Page 68 of Last of Her Name
She looks for a moment as if she’s going to pick a fight, but then she gives a dry laugh and flops onto the bed. Then she groans, pressing a hand to her side. “Let’s both take the floor. This thing is hard as a rock.”
“I’m not surprised.” Everything I’ve seen of Tyrrha has been hard, smooth, and sterile. My cell in the Loyalist base was almost more welcoming.
Mara makes room for me to sit beside her. We both end up lying back, staring at the stone ceiling, separated by a wall of silence. How many times have I shared a bed with Clio, just like this? Lying side by side, whispering and laughing, making plans. The dull ache I’ve lived with for the past few weeks suddenly sharpens. The pain of missing her is as acute as a cold blade between my ribs. I let out a shuddering breath, wondering if she’s been crammed into a room with a bunch of other prisoners or if she’s in isolation. Is someone looking out for her? Is she with the other Afkan prisoners, who might be able to help her? Does she think I’ve abandoned her? Does she blame me?
I should never have left her behind, not for a moment.
Mara sits up, raising one eyebrow at me. “You’re crying.”
I raise a hand to my face and find my cheeks damp. I hadn’t even realized the tears were there. Wiping them away, I close my eyes and press my oxygen mask to my mouth. The rush of air helps steady me.
“Look,” she says, “if you want the floor that badly, it’s yours.”
I snort, opening my eyes just enough to glance at her. She looks a bit bewildered by my tears, as if they’re a language she doesn’t speak. If there were ever a polar opposite to my sensitive, nurturing Clio, it’s Mara Luka. But I’m glad she doesn’t try to comfort me. Tenderness right now would only send me over the edge, into the dark, sucking abyss of grief that I’ve been trying my best to stay out of. I envy Mara her toughness. But I know that deep down, she’s hurting too.
The silence grows heavy while I search for the words I haven’t been able to say in the last sixteen days.
“I’m sorry,” I start, my voice thick. “Your dad—”
“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t be sorry, as if you forced him to do anything. He made a choice and I have to respect that.” After a pause, she adds, “I just hope you’re worth it.”
I sit up. The walls seem to press in on me, squeezing the air from my lungs. I want to tell her I’m not worth it. I’m not worth any of the sacrifices that have been made on my account. But the words stick to my throat.
Mara watches me. “I don’t hate you, Anya. Or Stacia, or whatever you want to call yourself. This is a war, and in war, soldiers die. Just … don’t forget what side you’re supposed to be on. Promise me that, and I’ll be your ally.”
I nod, feeling sick.
This may be war, but I don’t feel like a soldier. In many ways, we’re still just kids. The only thing we should have to fight for is a later curfew. Mara shouldn’t have had to leave her father to die. Clio shouldn’t be sitting in a gulag, waiting to be interrogated. Pol shouldn’t be recovering from a gunshot that came within an inch of killing him. Riyan shouldn’t have had to hunt across the stars for his stolen sister.
And I … I just want everything to go back to the way it was before. But it never will, even if I save Clio and take down the Committee and find this Firebird thing, whatever it is. Even if everything from here on out goes exactly the way I want it to, I’ll never get back what I lost. Something fundamental has changed deep inside me, and I think it’s changed in Mara too, and in Pol and Riyan. I shudder to think of how Clio will have changed, when I finally reach her.
None of us will ever be kids again.
Mara lies back again, eyes closing, her hands folded on her stomach. I kick off my boots and press my feet into the rough hide on the floor, the fur white and coarse. Through the narrow window, the great gas planet is rolling into view, yellow orange and ominous, like a dying sun.
Not long after, the peal of some massive horn sounds through the whole pyramid city in a bone-rattling groan. Mara, who’d nodded off, wakes with a sharp intake of breath.
I panic at first, thinking we’re under attack, but in the corridor we find a stream of tensors calmly making their way along. They give us odd looks when we burst out of our room with wild eyes and racing pulses. Then I realize what we’d heard was the tensor version of a dinner bell.
We follow the people at a slight distance, me hopping as I put my boots back on, my oxygen tank swinging from my belt. No one takes much notice of us, at least not openly; I see plenty of sidelong looks and curious glances, especially from the younger tensors, as we stand in a long line to pick up our dinner. Mara yawns and stretches, her eyes still red with sleep.
The mess hall—or Hall of Sustenance, as they insist on calling it—is nothing more than a long, narrow room with a long, narrow table. The ceiling is probably a hundred feet high, and because of the angled walls, it’s almost twice as wide as the floor below. Hard to tell, because the shadows obscure it from view. Along one wall, the tensors’ motto is carved forbiddingly into the stone:Imper su, imper fata.Candles—not holos but actualtallowcandles—burn along the center of the table in varying degrees of height. At the far end, where the youngest sit, a couple of kids are playing some sort of tessellating game, making candles float around and trying not to spill the hot wax. Mara watches them with a mixture of fascination and bewilderment.
They’re a strange, solemn society. No one raises their voice, and there is no shoving in line or racing to get a seat at the tables. I think of Riyan telling me the tensors prize self-control above all else and begin to sympathize with his sister Natalya. I can easily see how a girl longing for adventure would come to feel chafed by the tensors’ quiet, restrained world.
Mara and I pick up bowls from an elderly tensor stirring a large pot and carry them to one of the tables. She watches the gruel slide from her spoon to land with an unappetizing plop in her bowl.
“I’ve learned something today,” she says.
“Yeah?” I shovel the stuff in, swallowing the chunks of frost bison meat whole, since they’re as chewable as an old rubber gasket. It’s best, I realize, to get it all down quickly.
“I am not cut out for tensor life.” With a look of distaste, she pushes the bowl away.
Only to have it slide back toward her as if pulled by an unseen string. Mara jumps.
“In Rubyati culture,” says Jorian, tucking his hand back into his sleeve, “refusing the food offered by your host is an invitation to a death duel.”
“Name the time and place, then, mate.” Mara glares at the tensor until he walks on, his eyes sliding mistrustfully from her to me.