The Twelve Read Free

over her. Ofa spring night, and a wheeling carousel, and a taste of powdered sugar; of a lake and a cabin in the woods and the feel of a big hand holding her own. Tears rose to her throat.
    “I believe that they did. I hope they did.”
    “Does Uncle Peter?”
    She frowned, startled. “What makes you ask that, Caleb?”
    “I don’t know.” Another shrug, faintly embarrassed. “The way he looks at you. He’s always smiling.”
    “Well.” She did her best to show nothing. Was it nothing? “I think he is smiling because he’s happy to see you. Now, sleep. Do you promise?”
    He groaned with his eyes. “I promise.”
    Outside, the lights were pouring down: not a brightness as total as the Colony’s—Kerrville was much too big for that—but, rather, a kind of lingering dusk, lit at the edges with a crown of stars above. Amy crept from the courtyard, keeping to the shadows. At the base of the wall she located the ladder. She made no effort to conceal her ascent; at the top she was met by the sentry, a broad-chested man of middle years with a rifle held across his chest.
    “What do you think you’re doing?”
    But that was all he said. As sleep took him, Amy eased his body to the catwalk, propping him against the rampart with his rifle across his lap. When he awoke he would possess only a fragmented, hallucinatory memory of her. A girl? One of the sisters, wearing the rough gray tunic of the Order? Perhaps he would not awaken on his own but would be found by one of his fellows and hauled away for sleeping at his post. A few days in the stockade but nothing serious, and in any event, no one would believe him.
    She made her way down the catwalk to the empty observation platform. The patrols moved through every ten minutes; that was all she had. The lights spilled their beams onto the ground below like a shining liquid. Closing her eyes, Amy cleared her mind and directed her thoughts outward, sending them soaring over the field.
    —Come to me.
    —Come to me come to me come to me.
    They came, gliding from the blackness. First one and then another and another, forming a glowing phalanx where they crouched at the edge of the shadows. And in her mind she heard the voices, always the voices, the voices and the question:
    Who am I?
    She waited.
    Who am I who am I who am I?
    How Amy missed him. Wolgast, the one who had loved her. Where are you? she thought, her heart aching with loneliness, for night after night, as this new thing had begun happening inside her, she had felt his absence keenly. Why have you left me alone? But Wolgast was nowhere, not in the wind or the sky or the sound of the earth’s slow turning. The man he was, was gone.
    Who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I?
    She waited as long as she dared. The minutes ticked away. Then, footsteps on the catwalk, coming closer: the sentry.
    —You are me, she told them. You are me. Now go.
    They scattered into the darkness.

2
    SEVENTY-SIX MILES SOUTH OF ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO
    On a warm September evening, many miles and weeks from home, Lieutenant Alicia Donadio—Alicia of Blades, the New Thing, adopted daughter of the great Niles Coffee and scout sniper of the Second Expeditionary Forces of the Army of the Republic of Texas, baptized and sworn—awakened to the taste of blood on the wind.
    She was twenty-seven years old, five foot seven, solidly built in the shoulders and hips, red hair shorn close to her scalp. Her eyes, which had once been only blue, glowed with an orange hue, like twin coals. She traveled lightly, nothing wasted. Feet shod in sandals of cut canvas with treads of vulcanized rubber; denim trousers worn thin at the knees and seat; a cotton jersey with the sleeves cut away for speed. Crisscrossing her upper body she wore a pair of leather bandoliers with six steel blades ensheathed, her trademark; at her back, slung on a lanyard of sturdy hemp, her crossbow. A Browning .45 semiautomatic with a nine-shot magazine, her weapon of last