The Choosing (The Arcadia Trilogy Book 1) (4 page)

When silence had worked its way through the crowd, the Magistrate surveyed them coldly and said, "We have come to carry out one of the ancient contracts, collecting a tax due the emperor, for support of the realm."

Muttering broke out again, subdued but growing. The Magistrate didn't wait. His round belly shook under his blood-red jacket, and the purple sash across it looked like sunrise colors gone wrong.

"A plague runs throughout our lands, crossing boundaries and sparing no one. There is no such thing as safety from this plague."

Livy looked up at her mother. Mad stood with her face turned upward, toward the sky, though, not toward the speaker on the stage. When Livy squeezed her hand, Mad opened her eyes, asking what Livy wanted, and Livy in return, opened her eyes wider, questioning.

Mad nodded, as if to herself, and bent to speak directly into Livy's ear so she could be heard. "There is a plague of sorts, but it is not what they say. It does not spread and it is not a disease. You will not fall ill, Olivia. This is only a trick, meant to give the Plutarch what he wants, to – "

She broke off when something within the speech and something within the crowd changed.

"By order of the world leader, the tax to be collected is the periodic Culling that leads to the Choosing. The Plutarch is not cruel. His reign is not abusive. The Plutarch in the reign of life takes from the communities only once a reign. The Culling takes place only once a generation. No one from your village has been offered the opportunity for forty years."

Livy squeezed her mother's hand, confusion starting to frighten her. What did he mean, opportunity? When Centurions spoke, lies followed – she'd learned that one from her grandfather.

Whatever the Magistrate said next, his words were lost on Livy as her mother began to gently guide her back, behind Mad, and then back, into the crowd, Mad leading her, facing away, back toward the stage, but guiding her nonetheless. Livy expected to trample feet, to feel bodies as she backed into them, for hands to shove her away, impatient or simply repelling her, but the crowd seemed to open behind her, leaving space for Mad and Livy to move through so easily it was like a current of water cutting through a river: creating change, but unnoticeable.

The Magistrate's words reached her again. Livy felt her fear curdle inside her. Bile rose in her throat. She
had
been told something about this. Her grandfather had told her stories, but they were nothing more than myths, fairytales, legends of the bad old days when life was cheap and the current pacts of nonaggression not in place between the provinces.

That was all still true… wasn't it?

Even as she asked the question she remembered asking it years before when she'd been so much younger it had seemed a game to pick apart her grandfather's stories, logicking them into place.
But if there's a pact between the provinces, of nonaggression, then how can anyone be hurt or killed?
She'd been so young then, death had been a concept, like moving pieces on a game board. She'd challenged her grandfather for no reason but logic and curiosity.

What had he told her that day?

Then she had it: that she was correct, that there was a pact of nonaggression between the provinces of Pastoreum, Tundrus, Oceanus and the few scattered outposts on the very edge of the Forbidden Zone, the border of the Void.

There was no such pact between the seat of government and the governing bodies in the glass-domed city of Arcadia. The Plutarch himself had made no such promises.

"Today the Culling will take one year of the youths from this province, to serve at the dictates and wishes of the Plutarch," the Magistrate intoned. "Guards will begin passing among you, throughout this square – " such a sneer in his voice, such disdain – "and throughout the village of – " He consulted a note. Clearly he couldn't even be bothered to learn where he was before speaking.

Livy pushed herself to back more quickly. Her mother instantly picked up her pace, easing Livy back faster.

"Agara. When your name is called, you are to step to the front of the crowd. Noncompliance will force the guards into action." He paused, his silver hair gleaming above the well fed wattles of his neck. "You do not want this."

They had reached the edge of the crowd and now Livy saw her mother had been guiding her specifically into a cache of neighbors who now nodded to her, faces somber, eyes flicking only briefly between the Centurions on the stage and the girl standing wide-eyed before them. Just as easily as she and her mother had moved, they flowed around her, blocking her from view, making Livy realize each of the neighbors and friends hemming her in was taller than she was. So what? Everyone was. But these were among the tallest of the people they knew.

She slid between them and stood still, heart hammering, straining to hear what would happen next.

The names started then, someone other than the Magistrate speaking. There was no way to know them all. The village of Agara wasn't small; there were generations within it and other young people Livy didn't know. She held her breath, fearing to hear the names of friends, biting her lip before she realized Tarah was a good six months younger than she was. At fifteen, Tarah wouldn't be called.

