A Web of Steam & Puppet Strings (Sevastyan #1)

Chapter One [Part 1]

CHAPTER ONE

The last meal of the day always tasted of ash. Whoever fed us made sure to grant us a generous helping of rice and an extra sprinkle of salt and spices to go with our stew. But it tasted like the silence of our cramped dining hall, and it tasted like the numbers of us who had vanished in the middle of the night, and it tasted like the walls that would never let us go.

The twenty-five who remained didn’t know what happened in their sleep when they awoke to sopping or muddy or singed clothes.

I did.

Eliza and I met eyes from across our rickety table. Silent words of understanding passed between us. Weathered wooden spoons scraped against bowls and tin cups clinked against the cracked tabletops. The tick-tock of the steel grandfather clock tucked in the far corner of the concrete dining hall punctured every murmured word. I stole a glimpse of the windows. Night coveted the Playground outside, uninviting, distorted by gauzy moonlight. We’d most likely taste the dark very soon.

Gazes from the other tables in the dimly lit hall flickered in our direction as we stood and deposited our trays down the chute in the concrete wall. We left the brittle murmurs of conversation behind, slipping through the oak slab of a door and into the chill of the gray corridor. Bulbs suspended from the ceiling lit the way as we lingered at our own pace.

Eliza unloaded the heaviest of sighs. “That stew was a bit gritty tonight, I’d say. Texture is important in food, and our phantom chef needs to study up some on what palatable texture means.”

The corner of my mouth curled up. It was easy to smile with her. “You’re only particular because I taught you to be.”

The rose petals of her lips blossomed when she laughed. “Yes, so I have every right to say such things since I’ve been properly taught.”

“Not quite properly.”

“Oh, semantics.” She dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “You’re a much more attractive boy when you’re without them. The girls should tell you that more often—or the boys, of course.”

My cheeks burned. She danced away into the dank hallway of bunker compartments, each little room sealed by a sliding door of oak. Air did not pass through here. Every breath was stale, tasted like old sweat and bile. At the end of the hallway stood the looming Doors That Never Opened, plated with steel, with Chamber rules elegantly carved into its flesh, a gasp of aestheticism in a gray world.

The last rule never failed to catch my eye.

‘Do Not Fail.’

One of the bulbs flickered behind us. Eliza pressed her hand against the wood of our door and whisked it open. The single compartment was made for only one body to occupy, what with there being only a single cot attached to the wall, raised up from the unforgiving cold of the concrete floor. But, it hadn’t been so difficult for us to rip out the bolts of a cot from the wall of another compartment to set down on the floor.

And that was all the space we had.

Now that we were out of earshot, she let loose a groan. “Everyone’s so miserable tonight.” She plopped down on the edge of her cot, her dark hair a wild animal swooping across her shoulders. “Spending all day dreading what might happen at night isn’t the way it should be done. Poor attitudes are infectious, after all.”

I collapsed onto my own cot and reached under hers for our sack of uniforms. “I couldn’t blame them.”

“No…and I suppose I shouldn’t be so harsh. It’s just so tiresome—no, I don’t want to see that, put it back away.”