The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf (The Tribe) (10 page)

Flailing and treading water, I searched for the Serpent and found him coiled high above me. I started swimming, keeping a wary eye on him as I made my way to the shore.

“What did you do that for?” I demanded as I squelched out.

I was helping.

“You were
not.
”

I made you better.

“No, you didn’t.” Except the second I spoke, I realized that the pain was gone and my body wasn’t shaking anymore. More than that, I felt lighter, as if a weight I hadn’t even known I was carrying had been lifted. “What is that, some kind of magic water?”

It’s not the water. It’s what’s in it.

“And what’s that?”

Me.

I suppose I should have expected that answer
. “You’re like a Mender?”

There was a liquid, tinkling sound in my head. Laughter?

In a way.
He preened in the sunlight.
You will see them clearly now.

“See who clearly?”

The transformed ones.

I remembered his earlier words:
Death is a great transformation
. “Do you mean Cassie and Jaz?” I peered around eagerly. “Are they here?”

Yes. And no.

“Which is it?”

Which is what?

“Yes or no?”

I cannot tell you what you do not wish to know, Granddaughter.

“Of course I wish to know!” Then my brain caught up with what he’d said. “Hang on. What do you mean, ‘Granddaughter’?”

He didn’t make the laughing sound again, but I got the distinct feeling that he was enjoying my reaction.
I am your many-times grandfather, one of the creators of your people.

“That’s . . . that’s impossible.” It was ridiculous to be telling a giant snake that anything he did was impossible. “You made Illegals?”

Not Illegals. Your people in the world that was, before the great chaos you call the Reckoning.

Before
the Reckoning? There weren’t any Illegals back then. Although there were different peoples — different races, they were called. Ember had told me about it, once — how things like my skin not being the same color as hers or the way Pen’s eyes were almond-shaped used to mean something. After the end of the old world, when there were so few humans left, everyone stopped worrying about things like that.

“Are you saying that in the old world, my, um, people were made by giant snakes?”

My kind took many forms, Granddaughter.
He sighed deeply, and that sigh seemed to flow out of him and through the Firstwood, stirring the leaves in the trees.
When the great chaos began, I was sleeping deep in underground water. My resting place broke apart, and I was cast out into the end of everything. I journeyed for a long time, gathering all the scraps of life that I could find.
He rose higher and added softly,
I brought them here. Then I sang, reminding life of its shapes, strength, and its many transformations. Until life remembered its nature and grew.

I choked. “
You
made things start to grow again after the Reckoning?”

I made things grow here. There may be other creators elsewhere. I am one of the old spirits of the earth, Granddaughter. I do not know how many of us survived the great chaos.
He dipped down, coming so close that I could see tiny drops of water on his shimmering scales.
But yes, this one place is mine. The trees were the first to return. Then I sang the lizards into being, to guard what I had created. And everything else followed.

This couldn’t be true. Somehow, though, I knew it was. “Do you live here — in my world, I mean?”

I live in all worlds, and in the spaces between them.

“I swim in this lake all the time. Why haven’t I seen you before?”

I’ve been sleeping.

“Sleeping?”

I required much rest.

“It’s been more than three hundred years since the Reckoning.”

It was not an easy task to make life grow. I began to stir from my slumber when you came to the Firstwood, and I woke completely when you began to speak of me.

Speak of him? Then it dawned on me what he meant.
The Serpent
. “I’m afraid I wasn’t exactly talking about you.”

He made the laughing noise again.
Weren’t you?

“No, there’s this Illegal, you see, and he . . .” I let my voice trail off, realizing the uselessness of trying to explain.

The snake’s eyes swirled.
You have forgotten my story. But then, you have forgotten many things, haven’t you?

“I haven’t forgotten anything!” But that didn’t sound right. “I mean, I don’t
think
I’ve forgotten anything.”

It does not matter.
A wave of emotion seemed to flow out from him and wash over me, a feeling of affection mixed with a sort of proprietary pride.
What matters is that you can call upon me if you ever need my help. You might be the last to carry the bloodline of those I created in the world that was.

“Can you help me become a wolf?”

You are not going on, Granddaughter. You are going back.

“What do you mean, ‘back’?”

The Serpent didn’t answer, but light flashed, so bright it seemed to burn my eyes. For a few seconds, all I could see was a blue glow. When my vision cleared, there was no Serpent, no lake, and no Firstwood. Instead, I was lying on a bed in a white-walled room. Sunlight streamed in through a large window, and the air was filled with a clinical scent.
The hospital.

I was still alive.

I blinked, hoping my surroundings would change. They didn’t.
It isn’t fair! How can I be alive?
And what had that experience with Georgie and the Grandfather Serpent been if not the Balance? Surely, it couldn’t have been a dream. It had felt so real.

Connor was standing at the end of the bed, arms folded across his chest. He moved to stand beside me, and I hastily levered myself into a sitting position. I was wearing the collar and a crisp white shirt. I felt underneath it where Briony had stabbed me and found the faint ridges of a scar. Wentworth must have worked her magic again.

Sighing, I looked up at Connor. “You know, for a dangerous Illegal surrounded by enforcers, I’m having a very difficult time getting myself killed.”

And Connor said quietly, “Ashala. Briony is dead.”

“Dead?”
I gasped. “She can’t be dead. I just saw her.”

