40

Lila Easterlin

May 28, 2045. Sydney, Australia.

Lila woke at dawn and couldn’t go back to sleep. Her shoes lay on the end of the bed where they’d fallen when she kicked them off, exhausted and a little drunk, the night before. Even in the faint gray light she could still make out speckled stains on the toes. Bolibar’s blood. She’d packed only one pair of heeled shoes, and even if defenders’ shoe stores had sold black pumps, they wouldn’t have had them in Lila’s size.

Erik’s painting was propped on the dresser. Besides the human figure’s hair being yellow, it bore absolutely no resemblance to Lila. It wasn’t even clear it was a woman. The face was twisted, its expression a grimace, to the extent its expression could be made out. Erik’s face was rounder in the painting than in real life, his complexion pinker. He looked more human in the painting. Peering closely, Lila realized she looked a bit like a defender.

There was a sharp knock on her door. “Lila?” The tone of Oliver’s voice set her heart thumping. She sprang from the bed and flung open the door.

Oliver was staring at his feet. “Azumi is dead. Drowned. Defenders found him in the river.”

“Drowned? How did he drown?”

Oliver looked up. “I don’t know. I guess he could have climbed over that stone wall if he tried, but why on Earth would he do that?”

Lila dragged her hand through her tangled hair. She knew Oliver was thinking the same thing as she. Azumi hadn’t climbed over the retaining wall—he’d been thrown. He’d angered some defender, probably through the same type of misunderstanding that cost Bolibar his life. Or maybe it was that general, the one he’d broken up with. That made a sick kind of sense.

There were no police. As they’d witnessed on the night of Bolibar’s murder, defenders meted out justice spontaneously, and haphazardly.

“Where is his body?” Lila asked.

“They buried it. They collect up all the dead each day—defender and Luyten, and now the occasional human—and bury them in pits.” He shrugged. “That’s how they did it during the war; I guess they saw no reason to change.”

“So we can’t see if there are visible injuries on his body.”

“I’m not sure it matters,” Oliver said. “It’s not like they’re going to check him for DNA and search for his killer.”

Poor Azumi. He’d so wanted to leave. It was almost as if he’d had a premonition. With a sudden jolt, Lila realized she was the first to argue that they should stay despite the danger. Everyone else had agreed, though; it wasn’t as if they all would have packed up if she hadn’t opened her mouth.

“There’s other news as well,” Oliver said. “We’re finally meeting with the Triumvirate, on Friday.”