A pistol fired with a sharp crack! and a mob of soldier recruits launched across a crude chalk line onto a narrow track. Sonia stood in the back of the mob, swallowed in numbers. A slow trickle of blood dripped down her upper lip. Ugh. Another nosebleed. But she could breathe through it.The floral scent of crocus blossoms made her eyes water it was so sweet--tenacious life. All right, then. One obstacle at a time: logs, barrels, boulders.

Elbows flew, and Sonia took a hit, sharp into her ribcage, but bit her cheek, pocketing her anger.

Now up a broad wall, climbing with her core, gluts. At the top, she breathed for one beat, and dropped, graceless to the far side, tucking into a roll and taking the impact in her right shoulder.

The course was legend for its middle stretch, which ranged up a peak along a ley fault that ran along the highest elevation in Arrow. Sonia breathed low and deep and started climbing. A runner made a move from behind, coming up the hills fast, unnaturally so. He was obviously a drinker and the closer they came to the fault, the more power he could absorb. Sonia felt it too, but to excel was a risk, and she couldn't reliably project the ley force, especially against an opponent. Better not to open herself up to scrutiny.

Behind her, a runner began to move, not quickly, but gaining with every stride that brought them closer to the ley fault. He must be a ley drinker, but he wasn't skilled. Instead of overtaking her, he sidled up beside her, speaking through heavy breaths, "You're a drinker, if you're not going to use the ley force for yourself, how about giving me a push?"

She started. "Who said?"

"You're coasting," he said and grunted. "You think we're all blind?"

"You can't see ley force."

"No. But we can see you--spinning your wheels, skulking in the back, cowering in the corner..." he bit down on the last words. "We're at war. Give us a push!"

"I can't!"

"Liar. Don't be selfish."

"I said, no!"

The recruit leaned toward her, driving her off the trail. "Tell that to your superior!" He shouldered past her, giving her one last push that sent her sprawling to the ground.

She landed hard, the gravel stinging in her knees and palms. Something hard rose up in her throat, and traveling down and tightening her chest. They knew she could drink. No one had said anything! But if they knew, she would have to explain her lackluster record.

Sonia's cheeks froze as the wind rushed her face and chilled her ears, sending her a splitting headache, but she cut through the cold morning vapor with the speed of an arrow. She found the leyline energy with the natural grace of a child who had learned to run these faults from infancy. She tapped and loosened more of the power. Mile after mile, she dug for the strength she needed and found itl. Internal and external. The earth and its faults conspired to carry her, magnifying her strength as if with a glass, she only advanced her rapid, wind cutting pace.

Sonia loosened her stride as she thundered down the course.

She had taken the lead and was lengthening it now.

With her emerald green lenses, Sonia masqueraded as an honest recruit to the Green Guard, the elite Arrow military youth training unit. Over the past two years she had trained hard--hard enough, possibly--to preserve her disguise. She could cloak herself in her mother's heroism, her father's official rank, and her gifts with ley energy, a drinker of ley power.

She broke the ribbon, grabbed her knees. Wiping the stream of blood across her sleeve, she breathed a guarded breath. It was a fast time. That was good for her--one big fat record that she could hide behind.

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Sergeant Bowie stopped the watch and glanced in her direction. She gave a small smile, anticipating the Sergeant's congratulations. Bowie loved a champion. He'd hinted that he'd bet money on her victory. Bowie puffed on the clock’s face, wiped it with his sleeve, and glared at the numbers.

One solitary win couldn't be bad.

Bowie raised his hand.

Except for this win, she'd been a genius at blending in.

"Come with me." Sergeant Bowie clapped a set of cuffs across her wrists.

Or so she'd thought.

*

The Admiral Serrated Edge paced over the graves--graves he had unearthed over the leylines of the ancestral acreage. His boots, more than once bloodied in combat, desecrating the gravel where the bones had decomposed over hundreds, even a thousand years. The ley energy swelled and retreated like ocean waves that supported his fleet—but they would not support him.

He cursed. Stamped. Curse this land and all its locked up energy. It would not serve him! He owned it! It was his, and he couldn’t harness it. He’d spent a fortune trying. He’d raised that girl! Fed and clothed her when he would be shot if she were discovered. He’d done all this at great risk and, at last, his sacrifice yielded him nothing!

