True North Page 9

  And the postmark? It’s the red circle seal of the Russian subcontinent. She’s there. I can find her.

  I try to tamp down my excitement and concentrate on the letters, swimming and rearranging themselves before my eyes.

  Dearest little sister.

  Well, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it? I have been having so much fun that I have lost track of time and only just realized how long it has been since I’ve written. Honestly, it’s so much fun here. Endless soirees, long afternoons of horseback riding, ending the afternoons with social teas on the porch.

  Father and Mother send their love. They are very busy right now with work, but we get together whenever they can spare a moment. I hope you’re not shutting yourself up in that big old house by yourself! Get out and mingle. I know you’ll meet someone special who can help you get over your shyness.

  Anyway, darling baby sister, I have to get ready for a big to-do, but I will write again when I have the chance. In the meantime, know that I am well and happy and having the time of my life here.

  Love,

  Margot

  The tripping of the clock fills my ears like the metallic chop of an ax. My mind swirls and tries to unravel all the subtext and innuendo. Margot and I are the daughters of a politician—a true power broker. Our first lesson in life was to mask our feelings from everyone in the world except each other. I consider her words again. Go out and mingle. Get over your shyness.

  Great, except for one thing: I may be reserved, but I’ve not been shy a day in my life.

  What’s she telling me? Where does she think I am? Surely if she’s with our parents she’s heard that our house is going to be reduced to a pile of rubble. But if not…the sudden thought occurs to me. Is Margot telling me she’s not even with our parents? I press the heel of my hand to my eyes, hoping to shut down the looping, useless trains of thought. Margot has given me all the information I need to get to her; I just have to find it.

  Thunk. Thunk. The second hands on the clock tick. I’m running out of time. She wouldn’t have sent the letter otherwise. For a moment my flesh remembers the overwhelming panic I felt from my sister just a few days ago. How long does it take for a letter to arrive from Russian parts unknown, anyway?

  From the relative anonymity of the backseat, shaded by tinted glass, I watch the drones hover above the buildings, keeping watch over Dominion’s streets and occupants. Since my rendezvous with Ali, those empty eyes have seemed far more sinister, to the point where I had Torch hack into Dominion’s security mainframe. He played back hour after hour of feed for me. Every once in a while, the drone’s feed would zero in on a face and in immaculate, clean white letters, display everything about the person—from his job at the local tavern to his political leanings and life expectancy.

  Since then I’ve been absorbed by the drones. If these little flying machines collect information for Dominion’s government, why didn’t they notice that an army of Lasters had crawled up to our gates and hurled magic bombs into our bedrooms? Why didn’t our mercs use the footage to keep a better eye on things—why couldn’t they stop the attacks on our school, for instance? Who keeps watch over their feeds?

  I can’t ask. Not yet.

  “It only makes sense that Nash has a backer. The question is who. We’ll stick close to him until we’ve figured it out. Are you listening?” Storm waves a hand before my face.

  “He’s going to die,” I blurt out, turning my attention from Dominion’s crumbling skyline to the giant man beside me.

  I don’t mean to be so blunt about it. But in a city where death creeps the streets, there’s no point in tiptoeing. I feel Storm’s gunmetal gaze on me, hot as coals. He leans back in his seat but says nothing.

  “I know…” I start trying to put into words a lifetime of impressions that I’ve kept, like a locked box, between my sister and me. “I told you. I can usually tell. Not just intuition. It’s part of my…special gifts,” I end lamely. “Nash is a goner.”

  Storm continues to study me with restless, glittering eyes. The city seems abandoned, streets rolling out like a bone-strewn desert. Occasionally I glimpse a dog-size rat. They survive by eating through any dead left on the streets past dark. Sometimes before dark. Fewer bodies have been left on the streets as of late. Owing to the fact that the preachers are hiding in the walls like mice, Mohawk told me just this morning.

  Maybe it’s true, I think. I trace the outline of a pitch-black window through the glass. So many of the windows are empty and dark. It can’t all be because the grid was destroyed.

