Rhian

Turns out, this storytelling business isn’t as easy as beginning at the beginning. If anyone’s ever told you so, they’re liars and you can go ahead and quote Rhian Sinclair. I can’t promise you pretty. I can’t even promise you specific. But I’m good for the story and that should be good enough.

I would start on the day I was born, but I don’t rightfully remember it. Also, I don’t reckon it was all that interesting apart from it happening in the middle of the sea. Afore you get carried away, I’m not some half-woman, half-fish. Just had a mum who couldn’t hold me in any longer. Truth is, I don’t remember much after that, neither.

Greatest time of our bleeding lives and we haven’t got a clue.

“There’s something shiny in that there pile of shite,” we might have said, and it might have been the best something shiny we’d ever seen until it happens and we stop seeing the shiny in all the shite.

I only know that time exists on account of I’ve been around a lot of kids. And Feargus.

Right. After all the things I don’t remember, there was the orphanage in Stracha. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Stracha is one of Auditoria's six territories. It produced the small folk like me and Gus—and Gus is short for Feargus in case you hadn’t sorted that out.

Look, I'm trying to get this backstory horseshite out of the way so we can get to the good stuff, all right?

Anyhow. Our caretaker at the orphanage treated us all right, even if the other kids didn’t. She was a classy lady. Growing up, we knew we were different. Never mind we could run like the wind and jump six feet in the air, it was all about our eyes—grey and not green like the rest. “The eye-pluckers are gonna pluck your eyes,” the other kids would say. We reckoned it was probably true, but being fast and springy couldn’t possibly have anything to do with our eyes. Must’ve been born lucky.

Those eye-pluckers would have nothing on us.

But then they came.

A pair of fast, springy, grey-eyed heroes spared us from the eye-pluckers, and lo and behold, we weren’t so different, were we? So, there was Palisade. But there was still Gus. And then there was training, and then there was work. Lots of bloody work. Bottom line: it was two against the goddess-be-damned world until we met Michael Reider along the way. Hit him in the face with a door on the way to class one day.

He took it like a champ, and we were fast friends.

Andrei Strauss came around a few years later. Kept each other company all those days and nights locked up in solitary. Pain in the arse. Sometimes he drove me mad most of the time. The rest of the time I imagined him naked.

The truth is, I was relieved he was leaving Palisade for good. All those days and nights spent talking through walls, we might have accidentally fallen a bit in love. Of all the things we did talk about, we never talked about that.

It was complicated.

On the day Strauss took his vows, we stopped by his room to say goodbye. I held my place on the corner of his desk after everyone had gone, taking sips from the big green bottle of make-the-pain-go-away juice.

What you don't know is how the rest of our conversation went. Reckon I should pick up where he left off.

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“Maybe one day I’ll swing by that church of yours," I said.

“Do the Strachan often get deployed to Amalia?”

In case you’re a rock-person, Amalia’s another of Auditoria's six territories. Also, Strauss had a point. He knew we didn’t, so I could’ve said, “No,” and he would’ve said, “Exactly,” and our chat would’ve ended afore I wanted it to.

“Gus will make it happen,” I said instead. Gus was brilliant at making things happen.

“Then I’ll look forward to seeing him while you remain here at Palisade,” Strauss replied. “Landlocked.”

“Right,” I said. “Landlocked on account of you.”

“Not exactly,” he lied.

“Aye, exactly,” I didn’t.

“No.”

“Aye.”

“Sinclair, why are you still here?”

Truth is, he knew why I was still there. But it's like I said: we didn't talk about it. Now, seeing as it might have been the last time we saw each other, I could've said something sweet, but I didn't. The last time I did that, things got out of hand.

“Dinner is probably poisoned and I haven’t got anything better to do?” I said instead.

Strauss raised an eyebrow. He had the talent for it. Also, he had nice eyes. Not too round or big for the face like mine.

“What sane reason would the Assembly have to poison our meals?”

“Death is bad for business," I said. "I reckon it’s some kind of undetectable mind control poison.”

“Undetectable mind control poison?”

“Aye.”

“You are deluded.”

“And are you aware I’ve got a freckle shaped like an S on my big toe? See now that’s just pure luck on account of my surname—”

“Stop.” Strauss was annoyed. He was so bloody lovely when he was annoyed. “Have you ever shown me your feet?”

“No.”

“Then there’s absolutely no way I’d know about the freckle.”

“What about the time we bunked in Delphia?" I asked. "I can’t be entirely sure you didn’t peek.”

“You can’t be entirely sure I didn’t peek at your feet?”

“Aye.”

“On the word of the Blessed Mother of Might, Sinclair, I did not peek at your feet. Point, please?”

He’d already proved the point, but I hopped down from the desk, trotted on forward, and tilted my head way the hells back. It’d be tough to forget the way he smelled that day. Like cinnamon and musty books. It was the way he smelled on all the days.

“The point is, Strauss,” I hissed. (Go on, give it a try.) “You. Don’t. Know. Everything.”

He did the eyebrow thing again.

“There’s a good reason Councilwoman Kelly doesn’t send us Strachan anywhere near Amalia. See, she prefers us alive and still sane. Soon you’re gonna see it for yourself, and even then—questions after answers after more questions until death decides it was all for nothing—you still won’t know the half of it. So stop pretending you already do. And if you’re hungry, I’ve got plenty of snacks in my satchel courtesy of anywhere but here.”

I might have been exaggerating a little. Or a lot. Or not. Nobody could be halfway sure about any of the rumours around Amalia, only that a lot of us Partisans never came back. And as far as those who did? Palisade had the asylum for them.

Strauss smiled because he knew I was right.

And then I remembered I was gonna miss him, and then I felt sick like a punch to the gut.

I’ve taken enough to say so.

Pain in the arse.