Page 92 of Cage of Starlight
Sufficient desperation. Tory has that in spades. “How do you know?”
Riese closes a hand around Tory’s arm, right where the tattoo rests. “Because of this.”
Tory pulls back. “What?”
Riese rolls up the sleeve of his own sweater. On his upper arm, vital and sharp-edged, is a red tattoo. Just like his mother’s: the mark of a convicted criminal.
Tory’s reaching for it before he thinks twice. He pulls back before touching.
“It’s okay,” Riese says. “Go ahead.”
His fingers trace the warm skin. “I’ve never seen one like this. Outside, I mean.” He met a woman in the illegal House he worked in as a boy, bought out of the camps as an infant by her aunt. The only tattoos he’s seen were like hers: blue tattoos denoting a prison-born child with an intricate design in purple to show they’d been pardoned. He’s never met an escapee like himself, without the pardoning mark, and not once in his life has he ever seen a red one, freed.
All Riese’s wild claims seem suddenly, terrifyingly possible.
“We’re rare breeds, the two of us,” Riese says. “I refused to let them keep me. Clearly you felt the same.”
Tory can’t tear his eyes away. “What happened?”
“I was on one of Vantaras’ think tanks, if you’d believe it. I was a poor kid from the Northeast—little mining town. Coal, not stellite. But I wassmart,and I knew Vantaras values smarts. He and his geniuses had already made their first steam engine, but I studied mechanical engineering at university and argued in my thesis that if stellite could stably store power for the Arlunians, we could workmiracles with it if we could get it to do the same for us. I was put on a special committee to see if we could do just that. And thestrideswe made. There was a woman, a few years younger than me, still the most brilliant person I’ve ever met. We stayed over at each other’s houses, ate leftovers, didn’t sleep. She’d start a thought and I’d finish it. The first time Vantaras got stellite to store energy? That wasus. We made that happen.”
Tory thinks of the stellite in the Compound, brittle and dead from whatever they had to do to make it work, and winces.
Riese echoes the expression. “Yeah. See, after a while, things started falling into place for me. I’d gotten so caught up in thetheoryof it that I failed to consider the implications. When I realized that the energy the Grand General wanted to put in the stellite was Seed energy, for the purposes of tracking and identification . . . I was already too far along. I went to the woman I’d come to love and shared my fears with her. Naturally, she’d guessed the truth years ago, sharp thing. She must have reported me as a seditionist—not as a Seed, I wasn’t fool enough to tell herthat—because she gave me tea after hearing my worries, and when I woke, I was in the camps—aminingcamp, like she knew it’d sting the worst—and they’d already marked me.” He taps the tattoo.
“I realized it then, and you’ll learn it the hard way, too, if you don’t wise up now: love is dangerous. Being free, being aleadermeans freeing ourselves from the blinkering feelings that would let people hurt us. Lie to yourself all you want, but none of us can protect more than our hands can hold. Believe me, I tried. When I first established this group, I had suchgrandgoals. I turned over supply shipments. I freed a whole wagonful of conscripted Seeds like you. I grew the group, made us a force to be reckoned with.”He bares his palms to Tory. “But it was more than I could handle. Iri’s father paid the price for that. He was a Reader—he could identify Seeds at a glance. An incredibly rare and valuable Seed type. If he were ever captured, that bastard Vantaras could have turned him on all of us. Could have tried, at least. He would rather have died. He wasgood. But one of our new inductees panicked, thought it would besaferif Iri’s father was dead so Vantaras could never use him.” Riese grits his teeth. “I learned my lesson then. I’ve kept my group smaller ever since.” He turns Tory’s hands to show the scarred palms. “Learn from my mistake. Think hard about what you can’t let go of. That lapdog officer of yours, you’ll realize he doesn’t make the cut, either now or when he betrays you.”
Something flips in Tory’s belly, and the warmth from Riese’s confidence wars with the chill spreading from his stomach. He scans the tent, looking for a distraction.
His eyes land on a roll of blue grid paper. He recognizes the blueprints of the Compound immediately, its soft hexagonal shape covered with notes in black ink.Archives,one note reads. Another one saysOfficers’ Quarters.At least half the rooms have labels.
Tory has done enough late-night wandering while staying out of Gavin’s way that he could put names to at least half of the empty spaces. The room betweenArchivesandIntakeis a closet stocked with cleaning supplies where the night janitor likes to light up a pipe.
Riese clears his throat.
Tory’s eyes jerk up to meet his.
“It’s all right. We have nothing to hide. This is why I brought you here. Weneedyou. We’ve been gathering intelligence for years, but Vantaras’ anti-Seed prototypes messed everything up. Somethings we hadn’t expected to need to do formonths, but if we want to get out ahead of these weapons he’s making, we need to act now. We were desperate. Then you came along, like the stars led you here.”
“Why me?”
“You’ll know everything soon. I like you, Tory, but I hope you understand now why I’m more careful about who I trust.”
Tory squeezes his fist until his knuckles creak and remembers Sena’s parting words. “You want me to show you can trust me?” He says, mock-casual. “I can get weapons for you. Tons of them—more than you could ever use.”
Riese’s gaze sharpens. “What are you proposing?”
Tory swallows. “Scavenging. The little massacre you arranged? There are tons of bodies on the cliffs. All of them will be armed.”
“Except the side effect of our work on the border is that Vantaras has this area crawling with people. Our scouts came back this morning with news that there are soldiers on the fringes of the woods. We don’t have anything near the firepower they’ll be packing. It’s too risky.”
Tory leans over the maps, fingernails biting his palms. “Youwouldhave the firepower if you took the risk.” And if soldiers are trawling the woods, that meanssomeonewill be in range of a communicator. They can get in contact, buy themselves breathing room. Win-win. “What did you call it? Sufficient desperation?”
“Wisdom is important, too. We have time.”
Tory doesn’t, though. Sena doesn’t. If Riese can’t bring in that Reacher in time, Tory will be dead. “Guns are out there for the takingnow.”
“You seem awfully interested in speeding up my timeline.”
