Of Dreams and Rust - Sarah Fine Page 0,7
has intensified tenfold over the past year.
He snorts. “I like them just fine when they do as they’re told and don’t cause trouble. I thought they’d learned a lesson after the last time we had to put them down. They’d been quiet for a while.” With a stifled belch he edges closer to his desk, where I know he keeps his liquor. He gives his bottom drawer a look of yearning before turning back to me. The understanding that he can’t drink in front of me seems to fire his anger once more. His ears go scarlet.
“You realize how much we’ve done for the Noor over the years, Miss Wen? If it weren’t for us, settling in the west and creating order, they’d still be ranging around like barbarians on horseback, half starved and all stupid.” He’s pacing now, a bit unsteadily. “But we gave them roads. We put government into place and police, too. We planted crops. We stored up for hard times instead of letting them squander the surpluses. We gave them the opportunity to do meaningful work instead of scavenging and fighting and overbreeding and killing each other. And once again they’re repaying us with violence.” He throws up his hands. “I suppose that’s just their nature, though. They live in the moment and never think of the future. Sad, really.”
“They are human beings, just like us,” I say very softly.
Dr. Yixa lets out a laugh that drips with bitterness. “Just like us? Did you not hear what I’ve told you?” He grabs the paper from his desk and stomps over to me, then slaps it onto the table. The headline reads NOOR REBELS OVERRUN YILAT CAPITAL.
Below it there is another, smaller headline. WANTED: KNOWN REBELS is all it says. Beneath that are rows and rows of pictures, mostly artist’s sketches, some photos. A few of them are Itanyai, but most of them are Noor. “Do they look human to you, Miss Wen?” asks Dr. Yixa. “Look at those faces. Look into their eyes. They are animals.”
I stare at the pictures. Some of the men are listed by name, some by crime, some by description. These are the most dangerous, apparently, and they certainly look the part. Wild hair, dirty faces. The sketch artist has drawn them with their teeth bared.
At first I am almost frantic, scanning the page for any hint of a familiar face. I see none and slowly relax. Until I read the words beneath a face in the middle of the last row.
THE RED ONE.
Like the others, the man in that picture wears a grimace that makes him look more beast than man. His thick hair is pulled away from his face. He looks foreign and strange. But there is something about the way the artist has drawn his eyes with only the lightest shading that fills me with deadly certainty. My fingers drift along the line of his jaw.
I remember what it felt like beneath my fingertips, rough and warm.
“Ugly sons of goats, aren’t they? They’ll get what’s coming to them, Miss Wen, make no mistake.”
“And what’s coming to them?”
Dr. Yixa chuckles. “When our men march into Yilat, they’ll hunt down and execute those troublemakers. Shoot on sight, if they get a chance.”
I look into the eyes, pale gray in the artist’s rendering. In real life they are jade green and full of keen intelligence . . . and sometimes fiery defiance. This paper does not say what he has done, and I’m not sure it matters. Somewhere, somehow, he has been noticed. Giddy happiness and utter dread twine tightly in my chest.
Melik, the boy who rules my dreams, is alive. He is also a rebel, marked for death.
* * *
I am thankful when my shift is over, because my concentration is fleeting at best today. Whenever I have a break, I find myself standing over the front page, staring down at the Red One’s unfamiliar-yet-familiar face. And the longer I look, the more I wonder if it’s actually Melik. Surely he and his brother are not the only Noor with rust-colored hair. I search my memories of Melik for something to confirm or dispute the accuracy of the drawing, but it is like trying to close my hands around a puff of smoke. Was his nose that long? Was his brow that wide? When I peer at it closely, I notice that the man in the drawing has a badly chipped tooth—is it a recent injury, or is this a different