Chapter 48 Seraphina, Unguarded

Garnet didn't cry when we left.

She'd decided not to. I could see her deciding it, standing at the lift doors on Monday morning in her yellow dress, with her chin up and her fists clenched at her sides and her eyes very bright. She hugged Liam. She hugged Toby, and hummed the four notes in his ear. She hugged Seraphina, for a long time, with her face pressed into Seraphina's middle, and Seraphina let her, and put one hand on the back of her head.

Then she hugged me.

"Next month," she said, into my shirt. "You're using it every month. That's a rule now."

"It's a rule."

"And bring the cold one," said Garnet. "Luna. She said she wanted to come. Sera told me." She pulled back and looked up at me. "Bring her. I want to make her laugh again."

Genny didn't hug anyone. She stood by the wheelchair with her hand on Mother's shoulder. But when the lift doors started to close, she lifted her other hand, very slightly. Just a few fingers. The way you'd wave at someone through a window.

Mother didn't wave. She just looked at me. The memorizing look. The one she'd given me on the last night before the compound, and on the screen every Sunday since.

The doors closed.

It was a long way down.

Sixty floors. The lift was slow and old, with brass rails and a mirror on the back wall that was going cloudy at the edges. Liam fell asleep standing up within ten floors, leaning against the brass rail with his mouth open. Toby leaned against Liam and fell asleep too, with his tuning fork in his hand.

Seraphina stood in the corner, the way she'd stood in the corner of every lift I'd ever been in with her. Arms crossed. Not looking at anyone.

But something was wrong.

It was cold in the lift. The building turned the heat down at night, and the morning hadn't caught up yet. Liam's breath was showing faintly when he snored. Mine was too.

Seraphina's wasn't.

And her face was red. Not the red she went when she was angry. A different red. Flat. High on the cheekbones. Her forehead was shining. There was a line of sweat at her hairline, under the red hair, in a lift so cold I could see my own breath.

And the air around her was moving. Very slightly. Shimmering. The way the air shimmers over a road in summer. The way it had shimmered between her and Luna on the morning the squads were read out.

I didn't look into her.

When not to look.

I looked at the mirror instead. At the cloudy edges. At the floor numbers going down over the doors. Forty-two. Forty-one. Forty.

"Stop it," said Seraphina.

"I'm not doing anything."

"You're not looking at me so hard I can feel it," said Seraphina. "It's worse than looking." She didn't uncross her arms. "I'm fine."

"You're not."

"I'm fine," said Seraphina. "It's the lift. It's stuffy."

My breath showed in the air between us when I didn't answer.

She saw it. She looked at it for a long moment. Then she looked away, at the floor numbers, and set her jaw, and didn't say anything else all the way down to the cave.

She didn't go to the barracks.

Liam and Toby did. They went off down the long corridor toward the boys' end, still half asleep, Liam talking about the pool to anyone who'd listen and Toby nodding along. Seraphina watched them go. Then she turned the other way. Toward the far end of the cave. Past the training hall. Past the stable.

I followed her.

She knew I was following her. She didn't say anything. She walked to the far end of field four, where the lamps were old and swung on their chains, and there was nobody, because it was Monday morning and everybody was at breakfast. And she sat down on the bottom step of the old wooden stand at the edge of the field, where the instructors sat to watch drills, and put her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands.

Steam was coming off her.

Not a lot. Faint. Off her shoulders, and the back of her neck, and her red hair, rising into the cold air of the cave the way it had risen off the pool on the roof.

I stood a few meters away.

"Go away," said Seraphina, through her hands.

"No."

"Lucas."

"You called me Lucas," I said. "Not Scarecrow. Not Dask. You've never called me Lucas."

She didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she took her face out of her hands and looked at me.

Her eyes were too bright. Not with tears. With heat. Glassy, the way eyes go when somebody's burning up from the inside.

"Sit down," she said. "You're making it worse, standing there. Like a tree."

I sat down. On the step. Not beside her. A little way along. The wood was old and gray and warm, where she was sitting. Warm all the way along to where I was.

