Banished (The Ravenmaster Chronicles Book 2), page 11
“Then it’s decided,” the gravelly voice of an older boy announces. “Banishment.”
Murmurs of approval and objection—all laced with an undercurrent of fear—sweep through the crowd.
“What does ‘banishment’ mean, exactly?” I ask Anya out of the corner of my mouth.
She doesn’t answer at first, and I think maybe she didn’t hear me. But after a few seconds, I feel her breath in my ear. “It means they are no longer allowed to move with the Army of the Unsettled.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I whisper back. Thinking I may have inadvertently insulted her, I add, “It’s better than killing them, right?”
“No. Killing them would be better.”
Brohn asks, “What’s going to happen to them in the meantime?”
“We’ll take them back to the airport. From there, they’ll be sent off to the outside world with nothing but the clothes on their backs to fend for themselves.”
“The outside world?”
“The desert. The plains. Even the cities if they choose. But they can no longer move with the Unsettled.”
Brohn sounds shocked, almost offended, when he points out that no one can fend for themselves out there. “The Devoted and their Converters will be out there. Angle Fire and Bondo won’t have weapons, supplies, assistance, or direction. They’ll have no protection against radiation poisoning or heat exposure, and they’ll be easy prey for anything, or anyone, looking for a hot meal. Basically, you’re sending them off to die. Slowly. It’s a stretched-out execution. Don’t try to call it anything else.”
Worried Brohn might be going too far, I nudge up closer to him and prepare for the backlash. But Anya’s voice is calm and even. “We’re aware of the nature of the punishment. They are two sides of a single wound. The rift between Angel Fire and Bondo isn’t deadly by itself. But it has opened a gash and has made infection possible. We have to prevent the contagion from spreading.”
“These are your friends, not a virus.”
“Friends—no matter how innocent or well-intentioned—can infect just as easily as enemies.”
Anya’s once-hesitant voice is now a powerful echo in the cavernous space when she announces that it’s time for all of us to move.
In a quiet, somber procession, we march back through the tunnel until we arrive at the mag-tram platform where Brohn tells me that the long, glass-walled people-mover is hovering on its track. On a signal from Anya, the Unsettled begin filing past us—some offering their thanks, others wishing us luck in our mission—before they board the tram.
“And now,” Anya sighs, “we’ve got to get back to the airport so Angel Fire and Bondo can prepare for the final trip of their own.”
Adjusting Render in one arm, I reach out in a fumbling stretch until I’ve got my fingers curled around Anya’s wrist. “Can Brohn and I at least say goodbye?” When Anya doesn’t answer right away, I add, “They may have betrayed all of you and maybe even each other, but they were both helpful to our students not too long ago. We’d at least like to thank them for that.”
Anya says, “That sounds reasonable” and invites Brohn to lead me over to Angel Fire and Bondo.
Brohn says his goodbyes and tells Angel Fire about my eyes. “I’m not worried about her,” Angel Fire tells him. “There are all kinds of ways to see.”
I reach out toward Angel Fire who reaches out, himself, to shake my hand.
I don’t extend a hand to Bondo. The bastard, vulture wanna-be blinded me, and I’m still tempted to return the favor.
“This won’t be so bad,” I assure Angel Fire. I know this is tough for him, but a few minutes ago, I thought we were all going to die. So being either blinded or banished seems like a relatively light sentence.
I hear Angel Fire take off his glasses and rub the lenses with the bottom of his dress shirt. “You don’t understand, Kress. For the Unsettled, banishment is the worst punishment.”
“That’s what Anya said.”
“She wasn’t kidding. For us, banishment is worse than death.”
“Nothing’s worse than death,” Brohn insists.
“That’s a myth.” Angel Fire sounds frustrated and impatient, but I can tell he’s trying to keep his voice down to avoid being overhead by the straggling Unsettled still shuffling past us toward the mag-tram. “There are plenty of things worse than death. Getting kicked out of your home and separated from everyone you care about is worse.”
