The Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman Page 0,12

I’m hustling down the hallway, past windows that now look out onto the sporting district on one side, and a mural on the opposite wall. It features a parade of fantastical birds and animals, supposedly from the time before. We no longer have names for most of them—and quite a few look so stupid that I’m certain the artist made them up entirely.

I press my thumb against the SmartLock beside the door to the royal quarters. My skin tingles as the microneedles connect, and then the sensation passes. The lock is coded to just three people’s DNA—my mothers’ and mine—and even our attendants don’t have a way inside. Beatrin says she’d rather make her own bed than give up her privacy. Today, that’ll buy me time.

My fingers fumble as I unbutton my soy-silk shirt, then use it to scrub away the gold dots painted along my cheekbones. I dump it in a gold-trimmed puddle on the ground and strip down to my bamboo undershirt as I drop to my knees beside our luggage where it’s piled in the corner, ready to be off-loaded.

Everything I own has gold thread woven through it, so it’s impossible to pretend I’m anyone else for even a moment in my own clothes. But I press my thumb to the lock on the suitcase I took down to Port Picard for our overnight trip, and when the case opens soundlessly, I dig madly through the jumble of stuff I shoved inside this morning. At the bottom, I find one of Saelis’s plain blue shirts—I try to have something with me for moments like this—and I button it up as fast as I can.

I roll back the rug to reveal the maintenance hatch and grab hold of the ring to flip it open. The track flies by beneath the carriage as I crouch and wait, swiping my fingers across my chrono’s display to dictate a message to the others. “Meet me at the hangar.”

The train slows, slows and stops, and I slither down through the hatch, flattening myself on my belly, listening to the chatter of the workers above me as staff board and depart the train. I’ve thought about doing this before, scouted it in case I ever wanted to split, but now that I’m eyeballing it, it looks tight.

Well, as Talamar says, gotta flap if you wanna fly.

And then there’s a grinding noise somewhere ahead of me, and with a hum, the train’s alive once more.

I really hope I got the measurements right.

The thing just about gives me a haircut on the way out, but thirty seconds later my mothers and the council are on their way to the palace, and I’m climbing to my feet, checking the platform, then clambering up onto it to make my way out.

I duck out the station gates and into an alleyway, squeezing past a pallet of old circuitry bound for recycling, keeping my head down. I need to get underground as quickly as I can—traveling this way is how I’ve avoided the ident cameras for the last few years. It’s why today was the first time my mothers realized I’ve been leaving the palace. This time they’ll be on the lookout, but I’m not trying to avoid them forever.

I have a point I want to make before they drag me back home and take away everything that matters to me. It’s my last throw of the dice, and I’m not going to give it up.

I have to risk the grand boulevard for a minute, and I snag a pair of sunglasses from a stall, jamming them on my face and dropping a credchip as I keep moving. The afternoon sun is a huge ruby suspended skyward at the end of the wide street, gleaming at me through gray clouds. The colors to either side of the street are just as vivid, displays dancing across the storefronts, bright lights making even brighter promises. The smell of a dumpling shop wafts past me, and the shouts of a headset vendor mingle with the sound effects of the game he’s got on demo.

I duck down a second alleyway and get away from the main strip. I need to head underground from a shabbier area, where there are fewer cams—that might stop them realizing where I’ve gone, once they think to trace me.

The capital doesn’t have the slums you see on the other islands, but the support staff have to live somewhere. Like the palace, their homes are ancient, built out of