“Our bond tightens when we are physically closer,” I say.

  Jeran looks at me. “Then maybe that means we should head back into Cardinia.”

  I’m quiet for a while. He’s right, of course. Let the rest of the camp here survive on their own, free of whatever dangers I might bring back to them. We’ll carry on to the Federation itself.

  I nod at him. “It’s where they’re taking the others, anyway, on that train.”

  Jeran’s lips tighten. “Yes,” he replies. “So we don’t have a choice.”

  And now I hear the hint of resolve in his voice, some fire burning deep and angry in his chest. The Federation is reckless in who it hurts. Perhaps someday, in some way, that recklessness will be what brings it down—recklessness that breeds strong enemies against it.

  The other voice in me seems to agree, lending its strength to me.

  You are still here. And that means you have a chance.

  Jeran is careful not to voice aloud what we both fear. I picture Aramin, then Adena, strapped down in glass chambers, turned into Skyhunters or worse. I see them joining Talin’s side, forced to strike down their own friends and companions.

  “It will be easier, just the two of us traveling,” I tell Jeran.

  He nods, and I’m grateful that he—one of the first Marans to help me—will be at my side. The realization of leaving Mara behind to fall burdens his eyes. If we leave now, it is our acknowledgment that there is little our small group can do to take this nation back. It is him turning away from his homeland, like so many others have before him. Let things go so that we can live to fight another day.

  Finally, he nods and points his boots away from the direction of the campsite. “Then let’s find a way to hitch a ride.”

  CARDINIA

  THE KARENSA FEDERATION

  10

  TALIN

  I’m too scared to sleep.

  As night falls, I find myself propped against the wall of my chamber adjoining the Premier’s, forcing myself to stay alert, to keep a tight handle on the walls around my heart. I pace at first. Then I pour cold water on my face, trying desperately to stay conscious. The night lengthens, the moonlight shifts across my floor. I count aloud, reciting old Basean poems or Maran folk songs, rhymes we used to say to pass the time on the warfront.

  Sleep threatens to pull me under again and again. Each time, I jolt awake in a panic. No. I can’t sleep. I can’t dream. I can’t connect to Red by accident and expose him to the Premier. Not again.

  I am alone now. No one can help me in this.

  At some point before dawn, I pass out against the wall. I jerk upright with the first rays of dawn, bleary-eyed and gasping for air. Had I seen Red again? Had I betrayed him again?

  But when I meet Constantine, he says nothing. I must not have slept for long enough.

  By the time morning comes in earnest and we head down to the station, I’m exhausted. Dark circles smudge the bottom of my eyes as we pass the soldiers checking the tracks that the Strikers had tried in vain to destroy.

  We board the train in what feels like a blur. I sit across from Constantine and stare out the window as we pull slowly away from Newage, trying to remember the city that existed before the conquest. Already, it’s hard for me to imagine this place without scarlet-and-black banners hanging on its walls.

  Before long, we’ve left Mara behind and are cutting smoothly through the countryside of Basea. It is an image of what Mara will someday look like—a homeland that is no longer a homeland, but one that Karensa has stripped of its soul. I tear my gaze away from the windows.

  I half expect Constantine to needle me with a taunt, to say something to me in Basean. But he is mercifully quiet, spending his time writing notes into his leather journal. Maybe he sees the dark circles under my eyes, had sensed my exhaustion and grief and decided I’d gotten enough for now. No point in completely destroying his Skyhunter’s mind.

  In these moments, he looks deceptively docile and sophisticated, like he’s someone I’m having a pleasant journey with instead of a young warlord with blood staining his hands. A man who had shoved my friends into a train car.

  Other times, he speaks in low voices with advisors who come by to talk to him. I listen in helpless silence as he discusses which Maran holidays he’ll let them keep and which will be done away with, what new customs and cultures he will have installed. Among them is a change in the dress law, ordering the cutting of hair and style of clothing to more closely align with habits already in place in inner Karensa. Then there are conversations about technology to bring in. The building of new streets and tracks.

  He talks as if it’s nothing to rip away a country’s customs and traditions. As if he’s chatting about the weather, while in the train cars behind us are captive soldiers, prisoners that include my former Striker companions.

  His words sit like a fire in my stomach. But there’s nothing I can do except reinforce the walls around my emotions, hardening myself until it feels like anything still alive in me has died.

  I reach into my pocket and pull out a small pouch of coins hanging at my waist. From them, I remove a small, silver Karensan coin. I take it out and press it facedown in my palm, so that the side showing Constantine’s profile is hidden and the side displaying Karensa’s Federation boundaries is up.

  Mara is such a new territory that Constantine has yet to mint coins showing it within the borders of the Federation. As the Premier continues to talk with his advisors, I stare at the old lands. This has become how I remind myself that Karensa wasn’t always all-encompassing, that it didn’t always own Mara. I study the coin and hang on to the words of the young rebel leader before she had succumbed to a Ghost.

  Your Federation will fall. It is only a matter of time.

  There may still come a day when the Federation turns to dust and disappears into the fog of history.

