The Invasion of the Tearling

The gun barrel withdrew from Lily’s spine, and she shivered. Dorian’s hand squeezed her shoulder one last time, then left.

“So what to do with the whore?” Parker asked. His men had moved up to surround him, and Lily saw that they carried only knives or pistols, antiquated guns that must have been at least twenty years old, none of the heavy weaponry that Tear’s people were holding. Tear’s people seemed cleaner as well, as though they had access to plumbing. Here and there Lily saw crooked teeth, but none of them seemed to be rotten. The Blue Horizon clearly had their own doctors; did they have a dentist as well? Clothes, teeth, weapons … everything about Tear’s people seemed to be newer. Better.

What can he possibly want with these people?

“This is our house, Parker,” Tear replied. “The woman belongs to us. Jonathan, take her in the back and have a good time. Afterward, we might pass her around.” He sat back down at the table and gestured Parker into the other chair. “Let’s finish up.”

Jonathan grabbed Lily’s arm roughly and began dragging her toward a door at the far end of the room.

“Fight me,” he muttered. “Put on a show.”

This was actually a godsend. Lily’s nerves, frayed almost bare, suddenly sprang to life, and she hauled back and punched Jonathan in the face. He took a fistful of her hair and dragged her toward the door. Lily pawed ineffectually at his shoulder, and then they were through the door and Jonathan slammed it shut, then stood her up in front of him.

“Scream. As loud as you can.”

Lily drew a deep breath and screamed. Jonathan let her go on for perhaps two seconds and then clamped a hand over her mouth, muffling the scream into a grunt. He released her, and Lily moved over to perch on the arm of a puffy, misshapen chair that sat against the wall.

“Sorry about that, Mrs. M. It’s all these people understand.”

Jonathan hurried over to a door that stood open on the far side of the room. He shut the door, but not before Lily glimpsed something enormous in the warehouse space beyond: long bars of wood crisscrossed with horizontal beams that extended out of her range of vision. Lily had the impression of a massive skeleton, wooden goliath, half finished.

The skeleton of a ship.

She stared at Jonathan for several long minutes, her thoughts jumbling together around this new puzzle piece. Horses and medical equipment stolen. Transcontinental jets destroyed. Satellites brought down from the sky. A wooden ship being built by hand. The river-covered land that Lily had only glimpsed in her mind, a land where there was no Security, no surveillance, nothing.

And then she understood.

“You’re leaving. All of you are leaving.”

“I can’t talk about it, Mrs. M.”

The door slammed behind them and Tear stalked into the room. “It’s set. September first.”

“Parker gone?”

“No. He thinks he’ll get a crack at Mrs. Mayhew here. Animals, the lot.”

“What’s the word on the DOD feed?”

“Those three destroyers are still sitting a few miles outside the harbor. They’re not moving, just waiting.”

Lily’s mouth dropped open, and she stared at them, staggered. How could Tear have gotten into the Department of Defense?

The same way they can bring the satellites down from the sky and put out the power, her mind whispered. Technology is only as good as the people who supervise it.

“There’s radio silence all around the edge of the terminal,” Jonathan continued.

Tear nodded. “Hard to say when they’ll come, but I’m betting soon.”

Lily groaned, the truth tumbling into her stomach like a pile of rocks. “You already knew.”

“Yes.”

She sat down in the chair, covering her face with her hands. All of this … the entire journey, Greg … she had done it for nothing. She looked up at Jonathan, her cheeks blooming with furious color.

“I tried to save you the trip, Mrs. M.”

Another whoop came from the room outside, and Tear rolled his eyes. “That’s long enough, I suppose. Go and tell some heroic rape stories. Get them all ready to move as soon as Dori comes back. We’ll send Parker and his bunch out by the surface tunnels.”

Jonathan left, and Tear collapsed into an armchair near the door, perching his arms on his knees. The silver eyes gleamed at Lily, even from across the room. “I’m sorry for all of this. I’d like to shoot them as dogs, but I need them.”

“Why?”

“Because my people are valuable, Mrs. Mayhew. They’re intelligent and well trained. Brute force would be a waste of their talents.”

“What happens on September first?”

“Nothing you want to know about. How did you get here?”

“I drove.”

“Husband let you out in the middle of the night for a romp, did he?”

“I think I killed him.”

Tear looked up sharply.