The Refuge Song (14 page)

“Don't get too comfortable,” Simon said to Piper, when he found the three of us surveying the camp. Zoe snorted, looking out over the island of mud and reeds with its few straggling trees. “I'm sending you and Zoe to watch the town from the south,” Simon went on. “I've already sent Violet and two of her scouts to watch the northern perimeter. I want troop numbers, and whatever details you can get about the Council's defenses. Patrol procedures and routes, and anything else you can gather.”

“Cass is coming with us,” said Piper.

“It's not a holiday,” said Simon. “I'm sending you and Zoe because you're the best for the task. Cass is safer in the camp.”

“She goes where I go,” said Piper.

I registered Zoe's eye roll.

“I know New Hobart,” I said. “I've traveled the plains and the forest more recently than any of you.”

“The forest?” said Zoe. “You mean what's left of it, since you and Kip burned it down.”

I ignored her. “You know I'm better than anyone at finding places, sensing things. I'm going with them.”

Simon looked from me to Piper, and back again. “Fine,” he said. “But watch her.” He turned away. It wasn't clear whether he was telling them to protect me, or to spy on me.

Either way I was grateful to be leaving. The hostility of the troops
had been slightly blunted, less out of trust than familiarity, and the daily exchanges that were unavoidable when camping and traveling together. They spoke to me civilly enough when they needed to ask me to pass a water flask, or to pick the safest route through a patch of swamp. But most of the time they avoided me, and their stares followed me around the camp. I suspected that Simon had noticed it, too, and figured that it would improve morale for the three of us to be away from the camp.

We left Sally and Xander with the troops in the swamp. I would never admit it to the others, but I was as relieved to be away from Xander as I was to be away from the quiet hostility of the troops. Since Xander's words about
The Rosalind
's return, he'd hardly spoken. But each time his hands twitched, or he spat out half words, I became more aware of the restlessness of my own hands, and of the visions of flame that jostled one another in my crowded mind.

It took hours to negotiate the marshland before Piper, Zoe, and I could draw close to New Hobart. When the marshes receded, we were in the forest—or what remained of it. It had been late summer when Kip and I set the place alight; now it was a wasteland of scorched stumps, whittled by flame. The smaller trees were gone altogether and only the trunks of the larger trees were left. I touched one and my hand came away black.

Before the fire, we might have needed a lamp to make our way at night, but in the ruins that Kip and I had made, the moon lit the way through the spindles of tree trunks, their sharpened tips accusing the sky.

Had the whole world looked like this, after the blast? Worse, probably—no trunks would have remained, however charred. Was there a forest—anywhere—that had been spared the flames of the blast? The
world had been swept of its growing and living things. I thought of the total bleakness of the deadlands, where nothing grew, even after centuries, and I wondered whether Elsewhere would be any different.

Closer to New Hobart, there were sections of forest that had not burned. Here, with the lights of the town visible just a few miles to the north, we made camp for the night. Piper took the first shift, but I looked toward the town too as I lay down to sleep. It was strange to lie there, seeing the lights on the hill and knowing that Elsa, Nina, and the children were so close. After what I'd foreseen, I couldn't think of them without feeling my heart leap like a startled toad in my chest. Every night, now, in my dreams, Elsa floated in a tank, her mouth slack around the tube that penetrated it. I dreamed, too, of the children crammed together in a larger tank, a tangle of bodies. I could make out some of their faces: Alex, who used to laugh himself breathless when Kip tickled his stomach. Louisa, who followed me everywhere, and who had once fallen asleep on my lap. I'd learned, then, how the weight of a sleeping child is subtly different from their weight when awake. Now, in my visions, Elsa and the children were all weightless, their hair drifting across their faces.

I woke from the waterlogged dream with a shout.

“You insisted on bringing her,” Zoe hissed at Piper, who was leaning over me to hush me.

I couldn't speak, my mouth clenched shut against the scream that would otherwise break out again. During the dream, one of my sleeping hands had clawed at the earth. I stared at the gouge marks I'd left in the black soil.

“It's not her fault.” Piper's hand was pressed against my shoulder, steadying my shaking as he spoke coolly to Zoe. “You know that,” he said. “And we need her.”

“What we don't need,” Zoe said, “is her bringing a patrol down on us.” She strode away.

