Chapter Six

WORD FROM THE shrubbery is that Leece and Mara are halfway to the Highlands proper by now. They’re rumbling that the Mach met the regular soldiers who arrested them halfway along the Tread as soon as they left the non settlement in Lethe.

That’s when we give up any hope of rescuing them en route. The Mach are the most elite of the king’s forces, specially trained in massacre tactics. They’re the ones who carried out the original occupation of Izla and the institution of nongovernmental control throughout the Grove and the Samp. They designed the massacres of the dragons and attempted to infiltrate the Plains barrier in the attack that killed Jax’s joiner.

There’s no overcoming the Mach. Their magic tears the Energies in ways most faeries refuse to do. So we can’t beat them.

Mara and Leece are lost.

“What is it, Sadie?” Mom asks me one sunup, long after the Dreaming test. The labor canon won’t go off for a while, and she’s sitting between Mama’s open legs on Banion, Aon’s hatchling tree. My little sibling is bouncing around in Mom’s lap as Mama undoes Mom’s braids.

“What, what, Saaaadie,” Aon babbles as que stretches quer wings tentatively, almost pitching querself off of Banion’s canopy.

Mom leans down to catch quer and Mama jerks her hands away from Mom’s head, narrowly avoiding yanking her hair at the sudden movement. Mama’s eyes are on me, eyebrow raised, as Mom settles back into her with Aon. Mama’s fingers pick up where they left off expertly.

I run my hand down Banion’s trunk to ask if I can collapse onto one of his lower hanging branches. He rumbles a “not now,” so I spin in the air irritably, rolling myself around until I’m regarding my growns upside down, like Zaylam tends to do to me.

“It’s nothing,” I tell them with my body. I shake my shoulders and fly off, figuring I’ll go for a morning fly with Zaylam before labor instead of hanging with the growns.

“Sadie,” Mom calls again. It’s her you-better-talk-to-me-right-now voice. My wings droop and I hover where I am, turning around cautiously. I catch Mom’s waiting expression, and all at once everything is spilling out of my lips.

“You should never have let them lock themselves back up in that caravan! How could they possibly expect to lead those soldiers off course? They couldn’t even do magic in those chains, they kept them from twisting the Energies or else they would have escaped without any help from us!”

I glance around us and switch to unspoken body language. “And you knew he could Dream too, you knew, and you abandoned him! You made me lie next to him while they took him away, and he was like me! He was so like me, and you didn’t even care!”

Mom’s eyes are full of tears, and Aon is just staring at me, quiet. Mama’s hands have left Mom’s hair, and are now bracing her waist, thumbs running up and down her skin.

“Are you done?” Mom’s voice is full of gravel, and she says it like a statement. Something hot, like shame, comes rushing to the pit of my stomach.

“Faye.” Mom ignores Mama, who takes a deep breath and looks away from both of us.

“Sadie, he was so heavily guarded from the moment they brought him here. We had no time to prepare, and we couldn’t get to him, Sadie. Don’t you think that kills me just as much as it does you? He grew up in non chains, so he was like me too, Sadie, in case you missed that bit.”

A tear slips down Mom’s cheek and breaks my heart along its path. Mama swallows and leans her head heavily onto Banion’s trunk, her eyelids fluttering closed.

“You think…” My voice is all croaky now too, and I clear it and fly tentatively closer to my growns. Aon reaches quer pudgy arms around Mom’s neck. I glance around again and switch to communicating with my body. “You think it’s better to get Sliced? To not Dream? Changed your mind now that one of your young ones can and one can’t?”

Mom says nothing, her eyes wide, but Mama shifts and her eyes flash. “Since when do you talk to your mother that way?”

I glower and just stare at Aon. Que reaches for something behind me, the bulb of quer hatchling dragon, hanging loosely from Banion’s branches. Its fluorescent sunset orange glow, matching Aon’s wings, is fading by the sunup. Because que can’t Dream, the hatchling will never be born.

At least Aon Dreamed Banion in the short days after quer birth, before que was Sliced. A lot of newly borns don’t even get to connect with their hatchling tree anymore. I sigh exaggeratedly, and I hear Banion rumbling something, though I can’t feel it.

“He says you can come sit if you’d like,” Mama says stiffly. “Though I don’t know why.” She directs this to Banion. I grimace as I scoot onto his branch with my growns and sibling, stroking my thanks into Banion’s bark.

I lean around Mama to look at Mom. I take a deep breath.

“I’m sorry, Mom. Sometimes…” I toss up my hands helplessly and switch to using my body to talk. “Sometimes I don’t know if I’m sad for Aon or if I’m jealous of quer. For being Sliced. Because sure, I can’t imagine life without Zay or Jorb, but…”

I shudder and the anger fades from Mom’s eyes. “But you’re always at risk of someone finding out.”

