Page 3 of Born For Lace (The Cradled Common #2)

Chapter Two

Dahlia

I feel like the living dead, mindlessly interacting with the world around me. I’m certainly in shock. Maple’s death, The Trade Marshals’ murder, and the infant in my jacket are all too much for my brain right now.

So, I followed a stranger because of a name uttered from my dying friend’s lips: Tomar. I’m nothing like Maple, not effortlessly confident or spontaneous like her, but I’m not stupid. Na?ve, perhaps. Without all the information and with little experience, sure —but I’m definitely not stupid.

Usually…

“Head down into the blade,” Tomar says, gesturing toward a set of steps, and I don’t look at him as I move down into the hull.

I inhale slowly, steadying my pulse. The air is sharp with salt from the sea and heavy with the whispers of the ten or so strangers hidden in dark pockets inside the blade.

A smuggling boat? By the shape of this space, I would say it is a catamaran. What is the exchange for this passage across the water? What does Tomar want from them? What does he want from Maple—me?

Unasked questions roll around in my mind as I tuck myself in a corner, pull my mask off, and unzip my jacket enough to see the infant’s pink face.

He is making shapes with his lips, suckling at the air; he will need food soon. Food I don’t have! He has only been alive for a few hours, but he has unknowingly altered the course of my life.

Spero—hope.

In this moment of quiet, my first moment of reprieve from running , I feel grief wrap around me and squeeze, making each breath harder than the last.

Grief—I let it surface.

Maple… When she changed her Lace Girl tea, I told her this would happen. If only I had stopped her. If only I had reported her. She may have hated me for it, but she would still be alive. Regret twists my stomach. I failed her.

And then she got pregnant, and we knew it would be a difficult labour, but she had Trade intervention. They were going to deliver her baby. Oh, why didn’t she go to the Medical Hub? Why didn’t I make her? I could have, but I was scared. Fifty percent of births end in a Xin De Maternal Death. The Xin De are too big for us Common humans. Their offspring are larger than we can carry, but I thought?—

She’s different…

Maple is, was, special and strong. She didn’t want to go to the Medical Hub—now I know why. She didn’t want them to have her baby.

Life without her seems unimaginable.

Sorrow glides down my cheeks in thin rivulets. I think about her body being discovered by The Trade Marshals, and panic punches me. What if she wasn’t dead? What if she wakes, alone, and crawls for help? Will she come to find me?

I shake my head. No. She was dead. I am sure of it. The Trade will inspect her injuries and figure out what happened. They will come looking for their property—for us.

She deserved so much better…

The pain in my chest and stomach is nearly unbearable. Through a screen of tears, I gaze around the lower deck to the faces of the other stowaways from the Half-tower. Tracks of ash from the explosions mark their faces. Some have wounds. Most are shaking with fear. They look like I feel—lost.

“How can you see where you’re going through that damn Redwind?” A Common man calls up just as Tomar and the monster he called Lagos descend the steps.

“We can’t,” Tomar answers simply, making his way across to check the ropes that fasten boxes and crates to the hull walls. “We are on a zipline.”

The man gasps. “A what?”

Lagos grunts something inaudible and sits in the far corner. I try not to look directly at him but note his position and distance from me. He couldn’t be further away without being in the ocean, and I am happy about that. He spreads his legs out in front of him, pulls his hood over his brow, folds his thick arms over his chest, and closes his black eyes.

Tomar chuckles. “It’s been taking people like yourself from the Half-tower to The Bite for two decades. Hasn’t snapped in the Redwind yet. Trust me, it’s better than steering. We have to get through a small gap and without the line to guide us, we’ll hit rocks for sure.”

The Bite…

Maple mentioned it, but I thought it was another fantastical place that she dreamed up. It’s supposedly a cave filled with runaways, both Common, Xin De— and, even, Endigo.

My stomach churns. I’ve never met an Endigo before, but the tales of mutated Xin De, born with all the undesirable byproduct traits of hundreds of years of genetic engineering and human testing, reach all corners of The Cradle. Endigo men are cast as the villains in most bedtime stories.

We must be moving now as the tip of the boat lifts, climbing a magnificent watery hill.

The feeling of being at sea reminds me of the seesaw at the Trade nursery. Water rises, a billowing of pressure gathering beneath, only to disappear. The trough plunges us into an unknown depth, only for another wave to catch us.

The motion is slow but powerful.

Enough to affect the infant in my arms. He is crying, squeaky sounds that come from an inexperienced voice box.

“ Shh .” I use the tip of my finger and draw little circles on the baby’s back and will my nausea away.

I swallow rising bile.

“You’re going to get thrown around, little Lace Girl.” Tomar slides down beside me and lifts me to sit in the bracket of his legs, where he locks me in tight.

