The Refuge Song Page 2

  How could he be such a stranger to me, when I could identify each of his vertebrae under my fingertips, and I knew the precise curve of his hip bone against my own?

  But at the end, in the silo, he’d made the choice to die, to save me. These days, it seemed that was the only gift we had to offer one another: the gift of our own deaths.

  chapter 2

  Halfway to the Sunken Shore, Zoe led us to a safe house, at the edge of the plains. Nothing moved in the cottage but the wind, banging the front door, which had been left open.

  “Did they run, or were they taken?” I asked, as we walked through the empty rooms.

  “Either way, they left in a hurry,” said Zoe. In the kitchen, a jug lay in pieces on the floor. Two bowls sat unwashed on the table, velveted with green mold.

  Piper was bending to look at the door latch. “The door was kicked in, from outside.” He stood. “We have to leave now.”

  And even though I’d looked forward to a night of sleeping indoors, I was glad to leave those rooms where all noise was muted by dust. We retreated into the long grass that grew right up to the house itself, and didn’t make camp until we’d walked all day and half the night.

  Zoe was kneeling over a rabbit that she’d caught the day before, skinning it while Piper and I lit a fire.

  “It’s worse than we thought,” said Piper, leaning forward to blow on the timid flame. “Half the network must’ve been infiltrated.”

  It wasn’t the first ruined safe house that we’d seen. On the way to the silo we’d come across another safe house, where nothing remained but blackened beams, still smoking. The Council had taken prisoners on the island, and the resistance’s secrets were being wrung from them.

  As Zoe and Piper took stock of what we knew, I sat in silence. It wasn’t that they excluded me from conversations—rather that their talks were full of shorthand references to people, places, and information that they shared, and that I had never encountered.

  “No point in going past Evan’s place,” Piper said. “If they took Hannah alive, then they’ll have got him, too.”

  Zoe didn’t look up from the rabbit. She stretched it out on its back, grasped its back legs with one hand, and ran her knife down the line of exposed white fur. The stomach fell open like two hands parting.

  “Wouldn’t they pick up Jess, first?” she said.

  “No. She never dealt with Hannah directly—she should be safe. But Evan was Hannah’s contact. If she’s taken, Evan’s done for.”

  The resistance network on the mainland had been larger and more intricate than I’d ever realized. At how many other safe houses did broken doors now swing onto empty rooms, the latches smashed? The network was like a woolen sweater with several loose threads, each one threatening to unravel the entire thing.

  “Depends how long Hannah held out for,” Zoe said. “She might’ve bought him some time to get clear. Julia lasted three days when they took her.”

  “Hannah’s not as strong as Julia—we can’t assume she managed to last that long.”

  “Sally had no contact with Hannah, either. And some of the western cells should still be intact,” Zoe went on. “They reported straight to you—there were no links with the eastern network.”

  I spoke up. “I never realized how much of the resistance was going on here, on the mainland.”

  “You thought the island was the only thing that mattered?” Zoe said.

  I shrugged. “That was the main thing, wasn’t it?”

  Piper pursed his lips. “The thing about the island—it mattered that it existed. It was a symbol—not just for the resistance, but for the Council, too. It was a signal that there could be a different way. But it was never going to be big enough for all of us. Even in those final months, we had to turn down some requests from refugees—until we’d built up our capacity. Added to the fleet, sorted out the supply situation.” He shook his head grimly. “It was never going to be the final answer.”

  Zoe interrupted him. “Most people on the island did nothing. They felt like great rebels just for living out there, but that was it. They might have joined the guards or done a few shifts in the lookout posts, but not many of them were actually actively contributing—coming to the mainland to help with rescues; running the safe-house network; monitoring the Council’s movements. Even some of those in the Assembly with Piper—they were happy enough to sit about in the Assembly Hall, looking at maps and talking about strategy, but you wouldn’t catch half of them making the crossing. The mainland was where the hard work still happened—but once they’d made it to the island, most people never came back.”

  “I wouldn’t have put it like that, but Zoe’s right,” Piper said. “A lot of people on the island were complacent. They thought being there was enough. It was those on the mainland, or working the courier ships between the two, who did most of it. Zoe did more than most, and she’s never even been to the island.”

  I looked up quickly. “Really? I was sure that you had,” I said.

  “They never wanted any Alphas setting foot on the place—even I understood why.” Zoe was hunched over the rabbit. She pulled the fur from the flesh as if she was peeling off a glove. “Why did you think I’d been there?”

  “I guess because you dream about the sea all the time.”

  I didn’t realize I knew it, until I heard myself say it. In all those nights that we’d slept close to one another, I’d shared her dreams, the same way I’d shared her water flask or her blanket. And her dreams were all of the ocean. Perhaps that’s why it hadn’t struck me before: I was used to it, after my years of dreaming of the island. Used to the sea’s restlessness, and its shifting register of grays, blacks, and blues. In Zoe’s dreams, though, there hadn’t been any island, nor any land at all: just the churning sea.

  One minute Zoe was squatting by the fire, the rabbit’s flaccid body in her hands; the next her knife was at my stomach.

  “You’ve been snooping in my dreams?”

