Chapter 7: Lockdown — The Key of Oslov

Volume 16: Tales From the Sanctioned Brothel: Part 3: The Chase

Chapter 7 Lockdown

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

A whooping fire alarm woke Tilrey from a sound sleep. He rushed to the door of his top-floor suite, opened it, and peered into the corridor.The noise was deafening out there, but the air was clear, and no one was around. He pounded on his mother’s door—no answer. He must have slept into normal working hours.As he stepped back into the suite, the alarm abruptly went silent. Probably something innocent had triggered it, but he’d check with his mom on the internal intercom. First, though, he pulled back the shutters for more light.And saw the armored transport darkening the sky.Like most windows in Thurskein, this one overlooked the vast circle of snow at the city’s core. Since the city was a single unbroken ring, it wasn’t possible to drive ground vehicles into that circle, but there was a mag-grid above it. The army airship hovered there—an enormous black disc bristling with gun turrets.And Tilrey was eighteen again.He was in the schoolroom when the alarms started whooping. Excited whispers ran along the row—“I heard it’s a lockdown! Soldiers! Do they have guns?”The teacher rapped on her desk. “Quiet! Line up in single file.” Her voice broke; maybe this was the first lockdown she’d ever seen in her life, too.The teachers marched them to the gymnasium for processing. On the way, some of the kids veered out of line and ran to look out one of the city’s rare windows. Tilrey followed his friend Dal and saw something that made his stomach flip over—a ship hovering in midair, vast enough to crush Sector Six and full of guns aimed straight at them.“How did it get there?” he whispered. The ship didn’t look like it could go far under its own power.Even Dal looked awed. “They come out of the ground, my great-auntie says,” she said in a low voice. “They keep that thing waiting there all the time, just in case we misbehave.”Less than twenty-four hours later, Tilrey was a virtual prisoner in Redda. It was his first lockdown and his last—until now.The ship wasn’t descending, because it didn’t need to. The troops would already have arrived on ground transports and entered the sector on the side facing the Wastes. The ship was there to remind the inhabitants of Sector Six of what would happen if they didn’t comply with those troops. The only reason to lock down a sector was persistent Dissident activity, and oh, shit.Something lurched in his gut. The ship’s contours hardened into merciless focus. His mom. Dal and Lourisa. Mal. Every True Hearth operative in this place was in dire peril.Vera couldn’t have known about this. Though she wasn’t aware of his own or Lisha’s Dissident ties (he hoped), she would have known he didn’t want to be caught in a lockdown. Anyway, Int/Sec had authority exceeding that of the sector’s civil Administrator, as well as the power to muster troops on an hour’s notice.Tilrey tried to message Vera on his handheld, but the wireless network was down. Another strategic move, no doubt, though only Upstarts were supposed to access that network in the first place.The ship looming outside had reshaped everything into a nightmare landscape. He was dimly conscious of his breath going shallow, his palms slick. He opened a drawer, slammed it, opened another one, and pulled out clothes at random.He couldn’t lose his head now. He would run to his mother’s office, throw his weight around, and do everything he could to convince the agents not to arrest her. Gersha would never forgive him if he got arrested in the process, but Gersha would have done the same thing.He was nearly dressed when a frantic knocking sounded at the door. Mal stood outside, face shiny and eyes feverish.“Thank everything green.” Tilrey pulled him inside. “Where’s Lisha? Is she okay?”Then he saw the slight shape trailing behind Mal—Janta. Dressed in a school uniform, the boy looked bizarrely calm, or just lost.Mal slammed the door behind them and said breathlessly, “Where’s your luggage?”Tilrey cocked his head toward the window. “Looks like we’re stuck here.”Mal sank to his knees, nabbed Tilrey’s overnight bag from under the bed, and began cramming things into it. “One last flight to Redda. Fifteen minutes. None of us can get on it, but you can, and you will. It’s what Lisha wants, and you know it.”It was classic Lisha to try to protect her son when her own life was at stake. But Tilrey was past the point of needing to be protected. “She knows I can’t possibly—”“You should know she can take care of herself!” Mal was practically shouting. “You’d get in the way. Anyway, nobody’s going to arrest Lisha or me. They’re here for the Northmen. The general strike.”“A strike?” There hadn’t been one in Sector Six in Tilrey’s lifetime, and it wasn’t a welcome surprise. A splashy action like that could endanger everything the Hearth was quietly doing in Thurskein. “You knew about this, Mal?”Mal stuffed Tilrey’s papers and folders into the bag and forced the zipper closed over them. “They’ve been planning it for years. Kept the date secret, though. And before you say anything—” he raised his head, jaw set— “Lisha knew, too.” He slid the bag across the floor to Tilrey. “She said you had enough to worry about.”I do have enough to worry about. More than enough. Sector Six had stopped ferrying people to the Southern Hearth some years ago, when the Harbourer settlement was full, but supply flights continued to run there. Then there was the matter of the records that Lourisa had falsified, with Lisha’s blessing, to hide the sector’s small but significant dip in population.