The Harvest Read Online Free PDF Page A

can’t help you, Esther. I’m sorry.”
    “Your family has experienced some pain.”
    “It has. All families have, I guess.”
    She tuts and shakes her head. “Not most Empyrean families. Mine was an exception, not an example. The Empyrean are creatures of privilege. They don’t starve. They don’t choke on dust or pollen. They have the luxury of frowning at a day’s work as if it’s work for the animals.” She turns a hard gaze toward Cael. “Their mothers are not saddled with tumors, bedridden and fixed with pain.”
    “How’d you know that? About my mama?”
    “I knew her.”
    “Horseshit.”
    “I knew her and your father. Not well. But we met.” He’s about to follow this trail of bread crumbs, but she keeps talking: “Your father’s hip. Your mother’s tumors. All the pain of all the families of Boxelder and beyond. It has one source. One origin point: the Empyrean. The wealthy monsters above us. They’ll do anything to keep what they have, tightening their fists around Heartlander throats. Your life would be different without them. You’d have opportunity. You’d have the food you wanted instead of what was doled out to you.” Here, a pause before saying: “You’d have the freedom to marry the one you love instead of the one chosen for you.”
    He wonders what Wanda would say about that.
    Just the same, she’s right. A roaring river of anger runs through him like a gush of boiling water. Even just growing a few fruits and vegetables got him and his family and friends labeled as terrorists . And now, the Empyrean is doing far worse than that. Turning people into mechanicals?
    How is that even possible?
    How can that be just?
    He tries to imagine a world without the Empyrean telling him and everyone else what to do. A fantasy plays out, fast and loose. Him and Gwennie together. Maybe no kids, maybe a whole litter. Growing a garden. Or tending an orchard. Doing whatever the hell they want, when they wanted. Rigo still with two feet. Lane still with his parents. Pop able to run and jump. Mom up and beautiful without her tumors, helping him milk the goats or butcher a couple of chickens, or teaching him how to talk to girls so they don’t think he’s some kinda dumb jerk chawbacon asshole—
    “I’ll do it. Whatever you need, I’ll do it.”
    “That’s good. Because I’m afraid if I send anybody else, your friend Lane Moreau will shoot them on sight.”
    “Lane? What are you taking about?”
    “He’s mayor of Pegasus City.”

PEGASUS CITY
    EVERYTHING IS CORN.
    That’s how the Heartland works. That’s how the Empyrean engineered it to work. And it’s going to be their downfall. Just as Lane is subverting the image of the Pegasus, he and the Sleeping Dogs are going to take over the skies. And that means taking over the corn.
    Pegasus City—once the Saranyu—will fly. The engines are mostly intact. Hover-panels undergoing repairs. But they need fuel.
    Because this sonofabitch is gonna fly .
    “I still don’t think you should’ve called it Pegasus City,” Killian says. He makes a disgusted sound. “It’s a bit . . . on the nose.”
    “Well,” Lane says, pacing, “it’s the name I picked, damnit, so it’s there and you’re just gonna have to like it. And I still think I should’ve been allowed to go out there. I’m capable, you know. Good with a pistol. Good for morale, too.”
    Behind him, Killian groans as he leans forward on a broad, round bed. He’s pale, sweating. Gone thin, thin as a starved mutt. Beneath his pallor lies various intersections of bony lines. When he grins, it is a skullish one.
    “You’re no longer a raider captain,” Killian says. “You’re a mayor . Big man now. You don’t just . . . flutter out on missions. You lead a city, not a strike force.”
    The strike force.
    Lord and Lady, will it succeed?
    Lane’s gut clenches. Not far from the wreck of the Saranyu sits the town of Fort Calhoun. Once it was a town bent on doing the one thing