Free Vessel by Lisa T. Cresswell

traveling, looking for food.”
    “You won’t find nothing here. Unless you wanna work for it?”
    “How’s that?”
    The crowd of boys stood all around Recks now, but none of them noticed me. “We were just going down to the river to see what we can find. Maybe you can help us.”
    “There’s a Cleansing going on. I came from there,” said Recks.
    “Heard they were burning someone down there tonight. Distractions always help. I’m Tiber. This is my tribe.” The tall, thin boy waited for Recks, sizing him up, as if deciding whether to accept him or not.
    “Recks.”
    “Where are you from?” asked Tiber like it was a test.
    “West of here … Buchen.”
    “You don’t look like anybody from Buchen I’ve ever seen,” said Tiber, scrunching his forehead. The boys around them laughed even though there was nothing funny.
    Recks shifted his weight. “Do you know where I can get some food or not?” he asked impatiently.
    Tiber narrowed his eyes and glared before answering. “Yeah. You can be the decoy. C’mon.”
    As Recks followed the boys away, I saw his hand signal for me to stay put. We hadn’t made a plan for this, but I wasn’t about to be left behind in the darkness. I waited until they rounded the corner and then silently followed. I wished Recks had hidden with me. He was far outnumbered, and Tiber’s tribe didn’t seem all that friendly. I guessed these were the people Recks wanted to hide my femaleness from. I wasn’t so sure he was any safer than I was. If we got out of this city together, I made up my mind to tell him next time we should forage in the woods. I could at least find edible plants there.
    As we approached the Cleansing fire, I realized the crowd was hushed again. They stood still in stick-straight rows around the flames, watching a procession of Reticents carrying someone tied to a stretcher made of logs and cloth . Is this an execution? My horror was like a hard chunk of bread I couldn’t choke back down my throat. I looked at the victim long enough to make sure it wasn’t Kinder and then focused on Recks’s back, determined not to lose sight of him.
    Tiber’s tribe moved slowly now, trying to avoid being noticed in the crowd. Try as I might, I lost Recks. I searched the dark crowd, growing frantic. Everyone looked the same. But then I found him with Tiber close behind, almost as if he was guiding Recks by the arm. I scurried behind the crowd to keep up, focusing only on Recks and not the man on the stretcher about to be executed. I couldn’t help seeing the man lifted upright to face the flames.
    It wasn’t Kinder, but it could’ve been. He was old like Kinder, with a full head of shaggy, gray hair. He slumped forward, held up only by his restraints and the people lifting the stretcher. He looked beaten, and I prayed he might already be dead to spare him the pain the Reticents planned. I remembered the hot oil on my face and tried not to imagine that feeling over my entire body. There was no doubt they’d tried to kill me, and I probably would’ve died if Master Dine hadn’t cared for me. The man on the platform wouldn’t be so lucky.
    “This man,” began Anders, “has defied Mother Sun’s law. He made machines. He taught others to make machines. He must pay for his crimes. The price? His life.”
    The crowd began to sing an old hymn, a funeral song without words, only the somber sounds of human cries. Tiber worried me. Was he taking Recks to Anders? Why would they come to a Cleansing to steal food? Why walk through the crowd when they could be hidden from it?
    Then I saw it—a shop on the edge of the square the tribe was creeping toward. The curb out front had a small grill with skewers of stringy meat hung over the flames. A man tended the skewers, turning them this way and that while watching the Cleansing from a distance. He must’ve expected customers after the show.
    The people on the street made it easy for me to get close to Recks and Tiber, but I