Chapter 63
With David at his appointed place, Jarek has gone back to addressing the crowd, roaring at them to get them fired up for the ceremony, talking about how blessed our village is, how wonderful our system.
David continues to whisper in my ear. “You can’t possibly believe Jarek had the vision to pull this off on his own?
” My brain has locked up, but David keeps talking.
“I’m sorry about Henrietta, but she stood in the way of our advancement.
When I caught Albert spying on Marina after his family supposedly self-Harvested, he was easy enough to convince to take care of my problem.
All it took was a piece of the hover panel, plus Marina’s hand in marriage, and the boy was mine. We all have our price.”
“How could you?” I spit. I suppose I should stop being surprised. The leadership of this place is rotten at its core.
One of David’s shoulders lifts as his eyes travel to the center of the stage. The people of Noah’s Valley are staring up at Jarek as if he’s a god, hanging onto his every word.
“How could I not?” David asks. “Mealworm porridge is only fine until you know better. The future is coming, Rose, and it’ll be so much nicer than what we have now. Canned food, books on every subject—gold, even.”
We’ve learned of gold in our books. It has no value, not really.
You can’t eat it, can’t create tools from it.
His mention of it scratches something in my memories, though.
I don’t pursue it, because nothing matters anymore.
I am a shell, light as a leaf, empty as a pocket. “Everything you said to me was a lie.”
Gryphon glances over at me, gives my waist a gentle squeeze, then returns his attention to his father. To the outside world, it must look like David is sharing some knowledge from his House with me, a standard wedding day gift. They don’t know he’s pouring poison into my ear.
David shakes his head dismissively. “On the contrary. I do regret telling Jarek the truth of our founding, and he really isn’t very smart.
He runs everything by me and still manages to think he’s the one in charge.
Fortunately, that works for me. Less risk, more reward.
” He’s speaking low but conversationally, like we’re neighbors enjoying midday tea.
“Do you know what else? Korr was telling the truth in that article about there being a door inside the Valley that’ll open tonight.
” He coughs into his hand. “I found Hayes’s journal confirming it, though she writes that it’s small, an afterthought, really.
The descendants of the prisoners were never meant to escape.
I don’t think Korr would have bothered building it at all if not for a required safety inspection before prisoners could be transferred inside. ”
“You’re going to lead Jarek and the Guardians out through the tunnel?” I ask, my voice flat. “So he doesn’t have to blow up the Wall?” That, at least, is something.
David’s making a wheezing sound, and I realize he’s chuckling.
“I’ve already shared more than enough with Jarek.
He doesn’t even know there is a tunnel. Whatever is beyond it is mine, including a rapid exit should one be necessary.
” His chuckling stops. “Unfortunately, Hayes was too paranoid to write down its exact location for fear the prisoners would find it, but where else could it be but in the basement of what was her home? And when it pops open tonight—a hundred and twenty years to the day from our official founding—I’ll be the only one there to see it.
Can you imagine the riches on the other side, given what we’ve seen in her stash?
” He sweeps his hand, indicating the entire village gathered for my wedding.
“Which is why your ceremony had to be this evening. I don’t want anyone stumbling in while I’m taking inventory. ”
I’d strangle him if my hands weren’t shackled. “Jarek blowing open the Wall will put everyone in danger, even you.”
“That, or it’ll kill the Verdant Beast and clear the path to more wealth. You haven’t seen what some of the weapons we discovered can do, Rose.”
He’s as evil as Jarek. Worse. Jarek might be the blade, but David is the hand that guides it. “I’ll tell Jarek that you’re manipulating him.”
David pets his mustache with the side of his pointer finger. “Does he seem like a man who could be convinced he’s not running the show?”
I follow David’s gaze. Jarek appears completely in his element as he tells the villagers that he and the Record Keeper have an exciting plan to care for everyone, that tonight is going to be a night they’ll never forget, beginning with the wedding.
Gryphon glances down at me again, this time flicking his glance to David.
David steps away from me.
“But I almost forgot,” Jarek finishes, his booming voice reaching the far corners of the square, “that first we have three criminals on the whipping post to deal with.”
