THAT NIGHT WE STRING OUR packs up in a tree out of animal reach, spreading our sleeping bags out atop a rock. For some reason, sleep won’t come, Howl’s worried expression lodged firmly in my brain.
When June looks safely asleep, I slide down to where he’s sitting, watching the darkness all around us.
“I’m sorry for getting angry,” I say, worried the words won’t come out, stuck like sugary candy in the back of my throat.
Howl looks at me for the first time since the argument, surprise flitting across his face. “Is she asleep up there?”
“As far as I can tell. She couldn’t get into the packs without making any noise, could she?” All of the sudden I know I did the wrong thing, that she is already rifling through our few possessions. That we’ll be dead before morning.
Howl’s mouth opens in a huge circle of a yawn, hands occupied with rubbing his eyes instead of covering it. “I hope not.”
“I’m sorry that things are so . . . wrong. I want to help June, but I’m willing to take precautions.”
Leaning his head back against a tree, Howl doesn’t speak for a moment, fingers tracing patterns in the bark. “Can we be on the same side again?” he finally whispers, shifting toward me, accidentally planting his hand on top of mine. He pulls his hand back, not speaking for a moment as his fingers flex at his side. “Sorry. Not us against June. Just us.”
“Yes.” I ignore the flutter in my stomach as he looks at me, the hand that touched mine balled into a fist. “But with conditions.”
Howl leans in, whispering low enough that June won’t be able to hear us, but so close his breath tickles against my cheek. “You want me to trust her? I want her to be what she says she is too. Or . . . what Liming said she is.” He glances up at her sleeping bag, peeking over the edge of the rock. “And one point in her favor: I think we can both agree that she isn’t infected.”
“Unless she has a stash of Mantis somewhere.” He sets his hand down again, so close our fingers are touching.
I don’t mind. It’s funny, because we’ve been much closer than our hands touching, but this feels different. As if it’s on purpose, and without the cover of trying to help me or pretend for Cas and Tian, Howl doesn’t seem quite so sure of himself.
I like it. Howl a little unsure. His hand creeping up onto mine. But it seems a bit sudden, almost purposeful. As if he’s trying to distract me.
I pull my hand into my lap. “My conditions have nothing to do with her,” I inform him. “I need you to come clean.”
“Have I led you wrong yet? Trust me a little longer.”
I shake my head. “I have no idea what we are doing or why. You call Seconds ‘Reds’ like old women in the Third Quarter who have had enough of washing uniforms. You aren’t acting like a First, or like you’re even from the City. You shouldn’t even know how to turn on a stove, much less how to track down Wood Rats and dig up tubers. Or see a head of blond hair and not flinch. Up until a few weeks ago, light hair meant the enemy. Dead men with hair like June’s, strung up on our walls as a warning against spies.”
Howl leans away from me, rubbing his eyes again. “Fair enough.”
I wait for him to go on, but he just sits, staring for a few minutes. Thinking.
“Is that the end of this conversation?” I ask. “Trust goes two ways, and if you can’t give it, then I’ll leave.” Even saying it out loud sends prickles down my arms. “I’ll find your mountain all by myself.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s a reason Liming didn’t just send June out on her own to find the Mountain. You have to have a guide to even find an entrance. And someone to vouch for you.”
I wait.
Howl closes his eyes, his hands tying knots in his hair. “I’ve lived Outside before.”
That night down in the wine cellar, I wouldn’t have believed it. But now that I’ve seen him climb trees and find food, there isn’t really another explanation that would make sense.
“I came out with some Reds on patrol a few years ago and we were attacked.” Howl’s eyes are on the ground, words so slow and careful it’s as if he’s machine. “We didn’t expect a full-blown raiding party right outside the City walls. One of the rebels recognized me and decided to take me back to the Mountain instead of shooting me. For ransom.”
Rebels? I want to laugh, but I don’t want to wake June. What is there to rebel against? Sometimes down in the Third Quarter there was rebellious talk. Asking for shorter hours, better food. But it never amounted to much more than a day or two of missed shifts and avoiding the Watch. No one wants to get thrown Outside. No Seconds to protect you from Kamar or Firsts to make Mantis for your infected kids. Outside is worse than being worked to death.
Only, if there is no Kamar . . . Howl said I wouldn’t understand. That I hadn’t seen enough yet.
