“Don’t let go!” The words came out choked and broken; it was possible he hadn’t even heard them over the shrieking sounds of the wind as it rushed by.
Dr. Moss’s face appeared over the balustrade. “Close your eyes!” he shouted. “Channel everything you’re feeling into the tether. Let yourself feel it all and focus it!”
What he was telling me to do was impossible. My mind was a frantic jumble of panicked thoughts, and my mouth tasted like copper, the metallic tang of fear I recognized from the moment I woke up in Aurora. I could hardly breathe, and was sure that I was going to pass out. No, I told myself, shocked that I could even manage to formulate a single coherent thought. I wrapped my fingers around Thomas’s wrists, holding him as tightly as he was holding me; if I went limp, he might drop me, and I would surely die. I stared into Thomas’s eyes, expecting to see fear there, but there was nothing but fierce determination to hold on. If I’d ever cursed Thomas’s single-mindedness, I was grateful for it now.
Having no other option, I yielded to Dr. Moss’s instructions. I forced myself to inhale deeply and closed my eyes, focusing all my attention and energy on the fear that writhed inside me. At first, nothing happened; then I felt an abrupt, almost physical snap, like that of a knuckle cracking or a shoulder being forced from its socket—except that it was in my mind—and after a brief, dark moment, images came rushing forth, pieces of long-forgotten dreams, one on top of each other, small fragments like shards of glass.
The black phoenix on a red background, swaying back and forth in a sweet country breeze …
A girl no older than twelve, wearing the Libertas symbol—the tetractys made of stars, stitched on a forest green armband—taking away a dinner tray …
The darkness of the secret tunnel and the bobbing yellow orb of a flashlight as Juliana followed a young man stealthily toward freedom …
A thin blue strip of paper being folded into the shape of a star to conceal a message and being placed in the back of a drawer where no one else could find it …
The painting of the lake house …
A face—the young man’s face, older than Thomas but not by much, his lips curling up into a self-satisfied smile …
The images came so fast and there were so many that I only saw them for a fraction of a second. Some were old, worn, and blurry at the edges, while some were sharp, more recent. But they were all from the past, all pieces of dreams I’d had before. There was nothing from the present. And then, another snap, and there it was—the tether. In my mind’s eye, it looked like a tiny, brilliant filament of light, shifting this way and that, curling in on itself and then stretching infinitely in both directions. I stared into it as it grew larger, closer, and, summoning all the bravery I had, I let it consume me.
There was a knock at the door, but whoever was on the other side entered without waiting for permission. She sat on the tiny bed—she hadn’t slept on something so small since she was in a crib—her book in her lap. She closed it as he entered and appraised him coolly, but it was a front. She’d been in the custody of Libertas for two weeks and the only people who’d come to talk to her were him, at the beginning, though he was gone now; the girl at the previous location, who had not accompanied them to the farmhouse; and a new woman, a taciturn old country broad with a sparse mustache on her lip and a mean look in her eye, who brought her meals and did her wash, albeit begrudgingly. This man was entirely new to her. He was thin and wiry and tall, dressed in all black with no outward signs of his affiliation.
“Who are you?” she asked him imperiously, as was her habit.
“They call me the Shepherd,” he told her. He pulled the chair out from underneath the small white writing desk and sat on it backward.
“Do they,” she said, arranging her face in an expression of utter disinterest. It was one of her great skills, which she’d learned from her father. She was able, through years of steady practice, to fabricate her expressions to show exactly what she wanted them to. Pretending to be sorry for some slight against her stepmother had saved her from going to bed without dinner many times as a child.
“Do you know why?” he asked.
“I don’t care,” she said, knowing he would tell her anyway, because he wanted her to know.
He smiled, showing his teeth, but it was a cold smile. “As you are probably well aware, Libertas is an expansive and ever-growing enterprise. It has many members at many levels and many moving parts that need attending to. I am the one who brings them all together. I am the one who gathers the sheep and makes sure that none wander from the flock.”
“And you’re here because … ?”
“Because right now, you are a wandering sheep.”
She looked pointedly around the room. “That’s funny, because I feel penned in.”
“Oh, no, I don’t mean it that way,” he replied. “I mean that you haven’t yet been drawn in to the flock, incorporated into our plan. There are some outstanding debts to be paid, questions to be answered.”
“I’ve done what I was told to do,” she said, folding her arms across her chest in defiance, but also to conceal her shaking hands. “The conditions of our deal were clear—I would speak only to the Monad about what I know.”
“I’m the Monad’s chief adviser,” the Shepherd told her. “You can speak to me. I’ll relay any message.”
“That’s not what we agreed on.”
“Janus had no authority to make such a promise. He knows very well that the Monad doesn’t consult with outsiders.”
She laughed. “Is that what you call him? Janus?” She paused to appreciate how apt it was. “The god with two faces.”
“Sometimes our names are chosen for us, and sometimes we choose our own.”
“I’m not telling you anything,” she insisted once more. “If you want what I have, you’ll bring me to the Monad.” She was no ordinary person; she was the princess of the Commonwealth, much as she loathed the position, and she wasn’t going to trade secrets with a mere lackey.
“You’re going back on our bargain, then?”
“And what if I did?” Sometimes she wished she could. Sometimes she felt that her freedom—or, rather, the promise of it—had come at too high a price. How could she have betrayed her country for something as transient as personal happiness—and only the potential of it, at that? Other times, she knew that she could have done nothing but what she had done. It had been her only way out.
He stared at her baldly, something she was unused to. Very few people had the temerity to look her in the eye. It had been that way ever since she was a child—even her stepmother avoided it if she could. That was one of the reasons she’d taken to Thomas; she could tell from the first day he was assigned to her detail that he wasn’t afraid of her. At first, she’d thought it was because he hadn’t the sense to be afraid, but after a while she realized it was because he wasn’t much afraid of anything—except, perhaps, the General. Gloria was another, and her childhood nanny, Miss Bix. Her mother and her father. And the dreaded General. That was all.