4. The Assembly Will Provide
The Assembly Will Provide
Ileap from behind the cliff, and I’m met with chaos. I try to take it all in.
Our boat has been dragged onto the sand, either from the search or from the impact of the wave. Eric’s inside it, but watchers are trying to pull him out.
My body moves faster than my thoughts.
“Let him go!” I shout, rushing forwards.
Eric’s head jerks up.
“Ara! Tell them I didn’t do anything. I’ve just been hiding—”
The butt of a rifle slams into his face. I swear I hear a crack. He howls, clutching his eye, and I scream, as if it’s me that’s been hurt.
“You hurt him!” I shriek. I try to get to him – but two watchers block my path. Noticing Vikemy tramping towards us, I yell, “Look at him! Look what they’ve done to his eye!”
Eric lowers his hands from his face. His eye is swollen shut. It’s streaming with tears and blood.
I want to scream. I want to fight the watchers. Make a grab for their weapons.
I want Vikemy dead.
I’m not thinking straight.
Focus.
Vikemy locks his hands together, and speaks slowly and flatly. Like I’m senile. “Your brother is simply being taken for questioning. He was found hiding in this boat—”
“He hides when he gets scared,” I spit. “We grew up in a palace – as you know. He’s never had to deal with sky ships or tidal waves or watchers threatening to shoot him.” My voice rises. “Or blind him!”
I’d thought he’d gone with everyone else to the village. I should have known he might be hiding. If he feels panicked, he finds somewhere safe and warm and stays there. Usually, until I come and find him.
And I hadn’t. Until now.
This is all my fault.
“Your brother has been on this beach since the incident. He may have information about events that we believe occurred following it.”
My chest tightens.
Be stronger than you feel. Strength is a choice. Cosmer said that to me.
“What events?”
“A report was received of an intercepted radio transmission. An enemy soldier may be among us.”
I swallow. “If that’s true, then my brother and I need to get back to our grandmother, and make sure she’s safe. Please. Let us go.”
Vikemy’s face twists. He looked bored before.
Now, he looks mad.
“Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear. Your brother is an important witness. He will be coming with us.” Dangerously quietly, he adds, “Unless, since you also appear to have been on the beach this entire time – you may have the information we need, Ara?”
It clicks into place like a cog into a machine.
Vikemy has no intention of taking my brother in for questioning. He knows just as well as I do that Eric knows nothing.
Maybe a choice like this was always Vikemy’s goal, from the very first day we arrived as foreigners, enemies, in his little village.
He finally has me cornered.
“Yes,” I say, matching his steeled gaze with one of my own. “I believe I do.”
Eric gapes at me. Gasps out, “Ara, what are you doing?”
The watchers finally release him. He’s panting heavily. I worry it will turn into one of the full-blown attacks he gets sometimes.
“Follow me,” Vikemy commands, lip curling in a way that displays his teeth. It’s hard to believe he doesn’t have fangs.
“Not until I’ve spoken to my brother.”
I push past the watchers and rush to Eric, grabbing the handkerchief from the breast pocket of my dress.
Dabbing his eye, I say, “Listen to me. Go home. Make sure Old Mother is all right. She’ll look at your eye and bandage it. And when the watchers drop off our provisions tonight, sort them properly. Make the food last.”
He squints at me. “Ara—”
“If I’m not back by morning—”
His voice is shrill. “Why wouldn’t you be back by morning?”
“—speak to Cosmer’s mother. Stick together, the three of you. Look out for each other. If you can’t manage the boat on your own, send Babba as our next Provision. She should be worth at least a few weeks of rations—”
He grasps my shoulders. “Send Babba? Ara. What are you saying?” His tears fall thicker. “What have you done?”
“I’ll explain when I can. Just do everything I’ve said—”
Vikemy cuts in. “As touching as this is to watch, I must insist—”
“And if all else fails,” I say over Vikemy, “Become a soldier. Do you hear me?”
“But you said I shouldn’t—”
“I know what I said.”
I try to hug him.
But hands tear me away. I’m being wrestled in Vikemy’s direction by one of the watchers. Wrenching my arm free, I roar at the watcher’s reflective mask, “I know how to walk!”
Eric calls my name.
“You’ll be fine,” I promise him. More to myself, I promise, “I’ll be fine.”
And I try to believe it.
After all, what was it Drake had said?
The Queen wouldn’t make an exchange for just a nobody.
I follow Vikemy back into our village and over to Temple.
The whole way there I’m wondering if there’s anything I can do to get myself out of this situation.
But I can’t go up against the watchers and their training, their rifles.
Putting one step in front of the other is the safest thing I can do, not just for me, but for Eric and Old Mother.