“I should’ve known.” Tilrey’s voice was a growl directed at himself, because time was short and his body just sat here like a stone. He couldn’t fly away and leave Mom, Dal, Lourisa, all the allies he’d come to know over the years. But Mal was right. In Redda, he might have the leverage to do something.Niko Karishkov had to be behind this. Int/Sec Director Gelmedyn took her orders from him. Karishkov had been protecting Aleks Thulver for years, for reasons that Tilrey was all too well aware of, but maybe he’d gotten wind of the strike and decided it was a bridge too far. If he didn’t curb the Northmen before they caused actual damage, he might end up looking like their accomplice.Or maybe Karishkov had seen a chance to ambush the True Hearth and didn’t care if his own son got in the way.Because he didn’t want to think about Councillor Karishkov, Tilrey wheeled on Janta. “And why the fuck is he here?”“You’re taking him,” Mal snapped back. “We can’t protect him. Int/Sec loves hackers. If this one ends up there, he’ll give us all up along with Aleks.”“I wouldn’t talk,” Janta said in his calm way.Mal shot a glance at the boy. “No offense, kid, but their interrogations are a lot more rigorous than mine.”He picked up the bag and thrust it into Tilrey’s arms. “I managed to erase his arrest from Records before they shut down my access. He’s yours now. Make him a fake identity. Be decent to him.”Then he was muscling them both out the door, hissing in Tilrey’s ear as they went: “We need you free. Do it for Lisha. For Dal. For all of us.”Flying in an airplane was possibly the best thing that had ever happened to Janta.The whir and whine of the battery-powered engine vibrated everywhere. Gravity clamped him back against the cushioned seat as the plane’s nose tilted upward. The airfield shrank and shrank until he could see all of Thurskein spread out below him like an enormous gray bolt washer.He’d seen it from the outside before, but this was different. His city, so small.Now he had a better view of the army ship, too, camped above the hole in the center of the city. It was no bigger than his thumbnail. Still climbing, the plane banked left and headed over the Wastes, which glittered in the sun like a promise of freedom.Janta had been to the Wastes several times with Aleks and the other Northmen. They found their freedom in that wilderness, loving it the way his father loved the forests of his childhood.Janta, however, preferred the indoors. The freedom he dreamed of included hot showers and easy access to network portals. It was a freedom to use devices like the one he glimpsed whenever he tore his eyes away from the window—right there in Tilrey Bronn’s hand.He watched, mesmerized, as the older man’s fingers moved over the screen of the small handheld, twitching and flicking. Janta couldn’t see the screen—Bronn held it close to his chest—but he could feel electrons pulsing through the air. Data being sent.Bronn raised his head. “What are you smiling at?”Janta hadn’t realized he was smiling. He tried to stop, because clearly Bronn was miserable. His signal was denser than ever, full of angry static.Back at the airport, Janta had held his breath, expecting the soldiers to sense that cloud of guilt and rage around Bronn and stop them in their tracks. But after scanning Bronn’s hand-chip, the armed troops waved them right through. Bronn told them something about a “gift for a Councillor,” and they didn’t bother to scan Janta’s hand at all.Clearly Tilrey Bronn was a more important person in Redda than Janta had imagined. And Janta had just offended him. “Sorry,” he said.“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.” Bronn slipped the handheld back into his coat. “Don’t try to steal it, though. One wrong move by either of us, and you’ll end up being processed as either an Outer or a traitor.”Janta figured as much. Still, his heart couldn’t keep from soaring as he glanced back out the window, where Thurskein was turning to a black dot in a vast sea of white. “Can I have one of those things in Redda?” he heard himself asking.A huff of air, almost a laugh. “No.”“Why do you get one? Aren’t you a Drudge, too?”“I’m a special kind of Drudge,” Bronn said in the hard, brassy tone that Janta had learned over the years to recognize as sarcasm.The device was so distracting. Tilrey had it out again, its transmissions fizzing in the air, and Janta wanted it desperately, could already feel his fingers curling around the sleek shell. Thank the Lord of Light he had the view to look at instead.This was going to be an interesting life. So many new temptations.Bronn’s energy was another distraction he wished he could shut out. It kept darkening, a snarl of anxiety and other bad feelings that reminded Janta of Aleks whenever any of the Northmen were in danger.Did this man feel responsible for hundreds of other people, the way Aleks did? The way he and Mal had been talking, he must be True Hearth. Maybe even a leader.“It’s going to be all right, you know,” Janta said, remembering Mal’s frantic reassurances. “Fir’n Lindtmerán—your mother. She’s a mastermind, Aleks says. She prepares for everything.”“Good to know,” Bronn said. He put away the handheld again. “‘Aleks says, Aleks says.’ You seem pretty attached to the man.”Did Bronn dislike Aleks? Many True Hearthers did, so it was best to assume so, but Janta couldn’t imagine feeling anything for Aleks but affection. “He’s been good to me,” he said with a shrug. “The political stuff, though—I don’t care for that. I just did what he said.” He knew enough not to be specific, though they were well out of earshot of the other passengers.