Bron unlocks the door with skills I didn’t know he had and scouts the place before he lets us enter. It’s small, the second-story apartment above a small bicycle shop, one bedroom, one bath, a study, a kitchen. The shop is picked clean, but the apartment is clean, warm, and abandoned.
We shuffle around in the dim light through the window. Nyasha finds a pair of candles and a few matches. “Romantic, huh?” she says as she sets them on the coffee table. She sits on the edge of the couch, gazing at the pictures on the wall. A young couple smiles down at us. “I wonder where they are?”
“Dead,” I say.
“Maybe they were out of town.”
“Doesn’t matter to me as long as we can sleep here.” The cushions feel so good. I miss my own rooms, my own bed.
Bron locks the door, then places a small bookshelf in front of it.
We sit in silence. I lie down, close my eyes, and let the blood beat through my body. Nyasha moves over to the chair.
“The bed is yours, Calea,” Bron says.
“Did you and Nyasha decide that? You sleep there. It’ll keep your snoring behind a closed door.”
“It’s an offer, that’s all.”
“I’m sure Nyasha wants it. She’s a girl.”
“Let’s just admit we’re all too stubborn to accept it,” Nyasha says. “I’ll sleep anywhere.” Nyasha is obviously pleased with her grasp of the situation.
“Well, if you and Bron are too stubborn, fine. No use in a perfectly good bed going to waste just because you want to act like children.”
I am rather pleased with Nyasha’s expression as I stand. I was ready to fight tooth and nail to refuse, because I am not inferior to either of them and I won’t let them think I am. But a Select deserves better accommodations than those under her, and I need not let them think I am accepting a life at their level.
Or so I tell myself as I lie on the too-soft mattress, spread-eagle, alert and alone.
* * *
I cannot sleep. I am aware of everything, of every sound, of the creases of the sheets beneath me. Nyasha is speaking in the next room. “I know the general district where my dad’s relatives used to live. If we made it there, I’m sure we could ask around.”
Bron listens. He is considering events with his plodding brain. I already know what he will say in the morning. “Stay here. Let me look around.” He will concoct some scheme about blending in, making some money, earning our keep in some corner, and waiting. He won’t know what we’re waiting for. Just waiting, like he used to do when I spent hours in the lab, and he stood, guarding me from dangers that didn’t exist.
I lie awake, my mind turning over a single thought again and again. Nyasha has her search, however futile. Bron has his duty, however misdirected. And I have….
I have nothing.
When I wake up, why will I rise?
In a world of magic, I could study and create. My limbs didn’t hold me back; they were the focus of my studies.
Now I will be a beggar on a corner, living to eat another bite and sleep another night so that I can beg one day more.
Bron will drag me along, bleed for me in a world where bandits kill for food and rats fill civilized streets. Like a child he’ll carry me, as he did down the Well, as he did across the long miles to Averieom.
I can’t do it. I won’t do it.
I hate the bed. I twist and turn. I close my eyes and force myself to breathe slowly. I remain awake.
The thought remains, burrowing.
I will live like one dead. That is my future.
I stare at the ceiling for hours. The candles have been put out in the other room, and the city outside is dark. I hear the soft breathing of Bron and Nyasha; perhaps I only hear my own and pretend it is theirs.
A shift in the air draws my attention. I hardly know what it is. I listen intently.
“Bron?”
It is Nyasha’s voice, soft, a little scared.
He grunts. “I’m here.”
Nyasha settles again. I feel the house drifting to sleep once more. Then a whisper: “Bron, what will Calea do? She has nothing left.”
I wait. For thirty minutes I wait.
He doesn’t answer.
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