The Refuge Song (15 page)

chapter 16

The first snow began at dawn, and by the afternoon the tents were already sagging under the weight of it. The swamp made for awkward camping at the best of times. Now, it was a morass of ice and mud, overcrowded and with a chill wind slapping the loose tent flaps. Waste pits had been dug at the eastern edge, but their smell crept across the whole camp.

There were nearly five hundred soldiers gathered here, Simon estimated. It was more than I'd feared, but fewer than we needed.

“It's not enough,” Simon said quietly. “You've seen our tallies of the Council's soldiers. There's fifteen hundred in New Hobart, at least, and heavily armed.”

“There are divisions within the Council,” I said. “We should be exploiting that.”

“What are you talking about?” Sally said.

“The Ringmaster.”

From the way they reacted, my words might as well have been one of Xander's incoherent outbursts—Zoe was rolling her eyes, while Simon shook his head. But I pushed on.

“We know he's watching New Hobart. We know he's against the tanks.”

“He's a member of the Council,” said Zoe. “That's all we need to know.”

“What if we asked him to help us?” I said.

“He wouldn't,” said Piper. “And we couldn't even ask him without giving away our plans. He might be at odds with Zach and the General, but his loyalty's still with the Alphas, and the Council. He'd warn them, and ruin whatever chance we have.”

I shook my head. “If he took a stand against Zach and the General, other Alphas would follow him.”

“The General has pretty much the whole Council in her pocket,” Sally said. “They're not going to follow the Ringmaster into some kind of revolt.”

“I'm not talking about the Council,” I said. “I meant ordinary Alphas. The soldiers, for one thing. Some of them would follow him. You heard what he said, about how a few of Zach's soldiers had come to him already, scared by the machines they'd witnessed.”

“Why do you think the machines horrify people so much?” said Piper. “Because of us. Of all the blast's abominations, we're the one they fear most. You think those soldiers would go to battle for us?”

“I think they'd follow the Ringmaster, if he asked them to.” I remembered how he'd stood, undaunted, before Piper's and Zoe's raised knives. He was a man who was used to being obeyed.

So was Piper. He cocked an eyebrow at me now. “You want to ally yourself to somebody who doesn't see a fundamental problem with tanking, except for the machines they're using to do it? Somebody
who'd be thrilled to get rid of us altogether, if he could only do it without using technology? The Ringmaster's not on our side.”

“We need help—we don't get to be fussy about where it comes from,” I said. “Do you have any better ideas? I know the Ringmaster's motives are hardly pure. But you said it to me only last night: it's not about what we want. It's about what the resistance needs. He could help us to keep the people of New Hobart out of the tanks.”

But Piper talked over me. “He could, perhaps. But he wouldn't. He'd never go that far. He came to us to exchange information—nothing more. We can't risk blowing the whole attack by trusting him.”

He turned back to the maps, and the conversation continued around me.

“We attack at midnight in five days, at the turn of the moon,” Piper said. “It'll give us the greatest cover as we approach the town.”

I closed my eyes, and saw nothing but swords and blood.

Ω

“There aren't enough,” was Simon's constant refrain, whenever we gathered with him in his tent and tallied the daily arrivals.

“There are thousands in New Hobart who would fight along with us,” I said, “if only we could warn them to be ready.”

“If you've got a bright idea for getting inside those walls, do share,” said Zoe.

“What about the ones who aren't inside the walls?” I said, thinking of the workers we'd seen filing out of New Hobart each day.

“You've seen them,” Piper said. “They're surrounded by the soldiers all day. There's no chance of getting close enough to speak to them.”

It was true enough. Only two days earlier, we'd watched the workers filing through the gate. Most of the harvesting was complete, and the remainder was overdue. The workers had been digging with bare hands
in the frozen ground. It made for slow work. The soldiers had looked relaxed enough, chewing tobacco and chatting among themselves as they patrolled the perimeter of the fields, but at one point they'd converged with their whips on the slowest of the Omegas digging potatoes.

