Legend Read online

  Mom stands alone in our tiny kitchen, trying to cook dinner. This is a scene I know well. Both her hands are wrapped in thick bandages—she must’ve cut herself on broken bottles or empty tins while cleaning out the trash cans around Union Station today. She winces as she breaks up some frozen corn kernels with the flat edge of a knife. Her injured hands tremble.

  Stop, Mom. I’ll help you. I try to get up, but my feet feel glued to the ground.

  After a while, I lift my head to see what Eden’s drawing now. At first I can’t make out what the shapes are—they seem jumbled, littered in random patterns under his busy hand.

  When I look closer, I realize that he’s drawing soldiers breaking into our home. He’s drawing them with a bloodred crayon.

  I wake with a start. Dim streaks of light, gray and waning, are filtering in through a nearby window. I hear the faint sound of rain. I’m in what looks like a child’s abandoned bedroom. The wallpaper is blue and yellow, and peeling at the corners. Two candles light the room. I can feel my feet hanging off the end of a bed. There’s a pillow under my head. When I shift, I let out a moan and close my eyes.

  Tess’s voice drifts over to me. “Can you hear me?” she says.

  “Not so loud, cousin.” My voice comes out in a whisper through dry lips. My head throbs with a blinding, stabbing headache. Tess recognizes the pain on my face and stays quiet while I keep my eyes closed and wait it out. The pain goes on, like a pick slamming repeatedly into the back of my head.

  After an eternity, the headache finally starts to fade. I open my eyes. “Where am I? Are you all right?”

  Tess’s face comes into focus. She has her hair pulled back in a short braid, and her lips are pink and smiling. “Am I all right?” she says. “You’ve been knocked out for over two days. How are you feeling?”

  Pain hits me in waves, this time from the wounds that must cover me. “Fantastic.”

  Tess’s smile fades. “You pulled a close one there—closest one yet. If I hadn’t found someone to take us in, I don’t think you would’ve made it.”

  Suddenly everything comes rushing back to me. I remember the hospital entrance, the stolen ID tag and the stairwell and the laboratory, the long fall, my knife thrown at the captain, the sewers. The medicine.

  The medicine. I try to sit up, but I move too fast and have to bite my lip from the pain. My hand flies to my neck—there’s no pendant to grab. Something aches in my chest. I lost it. My father had given me that pendant, and now I’d been careless enough to lose it.

  Tess tries to calm me. “Easy, there.”

  “Is my family okay? Did some of the medicine survive my fall?”

  “Some of it.” Tess helps me back down before leaning her elbows on my bed. “I guess suppressants are better than nothing. I’ve dropped it off at your mother’s home already, along with your gift bundle. I went through the back and handed them all off to John. He says to tell you thanks.”

  “You didn’t tell John what happened, did you?”

  Tess rolls her eyes. “You think I can keep that from him? Everyone’s heard about the break-in at the hospital by now, and John knows you’re hurt. He’s pretty angry about it.”

  “Did he say who’s sick? Is it Eden? Mom?”

  Tess bites her lip. “It’s Eden. John says everyone else is fine for now. But Eden can talk and seems alert enough. He tried to get out of bed and help your mother fix the leak under your sink, to prove he felt strong, but of course she sent him back to bed. She ripped up two of her shirts to use as cool cloths for Eden’s fever, so John said if you find any more clothes that fit Mom, he’d be happy to take them.”

  I let out a deep breath. Eden. Of course it’s Eden—still acting like a little engineer even with the plague. At least I managed to get some medicine. Everything’s going to work out. Eden will be okay for a while, and I don’t mind dealing with John’s lectures. As for my lost pendant, well . . . for an instant I’m glad that my mother can’t find out about this, because it would break her heart.

  “I couldn’t find any cures, and I didn’t have time to do a search.”

  “It’s okay,” Tess replies. She prepares a fresh bandage for my arm. I see my worn old cap hanging on the back of her chair. “Your family has some time. We’ll get another chance.”

