Love? The thought makes me blush, but instead of pushing it down, I feel a surge of courage.
I’m most sorry that I won’t get a chance to know you better, I say.Maybe, in another life, we could have taken our time with each other. I…I hesitate, my pulse quickening.I would have liked that.
He doesn’t answer, of course, but his emotions sway with mine, warm and close. I imagine him pulling me into an embrace, his arms strong and steady, wrapping me tight. And somewhere through these walls, in a prison down below, he answers with a vague image of his face close to mine, eyes lowered.
The door to my cell groans open. I startle out of my reverie to see a soldier give me a brief nod. “Your visitor,” he tells me. Then he steps aside to let my mother in.
She’s carrying a small cloth package. From the messy way it’s tied, I know that the guards must have undone her careful knots to inspect everything inside the sack before tossing it back to her. She gives me a grim smile, her eyes roaming the chains shackling my limbs, before sitting across from me and unwrapping the cloth.
Inside are her handmade meat buns, still warm, and a large bowl of noodles with roasted chicken and carrots. There are ripe apricotsfrom the tree beside her home, as well as sweet sticky cakes made from pounded seaflour and sugarweed.
My throat tightens with emotion at the sight. Chicken is not an easy meat to get, not even in the Inner City, and neither is the beef for the meat buns. I don’t know what my mother must have traded in order to make this food for me.
She waves a hand in annoyance at my expression. “The first thing I thought when I saw you led back through the city,” she signs, “is that you haven’t eaten enough the past few weeks. Your last good meal must have been the one we had before you left.”
Now I genuinely laugh, the sound coming out as a hoarse whisper. We had risked death on a train into Cardinia—I had looked the Premier in the eye, had broken into the Federation’s lab complex and lived to tell of our escape, had fled through the woods bordering both sides of our warfront. But my mother’s main concern is that I didn’t eat enough while in the Federation.
I want to hug her. “Thank you,” I sign before picking up one of the buns, then offering her the second one.
She frowns and shakes her head. “For you,” she says in Basean. “I just want to see you eat.”
I finish one of the buns and half of the bowl of noodles and chicken before my mother speaks again. “I’ve asked the Firstblade what they plan to do with you,” she signs. “He won’t tell me. No one else will give me any information.” She pauses to make a disgusted face. “They can’t do anything to you. Not with the Federation about to push past the warfront. They need you in your Striker coat, defending us.”
My best guess is that they will execute me, because the Speaker couldn’t care less about whether Mara survives the next attack, and he will want me silenced before I start spreading the truth about histreason. But I don’t want to tell my mother this, especially not with the knowledge that the Federation is going to invade soon. What good would it do for her to know about the Speaker’s betrayal, anyway? It will only give the Senate a reason to punish my mother if they find out that she knows too.
“They haven’t told me any more than they’ve given you,” I answer instead. “But it doesn’t really matter, does it?”
She stares at the cold, damp stones of the floor. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”
The grief in her posture is the acknowledgment that, no matter how hard she had tried to keep us out of the Federation’s rule, we’re going to fall to them anyway. When we do, anything the Maran Speaker chooses to do with me will be nothing compared to what the Federation’s Premier will inflict on me.
“You have to hide, Ma,” I tell her now. “When they come. Do you hear me? At the first sign, make for the forests. Stay there for as long as you can.”
“While you stay and fight?” she scoffs aloud in Basean. “I’m not running again. It didn’t do much good the first time.” She pauses for a long moment. “What did you see in there?” she whispers.
I know what she’s trying to ask. What kind of fate is in store for us all?
“Darkness,” I tell her. “Disguised as light.”
She doesn’t answer. After a while, she says, “I hope you bury it in the back of your mind. Sometimes, it’s better to forget.”
I look her directly in the eyes. “I love you,” I sign.
My mother takes my hands in hers, then kisses my fingers. “I love you,” she signs in return.
The words are foreign in our house, as unnatural a part of our lives as it is a part of Basean culture. The rarity makes it carry that much moreweight, though—I can feel it in the strength of her grip and linger of her stare.
“Don’t give up,” she says to me in the tongue of our homeland as the guards finally return to escort her out. “You haven’t lost yet.”
As the afternoon stretches on, I fall in and out of a light slumber. Rumors overheard from the guards outside my door tell me that the Firstblade is going to visit each of our cells before the night comes. Maybe it’s to tell us what our fates will be.
Finally, as the afternoon dims into evening, I hear a commotion in Jeran’s cell below me. I come out of my half sleep, then crane my neck so I can peer through my grating to see Jeran rise to his feet. He taps his fist to his chest and bows low at the figure that strides through his door. In the torchlight filtering into our cells, Aramin’s face is washed in hues of blue and gray.
He doesn’t waste any time. “The Speaker has ordered me to arrange for your execution,” he signs to Jeran. I squint, paying close attention to the silhouette of his hands moving.
Jeran doesn’t reply at first. He keeps his head bowed, waiting for Aramin to say more. When he doesn’t, Jeran seems to swallow and nod. “And what about Talin and Adena?” he asks aloud.
“They’ll receive the same sentence,” Aramin replies.