“The fields are only guarded in the day, though,” I said.

“What are you getting at?” Sally asked.

“We could sneak into the fields at night and leave them a message. Tell them to be ready to fight.”

“Fight with what?” said Piper. “The Council will have long since taken any weapons from them. They've not even given them scythes for harvesting. And we can't spare weapons, even if we could smuggle them in.”

“There are still ways they could be helpful, if we could warn them about the attack. Maiming the soldiers' horses, creating diversions. Starting fires at the wall. Arming themselves with whatever clubs and kitchen knives they can muster. They'll help, if we can find a way to leave them a message in the fields.”

“On the off chance that someone sees it?” It was Simon's turn to sound skeptical. “Hell on earth, Cass. A lot of them can't even read.”

“True enough,” I said. “But if they see a message, they'll find a way to show someone who can.”

“And what if it's a soldier who finds it, instead of one of the Omegas?”

“We watched the soldiers for days. Did you ever see them getting their hands dirty out there? If we hid it well enough, nobody would find it but the workers.”

“We don't know who those workers are. What if they turn us in?” Simon shook his head. “It only takes one of them to tell the soldiers, and it's all over. Just one of the workers has to be too scared—or someone angling for favor from the soldiers.”

“Before they took the children, I'd have agreed,” Sally said. “But not now. Cass is right. They've seen the children taken. They must know by now how desperate their situation is.”

“It's still a risk,” Piper said.

I met his gaze. “Is there anything we've done lately that hasn't been a risk?”

Ω

We reached the edge of the charred forest as night fell. In the plains beyond, outside the town's walls, only a few of the vegetable fields remained to be harvested. Rows of pumpkins were topped with a thin layer of snow.

Simon had found paper and ink for us, but we'd feared that any words we tucked among the crops would bleed away in the snow. In the end, we decided to be even more direct. And so we found ourselves squatting in the dark, only a few hundred yards from the sentries on the walls, carving our message into the underside of the pumpkins.

We'd crawled on our bellies through the snow, moving so slowly that the cold began to feel like a more acute threat than the sentries. The clouds were thick, covering the waning moon. In all our days of watching New Hobart, we'd never been this close to the town. My clothes were soaked, chafing my chilled skin as I crawled. I gave up trying to repress the shaking. We edged forward, only a yard at a time. When a patrol passed the eastern section of the walls, we stopped entirely, faces pressed to the ground while the soldiers made their way around the wall's perimeter. The sound of hoofs on the iced ground, the heavy jangling weapons, seemed very close. When they rode past the eastern gate, we could hear the calls of greeting from the watchtower.

By the time we arrived in the pumpkin field, my hands were so cold that I dropped my knife twice as I began carving.

We'd agreed on the exact wording—the priority was to make the message short and clear. Each of us had a sentence to write, as many times as we could. Piper's:
Soon they'll take you all, like the children.
Zoe's:
To a prison, worse than death.
We'd decided against trying to explain the tanks—they were hard enough to describe at the best of times, let alone to inscribe on the underside of a pumpkin in the freezing dark. My sentence:
We attack at new moon, midnight—be ready.
And each of us added the Omega symbol that I wore on my forehead, and that had been hoisted on the flag above the island before the massacre: Ω. Even an Omega who had never learned to read wouldn't mistake the sign that was scorched into their own flesh.

Each letter was a struggle. My blade skidded from the curved skin of the pumpkin. The darkness that shielded us from the sentries' view made it hard to see what we were doing, so we were working as much by feel as by sight. On my first pumpkin I started too large, so that by the end of my sentence I had to cram the letters in, tiny scratches on the pumpkin's flesh. The second one was easier—I'd learned how to angle my knife so that it cut smoothly into the toughened surface. The words took shape beneath my shaking fingers.

On the third pumpkin, I threw my head back and shudders escaped me.

“Are you OK?” Piper had whipped around to see what the sound was. I pressed my hand over my own mouth but my laughter still escaped in quiet gasps.

