Free City of Savages by Lee Kelly Page B

Rows of bent backs and beaded brows. I’m obviously the only one who’s taken a million breaks since dawn.
    But no one’s giving me any grief.
    Something’s changed since the street-fights last night. I’ve seen it in the looks of other fieldworkers. In the smug smiles of the whorelords during the feast last night, and at this morning’s rundown of duties. There are nods of respect, talks of my “resourcefulness,” whispers of my “potential.”
    Sarah, Rolladin has to have her eye on your youngest now , I’d heard Lauren say to Mom this morning.
    You’ll be wearing a warlord shawl by this time next year . Mark my words , Old Lady Warbler had cackled to me at the festival, as I’d moved past her crowded pit to our own penthouse of fires.
    Trevor even overheard Council member Lory talking with Cass last night after they were good and wasted, telling Cass she needed to lay off me from now on. That with how impressed Rolladin must be with my performance on 65th Street, someone will pledge me, and I’ll be one of them soon enough.
    One of them .
    I’ve been raised my whole life to hate the whorelords. And I do. At least I think I do. They’re technically prisoners of war along with the rest of us, stuck on this dead island just like we are. But they’re the “chosen” ones—when our city was surrendered to the Red Allies, the story goes, our numb-nuts captors put them in charge. Well, I guess they put Rolladin in charge, and she fleshed out her ranks with bruisers and eye candy. Bruisers that get to beat us up and boss us around in exchange for food and safety.
    A bit of a bullshit exchange, obviously.
    I start picking at my lip as I sit, and the scab that’s formed overnight breaks apart. I think more about the matches, about the way the crowd cheered for me, and the way people looked at me differently afterward, like I wasn’t someone to be messed with. And I wonder, would being a warlord really be the end of the world? Extra rations for my mom and Sky, rooms at Belvedere Castle. And I could pretty much guarantee that no one would ever hurt my family.
    I watch Mom and Sky in the fields, as they rip the light-green husks from the yellow cobs. I don’t know why I’m even entertaining this. Mom would kill me. It’s not just that the warlord gig is dangerous—combing the Upper East and West Sides for feeders and raiders, being on the front lines of Rolladin’s crazy moods and whims. It’d also be the biggest insult Mom could think of. She hates Rolladin so much, it’s like a drug, and sometimes I think she’s so hopped up on it, she can’t see straight. If I ever “worked” for Rolladin, Mom might very well disown me.
    I think of Mom’s beef with Rolladin. Then I think of Rolladin breaking up my match, of stopping Cass before she reached for that knife—even though Rolladin was the one who forced our family into the whole mess in the first place. Why? It doesn’t make any sense. It works me up sometimes when I realize how little we know about my mother, and this city, and why things are the way they are. But unlike Sky, I refuse to let it drive me crazy.
    So I take a breath. Then I glance at my mom and sister, at the way the light hits the grass so it looks like they’re working in a field full of silver. And I say thanks for what I do know: that I’m lucky.
    I eventually get up and work for a few more hours, before a couple of whorelords start shouting over the fields, “Break time!” We all drop our tools and converge on the ration lines like an army of ants. Today’s midday ration won’t be anything as glamorous as last night’s stew, but who cares? I’m starving. Mom takes a break to talk with Lauren near the farming edges, but I can’t wait. I push Sky towards the front.
    “Cornmeal or potato hash?” I quiz Sky as we take our place in line behind about thirty fieldworkers.
    “Hash, definitely,” she says as she bends backward to stretch.
    “No way,” Trevor says as he just