The Refuge Song (12 page)

“What difference does it make?” Simon said.

“He killed the Confessor,” I said. “It cost him his life, but he did it. And we destroyed the machine they were using to keep track of all of us, and to decide who lived and died, and who should be tanked.”

Simon turned to Sally. “I'd heard the rumor that the Confessor had died. Is it true?”

Sally nodded. “I believe them. She's dead. And the machine that relied on her—it's finished, too.”

“But you still betrayed the Assembly,” Simon said to Piper. “Killing the Confessor, or dragging Sally along now, doesn't change that.”

Sally shrugged Xander's hand from her arm and stepped closer to Simon. The ring of weapons around us lowered slightly as she spoke. “I've fought for this resistance since I was fifteen, Simon, and in that whole time, I've never been dragged anywhere. I've seen and done things that you can't imagine, and I'm no stranger to hard choices.” She paused for breath. “Piper made a hard choice on the island. It was the right one. I've come here to vouch for him. But it makes no difference that I vouch for him and Zoe.” I noticed that she made no mention of me. “That doesn't matter. What matters is that you need them.”

“She's right,” Piper said to Simon. “I have information for you. There're things we need to talk about, and things you need to do.”

The woman close to me tightened her grip on the sword hilt.

“You don't get to tell me what I need to do,” said Simon. “But I'll hear your news.” He turned away. “You'd better come inside.”

There was a pause, and then the guards around us stepped back. The scraping sound, as they sheathed their weapons, was protracted, reluctant. Simon kept his ax in hand as we followed him farther into the quarry.

In the deepest part of the excavations, among the low trees that clustered there, was a handful of tents, staked out wherever the trees and boulders provided shelter from anyone looking down from above. Simon and his guards had been here for some time; long enough that the paths between the tents were worn down to shallow trenches of boot-clutching clay.

When Simon led us to his tent, I noted that the guards took up positions at the door before it had even fallen closed behind us.

Inside, both Piper and Zoe had to duck under the sagging roof. Simon, ax in hand, stood by the lamp at the far side of the tent and waited.

As soon as the door was closed, he sprang at Piper. Zoe drew back her throwing arm quicker than my intake of breath, but Piper's laughter disarmed us both. Simon was embracing him, the two of them chest to chest, and patting each other resoundingly on the back.

“I'm sorry about that,” Simon said, with a jerk of his thumb outside. “But you saw how most of them feel. If I'm to keep my authority, they need to see that I don't just lay down the red carpet for you.” He squeezed Piper's shoulder once more. “I hoped you'd be back.”

“So that you could punch me in the face again?” Piper said, one eyebrow raised.

“Sit,” said Simon, waving us to the side of the tent, where a table and benches had been cobbled together from fresh-hewn wood. “And eat something. You look like you need it.”

“We didn't come here for a tea party,” said Zoe.

“Speak for yourself,” said Sally. The bench creaked as she slumped down onto it and reached for the food.

Simon left us alone until we'd finished helping ourselves to the flatbread and water on the table. I made myself eat, but I was so tired that my head felt heavy on my neck. I poured a little of the water into my hand and splashed my face.

Simon lowered himself onto the bench next to Piper.

“You know I don't agree with what you did.”

“Say what you mean,” I interrupted. “Stop edging around it.
What you did
. Why can't you just say it? You would have handed me over to the Confessor. Or just killed me yourself.”

At least Simon looked me straight in the eye. “Yes. That's what I would have done. That's what I wanted Piper to do.”

“You know it wouldn't have saved the island,” said Piper. “They'd have taken her, and they'd still have killed the others.”

“Perhaps.” Simon leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and rubbed his face. “That's what some people believe, anyway, now that they've seen so much of the Council's ruthlessness. Perhaps you'll be able to persuade more people 'round to your way of thinking, now that you're back.”

“We can worry later about what people think. But there are things you need to know, about the Council's plans for New Hobart. Things that Cass has seen.”

“I'd keep quiet about the seers for now,” Simon said. “People might accept you back, if I'm seen to endorse you. And bringing Sally was a wise move. But wandering in here, trailing not just Cass but another
seer, and an Alpha, isn't going to help. After all that's happened, people need to feel that you're one of us.”

“Don't give me that,” Piper said. “Zoe's done more for the resistance than almost anyone. And seers are Omegas, just like the rest of us.”

“You know what I mean,” Simon said. His gaze, as he looked me up and down, said enough. I'd seen it before: the appraising way that people would stare at me, once they'd realized that my brand didn't correspond with any visible mutation. The distance that they kept, from then on.