“No!” The scream cuts through the crisp air, coming from the rear of the crowd, near the chapel.
The village parts to reveal Reatha. Her face is gaunt, gray, her hair wild.
She looks like she hasn’t slept since I last saw her.
She stumbles toward the stage. Her hand flies to her mouth when she spots Oscar, Eero, and Meryl tied up.
She runs to them, making it all the way to their whipping posts.
The Guardians stand frozen in surprise. To them, she’s risen from the dead.
She yells at the crowd. “How can you all stand there like sheep? These are our children!”
She’s turning back to untie my friends, but the Guardians finally wake up and pull her away, looking to Jarek for guidance. He holds up a hand but says nothing, his birdlike face studying Reatha as the Guardians release her.
The crowd shuffles uncomfortably, and Reatha approaches the stage.
She talks as she walks, her voice as loud as she can make it.
“I took my family into hiding after Jarek had me create the poison we call the Vex.” Gasps ring out from the villagers.
“That’s right! The Vex isn’t an illness but an herbicide.
Jarek used it against you. And he bewitched my own son into helping him! ”
I glance back to David, who’s staring at the ground, looking for all the world like a harmless, bookish man. Only I am close enough to see the smirk beneath his mustache. He really is a puppeteer.
“I believe he means to explore the Beyond,” Reatha is saying, “opening us up to untold dangers.” The throng glances from her to Jarek and then David, uneasy.
A baby’s cry splits the air. Still, Jarek remains quiet.
I can’t believe it. Why is he letting her rouse the people against him?
Even Misia appears shocked by his silence.
Reatha has reached the stage. She peers up, her eyes beseeching me.
“I’m so sorry, Rose. Your mother warned me about how dangerous Jarek is.
He made terrible threats against your father, and shortly after, Kirby was dead.
I believe Jarek killed him. That’s why I agreed to make the poison, until I learned what it was being used for.
That’s when I took my two children and hid.
I told myself I was doing it to protect the village, but really, I was scared Jarek would Harvest Albert or Marie, just like he Harvests the family of anyone who stands up to him. ”
She turns back to the audience. “It’s true,” she screams. “Look around! You let him take others in the hope that he won’t take you.
You know Jarek is culling our herd, but you don’t object.
You’ve forgotten yourself. You’ve forgotten your community.
” She points toward the Wall. “And now, he’s going to breach our only protection.
He intends to let the outside in. Raiders, creatures, the Sun and Water knows what else. And for what?”
“For evolution,” Jarek declares. His voice is loud but unnervingly calm. Have he and David planned for this, too? “That’s the only reason to open the Wall.”
His announcement is so shocking that the entire village goes quiet.
Jarek continues. “The Record Keepers and the Guardians have seen the Before Times items Rose and her mother discovered. You’ll understand when you see them, too.
Tools that will make your life easier. Carpenter House, would you not like a sun-powered drill?
Blacksmiths, what about a handheld welding torch?
There is food, too, entire shelves of delicacies that melt on your tongue and fill your bellies.
Weapons that can protect us from the wildest beast. And there is surely all of that and more waiting for us Beyond, if we can just go outside and take it.
” He pauses, breathes for emphasis. “We must allow the future in.”
So that’s their game. They mean to pass blame to me, to act like now that I’ve discovered goods from Beyond, there’s no turning back.
This is the natural order of things, so we may as well make the best of it.
Based on the way the crowd is nodding, vacant eyes reflecting the setting sun, it’s working.
Jarek and David are going to win. They’re going to get everything they want. Greed has replaced community.
“Guardians,” Jarek says, “pass out the rancher candy we discovered in Rose’s stash.”
Some of his troops move through the crowd, offering the sweets to the starved villagers as Jarek goes on.
“Rose’s mother made a mistake by hiding what she’d found from us and hoarding it, but she did us a favor by discovering it in the first place.
Now we know what’s possible.” He turns to face me, tilting his head in a mockery of compassion. “She loved you, Rose.”
