It’s her way of making me promise to return home alive and safe, apromise we both know I can never be sure to keep. But I bow my head anyway. The truth is, for the past few weeks, when I’ve struggled to find a reason to get up every morning, I think of my mother. I think of this tiny home. And I always push myself out of bed.
“I will, Ma,” I reply.
6
The road leading to the prison is quiet tonight. No one notices Jeran and me as we make our way down the path, nothing more than a pair of shadows in the darkness.
The buildings that make up the National Plaza include one of the most spectacular ruins in Mara—twelve buttresses lining a structure with three arched entrances. This building was once a grand library of the Early Ones, with rows and rows of shelves uncovered when Newage first began cleaning up the ruin, but many of its books had long ago rotted away. By some miracle, a few remained, and from those, we learned what little we know about the Early Ones. Inside the building, the space is cool and dark, with towering stone pillars. Once upon a time, the sides were lined with narrow glass windows that rose up along the building’s walls. Now, this ancient library has been modified into our National Hall. We’ve fortified its crumbling sides with steel and added hallways that radiate from where the windows used to be. Down each hall is a fine apartment where a Senator lives, paired with a team of soldiers to safeguard them and their family.
Below the National Plaza, we discovered an enormous, cylindrical pit five levels deep. Originally, this pit had been dug out by the Early Ones, the walls made of smooth metal, like a silo for storing grain. Adena thinksthey may have once used it to launch weapons more massive than anything we’ve ever seen. She’s always sniffing the air when she’s down here, murmuring about the lingering scent of something sharp and chemical.
I suppose it doesn’t really matter what it used to be. We now use it as our underground prison.
Guards standing drowsily at the prison entrance snap awake at the sight of my approach, then relax at the Striker emblem on my coat. Jeran gives them a polite smile and bows. They part and let us through toward the damp steps that wind into the darkness.
As we go, the familiar smell of water and blood and mold hits me, the filth of people kept here for decades, of interrogation chambers built into the metal walls. Shafts of dim blue light illuminate the steps from the gratings above. We move down the stairs at an even pace, spiraling and spiraling, passing one level of archways after another. Every floor is lit sparsely with torchlight, and against their flickering circles, the steel prison doors reflect a shiny black.
Beside me, Jeran moves without a sound, his steps sure and steady tonight as if he were out on a sweep. Light and shadow band across his face in a silent rhythm.
“They still aren’t feeding him?” he asks me as we go, his eyes flickering to my hands for my response.
I shake my head and raise my hands so he can see me sign in the near-darkness.“They are. He won’t eat. No one can make him.”
“I guess he’s determined to die, isn’t he?”
“Maybe this was all part of the Firstblade’s plan to get rid of me.”
“Aramin thinks you’re a valuable Striker, Talin.”
“Oh, is that what he told you?”
“It’s just the truth. You did defy him in front of the entire arena.”
“You’re always defending him, Jeran.”
Jeran looks embarrassed. “Not always,” he mutters under his breath.
“If this prisoner dies of hunger,”I sign gloomily,“at least my punishment will be brief.”
“Is that why you brought him a bag of bread and fish from the mess hall?”
“Stop wringing decency out of me.”
“It’s an honest question.”
“I need something as bait if I’m going to try coaxing answers out of him, don’t I?”
“Well,” he says, “don’t tell Adena that you’re trying to feed the prisoner.”
“Is she still upset with me?”
Jeran hesitates long enough for me to wonder if he couldn’t see my signs in the dark. “She’ll get over it,” he finally replies. “But you have to understand how hard it was for her to watch you defend the life of a Federation soldier.”
“We don’t know if he was a soldier.”
“She doesn’t care about that.”
I don’t respond for a while. A part of me rears up in my own defense—I had tried to save a life and a friend I’ve known since childhood is holding it against me. But then I think of Adena’s meat pie deliveries, the way she’d looped her arm into mine as we walked to the arena. I think of years ago, how she had screamed when Federation troops shot her brother dead as he tried to run across the warfront to us. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen her break the Striker oath of silence out in the field. Aramin had refused her plea to send Strikers into enemy territory to retrieve his body, but even he hadn’t had the heart to punish her for the outburst.
