Chapter 53
Saffron
Saffron hated leaving Jane to fight her battles alone, but she hated having to walk back through Wall into Elysium City even more. Entering the City was actually fairly simple—the Directorate wanted people inside and away from the farms. Leaving might get you shot, but arriving got you a microchip bracelet for the Rings, a supply of protein bars, and a room in a flat in the Core.
But despite that, Ferals would definitely be questioned and detained, at the very least. But if they entered as prisoners, they couldn’t be captured. Caradoc walked ahead, the coyotes attached to a makeshift leash in his hand. It had taken nearly an hour to convince the Ferals not to command them to bite his face off.
Saffron shoved the leaf mask in her pack but she still felt unbearably exposed. Her head was suddenly vulnerable, breakable. Somewhere along the way, a clutch of weeds and thistles had become her shield. The Protectorate uniform she’d stolen from Killian’s sister itched. Light glinted off the barbed wire, sparking here and there when electricity surged too quickly along the lines.
The Ferals clumped together, surrounded by the Greencoats in their stolen uniforms.
“Badlands10-15, code RedC12.” Caradoc shouted up at the towers. “Feral prisoners, so don’t keep me waiting.”
The gates opened. Saffron shifted, her grip on of her pack tightening protectively. Roarke stood with his rifle set against his shoulder. One of the soldiers whistled. “I’ve never seen that many Ferals.” He leered at Shanti’s legs, outlined by his flashlight in her sand-coloured dress. He had no idea he was even now cheating death.
“We’re expected,” Caradoc said. More flashlights tracked them, noting uniform tags, rifles, coyote teeth.
“There’s no transport,” someone said to Caradoc.
“There’s not meant to be,” he replied. “We have our orders, soldier, and they don’t involve parading through the streets to make a target of ourselves.”
Heart hammering, Saffron forced herself to walk calmly and confidently. She hoped fervently and fiercely that no one noticed the trees growing right over their heads. An acorn dropped on the soldier’s head, and he looked up annoyed. The leaves rustled, glossy in the artificial light.She hadn’t exactly had much time to meditate. Everyone was always shooting at them.
Still, she’d managed to make that bridge out of branches. She was improving. She slipped her fingers into the top of her pack, touching a bristle of burrs. “Stop it,” she murmured.
The soldier was still frowning up into the oak. The wind moved the leaves but they didn’t respond, didn’t multiply or start to flower. He turned away, uninterested. “Curfew in effect until the Trials,” he said. “You shouldn’t have any trouble. Stay out of the Amphitheatre district though, there are Cerberus on patrol.”
Caradoc nodded and then signalled sharply to the rest of them. They moved instantly and precisely, like any Protectorate unit. Saffron had seen enough parade drills to know how it was done. And if she was still muttering curses and imagining winter magic to keep the trees quiet, no one had to know. They marched like that for three more blocks until she said “Left here.”
Saffron took point. She knew the streets better than Caradoc who been gone for years. Whatever he felt at being back was well camouflaged by his usual calm and competent demeanor. The Ferals ran carefully, more accustomed to leaping crevices than a steady pace. Cats streaked by, hissing at the foreign scent of coyotes. A few windows glowed with the distinctly acidic light of a sunstick but mostly it was dark and silent. She almost wished it was raining again, it would have added a layer of sound to hide them. She took them into the alley set up for the rebel-meet. Elysium City was the same—it still stank of horse manure, mud, and metal. But at least tucked into the shadows, she could breathe again.
“Saffron.”
Saffron wondered if she was hallucinating. Perhaps she’d fallen asleep standing up. Or maybe being electrocuted and walking for days and using the leaf mask had left lasting damage. Nothing else could explain how Killian was standing in front of her.
And speaking her name.
She’d never heard his voice before. It was soft and hoarse, like an animal too long in hiding. He looked the same, if a little leaner. He still had a katana at his shoulder, but more knives at his belt. There was a fresh scar on his jaw, by his right ear.
“It’s really you,” she blurted out, right before launching herself at him. They hit the brick wall, Saffron laughing like a hyena.
“You’re crushing my spleen,” Killian said fondly.
She knew she was beaming like a child sitting on a mountain of candy. “Killian.” She shook her head, as if it would help her make sense of the surprise. Small broken parts of her that she hadn’t even noticed were suddenly mended. “What are you doing here? Not that I care. But what? How?”
