The Choosing (The Arcadia Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  There was nothing else to listen to anyway.

  "I'll take care of the dishes," she told her mother, and Pippa could escape, "Hey, Pip, I'll let you tell me everything about Denny and give you my most sage advice if you'll help me out."

  If Pip had any sense she'd have declined – Livy had even less knowledge about boys than her sister. At almost sixteen she'd been kissed once and once narrowly avoided the clutches of a group of Centurions drunk and stumbling from a tavern with ill intentions on their minds and too much distance between them and the closest pleasure palace. Otherwise, she'd found no one she wanted to spend her life with, no one she even wanted to spend an afternoon with, and that was fine. She had her family. She had her grandfather. If it came to that, she had her friends and she had a goat.

  But as long as Pip thought she knew something and was willing to help, Livy was totally taking advantage of that.

  Spring evenings in Pastoreum were cool. The house was divided by sections, into Grandfather Bane's curtained off room with its own exit, to the kitchen and eating area where they all spent the most time in winter, to the room where they sat beside the fire in the cooler seasons like a spring night. There were three bedrooms past that, her parents' and the boys’ room and the girls'. The house wasn't huge, but they'd done all right. Her father was respected in the community, able to make things work again when they'd stopped and willing to work on Before Times machinery. He'd more success than most and the Centurions would bring him their own malfunctioning machines and farm equipment. For all that they worked directly for the Plutarch, most of them belonged to enormous family clans in order to eek out a living from the ground, just like everyone else.

  And not just like everyone else. Thinking so got people killed. A Centurion could be posted in a community's midst for a decade and turn on them the first time anyone did anything remotely traitorous. They were cold, frightening, distant men. That her father could count them as customers was a saving grace at times. That her father might count them as friends was nothing more than a fantasy.

  She'd just finished the evening chores, and Pippa had disappeared into the family room without a backward glance (and you're very welcome for my sage advice, Livy thought, amused) when Grandfather Bane emerged from his room, holding the book diffidently.

  "You found a prize, Livy girl," he said, smiling at her. His blue eyes, so like her own, looked faded. "This is Shakespeare. Henry the Fifth. About a ruler in Before Times, about a war to end all wars. I can tell you the story, perhaps better with everyone, but do you want to practice?"

  Livy grinned. "Always."

  Grandfather eased himself onto one of the chairs at the table and placed the book reverently there. Maddy would have a fit if she saw the dirty thing that had come out of the earth now spread on her table. Even Livy felt a qualm, but she could clean the table after. In the next few minutes, she'd forgotten about it as she read a section at random, stumbling over words she didn't know and listening as Grandfather Bane carefully and patiently outlined the words, one thumb tilted so he could follow her progress underlining her words.

  "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead," Livy read. "In peace there's nothing so becomes a man, As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger." She stopped there, tilting her face up to her grandfather's.

  "Do you understand, girl?"

  She shook her head. It was confusing, too much story about too much history she'd never been taught, set in countries that didn't even exist anymore if they ever had and hadn't simply been figments of the writer's imagination. Her grandfather had told her Shakespeare had written about actual events, but who was to say? It had been hundreds of years ago.

  Trying to place what had happened when in the Before Times was like trying to logic out a dream. But if anyone would know what her parents had so suddenly stopped talking about, it would be her grandfather.

  Livy looked at him contemplatively. He looked strong tonight, and excited, delighted with her find and with her reading, her curiosity and ability to learn.

  "Do you want to stop?" he asked her, sounding sorry.

  "No," she said at once. "Well, not yet. But I wanted to ask you something."

  "My dear girl, my world ruler in training, my rebel and star," he said, a string of nonsense names that delighted her as much as the way he captured her hand and kissed it. “You need only to ask."

  I'll bet, Livy thought, but she tried anyway. "At dinner tonight, mother and father were talking – "

  "And you were eavesdropping," he said good-naturedly.

  "It's the only way to learn anything!"

  He smiled and gestured for her to continue.

  "They mentioned a new tax year," she started, and saw the instant caution come into her grandfather's eyes. He was no longer smiling. Only waiting. "And the Centurions are in Tundra. There's – something is making everyone nervous. But taxes are nothing new. And then they said something about sixteen and I'm the only one just turned sixteen."

  She tried to look calm, to watch his eyes as if of course she expected he would answer her, but sitting beside him at the table, her hands beneath the table were bunched in tight fists.

  She saw the struggle in his eyes as he decided what to tell her, and she saw the relief in them as the family in the next room began to rise, banking the fire and moving the furniture around, preparing to go to bed because the night was now late and the candle and oil lamps expensive.

  A little panicked, she looked to him again. Please, she thought, without quite knowing why; please.

  He let her down. He stood, more easily than he usually moved, and put a loving hand on her shoulder. "Whatever happens in your life, Livy, wherever you end up and whatever you must do, remember yourself. Remember your family and where you come from." Then, smiling, quoting one of the books he'd read to Livy earlier, "To thine own self be true."

