CHAPTER 3
I FOLLOW SWEETPEA BACK down the hallway of the East Wing, a Pip flanking me on either side. We’re heading towards the amphitheater, where the girls are gathered for announcements.
Passing the sliding doors that lead out to the rec yard, we continue through an open doorway and into the entertainment parlor. This room is even more dressed up than the Governess’s office. The walls are peach and draped with lace, and there are big leather couches and loungers atop the bearskin rugs. In the back is a huge stone fireplace—the kind that burns real wood, not the fake press-a-button flames I’ve seen in the city on market days. There’s no fire now, but soft, velvety light glows from lamps which are placed on each of the fancy wooden tables sprinkled around the room.
It still feels strange being here; once, places like this—and people like Pips—only lived in my ma and Bian’s stories. Finding them real makes me wonder what other nightmares exist.
“Come on,” says one of the Pips in a high voice. “Don’t dally.” He smacks my lower back with one of the beaters.
I growl at him and he holds the little stick out before him like a knife.
“The only time she ever comes through here is when she’s in trouble.” The other Pip has stopped, and motions to a couch with a twisty little smile. “Would you like to sit down, dear?”
I swallow. He’s got me pegged and he knows it.
It’s here that the girls will meet their prospective buyers for the first time; a very wealthy Magnate may even send an assistant to finish the sale. He might interview her on the couch, drink a cup of tea brought in by the Governess. We’re prepped on all the right things to say should this happen. City men like to hear they look young and powerful. They want to tell you about all the nice things they have, and you’re supposed to listen and smile down at your shoes and hope that you might be one of those nice things, too.
“Sure,” I say, forcing myself to relax. “I wouldn’t mind putting my feet up on one of those fancy chairs.” I wipe some of the blood drying on the back of my hand on the side of my dress.
“Pip,” says the first, making a gagging noise. “Get on already.” He smacks me again. I reach to snag the beater, but he pulls it away too fast.
We exit into a hallway where four smaller sitting rooms, two on each side, are left open to air. I clip Sweetpea’s heels, trying to make her hurry. This place makes my skin crawl. Should a buyer want a closer look at the property, the pair will be escorted into one of these private rooms. Here, he can request almost anything. Almost. A First Rounder must pass a medical exam verifying she’s not done it with anybody before any sale is complete. Nobody paying that much wants damaged goods.
I’ve never been brought into one of these rooms. Never the parlor either.
“Don’t worry, Clover,” says Sweetpea. “You’ll never make it this far.” She still thinks she’s better than me.
“Good,” I say with a snort, and she shoots a glare my way.
The curved outer walls of the amphitheater are broken by more sliding doors, and the last of the girls are going in. I’m held back until the end, and again I hesitate before I pass through. Just in case.
The first three descending rows of seats are filled, though the room can fit twice that. A Pip motions for me to sit in the fourth row, alone, and I find a seat behind the girl with red hair.
“Hi Daphne,” I whisper. The Pip doesn’t hear me. Before us is a stage the shape of a half-moon. The heavy maroon curtains are drawn.
She turns, her narrow nose scrunched as though she’s smelling something foul, and glares at me with her green eyes. I can see that she’s had her eyebrows waxed in preparation for tomorrow, and the skin treatments to remove her freckles are almost complete.
“Don’t speak to me,” she says. Buttercup, the skinny girl beside her with the slanted eyes, tries to hide the fact that she’s looking at me by pulling her long, smooth, black hair over her shoulder.
I lean back, only mildly stung. I didn’t expect Daphne to talk to me anyway.
“Your face looks terrible,” she whispers after a moment. “I’m glad Sweetpea hit you. You deserved it.” She smirks when Buttercup giggles.
I shrug. I’m glad Sweetpea hit me too. Now I don’t have to go to the meat market tomorrow. I, of course, don’t say this to Daphne. She’s only a half friend after all. Really, she’s not even that. More like a nonenemy.
“I got a month in solitary,” I say.
“A month!” she nearly shouts. Several girls nearby have heard her, and are now staring at me and whispering feverishly to one another. “A month alone out there? With that Driver stink? I can’t imagine it.” Buttercup isn’t hiding her stare now. Her mouth is open in shock, but pulls quickly into a smile.
The Driver stink Daphne refers to is the horse rental station the solitary yard butts up against. It’s the last facility in the business district before the city walls. But when she says stink, she’s not just referring to the animal smell, she’s referring to the people that own the horses.
The Drivers are horsemen who breed and tame their animals in the wild, then bring them into town for sale and rental. They’re a wild people, considered only a step above dirt—even lower than the Virulent who have broken city laws and are marked so that everyone knows it—because they are strange and unclean, skittish as rabbits, and too stupid to speak even the common language.
I’m not biased. Anyone within the walls of this city is an equal threat.
Buttercup’s distracted in conversation with another girl when Daphne turns back again.
“Why do you do that, anyway? Sing like that? If that’s even what it is.”
I lean back in my seat. The girls from the city don’t believe the same stuff I do. They don’t believe anything, really, unless the Magnates tell them they can, and the Magnates only worship themselves.
“It’s praying,” I say.
“Praying is for heathens,” she says. “The Magnate council outlawed it before any of us were born.”
Of course they did. Believing in anything other than the Magnate would mean that there’s something more powerful than them out there.
“You can’t outlaw praying,” I say.
“You can,” she argues. “Praying promotes false courage and a lack of personal responsibility. Besides that, it’s childish to believe in things that aren’t real. They did tests after the Red Years. Scientific tests. And they proved that gods don’t exist.”
I guess someone pays attention in the Governess’s lectures after all.
“You can’t prove that,” I say.
“Of course you can,” she says. “Have you ever seen your bird … woman—whatever you call her?”
“Mother Hawk.” I fidget. “No.” There are others too, but I don’t bring them up.
“Exactly.”
I pull the stretchy sleeves of my dress over my hands. I know Mother Hawk exists because she does. Because my ma told me she did. Because a long time ago, before scientific tests and Magnates, Mother Hawk gave the first people their reincarnated souls, and the only reason any of us walk and talk and live today is because of that gift.
I know she exists, because without her, I’m all alone.
I shake off the cold feeling that I am alone.
“Lots of people pray,” I tell Daphne. “My ma’s people were from a village on the other side of the mountains. They all prayed. My ma taught me how.”
“A lot of good it did her,” Daphne says. “She died, didn’t she?”
I wish I’d never told Daphne that. “Her soul lives, even if her body dies.”
Daphne doesn’t turn around, just whispers over her shoulder. “Grow up. There’s no such thing as a soul. There’s just us, Clover. Just bones and blood and body.”
Daphne doesn’t know. If the scientists here are so great, how come they can’t do what we can do? How come they can’t make a boy? The Governess once told us they’ve tried, but the results were deformed, or sickly, or not right in the head. That’s why we’re so important.
That’s what they get for messing with nature.
The curtains pull aside then and reveal three new girls standing on the stage beside the Governess, who is preening behind her lectern. She likes to welcome the new acquisitions this way, showing them off to the rest of us like livestock. I’ve heard her say it’s the first hint at what the auction stage will be like. A screen has already been lowered behind them, and as the pictures of wildflowers begin to rotate through, I feel my throat go tight. I miss home. The mountains. My family.
Daphne’s wrong. There is a soul. Something inside of me is pulling me away from here. Aching for my old life.
The Governess begins the way she always does, by asking us to observe a short period of silence in reverence for the Magnates and the Merchants, and all the men we serve. I keep quiet because I cannot risk her taking back my punishment, but I offer no such thanks.