"I was wrong about you," said Seraphina.

She said it to field four. Not to me. Very fast, and very flat, the way you'd say something you'd practiced saying and hated every word of.

I didn't say anything.

"On the first day," she said. "In the mess. When Liam picked you up off the floor like a stray and brought you to our table. I thought you were—" She stopped. "I thought you were what they said. A weapon. Your father's son. A boy who'd turned a hill into glass and a soldier into steam and would do it again to anyone who looked at him wrong." She pressed her hands together between her knees. "I thought Liam was an idiot. I thought you'd get him killed. I thought you'd get all of us killed." She stared at the swinging lamps. "I thought you were dangerous."

"I am dangerous."

"I know you're dangerous," said Seraphina. "That's not what I was wrong about." She turned her head and looked at me with her too-bright eyes. "I was wrong about what you'd do with it."

I didn't say anything.

"You don't do anything with it," said Seraphina. "That's what I can't stand. You can do anything. Anything. And you don't. You stand at the line in the Town with your eyes down. You put out my fire one flame at a time so you won't take anybody's air. You won't touch the dome. You won't touch the padlock on your own mother's roof. You won't even cheat at a race with Risa Friese." She looked away. "Risa told me. She felt you think about it. Twenty meters out. And then she felt you not."

"She wasn't supposed to tell anyone."

"She didn't tell anyone. She told me." Seraphina scowled at the field. "Girls' end of the barracks. We talk. Don't make that face."

"I'm not making a face."

"You're making a face like Liam," said Seraphina. "It's horrible." She wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. It came away wet. "So. I was wrong. About you. I hate it. I hate being wrong more than anything in the world, and I've been wrong about you since the first day, and I hated it in the Town, and in the hall, and on the stairs at home, and in the pool." She took a breath. "There. I said it. Now I never have to say it again."

"You don't."

"Good," said Seraphina.

The steam rose off her shoulders into the cold.

"It's the padlock," I said. "And the pool."

Seraphina didn't say anything.

"You melted a steel shackle with one finger. And then you kept the water warm. All night. For four hours. Around all of us." I looked at the steam coming off her. "And now this."

"It's nothing."

"You're burning up."

"It's nothing," said Seraphina. "It happens. It goes away. Three days. Four. I stay in bed and tell Okafor it's cramps and she doesn't ask." She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms round them. "It happened after the hall. Three days. Nobody noticed."

I'd noticed she'd been quiet after the hall. I'd thought she was angry.

"What is it?"

She was quiet for so long I thought she wasn't going to answer.

"The Calders call it the fever," she said finally. "Mum's people. The ones from the program, and the ones that came after." She stared at the field. "It's the fire. When you use too much of it. It doesn't all go out. Some of it stays in. And it burns." She pressed her chin against her knees. "Mum doesn't get it much. She's careful. She only ever makes little sparks. On the ends of her fingers, for Pip." She was quiet for a moment. "She got it once. The winter they came in. After the gate. She kept Liam warm for three days in the snow, with the fire, all the way from the ruins. And then she had the fever for two weeks, and nearly died, and the stabilizer was the only reason she didn't."

"And you."

"I'm worse," said Seraphina. Very flatly. "Everyone knows. Nobody says. Mum told Liam not to tell me, when I was eleven. Liam told me the same night, because he's Liam." She almost smiled. "Spark from nothing. Everybody thinks it's a gift. It's not. It's the opposite. The rest of them need their lighters because the fire has to come from outside. Mine comes from inside. From me. From whatever's in me that makes it." She looked at her hands. "And it doesn't always go back."

The lamps swung on their chains over field four.

"Roan and Bree had a brother," she said.

I looked at her.

"Cormac. Aunt Nessa's eldest. He was like me. Spark from nothing. The first one in the family." She was very still. "He had the fever when he was twelve, and thirteen, and twice when he was fourteen. And the second time when he was fourteen, it didn't go away." She stopped. "The stabilizer didn't do anything. Dr. Halloway tried everything she had. He burned for nine days. And then he stopped."

