Chapter 46 - The Deserving Ones
Lucretia
I stop screaming, not because someone who sounds precisely like July has told me to, but because I don’t want to ruin my voice.
I distractedly caress the weird frog’s little head, its soft fur oddly soothing against the cuts and scratches on my fingers, while I wait for someone to pay me attention.
Eventually, another voice speaks to me. “Do not touch the building, do not get any closer. To be clear, whatever you’re thinking of doing, just don’t. And, please, let Rary go.”
The sound comes from everywhere as if this disgrace of a building is talking to me. “Fine, and, for the record, I wouldn’t even brush a finger against this thing covered in moss and surely infested by every sort of insect.” I look at the frog in my hands. “Rary?”
A confident bark comes through my fingers, and a skinny webbed foot pops out between my thumb and forefinger. As much as I like the effect of the frog’s skin on my wounds, I kneel and gingerly open my hands to let it go. The frog hops away, trilling and chirping.
“Done,” I push myself up, patting my knees and wincing when my raw skin scrapes against my silk trousers.
My legs also ache, and my left knee has been throbbing since I fell badly on it while running away from the people who tried to capture me, after Popplewish and I got separated in Brenath, after having fled a burning Libera… My eyes sting at the memory of it.
I press a finger on my swollen knee and hiss, clenching my jaw.
“Are you—nope, clearly you’re not okay.”
That voice again, only closer, younger and…friendly?
I look up to find someone who wasn’t there a moment ago, standing only inches from me. “How did you?” I tilt my head to the side, searching for a door, some sort of entrance to the destroyed building.
With the moon setting at his back, the young man’s silhouette radiates an impossible shade of copper and silver, from his hair to the freckles on his smiley face to his silly orange shirt.
“You’re not Tabitha Lorne.” And who sounds silly now?
“I hope not,” he quickly assesses his statement by touching his face and chest before rushing to offer me his hand.
I swat his hand away, cursing silently as pain explodes in my body with every slightest movement. “Don’t touch me, I can manage.”
His face drops, “I’m sorry, I thought you needed—Thanks for letting Rary go, by the way.”
I look him straight in his boyish, cerulean eyes. “I don’t need anything and…You’re Horigean, what are you doing with Tabitha Lorne?” I move closer to better study him and make him blush.
“Was that July Crimson I heard?”
He nods, seemingly happy for me to change the subject. “She asked me to come and save…”
I narrow my eyes.
“Show you the entrance.”
“Well then?” I raise my arm to jab him in the shoulder, but stop when I notice something bulging on my wrist.
He promptly steps back, pointing at my hand. “That needs my sister’s knowledge, and I’d like to know how you and July are friends,” he comments, ignoring my insulted face and giving me his back.
“I’m Mack, by the way.”
“We’re not friends,” I snap. “And I’m not interested in hearing another word from you.” I trudge behind him.
“Are you sure this is the way?” I observe my surroundings, unsure whether to turn around and run in the opposite direction.
My head starts pounding.
“If this is another trap…” I blurt after Mack.
He glances at me from over his shoulder, bringing two fingers to his lips and turning an invisible key at the corner of his mouth before theatrically tossing it away.
“Fantastic,” I grumble, picking up my pace, surpassing him by a few steps, but before I can get any closer to the decrepit building, he nudges me away, waving his hands in my face.
“This is ridiculous. Speak, you weird Horigean, before I pluck your soul from your body,” I command, puffing light purple breath in his face.
He releases a loud sigh, hands on his hips, scrunching his lips. “You don’t look like the type of person surrounded by friends, but for some reason July thinks we should listen to you…Interesting.”
His words strike something inside me I don’t even want to contemplate. Dealing with betrayal from my own people is one thing. Arguing with a simple Horigean, so openly rude, is something I can only discuss after a shower, food and my beauty sleep.
Despite him still staring at me, immobile, the skeleton of rust and stones at his back starts creaking and hissing.
“Follow me, but don’t touch me. I don’t want a molecule of my soul to end up in your hands.”
