Chapter Twenty One Dawn
Zada woke up early in the morning, feeling unrested.
Something was missing. The instrument case still lay in the middle of the room. She cracked it open and stared down at an electric stringed instrument about the length and width of her thigh. With the certainty of something she’d dreamed, she knew this was a triple cello.
“Hey, Z.”
She glanced up. Her father was standing in her doorway. When she’d arrived home from Counseling, her door had been removed. She hadn’t asked where it had gone because it hadn’t seemed important.
It didn’t matter. She didn’t care. She had no secrets.
“I think I don’t remember something,” she said quietly. “I had it, and now I don’t.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “It’ll come back to you. Are you talking about your triple cello?”
She nodded.
“I always thought you played a little too much, to be honest,” her father told her. “It took away focus from the things in life that really matter. Maybe when things come back to you, you’ll be able to find a better middle ground. It’s all about balance, you know?”
Zada couldn’t argue with that.
“Yes, of course,” she said.
“I just want you to be happy here,” said her father, smiling slightly as he turned to leave. “Can you help your mother carry down all those boxes of flowers? We’re hiring a hyper-carriage to take them to the hall.”
Zada nodded. She’d seen the boxes yesterday. They were enormous, large enough for a child to climb into, but not very heavy. That was good. It wouldn’t do to exert herself too much on the morning of her wedding. At the thought of it, she smiled. Her special day.
Zada glanced back at the instrument case, the one detail out of place for today, like a strand of hair that wouldn’t stop drifting into her eyes.
“It’s part of who you are,” the stranger had said. And she’d also said, “there’s no way they took all of you, forever.”
No part of her had been taken, she reminded herself.
She was whole and in one piece, and she was going to be a bride.
Her life was about to begin, and that meant she wasn’t sad, wasn’t confused, wasn’t missing something vital clinging to the edges of her memory like a melody stuck in her head.
Something sweet and hesitant and openly romantic.
She knew the song, but she didn’t remember learning it, didn’t remember her first time encountering it anywhere else in the world. So how—
“Zada?” her mother called.
Zada closed the instrument case with a snap. “Coming!”
The processional was absolutely gorgeous.
Zada stood in the alcove of the grandest room in City Hall, savoring the sound.
Her makeup, her brows, the pale blue ribbons trailing through her hair that her mother had carefully chosen, and her frothy white dress dripping with ruffles—every detail was perfect.
Flora and Augusta had hugged her, tears in their eyes at the sight of her.
They had solemnly promised to be the best matrons of honor they could be, and Zada had clapped her hands and smiled at them.
And here, now, it was all happening. She clutched her flowers and waited for her cue, completely at peace.
The moment came. Zada walked slowly down the aisle.
Everyone stood to watch her advance. In the crowd, Zada saw her parents sitting in the front beside Buford’s parents.
Behind them were her old classmates from Dalrymple and her beloved matrons of honor.
Flora’s husband, Aiden, was the next row over, serving as the best man.
And even Administrator Erskine was in attendance. What an honor.
Oh. The stranger from last night was there, too. She was standing to the side, sleek in a black suit, a cut high on her cheekbone. Zada’s stomach swooped at the sight of that slash of dark red, in freefall at the thought that this stranger might have injured herself climbing down Zada’s wall.
Then the music swelled, and Zada remembered why she was here.
The rich curtains at the back of the stage almost seemed to glow as she took her place.
Buford, looking very handsome in his suit, gave her an approving little nod.
The officiant, a more senior aide of Legislator Bassey’s, stepped up to the podium.
But then, with an enormous grin, Flora handed Zada her triple cello, and Augusta produced the bow. How wonderful. She’d nearly forgot this was happening.
Zada took her place on the grandest stage in the grandest room of City Hall. The crowd before her was silent, rapt. They had been to enough weddings to recognize a bride going off-script. Nobody had asked her to play.
