Whisperworld
Chapter 6
The bright sunlight woke me a few hours later. I had left my curtains open last night so this would happen. I didn’t want to oversleep when there was an important investigation to work on.
Fuck you, me from last night.
But there were people waiting to be tested with the Halo, to be cleared of suspicion so they could finally go home. They had been waiting since yesterday morning and probably gotten even less sleep than me. So I clawed my way up out of the sheets and dressed, pocketing the Halo once more. I strapped my crossbow into place on my back and after a moment’s consideration, tucked the piece of lace from the greenhouse into another pocket. Maybe I could match it to someone’s clothes.
When I stepped outside onto the street, the sun momentarily blinded me again before I could fumble my goggles down over my eyes. The lenses flickered and then darkened to blunt the worst of the glare. The sky was still brilliant white, but to the northwest, I could see patches of yellow-green light and the air tingled. There was a storm coming.
Builders were already hard at work shoring up the cracks in the sides of buildings and the people living there pulled down loose hangings or anything else light enough to blow away. The Tear deflected the storms, but even with its miraculous and mysterious blunting effect, winds in the Whisperward could be stiff.
Most of the refugees hadn’t been settled yet and scrambled to find shelter. They were being slowly herded up into highrise apartments, but there were so many that the Blackthumbs hadn’t found space for them all yet. Homeless families with dust in their hair stood in the streets and spilled into the ladder- and bridge-filled alleys between buildings. It wouldn’t be a fun day, but so long as the Stormsphere held, they should be safe enough.
I resettled the heavy steel bulk of my crossbow on my back and wondered what it was like out at the city walls, with refugees pouring through the gates and into the protection of the Whisperward. What about those still making the long journey from Bridge City? How many of them would take refuge in the outlying ruins? How much shelter was there to be found outside Angel City’s walls? Not much, I knew… But the Whitefingers survived out there, somehow. I could only hope that the people escaping the failing Whisperwards could manage it, too. At least long enough to reach us.
Zach waited for me outside our building, holding a pair of roasted fence lizards skewered on long thorns. He held one out, garnished with a good morning slightly garbled by his own breakfast. I accepted the meat and took a huge, grateful bite. Last night’s snack hardly qualified as a meal and I was glad for some protein before setting out to test a bunch of frightened people for psionic power. I probably wouldn’t get a chance to eat again until late tonight.
We set a brisk pace out toward the greenhouses to begin our work. With any luck, we could finish before the storm hit. A dozen Greenguard had established a cordon around the Houses and were questioning everyone coming or going from the area. Except the Gardeners, of course. I wondered if it ever occurred to them that one of the Gardeners might be a dreameater. Anyone could be a psychic, and that was part of what made them so dangerous.
But there was no point in asking — it would only the Blackthumbs suspicious of me, not the Gardeners who employed them.
Not that any Gardeners were crossing the cordon line this morning. They all worked and lived inside the Houses and their duties didn’t often force them out into the rest of Angel City. If our psychic murderer were a Gardener, then we had no chance at all of finding them.
I just had to hope we were luckier than that.
It wasn’t just the Greenguard and Gardeners who made their livings here in the Houses. There were street sweepers, too, and cleaners who kept the greenhouse glass sparkling clear. Water carriers hauled buckets from the wells to the plants and couriers ferried messages between the important people of the Whisperward. There were freighters who carted meat in from the scale farms, as well as cloth and other supplies that couldn’t be grown or made in the Houses.
The Blackthumbs had roused and gathered up the workers who had been in the Houses yesterday morning. They stood together in the broad street in front of the Gardeners’ white headquarters, yawning and pacing as they worked the stiffness out of their joints. Everyone milled impatiently and waited fearfully for their turn while the street rakers grumbled about the damage we were doing to their precious roads.
We checked in with Captain Davis, the stocky Blackthumb in charge of the roundup, who gave us the numbers: seventy-three potential suspects. And this was only the beginning. I didn’t think it likely that Byron’s killer was someone who worked for him. It was too easy.
“Has anyone talked to the wall commander?” I asked Davis.
The other Blackthumb nodded. “Jameson just got back from the base. No one’s been seen leaving Angel City.”
“Not through the city gates, at least,” I grumbled. “That doesn’t mean no one scaled the walls and slipped out into the desert.”
“One thing at a time, Julia,” Zach told me. “Let’s start with these people. Then we’ll move out into the city. If the Halo still can’t find our guy, we can figure our next move from there.”
“Let’s get to it, then.”