Connor shook his head. “You’ve been unconscious for some time.”

I pointed to the window. “But it’s still afternoon.”

“Yes. Thursday afternoon.”

It was the next day. “It didn’t feel like that long.”

He pressed his lips together into a thin line. “It did to me.”

“What happened to Bry?”

“She was killed while attempting to escape.”

I tried to make sense of that and couldn’t. “Why would she want to escape? She was working for you.”

“Yes,” he acknowledged tiredly, “but the Chief Administrator was only prepared to give her an Exemption if she could persuade you to ask the Tribe to surrender. Until then, she was being treated like any other Illegal.”

“Where’d she get the knife, then?”

“She had a . . . relationship with her guard. He allowed her to keep the knife.”

“A
relationship
? With some enforcer she’d known for a couple of days?”

“She’d known him far longer than that. Since they were children.”

I snorted. “Exactly how many future enforcers could Bry have grown up with? . . .” But my voice trailed off as I made the obvious connection.

When Briony had introduced Connor to me, she’d claimed she’d been friends with him when she was young, and that she’d recently run into him again on a trip into Stonygull. I’d realized yesterday that she’d probably always known he wasn’t an administrator. Now it seemed she’d been lying about other things, too.

“It wasn’t you she knew as a kid, was it?” I asked. “It was Evan. He was the one who was her friend.”

He nodded, and I mentally reevaluated every assumption I’d made about Bry’s enforcer guard. Small moments replayed themselves in my head, like the way he’d been so focused on her at the park, and the glance he’d given her before he’d left her in Neville’s office. I’d thought he’d been concerned about doing his job. Now it seemed as if he might have actually been concerned about Briony. “So, Evan was the one she ran into in Stonygull?”

“It would be more correct to say that she sought him out in Stonygull.”

“And he reported to the government that she was willing to inform on us. Only,” I added bitterly, “they didn’t send him to the Firstwood when it came to it. They sent you.”

“Yes.”

“Because they trusted you. Because you’ll do whatever is
necessary
.”

Connor didn’t respond to that, just gazed at me with something like his usual cool reserve. But he wasn’t quite as statue-like as normal. There were faint shadows under his eyes, like smudges on marble. I got the sense that he was feeling almost as exhausted and edgy as I was, and I was glad of it. Because it was right, that Bry’s death should cause Connor and the government some pain. Especially since something else must have happened in the time I’d been unconscious for her to have run.

“Exactly what did you do to her?” I demanded.

Connor raised an eyebrow in surprise. “What?”

“You must have done
something.
Bry believed she’d get an Exemption. She wouldn’t have tried to break out without a reason.”

“She thought she’d killed you, Ashala! There was some kind of plant toxin on the knife. Not even Wentworth was certain that she would be able to save your life. If you’d died . . .”

He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t need to.
Bry wouldn’t have had anything to bargain with.
Plus she’d have been the only Illegal from the Tribe left for Neville to interrogate. “She must have been terrified.”

Connor shrugged, as if he didn’t particularly care if Bry had been scared or not. I did, though. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it. Even after everything she’d done, she was still one of my own, and I knew she hadn’t truly meant to kill me. She’d simply lost control when I’d shoved the truth about her parents in her face. I was pretty sure the poison hadn’t been meant for me, either, or for anyone particularly. It had been Bry’s way of protecting herself. Somewhere in that dreamy brain of hers, she’d realized how dangerous it was to come here.

“I still don’t see how she ended up dead. You’re telling me that an entire detention center of enforcers couldn’t keep hold of one Illegal?”

He answered irritably. “Evan tried to smuggle her out by disguising her as an administrator. The two of them were almost through the main gate when someone raised the alarm.”

“Then what? You lot stabbed her?” Except I knew immediately that they couldn’t have caught her with a sword, not if Bry hadn’t been wearing a collar. “You shot her, didn’t you?”

“
I
didn’t do anything. I was here, waiting to see if you’d live or not. But she used her ability, and yes, they shot her.”

“I thought streakers weren’t standard equipment yet.”

“They’re not. But they’ve recently been issued to the guards on the gates and walls.”

I sat in silence for a few minutes, imagining all those armed enforcers on the lookout for escape attempts or an attack from the Tribe. Had Briony understood how many deadly weapons would have been aimed in her direction? She must’ve been desperate to try to out-Run them. I felt a sudden rush of warmth toward Evan, glad that she hadn’t been alone at the end.

“What happened to her guard?”

“He’s here, in the hospital.”

“They shot him, too? What for, to punish the guy?”

“No one did anything to him,” he replied evenly. “He went a little crazy when Briony died, and he had to be sedated. He’s here under guard until Wentworth clears him to be moved to the cells.”

“Sounds like he loved her.”

“Apparently so.”

There was a note of surprise in his voice, and it stung. More than stung — it cut, opening up a wound I didn’t want to acknowledge was there. “Guess that’s not something you could understand, a Citizen loving an Illegal.”

Connor drew in a long breath. “No, it isn’t. Any more than I understand why you’re so concerned about someone who tried to kill you.”

“She was still Tribe! She was just another Illegal to you, though, wasn’t she? Someone to manipulate and
murder.
”

“
I
had nothing to do with her death. And she was well aware of what she was doing when she came here —”

“She was terrified and vulnerable, and you took advantage of her.”