She’s still shaking when the gate to the caves open for her. Lambert’s face peers out at her around the thick stone, blurred with disturbed dust. The sight of the black hastily hewn door’s a bit shocking. Lee quickly brings up something prettier, something less cold and dented and scarred. A second of mental concentration and suddenly Lambert’s stepping around a large, ornate gate, decorated with filigree of gold and silver flowers. The dirty stone beneath her feet a clear marble now, lined with delicate veins of white. Lambert places a helping hand on her arm and draws her into the city.

“Are you alright?”

 “Yes. Yes. I’m alright.”

He doesn’t look like he believes her. He’s barely 16 - new at gate duty - and has spent most of his life deep in the caves, the son of a phlebotomist. He’s fiercely dedicated to Lee, has been ever since he was a child. What was once a crush has turned into a deep loyalty that makes Lee felt uncomfortable but flattered.

He scrutinizes her face for a moment. “Ilena, you sure?”

He must be concerned if he’s using her full name. She pulls her arm away gently, trying to look calm and unruffled. “Absolutely.”

When she starts to walk down the marble path, he falls into step with her, his still babyish face etched with concern.  

“Aren’t you supposed to be watching the gate?”

He shakes his head, “No. I was just about to leave to go find you. I went looking for you, and Less said she thought she saw you walking out of the city.” He looks closely at her. “I wanted to make sure….” he trails off. Lee hears the unspoken words that were going to follow: you aren’t despairing over your brother.

She isn’t. Though she knows if she allows herself a moment to pause, she will. Lael had been the last of her family - now she’s all that’s left. She glances up at the statues in the distance, lining the old courtyard walled off in the south. The only decorations her people have bothered to create. She wonders if the stone really looks like them. Like the seers. She doesn’t know. Doesn’t want to know. She hates these statues, high and imposing, looking down at them as if they owe them something. During the sun-setting, even without any projection to change the sky, the monuments somehow look alive, like many dead things do in the half light.  In days past, when the divide was fresh and the unity of their people still unsteady, the courtyard with those large statues used to be the execution area. She doesn’t want to think about how those stone faces would look to a person kneeling, neck bent, ready to feel the sharp slice of a sword rushing cold through their skin and muscle and bone. Would’ve been best to look down, only down, at the rock beneath your knees and not at the sprawling, dead sky or the bare bright eyes carved from dull stone.

She blinks away the thought and hooks her arm in his companionably. “I’m fine, little Lambs. Why were you looking for me?”

He subjects her to that searching glance for just a few more seconds and then looks around. “I wanted to ask you something,” he whispers.

“What about?” she whispers back with mock seriousness.  

He pulls her over to a quiet spot beneath one of the larger cave walls. She leans her back against the cold stone, so at odds with the warm sunlight she’s projecting all around her. She has the sudden urge to ask Lambert what he’s seeing. To reconcile the separate realities they’re living in together.

“I wanted to ask you,” he says, “if you’re still planning on staying enlisted?”

“Of course.” The amusement fades from her voice. “Why wouldn’t I?”

He looks away, embarrassed. “Well, I just thought that since you’re the only one of your family that you might consider settling down.”

She eyes him critically. “You’re a little young for me, Lambs.”

“That’s not what I meant. It’s just…don’t you want to carry on your family?”

 She turns away, swallowing hard. How to answer that?

When he sees her distress, he stumbles on, “Not that you’re running out of time or anything…but it’s something you might want to think about, if you want to. And if you find someone you wouldn’t mind-”

“Lambert. Stop.” She takes a deep breath. “I’ll think about it, but for now I’m going to live my life like I always have. That’s not too selfish, is it?”

“No. Not selfish at all.” His brown eyes are soft. “And as long as it makes you happy, I’ll be there. In fact,” he draws up a bit taller, “I’m going to be there for you in battle too pretty soon - Basile just gave the okay for me to enroll in combat duty.”

Lee’s stomach drops sickeningly. He’s a baby. She nods quickly, hoping he doesn’t see her disappointment. She forces a smile. “You’re the youngest he’s ever allowed into battle, Lambs, you should be proud.”

He beams beatifically at her. The pale sunlight haloes him in a mist of sparkling dust floating in the air. She feels a surge of worry. She leans forward, as if to touch him, but pulls herself back in time. She slips her hands in her pockets.

“I have more news,” he tells her, still smiling widely. He’s tapping his long, nervous fingers against the metal of his belt, a habit old and comforting. “Less and I are going to be married.”

