He looked worried. Were the imposing walls unsettling to him after spending most of his life outdoors?
Maybe it was only hunger pinching his features.
“The door is always locked,” I explained.
“With a radiance lock.” He nodded. “Like the conduction box.”
“This one is a bit more complicated.” The door smelled like fresh-cut wood. I inhaled deeply, loving the way it took me back to the forest. Radiance rose in me easily, as sure as my breath. I placed my hand gently against the lock and coaxed threads of it into the gears. Manipulating fine gearwork had been our first task at the House of Industry, one that took most children years to master. It had come relatively easily to me, and I’d asked my instructor if I could spend my free time afterward learning how to use radiance to fight. She’d stiffened and quickly reminded me that only those chosen to be Transistors could fight with radiance.
I’d have been good at it. I knew that in my bones. My life would have been different if I’d been tapped to serve as a Transistor, assigned to a Mission not to help administrate it but to protect it from theft or resistors. I would have been called on to hurt people—maybe even kill them—in the name of Progress.
A traitorous thought made itself known: Was I hurting people anyway?
“Does it always take this long?” Ezra’s voice startled me, soft at my ear. The gears crunched audibly, and I winced.
“No. I’m tired.” I closed my eyes and finished the lock, mortified to have let my mind drift so far from my task. The mechanism gave a loudclickas the latch inside opened.
“After you,” Ezra said, holding the door for me.
We walked in, and he paused in the doorway, looking back over his shoulder. “Did you hear that?”
I flailed out into the courtyard in an anxious rush to make sure Julian or the mule or a worker or even an observant squirrel wasn’t watching me let Ezra into the Mission without asking permission. “Hear what?”
“I thought I heard something like a tree falling.”
My panic subsided. I turned back to him, putting my hands on my hips like Professor Dunn when someone asked her an ignorant question. “They’re still building the Mission. Right over there? It’s pretty loud.”
He leaned against the doorway, his mouth forming a sheepish expression. “I guess I’m jumpy. I don’t suppose Julian would appreciate me being here.”
“Why do you say his name like that?” I asked, my heart galloping from the thought of Julian catching me sneaking a boy in.
“Like what?”
“Like you know him. If you knew him, you wouldn’t say it all … familiar like that. You’d hate him.”
“Why is that?” Ezra asked, clearly trying not to laugh.
I took his sleeve and pulled him inside. The door shut gently behind us, not as noisily as it usually did. The frame must not have settled into place. “He’s … stuffy. And cross. And inflexible.”
Even as I said it, I wasn’t sure I meant it. Julian had done plenty of things that surprised me since I’d arrived. But Ezra didn’t need to know that. Better for him to be wary of my Senior.
“And what am I?” Ezra asked, tucking a curl behind my ear.
I wanted to punch him for making my insides do acrobatics. Instead I batted his hand away. “You’re foolish. And reckless.” My voice dropped to a testy whisper. “And you’re anAnimator.”
Ezra let out a mock sigh. “No denying those allegations.”
“You’re a nuisance. I’m only feeding you, and then you’re leaving.”
“What else would we be doing?”
I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or not, so I chose to ignore him. As long as we were quick, Julian would never know Ezra had been here. “There,” I said, dragging Ezra to the kitchen, where coals glowed at the hearth, evidence that Julian had only recently left. “Even if he comes back, I can tell him that you were taking a look at the cuts on my hands.”
“Are you having a conversation with yourself?” Ezra asked with a crooked grin.
Feeling self-conscious, I toasted some cheese on sliced bread. “One of us ought to think this through.”
“Think what through?” Ezra grabbed two plates from a cabinet and held them out for me to put the toast on. “It’s lunch. Not marriage.”
