Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,119

help you get around the camp.”

Chatine eyed them with skepticism. She’d seen maimed Third Estaters hobbling around the Frets on crutches before, but she’d never actually used any herself. For their simplistic construction, they looked oddly complicated.

“Don’t worry,” Brigitte assured her, clearly interpreting her hesitation. “You’ll get the hang of them quickly. I’m sure you’re looking forward to being mobile again.”

Mobile.

It was the magic word. Chatine had never felt so trapped in her life. And she had been to prison. She continued to eye the crutches still in Brigitte’s hands, her Fret-rat determination returning like a punch of cold air. If she could scale walls and dangle from rafters, she could certainly manage a pair of Défecteur crutches.

With Brigitte’s help, she pushed herself up to sitting and swung her legs off the bed. Her bandaged leg pulsed in response, but the pain was minimal.

“Put this on.” Brigitte pulled an odd piece of clothing from the closet where she’d retrieved the crutches. “It will keep you warm outside.”

Chatine stared warily at the strange garment. It looked like a coat, but it was unlike any coat she’d ever seen before. It was patched together, like the pants she used to wear back in the Frets. But these patches were thick and tough and so shiny they seemed to reflect everything in the room like a jumble of undulating mirrors. And unlike her old threadbare clothes, the moment this jacket was on and the hood was pulled up, Chatine felt nothing but rich, glowing warmth.

“These, too,” Brigitte said, holding out a pair of mittens made of the same material.

“Does all this really keep you warm out there?” Chatine asked, still skeptical but slipping on the mittens anyway. She’d known cold in Vallonay and on Bastille. But she knew it was nothing compared to the cruel, biting winds that swept through the Terrain Perdu.

Brigitte extended the pair of crutches toward Chatine with a smile. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

* * *

The jacket was magic. Ridiculously puffy but impossibly warm. As Chatine hobbled on her crutches through the intricate grid of box-shaped structures and roofed walkways that made up the Défecteur camp, she felt none of the chill of being outside. Brigitte walked slowly beside her, pointing out the various buildings—which the Défecteurs called “chalets.”

“Every roof in our camp is built with stealth technology,” Brigitte explained as they continued down the walkway. “Just like our ships. This allows us to stay hidden from any passing crafts.”

Chatine stared in awe at the structure above her head. If she hadn’t seen it with her very own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed that the roof of the passageway was invisible from above.

“How did you figure out how to do that?” she asked.

“The technology is actually not complicated. The Ministère has had the resources to develop it for more than five hundred years.”

Chatine’s brow furrowed as she continued to maneuver down the walkway on her crutches. They were nearing a cluster of chalets that was much larger than the others in the camp. “The Ministère has stealth tech?”

“No.” Brigitte shook her head. “That’s the thing. They’ve been so focused on using those resources for another purpose, they failed to recognize what they had.”

“What resources?”

Brigitte nodded ahead of them, and when Chatine looked up, her crutches nearly slipped out from under her. She froze, staring in awe at the large structure. Along the chalet’s frontside, there was a long row of slitted windows through which glowed a shimmering, iridescent blue.

“Zyttrium,” Chatine murmured numbly.

She suddenly remembered the transparent boxes in the cargo hold of Etienne’s ship. Processed zyttrium stolen from Bastille. Evidently, it hadn’t been the first batch.

“As you probably already know, the Regime uses the metal to manufacture the Skins. We found another purpose for it.”

Chatine gaped. “So you steal it from them?”

Brigitte let out a tinkling laugh. “One could argue that they steal it from Bastille. And that they steal the thousands of lives lost in mining it.”

“Oh, I’m not judging you,” Chatine was quick to say. She was the last person on the planet to condemn a thief. “I’m just … impressed.”

“Well, merci.” Brigitte continued down the walkway. Chatine hobbled beside her, unable to take her eyes off the blue light radiating from the windows. “Stealth technology is crucial to our way of life. As you probably know, we have a long history of … well, I guess you could call it ‘conflict’ with the Regime.”

Chatine did know. For years, General Bonnefaçon and his