“It's so absurd. The whole thing. For crying out loud: pumpkins.” I struggled for air. A tear was tickling the corner of my eye. It felt warm on my frozen face. “I thought Leonard and Eva's song was a strange weapon, but this tops even that. This is our revolution—the pumpkin revolution.”

He grinned. “Not exactly the stuff of legend, is it?” he whispered.
“Nobody's going to write a song about this. Even Leonard couldn't make this sound good.”

“We're not doing it for the glamour,” said Zoe. But she was grinning, too. We all were, as we knelt in the snow, the shrinking moon above us counting down the hours until the attack.

Ω

We camped the rest of the night in the forest, and came back at dawn to watch the workers being led through the gate. From where we crouched, behind a tussock in the swamp to the east of the fields, we could see that the fresh snowfall had covered our trails from the night before. But the crops, too, were veiled with snow, our painstaking messages buried under inches of whiteness.

For the whole morning, the workers came nowhere near the pumpkins. The soldiers led them to the next field, and we watched them work for hours, on their hands and knees among rows of uprooted carrots and parsnips.

We didn't know how long our messages would last, or whether the pumpkin flesh might already be healing over our whittled words. If they weren't harvested soon, it would be too late to matter—there were only three more days before the new moon anyway.

At noon the gates opened again, and two soldiers drove out on an empty wagon. When it halted at the fields, the soldiers began moving the workers, with shouts and blows, across to the pumpkin field. Zoe nudged me, and the three of us edged forward, peering through the grass.

It took an hour or more for the Omegas to work their way to the corner of the field where we had inscribed our messages. Two women were making their way along the row toward the pumpkins we'd marked. The women had been allowed no scythes or knives, instead
having to wrench each frozen stem free from the vine. It was heavy work; one woman had an arm that ended at the elbow; the other woman was a dwarf, the larger pumpkins reaching above her waist. A soldier stood ten yards from them, stamping his feet from time to time to shake loose the snow from his boots. As the women freed the pumpkins, they passed them to a tall Omega who carried them to where another soldier waited, leaning against the wagon into which the pumpkins were loaded.

The dwarf woman paused in her tussle with one of the pumpkins. Beside me, I heard Zoe's breath halt. Then the woman heaved again, and the stem snapped. She tossed the pumpkin aside to wait for the tall man's return. At the next pumpkin, she took longer, bending low as she grappled to twist and break the stem. Hundreds of yards away, through the long grass and the falling snow, I couldn't see clearly what she was doing. Did she crouch that way just to gain a purchase on the stubborn vegetable as she wrenched it loose, or had her fingers traced the message? When the stem was broken and she hauled the pumpkin into her arms, she didn't drop it on the ground this time but held it for a few seconds as the man approached. He leaned down to her as he took it from her hands. If she spoke to him, we had no way of knowing. He gave no sign of it, but when he walked to the wagon I noticed that he placed the pumpkin carefully, the right way up, on the side of the cart farthest from the soldier.

We scanned their every movement while they emptied the corner of the field. Each time one of the women took a while freeing a pumpkin, I imagined her stealing glances at the messages we'd carved. Once, the dwarf woman called the taller woman across to help her. It might have been because the pumpkin she was lifting was larger than the others, but I wanted to believe that she was whispering to her companion. That our carved words were spreading. Either way, the soldier nearby gave a
shout when he saw that the women had drawn close, and they sprang back to their allotted places in the row of workers.

The last of the pumpkins were harvested. Snow was mounting on the vegetables stacked in the wagon as it was towed back through the gates.

“Even if they haven't seen the messages yet,” I said, “there's a chance they could still be seen, when they unload them, or store them.”

“A chance they could be seen by the soldiers, too,” said Zoe.