Simon went on. “And since the island, they've got a better reason than ever to fear both seers and Alphas.” He looked at me again. “Tell me what happened. How did Kip kill the Confessor?”

I swallowed, and took a breath, but the words didn't come. Piper stepped in, and gave Simon a brief account of what had happened in the silo.

“I should've known you had something to do with that,” Simon said to Piper. “That'll go a long way in winning people over. They saw what the Confessor did, on the island. If they knew you'd had a part in killing her, they'd forgive you for what you did. They'd even come around to the seer.”

“We don't want their forgiveness,” said Zoe.

She hadn't even been on the island, but I noted how she took on Piper's guilt, and his defiance, as her own.

“You might not want it,” Sally said, “but that doesn't mean you won't need it. This isn't about your ego. It's about reuniting the resistance.”

“It makes no difference,” Piper interrupted. “We can't go around proclaiming that we were involved in killing the Confessor. The official story is that only Kip was there. If the Council links her death to Cass, they might decide to take out the Reformer themselves, to get rid of her.”

Simon sighed. “You're not making it any easier for me to welcome you back.”

“Did you think the job would be easy, when you took over?” Piper said.

“I didn't take over. You left, to chase your seer. Those who remained chose me to lead. I didn't choose this.” He grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “What about the song? Was that you as well? One of my scouts reported a bard in Longlake, singing about the refuges. Warning people not to go.”

“A blind bard? With a younger woman?” I asked.

Simon shook his head. “A young bard. He was traveling alone, my scout said.”

Piper and I exchanged smiles. The song was already spreading.

“I wouldn't be celebrating too much,” Simon said. “Every bard who sings it might as well be sticking their head in a noose.”

“Did the scout say anything about bards being caught for it?”

“No. But it's only a matter of time. Word's spreading.”

“That's the point,” I said.

“What news of the ships?” Piper asked him.

“Eight are moored nearby, at deep anchor off the peninsula. But the Council's increased its coast patrols, so we'll have to move the fleet east again. At least four of our ships were seized soon after landing, right by the Miller River. There's a report that
The Caitlin
went down, farther north. An unconfirmed sighting of
The Juliet
, much further north—could be that Larson and his crew are still on the move. The rest still unaccounted for.”

“That's good news about the eight, at least. But that wasn't what I meant. What about the ships out west?”

“Nothing.” Simon shook his head. “It was always a waste of time. I said so back then, too.”

“You've seen Sally's Ark paper yourself,” Piper said. “You know Elsewhere exists. You were outvoted.”

“We know it existed in the Before—that doesn't mean anything now,” Simon said. “And I was outvoted because you had the Assembly eating out of your hand.”

“They made a decision.”

“The Assembly's decision didn't seem to matter so much to you in the end, though, did it?”

Piper ignored the jibe. “
The Rosalind
and
The Evelyn
are still out there,” he said.

“We don't even know that—all we know is that they haven't come back. They could've sunk months ago, for all we know—or been picked up by the Council fleet.” Simon paused, and lowered his voice. “I did send scouts. Not that I held out any hope for Elsewhere—but I could use every ship we've got, not to mention the troops who were manning them. So I sent Hannah, and two scouts. They waited at Cape Bleak for three weeks. No signal fires, and nothing to see but Council ships patrolling. The winter storms were closing in. If the ships were still out there by then, there was no hope for them. I need my troops here, not waiting for ghost ships.”

His voice was grave. I was glad, at least, that he took no pleasure in telling us this.

Piper had closed his eyes against the news, but only for a few seconds. Now he was pursing his lips, eyes on the table in front of him. He was already recalculating, figuring out where to go from here.

“Elsewhere's still the one thing that can offer real change,” I said. I remembered how I'd felt, when I read the mention of
allied nations
in the Ark paper: a sense that the world had stretched, widened. That the blank spaces where our maps had always ended might hold something after all, and that there could be something beyond the Council. Be
yond the cycle of violence that pitted us against our twins, and killed both of us.

“I'm telling you now,” said Simon. “There'll be no more boats sent out while I'm in charge. That's the kind of gamble that you might be able to justify in decent times, but not now, when everything's gone to hell.”

“Isn't that the time that we need it most, though?” I said.

