Chapter 56
David Seingalt bows as if the weight of the world rests on his shoulders.
“Our ancestors being criminals, that is.” He stumbles over the word that Jarek had so comfortably levied against my friends and me. “All of them. Well, all of them but mine. As I’m sure you read, the Record Keeper was our warden.”
My words sound far away. “Originally. We’ve all mixed since.”
He leans toward me, his tone almost pleading. “You understand why I don’t stand up to Jarek now, don’t you?” His eyes drop. “It’s in our blood to be evil. It’s our destiny.”
I’m spinning inside out, a meaningless Mobius strip of agony.
The Valley wasn’t built to shield us from the chaos of the outside world.
It was founded to protect the outside world from us.
But there’s something more—another important truth the essay revealed.
I can feel it, like something sharp lodged in my throat.
“If you keep turning pages,” David says, rubbing his caterpillar mustache, “you’ll find one devoted to each of the original prisoners.
Name. Age. Crimes. There’s some pretty gruesome stuff in there.
A handful who tortured their victims, some mass murderers, and can you believe they recruited a cannibal to the Leatherworker House?
” He laughs at that, though it’s utterly humorless.
No, no, no, this cannot be. Lillian Allgood, the descendant of a cold-blooded killer? Sweet Jonas, sharing DNA with a monster?
“Helen Hayes wasn’t the only warden. She was assisted by a second, someone called Rodriquez.
They took notes for the first couple of years together,” David continues.
“It was rough. For the volunteers, that is.
Adjusting. A few had to be removed, but most did not.
Against all odds, they managed to foster a healthy community.
“Then communication with the outside world stopped suddenly. Rodriquez took the basket up the Wall to investigate.” He blinks, frowning. “He never returned.”
I think of our chapel. Our place of spiritual refuge. Was its bell tower designed as a lookout, a vantage point from which to guard our ancestors? The sharp, slippery truth contained in the essay starts to surface again, but I still can’t grip it. The second I think I have it, it spins away.
David keeps talking. “Hayes thought something terrible must have happened beyond the Wall. Figured they’d forgotten about everyone inside.
How scary must that have been? Trapped here with a village full of murderers, the world outside gone dark.
” He shakes his head at the horror of it.
“She decided their best chance at survival was to form a new society for real. No wardens and guards versus criminals, no ‘us’ separate from ‘them.’ Just people.” He sings the last word.
“As you surely read, they agreed the truth of their crimes would die with that first generation.” He chuckles.
It sounds like bone dice clicking. “Honestly, they were probably happy to do it. After the original prisoners died off, only the Record Keeper House would hold the truth of who they’d been. ”
I groan as I finally recall what was missing from the text. “The Harvest wasn’t mentioned.”
David reads my mind, his voice going hoarse.
“Blood was always the price of the Verdant Beast’s protection.
That thing’s a carnivore, plain and simple.
Perhaps it would have been unpopular to mention at the time.
” He shrugs. “But Hayes knew it needed monthly feedings. She writes about it in her private record, says that’s why we have to Harvest.”
The Verdant Beast hunting us wasn’t an accident. It was a feature. The cruelty is staggering. “Did the volunteers know?”
He doesn’t break eye contact. “A few may have guessed, but I have no evidence of them being told.”
“But you knew,” I hiss.
He holds up his hands. “Since only very recently. Not even a year.”
“You knew, and you allowed villagers to be sent up there to be eaten alive.” The image of my twin, body mangled and drained of blood, forces me to my knees on the cold stone floor. I barely register the pain. “Oh, Jackrabbit,” I whisper, aching deep in my soul.
“It’s better to lose a few than the many. Their sacrifices protect us all,” he tries to reassure me.
I lunge for him, forcing the old drunkard back and out of the vault. He barely catches himself on the rough-hewn wall, the weight of his body lacerating his hand against it. David’s blood drips from the wound.
And I feel no desire to treat it.
“Protect?” I bark. I’m thinking back to the two Guardians we lost eight months ago, the ones killed before my eyes just yesterday. Jonas’s face morphs to Peter’s in my head. “That monster is hunting us.”
