Alexandria (15 page)

“Look how fat she is,” Phoebe commands, stretching her skinny stick arms around Jeneth’s much pregnant stomach. “I think she has five babies in there.”

“I don’t have five babies. You’re asking for it. Someday, when you’re pregnant, I’m going to sit around all day calling you fat like you do me.”

“Okay,” says Phoebe. She puts her ear against Jeneth’s belly button and listens. She gasps.
“I can hear them
.”

“That’s my stomach growling, stupid. All day long,” she tells Lia, “all day long she’s like this.”

“I think it’s your babies growling.”

“Babies don’t growl, Phoebe.”

“You look beautiful,” says Lia.

“Thank you.”

“Here, sit down, Jeneth. Your feet must be tired.” Lia takes her hand and guides her to a bed in the corner. She has moved into a smaller room in the nearly finished wing, living now with Haylen and two other girls who were born at the Temple. “I’ll get you another pillow for your back.”

“That’s okay, I can’t stay long. I have to walk Phoebe back to the lodge, then I’m meeting Eriem after his training.”

“I’m so happy for you, Jeneth. He seems like a good man.”

“He’s great. I just get nervous they’re going to send him out. It’s so dangerous.”

“Yeah,” Lia says absently.

“Guess who just started training with them? Eriem just told me.”

“I don’t know. Who?”

“Jack.”

Lia freezes.
“He’s…”

“He’s doing well. Eriem says he’s a fast learner.”

A fast learner,
Lia agonizes.
What is he learning, how to steal children?
She rakes herself and shoves these thoughts into a deeply hidden compartment in her mind and locks them away until bedtime. “I’m glad that he’s okay.”

“It’s too bad he’s not older.”

“Why?”

“I remember how well you two always got along. It’s a shame he won’t be choosing, that’s all.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry—you’re so pretty, I’m sure you’ll get snatched up quick.”

Lia forces a thin smile. “Thanks.”

Jack’s training continues on through the long summer. They run everyday, always in the morning and sometimes again in the evening, and for distances that grow to feel endless, breaking from the path to climb trees or dive from high cliffs. At night, sleep comes deep and heavy. Days at the quarry become an afterthought with the time spent on this cruel regimen. They grapple and learn to fight, squaring off in impromptu bouts, and when they are not fighting each other they seclude themselves and strike at roped up shadowmen, stitched with leather and packed with sand. They practice bladework and learn the most vulnerable parts of the human body. Everyday he discovers a new way to hurt people.

Taket swings them around behind the barracks for a rest before their afternoon drills, and Jack snatches an apple and stands in line for a drink of water.

“I knew you’d end up here.”

“Hey!”

“How is it?” Braylon asks, draping an arm around his shoulder, brotherly.

“It’s hard,” says Jack, drinking down a ladleful of water, then wiping his arm across his mouth. “But… at least it’s not boring.”

“Exactly. Have they taken you hunting yet?”

“Just once. Hey, where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you since I’ve been back.”

Braylon grins wide. “It was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. A city… the biggest city ever… the size of the whole forest.”

“You saw it?” Jack says, envying the adventure.

“Yeah, we went all around it. King Nezra rode out special for a few days to see it for himself.”

“What was it like?”

“There’s water all around it. We rode up north and around because there’s no way across, and the whole way there are buildings… buildings everywhere.”

“Whole ones?”

“Not really. They looked mostly like the ones down over there, only bigger.” He nods off toward the ruins.

“Were there people?”

“We saw a few fires around, but not much. Mostly animals. But it went on for as far as you could see, and they had us searching through all of it. For over a month.”

“Searching for what?”

“Don’t know, exactly.”

“They didn’t tell you?”

Braylon narrows his eyes, thinking. “They said it’s supposed to be a place that knows things.”

“How can a place know things?”

Braylon shrugs.

“They send us looking every two or three years,” says Feiyan from the water line. “This was the second time I’ve gone. Didn’t find anything the first time either.”

“Why do they want to find it?”

“They don’t even really know.” Feiyan dips the ladle and drinks, then sidles closer to them. “We’ve been looking for it for years and haven’t found anything. I’m not sure it’s out there.”

“No,” says Eriem, catching his breath, “it’s real. It has to be. What about Thomas?”

“How do you know he told the truth?”

“What did he ever lie about?”

“Who is that?” asks Jack.

“What? Didn’t you learn this? He was here a long time ago.”

“The prophet?”

“Yes.”

“I forgot his name.”

“He said he came from a city to the north. Taught how to build the Temple and plant fields, all sorts of things. He must have learned it somewhere.”

“Maybe he was smart and worked it all out himself. If there was a city out there that could build temples like this, why haven’t we found it?”

“We haven’t gone far enough.”

“It’s legend. Nowhere I’ve seen could come close to building something like this.”

“Whatever it is, it counts. My first venture.” Braylon rubs a hand over his freshly shaven head.

“Barely,” says Eriem, goading him, “there’s no danger.”

“There’s plenty.”

