“We can’t get into the courthouse until the trial’s been had,” Alice says. “So Lex is having his group here this week. I’m sorry, love. I can’t let you in. I’ve been stuck in the kitchen myself. Come back later and we’ll have some desserts, if they haven’t eaten everything in the cold box.”
She closes the door before I can get in so much as a word.
The door opens again just as I reach the stairs. “Morgan,” Alice calls, and I spin around, hopeful. She hands me an envelope. “Would you mind dropping this in the message bin for me?”
I don’t have to read the envelope to know what it says:
Every week she fills out a mandated report of the pharmaceuticals she and Lex pretend to be taking, and orders more to keep from arousing suspicions.
I drop the envelope in the tall metal bin outside the apartment. In the morning a messenger on a bicycle will retrieve the envelopes and take them where they need to go. A messenger comes in the afternoon and evening too, but never this late.
I’m too restless to go home; the thought of listening to clocks ticking until I fall asleep is unbearable. Pen won’t be able to leave; her parents don’t let her out after dark since the fire happened, even if it’s just upstairs to my apartment. She’s their only child and her mother is particularly protective. Though, as Pen says, her mother’s protectiveness is subject to her whims and sobriety.
It isn’t late, and Basil will go for a walk with me. He might be a little unhappy to know I traveled to his section by myself, but the murderer, also suspected to be the arsonist, has been caught and there are still patrolmen at every turn.
A patrolman opens the front door for me. “Be safe out there tonight,” he says. It’s a phrase that’s starting to lose meaning now.
But somewhere out there, my father is saying the same thing, over and over. I wonder if he believes any of us are safe now.
Outside, warm lantern light greets me. The sky is smeared with stars like the glitter over Daphne’s eyes in her class image. I don’t know why this makes me feel at peace. Like everything is connected in some way, that humans are just that, whether they’re on the ground or in the sky, and that we all belong to the same greater something.
I gave a lot of thought to the gods when I thought my brother was dying. Pen says people get the most spiritual when things are at their worst. She was right about that. I wondered about the atmosphere that keeps us contained on Internment, and when my brother reached the edge, I wondered if the sky god felt betrayed. I wondered if the god of the earth had called out a temptation and set it on the wind. In the texts, we’re taught that it’s a hypnotic melody.
If Lex were to die, I wondered what would become of our family then.
I try not to dwell on it anymore. He lived. I don’t have the answers and it would be ungrateful of me to ask for them.
It’s a beautiful night; a bit colder, as the short seasons tend to be, but I don’t mind. It’s a short walk to Basil’s section, and I’ll pass the lake on the way. There will be patrolmen, inevitably, but if I’m lucky, they won’t send me back home. Now that the murderer has been caught, things are starting to relax. Or so the king would like us to believe.
There are fewer patrolmen than I expected. They stand guard outside apartment buildings and on certain corners, but then I see none for several blocks.
The lake is serene.
It casts a flawless reflection of the stars, as though it isn’t a lake at all, but a hole in the city itself. Lex and Alice used to take me here when I was small. They taught me how to swim in the shallows, and how to stand very still so that the trout would flutter up against me. I have a memory for every part of this city. With the exception of the sections accessible only to workers, I’ve been everywhere.
The stillness is broken by something rustling in the shrubs that outline the park. In the darkness just beyond the street lanterns, I see what looks like a figure hurtling toward me. Whatever it is, it brings the sound of more footsteps approaching, voices shouting, “This way!” and “You cover that area!”
If I can hardly make out the figure, it definitely can’t see me in the darkness, because in the next instant, it crashes into me and we grab each other to steady ourselves. There’s heavy breathing and the smell of sweat and possibly tears.
In the starlight, I can just barely make out the person holding my wrists.
I’m staring right into the face of Judas Hensley.
The voices are getting closer, and I hear bodies breaking apart the shrubs. Of course they’re coming for him. He murdered his betrothed. Supposedly. Maybe not.
“Help,” he says softly.
I think he’s surprised by the way my fingers tighten around his forearms. “Quiet,” I say, and push him under the lake water.
He disappears under the surface immediately and without struggle.
I stoop down and gather a handful of pebbles, toss one into the rippling water just as a patrolman approaches.
“Are you alone here, miss?” he asks me, doubling over to catch his breath. It’s been a long time since the uniforms have had cause to run.
“Yes,” I say. “I saw someone run through here a while ago.” I point toward the cobbles. I toss another pebble into the lake to mask the ripples being caused by the body under the surface. “He seemed to be in an awful hurry. Has he done something wrong?”
“He was caught stealing, miss,” the patrolman says. “You shouldn’t be out this late alone.”
I’m not quick enough to come up with an excuse, but it’s no matter. He’s run off to chase the phantom thief, who is really no thief at all.
It isn’t a moment too soon, because Judas bursts from the surface of the water, spluttering. I offer a hand out to help him, but he stomps past me, his bare feet making squishing sounds in the mud. He moves into just the right beam of moonlight and I see that his eyes are swollen from tears. I have seen enough crying eyes to be certain.
This is the boy that’s got Internment so scared. He’s tall and lean, and his face is all sharp angles. He holds his chin up high. But I can’t bring myself to fear him. It’s the bleary eyes, I think.
He drops to the grass and huddles forward, and his shape protrudes through his wet shirt, the muscles moving as he takes in oxygen. Like some sort of machine. Like there are gears under his skin. He seems too exquisitely crafted to be all human.
Cautiously, I kneel beside him. “I’ve seen you,” I say.
“On the king’s broadcast?” he says bitterly.
“At the academy.” There are four academies and universities on Internment. “We’re in the same year.”
“We
I don’t see something deranged, like how the killer who went mad from tainted pharmaceuticals when my parents were children must have looked. I don’t see Daphne Leander’s murderer. Just a ragged shirt and water dripping from all the angles of his collarbone, moonlight darkening the notches of his throat. Just a boy.
“Your father is a patrolman,” he says. “Stockhour? Am I right?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I say, feeling oddly brave. It’s strange that he would know this about my father; if anything, most of my classmates know me for having a brother who’s a jumper. “Your hands are bleeding.”
He stares at his open palms, marred with bloody lines, and then he rubs them in the dirt. I wince.
“Why did you help me?” he says. “Don’t you know who I am? I could have killed you.”
“How? By wringing your wet hair out on me?” I say. “You need to get someplace warm before you catch a chill.”
“Don’t have that luxury,” he says, pushing himself to his feet. He has already begun to walk away when I start after him.
“Where are you going?” I say. He can’t be thinking of hiding. “There are patrolmen on almost every corner.
