Lightblade | Chapter 5

We relocated to the incomplete version of my hometown Harska. Except it wasn’t incomplete anymore.

It was Harska. The streets were now cobbled, the buildings complete with stone walls and merlon-lined roofs. Lush cypresses lined the roadsides, and they didn’t have hands growing out of them, thankfully. The dragon no longer hovered around the sun, which was now covered by dark clouds. It was raining, as it often did. A red-tailed squirrel sat on a nearby branch, munching an oozing gooseberry.

Rain hitting the tree leaves went patter-patter. Cool drops washed down my forehead. Zauri didn’t seem to like it and took refuge beneath the branches of the broadest cypress. I glanced in every direction, taking in a memory that had now come alive.

“How can this be?” I said after joining Zauri beneath the tree. “Yesterday, it was completely unfinished.”

“Could be that you’re unlocking new scripts, somehow. There are training programs that unlock new features as you progress. I mean, that’s just a theory.”

“So something I did caused Harska to be built? But what? And why?”

“Like I said, it’s only a theory.” She shrugged. “I dunno.”

I bent down and stuck my hand in the wet dirt, then clumped a handful. I brought it to my nose and sniffed. Minerally and rich, like the dirt in the backyard of the house where I grew up. I was home…and yet, it was absent of what really made it home: the people.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Said so melodically. Zauri gave me a toothy grin. “You wanna go to your house, right?”

Well, of course. But I feared what I’d find there: an empty shell devoid of laughter. Without the waft of Abba’s spicy chicken curry, or the comforting sound of Amma chasing a giggling Chaya up the stairs. Even the sight of long-haired Kediri sulking in his room would be a balm.

At least Zauri was here.

“I can show you my room,” I said.

“Oh yeah? What’re we gonna do there?”

“Uhh…” I tensed up. What were we gonna do there? I scratched my suddenly itchy back. “Just see my miniature barrel collection.”

“Your what?” She scrunched her face, obviously perplexed. “Miniature…barrels?”

“Yeah…” I mean, what more was there to say? I collected tiny barrels in my youth.

“Barrels…like…what you use to store stuff?”

“Yup.”

“But…why would they be miniature?”

Wow, so many questions. Was it that hard to understand? “Well, the company that made the barrels would create small models, just to show them off. Abba was friends with the owner. So…yeah…my childhood wasn’t that interesting, is what I’m saying.”

“At least you had a childhood. I can’t even imagine what it must’ve been like to be a smaller, more vulnerable version of yourself. To grow from that into what you are now. It’s just unreal. I wish I could glimpse what that’s like.”

The glow dimmed on her face the way clouds cover the sun. The realization that she’d never get to experience childhood had obviously saddened her. Only then did I realize that maybe I was as strange to Zauri as she was to me. It made me feel so much less alone, to think that she was struggling with her thoughts about me, as much as I struggled with my thoughts about her.

About what she was. And even crueler, what she wasn’t.

“One day,” she cleared her hoarse-sounding throat, “you’ll outgrow me, too.” She’d said so before, when talking about how she was only meant to train children. “I’m static. You’re ever-evolving. You’ll flourish, like a butterfly unfurling its wings for the first time. You’ll become something great. You won’t need to visit me, anymore.”

“You’re definitely over-estimating me.”

“No…you’re amazing, Jyosh. You just don’t know it yet. I wonder, will you even think of me when that day comes? Even once in a while?”

“Zauri, they don’t sell dream stones on supermarket shelves where I live like they do in Karsha. Rest assured, I’m stuck with you.” That came out wrong. But it was the harsh truth, and nothing reassured more than truth, right?

She remained sullen. “Sorry…I don’t know what’s come over me.” She smiled, but it was the kind of smile that masked pain. “Let’s go see your house.”

Hopefully I could cheer her up once we got there.

My house was south of the central plaza and park, just past the statue of Sanga Surapsani’s father, Gupta, who stood cross-armed and wore a golden turban with a peacock plume. Then there was the supermarket — one of five in the city — where they sold only local goods and often didn’t have enough of anything, anyway. Once we cleared that, we arrived at a long street lined by palm trees with bulging date fruits, and then a cluster of walled villas for folks even more wealthy than my family. Finally, we reached the stream, which always had chalky, green water, crossed the wooden bridge, and arrived in the closest suburb. The first row of houses weren’t the nicest nor the largest, being wood built and single-storied, but the next row had stone and concrete houses, some as tall as four stories, and mine was in the middle.