“Isn’t there something we can say?” Brohn asks. “An appeals process or something?”
“Only if there’s a possibility of innocence,” Angel Fire interjects. “For me and Bondo, there isn’t.”
“But you’re not technically guilty of anything,” I remind him. “Bondo didn’t actually blow up the arcology, and you tried to stop him, anyway.”
“He tried to blow it up without the full approval of the Army of the Unsettled. I tried to stop him—also without full approval. I helped divide us. And we’re both guilty of putting our own desires ahead of the single, unifying desire of the Army of the Unsettled.”
“So what are the two of you going to do?” Brohn asks. “Wander the desert until you die?”
Angel Fire snorts. “It’s not like there are a lot of safe places to go these days.”
“There’s one,” I tell him. “Unfortunately, its location is a secret.”
“A secret?”
I turn my head in what I think is the direction of Bondo. “It’s one I’m not willing to share lightly. And not with just anyone. Especially with someone who tried to kill me.”
Bondo starts to say, “I’m sorry. I never meant to—,” but I cut him off with a very loud clearing of my throat. “You and Angel Fire were once one. And maybe you can be again. I’m not ready to forgive or forget. But maybe I can facilitate.”
Keeping my voice low so Anya doesn’t hear, I beckon for Angel Fire to lean in. With Brohn next to me, I whisper directions to Angel Fire for how to get up the mountain and to the Emergents Academy.
16
RESTART
A boy says, “That’s enough” and steps between me and Brohn and the two young outcasts. “We’ve got to get them back to the airport. They’ve got a departure coming up.”
“Where to now for you?” Anya asks.
Answering for both of us, Brohn simply tells her, “Up.”
“Good luck. And we’ll leave one of the tram cars behind. If you get into any trouble, come to the airport. We’ll do what we can for you.”
After thanking Anya and wishing her well, Brohn and I—with Render still cradled in my arm—start our climb back up the stone steps leading to the city. It’s a harrowing climb. According to Brohn, the rubble from “drone strikes and ruptured sewer conduits” has nearly blocked the way, but there’s just enough space for us to squeeze through. Brohn takes my hand and guides me along. It takes a long time, and it’s hard to breathe, but we eventually work our way through the wreckage and step out onto the street.
Blind or not, it’s nice to be above ground, and I take a breath so deep it makes Brohn chuckle. “You sound like you’re gearing up to leap off a hundred-foot-high cliff into a sea of sharks.”
“Well,” I tell him, returning his laugh. “We kind of are.”
Brohn sniffs the air and releases a sigh of frustration. “All that, just for us to get back up to the surface where we started. How’s Render?”
I run my hand over Render’s feathers, which are currently coated with dust and what feels like patches of almost-dried blood. Normally, he’d be happily soaring along above us, hovering from time to time in updrafts so we pokey bipedals could keep up.
But now, he’s huddled against me as I support him as delicately as I can. He’s uncharacteristically quiet, and I miss both of his voices: the one that’s uniquely his and the one he shares with me inside my head. I peer down and flick his feathers with my fingers. Time and pressure seem to be keeping any bleeding at bay. He’ll live and so will I, but I can’t help but feel sorry for both of us.
We’re wounded, and what’s typically a telempathic bond between us has become a revolving door of shared pain.
I feel every puncture mark in his sides where Mongolia pierced his feathers and flesh with her long, curved talons. I feel his labored breathing, his confusion, and the searing pain ripping through half the nerve-endings in his shivering body.
In return, he can feel the sting of slash marks on my face, arms, neck, and chest. He can sense the throbbing pulse behind my eyes and my terror over not being able to see.
I have my arm curled around him, and Brohn has his arm curled around both of us. I can walk okay and don’t need the physical support. But the psychological support…I’m pretty sure I’d fall down without it.
Brohn and I walk on, him in the lead and me following blindly behind.