“While you've been preoccupied with your pie-in-the-sky ideas, I've been busy doing the real work of keeping the resistance going. We've been working day and night: organizing shelter and rations for all the evacuees. Reestablishing the communications network, and finding new safe houses, now that so many have been raided. Getting warnings to all the people who are at risk, given who's been taken. Monitoring Council troop movements, and keeping track of their fleet, too. We've identified a site in the southeast that might be able to accommodate some of the refugees, and we've got a team out there setting up shelters, to see the most vulnerable through the winter, at least.”

“It's not enough,” I said.

Simon turned to me. His voice was a low roar. “You have no idea what it takes to keep the resistance together.”

“It has to be done,” I said. “And I don't doubt that you're doing it well. But it's never going to be enough. It's just rebuilding what we had before. It's more running and hiding. You want to build another hiding spot, only this time near the deadlands? What happens next? Another Council raid, another attack. How can things ever change if running and hiding is all that we do? What about striking back?”

“How?” Simon threw out his hands. “We lost half our troops on the island. There might come a time when we can strike back against the Council. But it's not now. Not with our troop numbers slashed, and half our civilians going hungry and on the run.”

“It'll be too late,” I said. “That's what the Council's counting on:
keeping us downtrodden enough that we can't conceive of fighting back.”

“What would you do, to strike back?” Simon said.

“I'd send more troops north, to seek the ships again. I'd outfit new boats, ready to send out as soon as spring comes. But that's not all. I'd free New Hobart.”

chapter 13

Simon slammed his hands onto the table, knocking over one of the water mugs and setting a plate spinning.

“Freeing New Hobart would be a massive undertaking at any time—let alone now, with the whole resistance in disarray. You're talking about open battle. Attacking a tightly guarded town.”

I explained what I had seen: that the town would soon be tanked. Thousands at once, worse even than the insidious expansion that was already taking place in the refuges. I could picture it: Elsa and the children, and all the thousands of others in the walled town. The hubbub of the market square replaced with the sterile hum of the tanks. But Simon addressed Piper instead of me.

“All these mad schemes, the wild-goose chases. The boats out west. Throwing your lot in with the seer. Even that bloody song that the bards are singing. Now this. You could be doing real good, if you'd work with me, instead of chasing mad ideas.”

“One of our
mad ideas
got rid of the Confessor, and her database,” said Piper. “It's done more strategic good than anything else the resistance has achieved in years.”

“The people coming to me aren't concerned with strategy. They're just trying to survive,” said Simon. “They're afraid, and hungry.”

“They're right to be afraid,” said Sally. “The Council wants them all tanked, in the end. Survival isn't going to stop the Council, or keep us out of the tanks. You need to fight back, now more than ever. Throw everything you have into finding the ships and freeing New Hobart.”

“You've been doing this for long enough to know the responsibilities that I have,” Simon said. “I need to devote our resources to rebuilding. Reestablishing the safe houses, finding shelter for the evacuees . . .”

Piper stared unblinkingly into Simon's eyes. “I protected Cass, at great cost, because of her value to us. If you ignore what Cass is telling you, that sacrifice is in vain.”

I closed my eyes. Piper was doing the same thing that Simon had done—measuring lives in terms of costs and value. Everything reduced to some kind of calculation.

“It was your sacrifice,” Simon spat, “not mine. And I won't throw away more lives on the whim of your seer, just to make you feel better about saving her.”

“Then the price we paid on the island is for nothing,” Piper said.

“You don't need to tell me about the price.” The shout burst from Simon like one of Xander's cries. “I was there. I saw those people killed. But is that even the price you're talking about? Or are you just talking about the cost to yourself—being forced out of leading us?”

“This isn't about me,” Piper said. “Not at all.”

“Are you so sure?” said Simon.

It was nearing sunrise, and we hadn't slept since the previous dawn.
Sally made no complaint, but I saw the slight tremor in her hands as they rested in her lap. Next to her, Xander had fallen asleep with his head on the table.

“You need rest, all of you,” said Simon. “We'll talk more about this later” was the only assurance he would give, as he stood and headed for the door.

When he led us through the quarry to our quarters, the resistance soldiers were already awake, fifty or more of them gathered around the campfires. Their conversations stopped, and they turned and watched our progress on the muddy path. Sally, at the front, was greeted with smiles and, from two older men and a woman, salutes. But when their gazes turned to the rest of us, the smiles faded. They stared warily at me and Zoe, leading Xander between us. I looked back to see how they greeted Piper. A few nodded in acknowledgment as he passed, but a tall woman with red hair glared at him with her single eye, and a man leaning on a crutch spat on the ground, muttering something to his companion.