It was harmless. She had smuggled her triple cello case to the venue in a box of flowers and then into the hall itself draped in the folds of her enormous dress. Flora and Augusta had done the rest, secreting the triple cello and the bow behind one of the massive curtains at the back of the room.
She only needed to prove to herself that she was not some broken shard of a woman, that every part of her was present and ready to marry Buford.
She touched the bow to the strings, playing a G on instinct.
The sound reverberated through the room like laughter.
The piece from before beckoned. Somehow, she knew that she could perform it by heart.
Zada brought the bow to the strings and began to play.
The floating, blissful feeling didn’t disperse all at once.
It felt like waking up very slowly from a dream, pieces of reality bobbing back up one by one to the surface of her mind.
Daphne, playing her foldable mandolin and the dizzying surge of shared creation, of writing a melody together that hadn’t existed before.
Zada sitting alone in her room, layering music at her triple cello.
That bone-dry first kiss with Buford. Laughing with Daphne, Flora, Augusta, and Carine as they painted their faces to pretend to be statues.
Watching Daphne, surrounded by bright lines of code. Watching Daphne distract a slew of anxious first-years with a spot-on impression of Professor Egerton. Watching Daphne deftly pick the lock of her grandfather’s study.
Gathering interviews with the nuns, picking up stories that ran against everything she’d ever been taught.
Kissing Daphne at the grotto rock concert.
Deciding to work hand in hand with a friend Zada hadn’t spoken to in a year, a friend she had no reason to trust, because it had seemed the only possible way out of a lifetime backed into living a lie.
The shock of realizing that Daphne had harbored her own agenda from the beginning. Crying alone in the interrogation room.
Zada kept playing on pure muscle memory.
She felt like she was fretting the strings and bowing the notes while falling down an impossible cavern, or possibly rising from it.
Every part of her mind that had been amputated and cauterized opened to her at once—the pain, the ambivalence, the bitter disappointment.
At the same time, she remembered the other side of the same coin.
She had chosen to go to the grotto rock concert.
She had kissed Daphne, and outwitted Chancellor Fallow’s security system, and uncovered the lies behind the Heartsong program and the Core.
She had turned down Counseling, and even then, she’d tried to leave herself a message in the form of seven notes inked onto her arm with makeup and tears.
Zada Chambers was shy and quiet and disastrously bad at public speaking.
But some part of her was also a fighter, and meeting that part of her again was a heady rush.
And not only that, she knew that Daphne had scaled the side of her home to see her, to try to break the spell of Counseling and to return to her some morsel of herself. She had it now.
She had it now, and everyone in the room was staring at her. Was there, she asked herself, a word for how she felt? She thought of the nuns and their secret library, and wondered if that word was inside one of the many volumes the leaders of New Ionia had fought so hard to keep from her.
The song ended. She was breathing like she’d run a mile. She half expected someone to run up and yell at her audience, to insist they hadn’t heard what they’d just heard.
From their seats in the hall, Zada’s parents beamed. They’d always loved her music, even if they thought it a distraction.
The officiant conjured up his notes from his SmartGem.
“Well,” he said with an awkward laugh, “I can’t follow a demonstration of love like that, and so I won’t try.”
Oh. They thought the song was for Buford. Her gaze found Daphne in the back of the room. Daphne, who for once looked uncertain.
The officiant cleared his throat. “Do you, Zada Chambers, take Buford Arnoth to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
Zada breathed in. She could do this. Just because nobody else had ever done it before didn’t mean there couldn’t be a first time.
“No,” she said, voice carrying in the perfect acoustics. “I don’t.”
A loud murmur arose. Someone gasped.
“Uh, nothing personal,” she added. “Buford is a good man. But this system, letting some algorithm decide who you’re meant to be with—it’s rotten, all of it.
” She swallowed. “And not just because anyone with the right permissions can go into the program and alter its results. The Heartsong program selected Buford as my soulmate, yes, but I can’t spend my life with someone just because the math checks out.
