Chapter 2
Imaneuver my way through the lines, rushing over. I know what comes next. I know the punishment for stealing. The risk I’ve taken every day to save up a way for us to leave this place.
It’s death.
By hanging in the square, specifically.
“I can pay!” I hold out a gold coin to the Mercyenforcer with my head tilted to the ground. Serafina looks up at me with tear-filled eyes. I shake my head subtly and straighten, hoping she gets my drift. She cannot cry. That would only make matters worse.
“She’s hungry, that’s all,” I tell him. “The ration truck had a bad wheel yesterday and never came. Please.”
The Mercyenforcer is silent. The crowds have quieted too. On my periphery, Miss Omon shuffles. I look up, just so, and catch her hollow stare crack—her eyes widening. She’s worried, for me. She’s showing what could seem like affection, and it could get her killed too.
“She sorts the linen each evening,” I lie to the Mercyenforcer, motioning to Serafina. “She needs her strength.” The truth. How else will she ever get well? “Again, I can pay.”
I watch his hand, hoping it doesn’t move toward his heart. That would be a sign that punishment is coming.
He snatches the gold from my hand, turning it in his, weighing whether it’s enough.
They don’t need gold. Mercyenforcers work for the Benevolent; they’re Skyborn.
They live in big houses in Skyhaven. I see them glistening from the mountaintops while I’m smuggling.
I sell my illicit goods at some of their doorsteps.
“Did you steal this?” the Mercyenforcer asks, now turning a small black box—a stinger—in his hands. The box’s edge is razored with biting shards of light that can make every muscle in the body go still for a time.
He waits for my answer. Some say Skyborn can tell when you’re lying just by looking in your eyes. I don’t know if that’s true. But I don’t steal the gold. I steal the Heartfillers. The gold, I earn. I swallow a dry breath, trying to still the drum beating harder in my chest.
“No, no, of course, not. I’m a courier in Dockers Row. I get one piece of gold every thirty days, fair and square, like everyone else.”
If he checks my pockets, he’ll know that I’m not even old enough to have the amount of gold weighing my dress down. I don’t move. I can’t. Maybe it was fortuitous that I didn’t pay for a ship this morning. If I had, Serafina would be hanged by sunset.
For being hungry.
We may not be allowed to show love, but aren’t we still human?
The Mercyenforcer releases Serafina. She stands stiffly, chest heaving.
He snatches the apple from her hand and takes a bite.
Then he tosses it at her feet. When he walks away, I can breathe again as I join Miss Omon and the others in line.
Nichol stands nearly as tall as me with red cheeks and wet pants.
He peed himself. He does that when he’s scared.
“It’s alright. We’ll be out of here soon,” I tell him. “Move forward in the line. Go on.”
I pick up the bitten apple, dust it off, and hand it to Serafina.
Her usual scent is warm and nutty, as if the days Miss Omon makes porridge live in her sun-kissed brown curls forever.
But today she’s all salt, sweat, and fear, still frozen with clenched fists.
Several of her schoolmates are in the census line pacing ahead of us, watching, like well-trained Saltblood children too young for Heartfillers.
Their palms lie flat against their chests, unmoved, allegiant—a Mercyenforcer gesture they must mimic to remind themselves that emotion is dangerous.
Order is mercy. Curiosity hides behind their cold stares.
I stand in Serafina’s line of sight, blocking her view of them.
Her tiny fists are still balled, and her cheeks are pink with embarrassment.
“Control, Fina,” I tell her under my breath. Soon we will be out of here. Soon we will have a ship. I want to turn her back on them and urge her forward. When we’ve moved a few steps, I say, “Stealing, Fina, really? You can’t take chances—”
“It’s what you do, isn’t it?” she whispers, but it feels like a shout. “When you come home very late?”
“Who told you that?”
“Nobody had to tell me.” She hacks up a nasty cough. One that’s lingered since she came to live with us. “My mother was Stonebound. Our tenement was in the hardest-to-reach mountains in that district. We’re good at watching things.”
I found Serafina on the shore months ago, so frail and sick I assumed she was younger than she is.
She clung to her mother’s corpse. The woman’s body was at least a day old.
Her swollen mouth, the scratches on her chest, and her ripped blouse, exposing the scar over her heart, made it look like a Heartfiller overdose.
But it was murder. By a Skyborn, I bet. Serafina would have been beaten if anyone else found her like that, weeping over a person, showing love.
No one knew who the dead woman was, so I brought Serafina to Miss Omon.
For safety.
Now she’s taking risks.
This is my fault. I’m the oldest in the orphanage. They look to me. I have to be more discreet.
“Close your mouth, right now, both of you,” Miss Omon mutters, passing me to join us properly in line. Her expression is still dazed, and I can feel her frustration with me.
I start to respond, but my dead mother’s words haunt me: Swim with the current or drown.
We’re sent to the end of the line for causing commotion. I shuffle that way, silently, wishing the square was clear so I could get to the smuggling request that’s been left under the loose stone at the statue.
The sooner I get a ship, the sooner this is over for all of us.
Every second of Census Day is so painfully slow, I am relieved when it is over.
Near the end with only a few in line in front of us, the crowd has thinned and the square is now only littered with discarded pamphlets.
I pass the time flipping through one of them.
It’s the usual: the Benevolent’s portrait, a historical recollection of the last fifteen years since the Redwake rebellion, “The Echo of the Allegiant” lyrics, and an entire section about the importance of Census Day.