I shake my shoulders back and forth, and both my growns put one of their hands on mine.

“You were so alone in the Highlands, Sadie. We weren’t really allowed to socialize with a lot of other faeries, and I…I wanted you to be connected to people. To faeric life, to your hatchlings.” Mama rubs her shoulders and continues with her hair. Aon crawls over to me.

“I was younger, and I was alone, and I was probably stupid. Selfish. For putting you at risk like that.”

I’m shaking my head now, and I’m hugging Aon to me like quer Mom. I nod my head toward Zaylam and Jorbam. “You’re not selfish, Mom. I wouldn’t have them if you didn’t take that risk for me.” I glance at the scar above her lip and shudder. “You lost a lot too.”

Her face gets veiled, and she leans back closer into Mama. I can’t look at her. I want to fly away. I can’t. I don’t.

“I know you felt connected to Leece, sherba.”

I look at Mom over Aon’s tightly coiled hair, rubbing my cheek into his sweet-smelling head. Mostly I’m too old for her to call me such a young-one-like endearment, but right now, I soak it up like water after a labor shift.

“It makes sense; you don’t know other nears who can Dream. Another thing that’s probably my fault.” She holds up a hand to stop me before I protest. “And I’m so sorry they…” Her voice chokes and she pauses. I wait. “One day, sherba, they’ll liberate the Pits and everyone there will be free. Leece too. All right?”

I don’t believe her. But I pretend I do. For now, it feels nice to pretend that things will get better.

Aon’s pudgy hands come up to clumsily touch my face, and I let quer have at it.

Que might be lonely without a hatchling dragon, but at least if que’s ever forced into a Dreaming test like that, que will be something I’ll never be.

Safe.

 

“YOU REALIZE THE Controller’s first Slicing is coming up, right?”

I grunt in affirmation and heave my axe over my shoulder for another slam into the short tree I’ve been tasked with killing this sunup. Kashat opens his mouth to keep talking, but I grunt again, this time in warning. P’Tal and Lerian are approaching out of the corner of my eye, right behind him, and we can’t talk about this in front of P’Tal.

Kashat follows my eyes and looks over his shoulder, alarmed, and we both swing our faye glass axes, hard, into the trees in front of us, carefully keeping time with the rhythms of the wordless labor songs.

“How’s Lunamez prep coming, Kashat? You’re getting your accounting performance together all right?” Lerian chimes, trying to change the subject as she passes behind us, hauling the pieces of tree bodies we and the others are chopping. She’s been assigned one of the bigger carts today, so P’Tal is strapped in next to her, his torso dripping with sweat. The harnesses around his shoulders are digging into him and reddening his strained, pale skin. His hooves pull in time with hers, but his eyes are distant.

“Good, yeah,” Kashat answers, his voice transparently overeager. “The Lunamez learning pod is being real sweet. Since I got old enough to do labor, they’ve been working with me after labor hours to get our performance together. Hazal’s even teaching us how to make those whisp creations, you know, the ones she tells stories with, that get all scary sometimes but usually are pretty great.” He nods at me when he says that. Mama has always been great at whisp art.

Kashat keeps on rambling about Lunamez, how excited he is for the holiday, and how it’s the first time he’s gotten to lead the performance. He’s nervous because at the non equivalent of fourteen harvests old, he’s the youngest to lead the accounting performance in a fair while.

While he babbles, I keep shooting P’Tal furtive glances. Kashat tries to engage me with the subject, to distract from what I know must be a deep pit of guilt in his belly for bringing up Slicings in front of the older centaur.

P’Tal, along with his joiners Aora and Zeel, are expecting a young one soon. The young one will be the first newly born under the new Controller. Zeel’s been carrying their young one in quer belly for almost two full harvests and will be giving birth soon. With Sachin, our last Controller, there was always a chance of secretly avoiding a Slicing. Growns could disappear for a while and have a fake scar tattooed on the newly born’s temple, and then return with false verification that they’d gotten it done elsewhere. Sort of like what Mom did with me when I was a young one.

But with Evelyn in charge, she’s succeeding in warning everyone else what the consequences will be of interfering with palace operations. The public Dream test, dragging Mara and Leece away in front of everyone. Under her command, failure to Slice a newly born will have consequences.

I glance across the Forest at Aora, her long brown hair wrapped up in a scarf behind her broad back as she works. Until a few sunups ago, Zeel had done quer labor in the harvesting fields, with Mama, but so close to giving birth, que’s now under mandatory rest, with nearly constant observation by the king’s Registry. Not a lot of hope of galloping away with their newly born.

