The prison guards ration out the vamerian tea, and I get half of the amount I should be consuming daily. When I was free, I could afford enough for both of us. It was difficult working in the vamerian plantations, but they afforded us a luxury many did not have. Without vamerian, people withered. The plantations took up too much water, too much fertile soil, too much labor, but they were the reason people did not die.

  Now, I can feel myself weakening. Years in the prison, the corruption getting worse with time, it has taken a toll on all of the prisoners. No amount of bribes are enough to satisfy the guards, and the supply of tea that comes to the prison is meager in the first place. Keeping the prisoners alive is not a kindness. It is an inconvenience the rulers pay for, since we are the cheapest form of labor in the country. We do not need to be healthy. Sifting through the tea leaves is not work that requires strength in our muscles. It only needs us to be alive and constantly moving our hands.

  My hands have grown bony and gnarled over the years. They are not the hands that held my son when he was a child. They are an old woman’s hands now, and I wonder how my son must have changed. It is not an easy thing to live on the run, especially when the rulers have such far-reaching influence.

  I can only hope that he is somewhere far away, and that he is still free. The knowledge of the mark is common, and it is not an easy thing to hide. It appears on the neck, a red circle right below the chin. If it were somewhere else, I could have hidden him for longer.

  Perhaps if I was wealthier, I could have afforded to bribe the city guards who conducted monthly checks. But all of those maybes were in the past. Now, I pray in the mornings for Jun’s happiness and I wish for his freedom at night.

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  I save some of the vamerian tea for later in the day. Sometimes, by the evenings, drinking the tea feels like taking a fresh breath. In the evening, after I am done sorting my share of the tea leaves, I take on some of the work of the others, when I hear the low rumble.

  We live in the north, where earthquakes are not common. But the prison walls are shaking, and the earth feels like its come alive. All of us women hide under the work tables. The tables are old and will offer little protection against anything, but they offer us comfort at all. I hear a boom, and the doors of the prison fall apart.

  A man appears, dressed in black and painted with grease. It is the uniform of thieves, to make them hard to hold onto. But through the darkness of the grease, I can still see the red circle at his throat. So there are ones like my son, born with the mark but not slaves. Jun might be a criminal like the man in front of me, but he might be free.

  The man comes forward, helping the women up from the ground. Through the dust, the chaos, I see the fallen forms of the guards in uniform. They are unmoving. The man who leads them walks closer, and helps me up as well. It is difficult rising up, my knees stiff.

  “It is difficult to rise, mother,” the man says. “Especially when we have been pushed down to the ground for so long.”

  I had wondered, and I received my answer. My son is grown, and he is my liberator. All the woman walk out of a prison to a new world, rising from the ashes of what had existed before. Everywhere, there is death. There are more people with red marks than I have ever seen in my lifetime.

  They walk through the streets, warriors and healers, the old and the young. The healers carry bags filled with red vials, and they are handing them out to everyone they see. Jun takes one out of his pocket.

  “This was never the mark of a slave,” Jun says. “It was the mark of freedom. Freedom from sickness, and that cure that kept us complacent. There is no need for tea, anymore, mother. No need for women with bent backs harvesting and sorting. No need to spend hard-earned money on the cure they controlled to keep us all in line.”

  “This is a cure?” I ask, looking down at the vial filled with the clear red liquid.

  “A cure drawn from the secret of our blood, the blood of all of those who had the mark. A cure that can be given to anyone. Drink it, mother. You will feel better.”

  I drink, and I feel the warmth of the mark blooming on my throat. My son did not lie. I stand straight, realizing it does not hurt to rise anymore.