After the Red Rain (29 page)

Alarmed, Markard spoke up: “Magistrate! That’s highly dangerous!”

“These are dangerous times.”

“We need an authorized court order to compel self-incriminating testimony.”

Ludo grunted in disgust, as though Markard were a small child refusing potty training. He snapped his fingers and held out a hand. An aide slapped a comm into his palm. A moment later, Ludo was speaking to someone on the other end. “Bil? Max. I need to interrogate an insurgent. Want to use SpeakTruth. Is that okay? Great. Thanks.” He handed the comm back and beamed at Markard. “Top Justice of the Territory Court. We have our court order. Do it.”

W
hen they’d left her alone, they’d turned off the only light in the room, steeping her in darkness. Deedra had become accustomed to the darkness. When she closed her eyes, when she opened them… it was the same, no matter what.

Just like the rest of the world. It didn’t matter, she realized, what you saw or what you didn’t see. The world was the same no matter what. You could imagine something better; you could read a story about something better. But in the end, the world was still the same stinking, hot, clouded-over, dirty, trashy place it had always been.

With a green-red stain where the boy you loved had died.

She struggled briefly and perfunctorily against her bonds. No use. She was theirs as long as they would have her.

The door opened and the lights snapped on, burning red against her closed eyelids. She decided to keep her eyes closed. To hell with them.

Expecting taunts and japes, she was surprised instead to hear only Max Ludo’s rumble: “Do it now.”

And then hands pushed down on her shoulders and another hand
grabbed her wrist. She opened her eyes and saw a man in medical garb at her side, wielding a needle.

“What are you—”

He jabbed the needle into her arm, just below the crook of her elbow. She barely felt it—she’d been dealt more and worse pain today than a little needle prick.

SI Markard stood at the other end of the room, arms folded over his chest, that weird paralyzed grin on his face. Max Ludo stood closer, rubbing his hands together eagerly.

“How long?” Max asked.

“Soon,” said the man who’d stuck her.

Deedra blinked rapidly. Her eyes were watering over. The room was swimming in sheer
wet
. She gulped the air like water, amazed that she could breathe it.

From the ceiling, red jewels dripped and sparkled. She caught her breath. They were
beautiful
.

“She’s ready,” a voice said, musically.

SI Markard approached and sat across from her, leaning forward, elbows on knees. His smile was spectacular. How could she ever have thought it was odd or off-putting? His green eye flashed and his blue eye spun like a whirlpool. She giggled.

“Deedra, can you hear me?”

Of course she could! “Yes!” she exclaimed happily.

“Good. Good. We’re going to talk a little bit. I’m going to ask you some questions. To start: Your name is Deedra Ward, right?”

Duh.
Why was he asking her something so
easy
? “Yes. That’s my name. Deedra Ward. That’s my name.”

“You’re an orphan and a ward of the Territory, correct?”

Thinking about that usually made her sad, but it didn’t seem to bother her right now. Waves of light shimmered, and the jewels from
the ceiling hung, coruscating, in the air all around her. “Yep! Orphan! No parents. That kind of sucks. No idea where I’m from. Oh well.”

“Okay, thanks, Deedra. Now, let’s move on. You know the boy named Rose, right?”

“Nope!” she said cheerfully. What a silly question to ask! “He’s dead, so I don’t know him anymore.”

Markard glanced around—when his head moved, she saw multiple versions of it, as if he were caught in slo-mo. “Yes, of course. You
knew
the boy named Rose, right?”

“I sure did! He was my friend! And then you guys killed him.” She should have been angry at that, but she couldn’t manage to summon the anger. She shrugged instead. “You shouldn’t have done that. That was wrong.”

“Don’t let her babble,” someone snapped. “Keep her focused.”

“Deedra,” Markard said slowly, “I want to talk about Rose. Do you know where he comes from?”

Did she? It depended on exactly what he meant by “where he comes from.” Because all she knew was that Rose had woken up in a graveyard and then walked to the Territory.

She wanted to help Markard. She really did. She wanted to tell him
so much
. But she didn’t know how to answer that question.

“I’m not sure,” she said, because it was the truth. “He was in a graveyard.”

The room fell silent. Deedra allowed herself to be distracted by the drifting jewels, which floated here and there on invisible crosscurrents. Occasionally, they would bump into one another and split off into multiple, smaller jewels.

“A graveyard?” Markard asked.

“A graveyard,” she confirmed. Up near the ceiling, one of the jewels was spinning now, gaining speed and light. It was like watching a tiny sun being born. “He got up and walked out of the graveyard and came here.”

“There are no graveyards anywhere near here,” someone said. Markard waved for silence.

“Deedra. Deedra, listen to me. Where was Rose before he came here?”

Ah! Ah!
She knew that one! “Across the river!” she explained eagerly. “I saw him out by the old bridge, and he swam across the river.”

“So… Sendar Territory?” Markard asked.

“Yes. Sendar.”

