The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) Read online

  I wonder, after all the years that span between my era and this, how man hasn’t progressed one single bit in how they judge women.

  The house we enter is more of a hotel than a home, the hallway full of men and women who brush past us impatiently, none of them seeming to stay very long. Feminine laughter rises from a corner of settees, partially concealed by a beaded screen that hangs from the ceiling to the marble floor. I hurry past them all, my eyes to the floor.

  The owner of the house, Mr. Desai, ushers us into a back room painted a warm shade of crimson and gestures for us to take a seat on a large huddle of cushions. I settle myself unsteadily, not yet comfortable with sitting on the floor as is the custom in some Bharatian houses. It still confounds me that there’s such a wealth of difference in our cultures and that I had to learn it for myself. Nobody thought to teach us about Indian culture. Even in this, a simple matter of sitting down to talk, our dissimilarities are stark. How could I have known nothing of this culture before? Frustration boils in my blood.

  Such ignorance was bred into me. I’m better than this, better than I was expected to be by my tutors, the men who neglected to educate me properly. Or maybe they knew nothing about India themselves. It’s hard to know the truth but it angers me either way.

  Rasmi and Mr. Desai exchange what I take to be pleasantries. He’s a middle aged, round bellied man with a dense grey beard and bushy eyebrows. His skin is pallid, ashen and dull compared to Rasmi’s glowing brown face. He’s unwell, I think, without having any proof. Why would Vast send me to talk to a sickly man? What could he possibly have to offer The Guardians’ cause?

  With nothing to do but wait for Rasmi to bring the conversation back to me, my gaze strays around the room. There are miniature tapestries hung over the windows in bright greens and golds, blocking out the umber glow of streetlamps, like curtains. Nothing in this room matches, I realise. It’s a room made up of anything that could be found at the time of decoration.

  It reminds me of my room in the Guardians’ home. It was empty when I arrived. The first night, I tossed and turned on a bare mattress on the dusty floor. The second day I returned after a guided tour by the ever-talkative Garima to find the entire base had donated their things to my cause. Bed covers, a set of drawers, pillows, embroidered fabrics to hang on the walls, even icons of their Gods. Everything needed to make a bedroom. I was instantly humbled and grateful, and a little bit in love with all of them, even if their open stares did make the nape of my neck burn. To be in such a bleak state of existence but to hang onto kindness and compassion in spite of it … That is what keeps me with the Guardians, what stops me from going off on my own—I admire their pure, basic decency.

  In a time of evils they have found the strength to be good.

  “Bennet.” Rasmi finally draws me into the conversation. For a quick moment, a pained expression crosses her face. It reveals how very little she enjoys these late night meetings, but the grimace is replaced with neutral attentiveness in a flash. I understand the sentiment. The men we meet are either overzealous or as grumpy as can be. This man is the latter. His expression could curdle milk.

  “Let’s do this as quick as it can be done, shall we?” I say. Rasmi dampens down a smile that wants to be wider, brighter. I begin speaking, with Rasmi translating into Hindi, “I am Bennet Ravel, the advocate and associate of The Guardians here in New Delhi. I have come to you with a proposition that will benefit both of us. Change, Mr. Desai, is fast upon us—and you can be instrumental in bringing Bharat into the future.”

  His grizzly face doesn’t shift a millimetre. I hold back a sigh. It would be much easier for Mr. Desai if he’d allow himself to be persuaded. Still, at least we came prepared. I take the envelope from my satchel and pass it across the floor. The man’s face drains when he reads the contents and within minutes he is agreeing to anything we ask.

  If only all men would be persuaded. If only all men would do whatever they could to change the world for the better. But of course selfishness and greed exist, kept company by indifference and stubbornness. Still, it is possible to change the minds of men. Blackmail and threats have become my close friends. I will do anything to be back with Branwell.

  ***

  Branwell

  14:20. 21.10.2040. The Free Lands, Northlands, Manchester.