Stats are in big letters along the top: Heartfillers reduced crime by 42 percent from last solstice; 95 percent of lowborns report improved sleep satisfaction; citizens with no memory of loss or longing: 61 percent and rising; 72 percent of Stonebounds describe improved focus and lower emotional interference; overall Ethyrian productivity up by 40 percent.
I flip it over. On the back is an announcement.
Tournament of Hearts
Mercy guards the masses,
but love tests the few.
A once-in-a-decennium chance to become
a Skyborn citizen and experience true love.
The Benevolent makes his final call for entrants to all lowborn districts, graciously extending the deadline. Join in celebrating the love-matching competition that’s brought us fifty years of peace and satisfaction across the districts.
I toss it and spend every second waiting for the census to end, staring at the loose stone at the foot of the statue, wondering how much my next smuggling run will bring me.
By the time the Mercyenforcers are loading up to leave, the sun is blazing hot in the center of the sky and Serafina’s raspy cough has gotten worse.
The chaos of morning morphs into a typical day, the square livening with its usual chorus.
With half the day gone, it’s too late to start deliveries.
Several people wander in a fogged daze, chests glowing.
They dart in and out of the square’s stalls for bread, jars of honey, and sanitation rags.
I hear a pair who pass mention they’re on their way to Ferdy’s.
Others—who like to double up on Heartfiller doses to get the fleeting intense feeling—loiter.
Several of them stand still, uninterested in moving, staring at nothing, gleeful, living a thousand fake moments over and over in their heads.
Some bounce down the road, giddy. Some stumble toward their homes, heavy with fatigue.
Miss Omon gathers Nichol and Sam as I fish out another gold. “Get some bread on the way,” I tell her.
She pauses, eyes flicking to the coin, then to the street.
“Go on,” I say. “Take it.”
She glances over her shoulder before grabbing it. She and the others keep walking with the square at their back. I drift from the group toward the stone statue. Serafina sticks to my heels.
“Where are you going?” Miss Omon asks, eyeing me warily, her hard gray eyes more gloom than steel.
I’ve lived with her since my parents died.
She lied to get me out of the mothers’ tenement, saying that she was my aunt.
In truth, she knew my parents, and she was upset by what happened to them.
She took me to her shack, where there were two other children, both younger than me.
Saltbloods survive by relying on one another. I hate relying on anyone.
She had two rules: Never call her Mother, and never lie to her.
In exchange, she’d keep me safe, well, and fed.
When she’d gotten me healthy and strong enough to yoke a pair of buckets across my shoulders, she took me to the icy stream that runs under our hovel and had me try to catch fish by hand.
My arms were purple all winter. I fished in every one of the streams that runs through the district, climbing anything, finding the hardest-to-reach spots to anchor myself stealthily to take a fish by surprise.
I became quicker than anyone and quieter than anything, determined that the Skyborn would never hurt me.
When I was old enough to work the docks, she put me to work selling clamshells.
She kept her word, and I followed her rules.
Until Nichol and Sam got violently sick.
We were out of medicine, and she told me they would die by morning.
She told me to prepare the funeral sacks.
Instead, I snuck out that night and robbed a young family of their medicine rations.
Scared she’d make me return it, I lied and secretly gave it to Nichol and Sam.
When they made it through the night, Miss Omon knew what I’d done.
She never mentioned it. And she’s never asked me once since the last solstice how I bring home so much gold.
But she knows. If Serafina knows, Miss Omon knows. And she doesn’t approve.
“I’ll be there soon, I promise,” I tell her.
“Serafina, with me,” Miss Omon says.
Serafina’s big brown eyes plead with me. They’re red rimmed and low; her skin is a sickly pallor. More pale than she was this morning.
“Go home. I won’t be long. Besides, you need another dose of medicine.”
She hacks into her sleeve and does as I ask, begrudgingly.
When Miss Omon and the others are completely out of sight, I start making my way to the statue. A woman stumbles into me; she tips sideways but catches herself without a glance my way.
“Careful,” I say. But she hardly blinks, transfixed by the Heartfillers pumping through her body. She teeters away, and I take another look around. There’s a single Mercyenforcer on duty by a lamppost, but he’s far enough away that I’m going to take my chances.
I walk over the stone, pausing a moment to rock back on my heel to wiggle it more.
It shifts beneath my feet. I turn and walk over it again, as if I’m pacing.
Then, I drop to one knee and fiddle with my boot laces, untying them with one hand and running my other hand along the seam of the cobbled stone.
The Mercyenforcer is gone from the lamppost.
He’s crossing the narrow road.
He’s marching toward me.
My heart pounds as I slide my fingers between the bricks, wiggling the trick one loose, while hiding my hand with my skirt.
The gap is too narrow. I push harder, teeth clenched against the pain.
Finally, the stone lifts. I pry it free, snatch the paper from the hollow, and shove it deep into my boot. Laces tied, I rise.
The Mercyenforcer is almost on top of me when he’s intercepted by a Saltblood who thrashes into his path. The man’s eyes are wild, his limbs jerking. Foam rims at his mouth, and his head snaps side to side. He’s hallucinating violently. The enforcer gets distracted trying to settle him.
I run.
Out of the square, I follow the cobbled path until I hit dirt. The winding road slopes downhill to where the ocean is on the horizon and the Saltblood shacks come into view. When I’m sure I’m not being followed, I stop to catch my breath and pull out the request.
11 Citadel Hill
As many as you can get.
On the back—the royal seal is stamped in dark ink, just above the words:
10,000 gold