Simon guided us to a tent that had been hastily cleared of its previous occupants' belongings. Before he left, he reached for Piper again and clasped Piper's hand with all three of his own.

“I'm glad you're back,” he said. “Despite everything.”

As Simon was ducking out of the tent door, I called to him, looking once again at the yellowing skin around his eyes, and his wilting stance.

“What happened to you, since the island?”

His exhaled heavily. “I took over Piper's job, that's what happened.”

Ω

We rose before noon, after just a few hours sleep, though we left Sally and Xander to rest for longer. Back in Simon's tent, with Piper, Zoe, and a handful of Simon's advisers, I began to get some sense of the daily business of rebuilding the resistance. Periodically, the signal whistle would
be relayed down into the quarry, announcing the arrival of a scout. Messengers came to Simon with news of raids, of patrol numbers, and of the evacuees from the island still in search of safe haven. A scout from the east reported more expansions at Refuge 14, and of posters in the region announcing another increase in tithes. Another scout from near Wyndham brought rumors of tension within the Council: of more jockeying for power between the General, the Reformer, and the Ringmaster, since the Judge's death. We recounted our own encounter with the Ringmaster, and the news that reached Simon now seemed in accord with what we'd heard. The Ringmaster still commanded huge loyalty among the army but was increasingly sidelined in the Council Halls, where the General was ruling, with Zach at her side. But that was as far as our information went—in these days of strict segregation, it was harder and harder to gain any intelligence about the Council beyond the scraps of tavern gossip that filtered down to the Omega townships and settlements.

Throughout the long afternoon of discussions and plans, whenever the Reformer's name was mentioned all eyes in the room would turn to me. Zach was a problem to which my own body held the solution. All day I noticed how Piper and Zoe positioned themselves in front of me, between me and the others, and how Piper's arm never strayed far from his belt, loaded with knives. But hearing the news from the Council, I knew there were threats from which they couldn't protect me. I'd seen for myself how brutal the rivalries in the Council could be. The Judge had lived longer than most. If Zach had powerful enemies at Wyndham, then my death was as likely to come from an assassin's blade to Zach as it was from an ambush at the quarry. My own death might have nothing to do with me.

Over that day and the next, in Simon's crowded tent, I began to understand his exhausted demeanor. Each new report from a scout demanded decisions, and action: a doctor was dispatched to the east, where the newly established camp for evacuees was overrun with dys
entery, while five guards were sent with him to help the camp shift to a spot with a cleaner water source. One of Simon's advisers, Violet, was sent to a camp a day's ride north, to oversee the interrogation of a Council soldier captured near New Hobart.

“Will he be tortured?” I asked Simon.

Sally rolled her eyes. “This isn't a time for squeamishness,” she said. “Do you think the Council hesitates to use torture when they need to?”

“And is that our aim, then, to be like them?” I shot back.

Nobody had an answer. And the messengers and reports kept coming, most of them the same: news of families, or sometimes whole settlements, struggling with the onset of winter, after another year of high tithes and land that would yield only meager crops. More and more of them were turning to the refuges, not knowing, or perhaps not believing, what awaited them there. Others were being burned out of their homes, not by soldiers but by ordinary Alphas, in response to the news of the Judge's death, supposedly at the hands of his Omega twin.

Simon sat at the head of the table, his advisers beside him. He issued orders decisively, and remained calm, but the longer I watched the more he seemed like a man trying to gather water in his arms. And the more it seemed to me that we were all mired in the endless stream of small crises, with no chance to consider any larger strategy. Simon consulted us as he went about the day's business, and his advisers listened avidly to Sally, and even tolerated Piper's views. But when we raised the issue of the ships, or of New Hobart, they brushed us aside, returning to the day's immediate concerns: a new message about a raid on a settlement; the next scout's arrival. Even Piper was less insistent, now, on the subject of the ships. When he pressed Simon to send more scouts north, his voice lacked its usual conviction. I thought of the dark waves that I'd crossed to reach the island, and tried to imagine them whipped by winter storms, let alone the hazards of the ice sheets that lay farther north. I
looked at the rigid set of Piper's shoulders, his head slightly bowed, and knew that he was thinking of the same thing.

Each night, back in our own tent, I bent over the Ark paper. By now I knew every word by heart, and needn't have bothered with the paper itself. But I clutched the page as I ran over the words again and again, as if that fading sheet of parchment was a map that would help guide my visions to the Ark, or to Elsewhere. But all I could find was my own fear, and the tank water rising over New Hobart. I couldn't make the pieces fit: Elsewhere; the Ark; New Hobart.