Sonia had learned the ley ways, but she couldn’t or wouldn’t, employ the power at his bidding. She’d claimed to have tried. Claimed to do so with tears streaming from her traitor eyes.

The dull roar of a motorcade rumbled over the rush of the river’s swift current. They were coming now. The investigation had found him. It had been dogging him for years. Ever since General Grey Hawkbill took his seat on the State Council. An enemy from his youth, Hawkbill had slowly built a case against him. Now he had enough—and these open mounds would supply much more rope for his hanging than even Hawkbill could wish for.

He kicked the wretched ground beneath his feat, but he didn’t run. Where could he go? He met the motorcade where it parked before his gate, and flung it wide to the outside. His father’s spirit was lingering close. The Admiral could sense his vindictive humor. Laughing at him.

*

A crowd milled, and finally, moved en mass toward the Great Hall for a ceremony billed as an advancement rite, though Sonia expected it to devolve into something more sinister. Eyes focused straight ahead, no one spoke.

From a loudspeaker, a low bass voice rattled off the names of the warrior youth receiving advancement. The names for penalties would follow the awards, and the ceremony would exhaust most of the day.

Two hours into the ceremony and Sonia’s name hadn’t been called, which was bad. They were saving her. The worst cases always came at the end of the assemblies. She stood behind the officers, hands in cuffs, head dizzy, triangulating what she'd done wrong. She'd been so careful, and Sergeant Bowie had named no charges. He'd simply cuffed her and dragged her into the hall.

As the assembly wound down, and the youth soldiers’ rear ends were inevitably stiff from the cold, granite seating of the theater, the bass voice paused and read one last name.

Sonia T. Edge.

This was it. She drew a breath and raised her gaze to the arena seating, filled with soldiers, staring at her. Her friends? If they ever were, they would not be now.

Colonel Rush Justis was a short man with a severely razor burned face. He grimaced at Sonia and spoke, “Other than your speed, it’s a pity you’re so useless with a weapon. You’ve no aggression. No hunger. No killing instinct. You've failed—failed your training and your country. What do you have to say? Are you Arrowan or are you enemy?”

Sonia’s knees weakened, buckled. All her effort and her green lenses hadn’t been enough to disguise her treason. “I am Arrowan!” She shouted, but her insistence sounded desperate, even to her ears.

“Prove it!”

“I’ll hunger strike!”

Rush Justis spat. “Hunger? Passive waif. Where’s your aggression! What are you going to do to show you can fight?”

She had tried to show her enthusiasm for war by pushing herself hard, but that didn't go far enough. She must bend the knee completely, reserving nothing, ergo injure someone else--a peer, or someone closer...

The Colonel spoke as though a new idea had just occurred to him, though he was always worked from a script to avoid the awkwardness of authentic thought. “You haven’t denounced your father. You’re the last in the unit not to.”

“My father is a high ranking officer in the Arrow Navy. His politics are impeccable!”

“He’s the patriarch of the old guard; we are the new. Denounce him.”

Anger bubbled up from deep within her—rash, thoughtless. She didn’t even know where it came from. “And what about my mother?” She surprised herself with the resentment in her tone.

The arena hushed at once. Sonia had spoken without thinking—spoken the unthinkable. Her mother had died a hero, her secret safely hidden in the attic nursery. Her political legacy secured by the fact that she was dead, and therefore, harmless.

The Colonel grunted. “Your mother died an honorable death. She did nothing wrong. Prove you are worthy of her. Denounce your father.”

Sonia stared at Rush Justis. Stared at all the audience of hard blue and green eyes surrounding her—challenging her, goading her to retaliate.

If she had planned to protect either of her mother or the Admiral, she planned poorly.

The Colonel nodded to the officers standing behind Sonia, and they forced her to the ground, fingers and palms upon her throat and face, searching. At last forcing her eye lids open, they spoke a curious Flintstock word phrase. Sonia gasped, her throat locking. I always knew he'd betray me someday.

The password fell from Justis's tongue cleanly, with minimal Arrow accent. At once, the lenses cooled, changed shape and fell from her eyes like scales.

The arena hushed. Blood rushed like water to Sonia’s head. Violating hands pulled her up, but her legs would not hold her. Her traitorous eyes darted around the theater.

Lungs gasped. Eyes widened in shock and fury.

At last, Sonia hung her head and forced the words across her rigid throat. “I denounce my mother as a traitor to the country! My father as an enemy sympathizer!”