pouring a cup of water at the side table, so that I could turn away from their stares. The water splashed from my unsteady hands.
Piper picked up his cup and joined me. ‘Zach’s trying to mess with you,’ he said, without looking at me, as he took the jug and filled his cup. He kept his voice low, so the others couldn’t hear. ‘Don’t let him in your head.’
I nodded. But he didn’t know that Zach had never been out of it.
Sally, Elsa, Xander and I sat in the front room of the holding house as the town’s evening noises rattled past the window. Soldiers off duty; the more orderly footsteps of those still on patrol; the voices of passing townsfolk. When I was last in New Hobart, it had taken me a few days to realise why the town sounded strange. It wasn’t only the aftermath of the battle that had left the town damaged and the residents nervy and furtive. Even after the repairs had begun, and people had returned to the streets, the sound of the city remained different. Eventually I’d realised that it was the nearly total absence of children. At Elsa’s house, around the market, and in the streets, only adult voices were to be heard. There was a whole layer of noise missing: the high voices of children’s chatter; the crying of babies; the sudden shout of a child ambushed in a game. The town was far from silent now – thousands of people lived here, and went about the business of their days – but like a dented bell, New Hobart didn’t ring true.
My gaze kept straying to where Xander sat, leaning against Sally’s chair with his eyes closed. I thought of Zach, locked in his cell at the Tithe Collector’s office. Zach was my past, Xander was my future. And ahead of us all: the blast, which would be the end of Elsewhere, and the resistance, and any futures that I could envisage.
Below the large window, another patrol passed – twelve mounted soldiers on their way back from the wall.
Sally saw me watching them.
‘We’ve increased the size of the patrols, since the Council seized Wreckers’ Pass and started picking off the convoys. We’ve set up some permanent outposts on the supply routes, too.’
It wasn’t the size of the patrol that had caught my attention, though. It was the two men in the centre of it, who didn’t wear the same uniform as the rest of The Ringmaster’s soldiers. They wore the blue of the island’s guards, and they were Omegas. The first man’s left arm was a stub, a clawed hand protruding directly from his shoulder. The taller man, behind him, had a hunchback that forced him to lean forward over the pommel of his saddle.
‘They’re patrolling together now?’ I said to Sally.
She nodded. ‘Neither side was that keen on it – The Ringmaster’s men in particular. It was never a decision we made. It just happened. There was the fire in the northern quarter while you were away, and everyone had to pitch in together, to stop the whole town going up in smoke. And at times, they were a few hands short for some of the Alpha patrols. Drafted in a couple of our troops – not without some muttering, on both sides.’
‘But they’ve kept doing it?’ I said, my gaze following the last of the riders as they turned the corner at the top of the hill.
‘Don’t get dreamy-eyed about it,’ Sally said. She took a deep pull of Elsa’s pipe, held the smoke in her mouth for a few seconds. ‘Nobody did it because they wanted to. Like I said: it just happened. Still only happens when a patrol’s shorthanded, or there’s some kind of emergency.’
I nodded, and leaned my face against the window frame to hide my smile. This was how it happened: daily familiarity, not grand gestures. You could only pass a fellow soldier so many times, at shift handover, and see him unbuckle his sword, and grunt about the weather, before you learned that he was a man just like you, no more mysterious or terrifying than that. The Council’s policy of segregation had been a key part of its attempt to stoke tensions between Alphas and Omegas. Sharing a latrine might do more to bring the two together than any inspiring speeches could have done.
‘It’s not all been smooth sailing,’ Elsa said. ‘There’s been bickering, and some big flare-ups, especially since rations got so tight. While you were away at the coast, some of The Ringmaster’s men tried to claim the biggest well, in the market, saying it was for Alpha use only. They were trying to get everyone worked up about it. Muttering about contamination.’
Sally rolled her eyes. ‘We share a womb, but they reckon they’ll catch something if we share a well?’
I knew what she meant, but I also knew that it was because we shared a womb that they flinched from us, not in spite of it – I’d learned that from Zach. Nothing frightened them more than the realisation that we were not so different after all.
‘There were arguments,’ Elsa went on, ‘and more than a couple of fistfights.’
Sally nodded. ‘The Ringmaster came down hard on both sides – he was fair about it, I’ll say that. Didn’t take any nonsense, not from his own soldiers any more than ours.’ She gave a slow chuckle. ‘It was laziness that put an end to the idea though – not discipline, let alone principles. Most of the Alphas quartered on the eastern side of town were too lazy to go across town to the market for water. The whole thing petered out after a few days.’
She still spoke of them that way: his soldiers and ours. But for the first time since Zach’s arrival I permitted myself a moment of hope that in this half-starved town, we were building something new. In its own small way, the sight of those riders, Alphas and Omegas together, felt as monumental as Elsewhere itself.
*
Sally came to the dormitory that night, when I was alone. I heard her distinctive gait across the courtyard: a slow step, each movement precise because it cost her so much pain.
‘I’ve seen you watching Xander,’ she said.
His name was enough to make me stiffen. What she said was true. I didn’t like to be near Xander, but when I was, I couldn’t stop watching him.
‘I don’t mean to stare,’ I said. ‘But I can’t help it. When I see him, I can see what I’m becoming—’
She spoke over me. ‘I don’t have time for your platitudes.’ She waved a hand impatiently. ‘You’re a seer and I need your help. I can’t reach him any more. Tell me what can be done for him.’ I thought of Xander’s face, blank as the burnt-out buildings that still lined the streets of New Hobart. ‘He’s barely said a word, for weeks,’ Sally went on. ‘Not even the usual fire-talk.’ His old refrain: Forever fire.
‘What’s the point of him saying it, now?’ I said. ‘You don’t stand in the middle of a burning forest, shouting, Fire! The blast is upon us. It’s too late for warnings. He knows it. We know it.’
‘So how can I help him?’ she said.
‘You can’t,’ I said. ‘I mean, not any more than you already are. Talk to him. Keep him fed. Let him go to the Kissing Tree, if it helps to calm him.’ All the hundred things that she did for him each day. That same morning, from the dormitory window, I’d seen her kneel on the gravel to trim Xander’s toenails, though kneeling seemed to take her minutes, both hands on the small of her back as she lowered herself.
‘Does he even know what’s going on
