This is not how I thought it would be to fly high. No sight of what lies below or where the stars might be when night comes. The pilot in the front compartment of the air ship looks out; but the Society keeps the rest of us from the sight of our own flight.
Chapter 7
KY
Everyone’s watching you,” Vick tells me.
I ignore him. Some of the cylinders the Enemy shot down at us last night didn’t explode completely. They still had powder inside. I push some of it into the barrel of a gun. The Enemy puzzles me—their ammunition seems to become more and more primitive and less and less effective the longer we’re out here. Maybe they really are losing.
“What are you doing?” Vick asks.
I don’t answer. I’m trying to remember how this is done. The powder turns my hands black as I sift it through my fingers.
Vick grabs my arm. “Stop,” he says in a low voice. “All the other decoys are staring.”
“Why do you care what they think?”
“It’s bad for morale if someone like you goes crazy.”
“You said yourself that we’re not their leaders,” I say to Vick. Then I look over at the decoys. They all avoid my eyes except for Eli. He stares at me and I give him a quick grin to let him know that I’m not insane.
“Ky,” Vick says, and then he suddenly gets it. “You figuring out a way to turn this back into ammo?”
“It won’t be much good,” I say. “It’ll only do one big blast, and you’ll have to treat it like a grenade. Throw the gun and run away.”
Vick likes the possibilities. “We could put rocks, other stuff in there. Have you figured out the fuse?”
“Not yet,” I say. “That’s the hardest part.”
“Why?” he asks, speaking low so the others can’t hear. “It’s a good idea, sure, but it’s going to be too hard to set it off while we’re running.”
“It’s not for us,” I say, and I glance again at the others. “We’ll teach them how to do it before we leave. But we’re running out of time. I say we leave the dead to everyone else today.”
Vick stands up, turns around to face the group. “Ky and I are taking a break from burying today,” he says. “The rest of you can take a turn. Some of you new decoys haven’t even done it yet.”
While they leave, I look down at my hands—ash-black and covered with the stuff that rained down death on us the night before—and remember the way we used to scavenge remnants back in my real village. The Society and the Enemy thought they were the only ones with fire but we knew how to use theirs. And how to make our own. We used stones called chert to light small fires when we really needed them.
“I still think we should go on a night where there isn’t a firing,” Vick says. “They might just think we blew ourselves up with this stuff if we can make it convincing.” He gestures to the powder scattered all around us.
He has a point. I’ve been so sure that they’ll hunt us down that I haven’t thought of other possibilities. Still, it’s more likely that others will try to follow if there isn’t a battle to distract them and death to cover our tracks. And I don’t want anyone to try to come with us. The Society will notice if more than a few decoys leave, and we might still be worth hunting.
And I have no idea what we’re going to find in the Carving. I’m not trying to lead. I only want to survive.
“How about this?” I say. “We’ll go tonight. Whether there’s a firing or not.”
“All right,” Vick says after a moment.
It’s settled then. We’re going to run. Soon.
Vick and I work fast, trying to come up with a way to get the guns to explode. When the others come back from digging the graves and figure out what we’re trying to do, they help us by gathering gunpowder and rocks. Some of the boys begin humming and singing as they work. I go cold as I recognize the tune, although I shouldn’t be surprised by what they sing. It’s the Anthem of the Society. The Society took music away by choosing the Hundred Songs carefully—complicated songs that only their engineered voices can navigate easily—and the Anthem is the only tune that most people can carry. Even it has a rising soprano line that no untrained person could sing. Most people can only copy the flat, drumming bass line or the easy notes of the alto and tenor parts. That’s what I hear now.
Some of those who lived in the Outer Provinces managed to hold onto their old songs. We used to sing them together while we worked. A woman once told me that it wasn’t hard to remember ancient melodies with rivers and canyons and the Carving nearby.
I only wanted to remember the how of doing this. But the who and why from before keep coming back too.
Vick shakes his head. “Even if we figure this out, we’re still leaving them to die,” he says.
“I know,” I say. “But at least they can fight back.”
“Once,” Vick says. There’s a slump to his shoulders that I’ve never seen before. As if he’s finally realizing the leader he is and always has been and the realization weighs him down.
“It’s not enough,” I say, turning back to my work.
“No,” Vick agrees.
I’ve tried not to really see the other decoys but I have. One has a bruised face. Another has freckles who looks enough like the boy we put in the river that I wonder if they were brothers, but I never asked and I never will. All of them wear ill-fitting plainclothes and fancy coats to keep them warm while they wait to die.
“What’s your real name?” Vick asks me suddenly.
“Ky is my real name,” I tell him.
“But what’s your full name?”
I pause for a minute as it flashes across my mind for the first time in years. Ky Finnow. That was my name then.
“Roberts,” Vick says, impatient with my hesitation. “That’s my last name. Vick Roberts.”
“Markham,” I tell him. “Ky Markham.” Because that’s the name she knows me by. That’s my real name now.
Still, my other name sounded right, too, when I said it in my mind. Finnow. The name I shared with my father and mother.
I look over at the decoys gathering rocks. Part of me likes the sense of purpose in their movements and knowing that I helped them feel better for even a little while. But deep down I know that all I’ve done is throw them a scrap. They’re still going to starve.