The Bone Wall (41 page)

Resting back on her heels, she looks up at me with a quizzical pinch between her eyebrows. “I suppose that’s what I fished for,” she admits.

“I won’t drag you off into battle,” I assure her. “Have babies.”

My delicate sister snorts with laughter. “Chantri’s pregnant,” she whispers to me.

“I know.” I lean on my hoe. “She told me a week ago.”

“I only overheard,” Angel confesses. “I’m spreading gossip.”

“I never thought of Chantri as particularly motherly.” I chop at a clump of soil and finally squat down to break it apart with my hands. “I suppose maybe there’s hope for some of us.”

“For all of us, Rimma,” my sister says, and though I don’t quite believe her, we leave our words at that.

An hour later, our dirt patch planted with beans, we sit on the path between the rows and guzzle down a flagon of tepid water. Our thirst quenched, we trickle what remains into our cupped hands and splash our sweaty faces. Another patch beckons, one we might tackle before midday if we don’t dally. I point with the hoe. “Shall we start—?”

Shouts from beyond the wall snap my attention, a bolt of fear shooting up my spine, sharp as lightning. Holding my breath, I scramble up, yanking Angel to her feet, prepared to run. Four men on horses, rangers from the waste, pound through the open gate and down the track toward the far alcove.

The hoe gripped in one hand, Angel’s fingers in the other, I hurry down the paths between the rows with the other men and women who toil in the late sun. The riders dismount, two striding inside while two tend the horses.

“What’s happening?” I ask Tory as the lean man hoists the saddle from a mare’s back.

His burden lugged to the shed, Tory wipes trail-dust from his face with a sleeve and spits through the gap in his teeth. “The People have declared war on the Fortress,” he replies. “They’re heading north, lots of them. Plus from the North Tradepost. Others we don’t know, maybe.”

The implications judder through my head. How many would that be? Thousands? How many powerfully Touched against the larger, better-equipped force of the Fortress. “Because of the killings?” I ask him, already knowing the answer.

“According to the People,” Tory confirms. “They argue the Fortress started the war a long time ago, but it’s worse lately. Forerunners killed hundreds down south a couple months ago. I guess they had enough.”

“What will we do?” Angel asks, her brow wrinkling with worry.

I look between them, afraid of every answer. The canyon walls close in, looming, rocks teetering on the rim, prepared to tumble. The waterfall roars in my ears, its wheel madly spinning. The broken world grins wickedly, a black void yawning open.

“The Council will decide.” Tory shrugs his shoulders. “We’re just bringing the news.” He starts unbuckling the cinch on the next horse as I rest my hoe on the shed wall and follow Angel into the dark. A score of us clutter the corridors, our vision blind in the dimness until our eyes adjust.

“We don’t have to go anywhere,” Angel reminds me. “Even if the Colony takes action, we can stay here.”

The words filter into my ears, and I drag in a breath, aware I’m trembling. My iron grip on Angel’s hand releases and she shakes out her fingers. “It’s my fault,” I murmur, my throat constricting. The narrow space feels tight as a tomb, its walls packed with corpses.

“No,” Angel whispers a reprimand. “You are one woman, Rimma. One.”

“But I encouraged it. I planned it. I suggested we go to Sanctuary.” I can’t breathe, the darkness cloying and oppressive.

“To
save
lives.”

“I saw our mother. She’s a Biter.” The words come tumbling out of me, the maw of Hell opening to swallow me. “I killed our sister’s father.”

Her gray eyes black as iron, Angel blinks at me, not understanding. She reaches for my arms.

“I killed our sister’s father,” I repeat, stepping back from her hands as they try to grab me, to keep me from fleeing.

“What? Rimma?” Angel holds my cheeks, confusion bordering on panic. “What sister?”

“We have a sister.” I’m shaking my head frantically, trying to back away from her. “I thought the man was chasing our mother, but he was trying to protect her. I bashed his head in with a pipe.”

“Who’s our sister?” Angel keeps pressing toward me, keeps touching me, her hands gripping my arms and shoulders, touching my face. “What about our mother?

