I paused, remembering my cover story for the last couple days. “The detail was fine. I just… I had an accident, that’s all.” James narrowed his eyes at me, but I pulled the sheets back on the cot. “Look, forget it. Let’s get out of here, okay?”
“I think they want you to stay till morning.”
“Seriously?”
“You’re aware that you puked all over Beacon Quan when he carried you out of the Lighthouse, right?”
“I don’t actually remember puking.”
James threw the blankets back over me and helped me sit up.
“You been to the barracks?” I asked.
“No. Why?”
I scanned the infirmary floor. Two companions and a citizen medic were at the far end of the room. They were presided over by a single beacon who looked busy with some paperwork. I slipped my hand beneath the sheets and into my pocket.
“Give me your hand,” I said.
“Why?” James asked. “Is it a bug? Are you going to put a bug in my hand again? Honestly, Cal, that stopped being funny when I was five.”
“Just do it.”
James held his hand out and I pushed the inhaler into it, closing his fingers around it fast. He drew his hand back to his waist and opened it.
“James, this is — where did you get this?”
“It’s not contraband. Don’t worry.”
“Then how—”
“I got it from Monroe.”
“From Monroe?” James looked from the inhaler to my cast and the bruises. His face went gray as ash. “If this is what it took to get this, then you should take it back. I don’t need it.”
“Oh, really? You and the beacons gonna pray the asthma away?”
James gritted his teeth. His fingers went white, curled around the inhaler.
“You’re Monroe’s favorite, Jim. The guy couldn’t tie his shoes without you. I promise, it didn’t take anything more than me asking nicely to get the meds. All this… it’s nothing you have to worry about. I swear.”
“Nothing that’s going to get you in trouble?”
“Scout’s honor, little brother,” I said, holding up my busted left hand.
“You were never a Boy Scout,” he said. “I wanted us to be Scouts, but you said it was for weenies.”
“I know. It was a mistake. You would have fit right in.”
James tucked the inhaler away, but his face was still scrunched up and dark, his lips tight.
“Come on,” I teased. “James…”
“I just don’t want you to get off Path again.”
“I’m not. Look, come here,” I said, waving him over. “Keep it between you and me for now, but there’s more, okay?”
“More what?”
“I’m meeting with Captain Monroe tomorrow.”
“So?”
I glanced back at the beacon, who was still absorbed in his paperwork. “We’re getting moved up.”
“Moved up?” James said. Then it clicked. “You mean…”
I nodded. “I told you you’re his favorite.”
“But—”
“We’ve been here six years now, James. With everything you do for him, it’s not even that far ahead of schedule.”
James still looked wary, but I could tell there was excitement bubbling underneath it.
“When?”
“Soon, I think, but I’ll know more after the meeting tomorrow. We’ll talk between breakfast and morning Lighthouse, okay?”
I almost laughed at James’s openmouthed speechlessness.
“Who’s the best big brother in the entire universe?”
“Well…”
“How about within a five-foot radius?”
James finally laughed but a companion cut it off, appearing just behind him. He nodded and she stepped away.
“Cal, I don’t… I don’t know what to say.”
“Music to my ears. Just go home and start packing our things.”
“Want me to lead a prayer before I go?”
James had his copy of The Glorious Path open in his lap. I checked over his shoulder. The beacon was on the far side of the room and out of earshot.
“It’s okay, Jim,” I said. “No one’s looking.”
There was a second’s pause and then something inside of James seemed to shift. “Yeah,” he said, snapping the book shut. “Right. Of course. I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Get some sleep,” I said.
“You too. And try not to puke on yourself again.”
“I’ll do my best.”
James tucked the book back into his pocket and walked away down the line of beds. Companions moved through the infirmary, snuffing out candles. I lay back on my cot, staring up into the dark, fantasizing about what job I might get once we were citizens. Surely they wouldn’t make me keep mucking out the dog kennels with Quarles. That was a novice job, and a bad one at that. Could I be a cook’s apprentice? A mechanic? It seemed impossible.
Of course, whatever duty I pulled, the important thing would be me and James in our own room in the citizens’ barracks — two beds side by side, with four walls and a door. Inside that room, there would be no beacons, no Lighthouse, no Army of the Glorious Path, just us.
I tried to banish my impatience for the morning with a prayer of my own, one that was composed of a single word written in stone.
5
I nearly knocked over a lieutenant when I staggered out of Captain Monroe’s office the next morning.
“Watch yourself, novice.”
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled automatically. “Sorry, sir.”
I stumbled down the stairs and out onto the street, shielding my eyes to block out the glare of the sun. A Humvee laid on its horn and blew past me. Cormorant had come alive in the hour since I had been inside. Soldiers grunted up on the training field and the air was thick with dust and diesel exhaust.
I fell into a stream of citizens who were bustling from their barracks to mess. They were all talking and laughing. I thought of how each had slept that night in a private room in a real bed.
“Hey, Cal!”
I turned to see James peeling off from a group of friends and rushing toward me.
“Get to mess, James.”
“How was your meeting?”
“Later. I have to get to work.”
“But—”
I whirled on him and shouted, “Just leave me alone!”
James nearly toppled backward. I shoved my way through the rest of the crowds and left him. My head was pounding and it only got worse when I reached the crest of a hill that led down to the kennels. I could already hear the rolling growls of the dogs and the rattling fences down below. The air was thick with the smell of meat, urine, and fur. I stepped into it, pushing through the stink and noise until I found Quarles out back on the edge of the training ground.
“The hell you been?” he croaked.
Quarles was balding and fat, dressed in layers of greasy wool despite the heat and sun. His blotchy skin sported a constant growth of stubble.
“Ops,” I said. I was about to remind him that I’d been with Monroe, but I couldn’t make my lips form the man’s name.
Quarles glanced down at my arm, then up at my face. “Should have figured,” he said, rolling the words around in his mouth like wet gravel. “Only a matter of time before someone decided to put a beating to a kid like you. Useless to me busted.”
“I’m fine. Let’s just get going.”
Quarles stared me down with his rheumy eyes. I was close to insubordination, but sending me off for discipline would mean he’d have to see to the dogs alone that day. Quarles broke and nodded toward the kennels.
“Feed ’em,” he growled. “But half rations! I want those monsters blood hungry this morning.”
The kennel was a narrow concrete-floored room lined with cages, ten on each side. Each steel mesh cage was barely two by three feet with an exit on either side, one leading to the yard and one into the kennel’s central aisle. I heard Quarles out in the yard, setting up the dogs’ practice dummies. I looked up at the pull chains hanging across from the back door. One pull and every cage would open at once, leaving him surrounded by twenty starving animals. Of course, with my luck I’d grab the wrong chain and send them all into the kennel with me.