I unwrapped the shiny Halo and snapped it on around my wrist. When I pressed its power button, the little device made a quiet chime as it powered up. Zach waved the nearest cleaner forward.
“Kneel,” he instructed.
Zach motioned with his crossbow, cocked and loaded. If we found a dreameater, things could get very ugly very fast. My mother always said a psychic could hollow out your head and dance your empty body around like a puppet. I’d never seen that, but my own experience was no less chilling.
Two years ago, a routine screening went stormy and a terrified young dreameater ripped up a shattered chunk of concrete foundation with her mind. It was twenty feet from corner to corner, but she flung it like I might throw a pebble. She killed seventeen people before Zach managed to put a bolt in her eye. We don’t fuck around with psychics.
I walked behind the kneeling cleaner. His brown hair was going gray at the sides and his skin was coated in muddy grit and dirt. He bowed his neck as though in prayer and his shoulders shook. I placed my hand on the top of his head. The floating system ready halo-gram flashed and then vanished, replaced by a glowing image of the cleaner’s brain. It was divided in two down the center and covered in convolutions like writhing snakes, just like every other one I’d ever seen on the halo-gram. I wondered what my own brain looked like, but even apart from the difficulty of reading the display with my hand up on my own head, wasting the Halo’s power was enough of an offense to blunt even my curiosity.
A little.
Rings of light danced over the glowing image and the halo-gram flickered. Maybe this Halo was almost at the end of its long life… But after a tense moment, the ancient device gave a disappointed-sounding beep and flashed green around my wrist.
“You’re clear,” Zach said.
He extended his big, rough hand and smiled as he helped the cleaner to his feet. Zach patted the man on the shoulder as he walked on shaking legs past the Greenguard and away. Zach picked one of the other workers and hooked his finger authoritatively.
“You. Kneel.”
And so it went for the next two hours. Men and women knelt before me and I placed my hand on their head, scanning. When I was done, Zach told each one that they weren’t a dreameater and helped relieved Angel City citizens back to their feet. I had moved the Halo to my other wrist, but by now, both of my arms ached.
“Want to trade, Zee?” I asked. “You’ve got bigger arms, anyway.”
“Sure. One more and we’ll switch for the rest,” Zach said and then pointed again. “You. You’re next.”
A sweeper covered in dust she had removed from the Houses’ roads stood slowly on obviously stiff legs. So it made sense when a teenage boy just to her right thought that Zach was pointing to him. The kid shuffled back several steps, pushing against the crowd of people waiting their turn. He was probably a water boy, to judge by his bruised and scabbed knuckles. Those buckets were damned heavy. His sandy hair was lank with sweat and there was an oozing red gash along his left forearm. I stared at him for a long moment before I realized why. Something glittered in the rolled cuff of his pants. Broken glass.
“Zee,” I hissed under my breath, but the boy had seen me staring. Or maybe sensed it.
He sprang into motion and Zach leapt after him. I was right on his heels, but we were shoving our way through confused and frightened people. Davis shouted and the Blackthumbs closed in, hemming in the scattering crowd too late and making our job ten times harder. The blond boy had already cleared the Greenguard perimeter. He was young and setting a pounding pace, vanishing rapidly into the shiny glass of the Houses.
“Move it!” Zach ordered.
He slammed into the crowd, using his greater bulk and strength to clear a path. People shouted and threw themselves down to the road in their haste to get out of Zach’s way. He shoved the rest aside and we burst through the cordon. There didn’t seem to be any more broken glass — or broken Greenguard — so the kid hadn’t started killing again. Not yet.
My crossbow bounced between my shoulder blades, bruising my spine, but I stretched out my legs and ran. Zach was good in a sprint, but he’s a solid son of a bitch. I was half his size and twice his speed. The boy shot a terrified look back over his shoulder and almost smashed into the corner of a greenhouse as he darted down a side path.
He clipped the glass with one elbow and cracks shot through the pane. I flinched, waiting for blade-edged shards to fly out at me. But nothing happened, so I poured on the speed.
His head start and my momentary flinch were all that my water boy suspect had going for him. For now… Running through the rows of greenhouses meant that I could see every turn he took right through the glass. He was nearing the edge of the Houses, though, and when he got out into the streets of Angel City, there would be a lot more people and solid walls. That meant Zach and me questioning hundreds of people in the thin hope that someone had seen the kid or would turn him in. It could take days and by the time we uncovered a lead, he would be long gone.
The panicked water boy jumped over a compost pile that I barely cleared. My boots scraped through drying human waste and the smell chased after me. I heard Zach’s heavier feet thump, but he was falling swiftly behind. He would have his crossbow in hand by now, I knew, sighting down the bolt and ready to fire if it looked like our suspect was about to get away.