“We scouted a group of wanderers in the northeast. They paint themselves with animal blood and eat raw meat and fight with spears. That’s danger.”

“Are you going?”

Eriem nods. “I just found out. I won’t even see my baby born.”

Taket launches out of the barracks and calls the men out to the range. Jack takes his bow and runs off to queue himself in front of the straw targets. His first few volleys go wide and he repositions himself and tries again. The arrow thunks into the outer edge of the bundle and hangs limply. He curses himself and draws another, aligning his sight down the thin shuttle. His mind betrays him with a bitter memory, and he envisions the dying eyes of the man he killed when he was twelve, such unmistakable malice extinguished so quickly by one lucky shot. He recalls the eerie calm that overtook him in that instant, that blinding red haze, and he stills his hand and quiets his mind, then releases the bowstring.

Lia stands with her arms outstretched and her back straight. Elise smoothes her hands down the sides of Lia’s dress and makes a few rough markings around the bottom.

“It’s going to look beautiful,” says Lia.

“Thank you. I wish Jeneth could help, I know she wanted to sew your dress.”

“I think she’s going to have her hands full for a while.”

“I know. She’s so sweet, she got Jeneth’s looks, I think.”

“Mmm.”

Elise pushes her arms softly to her sides and smoothes down the sleeves. She straightens the waistline and brushes away a few specks of lint.

“I’m really happy for you, Lia.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean it. I hated seeing you sad. You deserve a really happy life, and I know you’re going to get it.”

“Thank you. I owe a lot to you, for helping me through.”

“Please, we have to look out for each other, don’t we?” She squeezes Lia’s hand. “Okay, slip this off. Just a few little changes, I promise it will be ready. And Lia…”

“Yes?”

“Remember to
smile
.”

They ride back in the morning after a grueling month spent in the forest with Taket, allowed only their short hunting knives and no other tools, surviving off what they could kill at short distance. They swept a great arc around the provinces and covered more land than Jack had ever seen.

By early evening they arrive at the stables to water their horses and brush them down. Jack unsaddles one of the calmer mares and leads her back to her stall. He smoothes down her bristly mane and carries over the sack of grain and pours it out into her trough. Cullen bars the gate of the next stall over and sits off by the stable doors waiting for Jack to finish. The other conscripts have been charged with butchering the wild boar they cornered and killed on their last day in the woods. Taket granted them a rare night off to lay by the barracks and roast the kill in their own fire pit.

The day trainers are winding down their practice, stowing their gear away in the armory and suiting into different attire before wandering back to the Temple to be with their families. Braylon lingers around with the last few, turning simple tasks into lengthy processes. He is sharpening his knife for the third time when Jack and the recruits return to the barracks.

“Welcome back. Kill anything?”

“Yeah. There’s pig cooking. You’re here late, they keep you?”

“Just leaving,” says Braylon, but he makes no move to rise. “I thought I’d go check on Jeneth. She can’t even sleep until Eriem comes home.”

“How’s Mariset?”

“Beautiful. Jeneth can’t wait for you to meet her. Says she misses you and hopes your well.”

“Tell her
thanks
.”

“I’ll do that.” Braylon takes a deep breath and settles in next to Jack. “I wanted to talk to you… You probably don’t want to hear this, but I thought it should come from one of your friends. Jeneth said… at the bonding rights in three days, Lia is going to stand.”

“Oh,” says Jack, twisting his face in confusion. “I haven’t even seen her in years.”

“It’s all right, Jack, I know. You were together all the time back home, I just thought you should know.”

“I… I don’t…”

“She’ll be fine, don’t worry. I know how you feel.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I always… I kind of wanted to end up with Jeneth, doubt if you knew that.”

“No.”

“I don’t think she did either. But Eriem’s decent to her. She has a good life. I still don’t like him much,” he says, grinning. Jack grows quiet. Braylon stands and throws his pack over his shoulder. “Anyway, I thought you should hear it from me.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s okay. Hey, imagine if a girl from our little group became Queen of the whole Temple.”

“Yeah,” says Jack. “That would be something.”

Braylon claps him on the shoulder and lights off for the dormitory. Jack lies numbly back on his mattress and drapes his forearm across his face and a keening moan escapes his throat.

In his sleep he makes a familiar voyage to the ghost village of his dreams. It has grown oblong and hopelessly distorted. Flames no longer dance around him—he is surrounded by cold wet ash, and at the far end of the warped promenade he sees a shimmering form, but it is not his mother. It is Lia. No fire rages between them, yet still she glimmers behind a wall of heat waves. He runs to her, but Jack knows this story. He will come tantalizingly close and never reach her. He sees as he draws near that she is a child still, the way he remembers her best. Black hair tied up with garlands of flowers and ivy draped over her tiny form. She shimmers and he runs to her, but it is useless. She retreats faster than he can advance. He looks down at his own body and sees that he is coal-blackened from head to toe, wearing a sash of murder weapons and wielding a razor sharp machete. He realizes with horror that she is running away from him—running for her life.