Edge of the Falls (After the Fall) (2 page)

They’re waiting on me.

“I think the mistakes of the past deserve our attention,” Spiro says softly. “Maybe then we won’t repeat them.”

Alba twists to scowl at him, and I clear my throat, silencing her before she can launch on another tirade. “The Mistress wants you to watch the histories. If you have a problem with it, I suggest you take it up with her.”

I let the challenge hang in the air as silence thickens in the room. Alba stares at me for a long moment before she slouches down. Satisfied, I start the holo.

The images of a time long gone, both foreign and familiar, fill the room. A deep voice speaks over the picture about the chaos that lit the fires of the cataclysm. I pause, glancing at Kaida, nestled between Guin and Cedric. A pang of unease goes through me—the holo is violent. Too violent for her.

I can feel the Mistress watching me, and I push the thoughts aside. The histories are familiar to all of us, something that Mistress drills into each of her children. Reviewing the bloody days before the Cataclysm will not damage Kaida.

I shake my skirt free of dust, and leave the study. The Mistress watches me, her dark eyes probing, and I meet her stare levelly. I wonder what she sees, when she looks at me like she can see my soul.

All of us are quiet as she leads us through the Manor’s silent halls, past the ballroom where most of our free time is spent—what little we have. I barely note the empty rooms we pass. The Manor is so familiar that I sometimes forget its beauty. I trail my fingers over the scrolling edges of wood worked Before that survived Longest Night.

There is a formality about the Mistress that makes me nervous, a quiet tension that is reflected in Berg. I frown, watching them from the corner of my eye as she settles into her chair in the kitchen. Cook is absent for once, and I dip bowls of warm broth for the three of us as Berg slices sharp cheese, bread, and two of the last apples.

“I need Kaida,” she says, her eyes on Berg. I see him hesitate, his knife resting on the bread for a moment too long before he slices down and nods.

“She’s too young, Mistress,” I protest, suppressing a shiver when her gaze, cold and hard, finds me.

“I need more starrbriars,” she says quietly, and despite knowing this is coming, it hits me hard.

“Maybe we should wait, Mistress,” Berg ventures. I feel a flash of gratitude, and hold my breath, waiting for her response.

“How long do you suppose the fire-lizards will wait?” she asks tartly.

And that quickly, hope fades. She offers us life, education, security, and, in exchange, we risk our lives for her. All of us know her price.

“I want Kaida to go. She’s smarter than Guin—he’ll be ready when Kaida is too big, I think,” the Mistress continues, startling me—she never explains herself. I wonder why she does now.

“I’ll go,” I blurt, and her eyes come up from her bowl of broth, disbelieving.

“You?” A short laugh bursts from her. “Sabah, you know you can’t. You are far too big.”

It’s true. I am. I’m three inches shorter than Lilith, small for my age, but much too large to fit in the tunnel behind the waterfall. I shudder at the thought that Kaida will soon be crawling through hordes of fire-lizards and snakes.

“She’s too young,” I say again, my voice sharp. “It’s cruel to force it on her. Cedric still hasn’t recovered, and probably never will.” Anger swamps me, and I drop my spoon with a clatter. “If you’re going to keep demanding this, keep risking their lives, I won’t raise them. I won’t raise them for you to sacrifice.”

“
Sabah!”
Berg snaps and I glare at him.

The Mistress leans back, her eyes as sharp as a carrion hawk’s as she studies me. “This is my price, Sabah,” she says. “You know that. They know. Why are you fighting me?”

Terror chills my anger. What if she turns me out? I am an Exile, a girl with no Insurance or Quota—the City will never accept me. They never wanted me in the first place. I will not survive Outside for long, certainly not without one of the Roving tribes.

But the children—they have no one to speak for them. “Your price is too high, Mistress. You demand everything and give us no answers. No promise of a future. Nothing but a roof and food—we aren’t your slaves. Yet your control over our lives is like the Commission.”

Her eyes narrow dangerously, and I almost back down. Before I can say anything, Berg steps between us. “She’s just tired, Mistress. You know Sabah and I are loyal to you.”

