Chapter Twenty-Six #2
There was no precedence for the House executing one of their own.
Even the unruliest Children of Industry were made into servants so that their gifts were not entirely wasted.
But until today there’d been no precedence for the House murdering dozens of peaceful demonstrators.
I hoped, desperately, that Julian was still alive.
Not only for him and for us, but for everyone who would lose their lives in the explosion of my grief.
As we rounded the final river bend, the House of Industry’s back wall appeared. It was smooth and high with no windows until the third story. I’d never seen it from the water, only from the loading dock. From here, I could read the script set into the wall with smooth black stone.
Industry Is Inevitable
“Blech,” I said eloquently.
“Ready?” Ezra asked.
Positioning myself in front of him, I said, “Not particularly.”
Ezra fished out the small weapon Nikola had given him and held it to my temple. “I hate pistols.”
I hoped his hands were steadier than mine. “Please don’t discharge that thing.”
“I unloaded it,” he muttered. “I’m not that reckless”
Ahead, the sole figure sitting on the loading dock spotted us and rushed to his feet.
“No deliveries today!” the man shouted. Then he stumbled back, seeming to notice the pistol.
He looked over his shoulder at the double doors leading into the House’s storeroom.
By his drab clothing, he was a House servant.
“Stay right there,” Ezra called out. “Or the Conductor dies. Do you understand me?”
The servant slowly raised his hands. “I understand.”
“Good.” Ezra briefly gestured with the pistol. “Don’t make a sound, and I won’t hurt you. Take the line and tie us off.”
“Please,” I added in a warbling voice. “He kidnapped me at the exposition. Please do what he says.”
Moving jerkily, his eyes constantly darting to Ezra’s weapon, the servant jumped onto the raft and tied it off. He crept back onto the dock on his hands and knees and sat back on his heels, looking terrified.
“Tie him up,” Ezra told me, gesturing at a coil of rope on the dock.
I did as he told, but once the servant was restrained, I couldn’t help speaking to him. “I know you were a Conductor or a Transistor once.
You deserve to be free, not trapped here lighting lamps and cleaning up after people who don’t even look at you.”
I’d never looked a House servant in the eye. No one had. They’d simply been part of the small world around us. I’d let them move around me like living dolls, like they hadn’t mattered. I’d never forgive myself for that.
“Who are you?” the servant asked, sounding bewildered.
“I’m a friend of Gertrude’s. Do you know her?”
The man hesitated, but I could see the recognition in his eyes.
“Jo, we need to move,” Ezra said.
“What are you going to do?” the servant asked, looking between us nervously.
I had no way to answer that question. I didn’t know. We were here to rescue Julian, but there was no chance we’d easily get in and out with him. And there was no chance I could walk away from this place without leaving it inoperable in my wake. Now that I was here, I knew that in my heart.
“I’m going to get you out,” I said, swallowing to steady my voice. “The servants, the Generators, the children. Anyone who wants to be free of this terrible place.”
“Gertrude is with the little ones today,” the servant whispered, looking up at the House’s high back wall as if expecting it to topple on him in retribution. “They were attacked this morning. Don’t hurt them.”
“I won’t hurt the little ones,” I said. “I promise.”
Ezra pulled me toward the door. “Jo, come on.”
“Radiance caused the wasting,” I hurriedly said as Ezra dragged me away. “The Elders have known that all along. Progress is poison!”
With that, we pushed through the double doors and entered the House of Industry.
The smell of dried goods brought me back to being thirteen, resentfully stacking crates of apples and sacks of wheat flour.
It was cool and dark in the storeroom. At the far end, two House servants were gathering produce into baskets. They hadn’t noticed us.
Ezra trembled beside me. I could barely make out his whisper. “It hurts in here.”
There was nothing I could say to that. Radiance pulsed through every floor, every room.
It powered the great ovens in the kitchen and lit every lighting fixture.
And in the catacombs below us, radiance was cultivated and stored by Generators who never saw the sun, who were lost to the madness of their own power.
“Listen, the servants won’t be wearing black,” I whispered to Ezra.
“They’re not really servants, are they?” he asked in a low voice “They’re enslaved.”
“You’re right.” I took his hand and led him down an aisle of high shelves.
My feet recalled every hidden pathway through the storeroom.
Down here, I’d briefly been invisible. Undisturbed.
I’d enjoyed the respite from trying to be a good student, trying to do everything right. “So let’s protect them as best we can.”
We had to move as quickly as possible, taking advantage of being unseen.
Once the alarm was sounded, every Transistor in the House would be on our tail.
We crept up the winding stairs to the kitchen that served as a hub to every dormitory, with lifts designated specifically for servant use.
Trying to walk calmly, I stepped into one and beckoned for Ezra to follow.
“This a glorified coffin,” he murmured unhappily.
“Let’s hope not,” I said, turning the lever to the first-year girls’ floor and placing my hand on the conduction pad.
We rose slowly, the gears creaking. The service lift wasn’t ornate like the ones for general use.
It didn’t have the same gold filigree and built-in lamps and polished floor.
I felt like cargo being hoisted by a winch.
When it jerked to a stop, I pushed the doors open to a room full of startled little girls.
Gertrude sat on the floor with them, a tin box of medical supplies next to her.