For three days we watched the town. Each morning, before dawn, we set out from our base in the ruins of the forest and ventured onto the plain. We moved slowly in the deep grass, creeping to the few hillocks and copses that granted us some cover. Around New Hobart, the wall that was being hastily constructed when Kip and I escaped was now a solid structure, stoutly braced with posts. Red-shirts, the Council's soldiers, patrolled the perimeter, and manned the huge gates. We made note of the numbers of patrols, mounted and on foot, and the time of each shift changeover. We counted the wagons that sometimes came and went, escorted by soldiers, on the main road that traced through the eastern swamps toward Wyndham. When a wagon entered the city, we noted the procedure at the gate, observing how many soldiers it took to open the gates, and counting the guards in each of the watchtowers. There were so many of them; each day of watching only confirmed the Council's grip on New Hobart, its wall encircling the town like a strangler's hands.

Only a few miles from where we watched, Elsa, Nina, and the children were waiting. Somewhere, too, within those guarded walls, were the papers that held more clues about the Ark, and the secrets that it contained. The soldiers were searching. The tanks were filling. The hours while we watched the town felt too long, and never long enough.

Each morning, not long after dawn, fifty or more Omegas filed out of the eastern gate. Corralled into a tight group by mounted soldiers, they were led to the farmland northeast of the city. There they labored, watched by the soldiers, until they were escorted in again in the evening, along with the barrows of harvested food.

While the farmers worked, the soldiers milled about and talked
together. Once, an older Omega stumbled and dropped an armful of marrows that he was loading onto a cart. The soldier driving the wagon turned and whipped him, as casually as a horse flicking its tail at a fly. Without looking back he urged the cart away, leaving the man fallen in the mud, clutching at his face. Even from a distance we could see the blood running off his chin. The other Omegas nearby had turned to look, and one woman moved to help the bleeding man, but a shout from another soldier sent her bending back to her own task.

We noted, too, the new building on the slope of the hill inside the southern wall. Long and low, it stood out against the jumble of old houses around it. There were no windows. If it weren't for what we knew, I might have thought it was a storehouse. As it was, I only had to look at it to feel the tank water rising within it.

The Council had occupied New Hobart for just a few months, and the tanks were not an easy thing to build. I'd seen the tank chamber underneath Wyndham, and the complex tracery of wires and pipes and flashing lights that kept those people suspended in their almost-death. I'd felt the elaborate darting of the Electric through the wires. But lately I'd also seen the children's tanked faces in my visions, night after night. They didn't have long.

Ω

On our third day of watching the town, Zoe came back at a run from her post, a low hill in the marshes with a view toward New Hobart's western gate. Before she could speak she bent over, hands on knees, to reclaim her breath.

“We're not the only ones watching the gate,” said Zoe. “There are footsteps by the lookout spot. At least four or five people. Fresh prints—since yesterday's rain. Based on how the grass was flattened, I'd say they'd been watching the gate for most of the night.”

“Could it've been Violet and her scouts, coming to our side of town for some reason?”

“Not in identical boots,” she said. “The prints are all the same. They're Council soldiers, in regulation boots.”

“Why would they be sneaking around at night, watching their own guard posts?”

None of us had any answers.

“The tracks head away from the town,” she said. “But I lost the trail when they reached the grasslands. And there's not much cover out that far—I couldn't spend too long looking.”

We returned to camp before nightfall so that we wouldn't have to navigate the intricate swamps in the dark. We reported in detail to Simon all that we'd seen, including the signs that somebody else had been watching the town.

“Have Violet's scouts to the north seen any signs of others?” Piper said.

Simon shook his head. “No. But Crispin did. He and Anna saw something when they were hunting to the west. In the gully with the lone spruce at the crest—two uniformed sentries on duty, and a few soldiers coming and going throughout the night. They seemed to be monitoring New Hobart.”

“It doesn't make sense,” Zoe said. “Why would the Council be watching New Hobart, when they're the ones holding the town?”

“There isn't any single ‘Council' though,” I said. I was remembering what the Ringmaster had said:
You really think we're one big happy family? A Councilor's greatest enemies are those closest to him
. I remembered, too, the last time we'd caught glimpses of hidden watchers, the night before the Ringmaster had sprung on us. I could feel him, as if his arm was once more around my neck.

