mean what route we take next, but what happens when we arrive home. “I don’t know,” I sign.
“If we return,” Adena signs, “they’ll arrest us.”
It’s more than that. If we return to Mara now, not only will the Firstblade be forced to put us in chains, but they will probably execute us in the arena, in the same fashion Red almost was, for our treason to the country. Killed for trying in vain to save us all.
The thought is almost comical to me, and I have to force a bitter laugh away. Treason. Mara has suffered a worse betrayal at the hands of its very own Speaker.
“What do you want to do?” I sign to her.
Adena leans back slowly, wincing. She must be just as sore as I am. Her eyes fall on Red, and her lips move in silence for a moment, trying to find the right thing to say.
Finally, she looks at me. “Do you think the Federation’s Premier is right?” she signs.
“About what?”
“About the Speaker.”
I’m still for a moment as Constantine’s words to me return. You are too good, he had said. He’d meant I was too good to fight for such a leader.
“We don’t have to go back, you know.” I take a deep breath. “I can get my mother. We can flee. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again.”
“To where?” Jeran signs.
There are no choices left, but Adena still tightens her lips. “Into the woods, maybe,” she signs back. “We know more than anyone how to survive. I can make everything we need. I might even be able to sneak into the Grid for some of my tools. Then, when the Federation finally breaks through the warfront—as they will in weeks, maybe days—we’ll be safe in the trees, hiding. They won’t know to look for us. We can stay there, even strike back later, when they’re least suspecting it.”
Red looks questioningly at me, understanding only some of her signs, and I turn my focus to him, translating briefly to him through our bond.
He frowns. They’ll find us eventually, he tells me, his gaze falling on Adena. I sign his words to her, but she just grimaces, not wanting to believe it.
“The Federation stretches in every direction,” Jeran signs. His lips have stretched as tight as a string. “They’ll find us.”
I can hear the warning in it, but Adena plunges on anyway, too exhausted to care. “Well, maybe the Federation will even treat us better than they do in Mara. What are we going to do—sit in prison cells until they come?”
Jeran glares at her. “Because we’ll soon be under Federation rule, anyway?”
“It doesn’t matter either way, does it?” she signs. “If we stay or if we flee.”
“Then why did we do any of this?” he hisses aloud, his voice low and angry. Fury rolls off him like mist, and it is so sudden and dark that both Adena and I pause. “Risk our lives? Give up our honor and our standing and go barreling into the heart of the Federation on a fool’s mission? What was the reason? Why do this?”
“Why, indeed!” Adena is furious now too, her eyes flashing, her voice a sharp whisper. “You think it doesn’t affect me? I tried. I tried, Jeran.” Then her voice catches, and she stops herself, too embarrassed to let out a sob in the middle of her argument. She looks away so that we don’t see the well of tears in her eyes. “It’s all the same,” she signs. “They’ll come for us in the end.”
I can feel the way this has broken us, deep in our bones. Maybe we are all too good for Mara. Would I be a fool for stepping back into their territory, to be the one arrested when the true criminal is our Speaker? Why do I still feel a pull to return?
“We have to go back,” Jeran signs.
“Why, Jeran?” Adena signs, leaning toward her Shield’s face in anger and anguish. “Why do we need to go back?”
“The Firstblade would stay and fight,” he signs. “Even after what the Speaker has done.”
And then I finally understand Jeran’s reason. Back before we fled into the Federation, when we were gathered around my mother’s table, he had told us that he fought as a Striker in order to prove himself to his father. Then he told us he fought because of his brother, because he wanted to learn how to defend himself from Gabrien’s vicious attacks. These must all be