Read the book: «City of Dust: Completely gripping YA dystopian fiction packed with edge of your seat suspense»

Chapter 2

It was falling fast now. I shimmied down a fallen trunk and leapt up into a thick willow, keeping my eyes trained on the sky above the trees. Max followed agilely, sensing my need for urgency, and only paused when I reached the swaying branches near the top. I held up a hand, knowing the thinner, reedy branches wouldn’t support his weight. And it only took one of us to look past Arafel’s silvery waterfall into the canopied clearing beyond.

It had been two days since the hunter tree trials, and we were on the outer perimeter of Arafel’s forest, the last thicket before the gently sloping pastures we’d cultivated for our rotational crop supplies.

I scanned the busy fields swiftly. I could just spy Kela, today’s shift leader, checking the green shoots of the second barley crop, which once only grew in the old-world Middle East. It was another newcomer since the change in climate, and we were grateful for the flour that provided our village with barley bread throughout the volatile monsoon months.

Beyond the long pastures were the gentle, arid slopes that signalled the start of the mountainous terrain. They were used mainly for grazing the village goats, and the occasional wild caribou kill. The slopes were also where Eli had found Jas, our snow leopard watch-cat, when we were just children. As far as I was aware, she was still the only living creature I knew to have wound a precipitous route from the North Mountains’ snowy peaks into our hidden paradise.

Today though, Jas’s Herculean feat was not foremost in my mind.

I’d followed the tiny falling speck from the roof of our treehouse, feeling suspiciously like I’d fallen into one of my nightmares. Yet this speck was real, I was sure of that. It was also big with a predatory shape, like one of the birds of prey circling way up in the mountains. And its direct, urgent flight marked it out from the rest.

I craned my neck, trying to peer through the dense foliage into a clearing a few tree jumps away. The bird had merged with the trees here several minutes ago.

‘What was it?’ Max’s whisper was barely discernible above the rustle of the willow. ‘Boar?’ he added hopefully.

I shook my head, drawing mixed comfort from the warmth of his breath against my calf. The fallout was forgotten. I never could stay mad with him anyway, he was simply too Max. And he never suffocated me with words; everything that needed to be said was conveyed with a look or a touch. Apart from that one night, when he’d rolled onto his side to look at me. Really look at me. And I’d never felt more naked. The moon painted his Outsider skin in runes when he whispered the three words that terrified me most. And it was the best and worst moment of my life.

My own words had dried at the back of my throat, and it was part of the reason we hadn’t stopped. Because I couldn’t wrap words around my own feelings. They wouldn’t fit no matter how much I tried to force them. And now the nights were so much harder. The question was always there, hanging between us in the darkness. I really tried to bury my memories, to leave it all behind like we had that night, but the same confusion that stopped my words, stopped everything else. His frustration was tangible. And I could only hope that it overshadowed my guilt, which gnawed like a hunger at the pit of my stomach.

The sun glinted through the trees the way it always did, but today felt different somehow. I lifted my head and sniffed. It was too early for the rains, but the breeze was sharper.

I craned again, and then I glimpsed it, several trees away. The tip of an outstretched wing, a burnished gold-edged wing, and then something else that made my fingers clench the willow until the whites of my knuckles gleamed.

I shinnied back down the branch to face Max.

‘Hey, what’s up?’ he asked, weaving his fingers into mine. ‘You look like you spied a strix!’

‘Golden plumage,’ I whispered, loosening my hand before leaping again into a strong maple, and scurrying down into its thickened fork.

‘Griffin?’

Max was right behind me in a heartbeat.

He meant Friskers of course, our much-loved village pet griffin, who now roamed the outside forest. Although the outside forest inhabitants had been disgruntled, I’d no choice but to leave Octavia’s engineered beast there when I made it back from Pantheon. I knew it stood the best chance of survival among the wilder animals and vegetation, rather than within our farming community. But instead of embracing its new-found freedom, it had taken to waiting patiently in the outside forest for Arafel hunters to appear, when it would appear like an over-enthusiastic dog, its pink tongue lolling over its carnivorous beak. Even genetically modified mythical beasts had the potential for domestication, it seemed.

One of the village children had since named it after its unique mix of bushy feathers and whiskers, and somehow the name had stuck.

I shook my head.

‘Two heads,’ I mouthed, watching the teasing light fade from his eyes.

This time his pace matched my own. We both understood the implication of what I’d glimpsed. And as far as we were aware, the only two-headed creatures in existence were Octavia’s genetically enhanced haga, supposedly incarcerated inside Pantheon’s Lifedomes. Not flying free over the North Mountains.