“It's the Ringmaster,” I said. “He's here.”

“You can't know that,” Simon said.

I turned on him. “Can't? If you weren't so busy telling me what I can't do, you could use my visions to help us. I found the island. I found my way out of the Keeping Rooms. I found the Confessor's machine.”

“Why would he be watching New Hobart?” Simon said impatiently.

“For the same reason we are,” I said, thinking of the disgust in the Ringmaster's face when he'd spoken of the machines. “He doesn't trust the General or Zach. He wants to know what they're up to, what they're looking for in the town.”

“Discord in the Council is good news for us, in the long term,” said Piper. “But even if it's the Ringmaster out there, it makes no difference to us now.” He turned to Simon. “Warn the guards on the camp perimeter, and station sentries by the northern edge of the forest, so we'll know if they head this way.”

I noticed how he threw out the orders, as instinctively as he would throw his daggers. I noted, too, how Simon nodded and obeyed.

chapter 15

From dawn until dark, our camp crawled with the preparations. Near where I stood by Simon's tent, two men without legs were lashing together a ladder. I watched the precision of their hands, binding the struts to the spars. At the camp's edge, under a lopsided tree, a squadron was practicing with grappling hooks. They hurled the hooks again and again, climbing the knotted ropes when they gained a purchase. If the attack was to succeed, we needed to penetrate the wall—otherwise we would die in front of it.

Each day more troops arrived, and each day we were disappointed that more had not come. They came on foot, in small groups, or sometimes alone. Some knew how to fight but had no weapons. Others brought what they could: rusted swords; blunted axes, made for chopping wood, not fighting. They'd come hurriedly, when the messengers had spread the word, but they also bore tales of those who would not come. Too worried, with their families to provide for, and winter upon
us. Too scared, after the attack on the island, and with the safe houses being raided. I couldn't blame them.

Some of those who had come were well-trained fighters—those who had survived from the island, and those who worked for the resistance on the mainland. But they were a shadow army, not a standing force. Their experience wasn't in battles. It was in skirmishes with Council patrols, and raids on Alpha villages to snatch Omega babies before they'd been branded. They were used to evading Council soldiers, stealing horses, and attacking supply convoys. More than a century ago, as rumor had it, the Council crushed an Omega uprising in the east. Since then, the only large-scale battle I'd heard of had been on the island, and few enough of our fighters had survived that.

Others who came to the camp were resistance contacts rather than troops. They were untrained in combat, and sometimes unsuited for it. They were loyal to the resistance, and we were thankful that they'd come—but often, at night, I thought of the limbless and the crippled who had shuffled their way to the encampment, and I wondered what we were leading them in to.

Ω

That night I dreamed I was inside Elsa's holding house again. I walked the long dormitory where the children's beds were pressed up against the wall. Everything was silent. At first I thought the children must be sleeping. But when I bent down to one of the beds, I saw that it was empty. That's when I noticed the thickness of the silence. In all my weeks in the holding house, it had never been silent. In the daytime, the children were noisy in the courtyard or the dining room. Nina was usually banging pots in the kitchen, and Elsa's voice could be heard around a corner, chiding a child about this or that misbehavior. Even at night, the building hummed with the sound of forty sleeping children. The light
snores and openmouthed breathing; the odd cry of one of the younger ones, half-wakened from a dream. There was none of that now. Only a single noise, a dripping sound, a
plink plink plink
coming with eerie regularity from the far end of the dormitory. I moved through the darkness, trailing my hand along the rail of each empty bed. Perhaps there's a leak in the roof, I thought, or a crack in one of the pitchers laid out for the children to wash with each morning. But when I reached the far wall, I could find no puddle on the floor. The noise seemed to be coming from above. I tipped my head back and looked up. I could see it now, the drip, falling from the ceiling. It hadn't far to fall. Each drop landed only a foot below the ceiling, on the surface of the liquid that filled the whole room. From where I stood, looking up, I could see the concentric circles, spreading on the surface with each drop. I opened my mouth to scream, but in the thick fluid the sound was muted, even to my own ears.

When I woke, Piper's hand was on my arm, shaking me. I hadn't been screaming, but the rolled jacket that I used as a pillow was wet with sweat, my blanket rucked around my knees from my flailing.

“They're going to tank the children first,” I said.

“When?”

