“To cache is to organize your mind,” the tutor said, “and is the special privilege of the Knowing. Visualize a place to put your memories, a place far away and inaccessible. When you cache a memory there, it may only be retrieved when you choose to retrieve it. Cache both the very distressing and the very happy. The first is unpleasant, the second addictive, and both may interfere with daily functions … ”
I was three years old when I heard these words, on my first day in the learning room. I was terrible at caching then. I’m terrible at it now. And I Know what’s going to happen to me next. I close my eyes, and pain rips through my chest, tearing, slicing, cutting its way through my insides. Like needles. Like knives. This is separation from my brother, the grief I felt when I first understood that he was never coming back to me. And it is agony.
I lift my eyes, panting, my gaze sliding down the grassy slope to the tamed trees and the empty, shaded groves. The cliffs are over there, much higher than the one I just came down. A long drop into nowhere. Aunt Letitia went that way. And Grandfather Archiva was so afraid of the memory of helplessness from his infancy that he threw himself into the River Torrens rather than grow old. He could not cache, my mother said, and that was the end of him. It may be the end of me. The absence of pain, the absence of memory, sounds a lot like peace. And then the idea that death is the only way to peace makes me mad. Because it isn’t. There is another way.
But for all my Knowing, I am not supposed to Know about that.
I push myself upright, wipe my cheeks with the back of a burning hand, and peel away the undyed shirt of the Outside, trying not to bleed on the embroidered blue-green tunic I’m wearing beneath it. The matching leggings are a little torn from the rope, but Nita’s clothes have taken most of the damage. If I keep to the shadows, to the lesser-used corridors, I may escape some notice. But I’ll still have to pass through the Forum, full of the Knowing, and I will be spotted, with my loose hair and injured hands, and this is a twelfth year. A year of Judgment. When the Council weighs our accumulated sins. When the worthy of the Knowing are kept, the unworthy condemned and … removed.
I’m as unworthy as they come. But most of what makes me unworthy the Council doesn’t Know about.
Unless they catch me today.
I hide the torn clothes behind a clump of bluing grasses, sidestepping down the slope and into the upland parks. The parks are a table of land cut off, like the Outside, sheltered by the mountain on one side and the long drop over the cliffs on the other. The one place the Knowing are allowed to go open air but don’t. Mother thinks the parks are beneath our dignity. That to stand in the presence of the sky is to act like an Outsider.
I wonder what she’d think if she knew where I really spent my time.
I Know what the Council would think. And I Know what they would do.
The air dims, cooling in the shadow of the mountain, and then I am slipping through an arched door cut into a smooth face of shining rock. I leave the light and enter the dark, feet tapping down winding stairs of black stone, taking me to the Underneath. The temperature drops, hanging lamps making shadows, the spiced perfume of the city inside my nose. It’s quiet, the stairway deserted. Until Level Twenty-Two, where I see Nita on the landing, beckoning to me, frantic, her blue eyes bright against the undyed cloth, a sky-purple scarf trailing from one hand. Nita has been our family’s help for seven years now, since I was eleven and she was fifteen, and I think she’s just risked a flogging to bind my hair. This is not our level, and she is definitely out of bounds.
“I used your note and came in through the gates,” she whispers. “Your mother’s come back! Turn around … ”
Mother never comes back before the middle bell. This is her time to order her mind. Like I was supposed to be doing in my chamber. My stomach sinks.
“Oh, Sam, you’re a mess,” Nita says, gathering up the mass of my hair, long, black spirals hanging halfway to my waist, wrapping it all up quickly in the scarf. “Where are your shoes?”
Hidden beneath the stack of boxes that had supervisors all around them. I’m still wearing Nita’s sandals from the Outside.
“Here, use this to cover up.” She whips a cloak of dark, shining purple around me and fastens it at my neck. “I’ll try to distract your mother so you can get through the door. And do something about your hands!”
“What happened to the dyers?” I ask, but Nita’s already shoved me forward, disappearing back through the doorway. She must have an agreement with the Outsiders in this level’s kitchens. I wish I did. The way would be much shorter.
I hurry down the black stone stairs, Level Eighteen, Seventeen, passing more doorways and landings without seeing another soul. No one ever comes this way, because the Knowing never go open air. Except for me. Of course, the Knowing never break the law to put on undyed cloth and dress the wounds of their help, either. Except for me. And they definitely do not consider their help family. Except for me.
When I’m not so afraid, I feel good about my unworthiness.
Fifteen levels down, I duck through the arch on my right, into the dull, flickering lamplight of the medical section. It’s as empty and quiet here as in the stairwell, and that, I think, is at least one thing I do exactly like the rest of the Knowing: Never get sick.
There’s a door open on my left, a storage room, with shelves of boxes and bottles on one side, and on the other a back, a male back, in a sleeveless green tunic, brown hair braids hanging past his shoulders, injecting a clear liquid into tiny glass vials. He has ten scars on each of his arms, one for every year of his life. Reddix Physicianson. The sharp scent of our wellness injections springs to my nose.
I take one silent step inside, reach up for a roll of bandages, and Reddix says, “Can I get something for you, Samara?”
I glance back. He hasn’t turned or twitched or even stopped filling his vials. But he Knows it’s me. I snatch the bandages with my fingertips. “No, I don’t need anything.” My hands are hurting enough to make tears well in my eyes. Or maybe that’s Adam.
Reddix’s voice is low. Composed. “Then I suppose I’ll be seeing you later.”
I dart out the door. There’s a shadowed corner on the landing at Level Eight where I stop to bind my hands, wincing while I do it, ripping the cloth with my teeth, uneasy. I can’t think of one reason why Reddix would be seeing me later. When I’m done, I run down seven more levels, through a short tunnel, and then I straighten my back, adjust the cloak to hide my feet and my hands, and enter the noise of the Forum.