Month: July 2018

We don’t go out after dark.

None of us do, no matter what kind of errand we’re on. That’s the rule. Matchbox made it in the beginning before most of the younglings had arrived. No one goes out after dark, and no one goes out alone. We all know it, and we all follow it. No exceptions.

Only it’s dark now, dusk gliding through the trees, and Matchbox isn’t back yet.

I stand at the top of the porch steps and lean against the railing, watching the road. She left an hour after dawn, when the air was still damp from the night’s rain and the sky still bruised with clouds. She had business, she told me. I asked what kind, but Matchbox is the sort to have secrets and to keep them. She doesn’t like any of us digging around beneath her cot or asking questions that run too deep. She brought us together in the beginning, when the lights in the city went out and the water stopped running. The sky turned black with smoke after the first day, and most of the city burned within the first week.

People went crazy, Matchbox told me. She said the ones that stayed in the city were stupid, and most of them were probably dead now. The city wasn’t safe for anyone decent, and she kept us as far away from it as she could, although she’d found most of us in its streets, or locked in abandoned apartment houses.

Not me, though. She found me behind a dumpster. I’d had sense enough to hide after the first riots started, and I don’t think she would have found me at all if she hadn’t been trying to hide herself.

We were the first. The rest came after, rescued from overturned school buses or dragged out of the sewers. The smaller ones, they answer to me, but I’ve always answered to Matchbox. She’s the boss, the one that always has a plan. I let her make the decisions.

Only now, she’s the one missing. And I’ve had our one rule drilled into my head so often that I don’t dare disobey it.

We don’t go out after dark, and we don’t go out alone.

The sky is red above the city, and I can smell the ash on the wind. The house we’ve been living in is white, with bushes in the front yard and a picket fence. The kitchen is empty and the lights don’t work, but it’s better than sleeping in a drainage pipe. Some of us even have beds. The rest sleep on the floor, tucked into sleeping bags and blankets that we’ve collected over the last few months. Matchbox was the one to find the house. She’d been looking after a few of the youngest got sick from sleeping outside. I couldn’t believe the house wasn’t burned yet. The door had been kicked in and all the windows were broken, but the roof was sound. Matchbox was prouder than a pigeon when she found it, and she’s fought to keep us from moving on, insisting that this may be the last place we’ll be safe.

I tried to remind her of that this morning, but she only kissed my forehead and promised she’d be back by noon. She made me swear not to come looking, and stupidly, I did.

But the trees leading to the road are black, the first stars are peeking through the clouds, and the red light over the city looks like a crack has been torn straight through to hell. So I’ll give her ten minutes. Ten more minutes before I break our first and most important rule, and go looking for her.

They bring me satins and silks, embroidered dresses and lace that’s too fine to touch, too fine to wear. We’ve put a high price on my offer of marriage, but they can pay it, these men from the south. They come with golden cloth, with silver woven into scarlet, and I watch them as they parade their wares for me to see. My uncles insist that today is a celebration, a ceremony to honor me as I choose a husband. I know better. There is no ceremony, no honor in this farce. The wares my suitors have brought are bribes, not gifts.

This is an auction, and I am the chattel being sold.

One of the men, a pale-faced Beyran from the west, takes my hand, running my fingers along the length of damask silk he’s brought. I shudder at the cold clutch of his fingers and pull my hand away, looking instead at the tamed leopard another has brought. Their eager, hungry eyes follow my every move, and I wonder privately what would happen if I allowed myself to scream the way I want to. I don’t want this. Our kingdom is desolate, our people dying. We need wealth, a savior, and these men have the means to offer it to us. But surely, surely we have something better to sell.

Something other than my body, my soul. My life. I’m a prize to be won, still young enough to be beautiful, just old enough to be desirable. They all want me as their wife. Every one of them.

I want to be sick. I want their feverish, devouring glances off of my face, and I want my palace to myself again.

I paused, running my fingers over an ivory stool, and someone pushes a length of cloth into my hands. Muslin. Muslin? It’s poor fabric, poorer than anything I’ve worn since I was a child, sneaking from my rooms to run in the streets with children who longed for freedom as much as I did.

Muslin. I would give anything to wear muslin again, to run the streets and forget my duty and my birthright.

I’ve never wanted either.

The cloth—and the memories it brings to the surface—has made me stupid. A touch on my elbow brings me back to myself, and the man who gave it to me says softly, “It’s not much of a bid, your highness, but I thought it would catch your attention, at least. What do you think?”

I choke.

Will.

I stare at him, too horrified to say anything, too ashamed to push him away and run. He takes my arm, guiding me away from the crowds, smiling disarmingly at my handlers. They’re none too happy about their prize being removed from the buyers looking her over, but the silver tattoos on his hands and shoulders buy him a moment. Wealth, especially now, means everything. He pulls me out onto the terrace, into the cool wind that smells of rain and dust from the plains, and smiles at me. “Enjoying your auction? I must say, you have some tempting offers.”

I color. Only he would have to courage—the audacity—to call the ‘ceremony’ inside what it really is. It’s been fifteen years since I’ve seen him, fifteen years since we ran the streets together. A wealthy robber’s brat and a starving prince’s daughter. The beggar with the blue blood, he used to call me. I loved him then, for his bold tongue and his cheeky smile, but he’d disappeared, leaving me to my hell, and I’d never really forgiven him for it. “All of them more tempting than a bolt of muslin,” I tell him archly, hearing years of bitterness behind the words.

He feigns a hurt look. “You don’t like my gift?”

“Not particularly.” He would believe me, I think, if my face wasn’t so red. “I don’t like having my time wasted.”

“Ah.” He glances at the curtained doorway, a frown furrowing his dark brow. “Then you are not going to particularly appreciate what’s about to happen next.”

As if in response to his words, an explosion rocks the terrace, and the curtains between me and my potential suitors catch fire. Women begin to scream from the courtyard below, and I hear the frantic shouting of men who know they are about to lose all the wealth they’ve brought so very far. Will jerks me away from the door, pulling to the far side of the terrace, and utters a piercing whistle. When it’s answered from the ground he looks at me. “That’s my part done. Shall we leave it at robbery, or would you like me to add kidnapping to my list of crimes?”

I freeze, a thousand thoughts racing through my head in a single heartbeat, and hear myself say firmly, even before I’ve really made up my mind, “Kidnapping. Definitely.”

He grins, suddenly looking less like a robber and more like the boy I knew. “Perfect. After you, your highness.”