Page 11
Clara dropped her head back, letting her hair fall away from her face. Her eyes were glassy. “So it is happening. All the rumors are true. ”
“I promise I won’t let anything happen to you,” I said, unable to confirm it.
“How long has it been?” She shook her head. “Did you ever cut contact with the dissidents?”
I let out a breath, trying to stop the trembling in my hands. “There’s a contact in the Palace who will find you when it happens. Your mother and Charles, too. Wait for him. ”
She leaned forward and the tears came fast, touching down on the marble table. I rested my hand on her wrist and squeezed, trying to tell her everything unsaid. I won’t let them hurt you. I wanted to move my chair beside her, to fold my arms around her shoulders, pulling her to me. But it was too risky here. It would be too obvious she was crying, and then there would be questions.
I studied the wisps of fine hair that always framed Clara’s face even though her mother tried desperately to smooth them back with hairspray. Her nose was a little turned up at the end. It could be months until I was back inside the City. I wanted to fix her in my mind in a way I hadn’t with Arden or Pip. Now they appeared most vividly in dreams. When I tried to remember something more specific—a gesture, the sound of their voice—I couldn’t. It kept getting harder, the months passing quickly without word from them. I thought of taking a photo of Clara, maybe one of us that had run in the newspaper in the past weeks, my arm threaded through hers as we walked in the Palace gardens.
Tonight, at my final meeting with Moss, I’d make sure they were kept safe.
Clara swiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “This is going to sound crazy,” she started.
“Try me . . . ”
At that her lips twisted into a half smile. “The girls my age who weren’t orphaned were never exactly keen on spending time with the King’s niece. They used to say I was stuck-up. ”
I smiled, remembering the first time I met Clara, how she’d given me a quick, discerning once-over, assessing my shoes, my hair, and my dress as though it were on one of the shop mannequins. “Nooo,” I joked. “I don’t believe it. ”
Clara smoothed down the thin braid that held back her hair. “Maybe I’m not so surprised,” she said. “But now I can’t imagine things without you. ”
In the days after the wedding, Clara had been the one who’d brought my meals into the suite, when I refused to see anyone else. Those first weeks she’d never once spoken about Charles, no matter how strange it must’ve been to see him married, to have to look on and smile as he swore himself to me. Instead she curled up beside me, her hand on my back as I recounted what had happened to Caleb.
“I’ll see you again,” I said, but even then I knew how hard it would be.
She wiped her eyes. “You’re feeling better?” she asked, her gaze dropping for a moment to my midsection.
“It comes and goes. ” I tried not to look at the half-eaten sandwiches on her plate, where a pale piece of chicken lay exposed, the meat and mayonnaise taking on a heavy, sickening smell.
“And Caleb?” she asked.
I moved my plate to the edge of the table, away from me. Lately I didn’t talk about him as much, realizing it was impossible for anyone to understand what I felt. That was what I remembered most about the days after he died—the obligatory How are you?s that were everywhere in the City. Moss and Clara had asked with clear intentions, but even the simplest transactions—the opening of a door, the purchase of something within the Palace mall—would elicit them, the innocent, easy question taking on more weight. With each answer I was pushed further into grief, the small, empty responses making me feel more alone in my loneliness.
“That comes and goes, too,” I said.
“My mother said they’ll know by tonight,” Clara went on. “About the King. ”
She paused, waiting for my reply, but I just shook my head. “I can’t discuss it,” I whispered, my gaze darting across the roof. Both soldiers were standing now, their hands shielding their eyes as they looked out, over the City. A few people at the surrounding tables rose from their chairs, trying to see what they saw.
I followed their gaze beyond the wall. In the dwindling light it was hard to decipher, but one pointed to an area of sand-covered buildings. The radio at his belt crackled. For the first time I noticed that the top of the Stratosphere tower had changed colors, a red, pulsing light appearing at the tip of the needle.
Something between the buildings moved. The shadows on the ground changed as the men darted from one building to the next. They couldn’t have been more than a half-mile beyond the City. Maybe less. I leaned in, trying to alert Clara, when the first shots sounded. An explosion went off on the other side of the wall, the smoke black, billowing up in a thick, rippling stream.
The woman beside us pointed to the southern Outlands. Figures darted down the street, scanning the buildings for soldiers. Even from up high we could see their arms outstretched and hear the popping sound of gunfire as they moved swiftly toward the center of the City. “They are inside the walls,” she said. “They’ve gotten inside. ”
“That’s impossible,” a man behind us responded. Clara turned to me, searching my face. I knew what she was asking. Were there more tunnels like the one Caleb had been working on? Was there a way to get past the wall, despite what everyone thought? I nodded, a barely perceptible yes.
One soldier moved to the other side of the roof, blocking the exit. The people in the restaurant were eerily still. A woman had frozen in the midst of her conversation, her lips slightly parted, her cup perched in the air.
“Someone help me,” the soldier said, pointing to the serving carts and tables surrounding the exit. “We have to move these. ”
He dragged a table in front of the stairwell doors, blocking the only entrance. But it wasn’t until the other soldier spoke that anyone moved.
“Come on, people!” he said, raising his voice to a yell. “Can’t you see what’s happening? The City is under attack. ”
nine
AN HOUR PASSED. THE AIR SMELLED OF SMOKE. FROM THE ROOFTOP we could see a fire spreading in the Outlands, just beyond the old airplane hangars. More rebels had made it into the City, fighting along with the opposition inside. Screams rose up from the main road. I kept my eyes on the streets below, watching people dart into buildings, some trying to make it down the Strip, back to their apartments. Explosions sounded along the wall. The rat-tat-tat of machine guns was so constant I no longer flinched.
“You said we had time still,” Clara whispered. Her hand was clutching my wrist, her fingers digging in my skin as we looked over the City.
“I thought we did. ” My voice was strangely calm. The soldiers refused to let us move the tables stacked against the stairwell doors, blocking the roof’s only entrance. Most of the people stood at the railing, watching the fighting. Not many spoke. A woman had pulled out a camera and was taking pictures, photographing the flames that consumed a warehouse in the Outlands.
Gunshots sounded somewhere in the southern part of the City, where fires burned, their flames urged on by the wind. There were hundreds outside the gates now, a great mass of people, firing up at the soldiers stationed along the wall’s watchtowers. From where we were we could see just a sliver of the north gate and the sudden flash of explosions beyond it. The silhouettes blended together in the growing darkness, one indistinguishable from the next.