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

by Micaiah Johnson

When the urge to ruin his peace gets too tempting, I remind myself not to be selfish; I remind myself that wanting to shift someone else’s boundaries is a burden and a threat, not a gift or a compliment. Then I head down to the nightfire and find someone to clear his scent out of my head.

decade ago some prominent citizen’s body was found in the desert between Wiley and Ash, prompting the city to write a blank check to their enforcement. It didn’t matter that we didn’t kill the man they found outside. It didn’t matter that Wileyites are more likely to kill one another than to be killed by an Ashtowner. They like fixing imaginary problems, and the vote to increase enforcement’s presence at the border was unanimous. Unanimous because, of course, they didn’t ask us.

In the city they were still nice. Polite. Clean-pressed uniforms who’d call you Sir or Ma’am. In the desert they armed themselves like militia and acted like hyenas…which I’d respect if they were honest about it.

They wanted to beat us bloody, and then arrest for “assault” anyone who kicked dirt in their direction. They wanted to look like, be armed like, and act like a gang, but get treated with respect by the very people they terrorized. You don’t get to have your bloodthirst and your city key, too.

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.

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.

That’s the lesson: As long as someone is stretching to reach you, you’d better bend to reach them. This is how a runner always has coverage.

There is a story from before the walls of a woman who escaped her captors and took her four children with her. When they finally caught up to her, she looked them in the eye and sawed through the throat of the nearest child. It scared the captors so bad they left her alone with the other three. Seeing what she would do to her own made them too afraid to test what she would do to them. Do you see it? The emperor is the woman, Ashtown the children, and Wiley City the captors. Runners? We’re the saw.

The reigning champion of not reading the fucking room, this guy.

Real names are for lovers and children. They have no place between us.

But if you say, Once—once and only once, because dates are as bad as names for stories—a man loved the ground so much he ate a mountain and it killed him but it killed the mountain too, people will learn from the story without truth getting in the way. They’ll learn that to love something is to open wide and hope what you love is digestible. They’ll learn that if you love so much you consume the thing you love whole, neither of you will survive and neither will your love. They’ll learn not to eat fucking rocks.

But if I’m going to choke on poison by my own hand, you can at least let me congratulate myself on how well I take it. It’s a cold consolation, but that’s the only kind I’m likely to get.

This is what every feel-good story about these fucks misses. Yeah, there are nice people in enforcement, but it’s not about numbers, it’s about policy and policy always sides with the assholes. The ones they call bad are the ones who actually follow orders and department culture. Every nice thing the other guy does is an aberration that people use as an example of why they should exist.

Kind officers are just the exceptions that ensure the rule goes on.

Stories are powerful, and none are more powerful than the ones you let others tell you about yourself.

“I hope somewhere in the last decade you’ve overcome the instinct to punish the thing you love just because you aren’t allowed to have it.”

Sometimes, my brain reaches into the vast and wild infinite to send very unhelpful information right to the front. Right now, it does me the unfavor of making me aware that seeing Cross like this makes me want to fuck him. No, no, I don’t want to have sex with him. I want him to be fucked by me. I want to see how far this vulnerability, this devotion and willing helplessness can go. I bet he’d let me tie him up twice over. I bet he gives his lovers access to every single part of him.

Don’t make a permanent decision based off a temporary feeling.

At my word, they begin walking forward. I take one last look at Cara standing in the sand, and walk into the cave. And that’s it. That’s the last moment I could be sure of anything at all in this whole world.

When anyone sees someone like me being brought up, they see a quiet child, a victim turned doll by a lack of options. I think even my not-father got bored when I stopped reacting to the cruelty. I can’t imagine how unnerving it must be to backhand an eight-year-old for staring at you just to have her go on staring after you’ve hit her.

But it wasn’t ever about him, not really. I didn’t hate him because he called me a sinner. I didn’t hate him because he told me I was filthy and in need of redemption. I hated him because everything he said was true. Not because I fucked and let fuck for money. But because I’d killed a man who was a father to someone I cared about, even if he’d never been one to me. And because it wasn’t spontaneous. I’d spent most of my childhood and preteen years dreaming of murdering my father; it matters little that when the time came it was a different dad.

We took him in with cracks and we never even noticed.

“Exlee says jealousy is a poison you make for others but drink yourself.”

You can’t solve any craving for excess by stopping the act. You’ve got to solve what made them need, which is a separate thing entirely. Need can make any act harmful. Even love.

I was a violent child who committed the worst crimes; I was a broken child who had no reason to believe she wouldn’t be broken forever, but through the love, care, and modeling of everyone around me I learned how to love and care for others. All because I wasn’t thrown away based on how I behaved on my worst day.

She smiles, a white moon peaking out in the cloud-streaked night of her face. Her reputation is so big, the stories about her so varied, I don’t want this little thing to be missed: Cara has a great fucking smile.

But Cara isn’t here for herself, or the emperor. She’s sitting here doing a job she no longer wants under a man she never wants to see again, to save the lives of people who don’t even like her all that much. You’d think she was a god. You’d think we were all her children.

I’ve been gone long enough to have forgotten how hard up the city is about genders. They want gender like a border, something fixed, something to be defended from trespass. We like genders like landmasses here, like puddles that congregate, evaporate, and re-form.

They may be a group, but they’re not a team.

“I didn’t look at you because I thought you were smart. I did it because I thought you were kind,” she says. “And that’s why I’ll never respect you again.”

“It feels good to criticize others into the ground when we are right and we know they are wrong. But it’s not good, it’s righteous, and the two seldom have anything to do with each other.”