“I’m here for Caradoc. I was hoping you’d be here too.”
“I’m Caradoc,” Roarke said, as he’d said to her and Jane when he’d found them in the woods. He was Caradoc’s shield, a clever misdirection. She understood the need for it, but this was Killian.
“You are not,” she said.
Roarke hissed out a breath. “Saffron.”
“Well, you aren’t. And this isn’t some stranger. I’ve known Killian my whole life. I taught him how to scale the rope bridges.”
“You pushed me off.”
“One time!” Killian chuckled and she couldn’t help but stare. “How is it you talk now?”
“I could always speak,” he said softly. “I chose not to.”
“Why?”
“Later, Saf,” he said. “I’m the rebel guide. We need to get off the streets.”
“You’re with the rebels now?” she demanded. “Oh, Killian, I knew you’d get yourself into trouble without me.” He just shot her a look, one so familiar that she instantly wanted to sketch it. He pulled pointedly at one of the purple thistles in her hair. “Hey, the leaf mask wasn’t my idea. And I’m staying out of trouble.” Roarke snorted so hard she nearly asked him if he was having sort of seizure.
“I need the password,” Killian said quietly. “From the real Caradoc.”
“You say you’re with the rebels?” Caradoc stepped forward. “Prove it.”
“You say you’re Caradoc,” Killian returned. “Prove it.”
“You first.” Roarke’s hand hovered over his knife. Saffron scowled at him, trying to silently tell him to stop being such an ass. He didn’t appear to get her message.
Killian murmured a list of letters that made no sense, so softly Saffron couldn’t quite make it out. The set of Caradoc’s shoulder relaxed. He leaned forward and whispered something in Killian’s ear but try as she might, Saffron couldn’t make it out either. And working voice box or not, she knew Killian would never tell her. He took things like loyalty and secrets very seriously. She was happy enough to see him that she found it mildly endearing. That part wouldn’t last.
‘This way,” Killian said. She was a little disgusted when he led them through a door she had passed by dozens of times with no idea that rebels lived nearby. They went up two floors, crossed a rope bridge, and down into the atrium of what had once been a shopping centre. It was all cracked glass and dusty tiles and escalators that hadn’t moved since before Saffron was born. “You’re staring at me,” Killian murmured.
“I’m afraid if I blink, you’ll disappear.”
A walkway took them to an old subway entrance, boarded up and rigged with Directorate explosives. Killian ignored it, turning right and then back outside into another alley. The route was so circuitous, even Saffron grew disoriented, which she supposed was the point. They finally squeezed through a door hidden behind a dumpster that smelled so strongly of ammonia and rot that she had to hold the edge of her sleeve to her nose. Killian shrugged. “The smell keeps people out,” he explained, making some signal to a rebel Saffron couldn’t see.
Like the underground markets, the rebels lived
in the subway tunnels, only they chose to go much deeper. Saffron walked close to Killian, dropping her voice low. “Tell me everything,” she demanded.
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “I missed you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She poked him with one of the arrows. “You owe me years of talking. So talk. You can start with Titus and the rebels,” she suggested drily. “Because, really?”
“This from the girl hanging out with Cartimandua’s little brother.”
“Yeah, that’s just weird,” Saffron agreed. “And yet I trust him.”
“That’s even weirder,” Killian teased. “The mask really has changed you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I was kidding.” He touched the side of her wrist when she wouldn’t look at him, would only stare blindly at her boots marching forward. “Hey.”
She shrugged one shoulder awkwardly. She didn’t actually want to talk about it or hug it out or whatever. It had just slipped out. “I didn’t want to bow to the Directorate,” she said. “And I don’t want to bow to a sprig of leaves either.”
“You’re still you,” Killian said.
“How can you know that?” Damn it, she was talking about it.
“Because I know you, Saffron.”
“Have you seen Oona?”
“Last week. She lectured me on not getting enough sunlight.”
“Good.” She had to ask even though she didn’t particularly care. “Your mom? Brothers?”
“Same,” he said. “Don’t make the face.”
“I can’t help it.” She did try though, just a little. “How are they taking your defection to the rebels?”