“That’s smart of you. You heard what Mal said—from now on, your loyalty belongs to me.”The man’s voice had thickened, as if he were playing a part he didn’t feel comfortable in. Janta wondered why, but he answered automatically, “Yes, Fir Bronn. Thanks, Fir Bronn.”A heavy sigh. “Tilrey. Please.”Janta nodded with alacrity. Thurskein was out of sight now, and its disappearance gave him a pleasant tingle in his stomach. “How long till we get to Redda?”“About an hour.” Tilrey shifted, getting out his handheld again. In a lower voice, he asked, “Aren’t you worried about what’s going to happen to your friend Aleks now?”Those blue eyes pushed and pulled and itched at you and forced you to look back. Janta met them reluctantly. Tilrey probably knew as well as he did that there was a high Upstart who protected Aleks.Aleks did his best to keep it a secret from everyone but his closest friends, as if he thought people might hate him for having such an advantage. Janta had never understood that; why hate someone for something they couldn’t help? He said, “No. Aleks is lucky. Everybody knows that.”“Was your father lucky?”Again with his father. Janta’s father lived inside him and didn’t want to be brought out and examined by strangers. He thought he’d made that clear.“No,” he said. “He wasn’t lucky. He was unhappy.”“You told me your father said I stank of Upstart.” Bronn’s energy spiked as he spoke, as if the phrase offended him. “What does that mean? When did your father ever meet an Upstart, living in the Basement of Thurskein?”Janta thought about it. His father was distant at the moment; the exhilaration of the plane ride had banished him. But not for long, never for long.“There was a man who taught him how to act,” he said at last, dredging through half-formed memories. “He lived high on a mountain. He taught my dad how to talk properly, and then he told him . . . to go to Thurskein, I guess. ‘Blend in.’ That’s what he used to say. ‘I blended so well, and look where it got me.’ He was supposed to get all the way to Redda, but he blended in instead.”Tilrey drew in his breath sharply. His eyes held Janta like vises. “Did your dad ever ask you to memorize anything? In his language?”That was when Janta’s internal alarm began whooping.He managed to keep his face still and shake his head. Dad would have been proud of him. “No. What kind of thing?”“Poetry, maybe. Like the sagas, like a children’s rhyme.”A children’s rhyme. Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams, the blue Mediterranean where he lay . . .Dad hadn’t actually asked Janta to memorize the Verses. He used them as a lullaby, and Janta remembered them because he remembered everything. Later, when he was a little older, Dad sometimes recited the Verses when he got drunk, and then he got sappy and homesick.“I could have cracked the world open,” Dad said once through his tears. “I could have let the light in. But I didn’t. I did what that damned man said. I blended in.”That was around when Janta realized his father wasn’t right in the head. He’d never tried to make much sense of the man’s ravings while he was alive, but now . . .Tilrey wanted badly to know about the Verses, so badly his eyes were boring into Janta. Backdoor passwords, he’d said earlier, and Janta knew what those were. Was it possible?Until Janta found out more, he’d keep what he did know to himself. “I don’t know anything about poetry,” he said. “Why’s it matter?”Tilrey broke the stare-off, leaning back with a sigh. “You seem to think you can read people’s minds,” he said. “It’s a dangerous habit.”Some of the Northmen used to accuse Janta of trying to read minds, which mystified him. Aleks had taught him what to say to that, and he said it now: “Nobody can read minds. I just notice things. But you do that, too,” he added, going off script. “You’re used to knowing more about other people than they know about you. That’s why I bother you.”Tilrey tipped his head back and closed his eyes. His signal writhed inside him, the opposite of restful. “Did I say you bother me?”“You didn’t have to.”Tilrey was silent after that, and Janta returned to studying the view. They were above the clouds now. The strangeness of plowing through them and discovering they were only diaphanous vapor—which he’d already known, but still—took up all his attention.Maybe he wasn’t as perceptive as he thought. He could still be surprised. Aleks had sometimes had that effect on him, and he had a feeling Tilrey might, too.After a while, Tilrey said, “This thing you do, whether you call it mind reading or just noticing. I’m wondering if you could do it for me.”Janta nodded. Noticing was something he did anyway. “Who do you want me to notice?”“Various people, starting with a particular one today. Let me explain. When we get to Redda . . .”The taiga was clear in a half-mile-wide perimeter around Thurskein. When Aleks Snowblind and his friends returned from their trips to the Southern Range, they always waited at the edge of the woods until twilight set in. Then, under cover of darkness, they made the final dash across the clearing to the mouth of the tunnel they used to access the city.The four of them on this particular expedition—Aleks, Lasha, Bronia, Bers, and a burly kid named Vlar who was green but a workhorse—were grateful for the chance to rest for several hours. They’d spent all of yesterday clearing a desolate scrap of mountainside for their own private sweetbush.Lasha went to scout at the treeline. The others were slumping against trees, pulling out water bottles and protein bars, when he burst back into the gathering.