“Stop that,” I shout, and both of them jerk, looking at me. “I’m not a child you can order around. And I’m not asking you to make excuses for me,” I tell Berg. “I’m tired of watching my children die!”

There’s a long moment of quiet. I can feel their eyes on me, pressing and demanding. My emotions are raging, words I can’t say bubbling in my throat, so I choke them down and storm out of the room.

The cold bites at my face as I stalk away from the house. Mlena glows, brilliant against the darkness, setting my temper off even further. With the wind biting at me, I stalk along the edge of the river, away from the Manor and the City and everything that I can’t face right now. The wind is wild and fierce against my skin, teasing my hair from my bun.

It’s savage out here. A few steps away from my home, away from the shadow of Mlena, the darkness swallows me. I could vanish out here. For a long, cold moment, I consider it: walking until I am taken by a predator, or found by a tribe. Living my life racing the winds. Living
free.

Walking away from the Mistress and Berg and… the children. That makes my steps falter, and I look back. Can I really leave my children? Kadia, Cedric, Guin, and the tiny twins? Spiro?

I close my eyes, and finally, turn back.

**

The holo is still on when I return to the study, the dark vista of Genesis Fields spread out as a Commission puppet drones on about the dangers Outside. I can just see the distortion of the City’s shield in the darkness before it pans out to show a pack of ban-wolves running away from a unit of Keepers.

I clear my throat, and all of them turn to me. Young eyes, bitter eyes, curious—all in varying shades of gray, and all looking to me for something. I used to wonder why. Why did all of the strays the Mistress sheltered look to me for guidance? Was it because the Mistress was too distant to fill that role, or was it my age, or that I was the one who took them to their rooms and settled them into this life, after Berg found them and brought them to the Manor? Perhaps it was a mix of all three.

Eventually, I quit worrying about it. The fact was they did—for whatever reason. It falls to me to mother these orphans, and I do my best. Even when I want to fall apart.

I switch off the holo, and Guin lights candles, pulls the dark screen from the fire. “We’re done for today,” I say quietly. “Cook has lunch prepared and then I want you all to weed the greenhouse. Spiro, check with Berg to see if he needs your help today.”

I start to turn away, and Kaida’s clear voice stops me. “Sabah?”

A wild thought goes through me that I cannot face her—she’ll see the truth, if she looks at me. I steel my expressions, and turn, arching an eyebrow.

“What was sunlight like?”

It isn’t the question I expect and I flounder for a moment, unsure how to answer her. How, how to describe something that I have never seen? That no one alive has ever seen?

“Like spun gold,” Berg says from behind me, and I tense.

Kaida’s gray gaze darts to him, questioning.

“You’ve seen the lights from Mlena?”

Around the room, they nod, all but Alba, who watches, her arms crossed over her chest, as Berg moves past me, crouches in front of Kaida, and smiles. “It’s like that—except it’s more. It’s bigger—so big it filled everything with light and warmth. It warmed even the Falls. It was happiness, and light, and life—it was safety in the day, and seasons, and warm hands and healthy crops. It was everything we don’t have now.” There is a touch of wistfulness in his voice and I almost step toward him, almost reach out to touch and reassure him. But I feel so fragile already, and I still need to inform the children of the Mistress’ demand.

I clear my throat, Kaida looks at me, and something in her gaze is alert, almost as if she knows what I will say before I speak.

“She wants you ready to look for starrbriars in two days,” I say. Kaida meets the words with silence, a muffled gasp slipping from Lilith. I glare at her, and then look back to Kaida.

How can she look so serene, so calm? For a heartbeat, fear flickers through her eyes, and then she nods.

I turn and escape.

**

Night is a precious time. A time of deep darkness and danger, and the only time I can call my own. When the weight of the children and the Manor and
life
does not sit so heavily on me.

Berg is waiting when I slip into the study, his hands worrying the worn edges of a thick leather book. It is old, dated pre-Before. I know what it is without reading the almost invisible title—the gold gilt has long since flaked off.

I tug the book gently from his hands and set it on the table. He smiles at me, but there’s a tension in both of us—something unfamiliar in our relationship.