The gate was drawn closed again. We could hear the distant thud of the wooden crossbeam being dropped, as final as an executioner's ax hitting the block.

chapter 17

Back in the camp in the marshes, I dreamed of blood. A flood of it rose over New Hobart like the tank water had risen in all my earlier visions. Elsa was there, sinking beneath the red tide. When she was fully submerged, she opened her eyes to stare at me. She opened her mouth. Nothing emerged but bubbles.

When I woke, long before midnight, Piper and Zoe were sleeping back-to-back. Zoe was facing me, her mouth open, and her slumbering face looking younger and less guarded than her prickly daytime self. On the far side of Piper lay Xander. Sally was taking the lookout shift that night, and without her Xander slept restlessly, half-formed words tipping from his mouth each time he rolled over.

I crept from the tent, moving nearly as slowly as we had in the pumpkin field. Outside, the snow had added another layer of silence to the sleeping camp. To the west was the single path of reeds that was the only way out of our camp. Halfway along it, I knew, was the sen
try post where Sally was on lookout. Beyond her, in the swamp, more lookouts were stationed. I headed to the far side of the camp, where the reeds were deepest, and crouched to assess the water's icy crust. When I prodded it with a foot, the ice creaked. It wouldn't hold my weight, so I braced myself to crack the ice and swim. It was only a hundred yards to the next island of reeds, but the cold would be more of a risk than the distance.

“If you don't drown yourself, you'll freeze to death.”

The shock of the whispered voice sent my foot jerking through the ice, and I had to throw myself backward to avoid falling in. The cold of the water forced a sharp intake of breath from me.

“I wondered if you'd go to him tonight.” Sally stepped from amid the reeds.

“What are you talking about?” I said. “I just need a walk, and some time alone.”

She sighed. “Haven't you figured out yet that I don't have time to play games? Why do you think I volunteered to take the lookout shifts these last few days? I've been watching you ever since you raised the question of the Ringmaster and got shut down.”

Silent, I bent to wring the water from my soaked trouser leg, avoiding Sally's eyes.

“Can you really think a Councilor would help us?” she said.

“He wants to stop the tanks,” I said. “I know that.”

“Enough to take up arms against his own people? Enough to start a war?”

It was strange to hear talk of war in her breathy, whispered voice.

I wished that I could answer her with any certainty. “I think he's a man of principle, in his own way. But his principles aren't the same as ours. He believes in the taboo, and wanting to protect Alphas.”

“It's a hell of a leap from that to attacking the Council. And a hell of
a gamble, to tip him off before we attack. Your little excursion tonight could have cost us everything.”

“I know,” I said. “But I can't see any other way.” I looked down at my hands, and remembered the blood that I'd seen rising over New Hobart in my visions. “If we gave him the chance—if we asked him—he could help us.”

“Perhaps you're right,” she said. “But Piper and Zoe will never take that risk. They'll never let you try.”

“Can't you try to persuade them?”

“Not even I could do that,” she said. “Piper and Zoe have their own principles. Simon too. They'd never turn to a Councilor for help.”

I knew that she was right. I exhaled, slowly, and waited for her to call the guards, or Piper. I knew that I wouldn't fight Sally. And even if I could bring myself to, it would only take a single shout to rouse the camp and bring the troops down on me.

She stepped back. “I've tethered a horse to the roots of the big mangrove, just beyond where the path meets the next bank of solid ground. You'll have to skirt the watchmen on the outer perimeter. Have the horse back by dawn, when my shift ends.”

For a few seconds we stared at each other. She didn't smile, but she gave a small nod. “Hurry,” she said.

“What about your own principles?” I said.

She shrugged. “If I ever had principles, it was too long ago for me to remember.” She kept her voice low. “I've never seen the Ringmaster. I don't know about him, or what he believes. But I know about fighting and campaigns. And I don't think we can win the battle like this.” She waved an arm back at the camp and the line of tents that slumped in the snow. “There're too few of us, and too many of them. I'm old, Cass. I don't care if I die. But I want Piper and Zoe to have a chance. Xander too. So I'm willing to do what Piper won't.”

I reached for her hand, but she brushed me off.