  “Stand down,” said Piper. He didn’t shout, but it was a command nonetheless.

  The blade didn’t budge. Her other hand had grasped a handful of my hair, her knuckles jabbing against my skull, holding me in place. The blade had gone straight through my sweater and shirt, and was pressed flat against my stomach; I felt its cold indentation on my skin. My head was twisted back and to the side. I could see the rabbit on the ground where she’d dropped it, its wrung neck and open eyes.

  “What the hell have you been doing?” she said. As she leaned closer the blade became more insistent. “What did you see?”

  “Zoe,” warned Piper. He wrapped his arm around her neck, but he didn’t fight her—just held her and waited.

  “What did you see?” she repeated.

  “I told you. Just the sea. Lots of waves. I’m sorry—I can’t control it. I didn’t even realize until just now.” I couldn’t explain to her how it worked. How my awareness of her dreams wasn’t an eavesdropping, any more than I’d eavesdropped on the sea while on the island. It was just there, a background noise.

  “You said it didn’t work like that,” she said, her breath hot on my face. “You said you couldn’t read minds.”

  “I can’t. It’s not like that. I just get impressions, sometimes. I don’t mean to.”

  She shoved me backward. When I’d steadied myself, I put my hand to my stomach. It came away red.

  “It’s rabbit blood,” Piper said.

  “This time,” said Zoe.

  “If it makes any difference,” I said, “you know what I dream about.”

  “Everyone within ten miles knows what you dream about, the way you scream and carry on.” She tossed the knife down next to the half-skinned rabbit. “That doesn’t give you the right to poke around in my head.”

  I knew how it felt—I would never forget the sense of violation that the Confessor’s interroga
tions had left me with. How my whole mind had felt sullied by her probings.

  “I’m sorry,” I called after her, as she walked away toward the river.

  “Let her go,” said Piper. “Are you OK? Show me your stomach,” he said, reaching out to lift my sweater.

  I swiped his hand away.

  “What was that about?” I said, staring after Zoe.

  He picked up the rabbit and shook the dirt from its flesh. “She shouldn’t have done that—I’ll talk to her.”

  “I don’t need you to talk to her for me. I just want to know what’s going on. Why did she react like that? Why is she like this?”

  “It’s not easy for her,” he said.

  “Who has it been easy for? Not for me, that’s for sure. Not for you, or any of us.”

  “Just give her some space,” he said.

  I waved at the plain surrounding us, the pale grass stretching for miles, and the sky so big that it seemed to have encroached on the earth itself. “Space? There’s nothing here but space. She doesn’t have to be in my face every moment.”

  I got no answer but the rasping of the grass in the wind, scratching at the underside of the sky, and the moistened scrape of Piper’s knife on the rabbit’s flesh as he finished the skinning.

  Zoe didn’t come back until after dawn. She ate in silence and slept on the far side of Piper, instead of her usual spot between us.

  I thought of what she’d said earlier: Once they’d made it to the island, most people never came back. Is it Piper she’s thinking of, I wondered, when the sea floods her sleeping mind? The sea that he crossed for the island, leaving her on her own, after all that she’d given up to be with him.

  chapter 3

  I’d first heard Piper and Zoe mention Sally, and the Sunken Shore, when we were still in the deadlands. They were meant to be resting, but I could hear their raised voices from the lookout spot. It was dawn; I’d volunteered to take the first watch, but when I heard them arguing I left the lookout post and headed back to the fire.

  “I never wanted to drag Sally into this,” Zoe said.

  “Who?” I said.

  They both turned to face me. It was the same movement, doubled. And the same expression: the same angle to their eyebrows, the same appraising eyes. Even when they were arguing I felt like an intruder.

  Piper answered me. “We need a base, with someone we can trust. The safe-house network’s crumbling. Sally will give us shelter, so we can start to muster the resistance and send people to Cape Bleak to seek the ships. Outfit new ships, if we need.”

  “I’ve told you before,” said Zoe, still ignoring me and addressing only Piper. “We can’t get Sally involved. We can’t ask her. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Who is she?” I asked.

  “Zoe told you about how we got by, as kids, after we were split?”

  I nodded. They’d been raised in the east, where people used to let twins stay together a little longer. Piper had been ten when he’d been branded and exiled. She’d run away to follow him. The two of them had survived by stealing, working, and hiding, with some help from sympathetic Omegas along the way, before they’d finally joined the resistance.

  “Sally was one of the people who helped us,” he said. “The first one. When we were really young, and needed it most.”

  It was hard to imagine Zoe and Piper needing help. But I reminded myself of how young they’d been—even younger than I’d been when my family sent me away.

  “She took us in,” said Zoe. “Taught us everything. And she had a lot to teach. She was old when we found our way to her, but years before that she’d been one of the resistance’s best agents, working in Wyndham.”

  “In Wyndham?” I thought I must have misheard. No Omegas were allowed to live in an Alpha town—let alone in Wyndham, the Council’s hub.

  “She was an infiltrator,” said Piper.

  I looked from Zoe to Piper, and back again. “I’ve never heard of them,” I said.

  “That was the idea,” Zoe said impatiently.

