12

The market was situated in a square similar to every other square I'd seen in Gardens. The ground level housed shops and eating places, some with awnings shading a seating area on the sidewalk, and the square itself was set up with canopied tables displaying the sellers' wares.

Every inch of foot space was packed, either with tables or people mulling between tables. There was no way to navigate the stalls without bumping and pushing your way around the crowd.

I'd never seen so many people packed so tightly together. There was so much noise, how did any of them actually hear each other? Hundreds of people talking, arguing, haggling, and sellers shouting over each other, boasting specials and best deals.

The tables were mostly laden with farm goods, piled high with onions and potatoes or baskets of vegetables such as carrots and lentils. Some of the tables held crafts, pottery, crude jewelry, knitted garments.

A woman—a woman!—called out from behind a table piled high with fresh vegetables, "Onions! Two for one! Today only!"

I pushed my way through the crowd to reach her, fascinated. She was middle-aged, with graying hair and bags beneath her eyes. Too young to have aged into this job. In Capra, only elderly, widowed women were allowed to work, and then only at the academies for girls.

She grinned at me and held out two onions. "Half a credit."

"Oh, right." I delved into my pocket for the plastic card and offered it to her. I had no idea how many credits Roman had on it, but half a credit didn't sound like a lot.

She took the card from me and swiped it over a black box, then returned the card along with my two onions. Her attention moved to the man beside me before I could thank her, and an elbow was digging into me from the side, bumping me out of the way.

I hadn't planned on buying anything at the market. I'd come here to distract myself from the burning temptation to track down Jenna in The Break. It wasn't the Packing District with their Blood Throats, but Roman had expressly warned me about straying too far from Gardens. I wasn't looking for trouble, and I didn't want to give him yet another reason to think me reckless…but this was Jenna.

It was a lost cause.

There was no way in hell I couldn't go looking for her.

St. Ives girls looked out for each other and I needed to know she was okay.

And if she wasn't?

Maybe there was something I could do. I'd persuade Roman to help. Even if the wardens didn't have any jurisdiction here, he knew the ins and outs of this place. He was resourceful. I was pretty sure he'd know how to work the system.

It was decided then.

I was doing this.

But first, I bought some tomatoes and herbs to go with my two onions, since we had to eat tonight. I added a scoopful of fresh pasta to my groceries and stopped by the apartment to offload everything before setting out for The Break.

Paula's directions were simplistic to follow, if not highly detailed. As I walked deeper into The Smoke, everything felt denser. The buildings were stacked higher and closer together. The paved streets became narrower. Even the air felt thicker, although there were less people on the streets. I passed a group of children on a corner, three girls and a boy. They were playing some sort of game, tossing plastic sticks into a pile.

The dynamics was wholly out of whack. Girls and boys did not play together. Girls never outnumbered boys. Children of that age did not hang out on street corners without adult supervision, and it was a school day. Were the academy semesters different here?

I stared as I walked by. They didn't return the stare, too engrossed in their game to care about a passing stranger.

I'd been walking for maybe half an hour when I found myself in a business district again. Nothing like the market, just a block with shops and restaurants lining both sides of the street.

Pedra's Pita, with a scrumptious looking pita bread painted on the grime-stained frontage window. It was coming up to lunchtime and if the line of people wasn't coming out the door and halfway down the block, I might have joined it. Now I knew why the streets were empty. Everyone was here, lining up for pita bread.

Buy Swap. I peered through the window to see rails and rails of hanging clothes, all crammed so tightly together there weren't aisles to walk between.

The Soup Shop. My stomach rumbled, but as I got closer and saw the crowd packed inside, I lost my nerve. I spent a few minutes watching the bizarre arrangement through the window. The restaurant had no seating. People placed their order at a counter and then took their cup of soup and slice of bread and stood around, eating their bread and slurping their soup on their feet. When they were done, they placed their cup on a tray near the door and came out.

The sheer number of people in this place and their strange habits overwhelmed me.

There was something else about this scene that was wrong.

I wasn't sure what… Maybe it was the mixed crowd? The roles of women and men in Capra were strictly defined. That must be it, I decided. Men may be in a hurry on their way to or from a shift, so much so that they grabbed and ate on the run—or on their feet, as the case here may be, but not women. Capra women lingered at tables in the town square, there for the socializing more than anything else.

