Even if I wanted to talk to him—and I do, I do—I would never give Nelline the satisfaction of hearing me say I don’t know who I am anymore, I don’t know who I have been.

When we get back to the church, I commandeer Daniel’s office. I force myself not to look over my shoulder when Mr. Cheeks takes Nelline away. Loud noises come from deep within the building—shelterless wastelanders hiding from the heat of the day, just as my stepfather promised at the dedication.

I hit the projection function on my cuff and generate a list based on worlds whose census list Nik Nik as emperor. I stare at the two hundred or so numbers. I wait for the nervousness, the defeating apprehension that has come during every practice test. It never arrives. I do the initial comparison in half the time I would be given on the test. I double-check my data, but I didn’t make a mistake.

The results are good news for the revolution. Ashtown in Earth 175 has a higher death rate and shorter life expectancy than 90 percent of the worlds where Nik Nik rules, and those where it is close are so highly numbered there might be environmental factors contributing to the mortality rate. I’m relieved, but not surprised. I’d already decided that if it weren’t that way, if Adra was all bark and no bite and people were just as well off, I’d duck out into the desert and leave Nik Nik high and dry. But Adra is killing people who get to live almost everywhere else.

Once I review the primary figures, I go after little things. Ashtown here exports fewer goods to the Wiles. They seem to make less of everything, and they import more. They are operating at a staggering deficit, fabric and produce bought in bulk by the emperor from Wiley.

But why? He couldn’t hope to sell it back to his people for profit, since most don’t make enough in actual currency to buy their weekly expenses. Nearly half of the House’s clients pay in barter—favors, grown food, weatherproofing materials, any kind of metal.

I call out, hoping for Esther, but Nik Nik comes in.

“Yes?”

    “Those eight or so buildings a mile from here? Is that still an interior farm?”

Nik Nik shakes his head. “You mean Hangars Row? That’s the runners’ machine shop, and Adra’s base in the Rurals.”

“Why does the emperor have a base in the Rurals?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it. But he has a base in the deep wastes too.”

“What does he charge for the food he buys from Wiley?”

“Three days’ wages will get you a week’s ration for those who can swing it. Otherwise, he’ll take metal. He takes metal for almost anything.”

“And no one grows their own?”

“Not openly. He banned individual farming two years ago. He says it’s dangerous. But some of the poorer families never stopped. They grow aboveground, and they’re just as healthy as the rest of us.”

I turn back to my screen. “He should be buying synthetic soil from Wiley City. Not whole produce.”

But the emperor wants his people dependent on him for food. Why? So he can hoard their scraps of iron?

Nik Nik leaves me in peace. I bring back the master list of worlds. I’m missing something, but I can’t see it. I scroll through screen after screen, barely scanning the ruler histories, bothered by the problem of Adra’s stockpiled metal.

* * *

“MISS ME, KITTEN?” Nelline says, biting at the rough skin on her lip. Her hands are chained to a cot. Even from here I can see the straps cutting into her wrists. I picture Mixxie’s face, trying to hate this version of myself, but I can’t. I just feel sad, like I’ve failed somehow.

I step forward. “I think it’s a trick of the brain,” I say. “The way I can’t make myself hate you even though you’re a bloodrat.”

She hisses at the insult but stops short of denying it. She sold people out to runners. There is no worse thing a person can be in Ashtown.

    “It doesn’t go both ways, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she says. “What do you want?”

“Help.” She snorts, but I continue anyway. “I’m missing something. I can’t see it, but you know this world better than I do. And you know everything about Adra.”

She sits a little taller under the compliment, but keeps her face disinterested.

“And I should help you why?”

“Because you’ll want to be in Nik Nik’s favor when he comes out on top.”

She shrugs. “The idea of being in the pocket of an emperor lost its appeal when the current one tried to kill me.”

I take a risk. I sit beside her.

“Do you know why I have his name on my back?”

“You told Adra—”

“That was a lie. No one gets the emperor’s name tattooed because he’s good at his job. Part of his job is letting Ashtowners hate and blame him for our lives. No, I got it because I did the exact same thing you did. I failed at being a sex provider, so I weaseled my way into being the emperor’s kept woman. I thought being with him was the worst thing that could happen to me…but now I’ve met Adra.”

“He didn’t beat you for getting the tattoo? For letting everyone know?” The surprise in her question makes her sound young, and the hope in it makes me feel old.

“No. Nik Nik on my world was violent too. He was quick with a backhand. He’d throw something when he was mad, choke me when I said the wrong thing. But he was more like a child than a tyrant.”

She sneers at me. “You loved him,” she says, like I can’t be trusted.

“I didn’t,” I say, and this time I’m sure it’s true. “This Nik Nik seems to be better in every way than mine. But I don’t really know him, so that could be a lie. I’m telling you that even if he’s no better than the man I know, it’s still a better pocket to be in than Adra’s.”

She’s staring down at the concrete floor. The lights overhead make a dull shine between her feet. She takes her time, but eventually she looks up.

    “What do you think you’re missing?”

“I don’t understand the way Adra does business. In most worlds there’s an interior farm in Hangars Row, so they don’t have to buy produce from Wiley City. Some of the other buildings are used for textiles or pottery that get sold back. It’s like this Ashtown doesn’t make anything themselves.”

“You’re right. You are missing something. Adra is paranoid. He’s sworn for years that men in black suits are trying to kill him, but no one else has ever seen them.”

“Is he using?” I ask, though he’d be the first emperor that I know of with the taste.

“Obviously. Though whatever he’s taking is so pure he never has any of the side effects. It’s definitely not what he distributes to the masses.”

“What does this have to do with Hangars Row?”

“Because his paranoia inspired him. Hangars Row is a weapons stockpile. Adra reinvented the gun.”

* * *

I CANNOT, AT first, process what she’s saying. Guns haven’t existed in my lifetime. But I remember when I was a girl, people saying that if runners had to use guns instead of vehicles, they would do far worse than killing one or two people each.

There has never been weapons manufacturing in Ashtown, but it was Nik Senior who destroyed all available weapons brought from across the desert and the ocean beyond. He made the law that metal could be used only in domestic or industrial settings—partially a warlord’s attempt to ease the fears of his new people, and partially to disarm any would-be usurpers. Runners had to make weapons out of vehicles, and knives had to be useful for kitchen work or tanning even if you’d only intended them for murder. Even the emperor would learn to kill with chemical-filled rings and teeth when denied the easy availability of an obvious weapon. An art he passed on to both his sons.

    Wiley City’s stunners are what some think of as guns now, but the city’s been without guns even longer than we have, so they aren’t really. They are plastic and shoot a pulse that temporarily paralyzes but won’t kill. Nik Senior’s edict didn’t stop killing, but now people have to be in contact with their victims, have to feel their deaths.

In the wake of Nelline’s revelation I try to imagine what my childhood would have been like if Nik Senior’s men were armed. How I would feel if the deaths were quieter, quicker, but more common. I wonder if you feel it less, with guns. If so many people are killed with so little effort, is it easier to pretend they aren’t lives? That everything is fine? It’s different, I imagine, from seeing flattened forms like blood ghosts on the sand or hearing the screams in the streets during the parade. No, killing should take longer than a heartbeat. Murder should be unignorable, always.

CHAPTER TEN