And that’s how I ended up in these chains.
Chapter two
Robin: Victora
Asharp crack across my face drags me from darkness.
My eyes snap open. Pain shoots through my skull, a festering headache that won’t budge. Everything’s blurry—shapes moving in dim light, the taste of dust thick on my tongue. It’s dark now, an almost full moon providing the only illumination.
“About time.”
Though his wrists bear the same iron shackles as mine, the voice belongs to a stranger. A head full of dark curls, maybe thirty, with clothes I don’t recognize. Not the rough-spun wool we wear on Atrea. This fabric looks softer, dyed a deep red.
The world jolts beneath us. Metal groans and rattles. We’re moving—fast, in a way nothing on Atrea ever moved—the vibration running up through my spine from whatever hard surface I’m pressed against.
Another truck. That’s what the soldiers call them. Different from the last one I woke in, the ripped canvas walls closer together, the ceiling lower. How many days have we been in these things? Five? Seven? Time blurs when you’re rattling around in a box that moves without horses, without sails, without anything I understand.
Bodies press against me on all sides, their breath horribly warm in the suffocatingly small space. A dozen or so other men, different ones from thelast truck. All of us packed together like cattle. The air reeks of sweat and fear and something else. Blood, maybe. Or piss.
My throat feels like I’ve been swallowing sand for a week.
“What?” The word comes out as gravel.
The stranger nods toward the floor between my legs. A tiny metal canister rolls back and forth with each bump in the road, catching what little light filters through the tears in the canvas.
Water. When did they give us water?
Miraculously, my mouth floods with saliva at the sight. When did I last drink? Yesterday? The day before? The ship feels like a lifetime ago, and the days after that blur together—endless jolting, dirty faces, the sun beating down.
“If you don’t drink it, someone else will.”
The guy across from us—older, with hollow cheeks and desperate eyes—stares at the canister like it’s made of gold. His tongue darts across cracked lips. When I look directly at him, he turns away, fixing his gaze on the truck’s wall.
I force my tired body to snatch up the bottle. Not much inside. Maybe three swallows if I’m careful. The urge to drain it all at once burns through me, but I force myself to take small sips. The water tastes metallic, stale, but it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever felt sliding down my throat.
The truck hits a pothole, throwing us all sideways. Someone curses. Another man groans like he’s in pain.
Every mile takes me further from Atrea. Further from Esme.
Is she safe? Did they find her crammed under the floorboards and drag her out by her ankles? Is she sitting in an identical truck, bound for Victora’s slave markets? Or did they torch our house with her trapped inside, her screams lost in the crackling flames? Is she wandering the burned ruins alone, calling my name to silence? Did someone take her in, or is she starving in the rubble? Is she already dead, her small body left to rot where no one will find her?
The questions circle in my skull like vultures. No answers. No way to know. Just the endless vibration of wheels on broken road.
Outside, through gaps in the canvas, the dim moonlight allows me to catch glimpses of wasteland rushing past. Dead earth. Twisted metal. The skeletal remains of a world that died one hundred and fifty years ago. Growing up, we were told the stories countless times. How nations waged wars with fire and chemicals and poisons that seeped into blood and bone, twisting people and animals into something vicious. Unthinking. Feral things that hunt anything that moves. We were told again and again how lucky we were to live on Atrea. Paradise, they would say, and we’d roll our eyes.
It's only now, seeing the wasteland for the first time, that I finally understand. At least with all these armed guards around me, the monsters outside are one less worry.
We’ve been traveling all day. The sun climbed high and brutal, turning the truck into an oven, then slowly faded into the gray light of evening.
I cap the canister and look at the stranger who woke me. “How long was I—”
“Hours.” His accent is different too. Flatter vowels. “Sun went down while you were out.”
The truck lurches again, and through the gap in the canvas, I catch sight of lights in the distance. Not stars. Too bright, too clustered.
A city.
Thecity.