  “It was the resistance’s most covert project,” Piper said. “It wouldn’t be possible these days. This was back when the Council was less strict about branding, especially out east. We’re talking about fifty years ago, at least. The resistance had managed to recruit a few unbranded Omegas, with deformations minor enough that they could be disguised, or hidden. For Sally, it was a malformed foot. She could jam it into a normal shoe, and she trained herself to walk straight on it. It hurt her like crazy, but she got away with it for more than two years. There were three infiltrators, right inside the Council chambers. Not as Councilors, but as advisers or assistants. They were right in the thick of it.

  “The Council hated infiltrators more than anything.” Piper smiled. “It wasn’t even the information that they managed to find out. It was the fact that they managed to do it—pass themselves off as Alphas, sometimes for years. Proof that we’re not that different, after all.”

  “Sally was the best of any of them,” Zoe said. “Half of the current resistance was built on the information she got out of the Council.” When she spoke of Sally, Zoe had none of her usual sarcasm, or the raised eyebrow that could sharpen a single word into a weapon. “But she’s ancient now,” she went on. “She can hardly walk. Hadn’t worked for the resistance for years, even by the time we came to her. Too risky, apart from anything else. She was top of the Council’s wanted list for a long time, and they knew what she looked like. I don’t want to get her involved.”

  “We’re all involved, whether we want to be or not,” said Piper. “The Council will come for her, soon enough. They won’t care that she’s old, or frail.”

  “She’s managed to stay hidden from them for all these years,” Zoe said. “We can’t drag her into this.”

  He paused and then spoke more quietly to her. “You know she’d never turn us away,” he said.

  “That’s why it’s not fair to go to her.”

  He shook his head. “We don’t have any other options. Not after what I did on the island.”

  I could see it again: the blood thickening between the stones of the courtyard.

  “The Council would never have spared the island if you’d handed Cass and Kip over to the Confessor,” Zoe said.

  “I know that,” Piper said. “But we can’t assume that the rest of the resistance will understand that. You saw how they reacted at the time. When that many people are killed, people cast around for someone to blame. We can’t know how they’re going to take it when we reappear, especially not with Cass. We don’t know if it will be safe for her. If we’re going to reconnect with the resistance, we need to start with somebody we know we can trust.”

  She turned away from me again and looked only to Piper. “Sally’s been through enough,” she said.

  “She’d want us to go to her,” he said.

  “You brave enough to try telling her what she’d want?” said Zoe, with a slow smile. Piper smiled back at her. He was like her reflection.

  Ω

  At each settlement we passed on the journey to the Sunken Shore, we did our best to spread the word about the Council’s plans for tanking Omegas. Above all, we tried to warn them away from turning themselves into refuges. These huge, secure camps were supposed to be the Council’s protection for struggling Omegas—a place where any Omega would be given food and shelter, in exchange for their labor. They were a last resort for Omegas, and a reassurance for the Alphas themselves. A guarantee that however much they might restrict Omegas to blighted land, and however high they raised their tithes, we would not take them with us into starvation. But for years now, those who entered the refuge gates had not been allowed to leave. The refuges were expanding rapidly and had become nothing more than tank complexes.

  But time and again, when we tried to pass on this news at settlements, we were met with silence
. Wary stares and crossed arms. I remembered how Kip and I had started the fire outside New Hobart: how it had taken on its own momentum as it built and spread. Spreading the word of the Council’s tanks was more like trying to light a fire in rain, with sodden green twigs. It wasn’t the kind of tale you could just share with a stranger in a tavern, as if it were no more than gossip about a neighbor. We could only risk raising the topic with those who were sympathetic to the resistance—and who would admit to that, after the massacre on the island? The Council, after years of denying that the island existed, was now spreading the word of the island’s defeat. The blood on its streets had rendered it safe: a cautionary tale, rather than a threat.

  And the cautionary tale was working. People were warier than ever. When we approached settlements, people straightened in the fields and watched us coming, their hands firmly on their pitchforks and spades. We ventured into Drury, a large Omega town, but both times we entered taverns the noisy conversations stopped, as if the sound were a lamp suddenly extinguished. At every table, people turned to the door to assess us. Their loud conversations never resumed—whispers and mutterings replaced them. Some people would push back their chairs and leave as soon as they saw Zoe’s unbranded face. Who in the taverns within would dare to discuss the resistance with three ragged strangers, let alone a group that included an Alpha and a seer?

  The most frustrating encounters weren’t with those who refused to talk to us, but those who seemed to believe us, but still did nothing. In two of the settlements people listened to our story and seemed to understand how it made sense of the Alphas’ treatment of us. That the tanks were the endpoint to which the Council’s policies of the last few years had been heading. But the question we heard, again and again, was What are we supposed to do about it? Nobody wanted to shoulder the new burden of this news. They had enough burdens already. We saw it, everywhere we went: the lean faces, the bones of eye sockets thrust forward as though trying to escape the skin. The settlements where shanties and lean-tos propped up one another. The people with teeth and gums stained a livid red, from chewing areca nut to distract from their hunger. What did we expect these people to do with the news we told them?