I didn't say anything.

"Roan was six," said Seraphina. "That's why he doesn't talk. Bree was eight. That's why she punches people." She wiped her forehead again. "Nobody in the family says his name. Not at dinner. Not at all. Aunt Nessa tells stories nobody listens to so there won't be a quiet where his name would go."

"How old are you?"

"Sixteen," said Seraphina. "Seventeen in the spring."

She looked at me. Her eyes were very bright. Glassy. Burning.

"Nobody here talks about it," she said. "Not the Calders. Not anyone. Every family in the Act's got something. Toby's mum's hands. Risa's grandmother's heart. Your mother." She looked away. "The medicine slows it down. It doesn't stop it. And they put us in a program to go to another planet and fight, and nobody says that half of us are already burning down from the inside before we even get on the ship."

I sat on the old gray step and looked at her.

At the steam rising off her shoulders. At the flat high red on her cheekbones. At the sweat at her hairline. At her hands, wrapped round her knees, very tight, so tight her knuckles were white.

And I wanted to look.

Not the way I'd looked at Maura's hand, by accident, at the table, before I could stop myself. On purpose. I wanted to go down into her, past the skin, past the heat, and see it. The thing that was burning. I wanted to understand it. I wanted to know what the fever was, all the way down, the way I knew what steel was, and oxygen, and the walls of a cell in a fern leaf.

I didn't.

When not to look.

"You want to," said Seraphina.

I didn't say anything.

"You've got that face," she said. "The face you get in the reading room. Windsor told me." She almost smiled again. "You want to look inside me and see what's wrong."

"Yes."

"And you're not."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it's you," I said. "And you didn't say I could."

Seraphina looked at me for a very long time.

Then she unwrapped one arm from round her knees, and held out her hand. Palm up. Between us. On the old gray wood of the step.

"Look," she said. "Go on. You want to. And I want to know what you see."

I looked.

Not at her face. At her hand. Just her hand, lying palm up on the wood between us. Pick one thing.

And I went down.

Past the skin. Past the heat coming off it, which I could feel on my own face from half a meter away. Into the cells. Thousands of them. Millions. The way I'd seen them in Maura's hand, at the table.

But it wasn't the same.

In Maura, the foreign thing had been sitting in among her cells like a stranger in a crowded room. And her body had been fighting it. The hunters swarming. The war.

In Seraphina, there was no war.

The foreign thing was there. It was everywhere. More of it than in Maura. Much more. Threaded through every cell, wound into them, tangled up with them. But her body wasn't fighting it.

Her body was using it.

Like Dr. Halloway had said about me. Your body isn't treating it as something foreign. It's using it. As if it belonged there. Seraphina's body had taken the thing that had been put in her mother, and that had come down to her before she was born, and wound it into itself. Into the tiny furnaces in every cell, the ones the book said turned food into heat and work. Hundreds of them in every cell. Thousands.

And the foreign thing had made them burn hotter.

Much hotter. Every one of them. Running hot, all the time, like a stove with the door open. Making more heat than any cell should ever make. More fire. That was where it came from. That was the spark from nothing. Not from outside. From every one of those tiny furnaces in every cell of her body, all of them running too hot, all the time, and her pulling the heat out of them and throwing it into the air.

And when she threw too much, they couldn't stop.

That was the fever. I could see it. They'd been running so hot, for so long, all night, keeping the pool warm, that they didn't know how to stop anymore. Like a stove with no—

I came up out of her hand.

"There's no damper," I said.

Seraphina looked at me.

"Father's stove," I said. "In the field. It had a damper. A little iron plate in the chimney. You turned it, and it closed off the air, and the fire went down. Without it, the fire just burned and burned until the wood was gone." I looked at her hand, still lying on the wood between us. "Your cells are all furnaces. That's what makes the fire. And there's nothing in them that closes the damper. When you use too much, they don't know how to stop."

Seraphina didn't say anything for a long time.