“Get up!” he cried, chest heaving. “We need to get the fuck out of here!”Aleks was on his feet in an instant. Seeing where he was headed, Lasha tried to pull him the other way—deeper into the forest, away from the city. But Aleks shouldered the formidable bulk of his lover aside and sprinted to the treeline. Whatever lurked there, he’d see it for himself.When he spotted the armored ship hovering over the city, an enormous black blot on the gray sky, his legs weakened. He staggered against a pine and let it hold him upright.“Janta,” Bers said behind him. “He knew too much when they took him. I told you he’d squeal—”“It wasn’t Janta,” Aleks said. Now he could see the ground transports, too, three of them flanking the outer edge of Sector Six like parasites feeding on a host organism. There were probably enough troops in there to take every last person in the sector into custody, if the mission’s commanders saw fit to do so.And he suspected he knew who was ultimately commanding this mission.Just five minutes ago, he’d been taut with anticipation of tomorrow. After years of recruitment and preparation, nearly 4,000 workers were ready to walk off the factory floor at his signal, congregate in the sector’s cafs and lobbies, and demand greater freedom to go where they wished and say what they wished.They could still fight the lockdown, of course. But the advantage of surprise, the only real one they’d ever had, was gone. The die-hard Northmen might still be determined to defend themselves with their makeshift weapons, but most of the workers would get one glimpse of the soldiers’ shiny rifles and lose their will to resist.Where was his luck now?“They knew,” he whispered into the prickly bark. “He knew.”A big hand cupped his shoulder. Lasha’s arm slid around his back. “It’s not your fault,” the red-bearded man said, pitching his voice just for the two of them. “And I’m sure Janta didn’t squeal. You know I’ve never trusted Mal.”“Mal’s got too much to lose.” Aleks didn’t care who had squealed. In the end, he was the one truly responsible for what was happening, and Lasha knew that as well as any of them.He tensed in Lasha’s arms. “You know who’s behind this. I’m who he wants. I wouldn’t do what he wanted, and this is his response—crack down on the whole sector. Threaten my friends.”Thurskein was so close, and there was only one thing to do. Dash there without pausing for a breath. Crumple to his knees. Raise his hands in surrender. Take me to Fir Councillor Karishkov. Tell him it’s Lesta.He tried to break free, but Lasha held him fast. “If I give myself up, maybe he’ll stop this. Maybe he’ll call them off!”“Aleks. Aleks!” Lasha forced him back against the tree and pinned his wrists. “You aren’t making sense, love. Once something like this is in motion, nobody can stop it. Sacrificing yourself won’t help.”“I have to try! I can’t just run.”But even as Aleks twisted in Lasha’s grip, he realized his father could easily have locked down the city on the day of the strike itself, or a few days earlier. He’d chosen today specifically because Aleks wasn’t in the city. He wanted his son out of harm’s way.He’d planned all of this. Maybe he was watching them from a drone right now, waiting to ambush them and take Aleks discreetly into his custody.Aleks went limp in Lasha’s arms. For a moment, he let his lover stroke and soothe him. “I’m still going,” he said into Lasha’s shoulder. “I’ll offer myself to them. It’s the best—”“It is not the best way!” That was Bronia, who stood glaring in the snow with hands on her broad hips, looking absolutely fed up with their lovers’ bickering. “If the strike had happened as planned, they’d have locked us down anyway,” she said. “You know that perfectly well; we planned for it. Everyone in that sector knows how to stand strong and keep their mouth shut. Even the Hearthers—they got to. Too much to lose.”Whoever had tipped off Int/Sec clearly hadn’t kept their mouth shut. But Aleks understood Bronia’s meaning. He had to be a leader now, or there was no hope for any of them, inside or outside the city.He took a deep breath. Then he peeled himself free of Lasha’s warm, comforting body, stood tall, and faced the rest of them. “If I give myself up, I could be a bargaining chip.”Bers and Bronia shook their heads in unison. Vlar just looked scared.“You’re our leader,” Bers said, his eyes iron. “As long as people know you’re somewhere out there, free, then they’ll have hope.”“You’re not going to martyr yourself,” Bronia said. “Do that now, it’s all over.”Aleks wasn’t so sure. Sometimes he wondered if the other Northmen would be better off without him. He turned to Lasha. “You really think we should run away when our people are suffering?”Lasha’s brown eyes were soft, empathetic, but he narrowed them and raised his chin. “You heard them. As long as we’re free, as long as you’re free, there’s hope. But if you do insist on giving yourself up, I’m going with you.”Aleks couldn’t fight that. A long shiver ran through him as Bers, Bronia, and finally poor, scared Vlar seconded what Lasha had said: “Same here.” “You won’t go alone.” “We’ll all go.”They lacked the protection he had. If they surrendered along with him, they would disappear into Int/Sec cells and leave as exiles or ashes.Aleks drew another deep, shuddering breath and turned his back on the city. “We’re fugitives, then,” he said. “Back the way we came, quick. They could have patrols looking for us.”

