Sapient Salvation 1: The Selection (Sapient Salvation Series) (4 page)

Movement in one of the aisles caught my eye. A boy of about fourteen years old was taking the steps two at a time. He stopped, his chest heaving and sweat beading on his forehead, in front of Mr. Arsen. The boy leaned down to say something in Mr. Arsen’s ear.

Despite the evening heat, a chill swept through my body. Everything seemed to slow as I watched Mr. Arsen stand and face us. His face was pale, his jaw slack. He clamped his mouth closed, swallowed, and then held one hand up high.

“Clan Terra,” he said, his voice carrying up the tiers. “Our Obligate—” He faltered and his eyes bugged wide. He gave a slight shake of his head. “Obligate Belinda has—has died. Of a snake bite. Only an hour ago.”

My hand flew to my mouth as a chorus of gasps and cries rose around me. I turned to my mother and sister, and their faces reflected my own horror.

Being close to the front, I could see Mr. Arsen’s lips tremble as he raised his other arm and then flapped both hands, encouraging us to quiet down.

He turned and beckoned to the boy, who stood off to the side, watching. Cries and questions burst out in our section, creating an anxious cacophony.

Ignoring my mother’s distressed voice and Lana’s clutching fingers on my arm, and remained transfixed. Mr. Arsen said something to the boy and he nodded. With his head down, he sidestepped past Mr. Arsen. He went to the section to our left and tapped the shoulder of Orion’s clan officiant.

The officiant handed his clan’s lottery bucket to the boy, and the boy jogged back to Mr. Arsen.

“We have no choice,” Mr. Arsen said, taking the bucket from the boy. “We must draw our Obligate by lottery.”

3

Maya

MY THROAT WENT dry and my heart seemed to falter for a few beats. Then everything sped up, my pulse raced, and the shocked voices all around me thundered in my ears.

For a second or two, I tried to guess how many Obligate Elects there were in our clan, tried to calculate my and Lana’s odds of getting selected. There were certainly at least a couple dozen of us. But fewer than forty, maybe? My brain refused to complete the estimate.

Lana was clinging to my arm with both hands. Mother was looking around like a lost child, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

My eyes kept slipping over to Orion, the Obligate whose name had been drawn only moments ago from the bucket that Mr. Arsen held.

Orion had moved to the bottom row of the section for his clan—Clan Cairns. He sat with his chin up, his spine straight, and a hand resting on each thigh. Some members of his clan gathered around him to offer a few words and then drifted back to their seats. Orion nodded at each one. I couldn’t quite see his full profile from where I sat, but there was an admirable dignity to his posture.

I flicked a glance back down at Mr. Arsen, who’d enlisted a few Clan Terra members to help him quickly scribble names on the backs of the pieces of paper that Clan Cairns had used for their lottery.

“How could Obligate Belinda have been bitten by a snake on Selection day of all days?” The sound of Lana’s shocked voice made me turn to her.

I shook my head slowly. “I can’t imagine,” I said, barely managing enough air to push the words out.

“What about the next Clan Terra Obligate in line? Teresa? Can’t she go in Belinda’s place?” Lana asked.

“No. Teresa won’t be of age until the next Selection.” Teresa was slated to go to Calisto as Clan Terra’s Obligate in her first Selection next spring. She was still only seventeen and thus still ineligible for that evening’s the Selection.

I glanced again at my twin. If we’d allowed the overlords to classify Lana as a disabled citizen, she would have been taken from our home and placed in special housing. But she also would have been safely ineligible for the Selection. I’d always believed that we’d made the right choice, that she was better off at home with us, and truth be told, I couldn’t imagine sending her away. I couldn’t imagine life without her.

But as I watched Mr. Arsen and the others drop pieces of paper into the lottery bucket, my heart contracted, tightening into a tiny hard pebble of fear in my chest. Had we made the right choice with Lana . . . ?

Mr. Arsen held the lip of the bucket in one hand and shook it back and forth a little. Clan Terra had gone so silent I could hear the quiet rustling of the pieces of paper.