Not yet, damn it! I couldn’t get answers out of a corpse.
The boy angled toward a line of concrete wells. Familiar territory, maybe. Wrong move, kid. I sucked down a hot, dry breath.
“Greenguard!” I shouted. “Get out of the way!”
Other well dippers and water boys scrambled to clear the road without spilling any of their precious buckets. My suspect dashed around one of the wells, but I went over it. I jumped up onto the ledge, risking the coiled rope and a long fall, and leapt across. I felt cool, wet air wash over me, sprang off the far rim and then came down on top of my suspect, bearing him heavily to the ground.
All the breath and fight whooshed out of the kid as we slammed together against the ground. He pressed his face into the dirt and sobbed.
“I didn’t do it!” he cried. “I swear to God, I didn’t do it!”
I yanked the boy’s thin, wiry arms up behind his back and latched a pair of handcuffs around his wrists. “By divine sanction of the Gardeners, you are our prisoner. You will be tried and convicted according to the Book of Law. Is there any sin you wish to confess before sentence is passed?”
“I didn’t do it!” he shouted again.
“Keep at your business,” Zach said to the staring crowd of well dippers as he caught up. He motioned with his crossbow. “Go on. The Gardeners need you.”
I climbed off the boy and hauled him up to his knees.
“I didn’t do it!” he screamed.
“I heard you the first three times. What’s your name?” I asked.
He hesitated, panting and coughing, before answering. “Liam… Liam Fox. But I didn’t hurt anyone!”
“He doesn’t look much like a killer,” I said to Zach.
The big Blackthumb shrugged. “They never do. Test him, Julia.”
Zach was right — you didn’t need to look like a killer to be a dreameater. No one knew where the psychics came from or when their power might manifest.
The Gardeners told us that they were cursed, like Caine. Cursed to live off of dreams, eating thoughts like I ate lizards and cactus. But the dreameaters looked just like normal people. Short of an impressive display of power, the only way to uncover one was with the Halo. I checked my wrist and let out a sigh of relief. The shiny white polymer was a little dusty, but it seemed to be intact even after throwing myself on top of Liam.
I pressed the button and placed my hand on the boy’s head. Zach stepped to one side so he would have a clear shot. Cursed by God though dreameaters may have been, their mental powers were damned impressive. Destructive and deadly, as Byron could have attested if he were still alive. If Liam made the slightest move — or if anything around him did — Zach would put a bolt in Liam’s skull.
The halo-gram flickered into glowing brilliance above Liam’s head like a summoned ghost. The rings of light passed over the squiggly projection of the boy’s brain, moving back and forth as the Halo scanned. Bright red light appeared across the image, outlining several sections of the scan as though they were burning.
Fuck.
“Positive,” I barely managed to blurt instead of the other word. “He’s a dreameater!”
I leapt away from Liam and the halo-gram vanished. Shaking, I unslung my crossbow and brought it up to point at our prisoner. Zach kicked Liam’s shoulder and knocked the boy down to the ground. He held his crossbow with one hand while he worked at the knot of his bandana with the other. Awkwardly, Zach tied it across Liam’s eyes, blindfolding him. There wasn’t much that could protect us from a dreameater’s mental powers, but blindfolding one made it a lot harder for him to hurl shit at you. I had no idea if it hindered their ability to read minds, but I sure hoped so.
“I didn’t do it,” Liam kept sobbing. “Please, I didn’t hurt anyone!”
“Julia, look here,” said Zach.
He pointed down at the water boy’s bound hands. There was blood and the colorful remains of flower petals ground under his fingernails. A water boy had no business even touching a flower, to say nothing of the blood.
Carefully, I retrieved the shard of glass from Liam’s pant cuff. It was thick and shined clear, well cared for and clean. Greenhouse glass. Liam had been there when Byron died. Zach hauled the boy to his feet and began dragging him away.
“Liam Fox,” Zach said. “You have been found guilty of murder and possession of psionic power. You are hereby sentenced to be given to the storms.”
We marched Liam through the Whisperward, past two more Blackthumbs standing guard at the edge of the Houses. They stared and I twirled my finger next to my ear, the hand signal for dreameater, then gestured to Liam. One of them made the sign of the teardrop to protect himself, but they fell obediently into step beside us. There were four crossbows pointed at the blindfolded psychic kid now.