His voice sounds like that of a child mimicking an adult.
“You know I’m a Harvester, right? You know what I could do to you?”
But as I rant after him, louder with every word, he takes a step back and disappears in thin air, leaving me agape.
“Just keep walking, Harvester. The fences won’t be down for long. Your choice. Follow me and live to keep listing the bad things you could do to me, or…” His disembodied voice fades away. “Stay there, friendless, hurt and smelling awful!”
“Take them off me!” I frantically pat every inch of my body, shaking my head upside down as hundreds of invisible little legs crawl over me and under my clothes.
“Those are not creepy crawlies, you squeamish Harvester. Only millions of highly trained, thinking particles of electricity.” Mack chortles, standing crossed-arms in the centre of a vast hall with three doors.
“After a while, you’ll get used to it. It’s actually pleasant if you learn to enjoy it. It makes you feel alive.”
His tone is relaxed, despite our earlier altercation.
“What is this sorcery?” I pant, brushing my hair off my face.
“Says the one who threatened to suck my soul a moment ago. No magic, Harvester, just genius.”
He’s mocking me. He’s irritating me. So much so that I briefly forgot why I had even come here in the first place.
In the dim light of the atrium, warming up the naked walls and the simple terracotta floor, Mack no longer resembles the young, annoying boy I met outside. He owns the space, as he marches from one door to the other, making sure they’re all locked.
When he gets to the third one, at the end of a short corridor dividing the hall into two hemispheres, the door purrs? under his touch and slides open. “This way, Harvest—”
“Lucretia, for fuck’s sake. My name is Lucretia. Stop calling me that.”
He cuts a smirk from over his shoulder. “Oh, don’t worry. I know your name.”
“Mack, stop teasing her and come down now.”
A female voice I don’t recognise resounds from a hidden speaker above us.
“Boring soul,” he mumbles, taking the stairs behind the door and slowly descending, disappearing from my view.
I hurry after him as much as my sore feet allow me.
The staircase is well lit and, to my great relief, has only ten or twelve steps before it ends in another door, which Mack holds ajar, waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.
A slice of light flows from under it, disturbed by someone moving behind it.
“After you, Lucretia.”
I hold Mack’s mocking stare until the imposing female voice speaks again. “We don’t have the whole day.”
Mack pushes the door completely open, and my eyes widen.
Galen and July are standing with their backs against a flashing, beeping control panel. Next to Galen, a stranger, is another woman who shares Mack’s colours and annoying smirk.
“Finally,” she exhales, “Mack, restrain her.”
My jaw drops, and - it can be a trick of the light - but Galen and July seem to share my reaction.
But Mack nudges me gently to one side, stepping before me. “Excuse my dramatic sister,” he sighs with a hand to his heart. “Merya, you can’t be serious. She’s one against all of us, her wrist is probably broken and - I mean - look at the state of her!”
I scoff, averting my eyes from the back of his shirt, clinging to his lean but broad shoulders.
The woman he’s just called Merya studies him, then her ice blue eyes fall on me. “She’s a Harvester.” She bares her teeth, disgusted, before addressing Galen and July, “No offence.”
“None taken,” they answer in unison.
“And her wrist is simply torn,” she adds after looking at my hand.
“Broken or not, she’s wounded and clearly in pain. Shouldn’t we let her talk and understand how she knows Tabitha is here and why she’s looking for her?” Mack asks.
I give him a nod and guide my eyes across the room, silently asking everyone for permission to talk.
Moving slowly, as if close to a wild animal, Mack pushes a chair towards me, and I fall onto it, exhausted.
“I’m not a threat,” I tell them, uncertain whether they’ll believe me when I’m the first to doubt myself.
I feel July’s eyes on me—another person I cannot yet place on my already extremely shrunken list of amicable acquaintances.
Leaning against the panel, arms folded and with a bandaged leg, Galen breaks the wall of awkwardness that divides me from these people. “How did you get here?”
“Miss Popplewish told me the way before we got separated…”
“Evelyn knows this place?” July’s confusion matches mine as I’m still trying to understand how Miss Popplewish could be involved with the rebels we’ve often heard about.