  Honour falls into step beside me. “Thinking about your sister?”

  The terrain is uneven beneath my feet so I concentrate on walking. There are rocks embedded in spider-web-like crevices in the road, others crushing under my heavy boots. In the past week I’ve become so used to the sight of the ground beneath my feet that I barely see where I put my feet. “My father,” I say eventually. “I’m thinking about my father.”

  Through the heaviness of my father’s memory, I can feel Honour’s eyes equally heavy on me. “He was an inventor, right? Like you?”

  “Yes.” I kick the ground and draw in a breath, holding it until I am sure I won’t cry. “But I’m not like him. He was a creator, I’m a scientist.”

  My father was a good man, right until the end, despite The Olympiae tempting him with what I’m sure were unspeakable wonders. I am not good, or bad. I’m not sure I’m anything at all. The memory I hold of my father in my mind is of him letting his inventions gather dust when Bennet caught a cold when we were ten years old. His life depended upon and revolved around his creations, but he gave them up without a second thought when anything was wrong with Bennet or me. When I try to single out a memory of myself, one thing that stands above anything else, I see myself shouting at Benny that father is going to die.

  William was caring, hopeful, and faithful. I am unkind, without a hope, and without a care.

  “But you made The Depowerer.” Honour attempts to coax me from my snarling thoughts. I hear worry and pity in his voice but it barely pierces the veil of my indifference.

  “Copied it. I copied it from something my father invented and altered it to suit my needs. I wasn’t sure it would even function.”

  “You were sure. I know you were. You knew it’d work.”

  I yank on the strap of my satchel, wearing the leather down with my nails. “I thought it would work. I knew there was a large chance it could be useless, that it would have done nothing but give false hope. In truth, I had no idea what I was doing. I could have killed yet more people.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, Honour. You may think you know me but we met only two weeks ago. You do not know me one bit. Quit pretending we are the best of friends.”

  I am twisted and foul but I can’t bring myself to apologise. Nothing I said was a lie.

  I take a vicious pleasure in trampling the dirt under my feet. The landscape has closed in from wide, open lands with obvious signs of The Weapon’s destruction—foot-high walls that used to be grand houses, skinny black trees with branches like talons reaching for the ground, a charred husk of a car soldered to the ground—to higher buildings with intact walls, with barriers of glass running their length, with strange equipment sticking out at angles from high windows, a million devices running the length of them.

  It becomes increasingly clear that this place is inhabited. Food cartons and cans clatter across the pavement, picked up by the wind. Clothes have been suspended from a wire over our heads and hung out to dry. The buildings look cared for and lived in. This place is something else, something more than the safe towns we deposited civilians in. Those places were lifeless—lacking—but driving on regardless, an undead creature unwilling to lie down. But this town is distinctly alive. The streets are empty but something is thriving and thrumming, hidden just beneath them.

  Marie falls into step beside me. I automatically wait for Priya’s light footfalls on my left—they never come.

  “That wasn’t very charming of you, my Lord,” Marie drawls with obvious disapproval. She throws a glance over her shoulder to where Priya and Honour walk side by side a way off, making clear she’s referring to the way I spoke to him. “Act
ually,” she says, “it was downright nasty. Honour’s an alright guy. You could do a lot worse in a friend. At least he’s not likely to stab you in the back like half of the people around here.” She bumps her shoulder into mine until I make eye contact. “You’re not exactly well liked. The Guardians don’t like mysteries or the unknown, and you’re both. You won’t get any of us trying to be your friend.”

  I stare ahead, focusing on the backs of people’s heads, the seam of a canvas backpack, the tread a Guardian’s boot leaves in the dirt. I’m sure when this apathy fades, I’ll be ashamed I ever spoke to Honour in such a way. He’s my friend, that’s indisputable. And though I’ve only known him a couple of weeks, circumstance and disaster have forged a friendship I might admit I was dependent upon if I were in a better mind state.

