Grace (6 page)

The pumps do not have Keran Berj’s face or his smile or his sun on them. They are solid-looking, worn with age, from a time before all of this, and I think of what the man who made them would do to Keran Berj.

That man could find water in the desert and built this winding metal path across the land. He would crush Keran Berj like a bug, grind him between his fingers until there was nothing left but dust.

I smile, and Kerr wakes with a start, gasping. When he sees my face, whatever he was dreaming of falls away and he follows my eyes, sees what I’m looking at and then elbows me once, hard. I ignore him, but when he does it again I follow his eyes, which are not looking out the window, but at the door.

The soldiers are coming back, invigorated with fresh air and water, and I put my papers on my right knee and wait while they scratch themselves and then decide to look at our papers yet again.

They spend a lot of time talking to some people at the front of the car, two women traveling with a small, gloriously dressed child who must be important because he is given water from the soldiers’ flasks.

I want the train to start moving again and shift in my seat. As I do, I feel sweat drip down the back of my neck. I think of the dye yet again and lift one hand, tuck the short length of one side of my hair behind my ear, and check my fingers.

I think they are lighter than they were before. My stomach knots.

I have light hair, but I am not sure if it is still light enough, not light like it should be if I want to walk across the border and have the Guards believe I will come back.

And now the soldiers are coming this way; I see their feet, I see them, and they will see me, my hair, and—

“Sister,” Kerr says, tapping my head playfully before his hand rests on my knee, digging into the bone, a warning. “Someone is speaking to you.”

I look up and see a soldier, bitter-eyed with a sneer of a mouth, staring at me, eyes roaming across me.

I smile at him. Smiles are easy. I smiled when Da’s family would walk by me and pretend I wasn’t there, even when it was known that I’d been called. I smiled after Da handed me over at Angel House and the one who led me inside said, “I can’t believe we’re taking another one with bad blood. Saints bless me, but I don’t want to spend forever by your side.” I smiled when I’d walk through camp and people would greet me but never ask me to visit, would turn their faces away, duty done. I smiled when Liam dug his fingertips into my sides to hold me beneath him.

I smiled when I wrapped a bomb around my leg and was told to go, that I was lucky because it was truly a glorious day to die.

“You look thirsty,” the soldier says. “Are you?”

I nod, because I have heard his unpleasantness, his mockery, his disdain taunting voice a thousand times over, in Mary saying “You don’t try hard enough” when I would frown and she would stare, blank-faced, at the Rorys spitting three times whenever she and I walked by. In Liam saying “I’m so tired of pretending you’re Sian. I pray every day that the Saints will take you soon.” In Ann and Lily noticing how pale I’d gotten before I left, how they smiled and said, “Shut away for a few days, and now you look just like one of them.”

“I could give you some water, if you want.” The words are kind. His voice isn’t.

I look at my hand. There is nothing on it. My hair is fine. I don’t look like I’m from the Hills. I look like one of Keran Berj’s kind, his obedient sheep slaves.

I look like I am used to hearing orders and obeying them.

The thing is, I am.

I
was told what to do—what I was—so many times. I had been told what would happen to me so many times. I was raised knowing the Angels were reminders that the People would never give way. I was raised knowing my life was to be used in hopes of changing the world.

I was to keep nothing in my heart but devotion. No love, no hate, no room for anything else but what I was to do. How I was to serve.

So when the soldier gestures for me to follow him, I do.

I have no other choice.

I only had one once, and it has brought me here, to me following behind this soldier, resignation heavy in my heart.

But the soldier surprises me.

I expect to be dragged into their washroom—which I am—but instead of reaching under my skirt he asks about my imaginary sister, the one who has a baby due very soon.

“Was she sick when she was first carrying the child?” he says. “Did it—did it make her ill? ”

I nod slowly, staring at him warily and trying to hide my surprise at his question. Every woman I have ever seen with a rounded belly in the Hills spoke of being ill. Some with pride, some with resignation. But they all spoke of it. They all knew it would happen.

He blows out a breath. “Was there . . . what did you do about it? What is there to do to fix it? ”

I cannot picture this soldier with a family, a pregnant wife, sister, niece—anything. He is Keran Berj’s creature and no more, except here he is, talking to me.

Asking for my help.

I clear my throat.

“Rest,” I say. “Bland foods. Sickness is normal. It passes.”

He stares at me for so long I think I have said the wrong thing but after a moment he hands me his flask. He pulls it away after I take three swallows. The water is so cold it bites into my teeth. It is glorious. I want more.

“You weren’t that helpful,” he says when I look at the flask, and then opens the door, pushes me out. His hand is heavy on my shoulder as he walks me back to my seat, and as I sit, he presses something into my hand.

I wait until after he is gone to open my fingers.

Sitting on my palm is a waxed packet of rice balls. The rice is fresh, the grains still puffed and not shriveled from the heat.

“Don’t cry,” Kerr whispers, and the pinch he delivers to my arm is almost enough to mask the note of fear in his voice.

“I’m not,” I whisper back, but there is something wet on my face, and I am.

“Are you . . . hurt?” Kerr says, low-voiced.

I shake my head. How can I say that three sips of water and these rice balls—gained from answering a simple question—are the most kindness I have ever gotten from anyone? How can I say that someone asking me for advice is the most I have ever been judged worthy of?

“If you aren’t hurt, then why are you—?” Kerr says, a whisper against my ear, and I turn, look at him.

He draws back as if I have hit him, and I know what he sees. I can’t hide my surprise now. Or my pain.

I shove a rice ball in my mouth. I offer him the other one and wonder if his softness will make him reach for it, or if he will turn away.

He opens the top button on his shirt instead, and as he does, I see raw red skin.

I see why Chris told me he had a use for me.