I check to make sure P’Tal, trudging along with Lerian, is out of listening range. “You heard that the—” I hack and grunt as I yank my axe out of tree flesh quickly, keeping in time with Kashat’s pacing and sounds. “—Head Slicer is coming in tomorrow?”

Kashat grunts in the affirmative. He waits for the rhythm of the rest of the faeries to meet him, and swings his own axe in time to the melancholy but somehow soothing beat. P’Tal and Lerian are a safe distance away, dumping the contents of their cart in the assigned area, the tree flesh clattering in counterpoint with our axe strikes. I slam my axe down in keeping with the time for a while before taking a few heaving breaths, rubbing out the burning in my shoulders before shaking out my hands.

“Is it sick that I’m a little grateful? That maybe after the first Slicing goes off without a hitch, the new Controller will calm down a little bit and stop arresting us all randomly to check for Dreaming? Because—”

Lerian clears her throat loudly behind me. I jump and spin around. “P’Tal, I—”

He holds up his hands. “Stop. I get it. Just stop.”

I back away from the tree I’ve been assigned to kill and move toward him. His face is longer than usual. Tired. He repeats his hand gesture wearily, speaking with his body. “You three were Sliced, right? You all can’t Dream.”

Ler glances at me, but says nothing, and neither do I. It’s always seemed strange to me that Mama hasn’t told P’Tal I can Dream; they’ve been so close ever since Mama first came to the Grove as a near. But I imagine it’s for his safety. I feel guilty enough that I told Lerian and Osley when I was younger and stupider. I’m certainly not going to say anything to contradict Mama’s decision to keep her friend safe.

P’Tal presses me, whispering aloud now. “So the little one will be fine. Que has to be, right? Even if que can’t Dream. I can’t Dream anymore, they Sliced me too. All of us. When we were older, of course, when they did all the growns, and I’m fine. We’re fine.”

“Everything all right over here?” We all straighten up, breaking rhythm with the rest of the laborers, as the crisp Highlander non words interrupt our conversation, accompanied by the sound of skin boots on the ground.

My stomach swirls. I know that voice.

I turn. A girl Hand—woman, I guess, but she’s about my age-mate, so that feels odd saying—is staring right at me, with a challenge of a sparkle in her narrow eyes. Her jaw is set and her delicately manicured eyebrow is arched at me before I can even speak. There’s a brown sling around her arm, offsetting her white uniform with dotted purple stripes along the sides. Her high ranking sends a shiver down my spine.

I know why I recognized her voice.

Iema. The girl I rescued the night I met Evelyn. She must have healed up enough in Lethe to come back on duty, protecting the Controller.

Her eyes glisten with recognition—probably she recognized me even before she approached and spoke to us—but her face registers no surprise at my wings. There’s a warning in her stance, and I act as though I’ve never seen her before, as though she’s never pleaded for her fellow soldier to stop hitting me because I was trying to save her life.

“Yes, ma’am,” I stutter as my friends freeze.

She purses her thin lips and I remind myself to lower my gaze out of respect for her position.

“None of you seem to be working.”

Lerian’s tail swings around uncomfortably, and Kashat feigns extreme interest in the beetle climbing the grass under his dangling feet. P’Tal towers over Iema, standing at attention as though he were a Hand himself and she were his commander.

“You must all know by now how essential your work is here,” Iema continues. “The entire Kingdom depends on this land being cleared so roads can connect the Forest and the Samp more easily to the Highlands. You know this is only going to help all of you, don’t you?”

Kashat gulps, and I unfurl my wings enough to touch their tips to his chest. Only two seasons ago, he was a pre-choosing young one. Even though he’s a near now, almost my age-mate, I feel extra protective of him. P’Tal too, extends his fingers toward Kashat’s wing sprouts. His breathing slows at our touch.

I address this new Hand, this woman whose blood I was drenched in so recently. “One of P’Tal’s joiners is due to give birth soon, ma’am. He was just wishing he and Aora could be home with quer, in case the young one begins to come. That’s all.”

Iema’s eyebrows go up as she considers P’Tal, as though noticing him for the first time. “Is that what’s happening, centaur? You’re concerned about your wife?”

The side of his mouth twitches. Marriage is a non thing—faeries and centaurs have different forms of joining—and even if we did do marriage, wife wouldn’t be the right word for Zeel, who at quer choosing declared querself beyond woman and man.

But P’Tal is smart. He nods in the human fashion, even widening his already wide eyes to look more pathetic. His narrow nose twitches in hope. I almost smirk.

A long silence where we all listen to the movement songs of the laboring Forest. Then, “Finish hauling the next few rounds of wood, then get one of the other centaurs to replace your cart. Then you and this…Aora? Can take the rest of the day to yourselves. Report to me before you leave so I can give you the proper documentation.”

