Guardians (29 page)

“I saved you,” he said. The stubble of her hair felt unpleasant against his lips, and he was keenly aware that her thin body, shaking with sobs, was bony, hot, and sweaty. Still, he could tell it was the most effective thing he could do. “When she found you and brung you upstairs? She wanted to kill you. I saved your life.”

Nur could only nod.

At last, she pulled back to look at him. Her nose and the rims of her eyes were pink, and a trail of mucus gleamed beneath one nostril; still, she looked happy.

“You take me away from here?”

“Yeah. This time, I promise.”

“Where we go?”

Briefly, Gideon told her of the new building. Nur listened, smiling, then spoke. “When?”

“Tonight.” He paused. “Only there something I need first.”

The girl shot him a questioning look.

Gideon had taken a corner of his robes and was using it to remove something from his pocket. He handled the object gingerly: a small glass vial that minutes before he had filled up on the moonlit roof. It held an inch or so of dirty water that
he had drawn from the immense tank where rain was collected prior to being boiled.

“I need you do something,” he said. “For both of us.”

As always, Saith's room smelled of flowers.

The little girl appeared at the doorway. Wearing an oversize robe of a soft and slippery fabric, she frowned at what she saw. Nur had dragged in a small metal tub, which she had filled with warm water. Now she knelt by its side, stirring it with one hand as she poured in powder from a small plastic jar.

“What that?” asked Saith, her nose wrinkling.

“It a special bath.” Nur had managed to whip the crystals into a glistening white froth. Wiping the sweat from her brow, she sat back on her heels, waiting.

Saith sniffed. “Where you get the water?”

“From the reserves.”

Nur knew better than anyone that water was strictly rationed. There had been a heavy yet brief rainfall the week before; that was nearly gone and there was now precious little to drink. That she had squandered so much of it on something as frivolous as a bath for a single person was beyond indulgent. Yet it was exactly the extravagance of it that she secretly hoped would appeal to the priestess.

And she was right: Saith smiled. Then she slipped off her robe and stepped into the tub.

Nur was waiting as the little girl leaned back. She was already working some special soap into a lather, which she began massaging into the child's head.

“Harder,” said Saith.

Nur continued to rub the girl's scalp, using all the skill she had to make the child relax. And it worked: Saith grunted once or twice with pleasure and sank deeper into the water. Soon she was nearly asleep. Occasionally, Nur was aware of a figure moving past the screened doorway: Four guards surrounded the entrance. Other than that, the room was silent but for soft and rhythmic splashing sounds.

The jar of rainwater was in the front pocket of Nur's robe. When she moved, it bumped against her thigh, reminding her of its presence. She had promised Gideon she would do it. Their future together depended on it. No one would ever know; unlike, say, drowning the child outright, it was something she could accomplish surreptitiously, without drawing any attention or suspicion to herself. Even with armed guards a few feet away, the risk would be minimal.

Yet now that the moment had arrived, she felt sick with doubt and anxiety.

“That feel good,” said Saith at last. “Now wash it off.”

Nur dipped a plastic bowl into the bathwater and poured it over Saith's head again and again until every trace of soap was gone. Then Saith stirred in the tub and stood.

“Dry me,” she commanded.

Nur hesitated. If the girl got out of the water, it would be too late.

For a second, Nur shuddered to think what would be her fate if she were caught. But then she noticed something.

Saith was turning this way and that, admiring her pretty
little body in the long mirrors that hung along one wall. With her gleaming skin and damp hair fresh and soft from the bath, the child looked perfect.

She was so lovely,
Nur thought with a stab of bitterness.

She took out the bottle from her pocket, unscrewed the lid, and poured the contents into the tub.

The murky rainwater swirled and blended. As Nur lifted a towel and draped it over the little girl, the invisible poison made its way to a new victim.

A
WEEK LATER, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, THE CALL OF A SINGLE BIRD
echoed through the steel and glass canyon of downtown Mundreel. Its faint cries carried across the dusty marble lobby of a huge white building called “museum.” There in the high-ceilinged space, more than two dozen people, a dog, and a cat lay motionless, fast asleep.

Only one person was awake.

Esther had spent the night huddled near a lit candle, poring for the hundredth time over the odd picture that Uri had sketched for her of the District. This “diagram” was meant to depict all ten floors of the building, as well as the surrounding
block. After studying it, Esther found she was able to follow the layout of the floors, the locations of the doors, the stairwells, entrances, and exits. With Silas's help, Uri had been also able to add useful details: where Saith's altar was, where she slept, and where her many guards stood lookout.

The guards were the most worrisome factor.

Esther was all too aware that by comparison, hers was a small band, made up of the sick, the young, and the starving. They were sparsely armed with only the makeshift weapons they had been able to Glean from stores and homes: table legs, bricks, broken glass, household utensils. Saith's and Gideon's boys were not only older, stronger, and better trained; they outnumbered them and carried guns. Esther knew that the only advantage they had was the element of surprise; without it, their attack would lead to certain slaughter.

She could not allow that to happen.