We took a wide, circuitous route around the clearing, and leapt through the trees like spider monkeys, before dropping into a grove of large banana trees. A newcomer to the western world, they grew in abundance here. Today, I was grateful for their thickened corms and blades, which obscured us from whatever was shuffling around the forest floor just ahead.

I stole forward, pausing only at a light touch on my shoulder. I shook my head abruptly before returning my gaze to my path. Max had always struggled to accept my need to look after myself, but it was one thing I couldn’t compromise on. Like those words.

The pounding in my ears steadily increased as we crept forward beneath the swollen leaves, and each careful footstep seemed to sound as loudly as a felled tree branch. But as the interwoven leaves thinned I glimpsed bright colours that made my hairs strain to attention, until finally as I pulled aside the last fronds, there was a sharp gasp. It took a couple of seconds for me to realize it was my own.

I’d seen nothing and no one from Pantheon in a year and yet, somehow, I was staring straight into the archaic eyes of one of Octavia’s flying watchdogs of the night.

A haga.

It threw back its crested heads as our eyes connected, one microsecond before it crowed its aggression to a group of red pandas above. They scattered while we stared, mesmerized by the impressive newcomer, which was as alien to its forest surroundings as ever a creature could be.

It reached head and shoulders above any man or woman in Arafel, and had a wingspan that extended beyond twice that of a natural eagle. It was also one of the creatures August had sworn to keep within the world of Pantheon, despite my protest that the natural world would survive if he threw open the doors. Its containment was one of the fundamental reasons August had stayed behind; so what, in the name of Arafel, was it doing out here?

But I had no time to think. The question was crushed by a sudden leaden weight around my shoulders, sending me careering forward into the lush green grass as a muffled exclamation filled the air. Blindly, I wrestled against my assassin. He was small and lithe, but uncannily fierce, and it took all my strength to thrust him backwards. I was on my feet and spinning around in a heartbeat; just in time to witness Max force his attacker to his knees. He had autumn skin, and curious inked drawings all over his arms and neck. He wasn’t from Arafel.

I shot a look at my own combatant, who was drawing himself up to his feet. Her feet. I caught my breath again. Our eyes locked, and the forest melted away until there was only the heated rush of recognition. Then there was a brief stunned silence, before I forged forward to wrap myself fiercely around her slight frame.

‘Ow! You still have a ridiculously strong grip for a girl!’ she complained, detangling herself.

I chuckled, releasing her.

‘Like you can talk, General!’ I shot back, recovering myself.

The grin illuminating Aelia’s elfin face faded a little, and I was suddenly acutely aware of her jaded appearance. Her clothing was even more tattered and stained than I remembered, and she looked tired, deathly tired.

‘Are you hurt? How did you find us? Are we really to believe you somehow made it over the mountains on a haga?’ I fired incredulously.

Everyone knew the North Mountains were precipitous and unforgiving; their dangerous peaks and terrains had always been our protection. That a girl on a mythical bird could navigate her way over them seemed impossible. Yet here Aelia stood. A miracle, and an ominous threat.

Her eyes gleamed with adventure, and a sleepy dragonfly flapped its wings against the inside of my ribcage. I couldn’t imagine how it had taken me so long to work out Aelia was August’s Prolet-born sister. They shared the same shrewd wit, and eyes the colour of an Arafel dawn. And right now, they were more unsettling than I cared to admit.

‘Max! Let Rajid go. He’s got the most awesome Cerberus ink you’ve ever seen!’ she admonished, stepping across to them.

I watched Max relinquish his prize, before catching her up in an affectionate, slightly awkward hug.

‘Hey, Lia, wish you’d said you were popping in. I would have gone all out for a brace of rabbits instead of fresh trout!’ He winked, holding out a conciliatory hand.

The inked man shook his head and jumped to his feet in one agile move, rubbing his neck.

‘And if I’d known you were cooking, I’d have worn my best Prolet dress and booked the sky train instead of an oversized pigeon with no sense of direction!’ she retorted.

They grinned, and not for the first time I acknowledged just how suited they were. In another time and space they would have been perfect for one another.

‘Tal, there’s a lot to say. But probably … not here?’ She frowned, shooting a look at Rajid. ‘And this big pigeon over here needs some attention. It was cold up there. His flight feathers took a little frosting from the northerly winds.’ She ran her hands over the exhausted haga.