P’Tal bows his head, his shaggy hair flapping comically. “Many thanks, ma’am.”

Iema shoots me a significant look before turning on her heel and walking off. We all glance at each other uneasily.

P’Tal beams at me while Lerian grins and hits me on the shoulder and Kashat thumps my wing sprouts. “Good save, faerie.” I grin and push Lerian back, shaking off how unnerving seeing Iema was. Yet another Hand who surely has put together that I’m a spy.

“Yeah, you did great too, centaur. Loved the part where you said nothing at all.” She and P’Tal give small whinnies in between the rhythmic thudding of axe blows. P’Tal shifts toward me and puts his forehead to mine before setting off.

As soon as they’re out of range, Kashat shifts closer to me so that every time we raise our axes, we’re in danger of smacking each other in the head with the blunt sides. He mutters to me in between swings, using the labor songs as cover to avoid being overheard.

“You caught how she deferred to you the whole time, right? Like you’re all special and speak for the rest of us because you look kind of…”

“Like a non,” I grunt wearily as I rear my axe up again, careful to avoid thwacking him. “And nope, I didn’t notice exactly. But I see it now you mention it. I guess I’m just pretty used to it.”

Kashat grunts and yanks his axe out of tree flesh with a whispered apology. He turns to me, wiping his face with the rapidly developing muscular ball of his shoulder. He shakes out his long, light brown fingers before pretending to examine his axe blade. He talks so softly now that I have to glance around us to make sure no one’s watching. I lean really close into him then, so close I can smell the fruity oil in his hair. I lean down so it looks like I’m helping him check his axe for dents or imperfections.

“My growns have been working with Jax and some elders and a few newly post-choosing nears, like me.” He’s muttering quickly, his eyes darting across the area rapidly. “Jax figures, if we work with young ones whose growth has just slowed to a more non-like speed, and we try to actually induce Dreams, we might be able to restore Dreaming after Slicings. If we twist the Energies just right and put that twisting into medicine form, maybe we can get Dreaming back after Slicings take them away. We can have hatchling trees and dragons.”

Kashat glances at my furrowed brow and grimaces apologetically. “He didn’t tell you on account of you’re too old, and he didn’t want you to have another sneaky spy type thing to worry about.” More likely, because I can already Dream, so there’s not anything to restore. But I say nothing and nod him on. “And it makes your mom too sad to work on it. Anyway, point is, I’ve been in the infirmary a lot in between labor and Lunamez preparations. They’re ready to try out a serum that might counteract the effects of the Slicing. But someone has to slip it into the head Slicer’s equipment so we can try it in an actual Slicing. P’Tal, Aora, and Zeel knew and were excited, but it uh…it kind of stalled when this new Controller made it too risky to get to the head Slicer.”

He widens his eyes at me, and I run my fingers over his blade as a pair of centaurs pass under us with their carts. “Jax would never let me go on another mission right now,” I mutter back when they’ve passed by. “My growns would kill him, and he knows it. Not after what happened the other sunup. Too soon. They’re worried about traumatizing me, or something.”

Kashat inhales shakily, his eyes speeding around so quickly I’m worried he’ll get a headache. And then his hand is in mine, and something shaped like a small vial, like the kind Mom and Jax keeps liquid medicines in, passes between us. I slip it into my pocket without looking at it. “Don’t get me wrong, I care about you too, Sadie, but P’Tal’s been really good to me on labor every day, and I’m not trying to be your grown.” He winks at me.

“The head Slicer’s coming in tomorrow. Which means he’s probably staying at the Lethean Inn tonight,” I whisper, a tingling rising in my forehead that always happens when I’m focusing extra hard.

Kashat nods as we pull apart from each other, slamming our axes extra hard for effect as another team of centaurs passes, hauling their cart. “And since this new Controller looks like she brought a whole new team of Hands along with her, it’s super likely the head Slicer will be new too. He won’t know what you look like at all.”

I think about telling him no, that the risks of Dreaming aren’t worth it.

The labor songs around us take up the rhythm of an old dragon hymn, and I nod at Kashat. I’ll do it. It’s worth it. It has to be.

How else will the future be full of dragon songs? How else will Zaylam not be the last of the dragons one day—unless by luck some younger faeries Dream both of their hatchling mates in the short period before their Slicings—when all her elders return to the Energies and none have hatched after her? I can’t let her live through that.

I won’t.

I swallow heavily as Iema patrols under us, her functioning arm drifting up to her cast absently. I hold her eyes for a long moment.

When she passes, I turn to Kashat and nod. “Cover for me with my growns tonight,” I tell him. He grins and shakes his shoulders back and forth, a Grovian nod, conspiratorially.

Maybe P’Tal’s young one does have some hope of Dreaming and having hatchlings mates, after all.