The shade-giving cedar stood in the front yard, just how I remembered it. A timeless thing. Used to climb it despite my mother’s pleading. Abba even threatened to make firewood of it when I fell off and broke my arm.

Strange that my house was painted a drab eggshell rather than luminous white; was it a mistake or was I just remembering it wrong? Perhaps I’d brightened the memories somewhat. Most houses were painted off-white, right?

Anyway, I took it all in. That clay-colored roof now seemed a warm protector over our life, or at least the memory of it. And the door: did it always have a silver knob? Wasn’t it golden, or was that another thing my memory had brightened?

Zauri put a hand on my shoulder. I’d almost forgotten she was next to me. From her expectant yet solemn expression, she seemed to understand the moment. Hadn’t she looked into my memories, already? Then she knew what home meant. That my life had been pretty good, once. So good that I took it for granted because I never knew how bad things could get.

The knob turned easier than I thought it would. Upon entering, the place was so…dinky. The living room with its bird-patterned floor cushions seemed too small for a family of five. In my memory, it was like a palace. And the stairs were a few steps from the door, even though I remembered it as a vast expanse.

Amma had these ceramic plates in a big glass display case. But they weren’t there. Come to think of it, how could the modder know the layout of my house, and what items were inside?

A wire dangled from the corner ceiling. Abba would conduct green light into it upon request from the government. Every house had one. To this day, I’m not sure what it powered.

A dusty smell wafted from everything like dead skin. The silence hollowed out my hopes. I climbed the stairs, Zauri following behind.

My room was the first door on the left. I creaked the door open, not sure what I’d see, but expectant, nonetheless. The red sunlight beaming through the window showed a bed without sheets, a dusty wooden desk, and empty wooden shelves.

“Where’s your barrel collection?” Zauri asked.

“It’s not here. Not much is.”

“That’s too bad. I was honestly excited to see some small barrels.”

“Me too.”

It was like standing inside a skeleton. Even without the meat and skin, this was still my house. Or rather, it was the corpse of what I’d lost the day my brother Kediri tried to defect from the Manizan Air Guard, got caught, and got himself killed. The elimination of his family, of course, followed. Only I was spared and sent to a labor camp for life. Only I remained of this once proud home, this once loving family.

Sobs sounded from behind. I turned to see Zauri, diamond-like tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Jyosh, I have to tell you something.” I couldn’t understand why she was suddenly crying, as if her eyes had sprung a leak. “I’m not supposed to tell you, but I care about you too much to hide it any longer.”

“Tell me what?”

“Something very deliberate is happening, here. I’ve known the whole time, but I kept it a secret.” She took my hand in hers. “If I tell you, can you promise you won’t hate me?”

I couldn’t promise anything. I sipped on hate daily, used it for fuel. But here, in the dream, I didn’t want to hate. I especially didn’t want to hate Zauri.

“I can never hate you, Zauri. Just tell me. Whatever it is. So we can go forward without secrets.”

“But it’s…it’s truly terrible.” She sucked in a sob, then let out a pained whine. “I’ve been—”

WAKE UP!

Something bashed against my cheek, as if I’d been smacked with a hammer. Alarms blaring into my soul. Rahal’s angry eyes, pungent smell, and overgrown nose hairs, right up in my face.

He slapped me again, then grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “Wake up you sack of shit!”

I jutted up into a sitting position. “The hell — the hell is happening?”

That alarm. I’d never heard it before, but it raised my hairs and blared into my bones.

“War,” Rahal said. “There’s a goddamn war on. It’s them! It’s the Karshans!”

I threw off my blanket, pushed Rahal out of the way, and ran toward the door. I sprinted down the hall and darted outside the dorm. Then I stared up.

“Fuck.”

Levships covered the sky like a swarm. Each was rectangular and metallic. Some were even painted in bright colors. Unlike the levships you typically see in the Manizan sky, these had no wings. They weren’t shapely, but rather boxy. They seemed to be in separate clusters, with a big one in the center — probably a command ship — surrounded by ten to fifteen smaller ones. The big ones were about five times the size of the smaller ones, too, and flatter and shaped like a spade.

No matter where in the sky I stared, I saw a levship or the streaks of one.

