Birthmarked (27 page)

He leaned back, resting his weight on one hand. “It depends on your perspective,” he said. “Think from the Enclave’s point of view. It’s true you saved that convict’s baby. Very high pre file maneuver, that. And, you broke out of the Bastion. On the other hand, you have valuable skills as a midwife. You also have a lot of potential, genetically speaking.”

Gaia eyed him curiously. “You mean, they would keep me alive because I could become pregnant?”

Mace lifted a hand. “Why not?”

She flushed with indignation. “I’m not some cow they can use for breeding. And there’s nothing extraordinary about my genes just because I’m from outside the wall.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps not. But you are from Western Sector Three. There are many ways to be a criminal or a hero. Don’t forget that.”

Gaia leaned against the doorframe and idly rubbed a little dent mark in the blue wood.

“You know that soldier you said you escaped with?” Mace said.

“Sgt. Bartlett,” she said. She hadn’t told them he was her brother.

“I found out today that he’s disappeared. I don’t mean arrested. He was seen outside the wall, asking questions about your parents, and now he’s gone.”

Gaia felt relief for her brother, and then a stirring of hope. There might be other ways out of the wall, and maybe Sgt. Bartlett had gone to the Dead Forest.

She turned again to Mace. “I need to know everything I can about the Dead Forest. How far away it is, who goes there, how to find it. Is that where you get your wood?”

Mace shook his head, his expression puzzled. “There are some windfalls east of here, left over from a blight a few years back. That’s where we get our wood.”

She came near and sat beside him on the bed. “I need to know what’s out there,” she said softly, but with growing conviction. “I’m going to find my mother somehow, and when I do, I’m taking her to the Dead Forest.” As she said it, she realized this had been her plan all along, no matter how crazy it sounded.

She studied his heavy profile, with his large nose and ruddy cheeks. Then he clasped his warm hand upon hers. “I can’t say I know anything about the Dead Forest, but don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll think it all through carefully. I’ll talk it over with Pearl, and we’ll find a way.”

Her gaze fell again on Lila’s small embroidered pillow, a tangible reminder of loss. And courage. Her mother was still out there, alive and needing her, and Gaia wasn’t going to give up.

“I’m all she has,” Gaia said. “If I can’t free her, nobody will.”

Chapter 20 Forty-Six Chrome Spoons

IT WAS YVONNE’S IDEA to make the mask. She first suggested that they just cover Gala’s scar with flour and cinnamon, but since the uneven surface of Gaia’s left cheek would still be conspicuous, Yvonne suggested a true mask.

“I don’t see the point,” Oliver said. “All of the Enclave is on the lookout for her now. She’s been on the TV broadcast for the last three nights. She’ll never even get close to the southeast tower. As soon as anyone stops her and looks closely at her face, they’ll see her mask and know it’s the girl with the scar.”

“Not if it’s a good mask,” Yvonne argued.

“And not if she’s a boy,” Pearl added.

It was night, and they’d pulled shades over the windows of the bakery. Licks of firelight were visible in the cracks around the iron door of the brick oven, and within, trays of bread were baking. The redolent, yeasty smell made the kitchen warm, and the lamp above the table made the shadows withdraw to the corners. A pot of leftover soup from dinner was cooling on the hearth. Gaia gazed around at the wooden paddles, the wheeled racks with tray after tray of dark, baked loaves, and pale, white loaves that still needed their time in the oven. She didn’t know when Mace and his family ever slept, and now, at nearly mid’ night, they were still up and working on a plan to help her get to her mother. Mace had left to try to talk to Masister Khol.

Gaia looked doubtfully at Pearl. “I may be ugly, but I’m no boy.”

Pearl sat beside her at the table and took Gaia’s slender fingers in her warm hands. “Maces apprentice isn’t much bigger than you,” Pearl said. “We have extra clothes for him here, and if we pad you a bit in the right places, we can disguise your figure.”

As Gaia realized they were in earnest, she could feel nerves jangling in her belly. She pulled her fingers free from Pearl’s. “But will a mask really work?”

Pearl took Gaia’s chin in her fingers and tilted her face to the light. Gaia submitted to the inspection and kept her gaze on Pearl’s eyes. She knew what Pearl saw.

“How did this happen, child?” Pearl asked gently.