Lee’s mouth drops open into a small ‘o’. She knew that Less, just turned 17 and still lanky and awkward, has been following little Lambs around like a love-sick puppy. But Lee must have been entirely too wrapped up in her own world if she’d never noticed his returned interest. It’s by no means a bad choice. Less is sweet and dimpled and always around lending a hand to the soldiers or to the doctors, or to anyone who needs something she can do. She smiles a lot. Maybe too much considering the world they live in. Lee always imagines that Less’ projections are abounding with butterflies and kittens and rainbows. Unicorns. Maybe some candy falling from the sky - red and blue and yellow like those old earth sugar beans she’d read about.

She’ll make Lambs horribly happy.

She leans forward all the way this time and hugs him, trying not to let on to how disappointed she suddenly feels. The encounter with the other is still hounding her heels – it’s the only explanation for how strangely she’s reacting to this ostensibly good news. He’ll be bonded. He’ll have a child. Then another.

One of those children will probably die. Then he’ll have to have another…what a terrible life.

All she can see when she looks at him now are dead children. A dead wife. No projection can wipe something like that away. She wants to find Less and hug her tight and never let her go.

But she just smiles. “When’s the ceremony going to be?”

“Next month.” He bounces on his heels, barely containing his eagerness. She wonders if that other one - The One from the Camp - is still at the river. Wonders what he would do if she marched back there and told him that every child Less would give birth to that died would be on his head personally. That every drop of blood would be on his hands.

But he doesn’t know who Less is. Doesn’t care who she is. She has no doubt he’d shoot her right in between the eyes if he met her in battle. What a ridiculous thought - to think he might care.  

She traces the tip of her finger across the pale lines swirling through the limestone next to her. “Have you guys decided on how many children?”

He blushes. Lee tries not to contemplate the irony of that - a boy still blushing at the mention of having children but planning to get married in the next month. “We’re going to take it one at a time.” He wriggles a bit, nervously. “We already talked to Luca in the medical ward about regular checkups starting two weeks after the ceremony - just in case.”

“Smart Lambs.” She turns to walk away. “I have to go to talk to Basile.”

He catches her by the arm. “Lee -”

“It’s alright, little Lambs, I’m okay.”

He doesn’t let go. “Did something happen?”

She turns her head to the side. They’re inside the gates – there’s no river or trees or little girl staring across the distance at her with eyes a little too wide. No figure tall and dark and motionless, gaze cautious and wary.  You are a bit far from your home.

She forces a smile and shakes her head.  “No. Nothing.”

He lets her walk away, through the double doors into the citadel. She pauses in the middle of the entrance hall, taking a moment to stabilize the projection of marble and glass tables and white flowers in delicately engraved vases. She tries to make the vision exactly as it had been the day before and the day before that and the day before that, but her concentration’s shot and the details are a bit dulled, fuzzy. She shakes it off and takes the stairwell down towards Basile’s council room.  

He isn’t in his room, but she sees a flash of gold and blue rounding the corner and follows the tail of his coat into the small hall that lead into the medbay.

When she calls his name, he turns, all elegant white hair and striking gray eyes.

“Ilena?”

There’s a soft pressure on her arm for a moment - his hand - and she smiles quickly in response, anxious to get to the point. “Something happened today.”

His eyebrow rises up, and he gives her a swift once-over. “You look very serious.” She thinks she can detect a small sliver of condescension in his tone, but she’s used to it.

“What happened was very serious. I was walking by the footbridge and I ran into one of them.”

The amusement on his face clears. He crosses his arms. His hands are soft and doughy. Pale white. They remind her of snow. Of milk.

“Were you hurt?” he asks.

“No.” She can’t stop staring at his hands. She’d never noticed before how soft they are. “He was alone except a small child. We talked.”

“Talked?”

“Well…sort of. Nothing important.”

“And he simply let you go?”

She feels a flare - a flicker - of impatience. “Why was it that he let me go? Why couldn’t it be that I let him go?”

“Because you are near his camp, and not the other way around,” Basile responds slowly, gently.

“He had no weapon. He was getting water.”

He starts to walk back up the way she came. She falls into step. “Well, it’s fortunate that nothing worse happened.”

He brings her the long way round to his chambers. She follows dutifully, holding her breath as they pass by the forge. The smell of fire and melted metal always choke her up a little bit. She doesn’t spend much time there making weapons and forming swords and guns and daggers, but her brother had worked there before joining the regiment. He had always come back to their bunk dirty and marked with burns. But happy.