  “Whose house are we in?”

  As soon as I ask this question, I hear a door close, then footsteps in the room next to ours. I look at Tess in alarm. She just nods quietly at me and tells me to relax.

  A man walks in, shaking dirty drops of rain from an umbrella. He carries a brown paper bag in his hands. “You’re awake,” he says to me. “That’s good.” I study his face. He’s very pale and a little chubby, with bushy eyebrows and kindly eyes. “Girl,” he says, looking at Tess, “do you think he can leave by tomorrow night?”

  “We’ll be on our way by then.” Tess picks up a bottle of something clear—alcohol, I guess—and wets the edge of the bandage with it. I flinch when she touches it to where a bullet had grazed my arm. It feels like a match lit against my skin. “Thank you again, sir, for letting us stay here.”

  The man grunts, his expression uncertain, and awkwardly nods his head. He looks around the room as if searching for something he’s lost. “I’m afraid that’s as long as I can keep you. The plague patrol’s going to do another sweep soon.” He hesitates. Then he pulls two cans from the paper bag and sets them down on a dresser. “Some chili for you. It’s not the best, but it’ll fill you up. I’ll bring you some bread, too.” Before either of us can say anything, he hurries out of the room with the rest of his groceries.

  For the first time, I look down at my body. I’m clothed in a brown pair of army trousers, and my bare chest and arm are bandaged. So is one of my legs. “Why’s he helping us?” I ask Tess in a low voice.

  She looks up from wrapping the fresh bandage around my arm. “Don’t be so suspicious. He had a son who worked at the warfront. He died of the plague a few years ago.” I yelp when Tess ties a finishing knot on the bandage. “Breathe in for me.” I do as she says. Several sharp pains stab me as she presses her fingers delicately against different parts of my chest. Her cheeks turn pink as she works. “You might have a crack in one of your ribs, but definitely no breaks. You should heal quickly enough. Anyway, the man didn’t ask our names and so I didn’t ask his. Best not to know. I told him why you got yourself injured like this. I think it reminded him of his son.”

  I lay my head back down on the pillow. My body hurts all over. “I lost both my knives,” I mutter, so that the man doesn’t hear me. “They were good knives.”

  “Sorry to hear it, Day,” Tess says. She brushes a stray hair from her face and leans over me. She holds up a clear plastic bag with three silver bullets inside. “I found these caught in the folds of your clothes and figured you might want them for your slingshot or something.” She stuffs the bag into one of my pockets.

  I smile. When I first met Tess three years ago, she was a skinny ten-year-old orphan rummaging through trash bins in the Nima sector. She’d needed my help so much in those early years that I sometimes forget just how much I rely on her now.

  “Thanks, cousin,” I say. She murmurs something I can’t understand, and looks away.

  After a while, I fall back into a deep sleep. When I wake up again, I don’t know how much time has passed. The headache is gone and it’s dark outside. It might be the same day, although I feel like I’ve slept far too long for that. No soldiers, no police. We’re still alive. I lie unmoving for a moment, wide-awake in the darkness. Looks like our caretaker hasn’t reported us. Yet.

  Tess is dozing on the edge of the bed with her head tucked into her arms. Sometimes I wish I could find her a good home, some kind family willing to take her in. But every time I have this thought, I push it away—because Tess would be back on the Republic’s grid if she ever joined a real family. And she’d be forced to take the Trial because she never took it before. Or worse, they’d learn about her affiliation
with me and interrogate her. I shake my head. Too naive, too easily manipulated. I wouldn’t trust her with anyone else. Besides . . . I’d miss her. The first two years I’d spent wandering the streets by myself were lonely ones.

  I gingerly move my ankle in a circle. It’s a little stiff, but otherwise pretty painless—no torn muscles, no serious swelling. My bullet wound still burns and my ribs ache something fierce, but this time I’m strong enough to sit up without too much trouble. My hands go automatically up to my hair, which is loose and hanging past my shoulders. With one hand, I pull it into a messy tail and twist it into a tight knot. Then I lean over Tess, grab my beaten newsboy cap from the chair, and pull it on. My arms burn from the effort.