That alarm fed panic into my soul. As if it were saying “run while you can, or you’ll be blown to bits. And even if you do run, you’ll still be blown to bits.” Around the camp, most men were looking up, their jaws hanging, drool dripping. Some ran for the camp gate, colliding into others as if without sense. Others were shouting high-pitched things I was too nervous to focus on.

Chaos.

I rubbed my eyes and returned to my room. Took out my fire-colored dream stone and put in my green machinist stone. Then I tucked my dream stone into my pocket and sat on my mattress. We hadn’t received any instructions from the camp managers about what to do. I ought to just wait here, lest I get into trouble.

This coffin was the safest place. Sure, the Karshans had taken over the sky, but down here, the camp police reigned. But…wait…wouldn’t the Karshan air force target camps like this? Emperor Sanga produced weapons here, so…was I just waiting to be hit by a light cannon strike?

But could I really survive if I ran? It seemed I was just choosing a way to die. A thought drifted into my mind and made me smile, despite the terror choking my nerves: better to die free. Fuck this place.

I had no other possession worth taking so went back outside and melded into a group of laborers stampeding for the gate, the only opening among the fencing that surrounded the camp. Since barbed wire covered the top of the fencing, it truly was the only way out. Instead of watching where I was going, I stared at the sky.

So many ships. Just unreal. What was this Karshan fleet doing? Just hovering? It didn’t seem like a battle was going on. No light cannon strikes at all. Where was the Manizan Air Guard? Why’d they just let the Karshans in?

My bones felt the squeeze of the stampeding crowd around me. I could be crushed in here, so I pushed back, hard as I could, against the people around me. Forget the sky. There were enough dangers down here.

The crowd thinned as more workers ran out the gate. I could breathe again.

“Where’s everyone going?” I asked a young, beady-eyed man to my left.

“Some are going into town, others want to trek it to the border. I say the mountains sound safest.”

“Safest from who?” I wasn’t even sure what I had to fear most, in this situation. Was I going to get blown up by a light cannon strike, or would I die somehow in the chaos?

“I don’t know. Everything, I guess.”

You couldn’t live in the mountains forever. But we were safer in numbers, so I followed everyone down the dirt road for the next five minutes, my heart in my throat. Then I realized: maybe we weren’t safer in numbers. Numbers attract attention. But I wasn’t sure where to go, so continued following the crowd.

The jumble of us got clear of camp. Aside from the dirt road, all around were pockmarked, decaying fields. Some grass, but mostly graying soil. Actually, we weren’t far from the nature trail where I’d seen that mound of shiny green emirils yesterday.

A beam of light sliced the sky, as if a sword had cut through a tarp and exposed an angry sun. The beam struck somewhere beyond the mountains.

A flash scathed my eyes. A quake battered the earth as everyone bellowed in fear.

I got low, though I was rather delayed. A plume of smoke now trailed into heaven from beyond the icy mountain peak. A massive light cannon beam must’ve been fired from a levship at some target on the ground. A sign things were heating up.

For some reason, everyone was running. Scattering into the fields. Hollering as if being chased by death itself. Why? That shot was really far away.

“Hey! Where’re you going?” I shouted to the beady-eyed man as he sprinted off, his arms flailing.

Wait, what was this long, streaky shadow that had covered me, all of a sudden?

I looked up to see a levship, hovering just above.

Only I remained in its shadow, now. Nope. I wasn’t about to face a levship on my own. I let fear take over and cycled my legs as fast as I could down the dirt road. Heaving. Hurtling my bones forward, dragging my skin and meat along. Since everything was so flat and open, there was nowhere to hide until I reached the nature trail. If that levship wanted to fire at me, it would be an explosive end.

I could only sprint so far. I’d been breathing dirty machine air for the past twelve years, so after a few minutes of pushing my limbs forward, I had to stop to pant and huff and catch my breath. My knees ached, too, from standing sixteen hours a day for the past twelve years.

A group of two laborers ran by me down the dirt road.

“Where you going?” I yelled.

They didn’t answer. Where had Rahal gone? What about the camp managers and police? What was the plan, here?

Another beam tore the sky — a slice of blazing light. This one was close enough to really scathe my eyes, so much that my eyeballs hurt. I curled into a ball, fearful of fire, whimpering as death fear pulsed through me. The stench of burnt plastic and metal invaded my nose as a shockwave shook everything.

I looked up to see a tower of billowing black smoke. That had to be the camp going boom. My home for the past twelve years. My room — or rather, my coffin, must’ve been incinerated. I couldn’t quite mourn its loss, but I didn’t feel much relief, either.