  I scratch the back of my neck until my skin is raw.

  “I’ll apologise to him.” The shame has hit me sooner than I thought it would.

  “Later.”

  The tension in Marie’s voice makes me raise my eyes. There is a group of men and women, all ages, sizes, and colours, several metres in front of us. The strangers’ eyes are intent on us as we follow the Guardian leaders, nearer and nearer with every step. In the washed out light their stares look hostile.

  ***

  Bennet

  14:33. 21.10.2040. Bharat, Delhi.

  I used to think everyone who lived on this continent looked the same—dark skin, brown eyes, hair the colour of coal—but I was naïve and narrow-minded to think so. There are so many startling differences between each person in this Guardian building, as many variances as there are between one man and the next in London. It makes me wonder why I thought every Bharatian appeared the same, makes me wonder where I ever got that impression from, when it is quite obviously a lie. My father? My mother? My whole country? Can an entire country of people really be so wrong about the people of India? Could that be possible?

  No. I don’t think it could. Someone knows the truth, that the people I share my new home with aren’t as uncivilised or set apart from us as we’ve been led to believe. But why aren’t they telling everyone else? Why doesn’t every man and every woman back home know the wonder, and yet the banality, that is this land and its people?

  There is no important difference between Garima and me, other than I am light skinned and she is dark. But would people have me see her as too different to associate with? Too different to be friends with?

  I’m questioning many things lately.

  I’m especially questioning myself. Even now—I’m questioning the answers I give to myself, because there is a marked difference between Garima and I, a difference that sets us as far apart as worlds in the dark expanse of the sky.

  Garima would know what to do with this contraption, whereas I am pressing every button and switch I can get my fingers on.

  “How in the world do you work?” I hiss at the infernal machine. It doesn’t reply, inanimate as it is, but seems to stare at me through its narrowed eyes. Disapproving, judging. It’s not my fault I don’t know how you function, I argue. I’m from eighteen seventy eight!

  “Here.” Vast steps around me to push down a lever I had overlooked. It slides down the side of the metal thing, taking the bread with it, and begins to hum.

  “I’m hopeless,” I say, despairing. “I can’t even make food.”

  “You’ll get used to it. Don’t worry.” His voice is without inflection. Besides the bright show of emotion when I brought him the supposed Miracle, I’ve never seen him anything but cool headed and even tempered. I suppose being the Guardians’ leader means he has to keep his emotions hidden and allow logic and sense to rule him in the place of feeling and passion. But I still find it odd that he’s constantly robotic.

  I could never be like that. I feel far too much.

  “I’m glad I found you,” he says, smoothing black hair away from his face. “Garima insists you should be present.”

  “Present for what?” My irritation at technology is swallowed by curiosity. Does this have something to do with the vial I smuggled across the town? I’ve been wondering what they planned to do with it. I was told it was a basis for a cure, which I assume means there is work to be done with it, but I know next to nothing. Garima is part of the team tasked with the secret project but for all my bothering her she’s kept her knowledge to herself.

  Maybe now the mystery will be uncovered. I press my palms together, excited.

  Vast says, “A demonstration,” and I am officially overjoyed. Answers are one thing but to be shown instead of told how things are … I’m starting to really appreciate the way things are run around here.

  “After you,” I say, with a single backward glance of longing at my toast as it pops up.

  I follow Vast out of the communal lounge and along white washed brick hallways that slope ever downward until we reach a stairwell.

  Biting my lip to dampen a grin that would betray my thrill, I reach for my skirts to give my feet the freedom to swiftly descend the spiral staircase only to remember I no longer wear skirts. My legs are covered by trousers in a light, airy fabric that sways with my every step. I don’t need to lift them to walk; they narrow at my ankles and leave my slippered feet free.