The road under our feet is covered in a wide array of rubble and junk. As we trundle along, Brohn describes the ever-present collection of broken pieces of discarded furniture, piles of brick and stone, buckled pavement, uprooted signposts and trees, downed power lines, smashed traffic lights, heaps of glass, and scattered, petrified human remains. There doesn’t sound like there’s going to be an end to the obstacles in our path, and Brohn guides me along, so I don’t trip over anything. “At least you don’t have to worry about seeing my eyes go black,” I joke.
But Brohn’s not in the mood for my dark humor. He tells me not to talk like that. “You’re going to heal,” he promises. “You’ve recovered from a lot worse than this.”
I appreciate the optimism, but he’s wrong. Sure, I’ve suffered mental and physical injuries before—that’s part of life as an Emergent on a mission to change the course of an entire planet moving in the wrong direction. I press my fingertips to the makeshift tanktop-bandages Brohn tied around my eyes and my arm. This…this is a whole new level of injury, pain, and fear. This feels different, permanent. Unlike past injuries I’ve sustained in battle or else running for my life, this one doesn’t have an upside. I didn’t gain anything or come away with a victory. Okay. We stopped Bondo from blowing us all up. But I’m sure there are a million scenarios where we could have accomplished that without the loss of my sight.
Remembering that Brohn has no idea where we need to go, I ask him to wait a second. “If we’re going to resume our mission, we can’t just wander the city forever. We need to get our bearings. It’s the only way we’ll ever find the Fallen.”
He stops fast enough for me to jar myself against his arm. “The Fallen? We’re not going after the Fallen, Kress. We’re going to get you out of this city and back home where we can get you healed up.”
My legs lock, and I stand stone still. “We’re not leaving the city,” I tell Brohn with as much finality as I can manage under the circumstances.
“We most definitely are,” he snaps back with his own healthy dose of don’t-frack-with-me authority. “We just saved a city that’s already dead and nearly got ourselves killed in the process. We came back here for one mission. It’s not the mission you imagined, but it was a mission, and now it’s over, and we need to get home.” When I don’t respond right away, his tone softens. “Look, we can’t stay out here. It’s too hot and too dangerous. The Devoted, drones, Epic—there’s a long line of people and things ready and willing to kill us. We need to find shelter in a building that won’t collapse on us or draw any attention. And then,” he huffs, “we really need to get home.” When I continue to remain silent, Brohn shuffles his feet and clears his throat. The softness in his voice morphs into a kind of desperate plea. “We almost died down there, along with the entire Army of the Unsettled. If Bondo had hit that button, we wouldn’t be standing here, and neither would anyone else who’s left in the city. We dodged death by this much.”
I’m assuming he’s holding his finger and thumb a quarter-inch apart. I don’t remind him that I can’t see the gesture. “You really want me to go home and forget about the Fallen?”
“I want you to come home with me and remember the Fallen. We can always come back for them.”
“They could be dead by then.”
“They could be dead now.” The words are barely out of his mouth. He tries to swallow them back down, but it’s too late. “I didn’t mean…I didn’t mean it like that.”
“There’s only one way to mean something like that,” I snap. “You meant it.”
“But—”
“You’re right, though. They could be dead. They might be dead. Hell, they probably are dead. But might,’ ‘could,’ and ‘probably’ are an entire world away from ‘definitely.’”
“You’re really ready to risk your life for them again, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
Brohn is quiet for so long I start thinking maybe he’s snuck off and left me blind and alone in the middle of the street.
“Okay,” he says at last. “Then I’m ready to risk mine for you.”
Taking my hand once again in his, Brohn leads us into what he describes out loud as an abandoned single-story bungalow. “It looks like it might have been a house,” he explains. “Maybe a shop of some kind. There’s broken furniture and parts of a Formica counter over there by the wall. We’ll have to settle down here.” Brohn takes a second and says he’s going to have a quick look around. “It looks like the whole back half of the place is gone.”
“Gone?”
“Gone. Crushed. A drone strike maybe. It’s not safe back there.”
“Is it any safer up here?”