It was such an old story that Gaia should have been inured to telling it again, but somehow, because these were her friends, it bothered her more to tell it. “When I was a baby learning to get around, I walked into a hot vat of beeswax. Not into the liquid wax, you understand, although some had dripped out. I walked up against the vat itself.”

Pearl frowned, and traced her thumb gently along Gaia’s sensitive jaw line. Her wide, no-nonsense face was hard for Gaia to read. Then she reached for Gaia s hands again and inspected her palms, one by one, turning them upward as a fortune teller might.

“It doesn’t fit,” Pearl mused aloud. “Why aren’t your hands burned, then?”

Gaia curled her fingers closed, confused.

“When a baby’s falling, she tries to catch herself with her hands,” Pearl explained. “You would have burned your hands first.”

Gaia shook her head. “That would depend on the height of the vat and the angle I was falling. I don’t actually remember it, but that’s what I’ve been told.”

Pearl tilted Gaia’s face toward the overhead light once more before she released her. “I know burns, Gaia,” Pearl said. She pushed up the sleeves of her dress and showed her own muscular arms, the pale skin flecked with little streaks of brown, a myriad of new and older, fading scars. “When you work with hot trays and ovens all day long, you naturally get your share of nick burns, and worse from time to time. A burn such as yours-- well. I wondered if someone did it to you on purpose.”

Gaia drew back from the woman. The only people who could have hurt her like that were her parents.

“It was an accident,” Gaia said quietly.

“What does it matter now?” Oliver asked. “Can you cover it up?”

Pearl settled her sturdy body back on her stool, and slowly nodded. Gaia dropped her gaze to her hands in her lap, wishing she could erase what Pearl had said.

Yvonne clapped her hands together. “I knew it! Mom once made the most amazing mask for me for school. I was supposed to be this ghost girl, and nobody even recognized me. Tell her, Mom. You do it with a crepe, right? And flour mixed with spices to make just the right color powder. Right?”

As a silence stretched out, Gaia felt Pearl’s eyes on her even when she wouldn’t look up. Her wrists had healed from when she had been tied several days before, but the skin was still tender when she tentatively pressed on the marks. She couldn’t bear to think that her own parents might have burned her, but she couldn’t forget it, either.

“I’m sorry,” Pearl said gently.

Gaia sniffed once. “I just know you’re wrong,” she said.

Pearl gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. “Then I’m wrong,” Pearl said. “Come. Let’s figure out this mask.”

There was a light tap on the door. Everyone froze. Gaia’s gaze flew to Pearl, whose rigid expression told Gaia it was not Mace outside. Silently, Pearl pointed Gaia toward the stairs, and Gaia flew up them as noiselessly as she could, stopping near the top where she could crouch to peer back down. Her heart thudded in her chest as Pearl turned out the light, and then Gaia heard the big door open.

“Please,” came a whisper. “Let me in.”

Gaia clenched her hand on the banister.

“Were closed,” Pearl said sternly. “Come back in the morning.”

“Wait!” the voice came again, more clearly. “Derek Vlatir sent me.”

Gaia’s heart leaped in recognition and then fear. Leon! Why had he come? She couldn’t see anything down below except a faint beam of moonlight falling on the floor. Pearl opened the door to let him in. The moonbeam widened, then vanished as Pearl clicked the lock closed.

“Oliver. A candle,” Pearl said.

There was a scratching noise and a match flared. Leon stood just inside the door, his back to the wall.

Pearl had a knife pointed at his heart.

“You’d best explain yourself, son,” Pearl said.

Oliver lit a candle and placed it on a brick that protruded from the oven. He held a cleaver in his other hand. In the faint light, Gaia could see Leon’s face and disheveled clothes. His jacket and hat were gone. From her angle, she couldn’t see his eyes under his messy bangs, but wariness was visible in his motionless form and the tight line of his unshaven jaw.

“What do you want with us?” Pearl said quietly.

“Mace Jackson knows my father.”

Pearl was standing very straight. “We do not have the honor of being acquainted with the Protectorat,” she said.

Leon kept his hands against the wall behind him. “My real father is Derek Vlatir. He sent me to you.”

Pearl slowly withdrew the knife. Gaia, gripping the banister, came down a step and saw Leon s face open with surprise when he glanced up. She almost believed he was happy to see her, and then his expression dimmed.

“You re here,” he said quietly.

