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  “There’s no way Preia will let all of us leave to have a funeral,” he said.

  “Maybe not. But, does it hurt to ask? They don’t know anything about our current habits, or what rituals we might follow. As far as they know, a funeral is how we do it. So, why not insist we be allowed to do it?”

  “I guess it’s worth a try,” he said. “But, I think it’s a little cruel to let everyone see home, and then drag them back here for this . . . death march, or whatever Preia calls it.”

  “That’s just it,” I said. “Who says we have to come back? It’d be the perfect time for us to make a run for it. They know how far we’re going, and where we’re going. So, we just get there and keep on going. By the time they realize we’re gone, we’ll have days on them. They won’t be able to find us.”

  ◆◆◆

  I went back to Preia’s office the next day.

  “You’re here to accept my offer, I hope,” she said. Her mouth twisted up into what was probably supposed to be a smile—but instead of looking pleased, she looked rather predatory.

  “I’d like to,” I said, sitting on one of the couches. A bowl of apples sat on a low table in front of me. I took one and bit into it. The crunch was loud, and it nearly drowned out her response.

  “You want something more,” she said. She inclined her head, a look of respect lighting up her eyes. “You’re a clever man; I’ll give you that. What is it?”

  I wiped apple juice from my chin. “I’m sure you heard that my brother died. The brother you sent to the power plant?”

  “Unfortunate,” she said, clucking her tongue. “All reports are that he was a dedicated and hard worker.”

  “We have a strict tradition of burial in our culture,” I said. “Fiona wishes to bury Maestro alongside his father back at the mountain. We all wish it, really. It’s of great importance that he return to the earth from which he was born.”

  “That is a very lovely tradition,” she said. “Tell me more about this ritual.”

  “It’s a return to earth. We take turns digging the hole; he’s lowered in; we take turns throwing the dirt back over. Then, we all share a memory of him—generally, a good one, if you have one. We’ll spend time thanking him for his presence in our lives. Then, we’ll pray for his speedy return to Heaven.”

  “Heaven.”

  “Right, Heaven. Where souls go after they leave their bodies?”

  “Uh-huh. So, it’s a good thing we have plenty of earth here for him to be buried in. I’ll find a suitable plot of land for you to begin this charming . . . ritual.”

  “That won’t work,” I said. “It’s of the utmost importance he be buried amongst those who went before him. They’ll guide him to Heaven.”

  “What if he doesn’t go back to the mountain and have this ritual?” she asked.

  “His spirit will wander the earth and take revenge on those who stood in the way,” I said. I bit into the apple again, letting her think on that for a moment. “Maestro was a vengeful and strong-willed person in life. Let’s just hope he isn’t that way in death.”

  “Right. You can’t scare me with your silly ghost stories,” she said. “I’ll not allow you, nor any of your siblings, to leave for this. The risk is too great.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said. “Even though I’d love to accept your offer, I couldn’t do it in good conscience, without being able to properly bury all my siblings you wish to kill. I’d be bringing a lifetime of hauntings on myself if I didn’t secure that privilege.” She was silent. I finished chewing through the apple and spit the seeds into my palm. “Cooperation can be bought in many ways,” I said. “I’m sure someone in your position can appreciate that.”

  “Your cooperation was already bought,” she said. “When I named Maestro’s sickness.”

  “Yes. But, you haven’t yet bought the cooperation of my siblings, have you?”

  “They don’t need to be bought. They only need to pursue life as they know it.”

  I leaned forward and dropped the seeds, one by one, on the table. “Maybe they know more about life than you bargained for.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second. You didn’t tell them. I know you didn’t tell them.”

  I shrugged. “Believe what you want. I’ll give you some time to reconsider. Maybe a week? That should be long enough.”

  “Long enough for what?”

  “For you to know if Maestro is seeking revenge on you.” I stood and went to the door. “I hope you can see how important this is to me. To my siblings. Please, just give it some thought.” I didn’t wait for her to respond. I closed the door behind me and went home.

  ◆◆◆

  It turned out that she didn’t need a week. I was summoned to see her the next day—only at her home, instead of her office. A telepath came to get me, and he led me to Preia’s home in silence. I caught him looking at me with a strange expression, but he was unable to tell me what he was thinking.

  Preia lived in a much more lavish home than any of the houses near mine. It was large, made of brick, and covered in some places with dense ivy. The front door was covered by a large porch, and on either side of the steps leading up to it, a concrete animal of some sort stood guard. Their faces were eroded away by time and the weather, but their mass still made them imposing.

  The telepath indicated that I should go up the steps. He must have communicated with someone inside, because the door swung open, and another man guided me inside. The foyer was dark but felt large and impersonal. The new telepath pointed to a door off to the right that stood ajar.

  I tapped at it and swung it open. “Hello?” I asked.

  “Silver. There you are. Come in.” She was sitting at a large desk, a fire burning in a fireplace beside her. For as large as the foyer felt, this room felt small and cloistered by comparison. She pointed to a chair beside the fire. “Please,” she said.

  I sat and looked around the room. One wall was entirely filled with bookshelves; book after book took up the space. I knew they were pre-winter relics just from the strange, musty smell under the veil of woodsmoke. I’d never seen a book, though.

