Unwilling to Surrender

Chapter One The Draft Notice

CHAPTER ONE

The Draft Notice

Greybridge did not stop leaking because Anya Serrin had been drafted.

By the time she climbed out of the repair vault, the sun had cleared the warehouse roofs and the queue at the public pumps stretched halfway down Foundry Street.

People stood with blue ration cans, dented cooking pots, old wine bottles, anything that would hold water.

A city clerk walked the line with a tablet and the expression of a woman who expected to be shouted at before breakfast.

Anya's boots left wet prints across the stones.

Tomas caught her by the elbow before she could disappear into the pump house.

"You cannot go back to work."

"Watch me."

"I did. For seven years. Today I am trying something new."

He held up the red draft notice between two fingers as if it might contaminate him. The Crown seal had already dried. Anya took it back.

"The feeder is stable for maybe six hours. The west branch still needs a pressure test."

"Miko can run it."

"Miko thinks cavitation is a stomach complaint."

From inside the pump house, Miko shouted, "I heard that."

"Then learn faster," Anya called.

Tomas planted himself in front of the door.

He was fifty-two, broad through the shoulders, and had been chief maintenance supervisor long enough that three mayors had tried to replace him and failed because no one else knew which pipes beneath Greybridge were real and which existed only on seventy-year-old maps.

"Anya."

The way he said her name stripped the joke out of the morning. She looked at him.

"Go home. Tell your mother before the broadcast vans get there."

Her stomach tightened.

"They wouldn't."

Tomas gave her a look. Of course they would.

The Crown Trials turned ordinary households into national scenery.

Somewhere in the capital, producers were already pulling census files, school photographs, work records, debt histories, medical waivers, anything that could be arranged into a story neat enough for an audience to understand between advertisements.

Candidate Forty-Seven. Water worker. Greybridge. Father absent. Working family. Useful hands. Difficult mouth.

Anya shoved the notice into her coat.

"If the north feeder drops below thirty-eight—"

"I know."

"If the valve starts knocking—"

"I know."

"If Miko touches the bypass—"

"I will break his fingers."

Miko leaned out of the doorway. "Unfair workplace culture."

Tomas pointed at him without looking away from Anya. "See? Managed." She should have laughed.

Instead she looked toward the pump queue.

Old Mrs. Pell from Copper Row stood near the front with two cans. She had arthritis in both hands. Nemi's school friend Arlo carried a bucket almost as large as his torso. A woman with a baby tucked beneath her coat argued with the clerk about her household allowance.

None of them knew the woman who had been inside the broken feeder an hour ago would be leaving the city by sunset.

That was the obscenity of the notice. Not that the Crown wanted Anya. That it could interrupt a life without needing to know what the life had been holding together. Tomas followed her gaze.

"We'll keep it running."

"You have two technicians for three districts."

"Three."

"Miko is an apprentice."

"He'll enjoy the promotion."

"I will not," Miko said.

Tomas ignored him.

"Go."

Anya walked home through streets that already knew.

The Trial vans arrived before she did.

Two white vehicles blocked the bakery alley. A camera operator stood beneath the faded awning across from her building, framing the cracked brick and the old flour sign. A young woman in a navy Crown Media coat argued with Mira at the front door.

Anya's mother had both hands on her hips.

This was never a promising sign.

"You may film from the street," Mira was saying. "You may not enter my home."

"Mrs. Serrin, the public responds strongly to authentic domestic—"

"The public can respond from outside."

"Mother."

Mira turned.

For a second, her face did not move.

Then she crossed the alley and hugged Anya hard enough to press the wet repair coat against her dress.

"You're soaked."

"Pipe."

"Of course."

Nemi appeared behind her, twelve years old and furious at the government in the uncomplicated way only children could be.

"I told them you don't want to marry a prince."

The producer brightened. Anya pointed at her.

"Do not put that on television."

"Too late," Nemi said.

Mira closed her eyes.

The camera operator very carefully pretended to adjust a lens. Anya took her family upstairs.

The apartment was small enough that the kitchen table also served as desk, repair bench, sewing station, and the place Nemi did arithmetic badly. A pot of lentils simmered on the stove. A damp patch darkened the ceiling over the sink despite Anya fixing the upstairs drain twice.

Home was a collection of failures she understood.

She preferred them to the Crown.

Mira sat at the table and unfolded the draft notice.

"How long?"

"Registration tonight. First Measure in three days."

"Can you refuse?"

Anya looked at Nemi. Mira understood.

"Bedroom," she said.

"I'm twelve, not stupid."

"Bedroom."

Nemi left loudly.

When the door shut, Anya took the regulation sheet from her pocket and flattened it beside the notice.

"Refusal counts as unlawful evasion. Household penalties can include ration downgrade and employment review."

Mira read in silence.

"So they punish us if you say no."

"They call it compliance enforcement."

"Of course they do."

Mira's thumb moved over the red seal.

"Your father would have hated this."

Anya went still.

Davin had been gone eight years. Officially, he had accepted External Service after a theft conviction Anya never believed. Unofficially, the Crown had swallowed him somewhere beyond the eastern wall and sent back two letters before the letters stopped.

"He hated most Crown paperwork," Anya said.

"Because he read it."

Mira looked toward Nemi's room.

"We can manage."

That was what frightened Anya.

Her mother said it too quickly.

"The bakery stipend ends next month."

"I know."

"My wages stop while I'm in the Trials."

"Candidate households receive support."

"Which can be reassessed if I fail badly enough."

Mira's mouth tightened.

"Then don't fail badly."

Anya stared. Her mother almost smiled.

"I mean lose with administrative competence."

A laugh escaped Anya despite everything.

Mira reached across the table and took her hand.

"You do not owe us a crown."

"I know."

"You do not owe us a prince."

"Definitely know."

"You do not owe us winning because the government attached our rent to your obedience."

That one hurt.

Anya looked down at their joined hands.

"What if losing costs you?"

"Then the wrong thing is the cost. Not the losing."

Outside, the camera crew shifted position.

Somewhere downstairs, Nemi yelled that if anyone filmed through the stairwell window she would throw soup. Mira squeezed Anya's fingers.

"Go there. Keep your head. Come home yourself."

Anya nodded. She packed one bag.

Work trousers. Two shirts. A wrench small enough to fit regulations if anyone asked why a royal candidate needed one. Davin's old metal service tag, though she told herself she was not sentimental enough to bring it.

At the station, half of Greybridge seemed to have gathered.

Tomas stood with Miko and the maintenance crew. Mrs. Pell waved from a bench. Nemi had made a sign reading LOSE RESPONSIBLY, which Crown Media loved so much Anya nearly confiscated it. The train doors opened.

Anya kissed her mother, hugged Nemi, and let Tomas crush her shoulder once with his hand.

"Thirty-eight minimum," she told him.

"Go marry badly."

"That is the plan."

She boarded.

As Greybridge slid away behind glass, the public pumps became silver dots in the morning light.

Anya touched the folded draft notice in her pocket.

She had intended to lose because she did not want the Crown.

Now she understood the harder part.

She would have to lose without letting the Crown make her family pay for it.