“Impossible!” Max Ludo snorted from beyond. “We have a solid treaty with Sendar; Glorio is scared pissless of me. He’s from
Dalcord
.”

“He came across the river,” Deedra said again. “From Sendar Territory. I watched him.”

“She’s lying.”

“She can’t lie,” Markard said calmly.

“Then he must have gone around and come through Sendar
from
Dalcord.”

“He came from Sendar,” Deedra said for the third time. It was the truth, and she would keep saying it as long as she needed to. It was very important to her that they understand the truth, and this was the truth. It was true
and
it was the truth
and
it was a true truth, so she would say it. “He came from Sendar, and I fell in love with him, and then you killed him.”

“This is useless. You’re not getting anything done.” Max Ludo shoved Markard out of the way—the SI blurred as he moved—and hunkered down to fill Deedra’s field of vision. “
I’ll
get answers out of her.” He took Deedra’s jaw in one hand and forced her to look at him. “You know who I am, girl?”

“You’re Max Ludo, the Magistrate,” she said. And then, because it was equally true: “I hate you. You’re a horrible person.”

“I’ll lose sleep over
that
, I assure you,” he snickered.

“I hated your son, too. He attacked me and I almost stabbed him, but Rose showed up so I didn’t have to.”

Ludo glared at her, and his grip on her jaw tightened.

“That hurts,” Deedra said. Truth.

“What did you say about my son?”

“I said he attacked me. He tried to—”

“You’re lying.”

“Nope. I’m not.” She sighed. Why on
earth
would she lie? About anything? The truth was
so
important. She just wanted to tell the truth, is all. “We were looking out at the Broken Bubble from the rooftop, and Jaron tried to rape me, and I was going to stab him, but then Rose showed up, and Jaron changed his mind and left.”

“Rose killed my son,” Ludo said, trembling. The shake traveled up his arm and vibrated her skull, but the truth was still easy to discern.

“No, he stopped me from killing him. Aren’t you listening to me?”

“Not then!” Ludo let her go and leaned in closer, shouting. “Not on the rooftop! Later! He killed him later!”

Deedra didn’t know if that was true or not, so she didn’t say anything.

“He did it, didn’t he? He killed my son!”

Deedra shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Were you involved in killing my son?”

“No.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“No.”

“It was Rose, wasn’t it? Only he could do it. We found biomass in Jaron’s apartment that matches the crap they’re hosing out of my courtyard right now.”

“He shed that stuff all around the Territory,” Deedra supplied helpfully. “Anyone could have found it. Like Lissa.”

“Who’s—”

“Magistrate…” Markard interrupted. “You need to keep her focused, or she’ll ramble on about anything and everything.”

Max Ludo gritted his teeth. Deedra watched sparks fly out of his mouth. Amazing. Her head felt like a balloon, tethered to her neck by a thin filament.

“Yes, yes…” Max grumbled. “What did the Rose boy tell you about Dalcord and the invasion plans?”

“Nothing.”

“So you knew about the plans, but he wouldn’t give you any information?”

“No.”

“So you’re saying Dalcord
isn’t
planning to invade?”

“No.” She was getting confused. She had to tell the truth—that was so very, very, very, very times a million important—but she didn’t know anything about Dalcord. Had she just lied?
Was
there an invasion plan? She didn’t know. A buzzing started in her head, and she began clucking her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

“What are they planning, then?” Ludo demanded. “Tell me the truth!”

She shook her head, hard. There was nothing in there. Nothing about Dalcord. She didn’t know what they were planning, but that wasn’t an answer. Not a
true
answer. He hadn’t asked
Do you know what Dalcord is planning?
He had asked for the plan itself. If there was no plan, she could say nothing and be telling the truth. But if there
was
a plan, then she had to say
something
, but she didn’t know if the plan was real, so how could she know what to say, but she had to say something and the something had to be true and—

“Whoa! Whoa!” A voice from behind her. Hands on her shoulders again, steadying her. The room spun, the jewels whipping like planets in orbits, the air wet and suddenly rancid. Deedra’s eyes rolled and jittered. “She’s close to neurotic burn. You have to ask questions she can actually answer, Magistrate. Otherwise, the paradox will burn out her synapses.”

“I don’t give a dry rat fart about her synapses!” Ludo bellowed. “Tell me about Rose! What is he?”

“He’s a plant,” she said, and then giggled. It was so strange. Rose was a plant and
a
rose was a plant and she was in love with a plant, but the plant was dead, so was she really in love with anyone anymore? Did love die along with the loved? She had no idea. No matter how much they asked, she would never know.

Ludo gave a triumphant cry. “A plant! I knew it! He
was
sent here. He’s a spy.” He leaned even closer, which she hadn’t thought possible; his face overwhelmed her entire field of vision.

“Now tell me who sent him. Who. Sent. Rose?”

