Chapter 28: Black Crow Blues, Pt. 2

They passed through the gate into New Dallas, and Lily wondered if she’d also ridden backwards in time. The road was paved smooth, lined with electric lights on poles that gleamed against a twilight sky. A convoy of heavy vehicles crawled past them.

Flags flew from every building. The big white star reminded her of the Union, but there were no stripes, just divided red and blue. This was not the flag they’d brought to Omaha Base. Perhaps there had been a regime change.

Aiden’s laughter jarred her back to earth. He swept his hand across a distant crumbling skyline backlit red by the setting sun. “Welcome to the greatest city on earth.”

Anya signed at him, pink-cheeked with suppressed laughter.

“It’s not the only city I’ve been to, Anya, I’ve been all over and you went with me. No — the fuck you mean you like Austin better? Austin?”

A detachment of soldiers marched past in crisp brown and tan uniforms, perfectly in step, their boots gleaming. Not like the soldiers she remembered. All of this was different.

“How,” Lily asked lamely, as her companions argued good-naturedly. “How do you have all this?”

“Oh, uh…hard work, preparation, luck.” Aiden counted off on his fingers. “Oil. Decades of terrible war. More oil. There’s no place on earth like New Dallas. You ready to meet the Old Man?”

They rode slowly up a wide boulevard lined with vegetable gardens. There was not a single thing alive in Delphi, not even the people. Here they grew corn, beans, and summer squash in the streets.

“All right, so, couple things. One, everyone inside the campus is loyal to New Columbia. Second, you can’t go in armed. All right?”

Lily held the knife a little tighter. “What campus?”

“The old University.” Aiden pointed to a far-off group of crumbling edifices, ringed in a tall chain-link fence. “First crop after the Fall was planted on the lawn there, so everyone just calls it the Farm.”

It wasn’t a farm anymore; as they drew closer, Lily saw the grass was dead and untended. She also saw more guns. A boxy white building with dozens of narrow rectangular windows dominated the grounds.

Sentries waved Aiden through the gates. A horde of young people in blue uniforms were setting up tents on the wide lawn, laughing and shouting to each other.

Lily reluctantly passed her weapons to the woman in the guardhouse. The pistol was replaceable, but the knife…

“I’m getting these back,” she said.

“On your way out.” There was no malice in the guard’s voice as she tagged the weapons and stored them away. Just boredom.

“Miles!”

Lily heard a whoop of delighted laughter and turned to see Aiden embracing a solid white-blond man with a face lined by years. His eyes were sharp and blue, but they regarded Aiden fondly.

“I’ll come see you,” Aiden promised, shaking his hand. “I gotta do something inside first.”

“You know where I’ll be.” Miles took the reins, clucking softly as he led the horses off. His age and heavy limp barely slowed him down. He still moved like a wolf.

You know how much they pay for Operatives in Dallas?

Lily watched him go, arms folded.

“That’s Miles,” Aiden supplied.

“Yeah.”

“Remember, everyone here is loyal to the Republic. The Old Man can explain.”

“I sure hope so.”

Aiden walked her to a long, rectangular building, its windows sealed with brick and whitewashed. Heavy double doors stood open. Inside, sunbeams filtered through narrow skylights. The myriad fissures in the walls and ceiling were lovingly patched, and coppery metal filled in long cracks in the stone floor.

“So, does he lead New Columbia?” Lily felt naked without her weapon, shaken by that Operative out in the courtyard. “Your old man?”

“Pfft, no. You should call him a spymaster, though. He hates that.” Aiden chuckled. “He delivers intel to Houston, and they let him gather dust here in the library.”

‘Library’ was an unfamiliar word, but they passed through another set of heavy wooden doors and Lily understood. Shelves stretched from floor to ceiling, burdened by countless books; old books, somehow spared from the firestorms and the long winter.

“We saved them,” he said softly. “Underground. Look around if you want, I’ll come get you when he’s ready.”

He disappeared through a side door before Lily found her voice again, leaving her alone in the forest of shelves.

—

*Despite the shin-deep snow drifts half the town turns out to watch her leave. Some still think she’s a hero. Others think she’s a killer. Soon they’ll all forget.

So much time has been wasted. The year has turned, and beneath the snow the tracks are long gone.

Brenna’s warm-honey eyes threaten to spill over. She’s only twenty. Still a child.

Lily regrets this as soon as she thinks it. Brenna is the intricate network of roots that holds up the oak tree.

There are snowflakes in her eyelashes. She winds a scarf around Lily’s neck, undyed grey wool with a few thin blue stripes. “You’ll always have a place here, if you need somewhere to come home to.”

Luke holds out the reins. “Bring my horse back, General.”

She almost laughs. She almost weeps. Instead, she unbuckles 86’s knife — Michael’s knife, her knife — from her belt and presses it into Brenna’s hands. “Could you hold onto this for me?”

“Until you get back?”

Maybe saying goodbye would be better than lying. She wants to see Laketown in the summer, maybe learn medicine under Burnett and let her old wounds heal, but she will come back victorious or not at all.

“Yeah,” Lily says. “Until I get back.”

The horse carries her out the gate and down the logging road, bearing southeast. She doesn’t look back. *

—

Aiden returned and beckoned for Lily to follow him into a little room, packed with mismatched shelves sagging under the weight of books in various stages of disrepair.

A man stood at the workbench with his back to the door, sewing a binding. Something about his stance, his shoulders, the way he held his head…

“Hold on, Aiden, I didn’t expect you to get her so quick.”

Someone had grabbed her lungs and squeezed. Lily knew that voice. It was colored by a faint New Columbian accent, but it was still…

He half-turned, hands still busy.

It couldn’t be, but it was. She knew that face better than her own. Grief pricked like a fishbone in her throat as the name was dragged out of her, one syllable at a time.

“Michael?”