me but not hear my words. So I decide to continue. I’m sorry you’ve ended up exactly where you began. The thought gets a bitter chuckle out of me, and as if in answer, I feel a brief spark of amusement come from Red. Well, I’m glad one of us is pleased by this, I tell him wryly.
He’s silent, but the space between us doesn’t feel empty, and I let myself sink into the comfort of his presence in my mind.
I’m sorry, Red, I tell him after a while. We wanted to avenge your family. You gave everything you could and withstood returning to the place that held you captive. We still failed you.
The weight of that realization sits heavy in my mind. I let myself stay very still in the darkness, trying to keep my feelings down, glad he can’t sense everything.
I don’t know what to do, I confess. I don’t know how we’re going to survive all this. Maybe we won’t.
His mood shifts again, somber now, but there is a current of something else there. Gratitude. And then … what?
Love? The thought makes me blush, but instead of pushing it down, I feel a surge of courage.
I’m most sorry that I won’t get a chance to know you better, I say. Maybe, in another life, we could have taken our time with each other. I … I hesitate, my pulse quickening. I would have liked that.
He doesn’t answer, of course, but his emotions sway with mine, warm and close. I imagine him pulling me into an embrace, his arms strong and steady, wrapping me tight. And somewhere through these walls, in a prison down below, he answers with a vague image of his face close to mine, eyes lowered.
The door to my cell groans open. I startle out of my reverie to see a soldier give me a brief nod. “Your visitor,” he tells me. Then he steps aside to let my mother in.
She’s carrying a small cloth package. From the messy way it’s tied, I know that the guards must have undone her careful knots to inspect everything inside the sack before tossing it back to her. She gives me a grim smile, her eyes roaming the chains shackling my limbs, before sitting across from me and unwrapping the cloth.
Inside are her handmade meat buns, still warm, and a large bowl of noodles with roasted chicken and carrots. There are ripe apricots from the tree beside her home, as well as sweet sticky cakes made from pounded seaflour and sugarweed.
My throat tightens with emotion at the sight. Chicken is not an easy meat to get, not even in the Inner City, and neither is the beef for the meat buns. I don’t know what my mother must have traded in order to make this food for me.
She waves a hand in annoyance at my expression. “The first thing I thought when I saw you led back through the city,” she signs, “is that you haven’t eaten enough the past few weeks. Your last good meal must have been the one we had before you left.”
Now I genuinely laugh, the sound coming out as a hoarse whisper. We had risked death on a train into Cardinia—I had looked the Premier in the eye, had broken into the Federation’s lab complex and lived to tell of our escape, had fled through the woods bordering both sides of our warfront. But my mother’s main concern is that I didn’t eat enough while in the Federation.
I want to hug her. “Thank you,” I sign before picking up one of the buns, then offering her the second one.
She frowns and shakes her head. “For you,” she says in Basean. “I just want to see you eat.”
I finish one of the buns and half of the bowl of noodles and chicken before my mother speaks again. “I’ve asked the Firstblade what they plan to do with you,” she signs. “He won’t tell me. No one else will give me any information.” She pauses to make a disgusted face. “They can’t do anything to you. Not with the Federation about to push past the warfront. They need you in your Striker coat, defending us.”
My best guess is that they will execute me, because the Speaker couldn’t care less about whether Mara survives the next attack, and he will want me silenced before I start spreading the truth about his treason. But I don’t want to tell my mother this, especially not with the knowledge