As the minister droned on, Priscilla elbowed my ribs. “Braeden keeps looking at you, Rayne.”
I glanced over. Braeden smiled. He mouthed something, but I didn’t catch it—I was too busy looking at that sad twist of a smile. Maybe there was still time. Maybe I could—
But I couldn’t. It was done.
The minister had now begun the history lesson, just in case we’d somehow forgotten how we all got here.
“The end began when the world discovered the existence of supernatural beings. Witches, sorcerers, vampires, werewolves, and others, all living among us. When they were revealed, the natural order was destroyed forever, and the very earth revolted. Famines, earthquakes, tsunamis . . .
“Then those supernatural beings decided that infiltrating our world was not enough. They needed to infiltrate our very selves. They convinced scientists to modify ordinary humans with supernatural DNA, promising superior soldiers for our wars against those who sought to take our food supplies and our habitable land.
“And so we took refuge in our fortresses, where we continued to live as civilized beings, protected from the Outside. Yet even here, we are constantly under siege from another threat, equally dangerous. Overpopulation. That is why—”
The classroom door flew open. Two regulators burst in, one armed with a cudgel; the other, a syringe.
“Braeden Smith,” barked the cudgel-wielding one.
Every kid surrounding Braeden stumbled over himself getting away—chairs toppling, desks scraping the wooden floor—until Braeden was alone. He rose slowly, hands instinctively going to the pockets of his grease-and-soot-streaked trousers, then thinking better of it and lifting them.
“Is this about the Fourth’s horse?” he asked. “He says my father didn’t shoe it properly but—”
“Braeden Smith.” The regulator with the cudgel walked toward Braeden. “You are hereby charged with breaking the First Law of the fortress.” The whispers and gasps of the students almost drowned out his next words. “You have been accused of having supernatural blood. Werewolf blood. You will be taken to the stocks and watched for signs—”
“What? No! I’m not a—”
The regulator grabbed Braeden by the arm and twisted it, but Braeden broke free. He looked around, as if lost, then his gaze fell on me. He let out a snarl and flew at me. I stood my ground as Priscilla and the other girls ran, shrieking.
“You did this!” Braeden said as he charged. “You treacherous bitch!”
I made a move to dive for safety, but he grabbed me in a headlock, still ranting as I struggled. The regulator with the syringe crept up behind Braeden. As he injected him, Braeden stiffened. His hand dropped to mine. A quick squeeze. Then he hit the floor, unconscious.
A day later, they had their proof. Braeden had transformed into a wolf. We’d known he would. Braeden had grown up on the Outside and knew the gene ran in his family. As with most supernatural powers, it left whole generations untouched. We had hoped it would pass Braeden. It didn’t.
On the day of his branding, nearly everyone in the fortress crowded into the square. I read once about hangings in the Old World, how people would watch with great delight and baskets of food. There was no joy here, certainly no feasting. We came because if we did not, then someone—a regulator, a minister, a prefect—might notice our absence and decide we were not as committed to the laws as we should be. Or, worse, that we had cause to fear the same fate for ourselves.
They’d given me a place of honor, on the raised platform with the First’s and Second’s families. As Priscilla clutched my hand, I noticed her mother frown, but Priscilla’s chin shot up in a rare show of defiance, and she held my hand tighter. Her father noticed and nodded, first at me, then at her. She glowed at his approval.
Priscilla and I had always been schoolmates, but now that she believed I’d informed on a werewolf, I had risen to the status of friend. Friends with the Second’s daughter. How my mother would laugh if she were here to see it. No, she wouldn’t laugh. She’d rub her hands and plot how to use it to her advantage. That’s what it was all about in the fortress—getting ahead, surviving and thriving.
For my mother, surviving had meant accepting life as a whore. It’s a real job in the fortress, just like a blacksmith or a doctor or a farmer, and it’s considered just as necessary for the stability of the community. She accepted it. I wouldn’t. There were other ways to survive, if you were willing to take chances, including the chance that you wouldn’t survive.