Here, women appeared to be as much on the go as the men.

I moved on, finally spotting the tower Paula had told me to look out for. A massive needle in the concrete haystack that peeked out above the buildings directly ahead of me.

I forgot my hunger and picked up my pace. I couldn't walk a direct line, though. I had to steer left, then right, then left again as my path was cut off by apartment blocks. I lost sight of the tower and kept going, searching for All Saints. The ancient Anglian church was supposedly easy to spot, a marker between The Break and the Packing District.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I came across the steepled, limestone church. The last thing I needed was to land up on the wrong side of the marker and have a run-in with the Blood Throats.

Following Paula's instructions took me to the end of a long row of tall, narrow buildings. There was no buzzer on the outer door, but it wasn't locked. I walked right in, and up three flights of stairs to apartment 389.

I was taking a chance on catching this Lydia woman at home, of course, but I didn't have a choice. Roman wasn't going to leave me to roam The Smoke indefinitely. Every day here could be my last opportunity.

To my surprise, and relief, the door opened on my knock to a cheerful woman with orange ringlets framing her cherub face and bright blue eyes. She was pretty and young, and heavily pregnant.

"Oh, hi!" My gaze locked on her protruding belly for a minute longer than was polite.

She didn't take offense. The smile she gave me was wide and welcoming. "Hello."

"I'm sorry to…" Her smile was catching, and I broke into a smile as well, waving a hand at her stomach. "Congratulations."

"Aah, thank you." She placed a hand there and fake-groaned. "Three weeks to go, then I get to see my feet again. Are they still there?"

I chuckled and we stood there a moment, smiling like comrades, like I knew anything about the joys and tribulations of growing a baby.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," I said. I'd worked on my cover story and delivered it without a hitch. "I ran into Paula earlier and we got to chatting about Jenna. Jenna Simmons? I realized it's been a blue moon since I saw her, and I was hoping to reconnect. Paula suggested you might still be in contact with her?"

"Jenna? Oh, yes, we see each other regularly." Lydia lowered her voice confidentially. "I was in a bad place, you know…" She twirled a finger near her temple "…mentally, I mean. I was at the hostel because there were complications with my pregnancy." She cupped both hands protectively around the curve of her stomach. "Everything turned out fine, thank goodness. The bleeding's stopped, but Jenna was so sweet and supportive while I was there." She flapped a hand at me. "You know, right?"

I smiled and lied through my teeth. Well, maybe Jenna was sweet and supportive, but I had no personal experience of it. Unless you counted her sharing her flask of white rum with me as supportive. The Jenna I knew was a high-energy, insolate, insubordinate train wreck. Trouble with a capital T. That's exactly how she'd landed up here in The Smoke.

"Jenna is such a sweetie," I said agreeably. "Do you have her address?"

"She hasn't moved out of the dorms yet, so far as I know." She pressed a finger to her chin, thinking. "She must have mentioned which one she was placed in, but for the life of me, I can't remember."

"Are the dorms together, like Hostel city?"

"No, honey, they're scattered all over The Break." Her expression shrugged around a silent apology. "But you know what? She's hardly there, anyway. From what I've gathered, she mostly stays over at her boyfriend's place."

My eyes popped. I didn't comment, though. From the way she said it, Jenna having a boyfriend, staying at her boyfriend's place, was all kinds of normal. Instead I asked, "And where would that be?"

"Somewhere near the Blue Tree canning factory? I'm honestly not sure. If she told me, it's gone." She flicked her fingers like an explosion. "Pregnancy has turned my mind into a sieve, I'll tell you that."

I grimaced, disappointed.

"She might be at the community center," Lydia said and pointed somewhere over my head, apparently unable to speak without using her hands. "Do you know where that is?" She didn't wait for me to shake my head. "Do you know where All Saints is?"

Finally, something I did know. "Yes! I do."

"The community center is the awful vomit colored complex behind it."

"Does Jenna help out at the center?" I was thinking of charity work.

Her brow twitched. "You could say that. She teaches reading and writing."

"Teaches?"

"She's very smart. I'm not surprised she was assigned a job there."

