Broken Moon Read online

  BROKEN MOON

  By Sarah Beth Moore

  Copyright © 2017 by Sarah Beth Moore

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  To Devin, who never stopped believing in me.

  Ever.

  Not even once.

  I love you.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  … and soon all will bleed

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  AN OPEN LETTER TO WRITERS (+ A SHORT BIO)

  We are such fools, to think anyone could win a war on Earth, and thereby own the heavens. We are fools, and soon all will bleed.

  ONE

  Papa says there used to be Cities without Home Guard, but now that is no longer possible.

  The wars are over, of course. They have been for two hundred years. Yet the metal metropolises in which we live are dangerous, the Party tells us, and the open fields that surround the fifty-foot walls even more so. Still, I can’t help but wonder what it is like out there, beyond the perimeter, beyond the pastures. Where guards cannot follow; where my tracking chip wouldn’t reveal every move I made to a hundred Party-owned computer screens.

  I squint and brush my long, black hair out of my face. Up here at the Top of the World, a disused airstrip that forms the apex of the metal mountain on which I stand, it is possible to see in all directions. Below me in the twilight a covered bridge and a set of smokestacks wait to break my fall, fifty feet down. Staggered decks, from twenty to sixty feet of space between each, are like patchwork quilts stacked on top of one another, solid in some places, broken and open in others, connected by catwalks and ladders and footpaths. Train trestles twine beneath, between and through the decks like wormholes in apples. It makes for beautiful views and dangerous walking. But then, it was built for a time when the only security to be had was behind high walls, which effectively curbed humanity’s sprawl and forced us to build up. Not that height necessarily meant safety.

  My eyes travel upward, blinking in the light of the Broken Moon. Once whole, it now glows like two jagged halves of a cracked egg, the slight space between spattered with airless detritus and bits of dust. The response of one great power to another’s staking of territory. Proof positive that in the wars, there were no guarantees; thankfully no one leveled such a weapon at Earth, or we wouldn’t be here anymore. Though some places were destroyed, whole countries even, our Nation survived relatively intact. Clearly our towering walls, protecting the vertigo-inducing pyramid of levels on which we live and work, have had some effect.

  Lowering my head, peering down into the drop before me, I can just make out a dark shape below, climbing steadily, slowly. As I watch, the shape resolves into a long-limbed figure, heaving itself over the edge of Deck 23 and starting up a steep metal ramp. He won’t be here for a few minutes more. Of its own accord my foot begins to tap, the soft, worn leather toe beating out an anticipatory tattoo against the metal grate beneath me.

  Turning back to the vista before me, I can just make out the lights of the Home Guard’s patrol lorries as they move slowly between the orderly squares of waving wheat, dead corn stalks, waning vegetable gardens and the hills upon which skinny sheep and cattle forage for what they can. I’ve only been out there once, on a class field trip when I was nine, where I was awed by the expanse of land at ground level, at how endless the world looked. Just as I was awed by what actually goes on in those fields, the sweat and labor that makes even a Collector’s work look easy. It takes a lot of food to feed an entire city, I guess, even if there are fewer births than ever before.

  I pull on a jacket, slipping its worn metal buttons through repaired buttonholes. It clasps me tightly, like a friendly glove fitted to my narrow torso and rounder hips. On the decks beneath me, lights wink on in houses and seedy taverns. Power is expensive, and so is gas. Most people wait until nearly dark to use either.

  The population declines have taken their toll. It seems like every day now I pass a house whose windows used to glow with nighttime lamplight, but are now dark for good. It’s not hard to figure out why: only two in three women of childbearing age ever conceive, according to Party estimates. Of those, many never have a second child. The effects are apparent not merely in shuttered houses: the Upper City, haven of the poor and working class, is becoming drained of life. Down in the Lower City, where the wealthy ring the inner walls with their large mansions and sunlight yards, where theaters still show old movies and gardens are allowed, things are not so dire.

  Thanks to the tithe.

  The law says that the firstborn child of every worker, of every man who labors in the fields and every woman who staffs the factories, is automatically the property of the Party. These children go to live with the prosperous families in the lower levels, where they receive educations and lives they would not have up above. That is the reasoning, and I’ve even heard a few mothers say they understand it, that sometimes they can see why it’s best. Not many, though.

  Seven days after giving birth, these mothers must say goodbye to their newborns forever. In a City the size of ours, they will likely never see them again. I try to imagine carrying a baby that long, only to say goodbye, and draw a blank. Then again, pregnancy may not even be an option for me.

  No one knows what is happening. The Party has no answers. The scientists are mute. The religions that might have offered comfort have all been banished, their gods accused of starting the wars that almost ended the world. Mostly people just try not to think about it, and carry on.

  * * * * *

  A warm, rough hand claps across my eyes. A knife pricks my throat, and I freeze in place.

  “Preoccupation is death,” murmurs a teasing, singsong voice. I swear silently.

