Sapient Salvation 1: The Selection (Sapient Salvation Series) Read Online Free Page B

Maya.” He gave a little bow of his head, touched my elbow, and then angled off toward his own clan’s section.
    I guided Lana through the aisles, past other clan groupings. There was a charged energy in the air despite the hush, and my stomach tightened with nervous anticipation.
    When we passed a clan section where a man stood with a bucket in his arms, from which his clan’s Obligate would be drawn by lottery, I shivered. I couldn’t imagine what that clan’s Obligate Elects must be feeling, knowing that after the feast, one of them would have to leave their home forever and go to Calisto with no preparation or training to compete.
    Mother gave us a tired smile when we reached the section with the Clan Terra banner. I let Lana sit in between us, and I turned to wave at a couple of distant cousins farther up in the Clan Terra seating who were also wearing Obligate Elect white.
    At one time, everyone in a clan was related somehow. But through the centuries, the bloodlines crossed and mixed so much it became too difficult to draw lines between them based on blood relation. The clans later became symbolic groupings rather than family groupings, though most people had at least a few relatives in the same clan.
    I noticed the front-most row of our section was conspicuously empty.
    “Have you seen Obligate Belinda yet?” I asked Mother in a hushed tone.
    She shook her head. “Neither her nor her family,” she rasped, and then coughed a few times.
    I frowned. By Clan Terra tradition, our Obligate usually arrived early to the pavilion. Before the ceremony began, all of Clan Terra’s Obligate Elects would line up and file past to offer the Obligate a prayer of thanks and strength. We did that while the lottery clans chose their Obligates by drawing.
    It wouldn’t feel right to skip the traditional prayer for our Obligate.
    My unease mounted as the pavilion continued to fill. All of the Obligate Elects—young men and women between the ages of eighteen and twenty—stood out from the rest in their white ceremonial garb. There were sixteen clans total, and sixteen Obligates would be offered.
    But where was ours?
    The sky had deepened to the violet blue of dusk, and the crowd was settling as the last few attendees found places with their clans.
    Down on the pavilion’s stage the light bearers had lined up, eight on each side, one for each of the sixteen Obligates who would go to Calisto for our half-year’s Selection.
    I watched as Mr. Arsen, the Clan Terra officiant for the Selection seated in our clan’s first row, twisted and scanned our section. His salt-and-pepper eyebrows were drawn together, forming a deep vertical worry crease in the center of his forehead.
    I glanced at Mother. She was watching Mr. Arsen, too.
    An anguished cry pulled my attention toward the section to our left. A woman about my mother’s age was clutching at a young man who was dressed in Obligate Elect white. The young man stood stiff and still, a stricken look frozen on his face. Nearby, an officiant with a lottery bucket held a slip of paper.
    I swallowed hard as I watched the young man look down at the woman who was silently sobbing against his chest.
    “This is my duty, Mother,” he said. His voice was strong and clear, but his expression was dazed and his eyes glassy and wide.
    Lana tilted her head and then turned to me. “Who was the young man drawn for that clan?”
    I squinted, trying to place him. He looked familiar. We’d been in school together; he was a year behind me if I remembered correctly. I didn’t think I’d crossed paths with him since Lana and I had graduated. “He’s younger than us. Orion, I think is his name?”
    She nodded solemnly. “Yes. I remember the name. I think he may have ended up in machinery.”
    Orion’s sleeves were tight around his biceps as he raised his hands to his mother’s shaking back and bent to touch his cheek to the top of her head. His shoulders looked well-muscled, too. If he had