The Refuge Song Read Online Free Page A

chambers. Not as Councilors, but as advisers or assistants. They were right in the thick of it.
    â€œThe Council hated infiltrators more than anything.” Piper smiled. “It wasn’t even the information that they managed to find out. It was the fact that they managed to do it—pass themselves off as Alphas, sometimes for years. Proof that we’re not that different, after all.”
    â€œSally was the best of any of them,” Zoe said. “Half of the current resistance was built on the information she got out of the Council.” When she spoke of Sally, Zoe had none of her usual sarcasm, or the raised eyebrow that could sharpen a single word into a weapon. “But she’s ancient now,” she went on. “She can hardly walk. Hadn’t worked for the resistance for years, even by the time we came to her. Too risky, apart from anything else. She was top of the Council’s wanted list for a long time, and they knew what she looked like. I don’t want to get her involved.”
    â€œWe’re all involved, whether we want to be or not,” said Piper. “The Council will come for her, soon enough. They won’t care that she’s old, or frail.”
    â€œShe’s managed to stay hidden from them for all these years,” Zoe said. “We can’t drag her into this.”
    He paused and then spoke more quietly to her. “You know she’d never turn us away,” he said.
    â€œThat’s why it’s not fair to go to her.”
    He shook his head. “We don’t have any other options. Not after what I did on the island.”
    I could see it again: the blood thickening between the stones of the courtyard.
    â€œThe Council would never have spared the island if you’d handed Cass and Kip over to the Confessor,” Zoe said.
    â€œI know that,” Piper said. “But we can’t assume that the rest of the resistance will understand that. You saw how they reacted at the time. When that many people are killed, people cast around for someone to blame. We can’t know how they’re going to take it when we reappear, especially not with Cass. We don’t know if it will be safe for her. If we’re going to reconnect with the resistance, we need to start with somebody we know we can trust.”
    She turned away from me again and looked only to Piper. “Sally’s been through enough,” she said.
    â€œShe’d want us to go to her,” he said.
    â€œYou brave enough to try telling her what she’d want?” said Zoe, with a slow smile. Piper smiled back at her. He was like her reflection.
    Î©
    At each settlement we passed on the journey to the Sunken Shore, we did our best to spread the word about the Council’s plans for tanking Omegas. Above all, we tried to warn them away from turning themselves into refuges. These huge, secure camps were supposed to be the Council’s protection for struggling Omegas—a place where any Omega would be given food and shelter, in exchange for their labor. They were a last resort for Omegas, and a reassurance for the Alphas themselves. A guarantee that however much they might restrict Omegas to blighted land, and however high they raised their tithes, we would not take them with us into starvation. But for years now, those who entered the refuge gates had not been allowed to leave. The refuges were expanding rapidly and had become nothing more than tank complexes.
    But time and again, when we tried to pass on this news at settlements, we were met with silence. Wary stares and crossed arms. I remembered how Kip and I had started the fire outside New Hobart: how it had taken on its own momentum as it built and spread. Spreading theword of the Council’s tanks was more like trying to light a fire in rain, with sodden green twigs. It wasn’t the kind of tale you could just share with a stranger in a tavern, as if it were no more than gossip about a