  I smell chili and bread. There’s a bowl with some steam rising from it on the dresser next to the bed and a small loaf of bread balanced on the bowl’s edge. I think back to the two cans our caretaker had placed on the dresser.

  My stomach growls. I devour it all.

  As I’m licking the last of the chili off my fingers, I hear a door close somewhere in the house and, moments later, footsteps rushing toward our room. I tense up. Next to me, Tess jerks awake and grabs my arm.

  “What was that?” she blurts out. I hold a finger to my lips.

  Our caretaker hurries into the room, a tattered robe draped over his pajamas. “You should leave now,” he whispers. Sweat beads on his forehead. “I just heard about a man who’s been looking for you.”

  I stare levelly at him. Tess gives me a panicked look. “How do you know?” I ask.

  The man starts cleaning up the room, grabbing my empty bowl and wiping down the dresser. “He’s telling people that he has plague cures for someone who needs it. He says he knows that you’re injured. He never gave a name, but he must be talking about you.”

  I sit up straight and swing my legs over the side of the bed. There’s no choice now. “He’s talking about me,” I agree. Tess snatches up a few clean bandages and stuffs them under her shirt. “It’s a trap. We’ll leave immediately.”

  The man nods once. “You can get out through the back door. Straight into the hall, on your left.”

  I take a moment to meet his eyes. In that instant, I realize that he knows exactly who I am. He won’t say it out loud, though. Like other people in our sector who have realized who I am and helped me in the past, he doesn’t exactly disapprove of the trouble I cause for the Republic. “We’re very grateful,” I say.

  He says nothing in return. I grab Tess’s hand and we make our way out of the bedroom, down the hall and through the back door. The night’s humidity is thick. My eyes water from the pain of my wounds.

  We make our way through silent back alleys for six blocks until we finally slow down. My injuries are screaming now. I reach up to touch my pendant necklace for comfort, but then I remember that it’s no longer around my neck. A sick feeling rises in my stomach. What if the Republic figures out what it is? Will they destroy it? What if they trace it back to my family?

  Tess slumps to the ground and rests her head against the alley wall. “We need to leave the city,” she says. “It’s too dangerous here, Day. You know it is. Arizona or Colorado would be safer—or come on, even Barstow. I don’t mind the outskirts.”

  Yeah, yeah. I know. I look down. “I want to leave too.”

  “But you won’t. I can see it on your face.”

  We’re silent for a while. If it were up to me, I’d cross the whole country alone and escape into the Colonies first chance I got. I don’t mind risking my own life. But there are a dozen reasons I can’t go, and Tess knows it. It’s not like John and Mom can just pick up and leave their assigned jobs to flee with me, not without raising an alert. It’s not like Eden can just withdraw from his assigned school. Not unless they want to become fugitives like me.

  “We’ll see,” I finally say.

  Tess gives me a tragic smile. “Who do you think is looking for you?” she asks after a while. “How do they know we’re in the Lake sector?”

  “I don’t know. Could be a dealer who heard about the hospital break-in. Maybe they think we have a lot of money or something. Could be a soldier. Even a spy. I lost my pendant at the hospital—I don’t know how they would use it to learn anything about me, but there’s always a chance.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  I shrug. My bullet wound has begun to throb, and I lean against the wall for support. “I’m sure as hell not meeting him, whoever he is—but I got to admit, I’m curious to see what he has to say. What if he does have plague cures?”

  Tess stares at me. It’s the same expression she wore the very first night I met her—hopeful, curious, and fearful all at once. “Well . . . can’t be any more dangerous than your crazy hospital break-in, yeah?”

  I DON’T KNOW IF IT’S BECAUSE COMMANDER JAMESON has taken pity on me, or if she really does feel the loss of Metias, one of her most valued soldiers, but she helps me arrange his funeral—even though she’s never done that for one of her soldiers before. She refuses to say anything about why she chose to do it.