In the past, Esther wouldn't have bothered to plan anything. She would have confronted Saith on her own, slipping into the District on impulse and without any thought or strategy. Back then, she was reckless and confident enough—
foolish enough,
she realized now, ruefully,
to throw herself into danger without any thought of what might happen
.

Esther realized she could no longer afford brashness. She now had the weight of many people's lives on her shoulders: not only her family and friends, but the individuals they had added to their numbers in the past three days.

Recruiting more people had been Skar's idea. At first, Esther had disagreed with her; she didn't know whom they could trust
and who might be a disciple or even a spy of the girl priestess.

“We are only nine,” Skar had argued, “and four are little ones.”

Although she was still doubtful, Esther had finally seen her point.

She and her friends began their search for recruits by canvassing the area where they had first met Saith and Uri. The ravaged neighborhood was not far away, on the other side of the mountain.

When they arrived, the narrow streets of modest buildings were even more desolate than Esther remembered. Without hesitation, Uri had led them to his old home, a sagging gray house with two stories that stood in the middle of one block.

The boy had looked in through the splintered entrance, which was missing its door. “Hello?” he called. When there was no reply, he glanced at Esther, who nodded.

“Wait here,” she told Skar and the others. With Pilot by her side, she and Uri slipped inside.

The air had been stifling hot and smelled of dust, mouse droppings, and, above all, something sweet yet sickening. Esther recognized it as the smell of death, of bodies decomposing. She felt the hair on the back of her neck rise as Pilot growled, straining forward against his chain. He led the two deep into the darkness, pulling her with sure steps. In a dim, unfurnished room, something glittered. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light, Esther realized that three people were watching her.

They were alive, but just barely. At least one was in the
final stages of the illness, a motionless child cradled by another. Ordering Pilot to sit with a click of her tongue, Esther dug into her bag for a bottle of water. Uri was already walking among them, looking for a familiar face.

“What you want?” The boy who spoke sounded hostile and suspicious, his voice little more than a cracked whisper. He sat with the dying child in his lap, a dirty blanket draped over his shoulders.

“This is Uri,” Esther said. “He comes from here.”

No one responded.

Esther tried again. “We're looking for folks to help us.”

“Do what?”

“Do away with Saith.”

This was,
Esther knew,
a calculated risk: These could be the girl's supporters
. And in fact, the information received a visible reaction: All of them murmured, and the boy with the blanket sat up.

“How you do that?”

Esther noticed he had asked “how” not “why”;
that was promising,
she thought. Still, she herself wasn't sure of the answer. All she said was, “Are you interested?”

The boy exhaled. “She the one got us sick.”

Esther knelt close. She struggled to uncap the bottle, but the boy grabbed it from her. He unscrewed it and took a long drink of water, the muscles in his throat working. Handing it back, he gave her a brief nod of thanks. Then at last he spoke, and Esther was filled with mounting horror.

Days before, he and his friends had gone to the District in search of the miraculous liquid provided by the priestess. Like most of his friends, he had been
skeptical at first. Yet as the blue water burned his throat, the boy had inexplicably been filled with a sense of both light and heat. He was caught up in a feeling of euphoria and then total belief
.

After that, no one took precautions any longer; why did they need to? When the rain came, they didn't hide from it. Instead, he and his friends stayed outside, laughing and drinking from the sky itself
.

The first lesions appeared two or three days later. One by one, they became ill until all seven had been stricken. And now they were the only three left in the household
.

“So I come,” he had said. Although his voice was faint, Esther could hear the anger that lay beneath it. “The others too far gone.” He indicated the child in his lap and his voice softened. “I think she gone by tonight. But I the last one who got sick. So I still got strength.”

In this way, Esther and her friends gathered up soldiers for their army: one at a time, entering homes, meeting the sick and the frightened, and hearing their pitiable tales of outrage and bitterness. Not everyone they met was sick, yet each had lost partners, friends, and relatives to the disease, all because of their belief in Saith and her magical potion. As a result, they were desperate not only for the water and food that Esther and her friends offered, but the chance of retribution.

Esther and Uri managed to enlist eighteen in all.

Silas led the newcomers in Gleaning excursions into homes and stores. Then they forged crude weapons from what they were able to salvage. As Trey taught them the basics of hand-to-hand fighting, Skar hunted from dawn until dusk to keep their growing numbers fed.

Three days later, they were finally ready.

Within the next hour or two, they would make their way to the District, less than a mile away. Disguised in white and black robes, they would join the crowds of worshippers that flocked to its doors every day. Once inside, Esther, Skar, and Silas would each take a small group in different directions throughout the lobby and basement; at a given signal, they would disarm guards at their posts. In the meantime, Trey would make his way upstairs and deal with Saith single-handedly.

If possible, he was to take her alive. The same applied to Gideon. Trey had argued with Esther on both points, but she had been adamant:

Enough blood had been spilled. She did not want to add to it.