  I must have been staring, because she stood and motioned me to look at the books. “These have been handed down to the leaders over time,” she said. “The city leader always lives here. You’ll live here if you accept my proposal.”

  I ran a finger over the spine of a book.

  “You can look at them, if you like,” she said.

  I pulled one from the shelf. It was a lot heavier than I thought it would be. I rested it flat in my palm and opened the cover. Flakes of something fluttered out of it like little wings.

  “They aren’t in the best condition,” she said. “Not really usable anymore. But, they do look lovely, don’t they?”

  I closed the book and returned it to its place on the shelf. “Have you thought about my proposal?” I asked.

  “As it happens, yes. I have thought it over, and I think it isn’t such an unreasonable request, after all. If your siblings are condemned to die for the sake of the city, then I think we can certainly grant them the kind of burial they prefer.”

  “That’s good news,” I said. “Do you mind if I ask what changed your mind?”

  She blinked and went back to her seat at the desk. “I just had a night to think about how the services your people provide should be properly appreciated. That’s all.”

  “Well, I do appreciate you making that commitment,” I said. I tried to suppress my smirk. A friend of Tabby’s had tampered with the elevator at her office, and right after Preia had gotten off the elevator yesterday, it had crashed to the basement in a spectacular fashion.

  Preia believed that Maestro was haunting her.

  “There are conditions, of course,” she began. “You’ll be escorted to your mountain by a group of my guards. You may stay at the mountain for no more than 24 hours, and you may not enter the mountain. The guards will always be with you, even during the ceremony. T
he group must stay together and obey all commands from the guards. Do we understand each other?”

  “The guards must maintain a respectful distance for the ceremony,” I said. “I think a few hundred feet is fair?”

  A loud pop from a log in the fire caused Preia to flinch. “All right. That’s fair.”

  “Wonderful,” I said. “I believe we have a deal, then. I agree to be groomed for leadership, and you agree that Tennie, Leif, and Fiona will not be eligible for any dangerous jobs, and when a sibling does die, we’ll be allowed to take them home for their burial. All burial trips are to be held within your parameters, of course.”

  “Agreed,” she said. She held out her hand, and I shook it. “I’m relieved this was so easy.”

  “Yes. Me, too.” I hid a smile behind my hand and turned again to study the books so that she wouldn’t see my expression.

  ◆◆◆

  “We won’t be able to fight off her guard, Silver,” Tennie said. Her face was flushed, and her teeth were clenched.

  Leif put a hand out to calm her. “Nobody said this was going to be easy,” he said. “But, we have the upper hand. We know the area, there’ll be more of us, and we’ve got a lot more to lose than they do.”

  Tabby nodded. “He’s right, Tennie. The guards she sends will be little more than farmers with guns. She won’t send her best people, and they won’t expect you to be anything more than docile. You’re in mourning, after all.”

  “We’ve got to tell the others, though, Silver. It won’t work to keep them in the dark,” Leif said.

  “If they know too much, it’ll be easy for someone to talk,” I said. “We’ve got one shot at this, and I just don’t trust them to see it through.”

  It was Tennie’s turn to calm me. “You’ve got to have more faith in them. They may not have your ambition, but they’ve all got brains, and a will to live. They won’t want to stay here if they know about the jobs. They’ll follow your lead for no other reason than to get away from this.”

  “We have to tell them something. Sooner or later, someone is going to make a comment about how this burial thing you made up isn’t something we do,” Leif said.

  I sighed. “Okay. You’re right. We have to tell the siblings.” I glanced at Tennie. She was glaring at me. “All right, and Fiona, too.”

  “You think you should tell them?” Tabby said. “I think they might take it better from these two.”

  She gestured at Leif and Tennie. “I mean, they seem sort of angry with you already, and you did sell them out, so . . . ”

  I sighed again. “Are you okay with that?” I asked Tennie and Leif. “If you want, I could be there and just let you do the talking.”

  “No,” Tennie said before I could say anything else. “We’ll do it. Alone. You just stay out of sight, okay?” She jerked her head towards the door, and Leif followed her to it.

  “Wait—you’re doing it now?” I asked. My voice squeaked as I said it. My gut clenched into a ball.

  “We don’t have time to waste,” she said. “Maestro’s already dead, and if you want them to keep believing we’re so intent on this ceremony, we’d better be on our way fast.”

  “Good idea,” Tabby said. “I’ll go tell the morgue that you’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

  Then, I was alone to wait for the reaction of my siblings.

  Chapter 12

  We were on our way early the next morning. We were guarded by a group of a dozen men, all in various states of obvious physical neglect. The guards circled around us and kept us bunched together, while a wagon carrying Maestro, led by a sick-looking donkey, kept us bottled up from behind.

  Tabby came along with us, and I was grateful for her presence at my side. The siblings regarded me with thinly-veiled hostility, and she kept my spirits up.

  Preia had allowed us to have one tablet back to map our way home, and I nearly cried when I saw the mountain in the distance.