Everyone watched as we passed, curious and frightened. Zach and I gave them our best reassuring smiles. The Greenguard had done its job again, caught the bad guy and all that good shit. The refugees — crowded into the spaces between buildings and wherever else they could find room — watched even more avidly. Maybe their Greenguard did things a little differently in Bridge City, but they all stood back to let us pass.
Liam cried through the entire half-hour hike across the city and Zach’s bandana was swiftly soaked in tears. Out here, the buildings were encrusted with sand, and all of the sharp corners were wind-worn and rough. If our Stormsphere ever fell silent, these neighborhoods would be the first to feel the full wrath of the storms. There would usually have been only a few scattered families living out this far from the comforting black dome and wordless Whispers of the Tear of God, but with the constant stream of refugees from the fallen Whisperwards, they filled every house up to the highest remaining floors.
The city walls loomed up into the darkening sky, a tall but lumpy amalgamation of long-still automobiles all covered in a thick layer of concrete and adobe. Greenguard were hurrying another straggling group of tired, dusty people through the gates and into Angel City. The new refugees had wrapped themselves in all the clothes they owned, just like Whitefingers, to protect themselves from the stinging wind. They staggered wearily into the Whisperward, each clutching bundles containing all that was left of their worldly possessions. Even the children carried some small burden. Were they the last out of Bridge City? The other Whisperward was hundreds of miles away. Anyone still out there had to find shelter soon or they would die.
Like Liam.
The dreameater boy hung his head. He still couldn’t see, but he must have sensed that we were approaching the edge of the Whisperward and his feet dragged through the dust. I couldn’t blame him — I wouldn’t exactly have a spring in my step walking to my own execution, either.
“I didn’t do it,” Liam said for the hundredth time. “I swear it wasn’t me!”
It was starting to bug the shit out of me. Not the monotonous mantra — I had heard that before — but the nagging feeling that the kid was telling the truth. The blood and the flower petals, the cut on his arm, the glass in his pants… It all placed Liam at our murder scene. And he was a dreameater.
But why would a water boy — probably working in the Houses since he was old enough to carry a bucket — suddenly kill a Gardener? Was Liam just another natural malcontent like me? It didn’t seem likely. Other than Zach, I didn’t have many friends, and there was a good reason for that. I wasn’t like most people.
Had Liam recently discovered his psionics? When a dreameater’s power emerged, it was sudden and usually messy. Young psychics often panicked and lashed out, not knowing what they were doing and unable to control themselves. These new dreameaters were almost as dangerous as the ones trained by Whitefingers to hunt and kill with their cursed powers.
Maybe Liam had killed Gardener Byron by accident. But what about the missing key? It could have simply gotten lost in the chaos, but I doubted it. This key seemed far too important to the Gardeners to just be overlooked. Zach had searched Liam, though, and found nothing.
The Greenguard had started shouldering the city gates closed behind the refugees, but they saw us coming and heaved the big steel plates open once more. Wind was beginning to howl outside Angel City like a demon.
“Best hurry, Dias,” one of the Blackthumbs shouted to Zach. “That storm’s coming in fast!”
It was. The sky had turned from threatening gray to a diseased-looking green-black. The western horizon was gone and the ruins of the old city vanished swiftly behind a seething wall of sand. Flashes of yellow-green lightning crackled through the midnight clouds bearing down on us. By unspoken agreement, we all broke into a run.
“No!” Liam screamed.
He dug his heels into the ground. Zach and one of the other Blackthumbs grabbed the boy’s arms. They dragged him through the gates and toward an ominous row of thick metal spikes driven into the earth just beyond the storm line. Steel chains dangled from each post, clanking as the rising wind pulled at them. When the storm hit, it was going to be a tossup whether the sands would flay Liam or if a lightning strike to the pole would burn him first. Zach hurriedly chained the boy to the nearest pole.
“God rest your soul, Liam Fox,” he shouted out over the rising shriek of the storm.
The other two Blackthumbs were already dashing for the gate. Zach gave the chains a yank to make sure they were secure as Liam pulled against them, still screaming his innocence.
“Come on,” Zach called to me.
“Wait,” I yelled back. Sand swirled around my feet and the air actually crackled with energy. “I don’t like this, Zee. This whole thing… It was just too easy.”
“You call this easy, Julia? We chased that boy all through the Houses!”
“I’m going to question him.”
“What?” Zach had reclaimed his bandana and tied the wet cloth across his mouth. He pulled his battered leather hat low over his goggles. “Julia, the storm’s almost on us. We’ve got to get back into the city!”
“Why did he kill Byron?” I shouted. “Why didn’t he attack us? There’s too much we don’t know, Zee!”
