, no longer disinterested.

I grimaced as I heard my father rushing out through the kitchen doors to see what all the commotion was about. I turned my eyes his way, and recoiled as I met his stare, knowing that I’d made a mistake.

A deadly one.

“I’m sorry,” I said aloud, to no one in particular.

“What happened out there?” Brook asked, rushing to my side and squeezing my hand so tightly that the blood was cut off from my fingers. “What was she talking about? You didn’t look, did you?”

I stared at her, unable to speak, or even to breathe. Still.

Out in the restaurant, I could hear the girl’s mother, her voice calm and even—very diplomatic. My father had fallen silent, and all other sound in the restaurant had ceased. I wanted to hear what she was saying, but the closed doors—and the blood rushing past my ears—made it impossible.

Brook clutched my hand even tighter as she looked at me, her eyes widening, searching my face for answers.

Suddenly the woman stopped speaking, and we both turned toward the doors to wait.

There was a long pause, and I thought my heart might explode. Each beat was painful as I told myself that this wasn’t happening, that I hadn’t just made such a grievous misstep. Surely I couldn’t have forgotten. My parents had worked so hard to teach me, to instill the importance of never,
ever
mistaking one language for another. And to never,
ever
break the rules.

And yet, here I was. Waiting to see if I would die.

Brook’s fingers laced through mine as the door swished open, and my father’s solemn face regarded us as we stood there, his eyes falling to our intertwined hands.

My mother had taken Angelina outside until a resolution could be reached, one way or the other. She didn’t want my sister to hear what was being discussed.

“Well.” Brook exhaled, her voice pinched. “What did she say? What did they decide to do?” Her nails cut into my palm.

My father stared at me, and I could practically hear his disapproving thoughts and sense his disappointment. But it definitely wasn’t a look you gave someone on her way to the gallows, and I felt my breath loosening from the knot in my chest.

“They’re not turning you in,” he stated flatly, and I wondered if he even realized he was still speaking in Englaise. “They think the girl might have been mistaken, that she was upset because you spilled water—”

“But I didn’t—”

His hard glare stopped me from trying to defend myself.
Don’t you dare lie to me,
he told me with that look. And he was right. I fell silent, waiting once more.

“You were lucky, Charlaina. This time no one realized—” Now it was his turn to stop short as he glanced at Brooklynn. Brooklynn, who knew nothing of what I could do. At last he sighed, and when he spoke again, this time in Parshon, his voice was softer.
“You need to be careful, girls.”
And even though he addressed both of us, I knew his words were directed solely at me.
“Always be careful.”

“Come on, it’s the first club we’ve heard about in weeks. I don’t think we should miss our chance to go.”

I’d just finished clearing the last of the tables and I was exhausted, but I knew better than to complain. I worked hard, but my parents worked harder—from sunup to sundown—never
giving voice to their weariness, even though I could see it etched in the new lines on my mother’s face and in the worried expression my father wore each and every day.

“I don’t know, Brook, a club is the last place I feel like going tonight. Besides, where’d you even hear about this place?”

“Those guys. The ones from table six. They gave me the address and said I should bring you with me.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “They were asking about you, or at least one of them was. I think he kind of likes you.”

“Or maybe he just felt sorry for me after I nearly got myself hanged.” When Brook stiffened, I realized it might be too soon to be glib about the incident. Clearly, she wasn’t amused.

“I think it’s better if I just go home,” I said, trying to change the subject. “My dad’s really mad at me.”

But Brooklynn was determined. “It’s early, and you can stay at my house tonight. That way he doesn’t have to know you’re going out. Besides, it’ll give him a chance to cool off.” She turned her wide eyes on me, the way I’d seen her do to hundreds of different men. “Just go for a while, and if you don’t want to stay, then we’ll both leave.”

I stopped what I was doing and put my hands on my hips, practically daring her to look me in the eyes and lie like that. “No, we won’t.”

“We will. I swear it.”

I pursed my lips, but felt myself relenting even as I asked, “What about Aron? Is he going?” I already knew the answer, of course. Brooklynn never asked Aron to come with us.

Brook rolled her eyes as if my question was unreasonable. “You know they’re not exactly looking for more boys at the
clubs, Charlie. Besides, Midget gets all twitchy and over-protective.”

The door between the kitchen and the dining room had been propped open while we cleaned up for the night. My father passed the doorway, and I caught a glimpse of his hard stare. I felt him pinning me to the ground, reminding me with that single glance that I’d messed up.

When he was gone again, disappeared into the depths of the kitchen, I looked back at Brooklynn. “All right,” I muttered, deciding that maybe Brooklynn was right, maybe my father did need some time to cool down. “I’ll go.”

iii

Brooklynn must have known that I was having second—and even third—thoughts.

I glanced around. Something didn’t seem right. Most of the clubs were downtown, tucked away in the industrial districts, but somehow this was darker—and dirtier—than any of the places we’d ever been before.

From the streets behind us, I heard the faint crackle of the loudspeaker. The message was so muffled and tinny that if I hadn’t already memorized the words, I wouldn’t have been able to make them out: “PASSPORTS MUST BE CARRIED AT ALL TIMES.”

It felt as if even the queen had abandoned this part of town.

“Seriously, stop worrying, Charlie. We’re in the right place.”

The brick buildings were defaced with layers of fading graffiti. The windows that weren’t broken or boarded over were coated with grime. Cigarette butts littered the ground amid the rotting garbage. The stench of decomposing food was
bad enough, but the mingling odor of human waste made it hard not to gag.

And yet conspicuously absent were the new homeless of the Serving class who had infiltrated the city, sleeping on the streets and sidewalks, seeking refuge in doorways and alleys, scavenging for food scraps and spare change.

But as we walked, I heard—and felt—the distant stirrings of music trying to break free from one of the warehouses ahead of us.

Brooklynn stopped, pointing at a flash of red paint near the end of the alleyway. “I told you! That’s it.”

I knew she was right, because it was the only door that was freshly painted. Probably in years. Possibly decades.

Brooklynn hurried down the alleyway and bounced up the two steps in heels that seemed recklessly high, heels that had once belonged to her mother. I glanced down at my plain sandals, the brown leather straps laced around my bare ankles.