David studies his hand. The bare light makes his eyes glitter.
“It’s too hungry,” he acknowledges. “Hayes was worried that might happen. That’s why she brought herbicide in here, one that Arrow Korr didn’t know about.
Apparently, he was very protective of the Verdant Beasts.
I discovered it by accident when I found her panic room.
She housed all sorts of things she’d need if things went south—food stores, weapons, even vanity items like a full-length mirror.
” David rubs his nose. “After the first unplanned death, I decided to use her herbicide. It worked, too, for a while.”
That means David, not Jarek, was behind the poisoning of our water. It takes all my willpower not to punch him in the throat. Sure, I saw his footprints at the well, but the senseless, trusting girl in me had assumed good faith. To be betrayed by your own Record Keeper…
“Six lives lost to the Vex.” I spit. “And you’re responsible for each and every one of them.”
“You’re right, I’m afraid.” David shudders, obvious guilt twisting his features.
“I told Jarek the truth about everything—the Verdant Beast, the panic room, and the poison I’d discovered inside it—after the Beast killed those first two Guardians eight months ago, which I regret.
Jarek really believed an animal had killed his comrades, and he never would have poured the herbicide at its roots if I hadn’t told him the truth.
He believed in the poison longer than me, forcing our Chemists to recreate it.
I’m certain that’s the reason for their self-Harvest. I gave him the last of Reatha’s brew the other day, so I suppose we’ll see soon enough who was right. ”
“But he plans to open the Wall whether or not the last of the poison kills the Verdant Beast.” I phrase it like fact, though really I’m still guessing.
“He plans to try,” David says, confirming the terrible truth. “He’s become obsessed with the hidden chamber, all the Before Times treasures and weapons inside. He wants more.”
Gryphon was right. His father means to go Beyond.
“And it’s only a matter of time until he succeeds,” David continues. “In the meantime, we’re trapped in here like livestock.” He’s watching me process what I’ve learned. “It’s not a prison until you need to escape, is it?” he asks.
Words rattle around my skull, down my throat and back, but they can’t find my mouth. I think I might be sick.
“I see you burning to fix this, Rose. Your mother was the same way. You’ll soon realize, as I have, that it’s best to go quietly.
We all end up in the same place, just some of us with fewer bruises.
” He pulls a flask from his pocket and drinks, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve.
“Jarek has too much power and a taste for rare delights. He’ll not go back to hardworking days and cricket stew, not now that he believes there’s a better way to live. ”
I step closer, into the sour smell of pruno radiating off him.
We have a lot of problems here, but one’s more urgent than the rest. “Jarek is mad with power, David. If he blows a hole in the Wall, we have no idea what might come through. You say the world went dark a hundred years ago and that the Wardens never found out why. If that’s true, the Verdant Beast is the least of our worries.
” I mean, holy Wall, it might even be protecting us from something worse.
I take a deep breath, collecting all my scant confidence, and add, “We have to stop him. For the Valley.”
David’s face sharpens at that. “Stop Jarek? The two of us?”
Thoughts are crashing into each other. “It’s not just the two of us. There are others. With you on our side, we stand a chance. You’re still the Record Keeper. You’re still in charge of our rules.”
He shakes his head sadly, gesturing toward his disheveled state, his foot still cast in plaster. It satisfies me now to realize it probably wasn’t an animal trap that got him, that his limb was more likely crushed by the Verdant Beast.
“Look at me, Rose,” he says. “Who’s going to follow this man?”
I grab his shirt. “If we tell them the truth about Jarek, everyone! With him gone, we can have a clean start within. We’ll avoid Eden’s Gate until we find a way to destroy the Beast, and once we’re safe again, we’ll review all the Valley’s laws, hang on to the ones that work and reconsider the rest. Without the Guardians in your way, you could make it happen! ”
I’m talking too fast. I think I may have lost him when suddenly his face lights up. “You really think we can stop Jarek?”
I nod.