I stiffen—men don’t touch Lace Girls— but then he strokes the fussing infant’s cheek and says, “Sing for him.”

In front of all these strangers? I lift my gaze and coast the space, shocked to find eyes filled with fragile need waiting for me to sing to Spero. To a smuggling ship filled with runaways and refugees. To melancholy. A goodbye to the Half-tower and everything they have always known.

I clear my throat, gently, then start to sing. “Good first-light, to you, my Collective and friend. We head to the ocean, it's days there we spend?—”

Spero stares in the direction of my voice, quietening down. I exhale, relieved, my shoulders loosening as I find as much comfort in the familiar shanty as everyone else seems to.

“Though the Redwind is howlin' with a fist full of sand. We prefer it's hard slapin' to The Trade Master's hand.”

A man opposite me joins in, softly singing the song of the Trade Fisher, the song my Ward often sang before he left for the docks each first-light.

“For our Purpose was certain, so on the waves we do meet. Yet we sing with the crashin' as it’s freedom we greet.”

I sing and soothe Spero as if I’ve done it a thousand times. And I ignore the fact that I don’t know these men.

I look up, noticing all eyes on me. Soft. Sad. Listening. I just boarded a ship full of strangers with an infant that isn’t mine.

Oh, my.

I cuddle Spero to my chest and close my eyes, singing the shanty to bid farewell to my old life.

As the boat rocks me to the melody and Tomar’s legs stop me from sliding, I pretend I’m with Maple. That she huddles beside me, like she did that first day we met when we were no older than ten. When she told me everything would be alright. I am safe.

I imagine it until I fall asleep.

* * *

I wake, feeling like no time has passed, but it has. The ten or so runaways are already climbing the steps, and the boat has slowed down. Levelled…

How? There is something odd about the way the boat moves, glides instead of waves, seeming to slide on liquid silk.

Am I dreaming?

“You’re awake.”

I blink the sleep from my gaze and check on Spero, whose eyes are closed. Little squeaks come through his pursed lips, and my chest squeezes.

“Your baby is hungry,” Tomar says, and I bite down on my lower lip.

I ignore it. “Are we… here ?”

I don’t know where we’re going, so I don’t elaborate, keeping every question ambiguous to not give myself away. To not appear as confused as I am. Even as I go through the motions, I cling to the mindless actions I make because they keep me moving forward and not rushing backward.

Don’t let The Trade find him.

Tomar climbs to his feet. “Almost. Go up and see. You don’t need your mask here. I need to help Lagos on deck. I should be up there already, but you were sleeping, so…”

I straighten, realising I was leaning on him. I stuff my mask into my beibao and bundle Spero in tight before following Tomar up the steps.

My feet freeze on the top deck when the soft briny mist kisses my cheeks and lips. Peering around in wonder at what cannot be real, my eyes grow.

A dome of stars encompasses us above and is mirrored in the still watery surface below. It’s far more fantastical than real—thousands of glowing lights, some bright, others dim, but they are everywhere.

No Redwind…

Shocked, I gaze around the cavernous dome of stars, looking for an answer. Real stars? They can’t be… The Cradle hasn’t seen a star in hundreds of years. Am I dead? Is this The Crust—the spiritual afterlife?

The further the boat drifts, the more peculiar the stars appear. They move overhead, behind, under. The boat breaks the ones reflected on the water as it moves through them, smudging them.

“No… They are not stars.” I spin to take in the beaming spots, a sight mesmerising and extraordinary.

Ahead, I see the end, a rocky grey blockage lit by lanterns and lights from other boats. There are small wooden houses, dozens or more; I can’t be sure from this distance.

“Glowworms,” Tomar answers, flicking a star from a needle-like rock dripping with moisture akin to wax down a candle.

I gasp in awe. “Stunning.”

“They are just bugs,” I hear the big, mean one—Lagos—sneer.

“Glowing bugs,” I mutter, feeling belittled, but the sight of the cave washes it away. I don’t care if my wonder seems juvenile or ridiculous to that man. I don’t even know him. And the cave—The Bite, it’s real. A community carved with water’s hand. And it is stunning.

“Welcome to The Bite, Lace Girl,” Tomar says, leaning to check the zipline that I can now see rushes between the two hulls.

Tears rise to the backs of my eyes. I wish Maple was here to see this… It was her dream, not mine.

“Why is it called The Bite?” I ask. “This place is not at all vicious looking.”

Tomar’s eyes lift to the ceiling. “Well, the Endigos say that the sky never forgave us for fucking up the earth, but the ocean did. It took a giant bite out of the ground to give all, Common, Xin De, and Endigo a reprieve from the Redwind.”

I hear someone scoff—Lagos.

Tomar ignores him.

And I can’t help but smile.