He held the bucket up at shoulder height and nodded at the boy who had delivered the news of Belinda’s death. The boy reached up and his hand disappeared into the bucket. He pulled it out and passed a piece of paper to Mr. Arsen.

Mr. Arsen set the bucket down and then gripped the piece of paper in both hands as if it weighed as much as a brick. His lips parted and his chest rose and fell once before he looked up.

“Maya Calderon.” He held up the piece of paper.

A roar rose in my ears, the internal sound of my own disbelief and horror. But even through the roar, a thread of relief laced through my heart. At least it was not Lana.

“Maya, no!” Lana’s panic was a visceral shot to my heart, but her voice unfroze my limbs.

Mother was gasping, her mouth opening and closing as if she were drowning. She half-rose to her feet and started to cry out, but her words dissolved into a fit of violent coughing and she sank back down.

“Stay right here with Mother,” I said softly right next to Lana’s ear as calmly as I could manage. I peeled her fingers from my arm and stood, stepping out of the range of her reaching hands.

On clumsy-weak legs, I side-stepped to the aisle and went down to Mr. Arsen. He watched me with huge eyes.

I stiffly moved to stand beside him and face my clan. The weight of their shocked stares seemed to hit me right in the middle of my chest, and I couldn’t draw enough breath.

“Maya Calderon,” he called out loud enough for the whole section to hear, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat. “Maya Calderon has been selected as Clan Terra’s Obligate.”

Low words passed through the crowd, like a chill breeze rattling dry limbs, spreading from the lower rows to the upper rows.

I could hear the sounds of my mother and twin weeping and tried to keep my gaze averted, but I couldn’t help looking at them. They clung to each other, their faces twisted in unchecked misery.

“Maya,” Lana sobbed, as if she could feel my eyes on her.

The anguish in her voice ripped through me, snatching away my resolve with sharp claws. Hands reached out to steady me before I even realized I’d nearly fallen. I tried to hold myself up, but my knees refused to support me.

The hands on my arms and around my waist turned me and lowered me to the center of the front bench of Clan Terra’s section, sitting me in the place where Obligate Belinda was supposed to be.

Ahead, the light bearers walked in synchronized steps from each side of the stage to the row of candelabra at the back, marking the beginning of the Selection ceremony. One light bearer for each of the sixteen candles.

One of those candles was for me.

The light bearers filed off the stage, and the Selection Controller, a round woman with gray-streaked hair pulled up in a tight bun at the crown of her head, walked up the five steps from the pit in front of the stage. From there I could just make out the dot of the implant at the back of her neck. Like the man who took our bergamine collections every workday, she was an Earthen but also a direct underling of the overlords. She stood under the rusted iron ceremonial arch, a relic from before the overlords returned to protect Earthenfell, and turned to face the crowd.

Even when the Controller began to speak, the misery of Mother’s and Lana’s soft sobs still filled my ears, blotting out all other sounds.

Though my ears refused to listen, I knew, more or less, the script the Controller recited. The story of a perilous time before the overlords, back when Earthenfell was called Earth. The near extinction of humans at the hands of violent alien races vying for control of our planet. The arrival of the Calistan overlords, their promise of protection, the raising of the shield, and the battles in the sky.

And the price they demanded: sixteen human Obligates twice a year.

Suddenly the Controller’s words cut through the buzzing in my ears and the sounds of mother’s and Lana’s grief.

“And so we make this offering twice a year,” the Controller said. “We offer sixteen of our own who are in their prime at the command of the overlords and for the pleasure of Lord Toric.”

A violent tremor passed through me.

For the pleasure of Lord Toric.

One of the female Obligates would serve the alien lord’s pleasure. I realized with a jolt that I did not know for sure what that meant. We would be competing for a position in Lord Toric’s harem, of course, but I did not know
exactly
what it meant to serve him.

There were rumors of Lord Toric’s enormous sexual appetites. But what kinds of acts did he expect—
demand
—from his harem?

The uncertainty of what lay ahead and the horrible ripping in my heart at the prospect of leaving my home, my family, seemed to be trying to turn me inside out.

My stomach constricted but my lungs felt too wide. My breath hitched as if the muscles around my chest and throat had gone out of sync. I gasped as my pulse raced at a sickening pace.