  “Enoch!” I hate that he snuck up on me, probably by going the long way up the abandoned train track and around the back of the platform on which we stand. It is an old landing pad for government airships, and I’d expected him to take the utility ladder that comes up right beneath my feet. “You got lucky.”

  He laughs, dropping his weapon and his hand and stepping back. I turn in time to see him dump his heavy knapsack to the metal grate and bend to loosen the drawstring at the top. In a flash I am on him, grabbing his left shoulder and bringing my own blade under his right arm to rest in the hollow of his heart. He tenses slightly, doesn’t move.

  “Mercy is a mistake,” I remind him, parroting another of Papa’s maxims on the training floor.

  Again he laughs. “With you, Naiya, definitely.”

  Neither of us says anything for a moment more, and the September air seems to grow still and hot. My chest is pressed against his back, and I can feel his heartbeat through my black cotton shirt and thin leather
jacket. I back off hastily, my face flushing, hoping he’s noticed nothing. He’s my adoptive brother, but though the same man has raised us since I was eight, I’ve never seen him as a sibling. I’ve never even tried.

  “Mission accomplished,” Enoch announces. He seems oblivious to my racing pulse and sweaty palms. Instead, he pulls out a couple of apples and tosses me one.

  “You found it?” I ask, hiding my face until the blush passes, polishing the fruit on my pants. Enoch’s most recent mission had been fairly complicated, a tiny circuit board from an early-model computer, made before the wars. The Party manufactures similar technology now, but only for its own purposes. If an individual wants such things, they usually employ the services of a Collector. People like Enoch and Papa and I, who are trained to find it for them, to comb through the vast tracts of the City, much of which is abandoned but still perfectly serviceable. Population decline has its upsides.

  “I found it,” Enoch affirms, grinning as he sits at the edge of the ledge and dangles his legs into empty space. I’m not surprised; technology is Enoch’s forte. Mine is books. Outlawed everywhere in the City, blamed for the ideas that started a decades-long war, a book in the wrong hands can mean death for the holder. Most workers don’t even think about them, couldn’t name a single title. But for those in the highest echelons in the Party, and the Collectors who find what they want, exceptions are made. Only if we are careful, though. Only if we make no mistakes, guard our secrets, vet our customers well. Papa has taught us to take no chances.

  “So where was it?” I inquire, brushing more hair out of my eyes. Enoch’s journeys usually start in the old Tech District, a warren of crumbling buildings and laboratories on Deck 3. But his searches often end in disused office buildings, or even deserted apartments. You never can tell where you’ll find something, or if you will.

  “At the old courthouse, actually.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “I found an order slip on electronic file in the Tech District. It had the delivery address; they ordered a big set, one for every stenographer, right before the war. Thank goodness for this.” He wags his power pack at me, a boundlessly useful device that allows us to gain entry into protected buildings, forge electronic signatures, plug into every kind of socket there is and power up defunct gadgets. With a charge that lasts for weeks, we carry them everywhere we go. “The order form on the factory mainframe led me right to it. I only found two, though. Papa was hoping I’d get more.”

  “He’ll understand.” That’s how it is. Lots of things are gone, taken over the last century by people just like us. There are only a few Collectors in the City besides us now, mainly because our missions are getting harder and harder, requests for books and electronics getting more difficult to fulfill, and there is only so much work. But Papa is the best at what he does, as he taught us to be.

  “Yeah,” Enoch agrees. He seems disinclined to say more.

  “Where is it now?” I ask, hoping to see the circuit board. I love the minute patterns, the way Papa lovingly cleans the copper of verdigris and grime.

  “Already dropped it off at home for cleanup. That’s where I got the apples.” He grips his firmly and slices into it with his knife. It makes a crisp popping noise as the blade punctures the skin, which is bleached a shiny gray in the moonlight.

  “Mm,” I say appreciatively, mouth full of apple that I haven’t bothered slicing. Fruit is a rare treat at the food dispensaries; mostly we get rations of grain, meat and starchy vegetables, with a little butter, oil, milk and cheese to supplement it. But fruit is scarcer, and often makes its way down to the Lower City before it can reach us; anything sweet is hard to come by, and generally the province of the rich. Apples are abundant this time of year, though.

  “So what’s next?” I ask.

  “No idea,” he says. “Guess Papa will tell us when we get back. I bet we go together on this one.”

  I can’t read anything into the statement, and he doesn’t volunteer anything else, but the thought quickens my pulse. Now that we’re old enough to go alone, Papa often sends one or the other of us to find what he needs for his projects or to fill client requests while the other stays behind to help him at his workbench. I’m not afraid of traveling by myself. Papa has trained me well, both to find things and to protect myself; a rapist or mugger would probably come off worse in a fight. I am a little afraid of the Home Guard, though, with their strangely sharp teeth and those eyes that sometimes gleam a molten red. But they leave me alone, and I them.

