A Circus of Eagles [An HG Fanfic]

Runaway - Verity

Verity

The thing is...

The thing is, this is what you've got to do.

I never fought. In Malachite we deal every day in justice and injustice, but when the rebellion came I was swept up with everybody else and plonked down in a bunker. We had food, just enough, and water, rank but drinkable, and that's all I really remember. I wouldn't say it was hard. People lived worse in Haematite every day. Perhaps it was uncomfortable, perhaps sometimes my stomach grumbled, perhaps every so often someone's snoring woke me up, but my family are tough and we endured it. But I never had to actually survive.

So it surprises me that I'm good at it.

You don't have to be particularly fit or particularly fast, like I thought. You just have to choose your moment. You just have to be quiet. I crept up on Apollo, I crept up on Kula. It took all day, but I'm patient, and I can creep better than I ever thought I could. You have to be able to learn - well, nobody learns as quickly as me. I made mistakes with Apollo, but I didn't make them with Kula, and the mistakes I made with Kula I won't make next time. And you just have to be lucky. And I am. Nobody has found me while I slept, and I got my pack and my knives. That's luck.

So there's no reason, no reason at all, why I can't do it.

No reason.

I'm going back to the Cornucopia. I know what I can do, now. I can watch whoever is there - and someone will be camping out there - and if it's an alliance I can pick them off one by one, watch them break under the strain. I have Kula's jacket, which keeps off the worst of the cold and the fog, and I have his shirt, only a little bloodstained and wrapped around my hands, and I have his pack and whatever useful things might be in it. Without sponsors, these things could be the difference between life and death. What I could do with is a map. I'm having to navigate by memory, which is hard without true landmarks, and it's taken me a night and a day to find my way back to Verona Mill's tombstone. From there I think I know the way. In that time there have been three cannons, all within a matter of hours, just before and just after dawn. None of them are me. That's what matters. But I can't help but wonder who they are. Which of the people I shared a training room with are now dead. Who killed them. Who else is learning, like me?

I lean against Verona's stone to eat. Not much. A packet of nut-paste. A little pastille thing that tastes of nothing but which makes me feel a little more full. A sip of water. My belly complains but I tell it to shut up. The sun is setting, the grey of the clouds darkening, the fog starting to creep up out of the ground. I dig the glasses out of the pack and tuck them into my belt. With the extra jacket and the glasses and the knowledge that I can move almost in silence, I'm finding the nights here more comfortable than the days.

Who is left? Whose faces haven't I seen? Neither of the pair from Platinum, neither from Silver. That's Titan and Columbia, Dustrio and Thalia. I've always had a decent memory for names and faces, just like my mother. She never forgot a single defendant. There's a trick to it, she said once. So I'm using her trick now, to remember who is still alive. Caitlin, the journo, from Garnet, though her sector partner has gone, he was in the first photographs. The two from Amethyst were too. So was the boy from Copper, last night. I'm surprised he made it that far. As far as I know nothing has happened to the pair from Quartz, Melonie with the attitude and big, bulky Sylvester. They could still be out there, and I wouldn't risk my life on either of them in a fight. The Peacekeeper boy is still alive. Walterin, the one who fought Milo, who I haven't seen in the sky either. Neither have I seen Probus Fidelis - which does not surprise me, rebels in charge or otherwise - or his Ferrous partner. And there's one I'm missing...the small girl from Haematite. Her name eludes me for a moment, but then it clicks: Romily. A pretty name. Not a pretty girl.