Lotus and Thorn (7 page)

DAWN ROSE SOFT
over the desert, the sand drying almost as soon as the sun touched it. I eased away from Edison—untangling myself from his arms—and began to make my way out of the crumbling stairwell and back down to solid ground. Like Pleiades, this building had probably once stretched high into the sky, blue solar glass walls shimmering in the sun. But now it stood exposed, like a person without their skin.

You could see chipped sinks and toilets sticking out of the walls. Decaying furniture and waterlogged computers. Within a day, some crew would run across this place and strip it. Wire from the walls. Metal faucets. Circuit boards. Plastics. All good for trading. And anything wood could be used for bonfires.

I swung down from the lowest beam and dropped into the sand. I pulled off my boots, setting them in the sun to dry. Then I planted my feet and drew my knife. I did a few small kicks first, to work out the stiffness. The sand clung to my damp toes and I kicked high, flinging it off—the energy of the storm still imprinted on my muscles.

But here in the early morning desert, it was impossible not to
feel the absence of my lost crew all around me. Right now, they’d be breaking camp. Sparring. Chatting over breakfast. I closed my eyes, imagining them here—testing the bruise. My grief was still so fresh and at its center, I hit a wall of isolation so concrete it knocked me to my knees.

I forced myself to open my eyes and see its truth. That there were not friendly spirits bustling around me. That I knelt alone in the empty sand.

The only one of them left.

I clutched my arms to my chest as if they might keep in the pain—as if they might be able to hold me together. And this time when the tears came, I let them. It seemed right to let them fall on the damp sand.

It would not be the last time I’d cry for my friends, but when the tears were gone, I understood something new. I would have to speak louder now—because their voices had been lost. And I would be able to do so because the might of their voices had been added to my own. I wiped my eyes and got to my feet, steeling myself. Remembering what Suji and those women had taught me about surviving in a place that wanted to kill you.

Planting my feet again, I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind again. But it was still crowded and clamoring. Bit by bit, I cleared away the terror of last night’s flood. And the implications of losing the shuttle. I tried to clear Edison away too—the image of him sleeping slumped against the wall of the stairwell, mud streaking his isolation suit.

But my thoughts about him were too messy. This man—this Curador, I reminded myself—I was drawn to him in a way I didn’t understand. He was so confident and full of bravado and yet, when
he’d talked about his brother . . . about being different . . . I’d understood him. Or rather, we’d understood each other. I’d never had that before. Not with anyone who wasn’t Tasch or Lotus. But I wasn’t sure what to do with that yet, so I tucked it away for now.

The memory of the bird was not cleared away easily either. Wings pumping. Talons curled.

Had it survived the storm?

I hadn’t gotten a good look at it and I didn’t need to. I’d glimpsed that same bird many times before, when Dad and I were training out in the Commons. Or in the firelight of the Festivals. It wasn’t easy to spot, just a flash of blue eyes in the night. I didn’t even remember anymore the first time I’d seen the creature—but I felt like I’d spent my life peering into the shadows, watching for it.

I told my sisters about it once but I got the feeling they thought it was one of our stories. Taschen had slid her arm through mine and said,
Maybe it’s watching over you
—as if it was part of our make-believe world. In truth, the bird seemed so fantastic, I wasn’t sure I’d truly believed in him myself.

Now I traced the pink ridges running up my arm—the scratches from its claws were real enough.

“Are you hurt?” Edison crossed the sand, worry in his voice. And for a second, I was back in the storm—balanced on the roof, his arms locked around me.

“It’s nothing.” And knowing he wouldn’t give up so easily, I showed him my arm. “Just scratches.”

“Well, I feel like I’ve been through a meat grinder.”

“You’re injured?” The possibility hadn’t even occurred to me.

“Like you, just a little . . .” Edison trailed off, something catching his eye. “Will you look at them!”

He gazed around the dunes in amazement. The sun was all the way up now, and the thunderstorm had done more than simply gouge a trench through the desert.

Overnight, the Tierra Muerta had come alive. Tiny flowers graced the wasteland—yellow, orange, and red speckling the grey-blue sand. And the gully the flood had left behind was blanketed with blooms—a river of color.