I shook my head. “Today. Tomorrow, maybe. I don't know. Soon.” There'd been no mistaking the urgency of the vision. “We need to attack now.”

“There's sixty troops from the western ranges due any day,” Piper said. “More still to come from the east, too, if the messengers got through in time.”

“It'll be too late,” I said. “The kids are being tanked any day now.”

“We won't save them, or anyone else, by leading our troops into a massacre,” said Zoe. “We only get one go at this. We need whatever the Council's looking for in there. And we need enough troops to give us a chance.”

“What about the children's chance?” I said to Piper. “You saw what the tank did to Kip, and he was an Alpha. Even if we can free the town eventually, and get them out, they'll never be the same. Don't you want to save them?”

“This has never been about what I want,” he said, and looked away. “It's about what the resistance needs.”

All morning, as I watched the troops at their training, I could taste the tank liquid at the back of my throat. To distract myself, I asked Zoe to help me to practice the fighting again. We didn't speak much while we sparred, except for her instructions:
Lower. You're leaving yourself wide open. When you're in close like that, use your elbow, not your fist
.
I was getting faster now, the gap between thought and movement narrowing. The punches and jabs that she'd taught me had grown closer to habit, and while I could never best her, I was able to dodge some of her strikes. Even in the cold, we'd stripped off our coats and sweaters, and my shirt clung to the sweat on my back and my elbows. The training forced me to focus on my body: the strain of my right shoulder, from keeping my knife arm raised before my face. The bruise on my cheek, where Zoe's kick had slipped past my guard. As we circled and jabbed and circled again I had to concentrate on each breath, instead of on my visions of the children.

“We're done here,” she said after an hour or more. “No sense wearing yourself out.” But before she stepped away, she nodded at me. “Better,” she said. It was as close to approval as I'd ever had from her.

Ω

I stood in the entrance of our tent. Nearby, Sally sat on a fallen tree, four soldiers squatting by her feet as she jabbed with a stick at a map spread on the ground. Beyond her, the hobbled horses were feeding noisily on hay fetched by scouts from beyond the swamps. Three armorers were at
work, cutting up a felled tree to carve shields. Near the camp's center, on one of the few flat patches of ground, Piper had joined a squadron in some combat drills. They practiced one-on-one, the clatter of sword strikes reminding me of the warning bells that had rung out on the island when the Council's fleet came. Piper was sparring with Violet, Simon's adviser. He had the advantage of height and strength, but she had both arms, and the missing hand on her left arm didn't stop her from wielding a shield, strapped to her forearm. They were well matched; her short-sword was speedy against Piper's longer blade, and her shield blocked some of his parries. His single arm meant he carried no shield, and he had to move quicker than her, and more economically. Each block and turn was precise, and he seemed to pivot on the spot, forcing her to move around him. He pounced only when her more extravagant swipes gave him an opening.

They seemed to alternate in gaining the advantage. Twice Piper's reach allowed his sword to find her neck, where he gave a gentle slap with the flat of his blade; twice Violet's speed allowed her to get beneath his defenses and nudge his body with the flat of her own sword. Then the two would step apart briefly, before beginning again. I noticed, though, that while Piper nodded at her each time he conceded a point, and laughed once at his own folly when he overreached and stumbled, Violet's face was fixed. She launched herself at him ever faster, each time they had stepped apart. Soon enough they were both panting, and the grass around them was a circle trampled free of frost.

Then, when she gained a point, instead of turning her blade she struck home with the edge. Not a real strike, but enough to make him wince, and to sketch a thin line of blood on his shirt. Zoe, who'd been talking with Simon, turned suddenly. I wondered whether she'd felt a jab of pain from Piper's wound, or had just heard his intake of breath.

Piper stepped back from Violet, an eyebrow raised. He didn't look down at the blood, but stayed in the fighting stance that I recognized
from my own lessons with Zoe: knees bent, weight lightly on his toes, sword raised.

“You doing the Council's job for them now, Violet?” he said.

“You'd know about that, since the island,” she said. The two of them were moving in tandem, pivoting slowly around the point where their raised swords almost met.

The others sparring nearby had stopped now. Weapons lowered, they watched Piper and Violet.

“You should have handed the seer over,” she said to him.

“What kind of a leader would I have been, if I'd rolled over and given them one of our own?”