  * * *

  We arrive in Cardinia to a celebration unlike anything I’ve seen in my life. It pales in comparison even with the national fair we witnessed when Jeran, Adena, and I first attempted to infiltrate the capital.

  The train tracks that lead into the capital of the Federation all run along black steel bridges, something I remember from my first excursion into this place—but this time, those bridges have been painted in gold. Enormous scarlet-and-black banners hang at each entry tunnel, and as our train passes through one of these tunnels, I look up to see crowds cheering our arrival, each of them flinging basketfuls of paper confetti over our carriages. Beyond sprawls the capital, a cityscape of glass domes and towers that reach for the sky.

  “The celebrations will go on for the next week,” Constantine tells me as I stare at the scene. “It will escalate each day until it ends on the evening of the summer solstice. There will be a series of games throughout that time.”

  I look at him. Games?

  He nods. “It’s a tradition from the Early Ones, who used to host games every four years that drew participants from every part of the world.”

  I open one of the windows and stick out my hand to catch bits of the red paper. When I bring my arm in to look at the papers, I realize they each have the Karensan crest printed on one side, along with the flag of Mara on the other.

  I glance quickly at Constantine, who gives me a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

  Welcome into our fold, he tells me through our link.

  And I realize that this year, they are also celebrating their new conquest.

  When Adena, Jeran, and I first came to Cardinia, I’d been so awestruck by the sight of its towers that I’d never even bothered to notice the district that circles around the inside of the city wall. This district has its own, smaller wall, with a series of gates attended by guards.

  This time, as we head into the city, I turn to look back at that district. I’ve learned what it is now, because my mother had labored within this place just months earlier. It’s the prison district, a camp so large that it runs in a ring all around the outskirts of the city. Over the top of the prison district’s gates, I can see clouds of steam pouring from buildings.

  It houses prisoners of war. Traitors and spies. Thieves, murderers, and anyone that has crossed the Federation.

  General Caitoman oversees their interrogation.

  I turn my eyes away from the sight, sickness roiling in my stomach. I’d seen the hard labor my mother did in one of their factories, had to bear the horror of her bruises and wounds. I’d witnessed prisoners shackled to that inner wall, hanging until they were dead.

  What if the Strikers are sent there? What if Adena and Aramin end up hanging inside that wall?

  We come off the train to a commotion. A crowd of several thousand has gathered to see their Premier step onto the train platform. General Caitoman steps off first, head high and smile confident, as if he had never been held temporarily hostage by a rogue Skyhunter. He glances back at me, meets my gaze briefly, then steps aside to make room for me and his brother.

  At the sight of me, the throngs back instinctively away, and I hear the whisper of a Karensan word ripple through their ranks. Skyhunter. Skyhunter.

  I open my steel wings slightly, to impress them, then step aside to give Constantine room to walk. A roar greets him as he emerges from the train carriage. His makeup artists have done extra work on him today, covering the dark circles under his eyes and adding some color to his tired skin. He looks young and even refreshed. Perhaps part of his glow comes from the celebration of Karensa’s new region, because even through our link, I can sense his pleasure.

  Beside him, Caitoman nods at the crowd. “A good day to return home, isn’t it?” he murmurs to his older brother before he leaves us to manage his patrols.

  A cluster of Constantine’s advisors is here to greet him. They flutter around him now, all fawning smiles, jostling with one another to give him their updates. A few catch my eye and skitter away until they are on the far side of the group.

  I turn my attention from them and look instead down the train, craning my neck for any sign of the prisoners being unloaded. But billows of steam block my line of sight. Here and there, I think I catch glimpses of dirty sapphire coats moving through the cloud. Beyond them, teams of workers are already hustling the Striker arena’s lintel and the Waterfall onto moving platforms.

  Then, at a nudge through our bond, my attention shifts back to Constantine. We’re on the move again. Heartsick, I reluctantly follow the Premier as he begins to make his way along the train station’s path leading into the capital.

  “Tonight. It’s urgent.”

  One of the advisor’s voices floats to me. My ears, keener with my Skyhunter enhancements, catch the desperation on the man’s tongue as he hurries beside Constantine with the others.

  Constantine gives him a cold look, but the man continues. He’s pale, his lips pulled into a worried line as he speaks: “It’s about Tanapeg,” he says in a low voice. His eyes dart around the platform. “And Carreal. We need to send troops immediately. Tonight, sir. They’ve declared independence—”

  At that, Constantine turns and fixes such a cold glare at the advisor that he immediately shrinks back, dropping his eyes to the floor.

  “Of course, sir,” he whispers hurriedly, “we can address this later. We just need an immediate vote.”

  “Of course,” Constantine says smoothly as he walks, but in his voice, I hear a warning for the man. He pales even more, then bows his head low and drops the subject altogether. His shuffling gait speeds up as he follows beside the rest of the advisors.

  I am careful not to react too much, lest Constantine realize how much I’ve overheard. My emotions stay even, but my mind whirls at the news. Tanapeg and Carreal, states bordering the Federation’s territorial limits. The same states whose rebel leaders had been punished in Newage.

  Independence.