Her eyes widened, and she froze midway through wrapping a cotton bandage around a girl’s bloodied knee.
“Are you kidding me?” Gertrude asked, so shrill that it was almost comforting.
Before I could explain anything, one of the girls jumped up and pointed. “It’s the lady with the secret stories!” she squeaked.
No one had ever called me lady before. It threw me off so much that I stuttered, trying to think of a single thing to say. “W-well. Huh?”
The girl pulled a crumpled pamphlet out of her pocket and waved it at me. “I saw you with these. You’re”—her voice lowered to a whisper—“a resistor.”
“Children,” Gertrude said, bunching up her skirts to stand, “give me a moment to speak to our guest. Be good and quiet.”
“Miss Gertrude, are they going to kill us?” another girl asked, wringing her hands and staring at me.
“No,” I said, gesturing a sign of surrender. “Goodness, no. I’m looking for my friend who’s … lost. Everything’s all right.”
Gertrude, glaring at Ezra, took me by the sleeve and pulled me into the washroom. When Ezra tried to follow, she snarled at him: “Wait at the door. One move, and I’ll show you I can keep up with Josephine’s temper.”
Looking appropriately contrite, he hung back in the doorway.
“What under the stars happened in Copper Hills?” I asked Gertrude. “Why are you back? Why are you—” I couldn’t finish the question.
She was little more than a shadow. That’s all the House servants had ever been. Had they always looked this afraid? This empty?
Gertrude’s gaze went flinty. “My Senior was not pleased I refused to do what he expected of me,” she said, lifting her chin to look me square in the eye.
I saw a challenge there, a spark of rage that warmed me like the heat of a bonfire.
A lifetime seemed to pass between us as I allowed what she wasn’t saying to sink into my bones.
After all I’d learned of the House, it shouldn’t have surprised me that a Senior Conductor might demand to be served sexually.
“Are you all right?” I asked, numb. “Did he hurt you? Are you …?”
Her breath huffed, a shadow of the contempt she’d always showed me. “I’m here in front of you, breathing, aren’t I?”
I wanted to make my way to Copper Hills and find her former Senior. I wanted to run my radiance through him until his soft parts bubbled and burst.
“Control yourself,” Gertrude hissed.
The washroom flickered with the radiance threading up and down my forearms, looking for a way to be released, looking for someone to kill.
Shoving my hands behind my back, I held her gaze. “We’re here to rescue Julian. Leave with me. All of you, the servants … you’ve got to get out.”
“What are you saying?” Gertrude whispered. “Do you really believe the stories in those pamphlets?”
There was no time to tell her anything.
And I wasn’t sure if she’d believe me if I did.
Even worse, I wasn’t sure if she’d feel the same way I did—that the House needed to be destroyed entirely.
That’s what it would take to stop the spread of death and pestilence in the name of Industry.
Only in the absence of the House could electricity rise in its place.
“There’s so much I want to tell you,” I said helplessly.
“Judging by the state of your clothes, I’m sure of that.” She let out a hitched sort of chuckle. “I see you found yourself trousers.”
“Not before I nearly got myself killed tripping over my skirt.”
“I’m having no trouble picturing that,” she said, clasping my shoulders. Her smile slipped away. “Don’t do this. Go back the way you came. Survive, Josephine. Don’t you want to survive?”
Pulling her into a fierce hug, I tucked her face against my shoulder. She stiffened—and then softened against me with a low sob. “I can’t survive without doing this,” I whispered into her hair. “When it’s over, I’ll tell you all the things I’ve seen and learned. You’ll tell me what a fool I am.”
“You’ve always been a fool.” She sniffled and untangled herself from my embrace. As she smoothed the wrinkles from her dress and wiped her eyes with tight, sure strokes, she was the same Gertrude I’d always known.
“I love you,” I said, ignoring her startled gasp. I took her hands and squeezed them one more time. “I know I wasn’t supposed to, but I always did.”
“Don’t say goodbye to me,” she snapped, shaking my hands off. Her breath shuddered. “Listen to me now. All the Elders have been summoned to the House for an emergency council. People are saying they took Julian Gray down into the catacombs after he helped resistors attack us.”
“That’s not what happened,” I murmured, my ears ringing. “The House attacked innocent people.”
“Josephine! Look at me. You’ll never get him out of here. Do you understand?”
I stared at her. “No. I don’t. What are you trying to say?”
She watched me, pitying. “No one leaves the catacombs.”
That wasn’t true. Servants freely entered and exited the catacombs. They fed and cared for Generators. Unless she meant …
“But he’s not a Generator,” I said, panic growing.
Everything I knew about Generators collided in my mind.
Surely they wouldn’t—they couldn’t make someone like Julian perform an endless mindless task.
The washroom felt too small, the ceiling too low, my collar too tight. “Why would he be down there?”
Generators were chosen as small children—the ones too strong to rein in their radiance. The ones blessed with such an overabundant gift, it could be harnessed only as a pure source of power. They lived below ground, never knowing another way to exist.
Gertrude said nothing.
“You don’t know him like I do. He would never agree to that,” I insisted, my lungs tight, the air in the washroom thin.
Bitterness returned to Gertrude’s voice. “When did any of us agree to anything?”