They led Braeden out. He’d been stripped to the waist, his feet bare, his trousers even filthier than they had been when the regulators had taken him in. His face was unshaven, dark shadow on his cheeks; his hair unwashed, falling over his face. Making him look like an animal. See? This is what we saved you from.
I looked at his chest—the lean muscles, the old scars, the healed burns—and remembered all the nights lying in our cubbyhole, touching him, whispering with him. There were new marks now, lash welts crisscrossing every inch of bare skin.
“They’ll beat me, Rayne,” he’d warned. “You need to be ready for that.”
“I know.”
I tried not to see the welts, but of course I did, and the rage built inside me until Priscilla’s hand twisted in mine. I realized I was clutching too tight and loosened my grip.
Taking deep breaths, I forced myself to look at the figure on the stage and see another Braeden. To see the boy who’d been bought from the Outsiders to replace the blacksmith’s dead son.
In the fortress, couples are allowed only one child. If that child dies, they can have another baby, but that isn’t a solution for someone like the blacksmith, who needed a replacement for the strong, healthy ten-year-old son who’d been his apprentice.
The day that Braeden was brought in, everyone had again found an excuse to be in the square. They’d ogled the boy, who’d looked much as he did now—barefoot and filthy. They’d whispered about his eyes, how savage he looked, how angry, how dangerous. But I hadn’t seen anger—I’d seen terror.
I remembered him again, at twelve. A prefect’s son and his friend had cornered me behind the schoolhouse and decided that since I was going to be a whore someday, I should be willing to take off my shirt for a credit, and if I wasn’t, then they’d take it off without paying the credit. Braeden came around the corner and sent them scattering with an ease that made my weak kicks and punches look like the struggles of an infant. I’d asked him for lessons in fighting and said I’d pay. He’d said he didn’t need that kind of pay, and I’d lost my temper, snarling that I wasn’t a whore and when I said pay, I meant credits. He’d been amused, I think. But he agreed. Only he wouldn’t trade for credits—he wanted me to teach him something: how to read and write.
When they lifted the brand, I was thinking of Braeden again, at fourteen, the first time he kissed me. I tried to focus on the memory, but I could smell the fire and see the glowing metal.
“The brand is nothing,” he’d said. “I’ve had worse burns. You know that.”
I’d seen those burns. Some accidental. Some not. Mr. Smith might call Braeden his son, but he slept in the barn and worked from sunrise to sunset, and if he didn’t do a good enough job, he’d be beaten, sometimes burned.
Yet this was different. I saw that glowing metal coming toward Braeden’s back, and I had to drop Priscilla’s hand before I squeezed hard enough to break bones. I gripped my legs instead, my fingers digging in.
The brand sizzled as the metal touched his back. His body convulsed. I swore I smelled the stink of burning flesh. He didn’t cry out, though. They always cried out, even the grown men, sometimes dropping to their knees, howling and weeping. But after that first flinch, Braeden stood firm, gaze straight ahead, biting his lip until blood trickled down his chin.
Next the regulator pressed soot into the wound. That’s when Braeden almost lost it. His eyes bulged with agony, and tears streamed down his cheeks. His gaze rolled my way. His eyes met mine and he mou
thed, “Just a burn,” before looking away again.
“He saw you,” Priscilla whispered. “He said something.”
“Cursing me to a thousand hells, I’m sure,” I said, my voice thick.
She put a thin arm around my shoulders. “You did the right thing. Can you imagine if no one had discovered him? A werewolf?” She shuddered. “The last werewolf in the fortress ate three children before he was caught.”
I doubted it. I’d been with Braeden when he changed to a wolf, and he’d never even nipped at me. Priscilla’s story was an old one, passed down as an example of how horrible supernaturals could be and why they must be rooted out at all costs. There probably had been a werewolf. And children might have died in the years leading up to his discovery, but that was hardly unheard of in the fortress. Disease and death stalked the young and old here. It grew worse with every passing year, as supplies and food sources dwindled.