A whooping fire alarm woke Tilrey from a sound sleep. He rushed to the door of his top-floor suite, opened it, and peered into the corridor.

The noise was deafening out there, but the air was clear, and no one was around. He pounded on his mother’s door—no answer. He must have slept into normal working hours.

As he stepped back into the suite, the alarm abruptly went silent. Probably something innocent had triggered it, but he’d check with his mom on the internal intercom. First, though, he pulled back the shutters for more light.

And saw the armored transport darkening the sky.

Like most windows in Thurskein, this one overlooked the vast circle of snow at the city’s core. Since the city was a single unbroken ring, it wasn’t possible to drive ground vehicles into that circle, but there was a mag-grid above it. The army airship hovered there—an enormous black disc bristling with gun turrets.

And Tilrey was eighteen again.

He was in the schoolroom when the alarms started whooping. Excited whispers ran along the row—“I heard it’s a lockdown! Soldiers! Do they have guns?”

The teacher rapped on her desk. “Quiet! Line up in single file.” Her voice broke; maybe this was the first lockdown she’d ever seen in her life, too.

The teachers marched them to the gymnasium for processing. On the way, some of the kids veered out of line and ran to look out one of the city’s rare windows. Tilrey followed his friend Dal and saw something that made his stomach flip over—a ship hovering in midair, vast enough to crush Sector Six and full of guns aimed straight at them.

“How did it get there?” he whispered. The ship didn’t look like it could go far under its own power.

Even Dal looked awed. “They come out of the ground, my great-auntie says,” she said in a low voice. “They keep that thing waiting there all the time, just in case we misbehave.”

Less than twenty-four hours later, Tilrey was a virtual prisoner in Redda. It was his first lockdown and his last—until now.

The ship wasn’t descending, because it didn’t need to. The troops would already have arrived on ground transports and entered the sector on the side facing the Wastes. The ship was there to remind the inhabitants of Sector Six of what would happen if they didn’t comply with those troops. The only reason to lock down a sector was persistent Dissident activity, and oh, shit.

Something lurched in his gut. The ship’s contours hardened into merciless focus. His mom. Dal and Lourisa. Mal. Every True Hearth operative in this place was in dire peril.

Vera couldn’t have known about this. Though she wasn’t aware of his own or Lisha’s Dissident ties (he hoped), she would have known he didn’t want to be caught in a lockdown. Anyway, Int/Sec had authority exceeding that of the sector’s civil Administrator, as well as the power to muster troops on an hour’s notice.

Tilrey tried to message Vera on his handheld, but the wireless network was down. Another strategic move, no doubt, though only Upstarts were supposed to access that network in the first place.

The ship looming outside had reshaped everything into a nightmare landscape. He was dimly conscious of his breath going shallow, his palms slick. He opened a drawer, slammed it, opened another one, and pulled out clothes at random.

He couldn’t lose his head now. He would run to his mother’s office, throw his weight around, and do everything he could to convince the agents not to arrest her. Gersha would never forgive him if he got arrested in the process, but Gersha would have done the same thing.

He was nearly dressed when a frantic knocking sounded at the door. Mal stood outside, face shiny and eyes feverish.

“Thank everything green.” Tilrey pulled him inside. “Where’s Lisha? Is she okay?”

Then he saw the slight shape trailing behind Mal—Janta. Dressed in a school uniform, the boy looked bizarrely calm, or just lost.

Mal slammed the door behind them and said breathlessly, “Where’s your luggage?”

Tilrey cocked his head toward the window. “Looks like we’re stuck here.”

Mal sank to his knees, nabbed Tilrey’s overnight bag from under the bed, and began cramming things into it. “One last flight to Redda. Fifteen minutes. None of us can get on it, but you can, and you will. It’s what Lisha wants, and you know it.”

It was classic Lisha to try to protect her son when her own life was at stake. But Tilrey was past the point of needing to be protected. “She knows I can’t possibly—”

“You should know she can take care of herself!” Mal was practically shouting. “You’d get in the way. Anyway, nobody’s going to arrest Lisha or me. They’re here for the Northmen. The general strike.”

“A strike?” There hadn’t been one in Sector Six in Tilrey’s lifetime, and it wasn’t a welcome surprise. A splashy action like that could endanger everything the Hearth was quietly doing in Thurskein. “You knew about this, Mal?”

Mal stuffed Tilrey’s papers and folders into the bag and forced the zipper closed over them. “They’ve been planning it for years. Kept the date secret, though. And before you say anything—” he raised his head, jaw set— “Lisha knew, too.” He slid the bag across the floor to Tilrey. “She said you had enough to worry about.”

I do have enough to worry about. More than enough. Sector Six had stopped ferrying people to the Southern Hearth some years ago, when the Harbourer settlement was full, but supply flights continued to run there. Then there was the matter of the records that Lourisa had falsified, with Lisha’s blessing, to hide the sector’s small but significant dip in population.

“I should’ve known.” Tilrey’s voice was a growl directed at himself, because time was short and his body just sat here like a stone. He couldn’t fly away and leave Mom, Dal, Lourisa, all the allies he’d come to know over the years. But Mal was right. In Redda, he might have the leverage to do something.