  Before her parents came back into the room or her brothers exploded into it to run in circles, trying to exhaust themselves, before Pippa came back to ask one more question about Denny who Livy was actually starting to feel just a tad sorry for, her grandfather added, "To thine own self be true," and disappeared behind his curtain.

  He'd taken the book with him.

  Chapter 3

  She dreamed that night. Of the stories Grandfather Bane had told her. How the world she'd been born into was nothing like the world that had come before. It had been long ago, when there were too many countries in the world to comfortably count, when there had been different beliefs and people who felt they were free to believe them and those who felt that only their own beliefs and religions and gods and rulers were true. There'd been a time when anyone could hold weapons and life was both precious and cheap, when bands of citizens disrupted the government and rulers reigned by country and land, not under one unified rule.

  She dreamed of the rise of the Great City from the ashes of the Great War and the ruler who had come to bring absolute, everlasting peace, the one ruler, the Plutarch. Some said he had been a soldier in the Great War; others said he had been the cause, the assassin of kings and presidents and dictators alike. Whatever the truth, absolute peace comes with an absolute price, Grandfather Bane said. If everyone was to share in peace, then everyone was to suffer under limitations of freedom never before imagined.

  Freedom. Her father had said the bullets were freedom.

  In her sleep, Livy tossed and turned, confused. And frightened.

  The Plutarch divided the world into the provinces – Pastoreum, the agricultural land; Tundrus, the icy mountainous region where her father traded for metal and abandoned technology from Before; Oceanus, the oceans and ocean communities.

  In her dream, she shivered at the thought of the Void, the Forbidden Zone, vast and arid and lifeless, a scorching sun overhead by day and killing frosts at night. The place of punishment, banishment, the source of childhood night
mares.

  And Arcadia. The center of law and peace and sanity.

  But she woke then, the fear of the Void somehow combining with the dream of Arcadia, her heart pounding and sweat standing out on her forehead and a confused thought about taxes and collectors and why the two had sounded separate in her mother's words.

  It was a long time before Livy slept again that night.

  "Don't you think David is gorgeous?" Tarah asked.

  They were working side by side, tending the rows of potato plants, making certain the only things coming up were plants and not weeds.

  The spring sun shone down not quite so bright this afternoon, but after her restless night Livy was tired, irritable and still worried. Whatever had her parents worried and her grandfather spouting warnings without telling her the story that went with the warnings had her jumping at shadows.

  When Tarah caught up, working on the row directly next to Livy's, she'd been contemplating what she could do to worm the information out of one of her parents or even her grandfather, though he was a lot cagier than her parents. Probably because Liv's was the second generation of sneaky teens he'd put up with.

  Now Tarah was asking her –

  "Who's David?" Livy asked.

  Lowering her voice so it was nearly inaudible, Tarah said, "No one."

  Livy raised her brows and pretended to consider. "In that case, I think he's the handsomest boy I've ever seen."

  Tarah rolled her eyes.

  "No, seriously. That, or you've gone crazy."

  Tarah gestured. "Keep weeding and listen. Something's happening."

  Just that fast, the humor faded for Livy. Her skin prickled at Tarah's words. Ever since she'd found the book, life had seemed off. It wasn't the first time she'd found something and taken it home. She'd never been discovered before, and the penalty for such infractions as not turning over a relatively uninteresting find like a Before Times book was usually mild. She'd never heard of anyone being branded a traitor for it but Centurion rules could change in a heartbeat. There was a first time for everything, and the book wasn't the only thing that was weird.

  Her parents, talking about tax collectors.

  Livy frowned to herself. No. They'd been talking about taxes, and collectors.

  "What's happening?" she asked Tarah, her voice casual as if it were nothing more than a greeting.

  Tarah said, "David smiled at me this morning. He was wearing a red t-shirt under his hard wovens, and that really got my attention."

  Livy moved forward the distance of two potato plants without even pretending to weed. "Can you just tell me? Because you are awful at the – whatever it is you're doing. Innuendo? Codes?"

  "Being discreet," Tarah said, but though her tone was light, she didn't smile. "There are riders on the road."

  Livy went completely cold. "Centurions?" Her own voice was barely above silent.

  "Big as life and twice as ugly. Red coats, brass buttons. But." She stopped, frowning.

  Livy was coming close to the end of her row. That would probably signal the end of her shift. She paused and made a show of digging a rock out of the way of one of the plants. "But what? Come on, Tare. There's not much time."

  "Okay," her friend said in a hiss. "There are Centurions on the road. They're coming this way. I got this from Dean. He saw them. Not a friend of his or anything else. My brother himself."

  Which explained some of Tarah's unusual subtly. Dean was often where he wasn't supposed to be. Probably he had been again.

  "They're coming slow. But they're coming. It's not just riders. They're pulling chariots and they're armed. And – " She paused, as if uncertain how to continue.

  "And?"

  "There's one with them. Another Centurion? Only – he's wearing a purple sash."

  Livy swallowed hard. He was wearing the Plutarch's colors and being brought in a chariot the day after all the mysteries with her parents and grandfather. Her heart began to pound. "A Magistrate," she breathed, and saw Tarah's sudden understanding just before the other girl dropped back a little, separating them so they didn't appear to be talking too much.