“There was nothing! Nothing here yesterday!” he shouted. “Give them some water and they just spring up out of nowhere.”

“And they’ll probably be dead by tomorrow.”

He picked a flower, twirling it between his fingers. “But not before they shed their pollen. Don’t you see? That’s the whole point! They’ve been waiting months, maybe years, for this exact moment. The elegance of adaptation. Of evolution.” He held the tiny blossom in his outstretched hand, as if he was reaching for the right words to wrap around the ideas in his head. “That something so fragile could grow in this desert should be impossible. But against all odds, here it is.”

Without thinking, I repeated what Sarika said when she was collecting spices for brewing. “God loves all things beautiful and delicious.”

“God has nothing to do with it. It’s genetics. Years upon years upon centuries of this brutal place pushing life to evolve better, stronger, in order to grapple with this desert. You of all people should understand that.”

“Me?”

“You’re proof positive.” Edison reached out carefully and took my hands—running his gloved thumbs across my extra pinkies.
Then he looked into my eyes as if he was searching for something. Some sense of understanding, of validation. And I found myself, more than anything, wanting to give it to him.

“Leica, can’t you see this world was made for you? Or more accurately,
you
were made for it. Immune to Red Death. Fast, strong. Your extra fingers must give you an edge!”

An edge? What had my dad told me over and over again?
Your opponent is the least of your worries, Leica. If you believe you are weaker than him, if you believe his five fingers are better than your six, then you have already handed him your sticks.

I’d always imagined that I compensated for my Corruption with speed and strength and cunning. But was it like Edison said? Were my hands actually an improvement on the rest of the world? I’d never gotten a chance to try myself against the best of Pleiades; maybe I was stronger.

“Gabriel
made
you better. And for the sake of your people, you should accept that.” He laid his great hand against mine. “And Jenner? The Dome? For the sake of my people, they made
me
better. We are the same.”

Edison looked at me the way he’d looked at the wildflowers. I thought of the careful way Edison had talked about his brother and him being “the future.” I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. But I realized, stunned, that I’d never really had a future before. In a group of people who lived their lives in anticipation of a paradise I was never invited to, I’d only ever had an existence.

The same.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t liked the sound of that.

There was none of the grinning exuberance in Edison’s face now. Only a promise as he folded his fingers with mine. “The same.”

• • •

With only a half jug of water left, it seemed smart to see if we could find the shuttle. We followed the riverbed, picking through debris as we went. Broken crates. One of the orange boxes. Nothing useful.

“Maybe some of the supplies are still intact inside the shuttle,” Edison said.

We didn’t have to go far to find out. Around the bend we found the shuttle on its side, dug into the sand. Happily, it had flipped door side up when it sank.

The metal groaned as we used the wing to pull ourselves up onto the side, and drop in through the door. The shuttle was filled with wet sand and I dredged through it to find anything of use. The slideboard was smashed. Jugs were split open.

“Find anything?” Edison was rummaging through the back.

“One unbroken bottle of mezcal, for all the good it’ll do us.” I pried it out of the sand anyway and slipped it in my pack. I squinted into the dim shuttle. “How ’bout you?”

“Nothing here either.” Though I swore he slipped something into his pocket. Still, it wasn’t anything to eat or drink, since that would be useless to him while he was wearing his suit. Past that, I didn’t care. “At least the frame’s still worth salvaging for scrap.”

As I followed him back outside, I heard the static of his intercom. “Let’s see if they can get a reading on me now.”

“Ad Astra, come in. This is Edison. Come in.” More static. “Let’s try from the top of the dune.”

We climbed up and tried again. There was a hiss, and then: “We have a fix on your location, Edison. Jenner will be glad to hear
you’re alive. He’s livid you didn’t come back with the magfly and wants a full report.”

“At least he can’t kill me till I get back.” Edison grinned, and though I heard the undercurrent of tension, the man at the other end laughed. “Tell him I’ve found something interesting. We’re heading to the Exchange now. Send a magfly to meet us.”