“I don’t know,” I bark at her.

“Is she dead?”

“I don’t know!” Others crowded in the corridor turn to regard me, to listen, their expressions hidden in shadow.

Angel’s pawing arms suddenly drop and she heaves in a breath, letting it blow out of her. “Peace, sister,” she says, attempting to soothe me.

“I don’t know,” I echo, the words lost in my own ears, my back pressed to the wall.

“Peace, sister.” She gently takes my hand. “Let’s go back outside.”

Again, I find myself blinded. Blinded by the dark, blinded by the light. I have no place in this broken world. Angel asks me no questions, though I sense them keen and frightened on her lips. She seems to know better than to pry open my coffin of secret horrors. When my heart slows from its wild gallop, she leaves me by the seep-spring to find Priest. I sit in the alcove’s shade and wait for her return like an anxious child.

A blanket of shadows stretches across the canyon floor as the sun inches beyond the rock rim, the walls no longer looming over me. The white waterfall still sparkles, but it too won’t escape the inevitable ascent of night. When finally the clay building begins to empty, Angel and Priest join me. She’s a white ghost in contrast to his black skin and obsidian eyes.

“The Council refuses to intervene,” Priest informs me, sinking to the ledge beside the spring, Angel between us. From the distant gaze in his eyes, I know the debate replays in his mind. “Simone points out that we haven’t been invited by either side to participate. Jeph asks which aggressor is deserving of our lives—a fair question. Cash expounds on the Fortress’s repeated rejection of our desire to join because we won’t abandon our Touched.”

“They murder their own children,” Angel says, that fact forever hot on her skin.

“And therefore, why should the Touched come to their defense?” Priest continues the argument. “Nor is anyone served if the Fortress falls. Despite their faults, they have centuries of progress. They’re over ten times our size, a hundred years ahead of us.” He shakes his head wearily. “All our efforts to protect our future, to bear and raise children, to rebuild a broken world…only to witness thousands more die. Are we so damaged we’re irreparable?”

Yes, I would say aloud if I spoke my heart, but the question is unanswerable, or meant for someone far wiser than I. Yes, we are without hope, broken beyond repair, blind in the light, groping in the dark, adding bones to our mounting walls. We build them so high we can’t peer over. They’re all we see when we attempt to gaze beyond our familiar borders, our monuments to self-deception.

“Rimma?” my sister asks, drawing my attention back to the spring. She strokes my hand. “The Council decided that the Colony will only intervene if the Fortress agrees to concessions. They’re willing to let us speak with Mikel on their behalf, to offer an alliance one more time. If he accepts all of us on equal terms, including the Touched, the Colony will help defend his walls. And when this conflict is over, his war with the People ends and his gate stands open.”

“No, Angel.” The words erupt with a renewed swell of panic, the threat overwhelming. “No, you said we could stay here.”

“Peace,” she says with a hopeful smile, her gray eyes mirroring the full moon. “We can help broker peace, not war and death. I can talk to Cullan. You have influence with Mikel. He’ll see reason, won’t he, with thousands of armed men outside his walls?”

“Never. No, he won’t.” I refuse to yield, this idea bordering on madness.

“But we should try, shouldn’t we?” she assets, affronted by my resistance.

“You think this deed will undo all I’ve done, that my wounds can heal, that I’m redemptive?” I cover my ears with my hands. “You want to drag me from the canyon, remake me into something laudable?”

“Rimma, I never meant—”

“It’s not safe for you, either of you,” I insist. “I’ll simply end up killing. Mikel will never agree.”

“Yet I’ll have the conversation,” Priest says softly. He studies me, must note the sheen of sweat dampening my skin, desperation curled in my fists. He must see that I cling to the canyon walls by my fingertips. His dark eyes swing to Angel. “Perhaps Rimma is right and it’s better if you both remain here.”

“Stay here at the Colony, Rimma,” Angel urges, her hand reaching toward me. “Stay and I’ll be back.”

I almost laugh, the path so twisted, our roles rapidly reversed. The broken world yanks my puppet strings, my life beyond my sway. The flow of panic through my veins ebbs, the void opening and swallowing my fear, consuming me whole. “I follow where you lead now, Angel. If you go, I go too.”