“Perhaps the Ark's there—under New Hobart. Maybe it's that simple,” Sally said. “And that's why the Council seized the town—to get at the Ark.”

I shook my head. “No. I was in New Hobart for weeks. If the Ark were there, I would have felt it—places are the thing that I usually feel most clearly.” I'd felt the tank rooms under Wyndham, and the caves and tunnels through the mountain. I'd felt the island. “The Ark isn't in New Hobart,” I said. When I closed my eyes, I saw it again: the defenselessness of Elsa's open mouth, the liquid creeping in, thick and slow, like the probing of an unwanted tongue. The visions came again and again, until my jaw was sore from being clenched so tightly, and I was sweating, even though the ground underneath our tent was hardened with frost. I was so tense that the sounds of my own body felt exaggerated: the passage of air in my nostrils. The sound of skin on skin as I pressed my hands over my eyes and rubbed them.

“It's not finished,” Xander said, reaching for the paper. “The maze of bones.”

“What are you talking about?” I snapped. “Say what you mean.” I could hear the glint of hysteria in my own words.

Sally moved between us. “Don't talk to him that way,” she said, and I knew she was right. I looked at him, mouth opening and closing like a
fish. And I, more than anyone, knew that he wasn't trying to be obscure. I knew that his visions had knocked words loose inside his head and that he was scrambling among the wreckage.

“I'm sorry,” I said, and tried to reach for his hand, but Sally blocked my arm, turning her back to me as she soothed Xander.

All night I heard his mutterings and cries, his mangled words being spat from his mouth like broken teeth.

It was my fault, and my future.

Ω

On the third night, after midnight, Simon yanked open our tent flap.

“You need to come, now,” he said. He waited while we rose and threw on our clothes, his swinging lamp tossing agitated shadows on the walls of the tent. Xander was muttering, halfway between waking and sleep, so we left him to rest.

Outside Simon's tent, a guard was holding a horse, its gray coat dark with sweat, its hot breath steaming into the night air. When Simon entered the tent ahead of us, the woman inside stood hastily, but Simon gestured for her to sit. There were flecks of mud on her face from riding fast through the wet night. She was closer to Simon's age than Piper's. Her dark hair was bound back tightly and she had the wiry strength of a life lived hard. Her left wrist finished at a stub, rounded like the end of a loaf of bread.

“Tell them, Violet,” Simon said.

Violet raised an eyebrow. She was looking at Piper and Zoe, and at me.

“I've told you already.” Simon pushed his chair and stood. “They can be trusted.”

She spoke, while Simon paced by the door.

“I've been north, seeing what we could get out of the soldier that Noah's crew captured. He was a courier, heading back to New Hobart from one of the southern garrisons. The message he carried wasn't of
particular interest—updates on troop replacements and cargo. But we were able to get more out of him, about New Hobart itself.”

“How?” I interrupted. “Did you torture him?”

Simon glared at me. “We have a job to do. Don't tell us how to do it.”

Violet ignored us both. “He said they've been searching for something,” she said. “Inside New Hobart. Asking about documents.”

“Nothing else?”

“He didn't know any more than that,” said Violet. “Said only the senior soldiers were privy to the details. But they've all had the orders: anything old, any papers, to be reported straightaway. Twice his squadron was sent out to search, after tip-offs. They found nothing but a secret school—illegal, sure, for Omegas, but usually the Council wouldn't be so zealous about stuff like that. They were told to search the whole place, and all the papers had to be packed up and taken to the HQ.” Violet shrugged. “He thought it was funny at the time—all the kids' papers with their ABCs scrawled on them, being parceled up carefully to be examined.” Her face hardened. “He didn't think it was so funny by the time we'd finished extracting the story from him.”

They all stared at me when I stood.

“Get Xander,” I said to Sally.

Violet rolled her eyes. “Isn't one seer enough? What's the point of dragging the mad one into it?”

I went to speak, but Simon spoke over me.

“You're dismissed for tonight,” he said to Violet. “Rest, and we'll talk again tomorrow.”

She glared over her shoulder at Piper as she left. Sally stood, too. “I'll bring Xander,” she said.

I turned to Piper. “Xander tried to tell us. He told us that it wasn't me they were looking for in New Hobart.
You're not what they're looking
for
, he'd said. I thought he'd meant that the Confessor had really been searching for Kip, not me. But that's not what he was saying.”