Pearl glanced sharply at Gaia. Gaia came down the rest of the stairs and went to stand beside Yvonne, who slid her arms around her waist. Confused emotions kept Gaia silent, but her breath came quickly, and she peered intently at his lean, disheveled appearance. The single candle flame cast a weak light over his skin and the black of his shirt while he held himself motionless.

Leon turned back to Pearl. “Derek Vlatir was questioned tonight because the Protectorat believed I would go to him for help. He was right, and the guards nearly caught me. But Derek sent me back through the wall, and now-- ” He stopped. He shot another look to Gaia. “He thought Mace would help me.”

Gaia thought rapidly. If what he was saying was true, then in the last four days, Leon had unraveled the rest of the code, gone all the way outside the Enclave, found his birth father, and then returned.

“Why didn’t you return to the Bastion?” Gaia asked.

“I can t.”

“Why didn’t you leave for the wasteland?” she asked.

“I couldn’t,” he said, his voice low. “I didn’t know where you were.”

A strange, slow flip moved in her gut. She swallowed hard. She didn’t know what to say.

Pearl put her knife up on the rack and pulled the little hanging measuring spoon to turn on the light again.

“Clearly, you two know each other,” she said. “Put back your cleaver, Oliver.”

“But he’s the Protectorates son,” Oliver said. “We’re harboring a fugitive. He could get us all killed.”

“You heard the boy. He’s not exactly waving the Enclave banner tonight, is he?”

Oliver put away his cleaver, and Yvonne slipped away from Gaia, stepping toward the table.

“Are you a fugitive, too?” Yvonne asked.

Leon shifted his gaze to the girl, and his voice softened. “Apparently.”

The girl nodded, and Gaia breathed more easily. Pearl moved to the oven and opened the door to stir up the coals. She moved the pot of soup that had cooled on the hearth back into the embers.

“Have a seat,” Pearl said. “Let’s hear what news you have.”

Leon hesitated, as if waiting for a cue from Gaia, and with a nod she beckoned him forward. He accepted a chair and brought it up to the table. Gaia uneasily took a place opposite him. In the brighter light, she could see his black shirt was of a rougher quality, like ones men wore outside the -wall. Though he smiled slightly at Yvonne when she drew up a stool near him, Gaia could see the edginess in him.

“I know where your mother is,” he said. “She’s alive and in fair health.”

“In the southeast tower,” Gaia said.

He tapped a slow finger on the table. “How did you find out?”

“Mace told me.”

He nodded, his gaze sliding toward the oven. “I also found out where your father’s buried,” he said.

Gaia waited, tense, and Pearl came to put a hand on her shoulder.

“He’s in the potter’s field, outside the wall,” Leon said. “Where they bury paupers.”

Gaia closed her eyes as sorrow, for a long moment, silenced everything inside her. It hurt to think of her father, and there was something terribly final about knowing where his body reposed. It should have been some small comfort to know he was outside the wall, but she only felt the hard stone of her grief melting inside her, which was even worse.

“There now,” Pearl said. “He’s at peace, honey. You just remember that.”

Gaia opened her eyes and turned to Leon. “Why did they arrest my parents in the first place?”

Leon rolled his black sleeves to the elbows before resting his forearms along the wooden tabletop, and still he didn’t speak.

“Did my parents actually do something wrong?” Gaia asked.

“I don’t think so. No.”

“Then why-- “

“They kept a record. That was why they were arrested.”

“But keeping records isn’t illegal,” Gaia said. “How did the Enclave even know about it?”

“We heard a rumor that one or more of the midwives were keeping records, and then, when we questioned your parents, they were obviously hiding something. Once your parents refused to cooperate with us, they technically became traitors.”

She realized that he was evading her gaze, and that he had been since he’d come in. Something had happened to him in the last four days. A quickness was missing from him. She felt a barrier between them, too, one that caused a quiet coolness to settle within her.

She dropped her voice. “What’s really going on with my mother’s code?”

“I’m trying to figure out how to explain,” he said. “It’s intricate.”

Oliver leaned back into one of the darker corners, idle and watchful, while Pearl brought Leon a bowl of soup.

“Thank you, Masister,” Leon said.

“You might as well eat something while you answer Gaia’s questions,” Pearl said. “Just start from the beginning, and we’ll try to keep up.”