He’s quiet for a long time, thinking the words through. “If you had known the army was fighting rebels instead of far-off, foreign Kamar, how would you have felt about your place in society? The star they burned into your hand?”
I shrug, uncomfortable.
“The Mountain isn’t foreign, or even set on killing anyone. It’s made up of people who have left the City and people who were surviving Outside. They’ll take anyone who wants to be there, and give them something more to live for than fear. And they are organized and successful enough that the City is taking them seriously. If people inside the City knew that, they would leave.”
I look down at my hands, twirling the rusty red ring on my pinkie.
“You see why the war with Kamar is so important to the First Circle? And the lies about conditions Outside? Stringing prisoners up where everyone can see the enemy’s light hair and worry about how close a fictional army is to invading their homes, infecting their children? It’s all a propaganda campaign to convince Thirds to work for almost nothing with no way to complain. The forces that the Seconds fight are from the Mountain. They want to help Thirds.”
“Where . . .” I fumble with the question, not sure how it will sound. “Where do they come from, then? People . . . like June?”
Howl shrugs. “When Yuan Zhiwei locked the City gates, only certain people were welcome inside. I don’t know if that has to do with alliances during the Influenza War, or the invasion they teach us about in school. There are people of all kinds out past where City patrols range, lots of people like June in work camps and farms that belong to the City, but they’re kept out of sight. You must know the City hasn’t always been fighting Outsiders. How else could a First like you end up with a name like . . .”
I flinch and shake my head, not willing to talk about it. Yes, my mother gave me a funny, foreign-sounding name, but that doesn’t mean my family is somehow from Outside. “How did you go from hostage to sympathizer? It’s not as if you had anything to complain about up in the First Quarter.”
“A former First started visiting me every day in confinement.” Howl recites the story as if he’s reading it from a book, still looking at the ground. “She did SS research before she turned rebel. The First Circle had ordered her to start testing on humans, to purposely infect citizens and set them loose in the City. When she refused, they threw her in the Hole. The rebels caught wind of it and broke her out.”
“First-inflicted SS cases?”
Howl’s teeth flash in a half smile. “To keep the threat in Thirds’ minds. Seconds’, too. And you can turn off that respectful voice. I . . . I didn’t believe either, at first. The woman who talked to me introduced me to victims. People from the Sanatorium. They don’t just do SS experiments in there.”
“I know people in there.” My voice comes out too low as I think of Peishan, how frightened she was that day in Captain Chen’s classroom. How empty my room was after they took her away.
“What could be worse than infected all locked up together?” he asks. “Completely out of control, hurting themselves and anyone else they can get their hands on with no hope of recovery. . . .”
The dark expression in his face stops me cold. The thought of thousands of Parhats, confused and without conscience, left to cut crosses in their arms and hands . . . The City wouldn’t do that to people on purpose, would it? I sit back against the tree, tracing lines in the dirt. “So you turned. You started working for them.”
He sits forward, the intensity of his voice catching me by surprise. “All Firsts care about is keeping the cheap labor from realizing the Third Quarter isn’t much better than a slave camp. ‘Shoulder to shoulder we stand, comrades building a society strong enough to find the cure to SS.’ City principles are a load of garbage.”
I recognize the quote from our pledge, the one I used to recite for every Remedial Reform class, every shift at the cannery. The City was meant to be a place where everyone was equal, each pulling our weight, each taking our fair share. Thinking back to the gargantuan houses up on the Steppe, it’s easy to wonder how equal Firsts are compared to the rest of us. Especially when the First right in front of me is calling the City a prison.
I catch myself looking at Howl’s First mark, wanting to believe him just because it’s there. Even on a traitor’s hand, I want that single white line to mean safety. He looks at it too, one finger brushing the scar as if it’s graffiti that can be wiped away.
“I call Seconds ‘Reds’ because that’s what they call them out here. Not just because of the pins and the uniforms, but because of the people they’ve killed. They’re all covered with blood.”
Howl sits back against the tree. “I’ve been helping smuggle Mantis out for about two years now.” He gestures to my pack. “Dr. Yang gave us more than enough to get you to the Mountain, and the rest will go to the Mountain’s Mantis stockpile.”