  The fashion is something I don’t miss from home. The layers, especially. Although they were necessary to insulate me against the winter chills and ices, there’s a part of me that suspects a different reason. Modesty—but what does that mean and who decides what is modest? If women in Bharat can wander the streets in two, perhaps even one layer of clothing and remain modest, who decided that we had to wear so many more? It strikes me that we suffered so much pain from over-tight corsets and enforced ‘proper’ posture on ourselves for … what reason? Appearance? Because some faceless person decided it was fashionable? Or right?

  With every day that passes, with every difference I notice between the old me and the Bennet I have become, I love my home a little less. Maybe, when I’ve completed my task, fulfilled my destiny, and found my brother … maybe I won’t go home.

  Maybe I’ll stay.

  “You are not here with us,” Vast remarks as we reach the bottom of the dusty stairwell. Under the yellow glare of the flickering light his neutral expression might shift toward compassion. Understanding, maybe, though I fail to see how he understands. He’s hardly a teenage girl from the era of Victoria’s reign who fell into a future world that demanded her fix it.

  “No.” I raise my head, prepared to be attentive. “But I am now.”

  Vast appraises me. Satisfied, he swings open the silver door that, while he has been pretending to stall me with obvious statements, has been reading the impression of his thumb against the strip of glass set in its handle. One night I mused that I’d slip down here without anyone’s notice and pay my friend Garima a visit, bring her a drink or some cakes perhaps, but I surmised there would be some measure put in place to keep the laboratories secure. I was right. Without Vast’s fingerprint, I’d have no access.

  “Bennet!” Garima bounces over as soon as the door opens on the light-flooded laboratory, her hair hidden by a white hijab. Her eyes are wide, her excitement visible in the jittery way she bounces on her heels. Garima, my first friend, is never still and never silent. It’s why I like her, why I chose her, besides her intelligence. She motivates me to keep moving too, to not dwell on things loved and lost.

  “You have to see this! The liquid reacts with anything in its immediate surroundings. Water, oxygen, orange juice—all with different reactions. And the colours! I’ve never seen so many in one second. It’s like nothing else. You’ll love it.”

  “I’m sure I will.” I pat her arm with a smile.

  Vast has gone to the far end of the room, past a glass partition, where a team of Guardians in white saris and salwar kameez bustle around giant, black tables laden with vials and jars and bottles of all sorts of things. On one table a blue flame trapped inside a glass box flickers unwatched, experiments abandon
ed for the minute. My heart gives a painful tug. In a flare of fantasy I see my brother here, running around the tables, words of utter, childish joy at the Guardians equipment pouring out of him as fast as torrential rain. His eyes have that wide, glossy look they get when he’s happy, brown hair flopping into his eyes as he spins and spins, not able to decide what to inspect first.

  And then the image fades like the ghost it is. My brother isn’t here. My Branwell is gone.

  I fix my attention firmly on the scientists. Their hands are gloved, their eyes covered by mirrored glasses that turn flashes of light around the room. “They’re all women,” I notice aloud. My mouth gapes open. “Garima, why are they all women?”

  “Vast says men aren’t trustworthy. Women are more efficient. And we’re motivated by compassion and ambition and loyalty, not greed and personal gain and …” She sighs, her hand fluttering through the air. “And I forget the rest. Basically, we’re better than them.”

  “At what?”

  “At everything. Of course. Also the last man to be let loose in these labs stole something we were working on and sold it to States. It’s now killing people in the Forgotten Lands. We learned our lesson. Men are pigs.”

  I laugh. It’s hard to hold in my glee when Garima presents me with such bold and unapologetic ways of thinking. She reminds me of someone I won’t allow myself to remember. Such womanly fierceness!

  Garima interlocks her elbow with mine and, without a moment’s warning, darts across the lab, heaving me with her. I tuck my arms in so I don’t knock anything off the tables we fly past. “Could we maybe go a little slower?”

  “Slower? Why would we need to go slower? Seconds are ticking, Bennet! We don’t want to lose them.”