  I don’t know when it became the tradition to ring the bodies with pebbles, but I know the street kid gangs still do it. You can hear them singing as they complete their enchantments, begging their gods to turn them into True Borns. As though that would magically wall away death.

  “How soon?” Storm’s question catches me off balance. I pull my eyes back in time to see Jared through the rearview, raking over me with a scowl.

  “Pardon?”

  “How soon?” he repeats gently.

  They don’t usually ask about time. They usually assume the worst—as they should.

  Still, knowledge like this is not an exact science. I sift through my memories. “The longest stretch I’ve gone between a knowing and a dead man is about three months.”

  Storm nods. He’s dressed in his finery for this evening’s outing: black tux, crisp white shirt. His hair has grown longer these past few months and now falls over his collar. During the day he’ll pull it into a short ponytail. Every woman at tonight’s reception will be swooning over him and jealous of me, his escort. But they won’t know, will they? I muse. They won’t know that Nolan Storm keeps his heart for his tribe, not a lone Splicer woman. Any woman who would be swept into Storm’s life will be a strategy, all mapped out in his campaign for the True Borns. Just like me.

  “Does it matter? To your plans, I mean.”

  Storm considers the question carefully before answering. “Everything is a moving piece. You need to consider the movement of one before you can think of moving another.”

  I nod. “You sound like my father.”

  “Your father has a terrific head for strategy, I’ll grant him that.”

  “And just what is your strategy, Storm? What do you hope to accomplish?”

  Storm’s head drops. His spectral crown of bone illuminates the air before me as he chuffs a laugh. “I thought you knew.”

  “I thought I did. I’m not as sure about anything any longer.”

  My hands are clenched together tightly in my lap. Storm reaches over and pats them. If he’s aware of the electric jolt of his touch—so unlike Jared’s—he doesn’t show it.

  “What would you like to know? Ask me anything.”

  I’ve spent many a night thinking about Nolan Storm and his operations. The list of questions I have is as long as my arm, but I need to start somewhere.

  “Do you know where they all are?”

  “Who?”

  “The True Borns.”

  “No.” A small smile plays along his lips. “It’s not as though I have a homing device and can call them to me.”

  “But surely they know about you?”

  “Many do.”

  “How?”

  “I have people on the street. Some of those people are very visibly True Borns. Those people talk to other people. And then, of course, I’m Miss Lucy Fox’s escort to most Upper Circle events. Those events play on the NewsFeed. As do my business dealings.”

  “They report on your business?” That Storm and I would appear in society NewsFeeds doesn’t surprise me much. It didn’t occur to me that Storm’s business partnerships would also make headlines in Dominion. “I thought the Upper Circle would want to keep it quiet that they’re working with you.”

  Storm inclines his head. “That might have been possible had I not secured a sizable portion of Dominion’s interests.”

  “In what?”

  “Oh—a bit of everything.
Power, water, construction and building. Defense. Many, many security contracts. Loans.”

  “All the things that will keep Dominion going once the Lasters are too few to manage.”

  A cough sounds from the front seat. Jared turns from where he sits shotgun. “Another ten minutes, I think.” His eyes catch on me as though I’m an inch shy of going too far. I keep my expression carefully blank. I’m not about to take social cues from one of the more untactful people I’ve met.

  “And what will you do once you have them all right where you want them?” I ask, my sight still trained on the handsome True Born before me.

  A low, rumbling chuckle accompanies Storm’s response. “I’ll turn the city over to the people, of course.”

  It’s the most shocking thing he could say. To the rabble? Lasters, I mentally correct myself.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why give it to the Lasters?”

  Storm pats the back of my hand. “Oh, not just the Lasters. The True Borns, too. Especially the True Borns. As you say, soon the Lasters will be too few to manage things.”

  “So you get the city by default.”

  Storm looks at me gravely. “No, Lucy. We get the entire world.” My head spins at the frank brutality of what Storm has said, though I can’t argue. Still, it makes me feel sick. All those people will be gone, I think to myself. All the people we’ll see tonight.