A sigh slips from me as I snuggle into his lap, leaning my head against his shoulder. His lips press against my hair and we sit there, recovering from the long day in each other’s embrace.

I’m not entirely sure when the relationship between us changed. Berg is one of the first things I can remember from Outside. My mother is a shadowy figure that I can barely recall. I know, deep inside, that she must have loved me.

I know that she had turned me out only because she had no choice. Gutterlings, the outcast children living in the sewers of Cities, were prey to the Keepers, and more often then not, disappeared into the Commission’s experiments. Putting me out of the Shield that protected the whole of the City was necessary—sometimes I like to think she’d been called before the Prince, and threatened. The Commission could Exile her, snatch away her Insurance—the promised marriage to another Citizen that allowed each to fulfill their assigned Quota.

But she is a distant memory—someone who had loved me, and let me go, for whatever her reasons. Berg is the one who never let go. I was Outside for almost two days before Berg found me. We’d both been pathetically small, but I can remember him giving me water he’d collected from mist landing on his rain slicker. I can remember him promising me we’d survive, that he would protect me. I remember believing him.

When the ban-wolves screamed through the pitch black of night, he’d stayed awake, holding my hand, and tied me to him with a rope around both our waists.
If one of us goes, we’ll both go, Sabah.

We hadn’t fallen. We weren’t snatched by the pack of ban-wolves, either, though we heard their screams through that endless night. The Mistress had found us, and with a gleam in her eyes that made me shiver, she had scooped us up and taken us to her Manor.

We’d been the first. Her first orphans. Over the years, she’d collected Gutterlings and outcast orphans. Berg and I had helped them, taught them, and held them while they cried in the night. When I was overcome with missing the shadow that was my mother, he held me.

Sometimes I wonder who holds him.

He’s always been my friend—my only friend, since the girls were mine to care for, and the Mistress is so far above me, she could never be considered anything but what she is: my patron and Mistress.

“What are you thinking, Sabah?” he murmurs, his voice soft in my ear.

“When we met,” I answer, twisting my head to smile at him. “Did you think, then, that the Gutterling you rescued would be the girl you love?”

His eyes darken, and my breath catches. “Yes,” he murmurs and he's so close I can feel the word on my lips. His hands fist in my hair, pulling me even closer. I inhale, fighting to breathe, caught in the kiss and the storm of emotions he can make play across me.

We’re both shaking when he lets me go. We sit silently, and then he pats my knee. “Walk with me to the greenhouse.”

I stand, grateful for the chance to think about something other than his lips on me, as delicious as that is. His kisses always make me think of the future, and that is not certain for either of us.

We are Exiled.

The greenhouse is silent and creepy in the dead of night. It is the only time we turn off the Growlight, and the darkness that is a constant everywhere else fills the room. The smells are comforting though—natural and clean, fresh. I let my fingers brush over the herbs, and the smell of rosemary and thyme and cilantro flood the air around me. It makes my mouth water, despite the pleasant fullness in my belly from lastmeal.

“What was that, today? Why did you question her?” he asks, and despite the casual tone, I can feel the edge of tension. The hint of anger.

“Am I not allowed to do that? I thought it was only the Commission who hates questions,” I say, lightly. I pick up a pair of scissors and clip some rosemary, sniffing it before I tuck it into a pocket to leave for Cook.

“Sabah,” he snaps, and this time he does not attempt to censor the anger from his voice, “don’t be difficult.”

I blink, turning to face him. That is something that I am seldom, if ever, accused of being. If any of us—aside from Alba—is
difficult
, it is Berg.

“I’m not,” I say, my voice flat and unfriendly. “I’m asking why it is so damn necessary to risk the life of a child. Is that wrong, Berg? Because as far as
we
know, those starrbriars could be making her bath scent.”

Something flickers in his eyes, too quickly for me to catch, before he says stiffly, “If that is the price she asks for protecting us, it is her business.”

“No,” I snap. “Not when I raise these children. She makes it our business.”

He reaches for me, and I step back, out of reach.

“Why are you defending her?” I demand. I watch him shrug, watch worry and confusion war for supremacy on his face.

“I don’t want you hurt,” he says, and something in me tightens. He is telling me the truth—but not all of it.