me, and the reminder every morning sends such a sharp pain through my chest that I want to curl back into my bed and drift off into oblivion, to lie here and never wake, to stay and stay until death comes to claim me too.
Corian would scoff at me if he saw me like this. He’d roll me right out of bed and toss my coat at my head. The thought of his exasperated glare is almost enough to make me laugh through my grief.
Corian, I think. When you first met me, did you see someone with potential? Or is your father right? Did you really just feel sorry for me?
What does it matter, anyway? No new Striker wishes to pair with me. The Firstblade is debating what to do. Soon, I have no doubt, he’ll kick me off the patrols. Then I’ll be forced to stand by, as helpless as the day my mother and I fled our home, as the Federation comes marching through the gates of Newage.
The pounding against my door starts up again.
Walk with courage, I remind myself, thinking of the vow I’d once made to be more like Corian. I sigh, force myself to push up from the bed, and reach for my shirt.
When I finally answer the door, I see Adena Min Ghanna from my patrol standing there in her uniform, her smile so big that it looks like it hurts. Her frizzy hair is tied up into a neat bun, and the morning sun gives her dark skin a warm highlight. She adjusts a pair of goggles on her forehead and wrinkles her nose at me.
“You look like hell,” Adena scolds. She reaches down to brush a few strands of hair away from my eyes, then tugs once on the bottom of my shirt, which I’d left carelessly loose. “Tuck it in, you heathen.”
“I thought Marans didn’t have an official religion,” I sign, my mood turning me sarcastic.
“It’s a saying, Talin,” she signs back.
“Why do you look like you swallowed a frog?”
“All Strikers are to gather in the arena this morning.”
I squint up at the sky, my gaze settling on the bands of distant clouds. “For what? Is the cease-fire over already?”
Adena shakes her head. “No. We caught a deserter from the Federation.” She leans forward eagerly. “He’s to be interrogated today, before an audience.”
A prisoner of war. Now I remember Corian mentioning someone being seized during the same sweep when he’d died. This must be the soldier.
My heart hardens. By tradition, the Firstblade of the Strikers is the one responsible for interrogating enemy soldiers we capture. He questions them in public at the arena, often by stone or by whip, until they tell us what they know about the Federation. If they don’t cooperate, they are executed before an audience.
It sounds cruel, torturing a prisoner to death. But sometimes cruelty is catharsis. I’ve witnessed firsthand what Federation soldiers can do to the people they conquer. To women. To families. To children. This public death is a kindness in comparison, a pitiful fragment of justice for all of us who have lost loved ones in the most horrific ways.
“You made me get out of bed just because we’re executing some Federation coward today?”
“Is arguing with me your new habit?” Adena responds.
I hold my hands up innocently before replying, “Just asking questions.”
“Firstblade’s orders. Strikers to the arena. So stop playing around and go put on your full gear.”
Adena had been close with Corian too, but the way she copes with his death is to drown herself behind her meticulous habits, nitpicking everything as if she could organize the grief out of her system. She’s stopped by my apartment every day for the past two weeks, bringing me savory pancakes and meat pies wrapped in cloth from the cafeteria, checking to see if I’m sleeping and putting on clean clothes.
I hate myself a little for forgetting that others are also learning how to move on from Corian’s death, that Adena is the more considerate one of us, that she knows to think of me even as she struggles.
I haven’t lost my Striker uniform just yet. And watching the execution of a Federation soldier might at least distract me from my haze of grief. I bow my head to Adena and start to turn away. “I’ll be quick,” I promise her.
Adena waits in the open doorway while I wash my face and strap on my harnesses and weapons. A few minutes later, I emerge in my