I nodded briefly, collecting my wayward thoughts. Aelia was here, and she had to have a burning reason to risk her life over the mountains on the back of a haga.

‘Yes, of course! And Eli will take a look at the … bird. Will it follow? We can take it straight to the animal infirmary.’

Over the past year, Eli’s animal whispering had matured into full-time veterinary care in a purpose-built hut he and Max had built near Arafel’s centre. All the villagers trusted him with their livestock, and he never seemed to be at a loss for a diagnosis or treatment, despite being entirely self-taught.

I shot a look at Max, his grin saying it all.

‘And then I think Max has promised you trout,’ I added.

A golden pheasant peeped among the crickets as we followed the quickest path back through the forest, silenced only by a pair of amorous rainbow lorikeets. Aelia broke off our conversation to better watch their dance against the cornflower sky, unfettered by cavern or dome ceilings. Clearly, the array of wildlife running freely through the trees entranced and bewildered her. And I understood more than she realized.

Completely cut off from the outside world for nearly two hundred years, Arafel was a paradise compared with the brown grit of Isca Prolet. I recalled my own astonishment when Unus and I had emerged out of the tunnels into the Prolet world – Pantheon’s genetic rubbish tip, and Aelia’s natural home. Life there was so engineered, disparate and exploited. It couldn’t in any way compare with life on the outside, which had recovered far faster than anyone had expected.

I stole a glance across at the slight, elfin girl who had been so full of secrets in Pantheon. And now my mind was spinning with more questions, like one of Max’s water wheels, but I kept my lips pressed firmly together until we’d delivered the haga into the wide-eyed keeping of one of Eli’s volunteer helpers. It was only when we’d pulled the willow ladder back up inside our treehouse, that I allowed my curiosity to show. And Aelia’s nerves were as clear as Jas’s objection to the sudden intrusion.

‘Is this the actual cipher? Thomas’s cipher?’ she whispered, crouching to inspect the freshly swept floor of our small living space.

Cursing silently, I nudged Mum’s handmade reed mat over the crude drawing with the heel of my foot. I’d thought so many times about erasing the charcoaled markings Thomas had painstakingly drawn out on our living-room floor, but it had always seemed sacrilegious, especially with Octavia and Cassius gone.

Now, though, my inaction seemed foolish. Although Aelia had proven her real loyalty to the outside, I’d always sensed her scientific weakness for Thomas’s research and Octavia’s obsession with the Voynich Manuscript.

‘Its existence still isn’t well known in the village.’ I smiled apologetically.

It would have been so much easier if Thomas hadn’t recorded the cipher to decode the only known genetic blueprint for mythical creatures.

‘And Art felt it was for the best – to protect the other villagers.’

‘Doesn’t seem entirely open, in such an open society?’ she commented, her eyes narrowed and suspicious.

‘Would have been far better to burn it – for the firewood it is!’

Rajid’s low mutter cut across the small circle, and this was swiftly followed by another round of low growling. I shot a look at Jas’s sleek white body curled up in her bed, her yellow eyes watching our guests unwaveringly. She looked every inch the content treehouse cat, although her beautiful white jowls twitched unusually. I tried to assess her mood briefly, before returning my attention to our guests.

We were sitting in a makeshift circle, around Mum’s clay cooking pot of fresh trout stew. The aroma was making my stomach grumble, and by the looks on their faces, it had been a good while since our guests had eaten too.

Rajid was crouching, warming his hands by our fire. I shot him a careful look. Everything about him was at odds with Arafel. His manner was so cool and indifferent, and the mythical Cerberus snarling up his neck couldn’t brand him more a product of Pantheon, and yet he was here. In our forest home. I followed the purplish line of the ugly, salivating hounds, mesmerized by the reddened tongues hanging from their jowls, and wondered at the artistry that brought their bulbous eyes to life every time he swallowed.

Who would choose such a mark?

‘So, tell us everything,’ I invited, as my mother ladled the steaming food into wooden bowls.

She looked particularly tired and drawn tonight, and I could sense she was anxious. Eli had taken a shift foraging and hadn’t returned yet. And even though hunting in the outside forest was now deemed a lot safer, she never smiled until we were all back in the same room.

‘You mean, why am I here, disturbing your little corner of paradise?’ Aelia responded, her delicate features twisting up into a grimace. ‘Well, let’s see, where to begin?’

‘How is August?’

The question was out of my mouth before I could stop it. And although it was just three words, lightly spoken, it felt as though they carried the entire weight of the treehouse on their back. I tried to ignore Max’s eyes boring into the side of my head, telling myself it was perfectly normal to ask about her brother, especially given everything we’d all been through.