  “Jared,” Storm continues, not missing a beat. “Make sure you keep a close eye on Nash this evening. Kira, I want you to watch Gillis. Whoever they have their heads down with, I want to know about it.”

  Kira gives me a showy wink in the rearview before returning her attention to the road. Jared coughs into his hands once more, his eyes scanning for danger from under his crop of golden curls. The perfect merc, I think to myself once more. Except, I realize as he reluctantly turns to the front, Jared can’t seem to keep his eyes off me anymore than I can him.

  “Have you given any thought to Miss Fox’s future?” the man before Storm asks. The man’s light-green eyes flick over my Grecian-cut gown as though appraising my value before turning back to Storm.

  I smile with my teeth, a smile so fierce my face hurts, and squeeze my clutch to my stomach.

  I had never heard men speak of women this way before, so publically, so unabashedly. Our father might be a monster, but he kept at least some of this unpleasantness away from us girls. The man before us is the minister of finance, a lean, sleek greyhound of a man. His colorless hair lies flat against his head. A small scar notches his temple where I assume he has had some tumor removed. It’s an old scar, though, speaking highly of his ability to survive more than the shark-infested political circles he swims in.

  “How kind of you to take an interest in my future,” I chime in.

  It’s not something he expects. Young women are meant to be silent at these functions. I’ve been working this circle with my family for enough years to know better. But I’m standing in a ballroom, white marble pillars stretching up a thirty-foot ceiling, walls covered in masterpieces. And I’m not with my family any longer, am I? I remind myself.

  Storm touches my elbow and takes a sip of champagne before he answers the minister blandly. “Something for us to consider, certainly.”

  The minister takes Storm’s noncommittal reply as he wants to. His watery eyes widen with interest, and I have no doubt that people will be making wagers on me before the night is out. We make polite motions and head toward the back of the ballroom, where the guest of honor is ringed by his cronies.

  We pass through elegant crowds. Storm’s spectral crown of bone gleams dully in the dim candlelight, heads and tails above the other guests. I want to keep it together, but I can’t hold back another second. “You should have told him to go to hell,” I say with venom.

  “Relax,” Storm soothes. “This works to our advantage.”

  “How is that?”

  Storm leans down and murmurs his answer. “Yours is still a family of power. Your father is someone to be feared. They think I’m his partner.” Somehow the thought doesn’t comfort me. But then we’re standing before the sweating, shiny mess that is Senator Theodore Nash of the outer territories, ringed by his entourage.

  “Miss Fox, Mr. Nolan, so kind of you to join us this evening,” Nash opens. The senator mops his forehead before shaking Storm’s hand. He bows slightly to me. “We were just speaking of alliances.”

  Nash indicates a foppish man in an oversize gray suit, a delicate pink silk cravat at his neck. Beside him stands a woman in a gold lamé dress that hugs her generous curves. Her hair has been dyed a terrible yellow blond that shows her roots. But it’s her face that I stare at. Once she must have had the skin of an angel. Now the telltale signs of ravage appear on her cheeks: the fine rash I’ve seen over and over again from the Splicer treatments. These people are sick.

  I fight the urge to step away until I’m able to concentrate on their words.

  “Our oldest is coming to that age,” says the fop, whom I understand is named Charles Driscoll. “We’re squiring her to all the parties. Just like you, eh, Mr. Storm?” The fop’s elbow nudges Storm as though they share an inside joke. The inside of my cheek burns as I bite down hard to keep myself from speaking.

  In a rush I realize that according to everyone here, Storm is searching for a suitable husband for me in my father’s absence. Now it all makes sense: the parade of young men who’ve been presented to me at each and every reception. The private “cozy chats” Storm has enjoyed with keen-looking families at every single event we’ve been to in the past couple of months. Why he’s been allowed to enter their hallowed social ranks at all.

