The Bone Wall (34 page)

“Would you come with me today?” Still in my nightslip, I curl into her, my chin on her shoulder, my arm around her. Outside the morning sun wriggles from behind bulging clouds and the autumn day promises a hint of coolness.

“Harvesting?” She turns her head, gray eyes flat as sheet metal, a small smile tugging up her lip.

“Kneeling in the dirt like we used to, yanking beets and turnips, gritty to our elbows. To me it sounds wonderful, a day without death.”

“There are no days without death,” Rimma replies. She isn’t angry or sarcastic or bitter, merely stating a fact of the broken world as she perceives it.

“There can be,” I argue, sidling from the bed and dressing in my old ragwear from Heaven. “If we all learn to offer something besides arrows. If we offer something of value.”

“Anything of value can be robbed from you,” she says.

“No one can rob you of the effort,” I snap at her. “Of intent. Gah! You make me so angry, Rimma.”

“What would you have offered the Black Dogs, Angel?” She rises and stands at the window, her arms crossed. “Open the gates to Heaven to the rabid and offer them succor? The River Walkers didn’t want our friendship; they intended to sell us. What would Greeb have accepted as a peace offering other than my open legs?”

All the frayed edges of her righteous resolve mend before my eyes, whatever was unraveling as she lay beside me knits into a skin as impervious as steel. I have no answer to her questions. “Maybe it was all too late then,” I concede. “Maybe our bone wall was too old, too high, and too wide. Maybe if we’d started earlier.”

“
Maybe
isn’t very comforting.”

“The Fortress is amassing a bone wall,” I tell her. “Even the Colony had one. You’re adding skeletons to your own, Rimma, but you won’t add mine. You won’t turn me against you; I’m the breach in your wall.”

For a moment, she stares at me, her eyes glistening, the scaled armor over her skin bearing a tiny flaw, a fissure where I still can reach inside to touch her flesh. “I’m overdue on patrol,” she says and leaves my room, the door closing softly behind her.

**

Despite the squalor, I prefer the gardens outside the gates, the challenge of drawing shoots from the cracked soil, keeping irrigation ditches flowing, and now, pulling roots for winter stews. Though Rimma gives me pennies, I keep bits of dried fruit in my pockets for thieving children who know me by now, squealing as they garner a sweet and running off with full cheeks and juice-stained chins.

Among the women preening in windows and exposing their bodies are mothers bereft of living children, hoping it isn’t their wombs that reject life, praying that the right seed will bring them healthy sons and daughters, acceptable to Fortress standards. Among the alley drunks are survivors, soldiers tired of killing without conscience, and farmers tired of tilling a dead land, the wrecked remnants of People enslaved and assimilated by the Forerunners who slayed their fellows. Among the sick and dying I see souls of all ages and trades, all leveled by the poisons and wars of my ancestors. I choose to place food on their tables.

The day warms nicely but remains cool enough that I don’t sweat beneath Kya’s grass hat as I dig. I share the row with three other women, breaking up the soil for clumps of round potatoes we toss in wicker baskets. Their usual merry chatter is subdued beneath faces drawn with worry, and I can’t help but ask, “You seem quiet, Imari. Is something wrong?”

The honey-skinned woman bites her lip as she exchanges glances with Devan and Jaelyn. “We shouldn’t say.”

“Why?” I ask. Sitting back on my heels, I search their mum faces for my answer. “What’s happened? Why can’t you tell me?”

“Because you live up there.” Devan blows a red curl from her forehead as her gaze rolls toward the stronghold.

“Why does that matter?” My eyes dart between them in confusion.

“It matters a lot, Angel.” Imari stares at me as if I’m a mindless dolt. “Your sister’s a soldier and Mikel’s…woman.”

“Is it about Rimma?” A swell of panic rises to my chest that she’s once again thrust us into jeopardy, this time with nowhere left to flee. “Has she done something?”

“No,” Imari insists, her narrow braids swinging as she shakes her head. “It’s just…”

“Dela and Rik,” Devan sighs. “But we shouldn’t gossip.”

