“Are guards stationed at your family home?” Gemini sips her water.
I flinch. “No.”
“There aren’t any Netface terminals in the Harvester region.”
“How do you know?” I pick up the glass of water in front of me and take a sniff. It’s not like I could smell any of that Free I drank yesterday.
“Netface is only available at the Oasis unless you’re a Guardian with remote access or pay to use one of the public terminals within a hundred-mile radius from here.”
Considering Rugosa is four-hundred miles from the Oasis, I see why she assumes we don’t have the technology. I take an experimental sip from my glass. “Should we go for a walk, then?”
Gemini’s shoulders rise and fall. I stand, waiting to see if she follows. When she stays seated, I down the contents of my glass in a few gulps and walk to the door.
Someone grabs my arm and spins me around. Emmera Hull scowls into my face, her cheeks flushed with misplaced anger. Vitelotte Pyrus and Corrie Barzona from Bos stand at her sides.
“What are you doing here?” she snarls.
I snatch my arm back. “Let go.”
Emmera glances to the left, where two women stand behind the now empty Artisan table with their cameras trained on us. I huff out a breath. They probably remember her from yesterday’s attention-seeking outburst.
Since the Amstraad ambassador placed me here for entertainment, I play along and square my shoulders. “Are you still trying to hog the camera time?”
The corner of Vitelotte’s lips curls into a tiny smile. She steps back out of the camera’s range. Corrie pulls at Emmera’s arm, but the blonde girl bats her away.
“What did you say?” Emmera snarls.
I prod Emmera in the chest. “If you want to start a lizard chase in a cornstalk, I’m ready.” Placing both hands on my hips and hoping I don’t look too much of a villain for the audience, I add, “They might have made me the bronco of this rodeo, but I’ll buck you if you come close.”
She draws back and glances at the camera. One of the assistants rotates her hand in a motion I guess means to keep going, but Emmera’s lips part without sound. A second later, she mirrors my pose. “They should have called you the donkey. You make an ass of yourself all over Rugosa.”
“Really?” I smooth my hair over my shoulder. “You must have been watching me from afar because until we boarded the coach, I never once noticed you.”
Her nostrils flare, and her arm twitches. I raise my chin, waiting for the slap. Instead, she twists, grabs a glass of water and tosses it at my face.
I dodge left, letting the water splash on the ground. “They should make you the copy cat or the hog that just wasted a precious resource.”
Emmera’s eyes widen, and she stares at the empty glass, her face frozen in a rictus of horror. She’s probably thinking the same as me. Everybody who ever worked the fields will look upon her actions with disapproval. She’s just told the whole of Phangloria that Harvesters don’t value water.
“Wonderful!” Bryon Blake rushes toward us. “Keep up the tension for the next few days, and I’m sure the viewers will vote you both into the palace round.”
The other Harvester girls walk out of the room, leaving me alone with Emmera, whose face has turned the color of corn milk.
“Why does she get to compete when she didn’t even make the vote?” she whines.
“Friends in high and foreign places.” He flashes her a grin and heads to the table of Nobles, where a short-haired girl sits with her shoulders shaking with rage.
I don’t wait around for Emmera to finish her tantrum. Instead, I hurry out of the room and follow the other girls down a hallway that leads to a huge lawn.
As I step out, the scent of warm earth mingles with the sweet aroma of grass, reminding me of Herdwick. It’s a town of shepherds, where everyone either grows herbs in huge semi-circular tunnels covered in shaded fabric or tends to sheep or goats. I went there with Dad to buy seeds for his micro gardens.
The grass in this part of the Oasis grows about an inch high, but there are no droppings on the ground to indicate the presence of ruminant animals to keep the growth so trim. Beyond this pristine meadow are shrubs and trees arranged like borders. I continue down a path of stepping stones toward a large tree with a twisting trunk. It rains down branches with tiny mauve flowers.
Footsteps strike the stepping stones. Gemini hurries behind me. “You didn’t have to play up to the cameras like that.”
“I’m the bucking bronco. That’s my job.”
She raises her thin shoulders. “At least you have a way out. Stay quiet and don’t react to anything. Nobody will vote for you, which means going home.”
It’s excellent advice, but I need to get through this round or I’ll fail my mission. A long breath heaves out of my lungs, and we continue walking the grounds in silence. I can understand why she’s advising me to go home.
“Are you a Noble?” I ask.
She shakes her head and stares down at the stones. “Guardian. My father designed Netface.”
Our footsteps thud on the stones as we head toward the tree. If it wasn’t for the explosion of mauve, I would have identified it as a weeping willow. “How does Netface work?”
“It uses similar technology to how you get the government news channel down in Rugosa,” she replies. “But it’s two-way communication, so they can see and hear you while you’re watching them.”
I shake my head. It’s something else they’re keeping from the Harvesters. “What else does it do?”
“Everyone’s Amstraad monitor contains a camera that communicates with the Royal Hospital and the Central Guard. It’s the same with every vehicle.”
My heart sinks, and I think about the guard I poisoned with my darts. We reach the huge tree, and I duck under its pendulous branches.