  A Magistrate. Terror and guilt tried to leap up in her. It had only been an old book, of stories, not history, but what if what she'd done had brought a Magistrate to them?

  Just as quickly as the panicky guilt came, it fled. If that were the case, the riders wouldn't be so close to Pastoreum that news of their presence could be reported. They would only just be setting out.

  Which meant they were coming for some other reason.

  Centurions or not, it was something different. Something new.

  Livy felt her heartbeat change, pounding now with curiosity. Trying to catch up with Tarah again, she whispered urgently, "How long?" Because if they were coming, when would they come? She wanted time to talk with her grandfather and maybe her father, and –

  And the civil defense alarm began to sound.

  The chaotic response was instant. The second the clarion call of the alarm split the springtime air, everyone in the fields dropped their farming implements and stared at each other, then began to run.

  The mounted overseers conversed only briefly before forming into columns, creating an honor guard of sorts to escort the running villagers.

  Tarah grabbed Livy's arm, dragging her from her shocked incomprehension. Only seconds ago she'd wanted change, wanted something to happen, and now terror filled her at the thought that something was changing: The Plutarch had sent messengers.

  But why?

  And when Tarah tugged her, Livy fell into step with her, racing with everyone else toward the village center.

  Only to stop short at the sight that met them there. The citizens of Agara all crowded into the square. At first glance it looked like everyone in the town was there. Livy felt a wave of disorientation sweep over her. The square was familiar, from the dais and podium where local selectmen and selectwomen ran for governmental posts that made them figureheads at best, puppets at worst. There were the scales, where barters were enacted and the paperwork, such as it was for their largely illiterate village, was signed and recorded. The usual buildings surrounded the square – the bakers where everyone bought bread, where they pooled their hoarded sugar for special events. The constable's office, where Tom Robbins, who passed for law in the village, did his work. The pump station, centrally located in order to respond fast in the event of fire. The communal baths, the communal brick ovens, the communal laundry – everything about the community.

  The community itself was here, under the wide open blue sky and the beauty of Pastoreum.

  And the representatives of the world government were there, from Arcadia, the red-jacketed Centurions taking the dais, pushing aside the selectman who tried to stand up to them. His voice broke off in a squeak, mid-protest about the new taxes, nothing was due until the following year, they'd paid in lamb's wool and mutton, in grain and corn, in coin and the sweat from their hands and what more –

  He was silenced by a brutal backhanded gesture from the closest of the guards, who didn't even pause to ask permission or ascertain what he should do from any of his superiors or fellows. The Centurions were law unto themselves and no serf in a Pastoreum village could question them.

  Livy held tight to Tarah's hand as she scanned the crowds for her parents or her grandfather. From her limited viewpoint, all she could see was a clutch of familiar but panicked faces. No one stood still. The crowd rippled like water in a rain storm, constantly shifting and breaking apart and reforming.

  "Do you see anyone?" Tarah demanded. Her voice broke, making her sound as panicked as Livy felt.

  She squeezed Tarah's hand tight, terrified of losing her within the crowd. With her heart banging in her throat, her ears buzzing with stress, even the familiar faces of friends and neighbors seemed strange and threatening.

  You don't know that anything is happening. But Grandfather had told her about the Centurions, he'd told her stories about the Plutarch and the rule that
had started across the world, the way previously free countries had fallen one after another to the blinding white missile strikes.

  "I see everyone,” Livy said, and stopped fighting against the peristaltic movement of the crowd. The bodies around her kept eddying like water, pushing in, in, in toward the stage where a line of Centurions stood shoulder to shoulder, red-jacketed, brass buttons gleaming in the sunlight.

  The sound of the villagers was a roar of sound, battling the terrified ringing in Livy's ears. The knot of people around them grew tighter and tighter until Livy panicked. Neither she nor Tarah stood much taller than five feet. Even as the Centurions began to shout for silence, Livy identified the sound of the crowd.

  It wasn't just the normal sounds of a crowd, the noise of voices raised in confusion and curiosity and villagers calling each other's names.

  This was the sound of anger, growing more strident as the Centurions began to stamp their feet upon the boards of the stage, demanding quiet. From somewhere just behind her and Tarah, Livy heard someone shout, "We've been quiet long enough!" Other voices took it up as a chant, repeating the words until they became a battle cry and the crowd began to push forward toward the stage while those in the front, battered, began to push back, until the entire mass was in motion, rocking back and forth, the available space between individuals growing smaller and smaller.

  "We need to get out of this," Tarah shouted, her eyes wide, and she tugged at Livy, trying now to lead her out of the village square.

  Too late. From the edges of the crowd, more Centurions appeared, whipping the villagers forward into the square, leaving them with tattered flesh and clothes, blood mingling with sweat under the heavy, hot sun.

  The shouting grew deafening as a lone Centurion took the stage, his red jacket immaculate even in the spring heat, his brass buttons polished to a blinding shine, and the purple sash worn across his chest proclaiming him a Magistrate.