But Dav would. She heard his name and a groan from what was probably his father. She heard the commotion from the crowd, like a lapping of waves as they protested without words, the rustle of sleeves of hardwoven as they reached for him. Dav and after him Mira, his twin sister, and after Mira a handful of names she didn't know and one or two she did. It had never occurred to Livy how few friends her own age she actually had.

All around her people her own age were being called, their families letting out sobs as the sixteen-year-olds filed unwillingly to the stage or were dragged by Centurions, their wrists scanned to access their ID chips. Panic was growing within the crowd, parents calling, shouting, protesting, and starting to try and battle their way to the front where their children were being held. So far no one had moved any of them, there was simply a growing group at the front and Livy bit her lip, uncertain what was happening. That the Centurions were involved was bad, she knew that, but no one had taken them anywhere and –

"Why have I never heard of this?" she demanded of her mother, who looked horrified at Livy speaking out and shushed her. The crowd around them swayed, restive.

Anger rose in Livy. Her mother had known something about whatever was happening! She leaned up to her mother and hissed, "What's happening?"

Something had to be. This was more than a census, more than some kind of demand for everyone to choose a job before they were ready, more than identifying miscreants if something somewhere had happened that the capitol wanted to blame on Pastoreum or more directly, on Agara.

The panic seething through the crowd of villagers made Livy dig her broken, earth-dirtied nails into the palms of her hands. She stared around her at the faces of neighbors, willing someone to look at her and answer her questions. The faces above her were impassive or covered in rage; no one looked at her.

She startled back to attention when she heard the Magistrate call from the stage, "Olivia Bane."

The crowd around her did not move closer, did not, in fact, move, but she felt their muscles tense as they drew themselves tighter, drew in deep breaths and tensed. Uncertain, Olivia only looked around the faces above her, then stared straight ahead as far as she could see, which was the back of the man standing in front of her.

From the stage, the silver haired man in the purple sash of power said again, "Olivia Bane."

Livy drew in a breath and closed her eyes, willing herself not to be there.

A commotion behind them and hands came down on Livy's shoulders. She made an almost inaudible sound of protest and started to fight before her grandfather said, "It's me, girl." He stood as straight and tall as the other men for all his injuries and illnesses, and stared forward at the Centurions and the Magistrate.

Slowly, coldly, with anger in every syllable, the Magistrate said, "O. liv. Ia. Bane." Even as he spoke the guards were now passing through the crowd, roughly shoving adults and children aside, scanning anyone near sixteen, throwing those they found, now nameless and uncalled, up to other guards who shepherded them to the front. They were pushing them in with the others who even now were being moved onward to a prison wagon, a thing of crisscrossed bars and metal mesh, a hot killing box if dragged and left too long in the sun. Livy's insides went liquid at the idea of being stuffed in there, trapped in there, left in there.

Her mother's fingers were anxious on Livy's hardwoven tunic shoulders, urging her back and back, away from the stage, and all at once she whispered harshly, "Run, girl. Don't go home."

But she broke off with a cry as one of the guards threw her hard to the ground, shoved aside the other men who had been parting to let Livy out the back of their shoulder to shoulder stances, and grabbed Livy before she could protest or run.

"Wrist," snarled the guard and she recognized him as the Centurion who had asked her only the day before if she needed him to fetch her father as she tried to free the wheel from the muddy ground.

There was no humanity in his eyes today.

She didn't resist. There was no point. Even if she ran now they'd only catch her. She held her arm out and let him scan it, glaring the entire time. Grandfather had said if you met one who was human, to do everything possible to offer kindness, to be polite.

This had gone beyond that.

Her father appeared just as her chip registered on the scanner. "I have her!" the Centurion shouted, and tore her from the grasp of her family, leaving them crying behind her, their voices raised to call after her.

Livy struggled. There was no way to overcome the grip of the guard but she couldn't stop herself. Her arms waved frantically, wanting the embrace of her own family.

But she was lifted swiftly and thrown into the wagon, caught by the hands of the teenagers already in the box, who gathered her in, pulling her free of the metal-lined door before it was slammed shut where her feet might have still in that space.

She heard the guards shouting at the crowd. "There will be repercussions! There will be short rations for the next two weeks! There will be punishments meted out!" But her village had always been adept at hiding food and transferring blame. Livy was more worried about the situation she'd just been cast into than the one she was leaving behind.

The prison wagon jolted into motion. Next to her people were hanging at the opening in the metal mesh, hands outstretched to their families as if there were still time to be freed.

