I am going to be flogged, and I don’t know why I’m so surprised about it. No one could take this many risks and never get caught. I don’t want to be caught. I drop flat onto my back without a sound, stretching full length along the top of the wall, a wall that’s only a little wider than I am. There’s a long drop on either side. I clutch my pack to my chest, squint my eyes against the brightness of the sky. No. I’ve always known I would get caught. I just didn’t think it would be today.
I chance another quick glimpse over the edge of the wall. There are two people down there, standing close together in the shaded alley, my rope ladder dangling just above their heads. I don’t think they’ve seen it, and I don’t think they’ve seen me, though practically everyone else can. The walled city of Canaan spreads like a wide and shallow bowl of winking glass and white stone below me, and here I lie, ten meters high on its rim. Just one set of eyes on the streets during the resting, awake—as I am, as those two below me are—one pair of hands pulling aside a sleeping curtain from a well-positioned window, and they will see. And they will come for me.
My fingers find the twisted rope of the ladder, tied to a metal ring sun-hot and burning through the cloth of my leggings. I could pull up the ladder, flip it back over to the forbidden side of the wall, climb down, and wait until they’ve gone. Or I could try jumping for the roof of the Archives. That would be an easy drop, only the width of the alley and a meter or so down. But that roof is thatch instead of turf, the pitch steep, and how could either of those people in the alley not notice a girl jumping over their heads? Or the ladder pulling back up, for that matter? It’s a miracle they missed it coming over the wall the first time.
And so I force myself into stillness, into patience. Balanced high inside the dome of the blue-violet sky, the white city on one side, a wilderness of mountain and waterfall on the other, eight weeks of the sun’s trapped heat scorching my back through the wall stones. I’m not good at patience. The wind blows, a hot, swirling breath, and I wonder if it can push me off this wall; I wonder which side I’d rather fall on. Two words float up from the shaded alley.
“How many?”
It’s the kind of question asked when you think you haven’t heard right. I know most of the people of Canaan, at least by sight, though not by the tops of their heads. But the murmur of the answering voice I know right away. Polite. Always pleasant. It’s Jonathan of the Council, enforcer of Canaan’s many rules. Finding him in defiance of those rules is my second non-surprise of the day. Jonathan will have me flogged all right. And enjoy it. I wonder how many stripes you get for climbing over the wall.
“Eleven,” says Jonathan.
It takes a heartbeat to understand this answer wasn’t for me.
The other voice replies, much louder, “And what am I supposed to say to these people when they request their books? What reason am I supposed to give?”
This is Gretchen of the Archives Jonathan is talking to.
“The reason is mine, Archivist. What you tell them is your affair.”
I hold my pack tighter to my body. My own book is inside, its tether worked through a hole in the cloth, tied to the braided belt at my waist. Surely Jonathan can’t be telling Gretchen to not let eleven people read their archived books. Your books are your memories, who you are. The thought of being denied one of my books brings a familiar tingle to my fingers, my legs. I shove the feeling down. I can’t afford to panic, not here, on the wall, right over Jonathan’s head and in full sight of the city. Then I catch a movement from the corner of my eye. One of my braids is free from its pins, dangling over the wall edge like a long blond banner.
And there’s no more talk in the alley. The pause grows so long I can almost see the two necks craning upward, watching my braid flutter and the rope ladder sway. I think of the ridge of scars I saw on Hedda in the bathhouse, her back like a badly plowed field, and I make a decision. If they come for me, I’m going to pull up the ladder, climb down the other side of the wall, and go back into the mountains. Then I decide the opposite. Hedda survived. And my mother and my sisters need me. Even if they don’t know it. It’s only seventy days until the Forgetting.
The moment passes when Jonathan’s pleasant voice says, “Here is your list.” After a soft word from Gretchen his voice comes back, this time with an edge. “And what if your food ration depended on doing what you’re told?”
I pretend to be Gretchen of the Archives. Well, Jonathan of the Council, if your own ration depended on how much you love punishing a rule-breaker, I’m pretty sure there would be nothing left to eat in Canaan. And if you’d just look up, you could see one great big rule being broken right now …
Gretchen says none of these things, of course. I never say them, either. But I almost wish she would. I need for her to end this so I can get off this wall. I snag my wayward braid, tuck it up behind my head, and wonder what Janis, Canaan’s Head of Council and Jonathan’s grandmother, might have to say about back-alley meetings during the resting. I’d bet she doesn’t know anything about them.
More muttering from Gretchen, and then the air settles into quiet, lulled by the chick chick of the suncricket song. I risk another look over the edge of the wall. The dim alley is empty. No feet on the flagstones, no creak of an opening window, no shout that means I’ve been seen. As far as I can see, the city sleeps.
I move. The pack goes to my back, feet over the wall as I roll onto my stomach. My sandals find the rope ladder and I shinny down, but only halfway, a meter or so above Jin the Signmaker’s roof garden. I get my feet planted sideways, push hard, and make the short drop into the garden, half turning as I fall. I land feet, knees, then hands in the prickling grasses, the view from below now obscured by the huge, hulking, windowless building that is the Archives.
I hurry to a bed of dusk-orange oil plants and pull out a pole made from a fern stalk, light and thin, its end carved into a hook. I reach out, catch the hanging ladder with the hook, and work the ropes up and over the wall, letting the weighted last rung finish the job of pulling the ladder over to the other side. Then I slide the pole back into its hiding place and straighten, listening.