To my surprise, David chuckles. “He’s not too smart, you know?
Strong, certainly, good at forming an army.
Clever, even.” He indicates a stack of books, their covers garish and unfamiliar.
“According to one of these, it’s the sneaky leader you have to watch out for.
The show-off, obvious brute who has nothing but strength on his side?
” The Record Keeper grins, having made up his mind. “He can be defeated.”
I match his smile, feeling instantly lighter. With the Record Keeper of all people on our side, we may be able to defeat Jarek without destroying the tablet and basket, meaning I could return to the Valley with Jonas. Even if he’s no longer alive, I can bring his body back down.
The Verdant Beast cannot have my brother.
Suddenly, I remember something David glossed over. “The secret room. The vault with the new weapons.” I speak with a voice that brooks no argument, one I wouldn’t dare have used against him just a week ago. “Show it to me.”
Annoyance flashes across David’s face, but he must sense that I won’t be backing down today.
He slides his thumb into a nearly invisible indent inside the closest bookcase.
“I tripped the mechanism by accident,” he says.
“Hayes hid it well. That woman thought of everything.” He says the last bit with a puff of pride.
I’m about to remind him that he may not even be a blood relative to Hayes, given our marrying rules, when the case swings open, revealing a room nearly as large as the full cottage above.
My jaw drops. Sun and Soil, just how big is this place?
Before he can stop me, I step inside. The walls are lined with shelves, overflowing with tools I don’t understand and more types of food than I recognize.
I walk over to them, marveling at the sheer volume of stuff left over, even with David and the Guardians pillaging the Warden’s supply.
I spy an enormous metallic container labelled “canned ham.” I do not know what ham is, but the unnervingly realistic painting on its face looks just like the loaf of pink meat the Tzus served us the other night.
“It has everything but an exit,” David says.
“Nearly a hundred twenty years to the day since the Valley’s founding, and Korr said that we’d open to the world by then.
But if there’s a door, I haven’t seen it.
” His voice grows heavy. “I’m sorry, Rose.
But I think it’s one more lie he told the public. ”
My eyes scour the shelves. I’m looking for what, exactly?
Weapons I can use to save my brother. Plus any herbicide Jarek hasn’t already taken.
Unfortunately for me, the combat items are picked clean.
I see only food and tools and a singular patch of goblin’s gold on the floor on the far side of the room.
The luminous moss is typically found in caves—Mom had the Stonemasons collect it from the quarry sometimes for its microbial properties.
I turn toward David. “It doesn’t change anything,” I say.
“What?”
“This secret room.” I indicate the stores lining the walls.
“It doesn’t matter that it’s here, or even that there is no exit.
What matters is that we stop Jarek and kill the Verdant Beast.” With a sinking feeling, I see I’ve already lost him.
In the last couple minutes, the fire that’d momentarily sprung into his eyes has been snuffed out. “David?”
He takes another swig of pruno. “I need some time alone. To think.”
“But—”
“Give me time,” he barks, clearly ready for me to leave.
I’ve used up all my goodwill. Now I can only pray that I’ve convinced him.
I follow David’s lead as he weaves back to the main chamber, toward his pruno contraption, and fills up his flask.
I worry he’s going to drink himself into a stupor, but short of tying him up and destroying the still, I don’t know what I can do but hope he comes through for us.
I consider seeking out the other two Councilmembers—Alexandra and Nero—but think better of it.
They were fine covering up Peter’s cause of death and have been accomplices to Jarek’s sudden and oppressive changes to Valley law.
The only person I can truly trust is myself.
Or maybe not. After all, we’re descended from monsters here. Cannibals. Murderers.
I’m halfway up the stairs when David calls out to me, his voice unbearably weary.
“You’ll be hungry to tell the others what you discovered down here,” he says.
“How we’re the spawn of evildoers, doomed to wither on the tendrils of a vine.
You’ll burn to share this heaviness with someone, anyone.
Learn from me, Rose. Don’t tell anyone. It’ll only make them as miserable as you are right now. ”