But a brief shake of her head undid every good intention.

I stared at her, an uncomfortable flush crawling up my neck.

‘What do you mean? He’s … everything’s OK, isn’t it?’

Max’s frown deepened into a scowl.

‘August hasn’t been seen for three months. Not since the Director General took his seat back in the Senate,’ Rajid interjected, staring into the fire embers beneath the cooking pot.

I glanced at Max, my skin starting to crawl like I’d fallen into the fire ant nest myself.

‘The Director General? Cassius? He’s …?’

‘Alive? Yes,’ Aelia confirmed.

A stunned silence pervaded the small rounded room.

‘The head wound Unus inflicted in the Flavium would have killed any ordinary Pantheonite, but as one of Octavia’s original fighting elite … well it turns out Cassius was pretty strong,’ she continued.

‘When the Flavium was cleared, the Scientific Generals had him transferred to the infirmary, where he remained in a comatose state until last month.’

‘But if Cassius is alive, August …?’ I whispered, feeling all my old nightmares start to stir.

‘… was instantly compromised,’ Rajid drawled with a glance at Aelia.

‘It turns out Cassius still commanded a loyal following among the elite Pantheonites, despite what happened in the Flavium,’ Rajid continued, his tone at odds with the gravity of his words.

‘And as soon as news of Cassius’s recovery began to spread, August’s new legislation was frozen by the Senate. Cassius played the game cleverly,’ he continued. ‘He didn’t immediately pull rank. Instead, he offered to work together with August, to bring about a fairer, more open Isca Pantheon that pursued the more … useful elements of the Biotechnology Programme.

‘He recruited old friends, like Livia, as his Empress-Consort Deputy.’

My brain whirled as I tried to recall what I knew about the original mother of the Holy Roman Empire, though Aelia’s scowl already spoke a thousand words.

‘Livia … as in Livia Drusilla? Wasn’t she the real wife of Emperor Augustus?’

‘The wicked witch of Rome?’ Aelia responded, her top lip curling. ‘Yeah, she was a real shining beacon of womanly virtue … apart from the power games, treachery and systematic murder, of course.’

I stared, feeling my world grey.

‘And Cassius was convincing,’ she continued, the dark circles beneath her eyes suddenly more noticeable. ‘His speeches in the Senate were persuasive, especially among the newly elected Prolet representatives. He nearly had me believing in his integrated school for every Prolet and Pantheon child, irrespective of genetic coding. He always was a powerful orator.

‘Besides, the Senatore were weak. Octavia’s sudden death left them fractured. She wasn’t loved, but she’d always been there, at the helm. Her poison was still trickling through their veins, and Cassius was a direct link with the old way of life.’

The room went quiet and Aelia and Rajid exchanged another glance, almost as though they were deciding exactly how much more to share.

‘The Senatore decided Cassius’s seniority demanded he be given a chance.’ Rajid shrugged. ‘And that August should lead a new important mission – the investigation into habitable life.’

‘On the outside.’ Aelia’s whisper seemed to merge with the faded forest pictures I’d painted on the walls as a child.

I glanced at Max. It was the first time we’d heard of any deliberate move by Pantheon to investigate the outside world.

‘Despite his repeated request they send someone else, he was dispatched with the elite Equite force on an exploratory mission. Across Europa,’ Aelia confirmed bluntly.

I grew colder. August was somewhere, on the outside. And he hadn’t come to Arafel.

‘His key objective was to gather scientific evidence for sustainable community living across Europa,’ Rajid clarified.

Aelia nodded, swallowing hard.

‘It was Cassius’s idea, that the Senate explore opportunities for satellite Lifedomes, which would help start a re-familiarization programme. The Senate were impressed, heralding it as a new era, an opportunity to combine the best of the old with the future.

‘And August, with his background in fieldwork, was the obvious choice to lead the investigation.’

‘The mission was expected to take six weeks. It’s been three months,’ Aelia offered, her eyes flitting past Rajid’s.

‘Rumours spread swiftly after that. Now most Pantheonites believe August planned his desertion, and that the group of young Prolet Freedom Fighters abandoned the new Civitas to go looking,’ Rajid added.

‘Anyway, Cassius has since denounced them all as deserters.’

He paused to draw breath, while I stared, already knowing the answer to my question, but I needed to ask anyway.

‘Looking for what?’ I whispered.

‘For you, Tal,’ Aelia returned, like a challenge.