Scorched Earth by Tommy Wallach

Author:Tommy Wallach
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 2020-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

6. Athène

STRANGE TO BE A TOURIST and an enemy of the state at the same time, Athène thought to herself as she walked the streets of the Anchor, furred hood pulled tight around her face, gazing on every fresh miracle with a child’s wonderment. So many lamps burned in the windows that each apartment became a new constellation. So many buildings towered three or four stories over the street that each boulevard became a sort of canyon. The ingenuity on display awed her, yet it was also frightening to think how the Descendancy had brought nature low, concealing it behind a veil of defanged design. As far as Athène could tell, nearly every tree and flower in sight had been selected and arranged according to some unknowable set of aesthetic criteria, and though she could hear sounds of wildlife—crickets and mosquitoes, even the plangent hoot of an owl—she’d yet to see any animals other than a few stray housecats and a couple large, fearless cockroaches. Did Chang want the whole continent to look like this? Paved over, flat and gray, lifeless beneath the stones? She would hate for her child to grow up in a world like that.

A tin street sign bolted to a wall read VIOLET LN, but at first glance it looked like VIOLENT LN. Athène unfolded the map she’d taken from the Protectorate office in Edgewise and tried to get her bearings. Still surprisingly far to the Bastion—gods, but this city was big. Though it would have been faster to head straight east, she deviated slightly to the north, so as to pass through the celebrated plaza at the center of the city known as Annunciation Square.

It was probably a quarter mile from end to end, surrounded by five-story buildings on all sides. The complex tessellation of gray and red brick underfoot was scarred with bomb craters, only some of which had been filled in with gravel. At the very center of the square crouched the mangled but still imposing Notre Fille, the largest single structure Athène had ever seen, a marvel of granite and glass even in its current state: its eastern facade appeared to have sloughed off, and the resulting wound was covered up with tarp and scaffold. In spite of the lateness of the hour, men could be seen a hundred feet up, working away at the reconstruction. Near the base of the church, a gallows had been erected, and a dozen bodies swung from the high beam in a morbidly balletic near unison. Though Athène was well-acquainted with death, the sight of those corpses left out to rot made her shiver. And was it her imagination, or were those young men smoking in the shadows outside that café paying her an undue amount of attention? She hurried out of the square. It had been a mistake to come here, to allow herself the diversion. Every lane was Violent Lane now, and Athène was just a Wesah woman on her own, surrounded by enemies.

The Bastion was built of huge sandstone blocks the color of dried blood.

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