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I glanced at the sky, watching the smoke rise up in a haze, blanketing the stars. There was an orange glow coming from the north, where the fires grew in the Outlands. Two gunshots sounded in succession, then a woman’s scream.
“Where is that shop?” I asked Clara, hurrying out ahead of her. I looked to the east, where the side streets opened up to stores and restaurants. “We passed it one day while we were walking, and you said everyone bought clothes there. ”
“It’s just another block. ” She pointed to the corner ten yards ahead. I sped up, running as fast as I could in the long skirt, the tulle underpinning scratching at my legs. I didn’t stop until I’d turned onto the quiet side street. The shop was just two doors in from the road. I tried the door but it didn’t give.
“The rocks,” I said, pointing to the bushes that lined the main strip. They were planted beside the sidewalk, the dirt surrounded by heavy stones. “Pass me one. ”
Clara found a large rock by the base of the roots and handed it to me. I aimed at the center of the glass door, launching it through the window just above the handle. The glass shattered around it, splintered and white, like crushed ice. The alarm sounded, an electric howl so loud I felt the vibrations in my chest. I unlocked the door and ran inside, toward the back, where shirts hung on a rack.
Clara unzipped the back of my gown, helping me out of it. I pulled a black blouse off the rack, then some trousers. Clara dressed quickly, grabbing another shirt from a hanger and slipping on a pair of shoes. As she knelt down to tie them, the alarm continued its horrible wail. I looked out the shattered door, scared it would draw attention, but only one person darted past. They hardly glanced at the store as they ran.
“These too,” I said, grabbing two hats from a table on our way out. We pulled them down over our eyes and immediately I felt more at ease, stepping back onto the main road.
We ran in silence, our heads down, staring at the pavement. More gunfire could be heard somewhere in the north, then an explosion that cracked and rolled like thunder, shaking everything around us. A woman ran up the main road, covering her ears with her hands. An older man was right behind her, his jacket black with dirt, his right pant leg ripped at the knee. They slowed down as they passed. The woman pointed over her shoulder. “They’re coming up from the south,” she yelled. “There are hundreds of them. Boys from the camps, too. ”
The man lingered at the corner for a moment, his wife’s hand clutched in his. “Good luck to you both. ”
A fire had started in an old warehouse. Black smoke rippled up from a broken window, the air sharp with the smell of burned plastic. I watched the bend in the road as we ran, waiting for the Palace to appear beyond it. I could hear Clara’s breaths behind me and the dull sound of her shoes on the pavement. Slowly it came into view. The lights below the statues had been turned off, the silhouettes just visible against the trees. The fountains were still. Dozens of soldiers lined the north end of the mall, the Jeeps parked on the sidewalk, blocking the entrances.
I held my hands in front of me, showing them I was unarmed. We started up the long driveway, the thin trees rising up on either side of us. A soldier by the front entrance spotted us first, bringing his gun down, pointing to where we stood. I paused there, Clara next to me, watching as two other soldiers approached. “It’s Genevieve,” I said. I pulled off my hat, revealing my face. “Clara and I were trapped on the other end of the road. ”
One of the soldiers pulled a flashlight from his belt, running it over the black pants and blouses we’d stolen from the store. He rested it for a moment on my face, and I squinted against the lighted beam. “Our apologies, Princess,” I heard him say, repeating it as the figures ran toward us. “We didn’t recognize you in those clothes. ”
They escorted us on both sides, bringing us into the Palace’s main floor, where the marble statues stood, the women’s arms raised to the ceiling in greeting. But even after we were in the elevator, rising above the City, there was no sense of relief. I thought only of Moss, of the army coming from the colonies, wondering when and how I’d escape.
I SAT ON THE EDGE OF THE BATHTUB, THE RADIO IN MY HANDS. I’d covered the small speaker with a towel, afraid Charles would hear it from the bedroom. He’d been on a site in the Outlands when the siege began and was taken back in a government car. A boy, no more than sixteen, had thrown a flaming bottle at a Jeep. He’d described how it broke against the undercarriage, igniting the seat, where two soldiers were. Even after Charles lay down for the night, he kept his eyes open, his face fixed in a strange expression. He stared at a spot beyond the floor, looking at something I couldn’t see.
I twisted the radio on, turning it past the City stations and patches of empty static, to the first line Moss had marked in pen. A message cut the quiet, interrupted by an occasional low crackle. It was a man’s voice, stringing together several unconnected thoughts that would seem like gibberish to anyone unfamiliar with the codes. I tried to remember Moss’s directions exactly, the numbers he used to make sense of it. The message would repeat on a ten-minute loop, the second station providing the last portion.
I’d tried to keep my voice steady as I asked Charles to arrange a meeting with Reginald, the King’s Head of Press. My father had gotten worse over the course of the day and was still bedridden. I’d said I wanted to offer a statement on his behalf. Charles hadn’t seen Reginald since the morning, and most of the soldiers in the Palace believed he’d gone to the Outlands to report on what was happening. I couldn’t leave the Palace tonight, as we’d discussed—not until I’d secured protection for Clara, her mother, and Charles.
Everything felt wrong. I tried not to think, just copied the words from the radio, listing seven at a time down the page, as Moss had instructed. I wrote until my wrist hurt, my fingers cramped and sore, then twisted the dial to the next line Moss had marked.
It took me nearly an hour, writing down the mumbled nonsense, then listening to it again—twice—to be certain I’d gotten it correct. When I was done I had two blocks of words, seven down and ten across. I set the papers beside each other, moving over every three, then every six, then every nine, recopying the words.
I stared at them for a moment, these new sentences. I shut the radio off and sat there in silence. The colonies have backed out. They cannot provide support for the siege on the City.
I held the radio in my hands, not quite believing it. The colonies weren’t coming. In one day, with one decision, the rebels had lost thousands of soldiers. What did this mean for those who’d already begun fighting? What did this mean for everyone inside the City walls? Moss had been so confident they’d come, that they’d provide the final push needed to secure the City. Everything seemed less certain now.
I sat there, waiting to feel something, anything, but my insides felt hollow and cold. My hands were numb as I set the radio down. My pregnancy sometimes seemed more like a constant, all-consuming sickness than a child growing inside me. But since the siege began I hadn’t felt the heavy nausea. More than eight hours had passed. My stomach wasn’t tense and twisted. I didn’t feel anything, and that nothingness scared me. The doctor’s words kept coming back to me. He’d said it was still possible to lose the child, that stress and strain could cause it all to go away.