The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

Author:Peng Shepherd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-04-06T04:00:00+00:00

Mahnaz Ahmadi

SMITH TRES, THE SOLDIER WHO WAS STABBED DURING THE last attempt to trade, didn’t develop a fever, but the General wouldn’t know if he was out of the woods for at least another week. Naz was just so relieved that he hadn’t died on the first night—when he’d been so pale from blood loss his lips were almost blue, teeth chattering, unable to keep warm despite all the blankets she took from her own bed and all the other beds of the soldiers under her command. They’d lost so many people recently. Both to death and to the Forgetting. A few days ago, she even saw a new Red that she’d once known the year before—he’d fought in their army before he lost his shadow and forgot he had. He’d been one of her best scouts, just like Tres was now. Both of them as brave and reckless as she’d ever seen. Both of them almost lost completing missions she’d ordered. Naz didn’t know if she’d be able to bear it if another person from her team died.

But even though it seemed like Tres would survive, it still left the problem of who was going to take his place in her formation until he was healed. The army was stretched thin, but she’d been making do already missing her first scout. Now that she was missing two, there was no way around it.

“Go on, leave me behind,” Ory wheezed from the dirt. “Save yourself.”

Malik’s daughter, Vienna, grunted, and threw his arm over her shoulder to try to lift him.

“Save yourself!” he wailed as dramatically as he could.

“Vienna!” Naz snapped as the girl began to laugh. “This is not a game!”

“Ahmadi, come on,” Ory said, sitting up and dusting off his pants.

“You won’t think it’s a game when a Red bashes your head in because you joked your way through Malik’s boot camp curriculum,” Naz said to him. “And you . . .”—she looked hard at Vienna—“you won’t think it’s a game when I don’t clear you for missions.”

“No, I’m sorry!” Vienna cried. She snapped to attention and saluted. Naz pinched her lips tight to keep the sadness from showing in her face. It was so hard to tell anyone’s true age anymore—the starvation, the scars, the strain of carrying memories alone that should have been shared among others. Sometimes she didn’t remember that Vienna couldn’t be more than sixteen, maybe seventeen. In some ways she seemed years older, almost the same age as Rojan. Sometimes she seemed so much like Rojan it hurt. “I’m ready to go again, ma’am!”

Naz looked away. Vienna was not her sister, she told herself yet again. Her sister had almost made it, but the fever from the arrow wound infection took her in the end. Vienna was not her sister. It never worked. “And how about you?” she asked Ory. “Finished screwing around?”

“You know,” Ory said as he squared off against Vienna once more, “if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you didn’t like me very much.

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