  At first I’m revolted. I scold myself for not noticing it sooner. I take a shallow breath. Fine—let them think what they want. Better to pretend I’m on the marriage market than reveal our true purpose. And I believe that for two seconds—until I realize that Nolan Storm has been playing this game with the Upper Circle all along. Pretending that he’s interested in finding me a good match to help get his foot in the door.

  “Excuse me for a moment, won’t you?” I give them a bright smile and walk, shoulders back, to the refreshment table. The lemonade burns my throat but I force myself to drink it all. There, at the back of the room, Storm’s antlers bloom like an idea above the heads of the crowd. I note the faintly blue luminescence that curls like sharpened knives over his handsome profile.

  Dark thoughts make me shiver. With a murmured “thank-you,” I hand the crystal cup back to the Laster who won’t meet my eyes and for one brief moment let myself feel the horror of the truth.

  Storm might not be pretending.

  9

  Overcome with dark and anxious thoughts, I make my way to the doors leading to the gardens out back. A prickle runs up my neck. I’m being watched. The shaven-head mercs guarding the doors survey me with dull eyes but they don’t stop me, don’t say a word. I race through watery moonlight, panting, and get lost in a landscaped garden lit with paper lanterns. At least I’m blessedly alone. I tug at the flowing drape of my dress over my right shoulder and wish beyond anything that I could snap my fingers and bring back my former life. The minute I think of Margot, the dam of tears I’d been holding back so carefully breaks. I sob my way deeper into the garden.

  I haven’t been there for more than a minute or two when a red handkerchief dotted with white polka dots appears before my blurry eyes. I halt mid-sob and hiccup. The arm attached to the hanky belongs to none other than Jared Price.

  “Go away, Jared,” I snarl. But I take the handkerchief and dab at my eyes anyway. Surprisingly, the cloth is perfectly clean and in good condition, if a little wrinkled.

  “You’re welcome,” Jared replies as I blow.

  “I said go away.”

  “Where my hanky goes, I go.” He sounds so cheerful I want to throttle him.

  He’s painfully handsome by moonlight, his hair near silver. The planes of his face hollow out
until he looks more like the sleek beast whose face he sometimes wears. Tonight he’s opted for a faded tuxedo T-shirt, complete with a red bow tie at the neck. Before we left Storm’s keep, he called it his “undercover Upper Circle” look, which had Torch laughing like a hyena.

  It’s so easy for Jared to mock, I realize. He’s not trapped as I am. And at that, my anger explodes.

  “Can you not follow me for five seconds?” I snap.

  “’Fraid not. Kind of in the job description.” He looks down at my strappy emerald shoes as though appraising their value. I make a strangled sound and stomp away. I hear nothing, not a squeak or a whisper, but I can feel him ghosting me as I slip deeper into the garden.

  When I’m as fed up as I can be, I turn to confront him. And stare at an empty garden path.

  “You think this is funny?” I call to thin air. But I know he can hear me. I know he’ll not be far. “You enjoy watching girls cry?”

  A few beats later, his voice floats out from the darkness and brushes my ears like a kiss. “Why are you crying, Lu?”

  Even if I were inclined, I don’t have enough breath in me to tell him all the reasons I’m crying. “Does Storm know that you’re here?” I call out, surprising even myself.

  There’s silence from the darkness. Then, a soft, “No.”

  “I thought so. Does he know…?” I end with a dangling question, not even sure what I was going to say. Does Storm know that you’ve kissed me? Does he know we can’t seem to leave each other alone, even if we fight like cats and dogs?

  A beat, and then another soft “No” reaches my ears.

  I march deeper into the garden, knowing he’ll not be far. A small footbridge arches over a trickle of a stream and ends in a lovely, softly lit seating area. The evening is still fresh enough that the area remains undiscovered, so I sink down on one of the stone benches. It’s hard, in moments like these, to remember that we’re in Dominion. Less than a mile away, the drones record the lives of the rabble. People lay dying in their stacked cars, on the streets, in back alleys. Dying of the Plague or starvation or any number of the diseases that will kill you when you live hand-to-mouth with no help from anyone.