  Wealthy families like ours always have elaborate funerals—Metias’s takes place inside a building with soaring baroque archways and stained-glass windows. They’ve covered the bare floors with white carpets; round white banquet tables overflowing with white lilacs fill the room. The only colors come from the Republic flags and circular gold Republic seal hanging behind the room’s front altar, the portrait of our glorious Elector looming above them all.

  All the mourners wear their best whites. I have on an elaborate white gown, laced and corseted, with a silk overskirt and draped layers in the back. A tiny white-gold brooch of the Republic seal is clipped on its bodice. The hairdresser piled my hair high on my head, with loose ringlets cascading over one shoulder, and a white rose pinned behind my ear. Pearls line the choker wrapped around my throat. My eyelids are coated with glittering white eye shadow, my lashes are bathed in snow, the puffy redness under my eyes erased by shining white powder. Everything about me is stripped of color, just as Metias has been stripped from my life.

  Metias once told me that it was not always this way, that only after the first floods and volcanic eruptions, after the Republic built a barrier along the warfront to keep the Colonies’ deserters from fleeing illegally into our territory, did people start mourning for the dead by wearing white. “After the first eruptions,” he said, “white volcanic ash rained from the sky for months. The dead and dying were covered in it. So now to wear white is to remember the dead.”

  He told me this because I’d asked him what our parents’ funeral was like.

  Now I wander among the guests, lost and aimless, responding to the sympathetic words of those around me with appropriate, practiced replies. “I am so sorry for your loss,” they say. I recognize some of Metias’s professors, fellow soldiers, and superiors. There are even a couple of my classmates from Drake. I’m surprised to see them—I’d never been good at making friends during my three years in college, considering my age and my hefty course load. But they’re here, some from afternoon drills and others from my Republic History 421 class. They take my hand and shake their heads. “First your parents, and now your brother. I can’t imagine how hard it is for you.”

  No, you can’t. But I smile graciously and bow my head, because I know they mean well. “Thank you for coming,” I say. “It means a lot. I know Metias would be proud that he gave his life for his country.”

  Sometimes I catch an admiring glance from a well-wisher across the room, which I ignore. I have no use for such sentiments. My outfit is not meant for them. Only for Metias do I wear this unnecessarily exquisite gown, to show without words how much I love him.

  After a while, I sit at a table near the front of the room, facing the flower-strewn altar that’ll soon be occupied with a line of people reading their eulogies to my brother. I bow my head respectfully to the Republic flags. Then my eyes wander to the white coffin next to them. From here I can see j
ust a hint of the person lying inside.

  “You look lovely, June.”

  I glance up to see Thomas bow, then take the seat beside me. He’s exchanged his military clothes for an elegant, white-vested suit, and his hair is freshly cut. I can tell the suit is brand-new. It must have cost him a fortune. “Thanks. You too.”

  “That is—I mean, you look well for the circumstances, given all that’s happened.”

  “I know what you mean.” I reach over and pat his hand to reassure him. He gives me a smile. He looks like he wants to say something more, then decides against it and turns his eyes away.

  It takes a half hour for everyone to find their seats and another half hour for the waiters to start arriving with plates of food. I don’t eat anything. Commander Jameson sits opposite me on the far side of our banquet table, and between her and Thomas are three of my Drake classmates. I exchange a strained smile with them. On my left side is a man named Chian who organizes and oversees all Trials taken in Los Angeles. He administered mine. What I don’t understand is why he’s here—why he even cares that Metias died. He’s a former acquaintance of our parents, so his presence is not unexpected—but why right next to me?

  Then I remember that Chian had mentored Metias before he joined Commander Jameson’s squad. Metias hated him.

  The man now furrows his bushy eyebrows at me and claps a hand on my bare shoulder. It lingers there for a while. “How are you feeling, my dear?” he asks. His words distort the scars on his face—a slice across the bridge of his nose, and another jagged mark that goes from his ear to the bottom of his chin.