The Reject. Edyth Bulbring

of Slum City. All I wanted was to leave with Nicolas and have a new life, not fulfil some foolish prophecy. I do not fight other people’s wars. I fight only for myself and for Nicolas.

      Reader totters onto the desk clutching a book. “I heard that noisy bird. What is the news?”

      I cannot help myself. I laugh. “The teller says my sister will be well again and Nicolas is alive. The war is over.”

      “If you are sure, my lovely. You are certain the bird never lied?”

      The old man is ignorant. Tellers do not lie.

      The seacraft lurches as a wave beats against the beam. Reader clutches the book in his arms and grabs the railing. “We must anchor close to shore for the night. Tomorrow we will sniff the stench of our homeland for the last time and say goodbye.”

      “No, at first light tomorrow we’re going home. There’s something I have to do. Then we can go on our journey.” I will find Nicolas and ask him to come away with me as we planned. There is no one else in Mangeria for me to stay for. Not Mistress, my mother, who as a young girl took up with a Savage boy from Slum City and bore his child. I do not trust that she’d believed I had died at birth, that she had not abandoned me. She would have been at the forefront in the war against the rebels, fighting my father, Xavier. The man she once loved.

      I will not stay for him either. He does not even know I am his daughter, and would probably care rat scat if he did. As for Kitty, she would not thank me for refusing to join the rebels.

      But … there is my sister. Larissa does not know we share blood, and Mistress will make sure I never see her again. I shake my head. In time, Larissa will forget me.

      “This is not wise, Juliet. I do not trust the bird. It might not be safe. Sometimes lies are told not in what is said, but what is not said. We must hoist the sail tomorrow and leave as the sun rises.”

      The old man cannot stop me. I have to go back. If Nicolas won’t forgive me for deserting him, I will go on the voyage without him.

      Reader wets his finger and holds it in the air. “We do not have much time to dilly-dally. I fear a storm is coming to these shores.”

      I wake suddenly in the middle of the night. I cannot breathe. A dead weight sits on my chest and my arms are pinned down.

      A hand smothers my mouth and nose. I am suffocating.

      A monster peers down at me, its face cut in half by the faint light of the one-eyed moon. Black eyes stare into mine.

      “Don’t make a sound, else I’ll slit your throat.” The voice is male. His eyes are round. His hair is a savage mop of barbed wire. Not a monster: a boy from Slum City. He presses something cold against my neck.

      I kick out, but my legs are tied. I try to bite his hand, but it presses down harder, grinding my head into the deck. I force a harsh sound out of my throat, stripping it raw.

      “Stop messing around and shut your gob-hole,” he says.

      A foul smell fills my nose. The boy stinks of rot, and oil. I make my body slack and he pulls away a rusty knife. I run my tongue over my lips and taste the filth from his hand.

      “Who else is on this seacraft? How many of you? And don’t lie to me else you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

      Lying is one of my natural talents, one I have nurtured these past fifteen years. It has saved my skin in many tricky situations.

      “Five others. Scavvies. They’re sleeping below,” I tell him. “When they catch you, they’re going to rip you apart.”

      Scavvies – the Necromunda who scavenge for relics in the city that was drowned when the seas rose after the conflagration. They are the toughest scum from Slum City; burnt black by the sun, their skin salted from the sea.

      He grabs me by the hair and drags me across the deck. I am trussed up to the mast like a piece of meat ready for the fire. Fit for some Posh’s dinner. He tucks away the knife in his satchel, his grin mocking me. His teeth are jagged and sharp like bits of bone.

      “And the old man I found wandering around below, babbling to himself? Did you forget to tell me about him?”

      If the boy has hurt Reader, I will claw that smile off his face and make him eat it. “He’s just a past trader, a useless piece of rubbish. I hope you pushed him overboard.”

      The boy chuckles. “He said the nine Locusts on board would break me in two and use my spine to beat me before dragging me off to Savage City.” He saunters around the mast, checking the knots on the rope and pulling it tighter around me. He grins when I wince.

      “So, I’m right in thinking it’s just the two of you on this sloop. No Scavvies, no Locusts. It’s a big seacraft for one skinny girl and a blind old man.”

      He could not know that the sloop belongs to Nicolas’s father, that he sails it in summer to the pleasure resorts along the coast. If the boy swam out in the dark, he will not have seen the family emblem, a gloved fist, branding the front of the bow.

      But the seacraft is mine now. I will not allow this Captain Hook and his stinking knife to steal it from me.

      “What do you want? I’ve got food and water. Take what you need and get off my sloop.”

      “Yours? I don’t think so. I’ve always wanted to be a captain.” He limps over to a container of water, dragging his foot. He is injured. Weak.

      I could fight him. If I could untie my hands.

      The boy sprawls out on the deck and massages his foot. No, he is not wounded. His foot is a bunched club. He takes off his shirt and uses it to clean the oil off his body. His skin is brown, covered in a fine pelt of black hair. Scars criss-cross his bony back. They are old scars, like red twine bulging through his skin. The base of his spine is clear: there are no six numbers marking him.

      My mark is still on my spine, the same as all citizens of Mangeria – Posh and Scum alike. It determines what trades we’ll have and who our fate-mates will be. But The Machine cannot track me now. My mark is dead.

      As the boy scrubs his face I see his features. His face is dark and gaunt, hungry like a rat. Squatting above his eyes are growths like two small horns. My stomach knots with disgust. A club-footed devil with horns on his head, and no mark on his spine. A Reject: the worst scum. The Machine would have found him useless at birth. He would have been dumped in the landfills outside Slum City. And then, because he survived, he would have been bonded as a slave to another Reject. The scars on his back tell me he is an obstinate piece of trash.

      “Duh! I’m a Reject. You can stop staring at me with those big eyes of yours.” He fills a bowl with water and drinks. Burps. “Now, where’s the food, Cow-Eyes?”

      Cow-Eyes. It’s a name I have been called many times. My eyes are too big on my face, my body too long and skinny, my hair too Savage, my skin too pale. I am the ugly friend of Kitty, the beautiful pleasure worker. But Nicolas found me beautiful. And when I was with him, I felt beautiful.

      “Juliet! Juliet, my lovely. Are you alright?”

      The Reject turns as he hears the cry from below deck and groans. “I think I’ll take your advice and push the old rubbish overboard. Gab-gab-gab, gab-gab-gab, the whole time I was tying him up. I had to punch him in the head to get some peace.”

      I hiss at him. He will regret using his fists on Reader.

      “Hang on.” The Reject stares at me slyly. “Juliet? That’s a name I’ve heard in the market. There’s a price on your head, Juliet Seven.” He rubs his fingers together. “A large number of credits.”

      I strain against the rope. Rejects are loyal to no one – the traders of Slum City treat them with as much cruelty as the Posh do. The boy would sail the sloop back to Mangeria and trade me to the Locusts.

      I look towards the horizon. Reader was right, a storm is brewing. The sun is rising in the grey sky,