Kingdom of Cages(53)

After a moment, the door opened again.

“Chena? Teal?” called Mom.

They glanced at each other, guilty of eavesdropping, but not sure whether Mom realized it or not.

“Coming!” called Chena.

They clambered down the lashings and side by side walked to the front of the house. Mom leaned against the threshold, watching them. Chena tried to keep her head up, to act casual, but beside her, Teal shuffled.

“How much did you manage to overhear?” Mom didn’t sound angry now.

Chena decided this was probably one of those times when it was better to tell the truth. “Pretty much all of it.”

Mom nodded, smoothing her hair back over her scalp. “Come back in here. We don’t need to discuss this in the street.”

Mom stood aside and Chena and Teal walked past her. They stopped beside the table, but neither one of them sat down. Mom closed the door behind them and stood there for a moment, one hand on the knob and one hand on the smooth wooden surface.

“All right,” she sighed at last, and turned around. “So, now you know. The man who came here yesterday was from the hothouse, and he wants me to work for them.”

“Don’t they pay?” asked Teal, nudging a pillow with her toe.

A fleeting smile crossed Mom’s face. “Yes, they do. Very well. The thing I have a problem with is what they want me to do.” She took a deep breath. “He wants me to have a baby for them.”

“A baby?” exclaimed Teal before Chena was even sure she understood what had been said. “How can you have a baby for them? Dad’s not even here.” She stopped, realizing what she had said and how stupid it was.

Mom crossed the room and sank low into one of the pillows. “It is possible that I could have a baby without your father, Teal.”

“But you wouldn’t do that?” Teal hurried to Mom’s side, putting both hands on her shoulder. Chena couldn’t move. The words and their implications rooted her to the floor. Sadia’s mom had disappeared. Had the hothouse taken her? Madra said it happened. Had they wanted her to have a baby for them? Would they take Mom away?

Mom actually looked sheepish. “It is vaguely possible that I could have another baby one day without your father,” she said, looking more at her hands than at them. “What I will not do…” She stopped herself and started over again. “What I do not want to do is to have a baby and give it away, especially when I don’t know what will happen to it. I don’t even know if they will keep it alive or use it for spare parts when they can’t use me. I do not want to do that to a brother or sister of yours.”

Chena swallowed hard. Her hands were cold as ice and she felt them begin to shake. She didn’t like the way Mom was talking. She didn’t like the uncertainty under her voice.

“But from what Madra was telling me, the people in the hothouse may start to make it very hard to say no.”

Chena did not want to hear any more. She had to stop this. Right now. “I know how to get money,” she blurted out. “I thought it out yesterday.”

Mom looked up at her. Chena wasn’t sure how to read her face.

She looked both hopeful and doubtful at the same time. “And what way is that?”

“I can run errands on the railbikes.” Chena sank to her knees so she could look right into Mom’s eyes. “I’ve already got a job. Somebody gave me a message yesterday and paid me to take it to someone else.”

“Sombody gave you a message? Somebody gave you money?” Mom sat up straight, gentleness and exhaustion gone from her face and voice. “And you didn’t tell me yesterday?”

Chena bit her lip. She had said too much. Now she had to explain it. How was she going to explain this?

Start with an apology. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure I could do it.”

Mom’s frown plainly said she did not believe a word of that. “Start talking, Chena Trust.”

A story came to her then, like the stories about Dad. No, not like the ones about Dad. This one was mostly true. Chena swallowed her hesitation and did as she was told.

“I got to Stem, and I tried to eat in their dining hall, but they wouldn’t let me, because they said it was only for citizens.” She watched her hands in her lap, twisting their fingers together. “I got the serving guy mad and I was scared to stay by the shore, but I was hungry and I was wandering around looking for somewhere to eat. I ran into Farin, he’s a friend of Sadia’s, and I thought he was okay, really.” She risked a glance up at Mom. Her face hadn’t softened at all, but Chena had no choice but to keep going. “He got me lunch and we were talking and he said he had a friend in Offshoot he wanted to get a note to, and I said I’d take it, and he said he’d pay for it. So I did and he did, and I thought, you know, I bet if I could do a lot of this I could actually make money. But I didn’t know if it was going to be against any of the rules. They have so many here, so I didn’t want to say anything until I’d had a chance to go to the library and look it up.”