“Hurry,” she said again. It was the first time I'd ever heard her sound afraid.

Ω

The moon was almost at its thinnest, and the night nearly black. I had to lead the horse through the swamp, wading waist-deep when I left the paths to avoid the outer perimeter of our guards. As soon as the ground was solid enough, I rode, shivering with cold in my wet trousers. A light snow was still falling—enough, I hoped, to cover my prints if anyone noticed my absence and came after me. I had to skirt a long way west to keep a safe distance from New Hobart itself, and the dark and the snow conspired against me to make it hard to find the gully. In the end, instead of scanning the blurred horizon, I closed my eyes and let my mind grope toward the Ringmaster. I concentrated on what I knew of him: the memory of his breath on my neck; his voice when he'd ordered Zoe and Piper to stand down.

It was hours before I spotted the lone spruce tree. As I neared the mouth of the gully, it wasn't only the darkness that slowed my progress. I moved hesitantly, aware than at any moment the Ringmaster's sentries would see me, and that swords would spring out of the night. Ever since I left the Keeping Rooms, I'd been doing my utmost to avoid being taken by Council soldiers. Now I was seeking them out. I was undefended, Piper and Zoe miles away, on the other side of New Hobart. After all this time spent together, their absence now was like the snow, making the world unfamiliar.

I pushed onward, the horse picking its way through the deepening snow. The Ringmaster had assured me that I was no use to him as a hostage, now that the General was the main force behind the Council. But he could change his mind. I might not be enough to stop the tanks, but
handing me over to Zach would still gain him some leverage. Each step I took now might be leading me back to the Keeping Rooms, or worse.

When had the decision been made, that had led me here? It wasn't when I'd crept away from Zoe, Piper, and Xander sleeping in the tent, or even when we'd decided to try to free New Hobart. It went further back. To the island, and the massacre there. Or to the tank room underneath Wyndham, when I'd chosen to free Kip, and we'd set out together.

Further back still: to Zach, and the day he'd succeeded in having me sent away, the brand still a fresh wound on my forehead. That day, the first that we'd been separated, had set us both on our paths. There was no going back. Zach had shed me, like his old name, to become the Reformer, and conjure his dark fantasy of the tanks. All that I could do was ride onward, into the thickening dark, and do whatever I could to stop him.

A shout came from ahead, and then it all happened quickly. Soldiers converged, stepping out of the darkness. A ring of raised swords. If I'd moved a foot in any direction I'd have been skewered.

“I'm here alone,” I shouted, throwing up my hands. “I need to see the Ringmaster.”

One of them grabbed my bridle, and another half dragged me from the horse. My dagger was ripped from my belt. A soldier raised his lamp close to my face to inspect my brand. “It's one of them,” he said, his face so close that I could see the patch of stubble on his jaw that his razor had missed when he shaved. “Might be the seer—can't see anything else wrong with her.” As he patted me down for other weapons, his hands lingered on my body.

“I don't think my breasts are a threat to your boss, do you?” I said quietly.

One of his companions snickered. The man said nothing, but he moved his hands on, rubbing them down the outside of my arms, and kneeling to pat down my legs.

“Stand down,” said the Ringmaster. He was panting as he ran up the gully. His black jacket had a fur-lined hood, so it was hard to tell where his curls ended and the fur began.

The swords lowered.

“Bring her in,” he said. “But double the guard on the perimeter. Make sure she came alone.”

He didn't wait for my reaction, just turned and led the way down into the gully. I followed him, a soldier at each side, while the third dropped back, still holding my horse.

I'd thought it was dark before, but as we descended, the gully cloaked us in a second layer of darkness. The tents were pitched at the very base, shielded by the growth overhanging the cliffs on each side. Horses were tethered in a row by the largest tent, stamping and whinnying as soldiers rushed past us, carrying lamps.

The Ringmaster threw back the flap of the central tent and strode in. “Leave us,” he said to the soldiers, who stepped back into the night.

