Burn Bright - By Marianne de Pierres Page 0,6

it for days, at any time, making sure it triggered pain-shocks whenever he chose. Sometimes he woke her in the night with it; sometimes he activated it during dinner. One time, the pain made her sick up her meat soup, and Father had sent her to her room with nothing more to eat. She hadn’t cared by then. Hadn’t even cried.

Enduring pain meant practice.

Practice meant escape.

Retra finished the exploration of her face and wiped her skin dry, on the sleeve of her coat. Although her hair was still pinned, she could feel that tendrils had strayed. She let it loose and raked her fingers through it. Joel had thought it a stupid Seal rule – girls and women having to keep their hair tied and covered. Why have it at all, he’d say, if you must keep it hidden.

Disrespect seemed so easy for him. Retra found it hard, like loving someone who was cruel to you. Cruelty didn’t stop you feeling like you belonged. Retra had felt safe in the Seal compound.

Until Joel had gone.

She wound her hair up again, reattached her veil and shifted her heel from the door. She’d return to the bow of the barge, and sat there, away from Cal and Markes. In the quiet she’d be able to think and plan.

The Riper came for her at dawn. She’d been drowsing, unable to really sleep for the chill, and he’d jerked her from awake with shrill words.

‘Come below. Now.’

Cal had been admiring of him earlier, but Retra couldn’t see anything appealing in the empty eyes, and the lifeless-cold hands that pulled her to her feet. She noticed a tear in his leather coat and, underneath, a glimpse of something not quite flesh.

It started her trembling again. She snatched her arm back and stabbed her nails into her palms to calm her fear.

‘We pass through the edge of the Spiral soon,’ he said. ‘It won’t be safe atop.’

Retra followed him along the deck through the pink fingers of early light that reached as far as the narrow steel steps. As she descended into the cabin, she saw streaks of dark blood smeared the wall, as if someone had missed them while cleaning it in haste.

At the bottom, though, warmth and the buzz of conversation enveloped her. The cabin was brightly lit and crowded with nervous, blinking, talkative Grave runaways. For a moment their anticipation lifted her heavy mood.

She found herself searching for Markes. He leaned against the bulkhead, Cal hanging at his arm, their earlier differences already forgotten.

Retra moved to the opposite side of the cabin, away from them, but Markes caught her eyes and smiled.

Then a Riper began pounding on a drum. Other Ripers descended the steps and spread among the crowd. The tallest ones stooped by the low ceiling, all wearing the same blank stares.

‘Sit, all of you,’ said one of them. ‘The Spiral is not a thing to stand through. You will be perfectly safe from hyper-reaction as long as you stay seated.’

The cabin crowd dropped to the floor in one mass, laughing and falling on each other. Retra squeezed herself into a small space against one wall, trying not to touch the people around her. She wasn’t used to crowds; the smell of their bodies made her feel sick.

‘What’s hyper-reaction?’ she heard someone ask.

‘It happens when you cross the Spiral. Some get blissed out or real down. But it lasts … like forever,’ answered the girl on one side of her. ‘Some even get it afterwards.’

The Riper started speaking again. ‘Once through the Spiral, you’ll leave the barge and pass into the Register. There you’ll be fitted with your badge. After that your life – your pleasure – is your own. Burn bright!’ The Riper’s eyes glittered with strange comprehensions.

‘Burn bright!’ the crowd shouted in enthusiastic response.

Retra glanced to the small, high windows, seeking the sunrise. How long until she saw it again? She suddenly felt thirsty for daylight.

But the hum came.

The cabin lights snuffed out and the barge rocked, gently at first, then wildly – jarring her spine, throwing a boy onto her lap. His red curls brushed against her throat and he cheekily burrowed his freckled face between her breasts. With the roll of the barge he fell backwards again before she could react.

She hugged her knees for protection as the air got thick and heavy and the dawn turned abruptly back to dark. The crowd’s eagerness shifted to something fearful.

‘What’s happening?’ shouted one.

Another. ‘We’re sinking!’

‘Fross!’

Huddled in the pitch-black, fear-stink of