I looked around wildly for help.

Was I dying like Belinda? Was it a cursed position that would continue to claim Clan Terra Obligates one by one?

Someone laid a hand on my arm and asked me a question, but I couldn’t focus. My breath was hitching so violently I couldn’t have responded anyway.

I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out.

Flinging concerned hands away, I rose and pitched forward, aiming to run. I made it only a few steps before my feet tangled.

“Easy.” A low, soothing voice and a strong arm around my waist cut through my panic.

I looked up into Orion’s eyes. He was bent over me with a mix of concern and sympathy on his face. Even in my anguish, I thought how remarkable it was that he could be so kind when he’d learned of his own fate only moments before I’d learned of mine.

With a light touch of one hand on the small of my back and his other hand under my elbow, he guided me back to my clan.

“Slow breaths in through your nose,” he whispered.

I did as he instructed. It was a tiny relief just to have something to focus on.

“Your mother and sister need you to be strong. You can do this, Maya.” His hand slipped from my elbow, down the underside of my forearm, and squeezed my fingers with gentle pressure before he stepped back and returned to his own clan.

I tried to thank him, but all that came out was a wheezy whisper. The Controller was still speaking. I tried to focus on her words, to pull myself together.

Orion was right. Falling apart would not help Mother and Lana. I took a steady breath and tried to relax my clenched hands in my lap. My family would need every bit as much strength as I would to survive after I was gone.

My heart lurched with a sickening thump. Lana. Who would fulfill her quota each day?

Just as the new, deep worry began to fill me, someone was pushing at the back of my shoulder.

“You must go down there now.” Mr. Arsen was urging me to rise.

I started to stand so I could go join the other Obligates who were descending through the aisles to gather in the pit in front of the stage, but my knees gave out.

“Maya.” A hand appeared. I knew from the voice that it was Orion.

I grasped his hand and let him haul me to my feet. I stood there a moment, making sure my legs would hold me. Then I nodded to Orion.

“Thank you.” I pulled my shoulders back and lifted my chin, and he let go.

He held out one palm, indicating that I should go ahead of him in the aisle that led to steps down the side of the pavilion seating.

My first few breaths were shaky and constricted as I left my clan and my family behind. But as I walked, I concentrated every bit of strength on steeling myself. I wanted Mother and Lana to see how steadily I moved, how calm I was.

The steps down to the stage seemed to stretch out forever, but I focused on one at a time. It helped to know that Orion was right behind me. Two other Obligates walked down the steps ahead of me, and I wondered if they’d spent the past couple of years preparing for such a moment, or if they were like me and Orion.

“Maya?” Someone in the seats exclaimed. It was a familiar voice.

I slowed and turned my head, and my eyes met Rand’s. His mouth fell open and his head tipped to the side just a fraction, as if he were struggling to understand what he saw.

I averted my eyes, staring down at the next step. I had to focus my entire effort on keeping my composure.

Rand. Maybe he could help Lana. It was a huge request, but he was the type of man who just might do it. My heart lifted just a hair.

As the stage loomed ahead, I darted a look at the other Obligates converging at the bottom of the stairs the Selection Controller had climbed to begin the ceremony. My mind blanked. What was I supposed to do? I’d watched the ceremony many times before, of course, but for some reason my mind could not translate what I’d witnessed as an onlooker into what I should do as a participant.

I stopped behind the Obligate in front of me, a curvy young woman several inches shorter than me with waves of hair that hung halfway down her back. Auburn hair, I could see we were close enough to the candles.

I stared up at the stout Controller who surveyed us with grave eyes, her hands clasped under her large breasts.

“Obligates, take your places of honor.” She stepped a few paces to one side and swept one arm out, inviting us up.

I remembered. The Clan Terra Obligate always stood behind the third candle from the right. I moved into the right hand line that was forming, positioning myself so that I’d end up in the correct spot when we filed on stage in two lines that would split with one going to either side.

On stage, I took my place behind the third candle. With the brightness of the flame in my eyes, I could barely make out the people in the audience. They were mostly just rows of faceless forms, and for that I was grateful.