I got up and trudged on. After three minutes, I reached the nature trail, its daunting banyans surrounding it like a wall. Should I hide here?

Hide from what? From the levships, from the camp police, or from everything? It seemed nonsensical to hide when I wasn’t certain what to hide from. Who exactly was my enemy, now? What was I running from and to?

There was a town an hour’s walk that I’d obviously never been to because it was forbidden for us prisoners, but that seemed like a place worth going. Some of the sellers beneath the bridge were from there, so I knew it was full of normal folks who worked and barely got by. Would the Karshans target it, too? Those pamphlets they’d dropped around the flatlands had said they were Your Friends in Karsha — would our friends kill us?

Considering I tasted ash in my mouth from the camp explosion, I doubted they really were my friends.

 

I wasn’t the only one walking on the dirt road toward the town, but when I noticed more people walking away from the town and toward where I’d come from, I wondered if I should’ve just hidden in the nature trail.

I saw a middle-aged woman among the crowd walking in the opposite direction. And children. I hadn’t seen either in twelve years. I gawked at them as if they were mythical creatures.

“Where’re you going?” I shouted to the woman. She wore a thin, yellow scarf over her head and a thick floral gown.

She grabbed her children’s hands — a boy and a girl — and whisked away from me.

Oh well. I continued on.

A brawly man wearing a loose black blazer was pulling a cart full of hard suitcases. I asked him the same question.

“There’re Karshan soldiers in the town,” he said while resting against his cart. “They say they’re not a danger to us, but I don’t trust them a lick. There’s also some other people there.”

Of course. We’d been taught never to trust outsiders. “Other people?”

“Yeah. I saw some families getting on a big levship. I think they were flying them out of the country.”

“Why?”

He made a heh sound. “Don’t know. All kinds of rumors going around.” He drew big circles in the air with his hands. “Some say the Manizan army knew this would happen, and so built tunnels to move the army around. Supposedly a battalion is headed toward the city from underground. That’s why those other people are helping some of the city folk evacuate. There’s going to be a big battle.”

I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than getting away from Maniza and out of the steel grip of Emperor Sanga. If there were ships evacuating people, I had to get on one. Although, if the rumors about a battle were true, then I might get caught in a hail of light beams. So by going toward the town, was I going toward death or freedom?

Maybe neither. Maybe both. I wasn’t sure. Nor was anyone, it seemed. But hope shown brighter than fear, so I thanked the man for his information and continued my trudge toward the town.

Why would anyone help us, though? Why take the downtrodden out of Maniza? Seemed too good to be true. The world was a big place, though. Abba and Amma used to tell me stories of the wider world, though I couldn’t remember much. Still, I knew there were all kinds of people with all kinds of ideas. Religions, philosophies — vastly different ways of looking at the world. Someone out there among the vastness must believe in helping others, right?

Another light cannon shot sliced open the sky. This time, I witnessed the red beam as it surged from a spade-shaped levship toward some target beyond the mountains.

Even the mountains shook as the sound of screaming earth filled the air. Everyone around me either ran, got on the ground, or shuddered in place. I stood and stared, my heart drowning in fear.

Maybe the Karshans were trying to collapse the tunnels the Manizan army were supposedly using. Whatever happened to all those cannons I made? Why weren’t they being used against these levships?

I mean, I didn’t care if my labor hadn’t amounted to anything useful. Or did I? Maybe some part of me did, because it seemed like such a frustrating waste of my life, veins, and time.

Back to what mattered: the sky was flinging death at us. I stared up at the endless arrays of levships. They were all spread out in clusters, but one cluster seemed higher than the others, perhaps even high enough to reach Harska, which floated somewhere in the north near the mountainous border with Demak. Surely, given that it was the capital of Maniza and the Emperor’s seat, the Karshans must’ve been targeting it.

Wondering about that wasn’t going to help me. All this time, my veins had been bathing in adrenaline, in a rush to get somewhere, but that could only last so long. A jittery dread began to replace the hope that had been fueling me. You’re going to die it said. That became a mantra in my mind, poisoning my resolve. You’re in the middle of a war. People die in war. You’re a cockroach to both sides. You’re going to get crushed.

The thoughts flooded. I had to get to town. If someone was evacuating people, getting them out of this nightmare, I yearned to be among the saved.