Niko Karishkov had to be behind this. Int/Sec Director Gelmedyn took her orders from him. Karishkov had been protecting Aleks Thulver for years, for reasons that Tilrey was all too well aware of, but maybe he’d gotten wind of the strike and decided it was a bridge too far. If he didn’t curb the Northmen before they caused actual damage, he might end up looking like their accomplice.

Or maybe Karishkov had seen a chance to ambush the True Hearth and didn’t care if his own son got in the way.

Because he didn’t want to think about Councillor Karishkov, Tilrey wheeled on Janta. “And why the fuck is he here?”

“You’re taking him,” Mal snapped back. “We can’t protect him. Int/Sec loves hackers. If this one ends up there, he’ll give us all up along with Aleks.”

“I wouldn’t talk,” Janta said in his calm way.

Mal shot a glance at the boy. “No offense, kid, but their interrogations are a lot more rigorous than mine.”

He picked up the bag and thrust it into Tilrey’s arms. “I managed to erase his arrest from Records before they shut down my access. He’s yours now. Make him a fake identity. Be decent to him.”

Then he was muscling them both out the door, hissing in Tilrey’s ear as they went: “We need you free. Do it for Lisha. For Dal. For all of us.”

Flying in an airplane was possibly the best thing that had ever happened to Janta.

The whir and whine of the battery-powered engine vibrated everywhere. Gravity clamped him back against the cushioned seat as the plane’s nose tilted upward. The airfield shrank and shrank until he could see all of Thurskein spread out below him like an enormous gray bolt washer.

He’d seen it from the outside before, but this was different. His city, so small.

Now he had a better view of the army ship, too, camped above the hole in the center of the city. It was no bigger than his thumbnail. Still climbing, the plane banked left and headed over the Wastes, which glittered in the sun like a promise of freedom.

Janta had been to the Wastes several times with Aleks and the other Northmen. They found their freedom in that wilderness, loving it the way his father loved the forests of his childhood.

Janta, however, preferred the indoors. The freedom he dreamed of included hot showers and easy access to network portals. It was a freedom to use devices like the one he glimpsed whenever he tore his eyes away from the window—right there in Tilrey Bronn’s hand.

He watched, mesmerized, as the older man’s fingers moved over the screen of the small handheld, twitching and flicking. Janta couldn’t see the screen—Bronn held it close to his chest—but he could feel electrons pulsing through the air. Data being sent.

Bronn raised his head. “What are you smiling at?”

Janta hadn’t realized he was smiling. He tried to stop, because clearly Bronn was miserable. His signal was denser than ever, full of angry static.

Back at the airport, Janta had held his breath, expecting the soldiers to sense that cloud of guilt and rage around Bronn and stop them in their tracks. But after scanning Bronn’s hand-chip, the armed troops waved them right through. Bronn told them something about a “gift for a Councillor,” and they didn’t bother to scan Janta’s hand at all.

Clearly Tilrey Bronn was a more important person in Redda than Janta had imagined. And Janta had just offended him. “Sorry,” he said.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.” Bronn slipped the handheld back into his coat. “Don’t try to steal it, though. One wrong move by either of us, and you’ll end up being processed as either an Outer or a traitor.”

Janta figured as much. Still, his heart couldn’t keep from soaring as he glanced back out the window, where Thurskein was turning to a black dot in a vast sea of white. “Can I have one of those things in Redda?” he heard himself asking.

A huff of air, almost a laugh. “No.”

“Why do you get one? Aren’t you a Drudge, too?”

“I’m a special kind of Drudge,” Bronn said in the hard, brassy tone that Janta had learned over the years to recognize as sarcasm.

The device was so distracting. Tilrey had it out again, its transmissions fizzing in the air, and Janta wanted it desperately, could already feel his fingers curling around the sleek shell. Thank the Lord of Light he had the view to look at instead.

This was going to be an interesting life. So many new temptations.

Bronn’s energy was another distraction he wished he could shut out. It kept darkening, a snarl of anxiety and other bad feelings that reminded Janta of Aleks whenever any of the Northmen were in danger.

Did this man feel responsible for hundreds of other people, the way Aleks did? The way he and Mal had been talking, he must be True Hearth. Maybe even a leader.

“It’s going to be all right, you know,” Janta said, remembering Mal’s frantic reassurances. “Fir’n Lindtmerán—your mother. She’s a mastermind, Aleks says. She prepares for everything.”

“Good to know,” Bronn said. He put away the handheld again. “‘Aleks says, Aleks says.’ You seem pretty attached to the man.”

Did Bronn dislike Aleks? Many True Hearthers did, so it was best to assume so, but Janta couldn’t imagine feeling anything for Aleks but affection. “He’s been good to me,” he said with a shrug. “The political stuff, though—I don’t care for that. I just did what he said.” He knew enough not to be specific, though they were well out of earshot of the other passengers.

“That’s smart of you. You heard what Mal said—from now on, your loyalty belongs to me.”

The man’s voice had thickened, as if he were playing a part he didn’t feel comfortable in. Janta wondered why, but he answered automatically, “Yes, Fir Bronn. Thanks, Fir Bronn.”

A heavy sigh. “Tilrey. Please.”