Although Esther's plan was simple, she continued to agonize over the unknown. She had focused all of her energy preparing for Saith's guards, whom she knew were armed and loyal to the girl they served. Yet she did not know how great a danger the rest of the District's inhabitants might pose. Inside, people were still true believers who had traveled far and considered it a privilege to be under the same roof as their idol. Esther couldn't predict to what lengths they would go to protect the girl they were convinced was holy.

She would just have to trust in luck. And as she came to that conclusion, she found herself thinking of someone else.

Eli.

As far as she knew, he was still in the District. Thinking of him now, Esther had a strange twisting feeling in her gut.

Her old friend had deliberately turned his back on her and the others months ago. He had acted out of his own free will when he chose to side with Gideon and, by extension, Saith as well. He had served as their judge, upholding their cruel and senseless laws, and sentencing her and countless other innocents to Shunning, slavery, and worse.

And yet he had saved her life.

Esther could still remember the boy he had been back in Prin—the one who had once asked her to be his partner. Since then, they had traveled many miles together and had both suffered terrible losses. She had been able to recover from her wounds and, in so doing, had grown stronger, even wiser. Yet somehow, he had not been able to do the same.

Eli was not a bad person,
she thought now,
yet he was fragile
.
And didn't the strong have an obligation to look after the weak?

Pensive, Esther folded up the map and slipped it into her jeans. The air was so heavy, she wiped moisture from her forehead. Then she sensed someone watching her. Trey sat up a few feet away.

“You all right?” he whispered.

She nodded. But, even in the dimness, she saw the boy shoot her a questioning look as if sensing her apprehension.

Esther surprised herself by saying: “It's Eli.” Trey was silent as he slipped his weapon out of its hiding place and examined it quickly and methodically. “Before we go in,” she went on, “I want to get him out. He can't take care of himself. The longer he's there, the more danger he's in.”

“He mean that much to you?”

“If nothing else,” she said, “I owe him something.”

Trey nodded. If he was taken aback to hear her concern about the unsteady boy who had once guarded the basement drinking room, he didn't show it. He got to his feet. “I'll go.”

Esther shook her head. “He's my friend, not yours.”

She attempted to stand, but Trey held her back. “Then nobody's going nowhere . . . not now, anyways. When we get there, there be plenty of time.”

“But—”

Trey shook his head. “Best thing you can do now is get some rest. You ain't slept all night, right?”

Esther shrugged. Yet even she had to admit that the insides of her eyelids felt raspy, and a sudden wave of exhaustion made her light-headed.

“I wake you in an hour.”

Esther didn't want to agree. Yet no sooner had her eyes closed than she felt someone shaking her.

It was Skar. Behind her, the sky had brightened; it was nearly dawn. Esther could detect the clatter of everyone getting ready.

For a moment, Esther was disoriented. But she rose, trying to get her bearings. There was a growing humidity in the air, the type that precedes storms. “Where's Trey?”

“He's gone. To the District, to get Eli.”

Esther stopped, as a surge of annoyance swept over her. “He lied to me. We agreed that—”

Skar squeezed her arm in sympathy. “He said that we could do without him. But we couldn't do without you.”

Esther fell silent.

She could only hope that it was true.

A mile away, another person had been unable to sleep. As he had for days now, Gideon paced the lower floors of the District, his thoughts in a constant whirl.

He had been this way ever since he'd found out about his new home. On the same night Nur had poisoned Saith's bathwater, one of his guards had awoken him with terrible news. There had been a slave uprising at the construction site, with dozens killed. Unable to believe it, Gideon had hurried to the building.

What greeted him was a scene of total destruction. By moonlight, he saw that the surrounding streets were littered with the bodies of slaves and slave masters alike, indistinguishable in the gloom. Up on the roof, the tar-paper floor was littered with the shattered remains of the greenhouse. The long wooden tables had been upended, their boards splintered and cracked, and the green plastic troughs lay broken on the ground, their fragile crop already withered and yellowing like so much dead grass.

Worst of all, Joseph—the only person in Mundreel with enough knowledge to rebuild the thing—was gone.

If Gideon was devastated by the violent end to his plans, he did not let on to his guards. By the time he had made it back to the District, he had already begun rethinking his options.

He would continue to stay at the District with his boys. The old garden was still functional; somehow, he would have
to find workers to maintain it. His only challenge would be surviving the upheaval that he felt certain was about to take place.

For Saith was dying.

The day before, Gideon had noticed a glassy brightness to her eyes and a flushed appearance that indicated fever. The girl priestess had begun to wear a billowing white cloak that tellingly covered her arms and legs. Although she continued to receive disciples (
fewer each day,
Gideon noticed), her guards now kept visitors at a distance. They also whisked her away the moment she grew tired. Yet their loyalty had its limits; Gideon was amused to note that none of her guards dared to stand close to her any longer or touch her with their bare hands. When they were forced to approach her, they covered their mouths and noses with their arms.

Although the plans for his escape had been upended, Gideon didn't regret ordering Saith's poisoning. With her health declining, he felt a deep sensation of relief. He hadn't trusted himself to appeal to the masses, and so he had allowed two girls, first Esther and then Saith, to be his public face. Yet Saith had climbed too high, with disastrous results.