He might have been camping, but the arrangement bore no relation to the makeshift camps I'd occupied for the last few months, or the sagging tent-city that housed the resistance troops in the swamp. The Ring­master's tent was thick white canvas, tall enough that he could stand upright. A blanket of fur covered the raised bed in the corner, and close to the entrance stood a table and chairs. A lamp was mounted on the pole in the center of the tent, throwing warped and darting shadows on the canvas.

He pushed back his hood. “Do your resistance companions know you're here?”

I shook my head.

“Sit,” he said. I remained standing, but he sat, and leaned back in his chair to stare at me. “It's dangerous for you to be traveling alone. Don't you know how many people are searching for you?”

“Don't patronize me,” I said. “I know exactly who's searching for me,
and why. But this was the only way. Why are you watching New Hobart?”

“The same reason you are. Your brother and the General are interested in this place. That means I am, too.”

I made an effort not to quail under his stare.

“I knew you'd change your mind,” he went on. “What information do you have for me?”

“I haven't changed my mind,” I said. “I've come to give you a chance. If you really want to stop the tanks, I need your soldiers and their swords. I need your army.”

This time he laughed.

“You're offering me nothing, and asking for something you know I can't possibly give.”

“I'm not offering you nothing,” I said. “I have information for you. We're going to attack the town.”

“That's madness.” He picked up a jug and poured a glass of wine for himself.

“Not if we have your help.” I took a step closer to him. “I know you have soldiers loyal to you. If we fought together, we could succeed.”

“Half the army or more is loyal to me,” he said. “Your brother and the General are too caught up with their personal projects to stay in touch with the people on the ground. But being loyal to me doesn't mean my men would fight alongside Omegas, for an Omega cause. You ask too much of them. And of me.”

“I don't want to ally myself with you any more than you do with us.” I hadn't meant for the disgust to be so audible in my words. I tried to moderate my voice. “You know they've already tanked the children?”

“That doesn't surprise me,” he said. “That's always been their strategy, thinking in the long term. Stop the Omegas at the source. You should hear the way they talk.
Less resource intensive,
the General said to me, if they're tanked as infants. I don't think they grow once they're in
the tanks, you see. So they stay small forever. Cheaper to feed. Take up less space.” He grimaced as he spoke, spitting out the words.

“How can you have heard them say things like that and not want to stop them?”

“You're asking me to start a war. To set different factions of the army fighting against each other.”

“I'm asking you to stop an atrocity.”

That wasn't entirely honest. An atrocity was unavoidable. If we fought to free New Hobart, many would die, and their twins with them. I was choosing those deaths over the endless not-quite-death of the tanks that would otherwise await the town's inhabitants. I couldn't remember a time when decisions had seemed uncomplicated.

“You wanted information,” I said. “You wanted my help. I'm giving you this: we attack in three days' time—at midnight, on the new moon.”

It was in his hands now. This information could see us all killed, if he decided to betray me. I thought of how Leonard had reacted when we'd told him about the tanks and the refuges. We hadn't asked for his help—we hadn't needed to. We'd given him the information, and that had become an imperative. And I thought of Kip, and how his eyes had met mine through the glass of the tank. He had asked nothing of me. The knowledge that he was there, trapped, conscious, was enough. I knew that sometimes a moment could become a promise.

“It's a fool's errand,” the Ringmaster said. “Even if I wanted to help you, there's not enough time to prepare. The soldiers in New Hobart are loyal to the General. I'd have to muster my soldiers from farther north. And for what? For an attack that can never succeed.”

“We don't have any choice. Nor do you. You can't step away now as if it's nothing to do with you.”

He raised his hands. “It's too soon. What kind of army can you have mustered, since the island?”

“Any later is too late,” I said. “You know that. They've taken the children. Soon they'll take the others. And you're going to sit back and watch us try. If we succeed, you'll be glad, and you'll use it to help you in your maneuvering against Zach and the General. And if we fail, you'll wash your hands of it.”