I nod and let it all out. “We took a pod and abandoned Libera because it was on fire, and we got chased by bad people…And they followed us to Brenath…I watched a video…I think it’s my fault…and then—Popplewish stayed with them…”
Nobody dares say anything. Even Merya offers me some respite by averting her judgemental eyes to focus on the screens behind her, while Galen approaches my chair, limping.
“Are you sure? Perhaps you were just—in shock?”
I twist my fingers nervously. “I saw what I saw. She helped a man get away from the shore, and there were no firearms pointed at her…”
Galen turns towards the others, opening and closing his fingers.
“This was all his plan. The attack in Libera, the Wise…But Evelyn…” July exclaims, moving closer and looking at me with apprehension.
Galen picks at the stubble on his chin. “I refuse to believe she’s been on his side all this time. There must be another explanation.”
For a split second, I watch the shadow of a doubt crossing July’s face before she slides a hand up Galen’s back.
“If she told Lucretia to come here, it was to keep her safe. She knew she could trust Tabitha. But if Roden is with her now, he will force her to lead him to us. It’s only a matter of time. ”
“All very true and very wrong.” Merya towers above my chair. “How the hell does she know where we are?” Her voice cuts through the room like a hard ice shard, straight towards Galen.
“It wasn’t me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“We had a deal,” Merya replies as if everyone except her and Galen has left. “Tabitha took you in with the promise that Evelyn would never know where to find her. I knew I should’ve aimed higher. You may have already revealed our location to Roden!”
Galen consumes the space between them with only two steps despite his wounded leg, making the floor shake under his rage.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He stops inches from her face, panting dark purple puffs, one hand stretched towards her heart.
His entire body quivers as he grunts, “Pathetic…Horigean…Always ready to judge, ignoring how insignificant your life is…”
A faint yellow glow starts pulsating from beneath Merya’s black tank top. She glances at her top and then back at Galen. Her face betrays no emotions, but her eyes gleam with unwanted tears.
“I know what I’m seeing,” she hisses, her face beading with sweat.
A man I haven’t been introduced to yet, but who has been silently checking on July all this time, jumps between them, facing Galen and pushing him away towards a wall lined with bookshelves, while Merya, despite her stoic reaction, drops to the floor panting and coughing.
“Galen, stop. Are you crazy?”
Shocked by the impact, Galen blinks, gaping as if out of breath, nostrils flaring, before taking his attention back on Merya, ignoring the man who’s just hit him.
“What just happened?” I hear myself asking, gripping the armrests so tightly that the skin of my knuckles and my injured wrist hurts.
July mouths me to remain still as she slowly begins to move towards Galen.
“July…” the stranger calls after her.
She stretches a hand behind her, inviting everyone to wait, “I’ve got this, Kris.”
Backed against the wall like a feral animal, Galen’s eyes dart around the room, his breath changing to a lighter shade of purple as he slowly calms down. But when July is close enough to touch him, he shakes his head and shimmies along the wall, away from her.
“He’s closer,” he mumbles. “It was just a flash, but I saw him and he has Evelyn.” Galen takes his head in his hands, pulling his hair and sliding down the wall onto the grey stone floor.
July kneels in front of him, gently brushing his leg. “Did he speak to you again?”
My gasp matches Mack’s as Galen raises his head, shaking, staring at July through slightly veiled eyes.
“He showed me Libera as it imploded, taking with her those who didn’t want to follow him.
He told me it is time for the deserving Harvesters to end their exile and finally enjoy their promised kingdom. ”
In the room’s opposite corner, Mack stops tending to Merya at the sudden noise of a beeping alarm coming from the largest monitor.
“What is it?” Kris asks, voicing everyone’s thoughts.
July extends a hand to Galen, helping him up, and I mirror them.
In the room’s blue light, I know something is wrong when Mack grasps the edge of the panel with both hands, leaning forward, his spine rigid, knuckles white.
“Roden’s here.”