Surprise wasn't the word I'd use, either. I mean, I'd seen how everything was different here. But the notion of Jenna working, teaching reading and writing, was pretty unbelievable. Pretty amazing.

I thanked Lydia and set off for All Saints. My brain was crammed with all her helpfulness, most of which was useless for finding Jenna, but it wasn't useless.

I'd rather be worked to the bone in The Smoke for measly rations. That's what Jenna had said all those months ago, when she'd told us that she had no intention of graduating. When she'd insisted she desperately wanted to be removed from society.

A kernel of peace settled inside me. Jenna wasn't being worked to the bone in some factory. She had a boyfriend instead of marriage to a stranger. She'd never have to grow another woman's egg in her belly.

I suspected she'd somehow found the life she wanted.

The community center was exactly where Lydia had said, tucked away behind the stone wall that ringed the church. It was an uninspiring square building with prefab walls that may once have been cream, but now soot and grime gave it the sickly, vomit color Lydia mentioned. The entrance doors stood wide open and I walked straight in.

A woman sat behind the reception desk, her back to a wall of pigeonholes. Her hair was snow white and her wrinkles cut deep, so maybe it was just old age, but there was a weary, trodden look about her.

Her gaze tracked me as I approached, her brows furrowing. "If you're here for the sock and mittens drive, everyone's already in the hall."

"Actually, I'm looking for Jenna Simmons. She teaches here?"

"Mornings only, I'm afraid. Did you want to sign up for a class?"

I was a little old for a reading and writing class, wasn't I? "Thanks, but no. I was just…" I was what? "It's personal. What time will she be in tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow is Saturday, my dear," she said.

I took her word for it. With my house arrest, I didn't have a clue, what with one day bleeding into the next. "Okay?"

She regarded me with those tired, watery blue eyes. "Our classes run from Tuesday through to Friday."

"Oh, right." Which meant Saturday, Sunday and Monday before Jenna showed up here again. "Do you have her address on file?"

"Why would I have that?"

"I don't know," I said thinly, battling to contain my disappointment. So close, but I had a feeling I wasn't going to get to see Jenna. "In case she's sick and doesn't show up for work?"

"If she doesn't show up for work, she'll get docked a day's credits," the woman said matter-of-factly. "That's her problem, not mine."

Oh. Wow. Could she care any less?

I stared at her.

She stared back at me.

I blew out an irritable sigh, but decided this wasn't worth the fight. Lydia was doubtful Jenna would be found at her official address anyway.

"Well, thanks for your time," I said, even sounding sincere as my ingrained manners kicked in. She was an elderly woman, after all.

"Tell you what, if you'd like to leave a message, I'll make sure Jenna gets it."

When? Tuesday? I'd be back in Capra long before then.

"I'd really appreciate that," I said anyway, because it was better than nothing. Maybe Jenna found a reason to pop back in here later today or tomorrow. Highly unlikely, but not impossible.

The woman grabbed a pen and scribbled down my message. I kept it short, giving her my first name only and the apartment address in Gardens...and I sincerely hoped I could trust Jenna with that sensitive information.

I honestly couldn't see her running off to the Protectors and ratting us out. Either way, if she showed up in Gardens while I was still here, it was worth the risk. And if she didn't, and if she did rat us out, Roman would just have to deny, deny, deny. I'd be safely home in Capra, and a warden's word had to count more than a disgraced Capra citizen.

I was about a block from the community center, snaking through one of the many narrow alleyways that comprised The Smoke, when I stumbled into a situation. I didn't know exactly what, just that the wrongness made the hairs on my arms stand up. My feet rooted on the spot, my eyes narrowing as I tried to make out what the hell was going on with those two men crowding in the doorway.

It wasn't so much what they were doing, as what they looked like, and the sinister vibe they gave off. They were both dressed in black leather and their hair was just plain weird. The one nearest to me was shorn to the scalp, except for a central strip of straw yellow hair that hung down his back like a horse's tail. He also wore his leather vest over naked skin, despite the bitter cold.

I needed to get passed them—No, you don't, a warning voice screamed inside my head. Find another alley.