It’s them I’m always thinking about, above all.
He pushes open the arched door of the tall stone building, which leads out onto a dim hallway with a spiral staircase.
It ends in the centre of a large room decorated with well-crafted, ornately carved furniture.
I see items I’ve never seen in Hevalla before – a writing desk, chaise lounge and a radio resembling a pipe organ like those we had in the Palace, large and complex enough to be free-standing.
The woven rug on the floor must be Rhavnan, and a long window of Lorallahan glass looks out onto the village.
I can just about pick out the slanted wooden roofs of mine and Cosmer’s houses.
“Help yourself to fruit,” Vikemy says as he swipes something small from a wooden bowl on a small table.
“Is that an orange?”
“Ah, yes,” he says, as he collapses into the chaise lounge. “I forget you must have seen these before. My visitors normally haven’t. I have lemons too, if you’d like lemonade?”
I hesitate. Truth be told, I want it all.
But if there ever came a day when I would willingly take something Vikemy offered me, I’d need shooting.
“I didn’t think you’d brought me here for oranges and lemonade.”
“No, I didn’t,” he says, peeling the orange with his sharp nails.
“So? Aren’t you going to interrogate me? Torture me?”
“Do I need to do that? Aren’t we all adults here?” He tears a slice and plops it into his mouth. “You could simply tell me what you know. And I will listen. And then decide what the best course of action for you should be.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Admit you know the whereabouts of the enemy soldier.”
“But I don’t.” I’m not lying. I’m talking about right now. Drake could have moved on. Or help could have arrived.
Vikemy tuts. “Don’t lie. It doesn’t suit you.”
“You lie to people every Sermon.”
“When have I lied, Ara?”
“About the Queen. About how she starves her country, while she lives in excess, safe under the dome. How she uses her blood magic to control and deceive her people.”
“It is the truth.”
Rage inflates my chest.
“She might retaliate. Have you thought about that? She’ll be furious after what happened today. What if she breaks the Sky Treaty?”
He shakes his head, dismissively. “It would risk mutual destruction.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the threat of mutual destruction only work if those in power care?”
“Enough politics.” He fires, his face reddening. “Explain how you helped the Rhavnan soldier get away.”
I keep my mouth shut.
It’s the wrong thing to do. I hear the two watchers step forwards.
Vikemy sighs. “I can see you plan to continue withholding information. Choices are so easy, when consequences are not a consideration, aren’t they?”
Before I realise what’s happening, the watchers grab me. A sharp sting goes through my neck. Someone is yelling – I realise it’s me. Time is stuttering. I see things in fragments.
The radio crackles from behind us. A voice says, “We found him.”
Found who?
I spin around. Try to fight the hands off me.
“Bring him to me,” Vikemy orders. “And call Dezeeves. Get his time of arrival.”
Vikemy’s face looms over mine.
“Today, we truly will be providing for The Assembly.”
I’m plunged into darkness.
My eyes are open, though it’s so dark they might as well be shut.
“Ara?” a familiar voice says, quietly.
Jolting upright, I make out the vague shape of someone further away.
I failed. He was caught anyway.
“Drake,” I say, my voice cracking. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about. And I have only gratitude for you.”
I pull my legs to my chest. “Where are we?”
“An old wine cellar, it would seem. With only one way out.”
I glance up and see the trap door, thin thin slivers of light – the only light in the room – surrounding it. It’s a long, long way away.
“Wonderful,” I mutter.
I’m silent. There is nothing more to say.
Apart from, maybe, “Why are you all the way over there?”
As though to confirm the thought in his mind, he states, “You would prefer it if I sat beside you.”
“Yes, I would prefer it,” I say, with amusement. “You speak quite formally. Has anyone told you that?”
“It is how I was taught. Speak as a noble and you will be treated as one. I have found it to have truth.”
I blink through the dark. “Let me come to you.”
I crawl over to the shape of him. He’s by a wall, resting with his back against it. I do the same.
And sigh. It’s instantly comforting, somehow, to have the wide, solid heat of his body next to mine. I stretch my legs out to get more comfortable, accidentally knock my leg against his, and realise something.
“You’re shaking.” I can see the gleam that must be his black eyes. Him, seeing me.
“It would appear so.”
“Are you afraid? Of what’s going to happen to us?”
“Not particularly. As of right now.”
“What are you afraid of, then?”
“Do not concern yourself with it.”
It hits me. “You don’t like the dark.”
His leg jerks from mine. In a somewhat cold tone, he says, “Thank you for phrasing it that way. I was just thinking how much I wanted to be reminded how childish it sounds.”