35. Sam Unbound #2
As the members went on, gradually expressing their general support for Simeon’s plan, I began to fully realize the consequences of what was being decided.
What would be my role in this? Alas, I didn’t need them to specify instructions—my role was obvious.
I, no doubt, would be tasked with collecting the spirit of the murdered woman for the man who had desired her for a thew.
It was ghastly. It was unimaginable. It was evil.
And yet it was being discussed by the Cisneros men quite casually.
I had always imagined true evil as something quite extreme, resulting from a long and committed descent into malice. But I realized then that true evil was much simpler. Evil is merely the incapacity to see and imagine how one’s own desires destroy others.
I would not be able to continue my work for Cisneros. Until now, the work had been dangerous, but Corbin had always found spirits who wished to enter the world as thews, and those women had died natural deaths. This was something else altogether.
As these considerations ran through my mind, I lifted my head.
Consumed as I was with my thoughts, the room was only a blur.
Dimly, I saw the cluster of seated men, the cloud of tobacco smoke above the table, the ring of white figures around them, behind their chairs or by the bookshelves.
Then the room came into focus, and my breath caught in my throat.
Every thew in the room had her eyes fixed upon me.
They had seen what was in my mind. They had witnessed my opposition. I met Juno’s eyes; they were boring into me.
Hurriedly, I tried to amend my scurrying thoughts.
I must do what the Society asks of me. My life depends on it.
I don’t like this, but I can bring myself to do it if I have to.
The thews didn’t seem persuaded. Decima looked at me loftily, her dark eyes still.
Principa, Norbert Trench’s thew, opened her mouth to speak, but a gesture from Cassandra stopped her. Reluctantly, she closed her lips.
My mind was full of whirling thoughts made more confused by my wish to conceal them.
I didn’t know if I’d persuaded the thews of my loyalty or if they had, for some reason, granted me a reprieve.
I didn’t know what Principa would do once the meeting was over.
I tried to think about my studies: the book waiting on my desk, the paper on shielding that was still undone, the class I had tomorrow morning.
I concentrated furiously on these, and the meeting ended.
Hornsby walked up to me and gave me instructions for the following evening.
“Take this,” he said, handing me something.
I looked down and saw a small, sharp tool in my hand. “What is this?”
Hornsby smiled. “You told me the knob was loose on the other side of the portal.”
“Yes,” I said, “so I did.”
“Tomorrow you can fix it.” His tone was cheerful, almost collegial. I hardly heard him, but I nodded mechanically. I had a vision of Corbin in his bed, bound by his own rope. Take nothing from them, I heard Corbin saying. What could this small tool, animated by bone, do to me?
My only wish was to get out of Pebbles.
I compelled myself to move slowly as I traced my way through the subterranean corridors and out through the Camera, then across the green and to my dormitory.
There I locked the door and took a moment to breathe.
I didn’t think—no, that would be too perilous.
But I did pause. I looked out of my narrow window above the desk, seeing the bare branches of the oak tree and, beyond it, the gates of Commonwealth.
A beautiful view: it had filled me with elation and ambition at the start of my studies.
I’d felt that the world was mine for the taking, and that with a little ingenuity and hard work, I would succeed despite all the obstacles of circumstances and birth.
It was over. I needed no spirit’s wisdom to understand that my time as a student of enchantment had come to an end.
There was one more thing I had to do before packing.
I thought about my departed father, and I basked for a moment in the memory of that gentle smile he would give me when my meddling resulted in mishap.
I opened my desk and took out a piece of paper and an envelope.
Using all my strength, I guarded my thoughts.
I wrote quickly, addressed the letter to “Miss Lancaster, Orange Street, Salem,” stamped the envelope and put it in my jacket pocket. Then I packed my rucksack.
As I did so, I thought about dead worth.
I’ve always found the calculations tiresome, and they leave no room for anything else in my mind.
In particular, I dislike calculating decimals without paper and pencil.
I let the troublesome formulas fill my mind, eclipsing what I saw and what I felt.
I realized then, as I never had before, that dead worth is not soulless mathematics.
All the contrary: it is a numerical expression of how much love can overcome.
Only a small portion of a human being’s love is bestowed to the objects they cherish.
And even that amount of affection is sufficient to do great things.
I felt this keenly as I packed my paltry but beloved objects, which felt newly precious to me as I considered their prospective loss.
The worn books that went into the bottom of the rucksack, my carefully tended clothes, and then the handkerchiefs monogrammed with my initials by my mother.
I tucked one of these into the pocket of my jacket, closed the rucksack, and shouldered it.
Then I took off my tokens. I was wearing three of them: spectacles, a silver button, and a brass buckle.
I placed them on my desk, for I wouldn’t be needing them any longer.
The mismatched armor I left in the wardrobe, for I had no plans to travel into the spirit realm again.
I left Hornsby’s tool beside it. But the coil of rope my father had made, the precious rope that had been my lifeline many times that winter, would come with me.
I carried it on my left shoulder to balance the weight of the rucksack, and I left the dormitory.
Men stared at me as I walked across the green.
I passed several who knew me as Byron, but none now recognized me as Sam.
I dropped the letter into the mailbox outside Tenny with a whispered word: guíar.