Livy only held the bars around the door and looked out longingly.

From the crowd, she heard her grandfather's voice, stronger than it had been in years. "Remember, Livy," he shouted. "Remember what I told you."

The Centurions whipped the horses, dragging the wagon and their collected humans towards Arcadia.

W
hen the last
of the trees that surrounded Agara faded from sight, Olivia let herself slump down to the floor of the wagon. Many of the girls were already there, in tears, moaning, shaking and terrified. The boys still hung at the edges of the wagon, shaking the bars, trying the lock. They hadn't given up hope yet.

I didn't even have a chance to say goodbye.

But there was anger mixed with her sorrow and fear. Her parents had known something was coming, that something was going to happen, and they hadn't told her. If she'd known to expect something, maybe she could have taken steps. Run and hid before the announcement that something was happening in the town square, before she and Tarah joined hands and ran there.

How could they not have told her? Grandfather Bane had given her hints but even he had never come out and said that when she turned sixteen, she might be taken by the capital.

Though not everyone was. Livy frowned, turning the puzzle over in her mind. Something her parents had said the night before at dinner, about it not being time yet, being too soon, about it being a new tax.

It couldn't happen every year. Everyone would be aware that sixteen was a dangerous age and take care not to be caught.

Or maybe, Livy thought, the parents would take care not to have children born into a cycle that would result in their being taken when they reached sixteen and whatever timeline the Plutarch's troops followed to come looking.

Her luck, then, had been to turn sixteen at the wrong time.

That almost made her smile.

Then she turned her attention back to her current situation. Things were bad enough without
what if's
and
might have's
. For now, she needed to concentrate on learning everything she could and surviving whatever this situation meant.

She turned her face forward and looked to whatever the future held in store.

T
hey were
on the road for a week, driving through Pastoreum and stopping in every village from Orem to Lauke. Pastoreum's villages were small, the largest being the ill-named Friends, a small city of 50,000, where nearly two-thirds of the residents were tasked with producing the cheeses spread through the commonwealth.

"We're not going to miss a single town," Livy finally moaned on the fifth day. As soon as the prison cart had cleared the borders of Agara, it had stopped and the prisoners were transferred to a bus, something long and shiny and totally unreal in Livy's opinion. The sound and stench of it scared her, and she'd spent the first day expecting the thing to tip over or explode. When nothing happened she grudgingly realized that the plumbing on the bus meant not having to head for bushes with every stop, and the seats were comfortable, the windows opened and closed, at least enough to get air. There were enough places to sit that sometimes she could be alone and other times she could sit with some of the others. By day five there were better than thirty of them on their bus, and more buses joined the convoy daily.

"You're just lucky you were picked up after Tundrus and Oceanus," Simon said, flopping down next to her. Livy held her breath, hoping he'd stay. There was something more grown up about Simon than about a lot of the others – and something far more beautiful. Today he held a rubber ball in one hand, alternately squeezing it and throwing it against the ceiling of the bus. "We've been on the road since before the world began."

"Oh, please," said one of the girl's whose name Livy still wasn't sure of. The girl had a round sallow face and dark blond hair and she was tiny and quick. What Livy most noticed about her was her ability to compliment someone while actually saying awful things. When she'd been introduced to a handful of the prisoners from Agara she'd talked loudly about what was waiting for them in Arcadia, as if she knew.

"They're separating us out by ability," she said, preening. "Those with a talent for the arts have nothing to fear! We'll be welcomed into court life, able to spend our days training in our arts and perfecting them."

"Oh, right?" a boy named Cal who had been on the bus since Tundrus asked. "And those of us without talents? What then? The Plutarch just keeps us there out of the goodness of his heart?"

Cindy – Livy thought that was her name – had laughed like she thought Cal was actually joking, and then said, "I'm sure you have
tons
of talent, Calvin. I'm sure there's
something
you can do," which both seemed supportive and horrible at the same time. After watching Cindy do that half a dozen more times, Livy just took to avoiding her.

What Cindy thought was going to happen now was beyond Livy's understanding. What she did know was that anyone who wanted to give them a chance at determining their talents likely wouldn't come from the capital, where no one seemed to have much interest in those living in the "Outlying territories" which was, as Olivia had once pointed out, most of the rest of the world.

Another boy, Zach, who weighed probably three times what anyone else did, believed gloomily that they were all being taken for sacrifice.