Janta nodded with alacrity. Thurskein was out of sight now, and its disappearance gave him a pleasant tingle in his stomach. “How long till we get to Redda?”

“About an hour.” Tilrey shifted, getting out his handheld again. In a lower voice, he asked, “Aren’t you worried about what’s going to happen to your friend Aleks now?”

Those blue eyes pushed and pulled and itched at you and forced you to look back. Janta met them reluctantly. Tilrey probably knew as well as he did that there was a high Upstart who protected Aleks.

Aleks did his best to keep it a secret from everyone but his closest friends, as if he thought people might hate him for having such an advantage. Janta had never understood that; why hate someone for something they couldn’t help? He said, “No. Aleks is lucky. Everybody knows that.”

“Was your father lucky?”

Again with his father. Janta’s father lived inside him and didn’t want to be brought out and examined by strangers. He thought he’d made that clear.

“No,” he said. “He wasn’t lucky. He was unhappy.”

“You told me your father said I stank of Upstart.” Bronn’s energy spiked as he spoke, as if the phrase offended him. “What does that mean? When did your father ever meet an Upstart, living in the Basement of Thurskein?”

Janta thought about it. His father was distant at the moment; the exhilaration of the plane ride had banished him. But not for long, never for long.

“There was a man who taught him how to act,” he said at last, dredging through half-formed memories. “He lived high on a mountain. He taught my dad how to talk properly, and then he told him . . . to go to Thurskein, I guess. ‘Blend in.’ That’s what he used to say. ‘I blended so well, and look where it got me.’ He was supposed to get all the way to Redda, but he blended in instead.”

Tilrey drew in his breath sharply. His eyes held Janta like vises. “Did your dad ever ask you to memorize anything? In his language?”

That was when Janta’s internal alarm began whooping.

He managed to keep his face still and shake his head. Dad would have been proud of him. “No. What kind of thing?”

“Poetry, maybe. Like the sagas, like a children’s rhyme.”

A children’s rhyme. Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams, the blue Mediterranean where he lay . . .

Dad hadn’t actually asked Janta to memorize the Verses. He used them as a lullaby, and Janta remembered them because he remembered everything. Later, when he was a little older, Dad sometimes recited the Verses when he got drunk, and then he got sappy and homesick.

“I could have cracked the world open,” Dad said once through his tears. “I could have let the light in. But I didn’t. I did what that damned man said. I blended in.”

That was around when Janta realized his father wasn’t right in the head. He’d never tried to make much sense of the man’s ravings while he was alive, but now . . .

Tilrey wanted badly to know about the Verses, so badly his eyes were boring into Janta. Backdoor passwords, he’d said earlier, and Janta knew what those were. Was it possible?

Until Janta found out more, he’d keep what he did know to himself. “I don’t know anything about poetry,” he said. “Why’s it matter?”

Tilrey broke the stare-off, leaning back with a sigh. “You seem to think you can read people’s minds,” he said. “It’s a dangerous habit.”

Some of the Northmen used to accuse Janta of trying to read minds, which mystified him. Aleks had taught him what to say to that, and he said it now: “Nobody can read minds. I just notice things. But you do that, too,” he added, going off script. “You’re used to knowing more about other people than they know about you. That’s why I bother you.”

Tilrey tipped his head back and closed his eyes. His signal writhed inside him, the opposite of restful. “Did I say you bother me?”

“You didn’t have to.”

Tilrey was silent after that, and Janta returned to studying the view. They were above the clouds now. The strangeness of plowing through them and discovering they were only diaphanous vapor—which he’d already known, but still—took up all his attention.

Maybe he wasn’t as perceptive as he thought. He could still be surprised. Aleks had sometimes had that effect on him, and he had a feeling Tilrey might, too.

After a while, Tilrey said, “This thing you do, whether you call it mind reading or just noticing. I’m wondering if you could do it for me.”

Janta nodded. Noticing was something he did anyway. “Who do you want me to notice?”

“Various people, starting with a particular one today. Let me explain. When we get to Redda . . .”

The taiga was clear in a half-mile-wide perimeter around Thurskein. When Aleks Snowblind and his friends returned from their trips to the Southern Range, they always waited at the edge of the woods until twilight set in. Then, under cover of darkness, they made the final dash across the clearing to the mouth of the tunnel they used to access the city.

The four of them on this particular expedition—Aleks, Lasha, Bronia, Bers, and a burly kid named Vlar who was green but a workhorse—were grateful for the chance to rest for several hours. They’d spent all of yesterday clearing a desolate scrap of mountainside for their own private sweetbush.

Lasha went to scout at the treeline. The others were slumping against trees, pulling out water bottles and protein bars, when he burst back into the gathering.

“Get up!” he cried, chest heaving. “We need to get the fuck out of here!”

Aleks was on his feet in an instant. Seeing where he was headed, Lasha tried to pull him the other way—deeper into the forest, away from the city. But Aleks shouldered the formidable bulk of his lover aside and sprinted to the treeline. Whatever lurked there, he’d see it for himself.