There were no words after the branding. The charges and the sentence had been read beforehand. Now all that remained was the final part of that sentence. The casting out.
A horse-drawn cart waited beside the stage. The regulators prodded Braeden toward it. When he gazed about, as if blinded and befuddled by pain, they gave him a tremendous shove off the stage, and he hit the cart with a thud, crumpling at the bottom. A regulator jumped in after him and forced him to stand. It took a moment for Braeden to get himself steady—there was a post in the cart, where they often had to tie the convicted to keep him upright—but Braeden managed it and stood there as he had on the stage, gaze forward, expression blank.
The crowd followed in a procession behind the cart. Now there was a little spring in their steps. This was the part they looked forward to, as they jostled and jockeyed for a spot near the front. Not to watch a convict cast out. Again, that struck a little too close to everyone’s gravest fear. But they were about to see a sight they’d talk about for days. The Outside.
The cart rolled along the dusty streets, past the wooden buildings. Children too young to watch the branding leaned out the open windows. Mothers tugged at the children, but only halfheartedly. It wasn’t a sight for a child, but fortress life would be better and easier if they understood the alternative.
The cart stopped at the gates, and the regulator took longer than necessary fussing with the locks, making people stamp and twitch and whisper with excitement. I pulled my gaze from Braeden’s whip-striped back and looked up at the structure that kept us safe.
The walls of the fortress stretched twenty feet in the air. Our buildings might rot and list, but no expense would be spared for this wall. Voyager parties traveled for days and lost members to the hybrids and the tribes, all to bring back wood to repair the wall. Sixteen feet up there was a platform that stretched around the perimeter. Guards patrolled it at all times. One was permanently stationed at the gates, bearing one of the few guns we still had from the Old World.
As the gates began to open, Priscilla gripped my arm, her hands trembling.
“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “We’re safe here.”
That was the point. That was what this drama was all about. As those gates swung open, there was a collective gasp. A few women who’d fought to the front now shrieked and pressed back into the crowd. Men snorted at their cowardice, but even they shrank as the gates swung open to reveal . . .
Nothing.
That’s what you saw at first. That’s what was so terrifying. The gates opened, and you looked out to see miles of barren, rock-strewn dirt, stretching in every direction.
The sun beat down, baking and cracking the earth. It was so bright that it took a moment for your eyes to adjust. Then you noticed the plain was not empty. Far to the left, there was a mountain, dark with trees and capped with snow. To the right rose a thin ribbon of smoke. You didn’t need to wonder what was at the base. Not a bonfire—no Outsider would be so foolish as to announce his presence with that much smoke. It was a camp, now burning. Torched.
Braeden told me once about coming across a burned camp, back when he was with the tribe. They’d seen the smoke and gone to it, holding back and sending scouts until they were sure the raiding party had left. Then they’d swooped in for the scraps the raiders hadn’t wanted, bits of fur or wood left unscorched. They’d ransacked the bodies, too, taking whatever they could from the corpses of those too proud or too foolish to flee when the raiders sounded their horn.
“We didn’t take the bodies,” Braeden had said. “Sometimes the elders argued about that. Other tribes took them. For meat.”
I remembered how disgusted I’d been. I remembered how angry Braeden got.
“You don’t understand what it’s like out there, Rayne. You do what you have to. I really don’t want to eat another person, but if it was that or starve . . .”
He was right, of course. Later I found out that, sometimes, in the long winter, when someone died in the fortress, their body wasn’t taken out to be burned. People did what they had to, and it was no different in here than it was out there.
There were piles of bones on the landscape, too. We sent out voyagers to scavenge those when one of the craftsmen needed material, but we didn’t bother storing any. The piles weren’t going anywhere, and space inside was already at a premium.