She froze again. She didn’t know how to answer the question. It presupposed that someone
had
sent Rose, and she didn’t know if that was true or not. And she had to tell the truth. She just
had
to. It was the most important thing in the world to her, telling the truth. More important than her love for Rose, and bigger than Max Ludo’s enormous visage hanging before her.

“Who sent him?” Max yelled. “Who? Tell me. Who?”

At last, a question she had a definitive truth for: “I don’t know.”

Max’s face was flushed red and his eyes bulged, but he seemed to be calming down. “Do you know why Rose came here?”

“No.”

“Do you know who killed my son?”

“No.”

“Do you know what the Dalcord people are planning?”

“No.”

Max Ludo sighed, and Deedra almost felt sorry for him.

Markard watched the interrogation in despair. The Magistrate was asking all the wrong questions, and even the right questions were worded
imprecisely. Assuming the Ward girl knew everything they wanted and needed to know, Ludo would still get nothing but nothing out of her.

As the girl’s head lolled back, her mouth open and gasping, Max Ludo shrugged.

“The bitch doesn’t know a goddamned thing.”

“Magistrate—”

“She doesn’t know anything. Get rid of her.”

S
he woke in her apartment, on the bed. The roach netting was balled up in the corner and roaches roamed freely over her mattress. One of them had braved the hill of her left hip and perched there, silent and still, its antennae trembling questioningly, as though demanding answers from her.

Deedra had had enough of demands for answers. She lacked the strength to slap at the roach, but it skittered away when she shook her leg.

She wavered for a protracted moment, stuck on the precipice of sleep. Even though the roaches had free rein right now, she could not summon the energy or the wherewithal to care. All she wanted was to go back to sleep. Darkness wrapped its arms around her and they were warm.

As she sank into that sweet and black embrace, she recalled Rose’s tendrils, enfolding her, lifting her.

Her eyes fluttered open. A roach roosted nearby, right where Rose’s head had dimpled the pillow the night he’d stayed with her.

Dead.

She had no tears left to offer, so she choked dry sobs for a few moments. Her body ached as though she had a weeklong flu. Had the
roach crawled right up to her and begun exploring the contours of her face, she didn’t think she would be able to muster the strength to swat it away.

Sinking down into sleep—or unconsciousness, it didn’t matter which—she felt the arms again, woke up again, drifted off again, woke up again, a churning cycle of near-sleep and constant waking that lasted for a seeming infinity before her exhausted, battered body finally succumbed.

When she woke again, it was morning. Which morning, she didn’t know. The roaches were gone, except for two crushed and smeared specimens that had clearly come too close to her sleeping form in the night and paid the ultimate price. There was a greenish ichor from one, and her mind flashed back to the spray of Rose’s innards after the explosive bullet shredded his life, and she began crying. Anyone watching her would think she’d been moved to tears by a dead cockroach.

And someone
could
be watching, she realized. Probably
was
, in fact. Before, she’d been one of the anonymous masses. Now she’d witnessed a prison break and an execution. She’d been interrogated by the Magistrate himself. She would be watched for the rest of her life, she feared.

Fine. It didn’t matter anymore.
Nothing
mattered anymore. Once, she’d thought Rose meant…

Meant…

Something.

A way out? Out of what and where, she did not know. Maybe he hadn’t been a way out but, rather, a way
in
—a way in to a new life, a new way of living. Dr. Dimbali had believed that with Rose he might be able to change the entire world. Not the Territory or the City—the
world
.

It was a nice fantasy. A nice dream. But eventually, no matter how
fine the dream, you woke up from it. Sometimes you woke up with every inch of your body aching and protesting and your stomach so tight from hunger that it was almost impossible to move.

But move she did, rolling herself to the edge of the bed, then standing. The room tipped, tilted, and spun for a moment, and her vision fuzzed over. This must have been how Amory felt when he woke after his own brush with horror, imagining he’d seen his dead friend in the night.

She steadied herself with a hand against the wall until the world returned to something like normal. With small, cautious steps, she staggered over to the kitchen area and turned the tap. It seemed to take forever for the rust to rinse out of the water, but when the water cleared, she bent down and drank straight from the faucet, gulping greedily until the auto shutoff kicked in. She waited, chin dripping, until the shutoff disengaged thirty seconds later and repeated. And repeated again.

She was still hungry, though her belly now had something to occupy it at least. In a cabinet, she scrounged an old packet of fruit discs and gobbled them down so rapidly that her jaw hurt and her stomach threatened to return the discs back into the open air.

The metal flower Rose had given her sat near the sink. The sight of it and the sledgehammer of memories it evoked sickened and elated her at the same time.

Behind a folding screen was her toilet and a mirror. Her reflection nearly petrified her—she didn’t recognize herself. Her face was swollen and bruised from repeated slaps and smacks; the space around her left eye was almost night black. For the first time she could recall, her scar was not the most hideous thing about her. It was damn near unnoticeable.

I’m alive. At least I’m alive and not in prison.

But even as she thought it, she knew: None of it mattered.