Of Metal and Wishes (25 page)

Iyzu strides forward. “You are the dumbest girl on the—”

We all blink as the killing floor lights up as bright as day, every single bulb in the place snapping on at once.

BO HAS NOT
abandoned me. I start to step around them, hoping they’ll let me return to the clinic, but that is too much to ask for. Lati snatches me by the arm.

“I don’t know how you did that, but I’m not impressed.” He grinds his fingers against my arm bones and grabs a handful of my hair, but as he twists my head back, Iyzu stops him.

“Lati, I think we should hold off,” he says, glancing up nervously at the glaring lights. He may not have been scared of Mugo, but he is smart enough to fear the Ghost.

“What are we supposed to do with her?” Lati whines. His fingers are inching up my ribs, and I feel like I’m going to be sick.

Iyzu’s smile is hideous. “Let her keep the Noor warm. They deserve each other.”

Lati doesn’t seem to like that idea. Judging by his suspicious frown and questing fingers, I think he’d rather keep me for himself, but Iyzu is the leader between them, so he drags me across the killing floor to the refrigerated chamber way in the back. I look around, hoping Bo will appear and rescue me, but when Iyzu orders Lati to go fetch a group of men to post outside the door on this side and the one that opens to the cafeteria kitchen, I suspect there are few things my Ghost can do for me now.

Iyzu pulls a set of keys from his pocket and unlocks the chamber, then shoves me inside. “Try not to freeze to death,” he says brightly, and then he slams the door.

I am familiar with darkness, but this one is complete. Black and cold. “Melik?”

From across the room comes a low moan, but it is the best sound I have ever heard. I take a step and run into something hard and pointy.

That’s when I remember I still have a candle clutched in my fist. I light my only remaining match on the concrete floor, and when my tiny flame gutters to life, I hold it up.

This is a terrible place.

It’s as cold as the winter frost. Piles of meat, ribs, hindquarters, and ground chuck are all around me in huge bins. Dead cow and metal and my own fogged breath. But over in the corner is what I’m looking for, and I weave through beef and bins and boxes to get to him. He is curled on his side, his knees pulled to his chest, and he is shaking, shivering, losing his battle against the cold. I drop to the floor and lean over him.

“Melik,” I whisper against the side of his face, stroking my hand down his arm.

“Wen always has medicine,” he mutters thickly, and then chuckles, like what he’s said is incredibly funny.

I think he has hypothermia.

I lift my candle so I can see him better. There’s a blackened mark on his shoulder where the cattle prod burned through his shirt and cauterized his pale flesh. His face is deeply bruised, and blood trickles from his nose. They’ve beaten him. Tried to put him in his place. It fills me with an anger so deep it boils from my skin, enough to keep us both warm.

I get up again and use one of the enormous scoops to dig a heaping lump of ground chuck from a nearby bin. I plop it to the floor and sculpt it into a mound in front of Melik’s knees, and then I stick the base of my candle in it to secure it. I sit down next to the candle, strip off my dressing gown, and slide it over us like a tent. My mother made me this gown for cool winter nights, and it will hold the heat of the candle in and keep us alive. Of course, that leaves me in only my thin cotton nightgown, but this isn’t really the time to worry about modesty. I’m more worried about freezing.

While I wait for the space to warm up, I rub Melik’s frozen hands and talk to him, telling him stupid stories from my childhood, singing him songs my mother used to sing, telling him all the things I wish for, even my dream that I will go to medical school and be a doctor like my father. I don’t think it matters too much what I say, but I hope Melik will find his way back to my voice, that he will wake and know he is with me, that we are together. I wish I could tell him he is safe, but that is far from true.

“I know you didn’t do it,” I say when I finally run out of mundane things to talk about. “I have proof.”

“Iyzu and Lati have proof too,” he replies, his voice barely above a whisper.

He’s awake, and I have no idea how long he’s been listening to me prattle on about myself. I scoot closer, nudging up against his knees, and he raises his head and wipes the blood from his nose with the back of his sleeve. But he doesn’t smile at me. In fact, he looks extremely unhappy. “Why are you in here with me? What did you do?”

I shrug. “I’d rather be in here than out there. Lati and Iyzu caught me on the killing floor. They probably don’t want me to be able to tell anyone that they framed you.”

He squints at me in the dim light of the candle. “You shouldn’t be here. This is the last place you should be.”

I know that. But I can’t regret it. “You shouldn’t be here either.”

“Do you know if my brother got away?” His voice is so full of fear that it hurts me.

I inch forward on my knees, careful not to set my nightgown on fire. “He did. The local police are looking for your friends, but the last I heard, they had all escaped into the Ring.”

I touch his face, a brush of his cheek. Because while I am here, I may as well pretend that I am a Noor woman and I can touch whomever I please. He closes his eyes and winces as my fingers slide down his face. “That hurts.” I pull my hand away, but he catches hold of my palm and tugs me back. “I didn’t say I wanted you to stop.”

After a few minutes like that, just the simplest of touches, he opens his eyes, and they are full of want and wish and sorrow. “When they open that door,” he says, “they will take me away, and that will be the last you see of me.”

“That’s not true.”

He cups my face with his palm. “You know it is. There’s no way I’ll have a fair trial. I’ll be lucky if I
have
a trial.”

“The regional police are coming to investigate. I have evidence that you were set up.”

His laugh is as bitter as lye. “I’m a Noor, Wen. Most people in this country hardly think we’re worth something as expensive as an investigation.”

His words slip into my heart and crush it from the inside.

I will try; I will wave the forged note and scream of his innocence, but no one else will stand up for him, and I have no power of my own. Iyzu and Lati are good Itanyai boys. No one will believe Melik over them. The tears sting my eyes. I am going to lose him. This boy is going to die, and there isn’t anything I can do about it. “Then, what shall we do with this time?” I ask in a strangled voice.