“She was murdered!” Reatha yells. “Because she threatened Jarek’s master plan.” She turns back to the gathered villagers. “People of Noah’s Valley, we cannot let him do the same to anyone else! It’s time to act. Starting now, we must—”
She drops in mid-sentence, a mother-of-pearl-handled dagger quivering in her spine, buried to its hilt.
“Reatha is also a traitor,” Jarek tells the crowd, staring at the knife he’s just thrown.
I moan and sag against Gryphon, unable to believe my eyes. David exits the stage. Albert appears, maneuvering his wheelchair through the stunned crowd to his mother’s side. He stares down at her, stricken.
“Now!” Lozen yells.
She cuts Meryl, Eero, and Oscar free just as a handful of villagers, led by Augustus and armed with little more than their courage, rush at the nearest Guardians.
Eero’s parents, Zaha and Aldo of the Carpenter House, are fighting with their bare hands, their years of hard work and labor paying off in the form of powerful swipes and kicks.
Near them, Oscar’s father, Dale, of the Tailor House leaps on the back of a Guardian, surprising her with his ferocity.
Augustus is cutting through a swath of them, swinging a metal pipe.
The Guardians are caught unawares, and many of them seem reluctant to fight their fellow citizens, some of whom used to be family.
Jarek moves to the edge of the stage to watch it all coolly, Misia by his side.
The battle below is chaotic and brutal, with the thud of fists on flesh and the screams of the wounded filling the air along with the smell of sweat and fear, Guardians against villagers.
I think, unwillingly, to our ancestors. Were we always going to turn out like this?
I dive toward the stairs, but my shackles take me down.
I try to right myself. Gryphon is by my side, a key in his hand.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“War.” His stricken expression shocks me. “I’ve been preparing for this my whole life, but I didn’t know we’d be battling each other.”
He undoes the shackles at my wrists. How did he get the key from his mother? I rub at my bloodied skin as the cuffs fall to the stage, their clank lost in the angry cries of the raging fight. Do we stand a chance? I feel a spark of hope, and it’s terrifying. Giving up had been so much easier.
Sal appears out of nowhere, jumping between me and Gryphon.
“It’s now or never, Rose,” she cries, holding out the detonator.
The explosives! I glance over at Jarek and Misia.
They see nothing beyond the fight in front of them.
Sal pushes my thumb into the depression at the same time as hers.
I have only a millisecond to worry that we’re too far away from the weapons barn when a far-off explosion echoes with such force that it knocks me off my feet.
All right, I see why they make those things so hard to set off.
Gryphon helps me up.
I hear a whoop and realize it’s Lozen, who’s fighting Tomris just in front of the stage.
“Guess I was wrong about their range!” she calls out before sliding between the older Guardian’s legs.
She springs up, knocking her opponent at the base of the neck with her sword hilt.
Tomris drops like a sack of beets, and Lozen dives to shove a Guardian off another villager.
She’s doing her part, but Jarek’s training is paying off.
The rest of his Guardians are forming organized pockets, forcing the villagers nearest them to kneel.
Anyone who doesn’t is knocked unconscious or worse.
I think I see a Guardian run his blade through the Blacksmith’s son.
My earlier burst of hope is replaced by horror.
The rebel villagers—those who’ve already lost too much—are fighting with everything they have, but there simply aren’t enough of them.
Jarek’s army is too well-trained, their blades too sharp.
The uprising, if it had been that, is being quelled. Efficiently.
Jarek must realize it as the same time as me.
He turns, his face lit with an ugly, gloating satisfaction that morphs to rage when he sees that Gryphon has knelt to unlock the manacles around my ankles.
Gryphon has his back to his father and so doesn’t see him approach, and there isn’t time to warn him.
I rip the dagger from Gryphon’s belt and aim it, heart pounding, hand trembling.
For a split second, I hesitate—I’ve never taken a life—but then I fling it.
Jarek dives to the side just as the blade leaves my fingers, and it sails wide, clattering uselessly to the ground below.
My ankle shackles freed, Gryphon stands. He doesn’t know that I just tried to kill his father. Yet his onyx eyes are full of emotion.
It looks, weirdly, like he’s going to kiss me.
“Please forgive me,” he whispers.
Then everything goes black.