“Us?” the voice asked.

“Just do as I say.”

“Us?” I echoed the Curador’s question when Edison was done with the transmission.

“Only if you want to.” And the tentative expression looked strange on his face. “The radio is still out there, some exile has it right now, and soon enough, they’ll bring it to an Exchange. And then we’ll have it. And you’ll have your Earth.”

But for me, finding Earth meant finding a way home to my sisters. Edison guessed at my hesitation. “This may not be how you expected salvation to look. But the truth is, your best chance of finding the radio is with the Curadores.” Then he was the one who hesitated. “With me.”

Edison was right, this wasn’t anything like I thought it would look. And I wondered if he really understood what he was asking of me. If I became Edison’s Kisaeng, it would sever any remaining threads that tied me to my people. Even if we found the radio, even if I managed to make contact with Earth again, would the Abuelos accept a savior who’d betrayed her people twice?

“I’m sorry, Leica. If I could make it possible for you to go home, I would. But you know Curadores have no say in Citizen law. All I can do is offer you a way out of Tierra Muerta.”

And like a reminder of the ugly realities of this place, a large group of exiles slipped into view—crossing the lowlands at the bottom of the dune. I pulled Edison down into the sand, simultaneously weighing and discarding all of our escape routes. We couldn’t hide; we were too far from last night’s ruins. And we’d never outrun them.

“Maybe they haven’t seen us.” But even as I said it, I knew it was unlikely. We’d been standing on the ridge of the dune, Edison’s suit glaring white against sand and sky. Still crouching, I put my hand on the knife in my belt. Not wanting to draw it. Not yet.

“They’re hauling something big,” Edison said.

He was right. The men were headed southeast, moving in two lines across the sand with a deliberate, steady rhythm—neither clumped together nor spread too thin. In the center, protected by the others, a group of five hauled a slideboard piled high with salvage catching the sun.

“The shuttle!” Edison exhaled the words. “They’re the ones who gutted the shuttle.”

It was possible––the crew would’ve gotten caught in the sandstorm, just like us. They would’ve had to hunker down and wait it out in whatever shelter they could find or make.

“How can you tell?” Their Find was definitely metal. But it could be anything.

“I can see the radio components.”

I squinted at the slideboard, but it just looked like a mass of scrap to me. Could he possibly see that far? Then I thought of his enormous leap last night in the storm . . . what else was he able to do?

I was willing to believe him. I wanted him to be right. After all, what was my other choice? Follow Edison into the Dome, become
his Kisaeng, and what? Wait around and hope the radio showed up? No. My people had turned their backs on me, but that didn’t mean I had to turn my backs on them.

It was like Edison said:
Some exile has the radio, and soon enough, they’ll bring it to an Exchange. And we’ll have it. And you’ll have your Earth.

I stood up.

“What are you doing?” Edison was alarmed, but I didn’t answer as I headed down the dune.

He followed me, like I knew he would. “I’m doing exactly what you said. They want to trade it for supplies, right? I’m just skipping the waiting part.” We skidded down the slope, sand billowing up behind us. “We’ll promise them a huge Gratitude, escort the crew to the Exchange, and reclaim the radio.”

“And if they refuse?” Edison said, his voice strained.

“Wait—why would they refuse?” I stopped and looked at him, not understanding his hesitation. Crews fought each other over Finds, but never Curadores. Why else would they salvage the radio if not to bring it to the Exchange?

“Well, some of the exiles have been less . . . friendly toward us lately,” Edison said.

The crew had altered its direction to intersect with us and now we could see that this was no straggling mess of exiles. Aside from the double lines protecting their Find, another three men took the lead—walking in a V—and three men kept watch in the back. There was something disturbingly familiar about their neat formations.

“Meaning?” I asked.

“Meaning that there have been incidents.” I glared at his vagueness and Edison gave in. “There’s been attacks on the Exchanges.”

I didn’t understand. Exiles looting supplies? But it was too late to do anything with the information anyway—the crew was practically on top of us now.

Edison stepped forward. “Hello, friends!” The words boomed from his speakers. Commanding, but friendly.