My sister gazes at the man she loves, and I recognize in her eyes that her decision is as predictable and certain as the grave. I nod and rise to my feet. “I’ll see Chantri about my bow.”

**

Skirting the old roadways, we avoid the Biters who amass somewhere south of the Fortress. Chantri and Tannis lead us due north through rough high-country, adding two days to our journey though the distance is scarcely farther. Carved foothills snake with dry ridges of loose, red rock and sand that cascades from towers of stacked boulders. In one canyon, we ride past strange, contorted formations that reach out with knobby limbs and fingers, like deformed Biters charmed to stone in the midst of their demonic dance. Bizarre and beautiful at once.

With two Touched in our party, we need no fire pits for cooking, and the summer nights feel balmy beneath wool blankets and flaming stars. Coyotes bark and yip their keening songs in the early pale of morning, their company welcome.

Our route carries us east of the Fortress through the ravine where I killed my first small pack with Dex and Zane over a dozen stolen goats. I see the boulders where Rift and I hid, where Rift took an arrow in his gut and died screaming. Around the bend lie the mounds of rock where we buried the bodies.

“We’re a half day’s travel from the outlying farms,” I inform Priest, riding up alongside his bay. Angel straddles a mild-mannered gelding behind him, the horse chomping on a tuft of dry grass. I rub a speck of grit from my eye. “Chantri and Tannis should camp here, no closer. There’s a trickle in the creek and the Fortress doesn’t patrol this far without a reason. We cleared the People from here a year ago.”

With a nod, Priest reins his horse. “You’re certain Mikel will reject our offer, aren’t you?” I can’t tell from his expression whether he pities my pessimism or finds it ominous. He appears worn down either way.

“How many years, Priest?” I ask. “Always the same answer.”

“He’s never faced this threat before,” Chantri chimes in, she and Tannis trailing in behind us.

“I’ll tell you what he’ll do, Chantri.” I dismount and squint up at all of them. “He’ll aim for the Touched first. Men, women, and children old enough to appear dangerous. When they’re done for, he’ll start on the men.”

“Nice place,” Chantri snarls.

“He’ll make slaves of those who surrender, abandon any surviving Touched to find their way to the Colony if they live long enough, and hang anyone who puts up a fuss.”

“Fuck!” Chantri barks with a glare for Priest. “Why the fuck did we come here?”

“I told you not to,” I snap back at her. My shoulders roll in a shrug as I lead my horse to the creek.

“To change minds,” Angel replies, no doubt frowning at my back. “And you’re not helping, Rimma.” With only the devil visible these days, Chantri doesn’t hear my angel, and so her question goes unanswered.

Our horses watered, Priest, Angel, and I ride on leaving Chantri in a foul mood and Tannis aggravated at me for riling her up. They’re all irked by my icy gloom, but in truth, I lack even that morose sentiment. I’m a mote of dust carried by the wind. I don’t know why I’m here, why I’m in this world, what part I’m to play in any plan. I used to believe in God, in destiny, in a reason for my life and actions that made sense. I used to trust I held a vital role in God’s grand scheme, important to the future of the world. Then Heaven fell and a godless world brushed me aside.

I vowed to protect hope and innocence as my papa guarded mine. How terribly he failed, his noble aspirations interred in a mass grave, his trust in me wasted, for I killed my sister’s father. My memories of a youthful Rimma brim with pathos and yet feel so pathetic, my belief in my importance and power blindly naïve. I’m a child wielding sickles at an invisible enemy who needs only a snap of a fist to drop me. I watch Angel riding beside Priest, flaxen locks swaying, her face alight with shared smiles, and I know she needs no guardian wielding weapons of violation. She does well enough alone. So why am I here?

The Stronghold is a mere hour’s ride when we’re spotted. Two soldiers approach warily from the scrub at the track’s ruff, both with loaded crossbows pointed only slightly off target.

“Hide your arm,” I instruct Priest.

“No.” He leaves the stump of his withered forearm resting in plain sight.