"That's what Cormac had," she said finally. Very quietly. "That's what happened. For nine days. He couldn't close the damper."

"I think so."

"Can you fix it?"

I looked at her. At her too-bright eyes. At the steam.

"I don't know," I said. "Not yet."

"Not yet," said Seraphina. "That's what you always say. Not yet." She took her hand back and wrapped her arm round her knees again. "Then learn faster."

"I'm trying."

"I know you are." She pressed her forehead against her knees. "That's the worst part. You're actually trying."

The air went cold.

It came from behind us. Suddenly. All at once. The way it had come into the reading room the night the General walked the lines. I felt it on the back of my neck before I heard her.

Seraphina's head came up.

Luna Windsor was standing at the end of the old wooden stand, five meters away. In her training clothes, with her silver hair tucked behind one ear and her arms at her sides. I didn't know how long she'd been there.

"Calder," she said.

Seraphina's face went from flat red to angry red in about a second.

"Go away, Windsor."

"No," said Luna.

She walked along the bottom of the stand. Not fast. At exactly the pace she always walked. And she sat down on the step on Seraphina's other side. Close. Closer than I was. Close enough that their shoulders were almost touching.

And the cold came off her.

Not the way it had in the Town, or in the square, or in the sim. Not hard and fast and white. Slow. Gentle. A cool, still, steady cold, like the air in a cellar on a summer afternoon. It came off her and settled round Seraphina like a blanket. The steam rising off Seraphina's shoulders thinned. Slowed. The shimmer in the air around her went still.

Seraphina sat absolutely rigid.

"Don't," she said, through her teeth.

"Be quiet, Calder," said Luna Windsor.

"I don't need—"

"I know you don't," said Luna. "I heard. I was standing there for most of it." She was looking at the field, not at Seraphina. "I'm not doing it because you need it. I'm doing it because you're burning up on a wooden step in front of a boy who's too polite to do anything about it, and it's very irritating to watch."

Seraphina opened her mouth.

She closed it again.

The cold went on settling round her, slow and steady. The red on her cheekbones went from flat to faint. The sweat at her hairline stopped. Her hands, wrapped round her knees, loosened a little.

After a long time, she let her shoulder rest against Luna's.

Just a little. Just the edge of it.

Neither of them said anything about it. Neither of them looked at the other. They sat there on the bottom step of the old wooden stand at the far end of field four, fire and ice, shoulder to shoulder, looking at the swinging lamps.

I sat on Seraphina's other side and didn't say anything at all.

"If you tell anyone about this," said Seraphina, after a long time, "either of you, I'll set you on fire."

"I know," said Luna.

"I know," I said.

"I mean it."

"We know," said Luna Windsor. And then, after a moment, very quietly, still looking at the field: "Cormac. That was his name?"

Seraphina went very still.

"Yes," she said.

"I'll remember it," said Luna. "Somebody should say it. Even if it's only once." She was quiet. "Cormac Calder. Fourteen."

Seraphina didn't say anything.

But she didn't move her shoulder away.

That night, in the reading room, I opened notebook fifteen to the top of the list. To Not only Mother. Thirty-one families. And Maura's name under it. And Risa's line about the loose wire.

And I wrote:

Seraphina Calder. Sixteen. The fever. Her body doesn't fight it. It uses it. Every cell a furnace. No damper.

Cormac Calder. Fourteen. Nine days.

I looked at that for a long time.

Then I wrote, under it, slower:

It isn't only the parents. It's us. Liam. Sera. Toby. Risa. Genny and Garnet. All of us who came after.

Except, maybe, me.

Across the table, Luna Windsor was reading it upside down. She'd been reading it upside down for weeks. She didn't pretend not to anymore.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she reached across the table, and took Father's pen out of my hand, and turned the notebook round, and under my last line, in her small precise handwriting, she wrote:

And me.

She turned it back round, and gave me the pen, and opened the cell biology book to the chapter on the furnaces in the cell, and asked me what they were called.

I got it right.

I didn't ask her what she meant. Not that night.

But I didn't sleep, either.