I am traveling with Jerusha.

I am traveling with death itself.

O
nce, back when I was still living with Da, some of Keran Berj’s followers thought he had too much power. They looked at his gold statues and palace and realized he cared only for himself, not them. They never made any overtures to us, but we heard of them. We knew they wrote letters and smuggled them out. We heard that faraway countries asked to send inspection teams to visit, to see if life under Keran Berj’s thumb was as sweet as he claimed.

Keran Berj replied by saying he didn’t believe in violence, and that he and his people, his land, would not participate in any ongoing wars or in any wars that were to be. Then he sent money for “relief” or “care” or “rebuilding” to every nation that had ever questioned him. He said there were tragedies going on around the world and “we” only wanted to help. He even built a glass tower and had the word PEACE carved into it to show how much he loved everyone.

No inspection teams came, and Keran Berj sent his Guards out to round up everyone who had spoken out against him. They say the piles of bodies in the City were so thick that entire streets were closed. In the end, rather than bury the dead, Keran Berj simply lit part of the City on fire, and built a park covered with statues of him over its remains.

And then he passed laws. It was illegal to speak against Keran Berj or even mention him to outsiders. It was illegal to even think ill of him, and those he thought might have died in mass hangings that everyone in the City was required to attend.

He also sent Special Instruction Units to visit every school, and each child was given a copy of stories he’d written about how Keran Berj was now both mother and father to all because his God had told him so. There was more—we had one of the booklets, and all the Angels had to read it to understand what we were facing—but the very last thing Keran Berj said was that everyone had a role to play in keeping the world safe, and that if you ever saw or heard someone say something bad about him, you should write him a letter. He said he would read each and every one because he knew he could trust his children.

Lots of letters were written, and people—mostly older sisters and brothers, but some parents and a few aunts and uncles and grandparents—were taken in for questioning. Nothing serious was found—a few people were fined, or were reassigned to different, lesser jobs—but each child who turned in a family member got a package of sticky honey sweets and a little cap with Keran Berj’s face on it, and so more letters were written.

The sticky sweets and hats made children happy and families scared, but Keran Berj wasn’t happy. He was sure there were still plots against him, but he could find nothing. He tried hanging his son for thinking badly of him, but it didn’t help him find anything. It just scared people.

After that, he started giving long speeches about the losses he’d suffered for God and everyone who lived in his land. He even said he was praying for the People. Of course, he also called us “savage killers” and promised to bring “swift and sure” justice if we didn’t listen and obey him, but still. He spoke of us and there was talk among the People that perhaps he could be moved against. That all his killings had finally frightened his people enough to act. To rise up.

Then Jerusha Nichola wrote a letter to Keran Berj.

Jerusha Nichola lived in the City. He had met Keran Berj twice, and had even taken a tour of his office with a few other select children. His father, Pazi, was Chief Inspector for Factories, and his mother, Eliana, was Director of Music. Pazi made sure the factories ran the way Keran Berj wanted. He was also responsible for sending those who knew how to make the goods the factories churned out to a hot death in the desert. He made it so Keran Berj was the only choice for everything in life.

Eliana wrote songs for Keran Berj. None of them are sung now, but Keran Berj’s “Song of Praise” was her creation, its refrain a simple chant about Keran Berj’s glory that all were once required to learn. With consequences if one didn’t.

Pazi and Eliana did not like Keran Berj. They had both written letters to outside governments, and paid a fortune in bribes to make sure their names were never mentioned to him.

They thought they were safe because they’d paid so much money, and because Keran Berj killed others and not them, but after Keran Berj killed his own son they worried that perhaps someone would talk about what they’d done. They decided to offer to go on a diplomatic trip to a country eager for trade with Keran Berj, and never come back.

They kept all this secret. Not even the servants they had working for them, raw-boned country girls whom Pazi molested in the pantry and Eliana beat for not being quick enough with dinners, knew.

But their son knew. He heard them talking when he was supposed to be asleep. And so he wrote Keran Berj a letter.

His parents were arrested the day they were supposed to leave.

T
here’s a famous picture of Jerusha’s parents after their arrest, their faces crumpled with fright as Keran Berj watches with one arm around little Jerusha, who smiles proudly at the camera and doesn’t look at his parents at all.

Keran Berj made that photo famous because he had it turned into posters that were placed everywhere. He even had soldiers nail them into the lowest lying trees in the Hills—after first killing them by pouring chemicals into the ground so their very roots would sicken and die.

We killed all the soldiers who we caught doing that—they were not Guards, and were no match for the Rorys—and used the posters to write our own messages. I even got to do one because we had so many, and I remember carefully writing RORYS FIGHT FOR FREEDOM! in hopes of a bit of praise from Da or even one of the women watching us because I was there, trying to be what I was supposed to be. Because every child was helping out, every child was showing that the People stick together.

There was no praise, but I liked being with everyone else, being a part of the People without question for once. I still remember how we all looked at the other side of the poster—at Jerusha smiling while his parents were being taken from him, and how all of us, even the older boys, the ones who went on to die in battle as Rorys when I was learning how to die myself—and made the sign to ward off evil.

Jerusha’s Law was passed the day before Jerusha’s parents were hanged, and Jerusha was there when Keran Berj raised his hand and ordered the ropes dropped around their necks. He was there when their necks snapped. He was there, standing next to Keran Berj, when they died, mouth full of honey candy and a smile on his face.

Keran Berj made a speech afterward and talked about how brave Jerusha was. He showed off Jerusha’s neck, which was red, an open sore rubbed raw by rope. Jerusha’s parents had escaped the night before they were hanged and tried to kill their own son the way they knew they would die. Keran Berj said Jerusha was lucky to have lived, and Jerusha smiled.