Secondborn (Secondborn #1)(21)

Emmitt sidles up to me. “Feeling left out?” he asks, nodding at the portraits.

I adopt Father’s smile as a defense mechanism. “I’d rather not be in a club that doesn’t want me, Emmitt.”

The quiet soldier who has been with us since the Census cell has his neck craned all the way back, gazing up at the levels above us. His armor tag reads “Edgerton.” “It’s different from our woods,” he says, speaking for the first time.

“How is it different?” I ask.

He scratches his blond scruff of a beard, and I notice that he’s missing a front tooth. “We ain’t got windows in ours—all this here’s concrete.” He waves his arm at the glass shell of the building. His solemn brown eyes meet mine.

“Which one do you like more?” I ask.

He stares at me for a moment, surprised by my question—or maybe it’s more than that. Maybe he’s surprised that I spoke to him? He looks up again and points to a window way above my head where the light of the moon shines through. “It’d be nice to see the night sky once in a while when we ain’t on point.”

“It would,” I agree. He smiles. A fountain in the center dances with water that’s in sync with a lovely concerto playing all around us from some hidden source. I’m familiar with the song and hum along softly.

“Do you know this music?” Edgerton asks.

“I do. Do you?”

He shakes his head and shrugs. “Naw, what’d I know about music? I’ve been Transitioned since I were ten, same as Hawthorne. We come up together.” He shuffles his feet on the marble floor’s inlaid mosaic leaves of orange, crimson, and gold. It’s as if the Tree itself had shed them.

“It’s by Sovenagh—her ninetieth symphony. It’s called The Rape of Reason.”

We enter an elevator car. None of us speak as we rise to somewhere in the center of the trunk. When the doors open, Clara Diamond, Mother’s personal public relations assistant, greets us. “You found her!” Clara bleats to Emmitt with visible relief. “The Sword is threatening to have me killed if I don’t report back to her soon.” She’s not joking. The terror shows on her white-lipped face. Mother’s temper is legendary.

As we exit the lift, Clara reaches for my arm. I allow her to take it because I need her support as much as she needs to assure herself that she won’t be dying today. “We have to get you to the debriefing. We can clean you up later.”

I fall in step with her and Emmitt. The Sword soldiers trail us, rubbernecking in awe. The décor lacks the sophistication that I’m accustomed to, but the carpet is soft beneath my bare feet. Clara leads me down a long hallway that skirts the atrium.

We pass a few gangways that lead to round platforms that hang in the air above the ground many stories below. Clara pauses at the largest. Emmitt shoos me ahead, urging me over a lighted-glass gangplank with glass railings. I stop midway.

Emmitt holds the others back. “She has to go alone. You will wait here.” Hawthorne brushes him aside, but Emmitt manages to get back in front of him. “I’m only trying to save your life. This is a private conversation. You don’t have the security clearance level to attend. I don’t have the security clearance to attend.” He holds his hand on his chest to illustrate his point. “You can protect her from here. She can’t go anywhere, and Clara made sure that we’re the only ones on this entire level.”

Hawthorne gives me a reluctant nod. I turn and follow the gangway, holding its glass handrail until I make it to the rosette-shaped platform. Dangling over the atrium gives me the feeling of floating on air. About a hundred feet away, surrounding me on all sides, are tiers of balconies. As I peek over the railing, it’s as if I’m trapped inside the rib cage of a giant leviathan.

A dome of darkness forms around the suspended platform. I can no longer see the soldiers or the staff from Mother’s Palace. The floor illuminates. I’m now being viewed as a holographic image by whoever’s vetted into our meeting.

A holographic image of an elderly admiral projects before me. His white handlebar mustache is extremely outdated but well groomed. He’s attired in a highly decorated dress uniform. I straighten. He’s a firstborn Sword that I’ve met many times before. His name is Admiral Yarls Dresden. He’s a lecher and an alcoholic. The secondborn Stones of the Palace fear him.

Admiral Dresden doesn’t acknowledge me. I have to hold back a sigh of relief. Another holographic image of a slender woman in a beautiful silver ball gown made of light walks off the adjacent balcony and into the air, approaching my island platform. She wears a half-moon-shaped tiara atop her ebony hair. She stops just feet away from me. I recognize her as Clarity Toussaint Jowell, the leader of the Fate of Moons. She greets Admiral Dresden, and they engage in quiet conversation about the weather, ignoring me entirely.

Someone else winks into view—an attractive older man, maybe in his early forties, with a golden shooting-star-shaped moniker that indicates he’s firstborn Fate of Stars. His long dark hair is held back from his face with a leather tie. No gray taints the ebony of his full beard. He’s not dressed in formal attire, like the other two; rather, he wears a black woolen cloak that would be perfect for a midnight stroll in the crisp air. The Star-Fated man acknowledges the other holograms. “Admiral Dresden.” His accompanying nod is perfunctory.