“They think I’m dead.”
She pushed a clump of burrs off her brow. They prickled at her fingertips. “Why?”
“I faked my own death,” he admitted. “So they wouldn’t have to pay for my choices.”
“Your brothers should at least pay for theirs,” she muttered. They walked on, the silence stretching on, comfortable and familiar. “So you’re as chatty as ever, then?” Saffron said.
“It still hurts my throat,” he admitted. “And people talk all of the time without saying anything at all. It’s exhausting.”
“I’m not people,” Saffron said with mock indignation. “There’s no need to be insulting.”
“Why did you stop talking in the first place?” Her hand twitched to grab at him in case he decided to make a run for it. She’d stopped bugging him to talk he day he walked away from her and disappeared into the Rings for three days and nights. When he only shrugged, she relaxed slightly. “It’s about your dad, isn’t it?”
He nodded. She waited for approximately twelve seconds then sighed. “I’m going to need actual words here, Kill.”
He smiled slightly. It was almost as good as a speech. Almost.
“My dad hanged himself when I was seven,” he said. She’d known that already.
“He worked as a scientist for the Directorate. He did mostly genetic manipulation, stuff with the Dryads and the bonebirds. Until they moved him to the chemical unit, before I was even born. He showed an ‘aptitude’. He was one of the first to work on the Dust.”
That part was new to her.
She just couldn’t picture Killian’s idiot brothers with that kind of genetic background. She’d always assumed they’d been some kind of failed experiment with feral rats. Actually, that theory was still sound.
“But when they started to use the Dust on the suburbs, on people, he protested.”
Even that many years ago, that wouldn’t have gone over well. “So he didn’t hang himself, he was killed.”
Killian put down the bow. “No, he killed himself. It was the only way he could think of to prove to the Directorate that he wasn’t a threat, that his family should be spared.” Saffron could think of half a dozen ways off the top of her head but she didn’t say so. She thought of Jane as well, and went cold. “We were kicked out of the Enclave and moved into the City.”
“You were Enclave?” That was frankly as shocking as anything.
“Yeah. And when I found his body, I knew enough to keep quiet. Literally.”
“You stopped talking that day.”
“Not entirely. Just enough to make them think I was too damaged to worry about.” He met her eyes. “I stopped talking the day I met you.”
She tilted her head. It felt too full and too full of rage over seven-year-old Killian. “Why?”
“Because I knew you mattered, even then,” he quirked a small smile. “And I knew within five minutes of meeting you that you were all mouth. You’d have set off all the Directorate alarms.”
She couldn’t actually dispute that. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You get used to it.”
She hugged him fiercely. “You can stop protecting me now, dumbass.” She said into his ear. “I can take care of myself. I’m not seven anymore.”
He hugged her back, his arms sliding around her waist. They walked for a few more minutes before they finally reached the rebel headquarters, which was just an abandoned platform, like the markets. It had a small kitchen, with chairs and tables and weapons. Wooden bridges led to the other side which was mostly cots and hammocks. Saffron peered down the dark tunnel dubiously. “Remember when those soldiers found the market that one time?”
“Tunnels have conveniently caved in on both sides,” Killian assured her. “And we post better guards than the markets. We got this, Saffron.”
Kilian was greeted warmly, and Saffron wondered abruptly if he would consider returning with her to the forest, or choose to stay with the rebels. She liked them a little less for it. “Welcome,” said a man with a sword on one hip and a taser on the other. “I’m Titus.”
Saffron recognized him. She and Killian had watched him save the blue-haired boy from the Taggers from their balcony. Caradoc introduced himself before Roarke could claim is identity.
“Finally, we meet in person,” Titus said genially. Despite it all he looked strangely fatherly, at least ten years older than Caradoc and with an arm slung over the shoulders of the girl who had helped him in the alley that night. “My daughter Vix.” She was short, pale from living underground but also sharp as a blade. She and the others couldn’t help staring at the Ferals.
When Titus noticed, he ordered them to clear out. They shuffled away reluctantly, the hammocks swaying overhead. “We don’t get a lot of visitors,” Titus told the Ferals. He was friendlier than Caradoc but he had the same worry lines at the corners of his eyes. She trusted it more than his smile.
Still, she kept the leaf mask hidden inside her jacket.