Hope in Ruins Book III: The Fountain and the City of Salt

Chapter 18: Prison Cells

ANDA

Everyone says they want to see the future, but Anda knew what the future really was: a ghost. A figure, nothing more than a wash of light and color over the now, something composed of the past and present and solid and yet wholly intangible. No matter what they say, no one really wants to see ghosts. But they kept asking.

"Dr. Henderson says you're not cooperating." Aaron folded his hands in his lap and watched her from behind glasses like coins.

"I... I don't know what to say. I'm doing... everything I can," Anda said. They sat in the medical bay where she had been for the past few weeks. Since the coup. The failed coup. The coup that she had single-handedly stopped, saving countless lives, including the life of the man before her. That coup.

But in the days since Cassandra's failed uprising, the City of Salt had gone silent. Even from inside the medical building, far from the masses hidden in the ruins, Anda knew the world outside was silent. She couldn't hear birds or voices, only whispers, and the wind and the gentle buzz of the fluorescent lights. She wondered where all the people had gone and what had happened to those who'd been backing Cassandra. For weeks she'd seen no one but Dr. Henderson, Eli, Seth, and a few guards. The Fox had been banished by a blind hung around Eli's neck.

She looked down at the blue light from the blind around her own neck. "You're the one not... not cooperating," she said to Aaron.

For weeks she'd asked and begged and pleaded, but they wouldn't let the Fox out. Aaron had lied, and Aaron remained resolute. Dr. Henderson said the Fox was dangerous. She said that Aaron had considered Anda's request with great care, but the Fox could not be trusted, and they would not risk everything because a liar might know something. That was all the doctor would say before she returned to her questions and tests and exams, all of which Anda seemed to be failing. She hadn't seen Aaron since the night Hannah had been murdered. But now Aaron the Liar had finally come to see her: Anda Alderman, Sister of the Stars.

"Anda," Aaron said, pinching at the bridge of his nose. "It is far more complicated than you realize. The Fox is old. Very old. And he's mentally... not all reliable. There is something wrong with him."

"What about... what about Eli?" she asked. "He's even older than the Fox, isn't he?"

"He is. But he has proven himself more coherent. And he wants to help us. Besides, Dr. Henderson will not work with the Fox, so Eli will have to do. Which brings me back to why I'm here. Dr. Henderson says you're not cooperating."

"I... I am. But I... I want to talk to the Fox."

She sat on a gurney, her gray socked feet tucked under the sheets, and stared out the window—anywhere but at Aaron. Although the room was white and sparse and cold, it did not have the cleanness of the snow outside. Not that the snow outside was clean anymore. Not after the failed coup. Even days, weeks, later, the snow outside had been red and trampled, and the stench of smoke had lingered in the air. They'd saved the burning building, how she didn't know, but it smoked and smoldered in the cold in the distance. The smoke of it wafted up and veiled the mountain.

"I can't do that. And we need you to start cooperating," Aaron said. Some medical device beeped. Even in the stillness, there was the constant hum and whirl and beeping of medical equipment. Somehow those sounds heightened the silence that Anda felt. Like hearing your own heartbeat in the quiet.

"I told you, I... I am cooperating. And... and what happened to Cassie? And Stephen?" she asked almost timidly. While Cassandra and Stephen had led the coup, she had stopped it just as much for them as for Aaron.

Aaron shifted, but not uncomfortably. "They are awaiting trial. I've had other things to deal with."

"Will they be...." Anda smelled rosemary. Pepper. Rose. Death. How did death make her way into the medical bay? How long had she been sitting in the corner, waiting, watching? Death is a woman holding flowers and herbs in her hands. Death tilts her blushing cheeks to her bouquet of sorrow and inhales deeply. Anda didn't think death would look like that. Lovely.