his voice gentle as a blade. ‘Nobody’s introduced me properly to your new friend.’ His eyes were scanning Paloma, coming to rest on her face. ‘I’d love to learn more about you.’
Paloma spoke: ‘I’ve heard more than enough about you,’ she said.
‘And you believe it?’ Zach said quickly. ‘What makes you think you can trust these people?’
Zoe opened her mouth, but Paloma spoke first. ‘I make my own judgments.’
‘And you’ve judged that this is the best alliance your homeland can hope for?’ Zach cast a glance around at the rest of us, and the shabby kitchen.
Zoe shoved him backwards. It was only a light push, but with his arms chained in front of him, he could neither balance nor break his fall, stumbling and landing on his back by the fireplace.
Piper moved to pull Zoe away, but she was already leaving, Paloma beside her.
‘Keep your distance,’ she repeated to Zach, without looking back. She slammed the kitchen door behind her.
Zach raised his eyebrows, heaving himself upright and doing his best to brush the dust from his trousers with his shackled hands.
‘What are you all so afraid of?’ he said.
My vision answered: the flames burst behind my eyes. Forever fire.
*
For all the years of my childhood, I had done everything I could to stay with him. I had lied, and hidden, concealed the truth about my visions from everybody, so that I could stay with him and my family. Now he was here, and all that I wanted was to get away from him.
There were moments when I was ambushed by the similarities between us. I heard his inflections in my own words and so fell silent. At meals, sitting with my chin on my hand and the other hand rubbing the back of my neck, I’d look across the table and see that he was doing exactly the same thing. I didn’t know who was mirroring whom. But I always jerked away, placed my hands awkwardly by my sides, glancing to see if any of the others had noticed.
Often he was silent, just watching. When he did speak, it was always for a purpose.
He singled Sally out, one morning over breakfast.
‘Have you thought about the other potential uses for the tanks?’ he said.
I froze, a spoonful of porridge halfway to my mouth. Sally ignored him, and Zoe made a point of turning her body away from him to face Paloma, at the far end of the table.
‘We’ve seen enough of your tanks,’ Piper said.
‘You’ve all been so quick to dismiss the tanks.’ Zach waved his hand around the table. ‘A kneejerk reaction, because you’re afraid of the taboo. But there are other uses for them.’ His burn was healing: the blisters gone, the dried skin cracked like summer earth. Soon enough he would have a scar in the same place as mine. ‘For the sick,’ he continued, ‘to keep people alive until they can be cured. Or for the elderly.’ His voice was soft now, his focus back on Sally. ‘Who knows what medicine might achieve in future years, if this uprising of yours isn’t allowed to derail our progress? The tanks could allow you to stay alive decades longer, until we have the ability to help with your condition.’
Sally had been continuing to eat, as if he weren’t even there. Now, though, she put down her spoon and laughed loudly. ‘I’m not elderly,’ she said to him. ‘I’m old.’ She rolled the word on her tongue, relishing it. ‘And my condition is that I’ve been on this earth for more than eighty years, and I’ve seen and done things you can’t even dream of. There’s no cure for that.’ She pushed back her bowl. ‘You think I’d go into a tank, in the hope of scavenging a few more years?’
She leaned in, her face so close to Zach’s that he drew his head back, barely hiding his distaste. ‘I’m going to die, son,’ she said. ‘And so are you. The only difference between us is that I’m wise enough to know that dying’s far from the worst thing that could happen to me.’
The bench creaked as she stood up. She took Xander’s hand and led him from the room.
*
I thought it was rain that had woken me, but it was just the claws of rats on the roof. There was a plague of rats in New Hobart. It had started in the western quarter, and before long they were all through the town, scrabbling under the floorboards of the holding house. Like us, they were suffering from the absence of crops in the surrounding farmland, and so they swarmed to the town to scavenge what they could, which felt like everything. Each morning we swept their pellets from the kitchen floor. The leather upholstery in the Tithe Collector’s office had been completely gnawed away, and one day I found a nest of eight baby rats sleeping in the horsehair stuffing of the largest chair.
The Council ban on Omegas keeping animals meant there were no cats in New Hobart. Even The Ringmaster had to laugh when he reported that he’d sent two small patrols into Council territory, to steal cats from towns and villages. I was there when they returned, and when they opened the two sacks that hung, thrashing, from the rear rider’s saddle, the cats sprang out with a hiss like water on a hot skillet, scattering and howling, sending one of the horses shying into a fence. Within a few days the cats had settled in as the guards of our grain stores, and they grew fat and glossy while the rest of us grew thinner.
Despite the cats, the rats kept coming, and they grew bold. One afternoon I saw one scuttle across the courtyard in broad daylight, dragging a pilfered potato in its mouth. When I threw a stone at it, it didn’t even dodge, just turned to stare at me briefly before continuing its steady progress across the gravel.
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