“The little girl seemed to have a rash on her arm,” she says once they are past the cloying odor of smelting metal.

“What did it look like?”

She shrugs. Slips her hands into her pockets and presses her fingers rhythmically against her ribs, counting them. One, two, three. One, two, three. Shrugs again. “Like she’d rubbed up against a lyrle tree.”

“She wasn’t one of ours?”

“No, I’m sure she wasn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“He…he seemed to be concerned for her. I think she’s his daughter.”

She takes the steps up towards the higher level two at a time and waits by his door as he ascends at a slower, more sedate pace. He ushers her into his room. She moves into the small space and stops right behind the chair sitting in front of his desk. He circles her, coming to stand on the other side and opening a drawer. As he roots around in it, she lets her eyes skim across the familiar objects in his room. His desk. His papers. His jars and jars of preserved plants and weeds that line the window ledge.  The star constellations drawn on his ceiling in chalk that she always imagines have been written with pixie dust. She lets her vision wink in and out. Chalk. Gold pixie dust. Chalk. White pixie dust. Chalk. Silver pixie dust -

Basile pulls out a small envelope from his desk drawer. It’s bulging and odd-shaped - obviously not filled with a letter of any sort. He doesn‘t open it.

“One of them sick,” he murmurs.

“It’s important?”  

“Perhaps their power’s leaving them.”

“How would that be of any benefit? How does that help us?”

“We may not have to worry about getting rid of them. The planet may take care of them on its own.”

“We get sick and we’re still here.”

“We’re used to sickness. They aren’t. They’ll be wiped out within months if-”

“And then?”

“Then the planet is ours.” Lee doesn’t know what to say to that. That’s something they’ve been wishing for. Something that has been held frustratingly out of reach because they cannot simply march into their camp and kill them. Whatever protection the enemy had thought up has kept them safe. And now Basile is telling her that it may be soon be over.

He doesn’t give her time to respond, in any case. He continues, “Oh, speaking of which, have you heard? The weapons lab has come up with these new bullets.” He finally opens the envelope and shakes out some round pellets. “We’re passing them out later today - use them sparingly because we don’t have many.”

She lets him drop them into her open palm. They’re bitingly cold against her skin, like ice.  “What are they?”

“They’re coated with a jelly of palmitate.”

She’s taken aback. “Why?”

“The bullets we already have don’t seem…adequate…for the job. Soldiers have reported shooting one of the others and seeing them in the next battle without a scratch. Frankly, they heal too quickly. We need something that can finish them off. Something to even the playing field during those impertinent little sneak attacks.”

Her own father had died, not of a gunshot wound, not of a knife attack, but by being stabbed through with a branch of a tearsle tree. It went straight through his heart like his flesh and blood had been nothing but butter. Such an easy kill.

Lee wants to ask what these things do. These little balls of metal in her hand that seem so insignificant. Wants to ask how it will happen - will it start from the inside out, the burning? Or will they already be engulfed in flames before the bullet even pierces through their skin? But she doesn’t ask these things because she doesn’t know why she wants to know. Who cares really, as long as it brings down the enemy?

There must be something of distaste or uncertainty showing on her face. Councilor Basile’s expression turns stern.

“Imagine something,” he demands.

“I already am-”

“No, imagine something wonderful.”

She takes in the cool stone around her, the sunlight, the flowers sitting on his desk, so normal. Something wonderful …

She focuses for a minute and then the room dims. She speckles flowers across the ground, large and long petaled like old earth hibiscus. She forces them to life, glowing bright like lamplights. With the room as dark as it is, she has the weird sensation of standing weightless in the midst of the stars, all orbiting around her slowly - if the stars were shaped like flowers.  

“Now let go of it.” Basile’s voice comes out of the dark, startling her. She’d forgotten about him.

She obeys and lets the vision drop away, replacing it with the stone and the white sunlight from before.

“That’s what they kill us for - that’s what they’re so desperate for,” he tells her, “such a simple thing. Something they willingly gave up when they turned against the seers. It means nothing. Doesn’t make us any happier. But what we want is vital for our survival. But what we want was so much more important. They have the better lot, Ilena, and we have to find some way to get a piece of it.”

For a minute, just a minute, she almost says how do you know it doesn’t make us any happier? Happier than what? but she restrains herself.

Next Chapter: Chapter 5