Free Unbound by Shawn Speakman Page A

Quiet creatures?”
    “Bar’dyn,” she said, no argument or anger in her voice. “Three strides tall. Skin like elm bark—hard, cracked, but pliable. And others. Smoother skin. Just as big. Wide, thick races. Powerful.”
    “A land of giants,” Darius put in.
    “Slight races, too” Anna added, “but just as . . . driven.”
    “Driven to what?” Darius asked, making a show of impatience.
    Anna took my hand. The way she did on those rare occasions when she needed what strength I had for her.
    “I was bred.”
    The anger in my mind almost put me down. My chest heaved, ached, for my dear one.
    For maybe the first time, Darius had no response. I’d like to think it was a matter of decorum, as opposed to the calculated understanding that challenging such an admission would undermine his chances of winning the debate.
    I caught a look at Martin’s face, grateful for the sympathy I saw there.
    After a painful silence, Anna went on. “It wasn’t torture. Or amusement.” Her brow creased. “They’re trying to accomplish something. They’re trying to make something.” For all her strength, she began silently to weep. “Few of the children lived. Those that did were taken. The ones that I can remember, anyway. Sometime during those years, my mind left me. It’s like I was living backward.” She turned her eyes on me, and spoke in a broken voice. “Until the other night, when I awoke here, in the Grove, in a convalescent room. With Lour.”
    Then she shut down. She shook her head. A bitter look like shame—but not exactly that—took hold of her face. And she stumbled from the theater on weak legs. Her story done.
    No one spoke.
    I’m not sure how long it had been before Savant Bellerex stood and came onto the discourse theater floor. In a soft voice, “Those portions of this year’s forum position that have to do with the Bourne and those that live there . . . will be removed.”
    Darius had an argument in his eyes, but he kept his silence until only he and I stood on the theater floor. It was an odd kind of company we kept. For my part, I didn’t trust myself to move. Darius had stayed to say something.
    “You win, Lour,” he conceded, a note of humility in his voice. “I still don’t think you had a story proof. But one thing I can promise you: the League will now come. I’ll see to it. Formally. Fully. And with time, the position we argued today will be adopted and published.”
    “But not this year,” I mocked.
    He ignored me. “You won’t see it, though. Because you’ll be gone.”
    I’d anticipated this. Still, I hated to hear it. And it annoyed me, besides. “Gone, huh?”
    “Legally, you could be sent to a nice pit for what you did,” he said, conversationally. “But I’ll spare you that. Just gather your things and leave the Grove.”
    “Because I make you uncomfortable,” I said with a sour smile. “Me all white and fragile. Strange eyes and slow feet. I’m not a portrait of vigorous thought, am I? And I stick in your craw, hell the whole college’s craw, for that. Albino with bad bones.”
    “By tomorrow,” he replied, and strode away, boot heels clacking.
    I’d thought I was alone. When I took a last look around, I saw a figure in the shadows of the top row of seats. He stared at me a good long while. Then got up, and disappeared through a door behind him. But even at that distance, even not truly seeing who it was, I felt him. The indifference. The Velle.
    The creature out of the Bourne thought I’d done him a favor. I wasn’t so sure.
    He’d been right, of course. I’d have made this argument, anyway. But something was sticking in my own craw. How had he gotten through the Veil? If the stories were true, something was happening. Changing.
    * * * * *
    When I thought I could walk, I strolled with my cane through Aubade Grove on my way to find Anna. I took in the five great towers and their observation domes hundreds of strides above me. I walked the great circumference