true reasons—but they are not the final one. They’re not the reason why he went into the Federation with us, why he fought so hard to get out, and why, even after the knowledge of what the Speaker had done, he wants to return.
It’s because of the Firstblade. Because Jeran, young and kind and forever loyal, would rather return and give his life alongside Aramin than live knowing he had turned his back on the man he loves.
Isn’t that why I fight too? Because of Jeran. And Adena. And Corian. It’s because of that dinner at my mother’s table, with everyone’s faces reflecting warm in the evening light. It’s because of the children I see running through Mara’s Inner City, their bones sharp and jutting from all the years of war. Someone has to stand for them.
“I’m going back,” I sign. I look at Red and repeat it through our link. I’m going back.
Red taps his fist to his chest in the Striker salute. If you go back, so will I, he tells me.
I look at him, feeling that tug between us, knowing I would kill for him, and that he would for me. How strange it is that the Federation had given us this gift, the bond that cannot be broken.
“For Mara?” Adena signs.
“For the idea of Mara,” Jeran replies.
“Ideas are nothing but air,” Adena mutters.
“Then we’re truly lost,” I sign.
We don’t say anything after that. The sun shifts until its light spills warm over us through the forest canopy, then blankets the valley in pink and purple. After the last rays vanish over the horizon, we pack up our campsite in the twilight and move on, using the night to protect us.
It is evening on the fifth day of our flight from Cardinia when we finally cross the warfront from the Federation into Mara, our hands up, weapons sheathed away. The Maran soldiers who fetch us from their defense compounds come bearing rope, shouting between one another, and I know they already recognize us.
Strikers. The deadliest fighters in the land, the pride of Mara, the only thing standing between freedom and annihilation.
It doesn’t matter. We are still led back to our country as criminals.
NEWAGE
THE NATION OF MARA
30
Our return to Mara is a somber, silent one.
We are all wounded and exhausted, shadows of ourselves from when we’d first left the country.
The Strikers who ride back with us don’t talk as we go. Their eyes shift uneasily in Red’s direction as he rides in silence, and they leave a wide berth between him and the rest of us, a circle of guns pointed in his direction should he so much as make a single unexpected movement. Adena, Jeran, and I are transported with our hands and feet bound, escorted on our own horses. It’s impossible to ignore the weight in the air, as if we’re less Marans and more enemy soldiers.
None of us utter a word to the other Strikers about what we know of the Speaker. Saying so here, now, as criminals arrested for treason, will only make us sound like liars. Who would believe such a claim? They would just tell the Speaker, who might have us assassinated before we can even stand trial in the arena.
Red’s eyes stay forward, but I can sense his attention on me. He’s wondering if we should try to break free. I wait until he glances in my direction, then shake my head once subtly. Even Red, who can slaughter an entire battlefield, can’t survive a bullet to the head. There are so many guns trained on him. Besides—if we killed Strikers in an attempt to free ourselves, then they can no longer protect Mara.
As we crest a hill and the familiar sight of Newage comes into view, one of them turns to me. She’s a girl I’d trained with since the beginning, and one of the few who seems willing to communicate with us.
“Did you see what the Federation does to their prisoners?” she signs hesitantly to me.
Her eyes are wide, the expression in them almost desperate in their hunger. I realize immediately that she’s asking because she knows someone who had been captured once and never heard from again. My mind skips to the Ghost I’d seen in transition at the labs, with eyes so piercing I’d mistaken him at first for Corian. I think of the parade of Ghosts on display at their national fair.
Instead, I just shake my head. My hands twist in vain against their bonds.