Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
“What he means to say is why should we believe you when you say you didn’t know what it was when you got it?
” the wife asked, frowning at Harrison as she did.
Her expression was set with the same disapproval I was used to seeing from her but without much of the patented ire that usually came with it.
That, she apparently reserved for First Ringers only.
“You shouldn’t,” Harrison answered with a shrug.
“If you were being smart, if you were being careful, you wouldn’t believe anyone about anything that has to do with the mark or the rebellion itself.
I know what everyone saw when that asshole made me take my shirt off in front of the crowd.
I know what they think. Unfortunately, it’s exactly what he wants them to think.
The Vipers are making enemies of everyone in the lower rings and using the gods to do it.
They won’t be looking for marks for long.
Soon, they’ll just assume you’re one of them because you’re down here too.
Whether you choose to join or not, I don’t think it will matter much longer. ”
Warren and his wife exchanged a look. Maurice just kept glaring at his brother, not even looking Harrison’s way.
“Cosmo’s whole argument is that those of us in the lower rings are dangerous heretics who pose a threat to peace and order in this city,” Harrison added when no one else said a word. “The rebels blew a hole through the twelfth and proved his point.”
The screech of a chair against tile rang out through the night as Maurice stood abruptly and paced to the other side of the room, shaking his head as he went.
“People died,” Harrison continued. “These people are dangerous.”
“People die on the Deck all the time,” Maurice’s gruff voice answered.
A hush fell over the room as he continued, facing away from them all as he spoke.
“From starvation, from thirst, from being exposed to the elements, from injuries in dangerous jobs the Uppers don’t want to do, from the choices they make out of neglect and despair.
People die in the Third too. Boys get beheaded.
Girls get shoved through tunnels against their will, never to return.
And in the Second where houses burn down and men drown to appease the same gods Cosmo’s so concerned we’ve offended. ”
“That’s no excuse to blow them up, Maurice,” Warren replied, tone somber and somehow exhausted at the same time in a way that told me this wasn’t the first time he’d presented this argument.
“Isn’t it?” Maurice snapped, gaze shooting to his brother as he finally turned to face them.
Dahlia sighed, dropping her head into her hands and shaking it. Yes. They’d certainly had this discussion before.
“You don’t want to join them, Maurice, trust me,” Harrison started, stepping forward.
“They spout all these lofty ideas about pulling down the top and rising from the bottom but they don't have any actual plans for what to do when they get there. They bitch and moan about how poorly the Houses are managing the city but they don’t have any better policies to put in place instead. They’re violent and radical and short-sighted.
Even if they managed to overthrow just one of the major Houses, the other two would destroy them before they got the chance to keep it. ”
“Not if we had enough people.”
Harrison froze, every muscle in his body visibly tensing as he reacted to the one word Maurice uttered which they’d all heard. We.
My breath caught in my throat. If you’d asked me, days ago, to choose which of Adrian’s brothers I thought was most likely to join a violent rebellion, I never would have chosen the soft-spoken, thoughtful older brother.
Not when I’d grown used to the middle brother’s outbursts, had watched him tear through a line of priests to get to his sister on her last day in Sanctuary.
And yet the fury on the eldest brother’s face was unmistakable.
I wondered if it had always been there, simmering just beneath the surface, if we’d all missed it.
“Please tell me you haven’t already joined them,” Harrison spoke quietly.
Warren let out a long-suffering sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb.
“We’ve been arguing about this ever since she showed up at our door,” he confessed, shaking his head. “And then the bombing happened and he won’t–it’s practically torn mom apart but he’s so damn stubborn and I–”
“Maurice,” Harrison interrupted, stepping toward the older brother whose fists were clenched at his sides in a stance I knew all too well.
He was ready for a fight. “Please think about what you’re doing, what you’re signing up for.
They blew up the twelfth tunnel for the gods’ sake.
That’s on the Deck, not the upper rings. ”
“He took my sister,” Maurice’s voice was so low, so raspy and dangerous it was almost difficult to understand him.
But the words had the desired effect. Harrison blinked and reeled back, at a loss for what to say.
“That bastard can claim the gods called her as much as he likes but I saw him shove her into that tunnel. I know who’s really responsible for Adrian being gone and I’ll make him pay for it even if it costs me my life to do so. ”
“And our lives?” Warren snapped. “You’d barter our lives as well? Mine? Dahlia’s? Mother’s? Bria’s?”
Maurice’s gaze slid to his brother.
“He wouldn’t touch her,” he barked.
“He would,” Harrison warned, tone gone cold. “I’ve heard rumors about the way Cosmo treats his family. He used to abuse his grandson, his own heir. Dante had bruises to cover, injuries so bad sometimes he missed training because of them. Don’t, for one second, assume anyone is safe from the Viper.”
“How do you know that?” Maurice asked, gaze narrowed in examination. “Did Adrian tell you?”
“Yes,” Harrison lied easily, too easily, but it worked.
Maurice deflated, closing his eyes and shaking his head.
“Someone has to do something,” he muttered a moment later. “They can’t keep getting away with how they treat us. Not after Adrian. She proved we’re just as worthy of the gods as they are. They can’t–”
“I know,” Harrison said. “And you’re right. So maybe let’s hear what this Milo guy has to say?”
They exchanged a look, clearly perturbed by the idea, but nodded in agreement anyway.
I breathed out a sigh of relief, though still disturbed by the conversation in its entirety, and turned toward the husk of the home next door.
It had burned nearly to the foundation. A few charred walls remained standing and a door swung on its hinges in the evening breeze.
Papers fluttered over the floor, flipping up and dancing in the wind, and I wondered when she’d come back, if she’d managed to gather all the evidence of her involvement in the rebellion and hidden it away somewhere else.
I wondered where she was now. Back on the lowers?
Or squirrelled away somewhere else up here I’d never find her?
A thought occurred to me as I considered the task of hunting her down once more and felt a bone-weary exhaustion at the very idea.
Why hunt the rabbit when I could hunt the Wolf?