He smiles, and the candlelight glints in his pale jade eyes. I see so many things there. Fear. Resignation. Sadness. And mischief. “Stay warm.”

He pulls my face to his, one of those sudden movements I don’t expect. But his kiss is only a touch of his lips to mine, a test, a request. I give him my answer when I fall into him, and he is ready and catches me. His hands are around my waist and his mouth is soft and I don’t know what I’m doing but he doesn’t seem to mind. He is playful and gentle, and in each of his kisses there is a whispered secret meant only for me. He tells me I am the one good thing he has left, that he does not regret any of the moments we have been together, that if things were different . . . if things were different . . . we would be in another dark room, and there would be a slow-burning fire, and he would be teaching me things I desperately want to learn from him. He doesn’t have to say a word; he weaves me wishes with his fingers and lips, with his sighs, with the way he finally decides he needs more and pulls me hard against him.

The candle burns low, and sometime later it sputters and dies. Now it is Melik and me in the dark and cold, with nothing but ourselves to keep each other warm. He coils his arms around me and sits with me curled between his knees, his legs arched up like a fortress around me. “I wanted to take you with me,” he whispers into my hair. “When you came to warn me, when I told everyone to run, I wanted you to run with me.”

“Why didn’t you ask?”

“Because you deserve better than anything I could have offered you.”

I would have gone. If he had asked me, I would have said yes. But it doesn’t matter now, because neither of us is going anywhere. I nestle my head against the skin of his throat and lift my chin so I can kiss his neck. I am so tired right now, and the chill has crept into my bones and made them ache. But I will not fall asleep; no, I will sit here with this boy who does not know his place, and I will be with him until our time runs out.

“You’re wrong” is all I say, so quietly that I’m not sure he hears me. I burrow into the fading warmth of his arms, and he wraps himself around me, whispering all his secrets against my hair and skin in a language I no longer need to translate.

And that is where we are when the cafeteria-side door to the chamber slams open and we are blinded by lantern light.

When the hands reach for me and pull me up, I sigh with relief because of the warmth on my skin. But my sluggish brain awakens quickly, and I look around to see that we are not surrounded by the regional police, or the local police.

We are surrounded by a mob.

Behind me, Melik is struggling. He grunts as someone punches him. Someone else has me by the arms, and I twist this way and that until I see it is Iyzu. They drag us through the kitchens and into the dining area of the cafeteria where all the men have gathered. Up ahead, Ebian is standing near the entrance, looking on with a blank expression. He frowns when he sees me and gestures to someone on my other side. My dressing gown is shoved into my hands a moment later, and I quickly put it on so that I am not on full display. My eyes search the crowd, which has grown huge during the night. The workers of the day shift are here and have obviously just heard of what has happened. There is hatred in their eyes as they see Melik hauled into their midst, pale and bloodied.

I call to Ebian, for he is the one person who could possibly stop this. “He was framed,” I yell, but I am not able to say any more because Iyzu’s hand clamps down hard over my mouth.

“We just received word that the regional police will not be arriving for at least a week,” Iyzu tells me. “There are food riots in Kanong they must suppress. So we’re having our own trial, right now.”

Someone has told the regional police that a Noor is to blame, and they will offer him no rights, no protection.

Iyzu wrenches me forward, through the mob packed shoulder to shoulder in this cafeteria. He stops in front of Ebian, awaiting orders. Ebian nods over at Melik. It is taking four men to hold him down—he knows he is fighting for his life.

“Take him to the killing floor,” says Ebian, and a shout goes up from the mob. This is exactly what they were hoping for.

At least a hundred grasping, groping, yelling men carry Melik and me through the open area by Bo’s altar and onto the killing floor, where Mugo’s blood still decorates the concrete. All is chaos and shouting, and I can’t reach Melik because I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I still struggle, though, until one of the men jabs me with a cattle prod and I lose control of my body as liquid pain flows through my veins.

A rope is thrown up into the air and looped over the metal braces that hold the hook system to the ceiling. It falls back into the crowd, and one man seizes it and begins to coil and knot it.

He’s making a noose.

The scream comes from me, rising high over the shouting. I claw and kick until someone shocks me again and I arch back and become nothing but agony. Iyzu holds me tight as the men clear a space around the noose, which hangs in front of the conveyor belt. Two of them climb onto the belt and pull the rope back over it. Melik is jerked forward and dragged up to stand between the two men.

He’s not struggling anymore.

He sees that it is pointless.

The men wrench the noose over his head while he searches the crowd until he finds me. His face crumples when he sees the shape I’m in, so I stop fighting Iyzu and stand as straight as I can.

Ebian says something to Melik, who shakes his head. He squares his shoulders and looks back at me again. For a moment everything is quiet, because I think everyone expects Melik to beg for his life or make some final, defiant statement of his innocence.

He does none of that.

With his gaze fixed on mine, he places his hand over his heart and then turns his palm to me.

The men grab his arms and yank them behind his back. As they tie his hands together, Melik stares at me, and I stare at him, silently promising that I will be with him until the very end.

When I hear the whirring noise, at first I believe someone has turned on the factory machines. So do the others. They look around, puzzled, toward the circuit box at the edge of the floor. But none of the machines are moving.

That’s when I see Bo.

He is standing on the second-level catwalk, though how he got up there, I have no idea. He is looking right at me, and I read something in his face that I do not expect to see.

Guilt.

“I’m sorry,” he mouths, and glances down at the red letters on the killing floor, then at the bloody hooks suspended above them. I gape at him, absorbing the truth of his confession.

Iyzu and Lati didn’t kill Mugo.