Those Beyond the Wall (The Space Between Worlds #2)

by Micaiah Johnson

Bitterness is anger with nowhere to go. Bitterness and resignation are close and tempting cousins. Anger with a target is Rage, and Rage is sister to Hope alone. We rage because we do believe things can be better, by fire if necessary.

While bitterness is an isolator, a repellent to community, Rage is a beacon calling out to others. It is as much a communal invitation as any bonfire.

The night is long and dark, Rage says, but I will keep us warm.

We don’t like witnesses in Ashtown, but I guess that’s what I am now.

Exlee doesn’t even strictly believe girls and boys exist separately, but they still call me Pretty Girl because I like being called a girl as much as I like being covered in grime from other runners’ rides.

I held her together. She insisted on breaking apart. I held her harder. But then I was just breaking her too. Sometimes when you want to fix something too bad, you break it. The way you can shatter metal if you get it too hot, even if all you’re trying to do is mend a crack. This was something I should already have known.

Everyone saw the kill. No one saw a killer.”

trying to find a pattern in the damage. And there is a pattern. I can’t quite see it, but I know it’s there. This can’t just be chaos.

He doesn’t respond, which is the only right response.

Always with his voice and head low, not like a kicked puppy, but like an animal on a leash.

they wrap themselves in self-righteousness and call it purity.

now I don’t understand we’re standing in a trap until this layered whisper. I should have known there was something behind all his talk of policy and the palace.

I try to look scared, but I’m not. I feel utterly safe as I walk into the corner with the man that is everyone’s worst fear…everyone except me.

At the mention of my worst crimes he squeezes my hand, because my monstrosity doesn’t strain our relationship; it cements it. The blood on my hands matches the blood on his teeth. Me too, they say to each other, I know.

“And if I find out you prayed over her, I’m snipping out your tongue. You called her a sinner while she was alive, you don’t get to violate her afterlife.”

When he noticed it, he did exactly what you’d expect if you knew a guy like Cheeks. He pulled away, kindly.

Sometimes I want to call him back close again. Tell him there’s no need to worry. Tell him there’s no danger of us being more than friends. Tell him I only miss when we’d touch for the warmth. Tell him he’s just a brother to me, and I’d rather have him as a friend than a lover anyhow. But he probably wouldn’t buy it. Just ’cause it’s a lie and all.

I remind myself that wanting to shift someone else’s boundaries is a burden and a threat, not a gift or a compliment.

Like they didn’t believe in nightmares until they became one.

If it’s synced, that means any dream I had of this being some natural, random phenomenon is dead.

It’s one of Ash’s favorite stories, filled with sun, death, a miracle, and an excuse to trash-talk the city. It’s a story that’s been repeated so many times since I came to Ashtown for work that it’s not even mine anymore. It’s air. It’s dust. It’s atmosphere. It’s not even really a story about anyone’s parents dying anymore. For most of Ashtown, it’s a story about a door that never opens.

The true test of a runner isn’t how much violence you can stomach, or how you react to a dead body. The true test of a runner is how expertly you can shut the fuck up.

I’m privy to his silliness, but I’m also the only one living who’s ever seen him cry.

“Going public won’t protect me. It’ll paint a target on my back.”

Places where violence isn’t tolerated will never teach you how to deal with it, when it is avoidable, or how to execute it cleanly when you must. You have to accept violence as a part of life to know it, to tame it like a pet, to keep it in your pocket and understand when to let it out.

They choose privacy over security every time. The citizens say privacy is a right they won’t have violated, but apparently rights are only for people on one side of the wall,

They like fixing imaginary problems,

They wanted to look like, be armed like, and act like a gang, but get treated with respect by the very people they terrorized.

The officers’ turn in the desert ended the way all stories do when two gangs occupy the same space: blood on both sides, glory on one.

It didn’t matter which version was true. They were all real. Stories should never be believed, but they should always be trusted.

When they didn’t deliver the killer up for charges they weren’t saying, He didn’t do it. They were saying, He was allowed to.

Ash residents have too many other things to remember, and Wiley would sooner forget.

Riding in the front would just be sitting next to Cheeks with the backs of our knuckles six inches apart and me having to hide that I’m aware that our knuckles are six inches apart and will never be any closer.

Elitist Wileyites? I know them well. They don’t scare me. But this, this weirdly intense studying creature, makes my skin crawl. He doesn’t look at us like he hates us or pities us or is disgusted by us. He doesn’t look at us like we’re human at all.

In the south of the south, a cut of land in a ridge so deep it sees the sun only a few times a year, is Akeldama, the field of blood. This is where people—almost exclusively from the city—come to request their own death.

You can’t curse the dead.

The House takes care of their own in death as well as they do in life, and Exlee has never let one of their chicks go into the dark with anything but the absolute best.

These are the oldest rocks, and they’re sitting on ground so still it used to be ocean floor and hasn’t yet realized it’s not anymore.

everyone talks about what they’ll gain, how high up they’ll be, how much more money they’ll make in the end. We never say the truth. We never say, You’re giving up this wide horizon, you’re losing every one of these stars, you’re losing the salt of ash on your tongue and you’ll never taste anything like it again.

They don’t leave, so they never know what they won’t have once they go.

This is what it’s supposed to look like when the world tilts wrong: a gaggle of runners, moving in concentric circles, ready to unfuck the earth’s very axis.

As long as someone is stretching to reach you, you’d better bend to reach them.

Your kin will hold you up even if the emperor sees fit to push you down.

He and the emperor share a look, and then Cheeks turns to look at me. I shake my head, denying what I don’t know, but his face shifts into a glare. He’s looking at me like he hates me. He’s never looked at me like that before. I’d do anything to make that look stop. I’d go to my knees at his feet begging him.

Getting a cut on your neck is a warning, getting beat during the meeting is a judgment.

I was excited like a puppy getting to play with other puppies. He was a shark catching a scent.

Today will break bones, and tear flesh, and batter organs, and loosen teeth, but it will not take a life. Nik Nik doesn’t beat those he intends to kill.

Mr. Cheeks used to begin the cheers, grunting loud with each blood drop, hyena-laughing at each broken bone. Not because he loved violence, but because he loved the emperor and there is no getting closer to Nik Nik than watching him perform his art. These days, Cheeks joins the punishment cheers later and later. Today he joins in just before the end.

You’d think with the way Cheeks has been getting skittish with the punishments that he’s moving away from the emperor. But that’s not it. He’s still knuckles-first anytime someone says a cross word about Himself. It’s not distaste that has him clapping slow and quiet. It’s fear. Or guilt, maybe. I’m not sure, but he’s been looking at punishments like they’re fires that could catch. He’s been looking at beatings like he’s next.

Runners love sentimentality, so they’ve probably called us sisters, or lovers. They’ll say I screamed I love you while she died, or vowed vengeance or something.