Читать книгу The Remnant - Laura Nolen Liddell - Страница 11

Time flies when you’re spending your last moments of relative freedom locked in a stuffy cargo bin with an equally stuffy elderly judge who’s looking forward to your execution for high treason, but has mercifully decided to stop berating you over your questionable life choices in the meantime.

Before I knew it, there was a rustle in the aisle outside the bin, then another click on the lock.

I considered threatening to shoot the judge, but to be honest, I didn’t have much of an endgame in mind, and I was a little sick of having her as a hostage anyway. Maybe I’d just threaten the next person to enter the bin and call it even.

“Don’t shoot.” I knew the voice before he spoke the second word. It was low and confident and laced with some emotion I couldn’t place. “I’m coming in, Charlotte. I’m unarmed.” Wait. Was he smiling?

I lowered the gun. “I’m not going to shoot you, Isaiah.”

He stepped fully into the bin, taking care to hold the door ajar behind him. As was his habit these days, he didn’t carry his white-tipped cane. In the Remnant, I’d assumed he simply hadn’t needed it, since he’d memorized the layout of the rooms he frequented. But now, I thought there must have been some other reason to avoid it. To avoid letting me see it.

“That’s a start, then.” He turned to the judge, still holding the door open behind him. “You may go,” he said.

She did, sparing me a final, judgy glare on her way out.

I returned it with my brightest smile, in spite of the darkness in Isaiah’s tone. “I think it’s a little late to talk about beginnings,” I said.

He tilted his head slightly, as though considering me. “Once, you let me show you the way out. I told you then you’d only find a bigger cage.”

I glanced at the upper corners of the bin. They were close enough that, if I stood on two crates, I could dust them for cobwebs. “Yeah, well, we’ve said a lot of things to each other, Ise. I’m never sure which ones still count.”

His smile faded in the silence that followed. The last time we spoke, he begged me to return to the Remnant with him, to be protected by him, and he’d called me his enemy when I refused. To be fair, the conversation before that one hadn’t gone much better. We’d been dancing around the idea of each other for a while now, but we could never nail down exactly what we both wanted. He’d once told me that he loved me. I still believed that was true.

But I had absolutely no idea what it meant.

I gestured around the bin. “At least this cage is mine. And it beats the hole you’ve kept me in for the last six weeks.”

He unclenched his jaw and gave me something like a patient sigh. “I had to make you see reason, Charlotte. Had to get my ducks in a row, too. You’re not in there anymore. You’re not dead, yet. I don’t have much to apologize for.”

I had nothing to say to that.

He continued. “So what’s next? You like it out here? You want to stay?”

“I don’t have too many options.”

“You don’t have any options at all. You can’t stay in my jail. Not after that nonsense with the judge. You’ll never make it through the appeal. You don’t belong with my people.”

“I’ll manage.”

“Like you are right now? I found you in less than an hour. How long do you think it will take the Commander? How long until you starve?”

“I’ll manage. Just because I picked the wrong—”

“Let me be more to the point.” He gestured to the bin. “I have you surrounded.”

“Ah. The perils of lock-picking in an enclosed space. I could write a book.”

“Let’s write that book, then, Charlotte. Jail. Not for you, though.” He ticked the words off on long, outstretched fingers. “So you fight. You’re looking at a stab wound, maybe a gunshot. The fight won’t last long. Then you’ll come quietly. You’ll be thrown out an airlock. It’s a pretty short book.”

I looked away. “Where are you going with this?”

“May I sit?”

I looked at him incredulously. “By all means. Big box to your right.”

He settled himself gracefully on a heavy red crate. “I’ve always been a believer in second chances. And it’d be a shame to let your skills go to waste.”

“Let me stop you right there. I’m not going to steal for you. Not anymore, anyway. Not after last time.”

“You just kidnapped a judge. When are you gonna quit pretending you’re so much better than me?”

“Better than you? Mr. King of the Remnant?”

“I found something I believe in. I’m not going to apologize for that, either. You’re just mad ’cause I’m right.”

“Oh, you’re really onto something there, Ise.” I shrugged at him and forced my voice down a notch. I had no idea why I found his words so irritating. “How’s this? I believe in not stealing anymore. Especially not for you.”

“We were friends for a long time.”

“Until we weren’t.”

“I didn’t have to be your enemy, little bird. I—” There was a long pause. “But you don’t hear the things I tell you. You think you know better. But this is the end. It’s me or the airlock. So maybe you’ll listen now.

“I said you have skills. I wasn’t talking about stealing. There’s more to you than that. You care about your family. I may not understand it, but I’ve always respected it. You want to belong somewhere. No, don’t deny it. You always have. ’S’why you got in with those clowns down below,” he said, referring to the group of thieves I’d run with back on Earth. “And you can be very convincing when you want to be. You keep a level head.” He looked thoughtful. “I can work with that.”

“Work… how? What did you have in mind?”

“My life… your life. I find I believe in more than just the people in the Remnant. I believe in the fact that we’re all still here. They did their best to keep us off the Arks, but here we are. We’re alive. We’re fighting.”

He rubbed his hands together, and it occurred to me that he was nervous. He was trying to convince me of something, and he actually cared how this turned out. Regardless of how he was acting.

“And I think that, in spite of everything that’s happened, deep down, you do too. You may not see it yet, but on some level, you and I are on the same side. And none of this would matter except for one last thing: we both believe in second chances. A clean slate.” He looked up from his hands. “You and me.”

I couldn’t even imagine what that might look like. He was right the first time: I was trapped. I couldn’t exactly waltz back into the Remnant on his arm. I was their enemy. “So, that would mean…”

“I thought about this a lot. It’s like, we betrayed each other. I’m not sorry that I used you. I had my reasons, but I could have gone about it differently. No one should have died.” He took a breath. “You have to forgive me, Charlotte.” He swallowed. “I’ve forgiven you.”

I frowned at him. “For what?”

He took a moment before answering. “For always choosing everything else instead of me.”

There was a slow silence between us.

My mouth hung open until I spoke, uneasily. “I’ll come with you, but I’m not your friend, Isaiah.” As much as I had once liked him, six weeks in his prison had given me plenty reasons to remain cautious. I shook my head. “I think you know that.” I paused, so that my last words hung in the air like poison. “And I don’t forgive you. For anything.”

He laughed, and the bin was full of the sound. It wasn’t a real laugh, and it didn’t sound like Isaiah. It lacked confidence. It was too loud. “So.” He clapped once and stood up. “You’re in.”

“It’s like you said, Ise. I don’t exactly have a choice.”

“Good enough for me. Let’s get out of here.”

I crossed my arms, still standing. “Where are we going?”

He shook his head. “Still not listening, are you? Don’t even pay attention at your own sentencing. The airlock, little bird. The airlock.”