Just then, yellow stripe lurched backward, and I saw he was dragging another man out from the doorway. That was enough to freak me out. What was worse, the man he had by the scruff of the neck was taller than him, twice as wide, and wasn't putting up any fight.

Yellow stripe's friend, a thickly bearded guy with coal black eyes, swung a baseball bat out from somewhere. The steel bat connected the captive man behind the knees. I heard bone crack, or maybe that was just the start of the guttural sound that ripped from the man's throat as he sagged in yellow stripe's grip.

My stomach twisted.

Bile lurched into my mouth.

I backpedaled, my gaze frozen on the horror scene, and that's when baseball guy's head turned my way and those coal black eyes pierced me.

I yelped and spun about. My only thought was to get away from here, as far and fast as possible.

In my panic, I stumbled, it felt like I'd side-stepped the edge of a cobblestone. I didn't spare the time to look at what had almost brought me down—it hadn't, it had cost me a couple of seconds, that was all. I recovered and I raced toward the head of the alley.

I was there.

My fingers caught the corner of the brick building as I flew around it onto the paved road. It only had two stores, a Wicks Wax at one end of the block, and a trading store at the other, but there were at least a dozen shoppers milling about.

I slowed my frantic pace into something resembling a scurry, head down. My breaths were still coming fast and ragged, and I willed myself to breathe, breathe. There were people here, and people meant safety. Even in this place where leather-clad men dragged you from your front door into alleys and cracked your knees. That's what Roman had said. Stick to places where there are people.

I stepped off the curb, about to cross the road, when an iron-clad brace of fingers gripped my arm. It had happened so quickly. I went from that brief moment of relief to utter terror and shock in the space of a second.

That's how long it took for me to be dragged back onto the curb and spun about with my back shoved up against a wall.

One second I was thinking, people, I'm safe.

The next, I was staring into a pair of coal black eyes.

A scream worked up my throat. I let it out with, "Let go of me!"

Black eyes sneered, his upper lip lifting to reveal an upper row of silver teeth.

Horror filled me. My gaze darted around wildly. He'd dragged me back to the head of the alley, but I wasn't in the alley. Not yet. To my left, a man dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved sweater came into view. He took one look at us, me shoved up against the wall, menacing black eyes breathing down my throat, and crossed the road. To get to the other side, to get away from us instead of helping me.

Everyone gave us a wide berth, avoided looking directly this way, pretending we were invisible.

These people didn't mean safety.

I wasn't in Gardens.

"Did you see something you like?" Black eyes said.

"No…" I didn't see anything.

"No?" he mocked. "You don't like me? Well, that's rude."

The brace of fingers went from my arm to my throat. He wasn't squeezing, but the threat was implicit. One wrong move, one any move, and he would snap off my air supply.

My knees buckled, threatened to buckle out from under me.

"Downright disrespectful," he went on, never taking his eyes off me. "Wouldn't you say, Hux?"

I glanced out the corner of my eye, and saw yellow stripe standing there, arms crossed and leaning against the wall.

"Leave the girl alone," he drawled. "You're scaring her."

"Little mice who wander into Blood Throat territory should be scared." Black eyes' voice pitched high into a freakish sing-song, "Very, very scared."

"Blood Throat territory?" This had just gone from bad to hell. "I didn't—I'm sorry."

My mouth was as dry as sandpaper. I swallowed dry grit and dust and tried again. "I was told… I thought the Packing District starts north of the church."

"Blood Throat territory starts where I say it starts, and today I say it starts here."

Yellow stripe, or Hux, pushed away from the wall and sauntered closer. His blue eyes assessed me from the side, sized me up—or maybe he was just trying to determine if it would take one bite or two to swallow me whole.

My heart was pounding so hard, it was a train crashing into my chest, again and again. I had to concentrate on keeping my knees locked, terrified they really would buckle out from under me and then I'd end up hanging myself in black eyes' finger brace.

"This is boring as fuck." Hux's gaze cut away from me. "Enough."

He turned and walked off, disappeared into the alley.

Black eyes leered at me a moment more. Then, with a manic laugh, the brace around my throat fell away and he strolled off, after Hux, without sparing me another glance over his shoulder.

What the freaking hell?

I mean, I didn't want them to come back.

But what was that?