“A little late for that.” Jaelyn ogles the other two, clearly annoyed with them. Our senior by a few years, the plump woman frequently runs short on patience.

“We have to tell her now,” Imari concedes.

With a reluctant nod, Jaelyn faces me. “You can’t say a word to anyone, Angel.”

“Or someone will die,” Devan adds with her typical flair. “You have to promise not to say anything.”

If not for Jaelyn’s stern-faced worry, I’d swear I’m back in Heaven sharing rumors of unauthorized kissing. Now I don’t know whether I want them to continue. “If Dela needs help, I can’t promise silence.”

“She needs more than help,” Jaelyn clarifies. “But right now, she needs our mouths shut.” Her dark eyes narrow on Imari and Devan while the two women squirm and return to digging potatoes.

“Fine then, I promise.”

“Dela had her baby,” Devan blurts like a popped bottle. “He’s early, but he’s strong.”

“Why is that a secret?” I ask, looking between them. “That’s good news, isn’t it?”

“He’s not right.” Imari shakes her head. “He doesn’t cry.”

“But Devan said he’s strong. They wouldn’t…” I leave my thought unspoken. I know what that means. The baby can’t remain at the Fortress if he isn’t deemed healthy. “Maybe he will, maybe he simply doesn’t have a reason to cry.”

“It’s not that,” Devan says. “They tried pinching him.”

“Not hard,” Jaelyn assures me, ready to swat the other two.

“But, what is she planning to do?” I clap a hand to my mouth, the consequences too terrible to utter.

“Wait,” Imari replies. “What else can she do?”

Tears blur my vision. So many pregnancies fail here that after months spent in heartbreaking worry, a live birth seems a miracle. “She can’t let them poison him. How can this place poison babies?” I whisper the words, but they shriek in my ears.

“She means to hide him,” Jaelyn says quietly, patting my knee to comfort me. “Hope he gets better. Maybe it’s something from the birth or being early.”

“But what if he doesn’t?” I protest.

“If they find out, she won’t have a choice,” Imari snaps at me. “You think any of us have a choice? It’s the law here. No cripples.”

“Then…then she should go to the Colony,” I stammer. “No one’s
crippled
there. The Touched are…just ordinary people with a gift, part of life. They’re
enhanced
. They’d be safe. I promise. No one there would harm a child.” The women gape at me as if I’ve grown a second head, and Imari huffs a deep breath. Even in Jaelyn’s thoughtful gaze, I recognize skepticism. The Fortress has constructed a wall of distrust as solid as stone.

“It’s dangerous out there,” Jaelyn finally says. “Dela and Rik have other children to think about; they won’t just pack up and risk everything on your promise.”

“Jaelyn, I used to live there. I could convince them.”

“Just don’t say anything, Angel. We shouldn’t have told you. Give them time and if anything changes…
I’ll
find
you
.” Jaelyn sits back on her heels, expecting obedience.

“Fine,” I murmur sullenly.

The gloomy silence that I noticed before our conversation returns. I jab my spade in the dirt, popping out potatoes, furious beyond words. The Fortress possesses the strength and resources to forge a different future. The Forerunners organize, collect knowledge and skills, apply reason in their construction of a model for success, but it’s devoid of humanity. They design laws around a vision of the future that leaves too many behind, that codifies ruthlessness. It’s civilization but without heart, vision without compassion. It’s a deceiver’s garden with a bone wall in the making.

My basket overfull, I lug it to the wagon and heave it up with a grunt. The day’s grit brushed from my hands, I decide I’ve had enough of potatoes and simmering in the soil. The outer city feels suddenly desperate to me with lives needlessly harsh. Even before the breaking, I suspect the world wasn’t fair, never meting out joy and suffering in equal shares, but that conclusion offers no comfort to my sense of helplessness.

A bitter laugh bubbles up at an odd thought. I wonder if this is how Rimma felt with the River Walkers, powerless and stuck, frustrated and full of rage, desperate to try anything no matter the risk. Because to sit back and do nothing feels intolerable.

