A boy in a green bandana. A long braid in the dark.
They’d robbed the train. Ezra and Ainsley had been with the bandits.
Theywerethe bandits.
Something must have shown in my eyes, because Ainsley came closer and smiled knowingly, but not unkindly. “It’s a terrible thing to feel like a fool, I know.” She crouched in front of me. Behind her, Ezra’s shoulders tightened, but he didn’t move as she loosened the gag and let it fall around my neck.
“You’re a bandit?” My voice wavered. I felt small before her calm, measured gaze. “A resistor?”
“I’m a defender of life and nature. Of our wild, unspoiled frontier.” Her pride was a real and bright thing in the night. She smiled serenely. “With Ezra’s help, we’ll shut down every Mission on the railway line and drive the House all the way back to Sterling City.”
I couldn’t hold back a ragged shout. “Why are you doing this? Resistors are murderers. They kill children!”
Ainsley laughed. “What did I tell you about believing everything you’re told?”
Marshall echoed the sound, slapping his thigh. “Murderers, she says. That’s rich. You should have taken her to the graveyard, Ez.”
“This isn’t right.” I gasped for breath, reeling. I couldn’t make sense of what they were saying. “You didn’t have to kill Julian. You don’t have to kill people.”
“This isn’tright?” Ainley asked, a disdainful echo. “Didn’t Ezra tell you what you’re doing with your poison? That the Mission is making everyone here sick?”
I choked, shaking my head helplessly. Ezra avoided my searching gaze.
“Did he tell you that you killed your own parents?” Ainsley asked. “That the House of Industry killed mine? And Henry’s? Progress is a blight on this world. Your parents should have drowned you the moment you came into this world squalling and sick inside.”
Her words became a liquid thing within me, seeping into my bones. Into my lungs. If she had told me this the afternoon I’d spent in her little house, I would have raged at her for lying. But I’d seen Ezra shrink from me. I’d seen the dead trees. The sick folk carried away from the worksite. The wasting, the wasting.
Don’t you ever wonder why we were all orphaned?
Had Julian known? Or had he died believing himself to be part of a greater good? The march of Progress.
“I’m sorry,” I said, helpless and dizzy with everything I’d seen at the edges of my vision but had refused to look at directly. I’d brought something terrible to this town, and I’d allowed Ezra into Julian’s home to kill him, and I’d listened to everything I’d ever been told without asking enough questions, without asking why death followed us everywhere we went. “I’m so sorry.”
“I believe you.” Ainsley stood and brushed the dirt off her hands. “But you still have to die. I don’t need a hostage.”
Marshall straightened in an instant, his grin like a blade. I’d seen street dogs wear their hunger less plainly.
She angled her head toward him, her voice hardening with disdain. “I didn’t say to torture her.”
He glared but said nothing, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“I can’t be choosy with the help I hire,” Ainsley said to me with a mild shrug. “I’m not bloodthirsty or cruel. I hope you know that.”
“Ainsley,” Ezra said quietly, approaching her from behind with halting steps. “We wouldn’t have to hold her long. There’s another train next month.”
“A train back to the House of Industry. Yes, that’sexactlywhere we need to send her.”
“Then let her go. She’s got nowhere to run to. No one to send for. The woods will take her eventually.”
Ainsley was watching me. For a moment, she appeared thoughtful. My throat worked against dry, hot panic. She closed her eyes for a moment, regret softening her features. “No. We don’t make exceptions.”
“But she’s a child.”
“I’m not a child!” I snapped, in tandem with Ainsley muttering, “She’s not achild.”
Ainsley went on. “She’s a killer. She’s a Conductor of death. We both tried to warn her, and she carried on. Uncaring.”
“Warn her?” Marshall asked, feigning confusion. “I thought the plan was toseduceher, not warn her.”