“He’s a dreameater, Julia. He’ll twist your mind!”
“I have to be sure!”
I turned away from Zach. He could go back to the Whisperward if he wanted, but I couldn’t leave until I had answers.
“Liam, you say that you didn’t kill Byron,” I said. “But you were there. Why?”
“I didn’t kill the Gardener!” Liam screamed. The boy wasn’t looking at me. His bulging eyes were fixed on the colossal, flickering mass of the sandstorm boiling up toward us. “I was there, but it wasn’t me!”
“What were you doing, then?” I asked. “Were you working?”
“No, I… It was the Tear of God. I had to see it. They… they asked me to come. I was going to the Tear!”
I could barely hear Liam. The storm hissed and boomed with thunder. The air seethed with heat and violent potential.
“Bugshit,” I said. “No one called you there. Only the Gardeners are allowed that close to the Stormsphere.”
“Not them. The Whispers…!”
Wind whipped away the rest. I leaned in until I was almost within kissing distance of the condemned boy.
“If you didn’t kill Byron, who did?” I asked.
“Whitefingers!” Liam gasped.
“Whitefingers?” Zach asked. “Every murderer says that the Whitefingers did it, Julia. This is a waste of time. We have to go!”
I could tease Zach about getting drawn back in long after he said that we had to go, but later. I held up my hand to silence my partner.
“What did you see?” I asked Liam.
“Someone short, all cloaked and white with salt. They were sneaking up behind Byron and I shouted. I warned him! Byron saw the Whitefinger and they fought. The Blackthumbs were running to help him and then the greenhouse just… exploded. Glass flew everywhere.”
My heart pounded. “Did you see anything else?”
“The Whitefinger was cut up, but I guess he was alright enough to run. He took something off Byron. A white rectangle on a chain, but thin like… like paper and shiny like the Halo. Please, don’t give me to the storm! I didn’t do anything wrong! I tried to help Byron after the Whitefinger left.”
That explained the blood and flower petals under Liam’s nails. The glass and the cut, too. What about the white plastic card? Was that the key that Martin said was missing from around Byron’s neck…? A greenish bolt of lightning snaked through the seething, boiling sky and I tried to blink away the spots floating in front of my eyes.
“Why didn’t you come forward? Why didn’t you tell us?” I asked.
“I’m a dreameater,” Liam cried. “You would have killed me just for being like this… I didn’t mean to be! It only started a few days ago. I hear the Whispers wherever I go, even when I’m not in the Houses. And then I began hearing other things… Things people were thinking. I don’t mean to, and I never hurt anyone. I swear it to God!”
“Julia!” Zach grabbed me by the arm and started dragging me away. “We’re out of time. Get back to the city!”
“Don’t leave me out here!” Liam shouted. “I didn’t hurt anyone!”
Liam strained against his chains. His short blond hair was beginning to stand up on end as the charged air swirled around him. Sand scoured Liam’s skin and opened a shallow gash along the boy’s cheek. Bright red blood oozed from the wound.
“Zee…?” I asked.
“Even if he didn’t kill Byron,” Zach said, “he’s a dreameater. You know the sentence for that, Julia!”
Zach pulled me back toward the city walls. My mouth was full of grit and the wind had torn most of my hair free of its braid. I pulled my bandana up onto my face and goggles down over my stinging, streaming eyes. The howl of the wind was deafening and my ears rang as Zach hauled me away.
We ran toward the city, out of the screaming wind and once more into the protection of the Stormsphere. Zach pounded on the gates. Behind us, the storm churned up over Liam and the row of iron rods, then slammed into the Stormsphere’s invisible barrier. Thunder boomed and nearly knocked me off my feet.
“Open up!” Zach shouted.
The Blackthumbs shoved the gates open a few feet and we staggered through. I yanked my bandana down and coughed sand and mud out into the street.
Clouds of dust whipped up over the top of the craggy walls, but nothing else passed through the Stormsphere’s perimeter. Refugees huddled together in the alleys, fighting for space out of the wind. They were frightened. The Stormspheres in Bridge City and Sun City had failed, letting the storms in to ravage their Whisperwards. Were they afraid it would happen here?
“What the hell was that? You closed the gates on us!” Zach shouted at the Greenguard. “The Tear will stop the storm a hundred yards off!”
“Sorry, Dias,” said the other Blackthumb. “It’s been getting closer. We didn’t want–”
Zach let loose one of his rare strings of profanity as I slumped against the wall. I swore that the wind still carried the sound of Liam’s screams.