Inside the gates, new bodies hang, dripping shit, faces bloated, but not yet bruising purple and black. Major Cullan stands with one of his lieutenants, a short man with a beaked nose, while soldiers disperse to new duties, their grisly deed done.

Without a second thought, I march up to him. “Cut them down, Major. They’re dead enough, wouldn’t you say?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be on the north wall?” he asks me. I suppose he thinks I’m Rimma.

“I’m Angel,” I reply. “Rimma’s not the only one who dares speak her mind. This is barbaric. You’re no better than the people you hang.”

The expression on the major’s face is pure puzzlement. “You don’t seem yourself, Angel.” The hook-nosed lieutenant blinks and walks away with a chuckle. No doubt, the little blond wisp throwing commands at the broad-chested major is high on entertainment.

Those blasted tears well in my eyes again. “How can I be, Cullan? How can anyone be themselves in a place that enslaves people and hangs them for not being happy about it? How can anyone smile with corpses rotting between carts of food?” I’m shouting through my tears and drawing the stares of curious passersby, but I can’t stop. “How can you live in a place that murders children?” His hand curls around my arm and he hauls me back to the gate and away from the gathering crowd.

“Your cousin. Did you meet her?” I demand to know as he drags me along. “Did you like her? Did you find her repulsive?”

“Yes, I met her,” he replies sharply, letting me go. “And no, I didn’t find her repulsive.” He stands before me, fists planted on his hips, his expression stuck between a resigned sigh and a furious frown.

“Would the world be better off if she’d been murdered as an infant? Because that’s what would have happened had Simone stayed here.”

“No, the world wouldn’t.” He rakes a hand through his sandy hair and waits for my next accusation.

“Thank you,” I say, the fire of my emotions burned through. “Thank you, Cullan, for at least having the courage to admit it.” I turn my back and stride through the gate, past the swaying corpses and up the hill to the stronghold, unsure of what, if anything, I’ve accomplished.

Inside the place smells vaguely of smoke as cooks on the first floor labor at wood-burning stoves and ovens, dishing out the evening meal. Thin, gray tendrils curl from long metal pipes that vent through boarded up windows. I also smell bread and something roasted with a trace of rosemary. Smoke and the scent of food rise through the atrium’s floors with the heat. The stronghold feeds the soldiers, the families of officers and trade masters, hundreds of servants who toil within its walls. I wash in the tiled rooms with a bucket of frigid water and then sit among them to eat, feeling a stranger, noticing the evening shadows that skulk in the corners instead of the sweep of golden light that commonly captures my eyes.

Without a word, I follow several women into the stairwell, sharing a lantern, mine forgotten in my room that morning. They exit before me, and I creep the rest of the way in blindness, feeling my way with each tentative step, my hand tracking the metal rail, the wall, until the treads end and my fingers grope for the doorknob.

The seventh floor is murky and warm, lit more by the fat moon above the atrium’s skylight than the spare lanterns hanging in hallways. Soldiers still stride through connecting corridors, most holding a destination in mind it seems, a few looking lost and wandering like me. I stop within view of Mikel’s door, running improbably scenarios through my head, making up conversations that all end with his understanding and compliance. All the clever words I’d say.

“Thinking of going in?” Rimma’s voice rises smooth behind me. I pivot to my human mirror, except I wear age-old ragwear trousers smudged with dried up dirt, and she’s in diaphanous silk blue as topaz. Soldiers pause to stare at her. My twin smiles and touches my cheek, appearing strangely serene.

“No.” I shake my head. “I haven’t the courage.”

“The room is yours tonight,” she whispers in my ear and glides past me, liquid folds of the dress swirling around her ankles like eddying water.

When I open my door, I inhale the faint fragrance of wild roses, hear the soft harmony of wind-whispered voices, witness nothing beyond the ordinary until Priest materializes by the window, a smile of missing me in the rich loam of his eyes. All my loneliness and sorrow rises up in a geyser, the pressure bursting in a torrent of tears and desire, needing the safety and solace of something, someone who feels unbroken.

“Angel?” He holds my face in his hands, kisses my wet cheeks. “What’s happened?”