A glow of hope washes over me as he says it. A whole stockpile of Mantis outside the City. A safe place to hide from whatever monster SS grew inside of me. But something here doesn’t quite fit. “So the bomb at Aihu Bridge . . . That was the rebels?”
“That bomb was air-launched, right?”
I nod.
“Then no. The City has the only aircraft in the area. Rebels don’t have access to that kind of power.” Howl yawns again, eyes crinkling shut. “That must have been a busy night for the propaganda department, trying to explain how you managed to blast yourself off that bridge. I think it ended up being something about you marking a target point for a ‘Kamari’ heli-plane.”
So, if I’m going to believe Howl, even the SS bombs in the City are self-inflicted, keeping the threat of an army waiting just on the other side of the wall fresh in everyone’s mind. It must have just been an added bonus that I was there that night with Tai-ge. Through this new lens, it’s easy to see why the First Circle would have used the situation to send me to the Arch. A story about a Kamari spy caught in the act of bringing SS down to where it would hurt the most people would pull Thirds closer to the City than a distant chemical bomb and a burning bridge ever could. Almost like the propaganda department wrote my part. But that still doesn’t explain what Howl said while he thought I was unconscious the night the Watch came after me. She’s the only one like me.
“What does any of this have to do with me?” I ask, cautiously fishing for an answer, wanting to trust him. “Why did Dr. Yang bend so far to get me out of the City? Why did you leave with me if you were doing so much good, ferrying Mantis over the wall?”
“I left because . . . it’s just too hard. Being there. Watching people bend until they break. I want to do more. I can do more out here.” Howl’s breath blurs the air between us, his eyes suddenly directed anywhere but at me. “And as for why Dr. Yang wanted you out, you’ll have to ask him yourself.” He glances toward June. “You should probably get back up there. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where we were going before. Dr. Yang was worried that if you knew, you wouldn’t come. That you’d try to run away from us and end up dead along with whoever else they are pinning to that bomb.”
My heart starts to pound, Tai-ge’s dimpled smile clear in my head. And another, but much blurrier: my father, caught in the tangle of my mother’s deception. I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me before that blame for that bomb might have attached to someone else after I was smuggled out of the City. “Whose life did I trade for mine?” My voice is low, a slow vibration that almost doesn’t make it out. “Who is dead because you helped me escape?”
Howl grabs my shoulder, giving it a shake. “Your staying wouldn’t have changed anything.” When I don’t respond, he whispers, “I think it would take quite of bit of hard evidence to get at the Hongs, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Relief floods through me, but guilt and fear immediately crawl up after it. My escape could be blamed on anyone. The nuns, my teachers, my roommate. Except Peishan was already in the Sanatorium. And if Tai-ge believes I meant to kill him that night . . . at least he’s above suspicion. It’s not as if I can ever see him again. But is he safe? Dr. Yang said something back in the City about hurting Tai-ge as some kind of warning to General Hong. . . .
“Should we have brought him, too?” I ask.
“Would he have come?”
“No.” I wouldn’t have either if I’d had a choice.
“Then just be glad you’re alive. There’s nothing you could have done differently except let them kill you.” Howl sighs, and the hand on my arm slips down to encircle my wrist. His fingers feel warm through my coat, comforting. Genuine. “You care a lot more about them than they seem to care about you. No one has thought twice about abusing you for the last eight years.”
He turns my hand over, the two of us staring at the brand’s star shape melted into my skin. I can hardly find my voice, the words coming out in a whisper. “Some people decided to look past these to find out if I was human or not.”
“Tai-ge.” Howl looks up at the sky again.
I take a deep breath and let it out, not ready to speak for a moment. The corroded ring around my finger has left a permanent stain on my skin, a rusty fungus-looking smear. That’s probably exactly what he thinks of me now: a stain on his past that will be hard to scrub away. But Tai-ge couldn’t believe I would have hurt him, could he?
Another deep breath.
It doesn’t matter now what Tai-ge thinks. As long as he’s safe. His father would never let anything happen to him. “What about June? Are there many more . . . like her in the Mountain?”
Howl blinks. “Everyone gets a fair chance in the Mountain. Wood Rats, City runaways, people from out past this forest . . . No stars, no brands, and no one cares who you are or what you look like.”
“Even for me?” It seems impossible that my stars could not mean anything. That people wouldn’t look at my birthmark or my star burn and see my mother.