  Still, I prefer to go with Enoch. He’s been gone for four days this time, and I’ve missed him. I glance sideways surreptitiously, watching as he pulls a slice of apple off the end of his knife with white, straight teeth. I’ve always envied those teeth; mine are a little crooked, and there’s certainly no straightening them on our wages. In the Upper City, you’re lucky to get a tooth pulled before it abscesses; vanities are out of the question.

  Teeth aren’t our only difference, and my ivory and his ebony skin not the only clue we don’t share blood. Where my eyes are almond-shaped and violet, his are round and green; my hair is long and straight where his is hopelessly curly, rolled into tight locks. I am sturdy and strong, and he is so skinny it sometimes seems the night breeze could blow him away, but I’m not fooled. Beneath his bony exterior is a wiry toughness best not crossed. And in that, we are alike.

  “Have you seen Amy yet?” I ask, hoping to get him talking. We meet up here at the Top of the World when we finish missions for just that: to chat, relive assignments we shared, relate details of those we didn’t. At the best of times Enoch is quiet, but tonight he seems especially reserved. Perhaps it is just because I was looking forward to this so much.

  “Not since I got back.” He finishes his apple and wipes his knife fastidiously on his pants before putting it back in its holster on his belt. “But I visited before I left. She looked happy.” His eyes reflect his older sister’s contentment.

  I smile. Amy’s happiness is well founded. After a child lost to the tithe broke her spirit and ruined her first marriage, Amy fell into a deep depression. It happens sometimes, a mother who can’t get past losing her infant. There have even been rumors of mothers escaping with their babies, leaving the City through the tunnels on the lower levels near the walls, though I’ve never heard of anyone who did. Amy never tried anything so dramatic, merely slipping into silence, missing shifts at the factory. The kind of thing that gets workers taken in, committed to the hospitals. Sometimes those people come back the same, but more often they don’t. We were terrified, and although I probably shouldn’t have been, I was angry at her refusal to bear a fact of life that so many others did.

  And then, the worst: she disappeared. That too happens, when someone has lost it, is no longer contributing to society, the Party. Everything for everyone, and nothing for ourselves. The Party motto, the way the Mayor wraps up every televised speech.

  The disappeared almost never come back. I could barely live with myself and with the things I’d said. And just when I had given up hope, she returned. Seemed better, more herself. Her laugh was back, and she started braiding her dark hair again. Despite the fact that Papa and Enoch and his younger brother, Pip, are related to her by blood, I think I was most relieved. Even more so when she remarried and found herself pregnant again. She’d already done her duty, and her husband, John, had given his firstborn before his first wife died. Indisputably, this child was theirs.

  That was almost nine months ago.

  “I can’t wait to meet the baby,” I say. Amy and I have also patched things up, and visiting her warm home is once again a joy. And while I could never love the other, I feel sure I will adore this baby.

  Enoch’s mouth quirks at the edges, the closest he’ll come to admitting excitement for an infant. We sit in silence for another moment.

  “We should go home,” I say finally.

  Enoch looks over at me. “Sure.”

  He hoists himself backwar
d off of the edge with his palms before standing up and offering me a hand, immediately disengaging it once I’m up. Then he bends to close his knapsack.

  I try not to mind how quickly he took his hand away. Gazing out over the countryside, where night has fallen fully, I can see faint blips of light from passing airships. Perhaps they are bound for other Cities, launched on their journeys from close to the walls, or perhaps they are on patrol. Either way, I envy them.

  I brush my hair back again. Despite the fact that I’ve pulled it into its habitual ponytail, smaller strands have escaped and whip around my face in the brisk fall wind. I consider taking it down, but don’t. It’s unpleasant to disentangle the bare elastic. Instead I turn to Enoch, opening my mouth to ask if he is ready.

  My stomach turns to ice water. I blink as slowly as possible, as if to rid myself of the nightmare, but when I open my eyes it remains.

  “Enoch,” I whisper. My throat is dry, and the name comes out hoarse and panicked.

  He turns, his face a question. Without moving, I merely point my chin at the figure walking toward us. He looks, and stills like a frightened animal. Ridiculously, his hand goes for his blade.

  It is, after all, his sister. Amy, her stomach slender as a freshly minted rail, her eyes as empty as the windowpanes of the Upper City. She does not look as though she recognizes either of us.

  “Amy?” he inquires softly, though he must know it can’t be.

  What is this? I think, steeped in dread. Where is her child?

  “She’s too thin,” I whisper to Enoch. “Even if she’d given birth, she wouldn’t be that thin.” I remembered her last time, still soft around the middle after she delivered, distended. Not like this, skin and bones. Tiny and taut and emaciated, as though she’s never been pregnant in her life.

  Enoch merely nods, eyes glued to this terrifyingly altered vision of our sister. Something is different about her, and not just the removal of nine months of belly. It is something in her eyes, in her face, as though fear is the only emotion she’s experienced in a long, long time.