As I walked down the dirt road, huffing, my legs aching, the town’s silhouette emerged on the horizon. It was a dusty enclave of concrete tenements near the mountainside. The sight of it pushed me to hurry on.

I arrived at the first row of tenements, yearning for a break. To my astonishment, the dirt road fed into an actual paved road, something I hadn’t seen since Harska.

A crowd was bubbling in the plaza amid the tenements. Everyone surrounded something as large as the buildings: a rectangular, metallic box with a painting of a blue shield and a golden dragon on it. A levship!

“What’s happening here?” I excitedly asked a scrawny old woman, hoping she wouldn’t scurry away.

“They’re choosing people to evacuate.” She pointed to a young woman with short hair in an unfamiliar, ocean-blue uniform. A crowd of people with raised hands were swarming her. “Go get a lot from her.”

“A lot?”

“Just go before they run out.”

The young woman held a stack of tickets, and she was handing them out to everyone who threw their hands at her. I stood amid the chaos and inched forward whenever a gap in the crowd opened up.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I’d not seen a young woman who didn’t look like Prisaya or Zauri in forever. But I wouldn’t say I was attracted to her. Rather, she intimidated me with how easily she handled the crowd. She brandished a baton and wasn’t afraid to electrify it if someone pushed into her space. Was that electrification also a conduction ability? She never actually had to hit anyone: soon as those yellow sparks spat off the baton and she shouted “get back!” everyone obeyed.

Was this woman a Karshan? I couldn’t tell, even when I got close. The same blue shield emblem from the levship emblazoned her breast pocket. Brass buttons glimmered on her shoulders, and a gold trim snaked around her collar.

As she handed a ticket to me, I glared at the sword hilt on her belt: it was different from the one in my lightblade training program. It had a metal fragment that protruded from the hilt. A soft coating lined the grip, and a curvy pommel stuck out at a right angle.

She slapped my chest with the ticket; I grabbed it, said “thanks,” and went a few paces from the crowd.

It had a number on one side and the blue shield emblem on the other. Nothing else.

I checked on the sky. Not much was happening. A cluster of levships hovered low at the horizon, just in front of the red sun. The way they clustered, with the sun in the background, resembled a bruised rose. Also, they casted the most bizarre, elongated shadows in our direction. I wasn’t sure whether to be awed or terrified. A lot of both welled up in my chest.

I went back to the old woman who’d been willing to talk to me. “Who are these people? Why are they helping us?”

She ruffled her nose and stared into me. “You’re from the camp, right?”

I nodded. No reason to lie.

“They claim to be from a country called Behesh. You ever heard of it?

I shook my head. There were so many countries. I only knew the major ones and the nearby ones.

“They say they’re going to help as many as they can get out before the battle starts.”

If that was true, there really was hope. People in the outside world actually cared about us. I’d never have believed it if I didn’t see it.

“So why’re they handing out lots?”

“There’s only so much room. The next flight is tomorrow. But with a battle coming, that’ll probably be too late.”

So whoever got on this ship had the highest odds of surviving, and it was determined by lottery. Fair enough. I could only hope the universe had mercy on me, for once.

“If your number ends in five or eight, you’re getting on this ship!” a man with a megaphone called. He was standing atop the ramp that led inside the levship.

I longed to walk through that threshold more than I’d ever longed for anything. I saw myself walking up that ramp and inside the belly of this metal beast.

Everyone looked at their tickets. Oh yeah, five or eight. Five or eight. I brought my ticked to my face.

6

Fuck.

Hollers and jeers sounded from the crowd. The short-haired woman and other guards around the levship raised their electric batons.

“Fives and eights, line up!” the man with the megaphone said. “We don’t have forever!”

Thunder exploded above. I dove and crossed my arms over my head. Everyone ducked or jumped or stuck their arms in front of their faces. The thunderous bellows continued, as if a divine dragon were flinging rage at the world. But it was no dragon; it was the levships firing at somewhere not too distant, somewhere on this side of the mountain range.

And then something from the ground fired back. It sliced the sky like a watermelon. A levship turned into a ball of flame. The explosion sounded as if the sky were coughing. The ship’s metal carcass sundered into pieces and rained upon the earth.

The levships fired back, and the ground fired back, as if the earth and sky were at war with each other. Another levship exploded, and then another.

Well, seemed those cannons I helped make weren’t entirely a waste. Not that I was proud or anything.