  “I never thought I’d see it again—or, that I’d think it was so beautiful if I did,” I said to Tabby. I pointed it out to her, and she nodded. She put her hand in mine and squeezed.

  The rest of the trip was uneventful. We arrived at the mountain just after dusk, and we started to set up camp inside the wall surrounding the entrance. The guards were on edge and didn’t like us being so close to the mountain door, so they forced us to move outside the walls. We were tired and irritable, but we did it. Nobody wanted to provoke violence when we were defenseless.

  In the morning, the guards roused us at first light and insisted we begin our ceremony so that we could leave by the afternoon. We gathered around Adam’s grave, and Fiona set the plan into motion. “We need shovels,” she said to one of the larger guards. “Can we go in the door there? The supply shed just inside the door?”

  The lead guard—the one with the smallest gut hanging over his belt—pushed through the crowd around the grave to confront Fiona via Tabby.

  “He wants to know why you came out here without shovels,” Tabby said.

  “I’m sorry,” Fiona said. “I didn’t think about it, but please, my son . . .” She pointed at Maestro, who was wrapped in a black, plastic bag with a zipper up the front. Like everyone else in the city, they never seemed to grasp that he wasn’t her son. Giant tears began sliding down her face, and I pushed forward to hand her something to wipe her face with.

  “She’s in mourning,” I said to the guard in a harsh voice. “What did you do to her?”

  He looked around like someone might rescue him, but the other guards backed away or looked at the ground.

  “You didn’t bring any shovels,” Tabby supplied.

  “Well, I’ll get her one,” I said. “There’s some right inside the door.”

  He grabbed me by the arm as I tried to walk away and shook his head.

  “You aren’t allowed in there. That’s one of Preia’s rules,” Tabby said.

  “All right,” I said. “He can go get it. I’ll show him how it works.”

  We walked together towards the door. He eyed it nervously.

  “It’s like an air lock. See that inner door, inside, that’s shut? It won’t open until you close the outer door. Then, the shovel should be just inside the door. On the right.”

  He nodded and approached the door.

  “You seem a little nervous,” I said. “Maybe you should take someone with you? To show you?”

  He frowned and shook his head again.

  “Easy, easy,” I said, holding up my hands. “Maybe one of the other guards would go with you.”

  Another guard came over, and they entered the chamber between the doors.

  “Now, I just have to link my tablet up here and get the door shut, then the inside one will open. You get the shovel and come back in the chamber. I’ll reopen the door after five minutes. That should be plenty of time for you to find it. Make sure you stay clear of both doors when they shut. Ready?” I linked the tablet, thankful that somewhere inside the mountain, a power source had kept the main computer online.

  The guard nodded. The hefty guard he’d called over turned to look at me, and I caught a quick burst of fear as the door slid shut. There were no lights inside the chamber.

  But, the nanobots were still there.

  Thankfully, we weren’t able to hear their screams. According to Fiona, it shouldn’t last long, anyway. I stood and waited.

  A few of the remaining guards came over to observe the doors. One of them nudged me after some time had passed, and gestured at the door.

  “Has it been five minutes?” I asked. “I want them to have plenty of time to find it. Might be kind of hard, in the dark.”

  Tabby came over. “They’re saying give it a few more minutes. Those two aren’t too smart.”

  The guard nodded. He elbowed the other guard in the ribs and laughed with a croak.

  I smiled but kept my eyes on my tablet. It was almost time.

  “Their time is up,” I announced, then opened the door. The chamber was empty e
xcept for the metal guns they’d been carrying, which apparently were the only inorganic things they’d had on their bodies.

  “They must still be looking,” I said. “I Better shut it, so they can come back in.”

  I shut the door and waited a minute. Then, I looked at the guards. “Now?”

  They nodded.

  I opened the door. Still, only the guns were there.

  Tabby conveyed their thoughts. “They think this is weird and want to know where the missing two are.”

  “I couldn’t say,” I said. “The shed is really just inside that door. Maybe one of you wants to go in and look for them? They must’ve gotten turned around in the dark.”

  Someone handed one of the guards a lantern.

  “Maybe two of you should go. In case you need to split up,” I said. Another guard shrugged and stepped into the chamber with the guard who had the lantern. I gave them the speech about what to expect and what to do, and I closed the door.

  This was almost too easy.

  After the allotted time, I opened it again. The guns and lantern were on the floor.

  “They want to know what’s going on,” Tabby said. “They’re getting upset. Is someone inside?”

  “Of course not,” Fiona snapped, coming up behind me. “There’s nobody in there because you forced us all out of our home. Remember?”

  “I could go in,” I said. “Take a look around. I know that’s against Preia’s rules, but . . .” I trailed off, and waited for the guard still standing with me to make a decision.

  He eyed me for a moment.

  “He says he’ll go,” Tabby said.

  He fumbled with the lantern and stood amongst the guns. He kicked at them but didn’t seem to question why they’d been left behind. He nodded that he was ready. The door closed. Half the guards were now taken care of. I glanced over at Tennie and signaled to Leif. He pushed another sibling—one whose name I couldn’t remember—and they began to argue. The remaining guards clustered around them, trying to keep the peace. From the corner of my eye, I saw Tennie slip away.