I can’t trust an algorithm over what every fiber of my being is telling me.
The Core has what data I’ve given it, but it doesn’t know me.
It doesn’t know what I need or what I truly want. ”
When she looked out into the crowd, Daphne was gazing back at her.
“I don’t really know what my destiny is,” Zada continued, “but I believe that love should be a choice.”
She thought of the nuns, Sister Patience and Sister Justice, who hadn’t been brought together by Heartsong.
They’d picked each other, with no guarantee at all of how their story might end.
Two months ago, the very thought of that would have filled Zada with panic.
Now, she saw something brave and beautiful in what they’d built, even on uncertain ground.
“And I don’t choose Buford,” she said. “I can’t.” Another deep breath. Her time was running out. She knew the only reason she’d been allowed to speak for this long was because everyone in charge was too stunned to move. “The person I’d choose—if she chooses me, too—is Daphne Fallow.”
Daphne’s face lit up, sun-bright. Then she was running down the aisle, crossing the room in long strides, and vaulting up onto the stage.
“Hi,” said Zada softly.
“Hi,” said Daphne.
Slowly and deliberately, Daphne took Zada’s hand in hers.
It was about that time that the grandest room of City Hall erupted into chaos once again.
Everyone spoke at once. Some were shouting.
Administrator Erskine was calling for a microphone, but even she couldn’t really be heard over the din.
Zada looked for her parents, but they were lost among the crowd.
Some were leaving their seats, while others were activating their SmartGems, no doubt to tell their social circles what had just happened. The scandal of the century.
Daphne squeezed Zada’s hand in three even pulses. Zada felt her mouth curve into a smile.
Someone tapped Zada on the shoulder. It was Flora. Augusta stood behind her.
“That was wonderful!” Flora had to shout to be heard over the noise of the crowd. “I had no idea—”
“Well, I did,” Augusta put in, beaming.
“You need to go, right now,” Flora yelled. “Aiden heard Administrator Erskine talking. She wants to Extricate you, Zada—”
“They’ll have to go through me first,” said Daphne, eyes flashing.
“We’ll take our chances,” Zada said. “Together.” This time, she wasn’t letting go of Daphne, not for anything.
Augusta shook her head. “They’re going to put you through Counseling first. They’ll make you recant everything you said, in front of everyone. Then they’ll abandon you outside without any of your memories intact.”
Zada tried to imagine the two of them, freshly Counseled, utterly helpless and full of deluded belief in the very people who had abandoned them. They would not survive for long. She shuddered.
Augusta grabbed her by the arm. “Run. The sisters are outside waiting.”
“But how—” Zada started.
“Aubrey,” Flora broke in breathlessly. “You were right about them. We reached out to Aubrey, and they did the rest.” She handed Zada her triple cello and bow. “You’ll need this.”
“Out the back door, now,” said Augusta. “We’ll cover for you. Hurry!”
A pair of guards thundered up the steps, and Flora and Augusta moved to block them. Zada and Daphne bolted for the back exit, slipping past the heavy curtains. Then Zada and Daphne were racing through the double doors and out of the room.
“The guards were right there. We have to jam the doors.” Zada panted, searching for something, anything, they could use to bar the doors.
“Here!” said Daphne. She’d snapped a candle-style light fixture off the wall and tossed it to Zada, who slid the artificial candle through the door handles.
Soon, they were running down the mazelike back half of City Hall. It was strange to think that only two months ago, Zada had wandered the hallways alone until she’d found Daphne surrounded by twinkling blue lights.
“Do you know the way out of here?” asked Zada.
“I think so,” said Daphne, “but we need to—”
She broke off. Someone was standing in the shadow of the hallway. The figure emerged from the darkness as if he’d been waiting for them. He wore a fashionable blue suit, and his auburn curls had been slicked into place.
“Thought you might come this way,” said Buford Arnoth.