"To what?" Simon had asked as Livy, against her will, had initially frozen in fear with Zach's words.

"To anything that will keep the capital safe," Zach had said knowingly, nodding his massive head.

"Safe from what?" Simon had persisted and Zach had gone back to humming and watching everything passing outside the bus windows. "Safe from what?" Simon persisted. "The Senators are safe from everything!"

Zach turned his massive head and snarled, "Safe from the world serpent."

There was silent in the small knot of people surrounding Zach, and then one of the girls said softly, "There's no such thing, Zach."

Something that looked crazy surfaced in Zach's eyes. "My brother told me about the worm. It's a serpent, miles long, something wrapped around the world and threatening to crush it. It could blot out the stars. It could end the sun. It's giant and we live and die at its wish." He stared at them all, not looking quite sane, then crossed his arms over his chest and thumped back hard into his seat.

"Are you sure your brother wasn't teasing you?" Simon asked. "Brothers have been known to do that."

"My brother is not a liar." Zach struggled to get to his feet, even as Simon backed up, hands out in a gesture of nonaggression.

"Just asking. Brothers sometimes do make things up."

Zach glared. "The serpent is real, and the world is doomed."

Everyone was stunned into silence for an instant, wondering if what Zach had said had any basis in truth. Then Simon said brightly, "Well, that was cheery! Now why don't we all sing?"

His suggestion met with groans and hurled objects.

"Right," Simon said brightly, as if unperturbed. "I'll start.
Plow, plow, plow your field, gently in the rain, Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is not a pain.
Come on, everybody, join in!"

Despite all the eye rolling and expressions of
This is so stupid!
Most of them joined in, and for a few minutes the bus rang with the voices of sixteen year olds, singing a round, one group starting, the next coming in a line later, the next a line later, until one by one, as if prearranged, the groups began falling out and at last, one group finished the last of the round.

When the song ended, most of them grinned at each other, briefly comrades who had created something, however ephemeral.

Into the silence, a voice asked, "Anyone know
To Call the Sun
?" and several voices instantly chimed in:

To call the sun in dark of night

To start the fire and bring the light

To turn the year and start it right

To end the dark in a blaze of light.

Livy sang with the group, but her sharp eyes missed nothing as she sang. She had seen who suggested the song and knew it was one of the Centurions. She saw the tension in the others at the suggestion that they join their charges in something communal and joyful. She knew from the choice of song that the Centurion who suggested it was from Pastoreum because
To Call the Sun
was the regional name given to a traditional ballad called
The Turn of the Year.

And she knew that the Centurion who had asked for the song was a woman.

T
he following day
they stopped to load more prisoners from one of the southern towns near the edge of Pastoreum. They were close enough to the capital now, even the guards were anxious, watching out the windows as the bus traveled along a land bridge over the Pac, the ocean the islands of Oceanus rose out of. Not true islands, they were also connected by thin fingers of land to the whole of the super continent. Before much longer they'd be reaching the capital.

The Centurions let them off the bus. This had become habit. There was nowhere much to go. Everyone's faces were familiar now and everywhere they stopped the townsfolk pulled together, as afraid of the kids as they were of the Centurions. Somewhere, Livy realized, the Magistrate had to be riding also, perhaps a day ahead of them, but on the same road, because everywhere they went the sorting happened, the culling of sixteen year olds as some kind of tax or tithe. Those times Livy would burn with anger, her grandfather's words in her mind – she would remember who she was and where she was from, and she would not let them change her.

She may be a prisoner on the outside, but she would forever be free in her own mind.

No one ever went very far when they left the buses, it was just a pleasure to be free of the metal beasts and walk on the ground again. Livy, used to having time alone or being able to plant or walk with Tarah, the two of them able to go long tracts of time without speaking, would instantly seek solitude, wandering in the nearest Agara-like field or near trees or anywhere that allowed her to touch nature and walk alone.

Today she did the same thing, leaving the square where new families were just beginning to wail as they understood what hell had come to them and what loss they were facing, seeking the solitude of a field that reminded her of home. The second bus pulled up before she'd gone more than a few yards away, and several of the prisoners disembarked waving their hands madly, swearing and shaking their heads.

Livy, half smiling, shrugged at Simon, who called, "Grain flies." Livy nodded. The things were pests, with a hard sting that could raise a welt, but common enough in her village. If they'd brought corn or grains with them in the belly of the metal beast, likely a new crop of the flies had hatched.