Off to the far left there was a body not yet reduced to bones. Carrion eaters attempted to remedy that, silently ripping flesh from the corpse. From the looks of the body, it had been a hybrid, I could no longer tell what kind. Maybe part bull or part bear or part cat. Those were common ones.
The hybrids were the end result of the overreaching ambition that began with the supernaturals. The minister taught us that supernaturals had convinced us to use their DNA, but Braeden’s family told him it had been the humans’ idea. They’d rounded up the supernaturals and taken that DNA. The scientists had started with careful, controlled studies, but then the wars for food and land broke out, and there wasn’t time for caution.
Eventually they decided there was no need to limit themselves to creating ultrapowerful werewolf soldiers or spell-casting assassins. If they could use the DNA of supernaturals, could they use animals, too? That was near the end of the Old World, when the situation was so dire that no one cared about limits. So they created hybrids. Then the Great Storms came and the Final War came, and when it ended, the hybrids and modified supernaturals broke out of captivity and fought back. It took only a few years for the first fortress to rise, shielding a small group of uninfected humans against that endless wasteland overrun with hybrids and roving bands of survivalists.
That’s where Braeden was born. Out there. When he was five, his parents had been killed by hybrids. He’d survived and been found by a tribe of wanderers. They’d taken him in—as a slave whose job was to roam from camp and attract any nearby hybrids so that his tribe could kill them for meat.
So Braeden knew the hybrids better than any fortress dweller. We were told they were just animals with humanoid features, but he said they could be as cunning as humans, setting traps and raiding camps. Some even had language. The point of the lie was to convince us they weren’t human so that we wouldn’t feel guilty when we slaughtered and ate them.
The hybrid rotting outside our gates hadn’t accidentally perished there. I’d heard the shot two days ago. It had ventured too close to the fortress, and a guard had killed it. The carcass would warn others away. To me, that proved the hybrids had some human intelligence.
When the gates opened, the regulators drove the cart through, then stopped just past the walls. By now, Braeden had recovered enough to walk on his own. Once he was out of the cart, the driver led the horses to the side, and two regulators flanked Braeden as the First stepped from the edge of the crowd and solemnly walked toward him. A young prefect followed.
The elderly First stopped in front of Braeden.
“Braeden Smith,” he said in his reedy voice. “You have been found to possess werewolf blood, which has been proven to manifest itself in the form of
a physical transformation. For this, you must be cast from the fortress. However, in recognition of the fact that you have been an otherwise loyal and productive member of the community—and that this curse comes through no fault of your own—this is not a sentence of execution. We hope that you will find your place in the Outside. To that end, we will provide you with the tools necessary to do so.”
He motioned to the young prefect, who stepped forward and handed him a dagger, the metal flashing in the sunlight.
“A weapon for defense.”
He dropped it at Braeden’s feet. A small bow followed.
“A weapon for hunting.”
A filled skin and a bound package.
“Water and food.”
Another parcel.
“Clothing and shoes.”
Finally, a bag.
“And a pack with which to carry it. You are young and strong, Braeden Smith, and I trust that you will not perish in this harsh land. Go forth with our gifts. And do not return.”
Everyone waited for the inevitable final outcry from the convicted. Some attacked the First, and their exile turned into a speedy execution. Some raged and had to be forcibly dragged into the Outside. Most dropped to the First’s feet, wailing and begging, promising anything, should they be permitted to stay.
Braeden bent and picked up the shoes first. He put them on. Then he stuffed the food, the waterskin, and the rest of the clothing into the pack. He slung the bow over his shoulder. When he reached for the knife, the First tensed, but he could not recoil, could not show fear. Braeden picked up the knife, thrust it into the discarded sheath, fastened it to his belt, and hefted the pack. Then, without a glance at the First or the fortress, he began to walk into the Outside, bloody soot falling from his branded back in a trail behind him.