I hear Brohn’s palm against the wall behind us. “It looks strong. The ceiling’s intact. And I don’t see anyone lurking in the shadows.”
“I guess these days, that’s about as much good news as we could hope for.”
“Someday, we’ll set the bar a little higher,” Brohn promises. I hear him kick at some debris and push what he says is half a sofa frame out of the way to clear a space for us to sit down on the floor and rest.
Sounding like a kid at Christmas, he shouts out, “Hey!” and tells me he found a shirt in the rubble. I hear him shake it off and slide it on. “Not bad. Short sleeve button down. A bit snug. But pretty clean, all things considered.” He rummages around next to us for another minute or two before coming back to sit next to me. “There’s some other clothes, too, but nothing wearable.”
“I wish I would see you in your new shirt. I bet you look great.”
“It’s not the prettiest thing I’ve ever owned. But it has a picture on the back of a flying raven! That’s got to be an omen, right?”
“You’re sure it’s a raven?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Is its tail flat along the end or wedge-shaped?”
Brohn says, “Just a sec” and takes the shirt off. I hear him flip it around and rustle it open. “Flat.”
“The tips of the wings. Are they more blunt or sharp?”
“I don’t know. Blunt, I guess.”
“Then it’s probably a crow,” I sigh.
“Well, crows can be good omens, too, right?”
“They’re more often omens of death.”
“Oh.”
I heave a sigh of pretend annoyance. “Great. I’m blind, and you’re wearing an evil-omen shirt of death.”
Brohn laughs, and I hear him slip back into the shirt. “It may be ugly. And it may even be an omen of death….” He pauses and takes a big sniff through his nose. “But at least it smells.”
Laughing, we lean back, shoulder to shoulder against the wall. Not being able to see is annoying. Not being able to see my muscular, superheroic boyfriend bare-chested or in a tight-fitting shirt—that’s the salt in a very open wound.
Sitting down feels good on my weary body, but it makes my mind and heart hurt even more than they already did. Brohn wants us to find our way home. I want to find the Fallen. Like the Unsettled, we both know the risks of staying in one place for too long. When the bombs start falling, any direction is better than none at all. Like with me and Brohn right now…even without an agreed upon plan of action, stopping like this is the surest way to make sure neither of our goals gets met.
Unless the goal is a brief timeout in what’s been an otherwise chaotic day.
Next to me, Render has gotten busy preening himself. He’s still in pain. But for him, nothing is more painful than having a body full of dirty feathers.
Brohn slides his arm under my ponytail and around my shoulders. He asks if the makeshift bandages over my eyes and around my arm are still okay. I assure him they are. “The knife wound doesn’t really hurt much,” I tell him. “And I don’t think there are a ton of pain receptors in the actual eyeball.” I run my hand along the top of my chest, around the front of my neck, and over both collarbones. “I don’t think I’m going to die of blood-loss…so that’s something.”
“Kress…”
I can’t see his face with my actual eyes, but in my mind’s eye, it’s a creased and contorted mass of worry.
“I’m okay,” I assure him, but he’s not buying it.
“I think maybe you and I have different definitions of ‘okay.’”
I want to be tough right now. I want to insist on us getting some rest so we can be primed and ready to go out in the morning and find the Fallen. I want to tell Brohn to stop being silly, that a little injury like this is just a setback. I few nicks to the eye. A nice slash to the arm. A few scattered bruises and assorted contusions. I’ll live. I want to remind him that we’re warriors, Emergents, and the best hope for the future of humanity. I want to point out that I’m the Kakari Isutse, “the Girl who dreams in Raven.” And I want to assure him that I’m okay right now—by any definition—and, if he gives me some space, I’ll be a hundred percent in no time.
I want to say all those things, but right now, almost all of it would be a lie.
Instead of saying anything, I cradle Render a little tighter to my side. He’s too tired and injured to object. I know he’s disoriented, hungry, and hurting. I know because I’m feeling all the same things. Having all these worries and weaknesses magnified between us is creating a looping cycle of insult to injury.