  No doubt Constantine will order troops there, may send General Caitoman out to crush the unrest. But an outright declaration of independence?

  That means the Premier didn’t have enough troops to quell the beginnings of their rebellion. It means the Federation might be spread too thin, and this negligence has cost Constantine the advantage of absolute control.

  How deep do these cracks in the Federation run? Where do they go?

  The questions sit heavy on my chest as we go, taking root there.

  The rest of the city has been covered entirely in scarlet banners and strings of golden lights. Food carts line the streets, the aroma of their sizzling meats and breads sending my stomach grumbling. I look on as children chase one another through the streets, laughing, pointing, and waving at the Premier’s caravan parading toward the central palace. As sundown approaches, pink light casts a warm glow across the entire city. The distinctive glass domes that top so many Karensan buildings catch the warm hues of the light. The angle of the glass is designed in such a way that the tops of these buildings look bathed in bloody light.

  It is such a contrast to Mara’s black-and-white architecture or Basea’s lush greenery. My heart trembles at the sight.

  By the time the sun sets, we have reached the end of Cardinia’s main thoroughfare, where the central palace looms. General Caitoman rides on horseback in front of his patrols, leading our procession forward. Here, I see the beginnings of a vast sculpture garden with installations taken from every conquered region inside the Federation. The hollow steel husks of the Early Ones’ ancient flying machines. Bones of old buildings, mangled steel and stone, jutting up into the sky. Pieces of domes and straight white columns taken from some old ruling house.

  But then there are the newer pieces: a stone statue of a beautiful woman taken from Danbury; the carved arch of what was once an enormous door, taken from the halls of Saleia’s governor; a collection of matching busts that used to line the front steps leading up to Tanapeg’s Senate Hill, depicting each of that former nation’s leaders before Karensa came.

  There must be hundreds of these sculptures, all artfully placed in this garden and surrounded by blooming flowers. The pieces then continue on down the middle of the main thoroughfare leading both ways from the palace, for as far as the eye can see.

  Constantine turns to me as I stare at the structures we pass. I preserve beauty when I see it, he tells me casually through our bond, as if this is a valid reason for all the stolen pieces here.

  I grit my teeth and look away from him. These are haunted tombs.

  But the Premier just shrugs. There are twenty regions in this city, he continues, and every single one of them will soon be adorned with sculptures. Let them remind us of Karensa’s destiny, fulfilled. He gives me a pointed look. Best get used to it, Talin. You will have to oversee Mara’s installations with me.

  I look at him, and through our bond, I see a glimmer of his thoughts—his vision of the engraved lintel from the Striker arena and the pieces of the Waterfall that were being unloaded from the train.

  He means to waste no time, then. He intends them to take their places here with the rest of the skeletons, as soon as possible.

  Relics of Mara’s greatness. Objects that hold a place deep in a nation’s psyche. Soon they will be on display here too, proof of that nation’s collapse. Plate sets and family heirlooms seized from the Maran nobility will fill Cardinia’s National Museum. I can see the pillared building from here, its beautiful façade hiding its stolen interiors.

  Even though the memory of Mara’s sneering noblemen still lives fresh in my mind, I can’t muster any satisfaction at it. Their wealth and greed will outlive them, put on display behind glass while they lie buried, rotting, in the ground. So what was the use in accumulating it all?

  Maybe my sadness is foolish. Mara had been the nation full of people who spat on the ground I walked over, a country that refused to let my mother past its walls and shot refugees who dared to enter its gates.

  But it had also been home. It had also birthed Adena and Aramin and Jeran and Corian. It had tried, at least, to hold a greater evil at bay. So I turn my eyes away from the National Museum in the distance and let my breath out, dizzy from the war of emotions in my chest.

  I stay behind the Premier as he stands up on the carriage that pulls him down the main thoroughfare toward the palace, waving to the crowds that have gathered to watch him. Dancers in scarlet costumes parade before and behind the carriage, while the one behind us brings his advisors. Even from here, I can hear their laughs and chatter. Some are already drunk, eager for the night’s festivities.

  We finally reach the front of the palace. The square wall running along the palace’s perimeter has a gate in the middle of each side, and only the Premier and his immediate procession are allowed to enter through the front. The advisors split off from us here, heading to the side gates, while we continue forward. The gate’s doors, like those I remember from the National Laboratory, are made of black steel, and as we approach it, they slide open on their own without a sound.

  Here, Caitoman guides his brother off the carriage and up a set of stone steps leading to the top of the palace gate, where a rampart draped with red-and-black banners and equipped with an ornate chair is waiting for him.

  The Chief Architect is already here and waiting for us. Her sleek white coat nearly touches the ground, and her hair is swept up into a simple bun. Her shoulders are hunched up in a familiar, tense gesture that makes her look eternally anxious, and her deep-set eyes are hidden behind the glare of light on her glasses. A gold ring engraved with the sun’s rays flashes blindingly bright on her finger, distracting me. When she notices me looking at it, she smiles briefly at me, then offers me a cool kiss on my cheek. Beside the Premier, General Caitoman nods in smug approval.