Violet came at him again. On the third strike her blade shrieked its way down the length of his, and they were brought close, their swords locked together at the hilts. She aimed a kick at Piper, which he dodged, and while she was off balance, he shoved the sword hilts away, twisting his blade free. Violet's own hilt struck her, and she wiped her face with the shoulder of her shield arm, smearing the blood that ran from the corner of her mouth.

“She isn't one of our own,” she said. “She's a seer.”

The stares of the crowd shifted to me, and I forced myself to return their gaze.

“Cass is one of us,” said Piper.

Violet moved forward again, her sword darting low. He blocked the strike, and the one that followed.

“Giving her to the Confessor wouldn't have saved the island,” said Piper, each word coming as a grunt as their blades clashed.

“You don't know that,” Violet said. “And anyway, we've all seen how you look at her. Don't try to tell me you saved her for the good of the resistance.” She swiped low again, and Piper had to step back to dodge the blade that came at his thigh.

Then he pressed forward, striking three times fast. Violet blocked the strikes but had to retreat a few steps. Piper advanced, toe-to-toe with her. As she stepped backward, he hooked his foot behind her heel, so that she fell. When she landed, Piper was over her, knocking her sword from her hand. He knelt above her, planted his knee in her ribs, the tip of his sword at her neck.

For a second I thought he would plunge the blade into her throat. I shouted, my
No
hanging in the frosted air.

He kept his sword where it was and bent his head close to hers, so she couldn't look away from him as he spoke. “Even if it had saved the island, if I'd given them Cass and Kip—who would I hand over the next time they come? And the time after that? What happens when it's your husband, or the woman who raised you, or the child you've cared for? And what happens when I've handed all of us over, one by one? What then?”

“You should have been willing to compromise,” Violet shouted. Her hand swept the ground beside her, groping blindly for her weapon. With his own blade, Piper flicked her sword out of reach.

“There is no compromise with the Council,” he said. “Just surrender in stages. Do you really think they were ever going to just let us keep living peacefully? Maybe once, when they had no alternative. But now they have the tanks, that's their goal: every single one of us, floating. They're not going to stop until that happens. Handing over Cass would only have sped up the process.”

He threw his sword aside. It landed in the mud by my feet. Then he stood. He looked down at Violet, still sprawled on her back.

“I fought on the island, too. I bled there, along with you, and I grieve with you for those who died there.” He spoke loudly now, his words for the assembled crowd, not just her. “I'll fight and bleed again when we go to free New Hobart. But I'd rather die at the wall outside New Hobart than live in a tank.”

He bent, and held out his hand to Violet. For a moment she waited. A narrow streak of blood was running slowly from the corner of her mouth to her chin. Then she took his hand, let him pull her up, and walked away.

Piper turned to the watching troops.

“Does anyone else have anything they want to say to me, about the island?”

Nobody spoke.

“Then let's get back to work,” he said, and picked up his sword. I saw Sally's smile as she watched him stride back to the center of the sparring ground, the troops moving quickly out of his way.

Ω

That night, I was woken by a quiet keening in the darkness. It took me a few minutes to realize that it wasn't Xander. He was peacefully asleep, mouth open, lying close to Sally. Next to Sally, Zoe and Piper slept too, the blanket halfway over Zoe's face.

The crying was in my head. And from the wailing I began to pick out individual voices. I heard the phlegmy gasps of little Alex, and remembered Elsa always swiping at his runny nose with her handkerchief. The high-pitched sobs of little Louisa.

“They're taking them now,” I said, shaking Piper's arm and whispering.

Through the hours that followed, I was grateful that he did not speak, or try to tell me that everything would be all right. He sat with me, legs crossed, and when I found myself rocking, or crying out, he did not stare or try to hold me still. He just waited with me, patient as the dark.

The only thing that I could do for the children was to bear witness. I kept my eyes closed and surrendered to the vision. I saw the wagons
being hauled down the narrow street, a single lantern swinging from a hook above the driver. I saw the silhouette of the long, low building, blocking out the stars. At the back of one of the wagons I saw the small hands clinging to the gaps between the boards. The cries coming from within weren't loud anymore, as they'd been when the vision first woke me. This wasn't the sound of children calling out expecting to be heard, let alone helped. This was a crying of voices in the dark, of children who knew that nobody would come. And they were right.