When he spotted the armored ship hovering over the city, an enormous black blot on the gray sky, his legs weakened. He staggered against a pine and let it hold him upright.

“Janta,” Bers said behind him. “He knew too much when they took him. I told you he’d squeal—”

“It wasn’t Janta,” Aleks said. Now he could see the ground transports, too, three of them flanking the outer edge of Sector Six like parasites feeding on a host organism. There were probably enough troops in there to take every last person in the sector into custody, if the mission’s commanders saw fit to do so.

And he suspected he knew who was ultimately commanding this mission.

Just five minutes ago, he’d been taut with anticipation of tomorrow. After years of recruitment and preparation, nearly 4,000 workers were ready to walk off the factory floor at his signal, congregate in the sector’s cafs and lobbies, and demand greater freedom to go where they wished and say what they wished.

They could still fight the lockdown, of course. But the advantage of surprise, the only real one they’d ever had, was gone. The die-hard Northmen might still be determined to defend themselves with their makeshift weapons, but most of the workers would get one glimpse of the soldiers’ shiny rifles and lose their will to resist.

Where was his luck now?

“They knew,” he whispered into the prickly bark. “He knew.”

A big hand cupped his shoulder. Lasha’s arm slid around his back. “It’s not your fault,” the red-bearded man said, pitching his voice just for the two of them. “And I’m sure Janta didn’t squeal. You know I’ve never trusted Mal.”

“Mal’s got too much to lose.” Aleks didn’t care who had squealed. In the end, he was the one truly responsible for what was happening, and Lasha knew that as well as any of them.

He tensed in Lasha’s arms. “You know who’s behind this. I’m who he wants. I wouldn’t do what he wanted, and this is his response—crack down on the whole sector. Threaten my friends.”

Thurskein was so close, and there was only one thing to do. Dash there without pausing for a breath. Crumple to his knees. Raise his hands in surrender. Take me to Fir Councillor Karishkov. Tell him it’s Lesta.

He tried to break free, but Lasha held him fast. “If I give myself up, maybe he’ll stop this. Maybe he’ll call them off!”

“Aleks. Aleks!” Lasha forced him back against the tree and pinned his wrists. “You aren’t making sense, love. Once something like this is in motion, nobody can stop it. Sacrificing yourself won’t help.”

“I have to try! I can’t just run.”

But even as Aleks twisted in Lasha’s grip, he realized his father could easily have locked down the city on the day of the strike itself, or a few days earlier. He’d chosen today specifically because Aleks wasn’t in the city. He wanted his son out of harm’s way.

He’d planned all of this. Maybe he was watching them from a drone right now, waiting to ambush them and take Aleks discreetly into his custody.

Aleks went limp in Lasha’s arms. For a moment, he let his lover stroke and soothe him. “I’m still going,” he said into Lasha’s shoulder. “I’ll offer myself to them. It’s the best—”

“It is not the best way!” That was Bronia, who stood glaring in the snow with hands on her broad hips, looking absolutely fed up with their lovers’ bickering. “If the strike had happened as planned, they’d have locked us down anyway,” she said. “You know that perfectly well; we planned for it. Everyone in that sector knows how to stand strong and keep their mouth shut. Even the Hearthers—they got to. Too much to lose.”

Whoever had tipped off Int/Sec clearly hadn’t kept their mouth shut. But Aleks understood Bronia’s meaning. He had to be a leader now, or there was no hope for any of them, inside or outside the city.

He took a deep breath. Then he peeled himself free of Lasha’s warm, comforting body, stood tall, and faced the rest of them. “If I give myself up, I could be a bargaining chip.”

Bers and Bronia shook their heads in unison. Vlar just looked scared.

“You’re our leader,” Bers said, his eyes iron. “As long as people know you’re somewhere out there, free, then they’ll have hope.”

“You’re not going to martyr yourself,” Bronia said. “Do that now, it’s all over.”

Aleks wasn’t so sure. Sometimes he wondered if the other Northmen would be better off without him. He turned to Lasha. “You really think we should run away when our people are suffering?”

Lasha’s brown eyes were soft, empathetic, but he narrowed them and raised his chin. “You heard them. As long as we’re free, as long as you’re free, there’s hope. But if you do insist on giving yourself up, I’m going with you.”

Aleks couldn’t fight that. A long shiver ran through him as Bers, Bronia, and finally poor, scared Vlar seconded what Lasha had said: “Same here.” “You won’t go alone.” “We’ll all go.”

They lacked the protection he had. If they surrendered along with him, they would disappear into Int/Sec cells and leave as exiles or ashes.

Aleks drew another deep, shuddering breath and turned his back on the city. “We’re fugitives, then,” he said. “Back the way we came, quick. They could have patrols looking for us.”

Chapter End Notes

Those deadlines wiped me out for a bit! And when I realized that Big Stuff has to happen in this story, setting up an eventual climax for the whole series, things got daunting. There’s always a part of me that would prefer things to be small-scale and comfy, even as I create a scenario that demands a Big Plot and a Real Revolution. But I have a better handle on it now, I hope. Thanks so much for reading! <3

Chapter End Notes