’Cause I bet snakes do mourn their skins. I bet they crawl back inside sometimes, wishing they could fit. I bet they rub their old skins all over, trying to cover themselves in the smell of home. That’s all growth is, getting too big to stay somewhere that used to feel good. Just having one less place in the whole world that fits right.

“My father died a week ago,” I say. Cheeks shakes his head in confusion. “Your parents…” “Not my biological father. The man who raised me, who abused me, who treated me like shit for not being his. He died and I didn’t tell you because it would take too much time. You didn’t even know who he was. But I know your father left when you were four, and I know the story of every time he’s ever let you down. I know the name of the man who hurt your mother, how your grandparents met, your worst fears, and you don’t even know my name, D’Angelo. So I’m sure not having me come around to wipe your tears was a real fucking shock and a letdown, but I’ve been keeping my own head on straight. I’ve been being exactly as self-protective as you have always been in our friendship, but you can’t stand it.”

“Cara was the only one who came back every time,” Dell says. “And she was the only one whose handler was in love with her.” “You think it mattered?” “The science of sound and a mineral compound is what you need to send you. But sometimes it felt like my own will was bringing her back.”

There are those who choose the city because they’ve genuinely absorbed Wiley’s values so they’ve learned to hate the way their parents talk, the town they were raised in, their own names, their own skin. But then there are those that shed those things, not because they hate themselves, but because it is the only way to really feel safe. The only way to reach a place in life where you no longer feel like you’re always just barely not-drowning. I’d always assumed Adam was the former. But maybe, maybe he’s the latter, viewing Wiley as a tool not a salvation. I was dead set on Adam being evil, because I’ve been looking for a villain this whole time. Every story needs a villain, especially one with as many dead as this tale has. I just didn’t know it was going to be me.

I did, eventually, find one Cheeks that gets to be happy. One single version that gets peace. But it’s not this one. Twelve minutes later Viet is telling me he’s gone, and the room fills with oil as the preparations begin. I leave, tears streaming down my face, and go to select my crown.

Well, that’s fine. All good stories have ghosts. Let me be a vengeful one. Let me be the bloody kind men hear shrieking in the night before they never wake up again. Let me be the ghost of all our dead come back armed and rabid.

I may never get to be a runner again, but let them always remember that my name was Scales.

This was not me killing a man I used to love who never loved me back. This was not me killing my best friend so he wouldn’t suffer what was to come. I would have done it even if there had been happiness on the other side for him. No. This? This could only ever be one thing: the moment I became an emperor.

We are murderers. We are meant for murder. The last few weeks have been a scramble to protect our people, but at the core of that protection is a promise to rise to violence. This is the step some civilians don’t understand, the step Cara rejects: We can only make good on our promise of protection if there’s blood on our hands. We can’t bluff. The city only speaks the language of power, and we have to speak it right back for them to listen.

‘This is public land and cannot be taken from the people without legislation. You cannot trespass on public land,’ ” Dell says, and I wonder who all is watching and listening on the drone above. “Unless you have passed a law taking yet more land from the people, this land is public,” I say, which is true of everything up to the wall itself. “We have authorization via treaty to enter these walls, and so we will. If you use force against us, you will be doing so on orders you are aware are illegitimate.”

Every hard thing the desert has thrown at us is worthwhile now, watching enforcement red-faced and struggling with their first taste of the things that raised us.

Jesus fuck. It’s Wileyites. Dozens of them have pushed through and are blocking enforcement’s path with their bodies and large plastic sheets to obscure their vision. I see a flash of familiar purple hair and I’ve just managed to grasp that these Wileyites are putting themselves in front of weapons to protect us when I see the second group. These are dressed like the first, but they aren’t pale. They’re Ashtown. The children we sent away, the adults who managed to immigrate, the ones I always thought never looked back. And there, at the edges with their sleeves rolled up, is Jax. I knew I would cry today. But I did not think that the first thing that would bring tears to my eyes would be this unexpected sacrifice. I’d prepared to feel so many things on this battlefield, but now I am overwhelmed by hope.

We’d broadcasted into the city, but it wasn’t a call to action. We didn’t have enough hope for that. But it became one. Now dozens of young Wileyites are standing in front of enforcement shouting that the whole world is watching.

“But it’s not because I didn’t mean it. It’s not because it wasn’t real.” He looks…surprised. Like he just heard something impossible but, also, something he definitely wanted to hear. “Whenever you’re ready, you just say my name.” And we both know he doesn’t mean Cross. And we both know I’m going to.

Watching her so nervous—eyes darting around, the hand holding her weapon shaking like her whole world is falling apart and this one thing is all she has left—I know that whatever mistakes she’s making, she believes in them. She didn’t betray us for money, didn’t campaign on hating us solely for power. She believes in everything she does. She’s scared, she’s always been scared, and she made her TV appearances and ran her campaign and passed her border laws to make everyone else as scared as she was.

The mayor asked if we wanted her to open the doors. No, that’s what Cara would have wanted. We want them to no longer have doors to open.

They won’t be able to keep us out anymore, but they won’t be able to keep their artificial atmosphere in either. Without the ring keeping the field concentrated, and with Adam increasing its potency to extend its distance, the artificial atmospheric field will radiate out, providing a shade umbrella for miles and miles. Yes, we’ll get to benefit from the barsamin shielding us from other worlds, but we’ll also get Wiley’s artificial atmosphere. The carpet of dead plants outside of the city will turn into a garden again. No more bodies scorched by bright days. No more being limited to growing what can be kept indoors or what is charproof. No more skin sickness in our children or elderly. This will change everything, forever.

Those who built the city were never paid for their labor. They are never acknowledged in the city’s history. That makes those walls and everything in them stolen, and everyone knows you’re allowed to take back what doesn’t get paid for.