She nodded at Simon and continued toward the edge of the field when a scream came from the assembled villagers. Livy started running before she even knew why, her mind moving even faster than her legs. Her mother had screamed like that when Tad had been stung by a grain fly and Grandfather Bane had been right there that day, knowing what to do. He'd found –

Cow's spittle, stupid ugly name for a little brownish daisy like flower. Named that maybe because it was so bitter cows would mouth it and spit it back out and it grew in fields like the one fronting the town square. While most people either froze or ran toward the still screaming mother, Livy took a chance she was right and ran from her, finding the flower easily and tearing up a handful before running back.

It was easy to find the afflicted child and his mother, harder to force her way through the crowd to them but she managed, throwing herself down and quickly rolling the sap-rich flower stem between her palms.

"Where's the sting?" she demanded of the woman who kneeled, wailing, above the child, whose face was already swelling, his breathing becoming thready and weak.

The woman pulled her son's hand up, holding it, watching Livy with hope that scared her even as she covered the site with both hands, rubbing hard to introduce the sap into the wound.

It took only minutes before the swelling began to visibly reduce, and then a few more minutes before the boy opened his eyes and sat up, starting to cry and reaching for his mother, but he was no longer swollen, and he was alive.

Livy sat back on her heels and panted. The mother's gasped out thank you's weren't the point. The boy's shaky breaths were.

Finally she attempted to climb off her heels, her legs having fallen asleep, and looked up only to find herself eye to eye with the female Centurion who had asked for the song.

Startled, Livy started to smile. Only to stop.

As very slowly the Centurion shook her head, nodded toward the boy, and mouthed, "No."

T
he miles rolled away
as the buses lumbered south, passing through the lower third of Pastoreum. From the farming lands of Agara, they passed through villages where serfs also labored in the fields or fished in enormous natural lakes and dams, where farmers raised cattle and where bread was baked hour upon hour by men with skin burned dark from the constant ovens.

Livy watched out the windows as the landscape changed, barely perceptible at first but finally faster as they reached the incredibly dense, rich lands near the capital city. After they'd left the village of Elle, she'd tried to find a way to speak with the female Centurion, the one who had warned her, but after dispensing her message the woman had turned as uncommunicative as any of the others.

What had been wrong with helping the child stung by the grain fly? All she'd done was use a simple, traditional remedy, the sap of a flower that grew freely in Pastoreum. At home it was as common as cleaning the knee of a child who had fallen. Flies bit; daisies healed.

A
fter a week
on the road the buses passed onto a narrow isthmus with the sea of Oceanus on one side and to the east, the Void began. Brutally hot, rocky, with sand dunes so vast trying to cross them would be similar to crossing an inland ocean.

As the land first changed, from pastoral to wooded to the barren desolation of the Forbidden Zone, everyone crowded by the windows on that side of the bus, watching the scorched fiery wasteland.

"This is where the world snake lives," one large rural youth declared. He was burned by the sun, peeling now from his forced days on the bus, into a patchy, pale, soft-looking youth.

The boy next to him gave a derisive laugh. "It's a myth. How stupid are you? There's no such thing. There's a reason they want to keep us out of the Void. It's only called that so no one goes in and finds what's there." He was dark haired and lean, tall and well muscled and clearly thought he was superior to the spotty youth.

Another girl near Livy spoke up. "I've heard that too. There's all manner of wealth in there, and everything wonderful to eat. The fruit grows on beautiful, low hanging trees, and you can pick as much as you want and never run out."

Livy rolled her eyes. This was a girl from Pastoreum? Maybe from one of the larger cities. If she'd ever worked a day in the fields she'd understand how hard it was to grow anything, beautiful land or not. The laws that came out of Arcadia overtaxed the land, and the fields were never rotated, never given time to rest. The best that anyone could do was change out what crops grew in what fields what years, and sometimes they couldn't even do that because a family in need would have to have a specific cash crop or they couldn't make it. The rest of the community – they were a community, at least in Agara, and not only because the government ordered them to be – would try to help out, but there was so little for every family, it was almost impossible. And even if they wanted, the families couldn't always assign the top crops to the poorest families – like tobacco, and corn which was made into a million sweet treats for the Arcadians – lest they themselves become the newest group of ultra poor families.

Olivia's grandfather had told her about deserts. He'd told her about the Forbidden Zone, which wasn't the entire Void but a section within it, enormous, more than huge enough to drop several times Agara in it and maybe even more than one Pastoreum.