Howl looks at the ground again, choosing his words carefully. “Whatever happened during the Great Wars, everyone left over just wants to survive. I don’t think having light-colored eyes should take away your right to a good life any more than having the wrong number of lines on your hand should.”
My head is swimming with information, all of it glassy and distorted, as if I’m peering through murky water. “Why were we so worried about June’s family, then? Why don’t all of them just go to the Mountain?
“You can’t just walk in. They’ll let anyone in who’s willing to help with a war. Plenty of Wood Rats are content to scavenge on the edges where they don’t have to fight. I don’t understand what was going on in that family. Liming could have found a Mountain patrol and asked for a guide in.”
Why didn’t Liming come with us, then? I glance back up toward June, though I can’t see her sleeping form from where I sit. “How long did you live out here?”
“Two years. A little more.”
“How is it . . .” I shrug. “I never heard anything about you being gone.”
Howl looks down at his hands, and suddenly I’m uncomfortable, seeing things on his face that no one ever should feel. He can’t even call his father anything but “the Chairman.” Was it more important for the Chairman to save face, to keep it quiet that Howl was gone, than to mobilize Seconds to get his son back?
“What did you ever hear about me?” he finally asks, still staring at the ground.
I cock my head to the side, bending so he has to look at me. “I heard at least one pretty little girl from the orphanage wish Third boys were as nice-looking as your portrait. Maybe she meant she wished they were cleaner?” Looking him up and down, I give a mock frown. “Not really sure I agree.”
He rolls his eyes. “Well, there you have it. I lived out here. That’s how I know where we’re going.”
“And what tubers are?”
The lighthearted question almost makes him smile. “Right. Tubers.”
His hand finds mine again, and the tightness in my chest eases. No more fighting, no more anger. No lying or withholding information. We’re friends again. More than that. We could be partners, part of this cause, if it’s real. I could help people like June.
People who have no chance, like my sister, Aya, before she was shot down in the street.
People like me.
The City, no matter how I feel about it, isn’t an option anymore. Neither is Tai-ge. He never was. And, just like the rest of the City, Tai-ge never could completely forget my brand. No matter what he felt or thought about me, my past was a wall that we both knew he wouldn’t try to climb. He never tried to hold my hand. No one ever even noticed that I had hands at all in the City, except to crush them while checking my traitor star. And Howl is right here in front of me, asking me to listen, just to think it through. That maybe I’m worth more than a messy burn. That there’s more to life than Yuan Zhiwei and rows and rows of canning jars, and the pieces on the weiqi board numbered from one to four.
Hand-holding has nothing to do with it. I want to believe him.
I do believe him.
• • •
That night, I dream of Zhinu and Niulang. Except when Niulang first sees Zhinu, his teeth stretch out over his lips, jagged and sharp. Morphed into one of the monster qilin, he chases her back to his den, where the other snarling creatures wait. Her cries surround me, choke me, as her eyes open—deep brown. My eyes.
I wake to find myself precariously balanced against a tree branch on the edge of our rock, slick with sweat. Zhinu’s sobs ring in my ears, echoing against the night sky, moon covered by a sea of clouds. My heart drums against my chest as if it’s trying to escape its bloody prison.
Howl climbs up from the ground, perching next to me. “What’s wrong, Sev?” His eyes wash over June before flicking back to me.
I take a deep breath, trying to erase the image of Niulang’s long, sharp teeth tearing through. . . . “Nothing. I just had a bad dream.”
He sits for a second, peering at me through the darkness. I can’t look at him, as if my dream could somehow reach out and destroy Howl, too, giving the one person I’ve decided to trust sharp teeth and an appetite for flesh. His hand brushes my cheek, and the awful image goes away, leaving only my friend. Howl is safe.
“Want to talk about it?” he asks.
I shake my head, taking a deep, shuddering breath that sends darts of pain through ribs I thought were starting to mend. “No. I don’t even want to think about it.”
“Okay.” He doesn’t climb back down, tracing the pattern quilted into my sleeping bag with one finger. “Do you need anything?”
I shake my head.
“I’ll come up.” He climbs over me and slips in between me and June. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and June will fall off.” He smiles to belie the joke.
I smile back, glad that he doesn’t mean it. It’s odd, but having Howl right beside me does make things seem less frightening. I sleep, and this time the dreams stay far away.