Everyone around me was hollering and trying to climb the ramp into the big levship. The guards electrified their batons. A rather tall man got thwapped hard; vomit spewed from his mouth as he hit the ground. Two rugged-looking men followed his foolish attempt and met the same fate.

Despite the metal and fire raining from above, everyone calmed down once they saw what those batons could do.

“Fives and eights! We’re taking off, now!” the man with the megaphone said.

Amid the cacophony and chaos, I barely noticed something sticking to my boot. I picked it up: a ticket that read 108.

Could this be my lucky day? My lucky number? A repayment for all I’d suffered? I glanced around — everyone was either focused on the sky, on their tickets, or on their families. No one had noticed me pick it up.

I got in the back of the line that had formed, an uplifting spirit washing through me. The godly battle in the sky made me jittery. Hard to digest all the hope and fear in my veins. Some things can’t really be understood in the moment, and perhaps that was a good thing because if I really comprehended the danger I was in, I’d probably be paralyzed.

“Please help!” a woman cried. “I can’t find my ticket!”

It was the old woman I’d been talking to earlier. She crawled on the ground and dug up the dirt like a cat. “It was one-zero-eight! I swear it was one-zero-eight!”

A young man and woman got on their knees next to her. As did three droopy-cheeked children. They all searched the ground for the ticket.

I swallowed bitterly. I looked away. Better not to see or feel.

But unfortunately, I couldn’t not hear.

“We won’t leave without you, Amma,” the young man said.

“No, you go!” said the old woman. “To see you grow up and have children was all I wanted from life. I’ve lived long enough. I’m fulfilled, and I leave my fate to the gods. Go, now!”

One by one, people ascended the ramp into the mouth of the levship. I nudged forward in the line. I was almost at the ticket checker — the young woman with the electric baton.

I turned to look at the family I was breaking.

The young man got off his knees, grabbed his three children, and along with his wife lined up behind me. The wife wiped tears from her husband’s reddened eyes with her sleeve, then hugged him. The children, too, hugged his legs.

The old woman was right, though: she’d lived long enough. Surely, with time, they’d come to understand that.

She put on a bright smile and waved goodbye to her grandchildren. I’m sure she was relieved and joyful to see them go despite the separation. Despite the danger of remaining in a war zone. How would an old woman survive without her family to look after her?

Survive. Survive. Survive. The sky exploded, fire rained, and the ground quaked. I needed to survive somehow, too. I wanted out of this hell. I’d wanted out for twelve years. I’d given too much time to suffering.

But that old woman…she had people who loved her. Who’d miss her. I didn’t. Maybe one if you counted Zauri, but she wasn’t flesh and blood. She wasn’t really real.

Vir had deserved more than what I’d given him. But I was hungry for a way to survive, even if it meant hurting others. I chose what I chose, and I became what I became.

But did I like what I’d become?

Did it matter if I liked myself, so long as I survived? Was it worth more living as a contemptable man or dying as a decent one?

I left the line and went to the old woman.

“I found this on the ground.” I handed her the 108 ticket. “It’s your number, right?”

She gaped, bouncing her gaze between me and the ticket, as if I were one of the gods she prayed to.

The old woman grasped the ticket with both of her shacking hands. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.” Then she hugged me. Warm yet weak. It reminded me of my mother’s hug.

“Can you tell me where your house is?” I asked. “I need a place to hide.”

 

I went to the old woman’s apartment, located on the bottom floor of a tenement painted in a color I’d describe as rotting eggshell. It was just one cramped room with three mattresses rolled neatly in the corner. Judging by the sizes, colors, and shapes of the clothes strewn about, the old woman had lived here with her son and daughter-in-law and their three children.

If I was going to die, might as well die dreaming. I unrolled one of the mattresses; it only took up a third of the floor space — a major improvement over my coffin in the camp.

Zauri was about to tell me something, and I was too curious to die without knowing. How badly was I about to be betrayed, I wondered. As badly as I’d betrayed Vir?

What kind of betrayal could Zauri inflict on me? She only existed in my dreams, so what could be so bad? You never know how bad things can get, I suppose, until you’re sentenced to a lifetime of hard labor. Or until the sky explodes.

After I put in my dream stone and lay down, I imagined that the sound of light beams firing was just a game — hard to do with the ground shaking, with the worry that the roof could fall on me at any moment. But I had quite an imagination, if nothing else. Besides, I’d walked so much and hadn’t slept well recently, so I was tired. Tired in my soul. An orange sleep snatched me and dragged me in its current.

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