Twenty-Six #2
And yet. When I think about using the cash like that, it feels wrong. Like a dream, something that would come apart under your fingers if you tried to grab it. I can’t quite put my finger on it…
Somi, that bastard, is smiling at me. He believes what he said. I cough awkwardly.
“Actually I have… a few bits to contribute.” I’d set some aside in spite of Ky’s objections; enough to keep the Clawmarks away until I get back. “But you’re right. It hasn’t paid off just yet.”
“So when are you leaving?” Somi says.
“Leaving—” I stare at him for a second, and he rolls his eyes.
“Come on, Taj, I’m not stupid. That girl is from Hod.
You’re taking that thing you’ve been building in your room and going up there”—he jabs toward the ceiling—“to try something big. You don’t want to give me the details, fine, I’m not going to ask.
I just want to know how long you’re going to be gone. ”
“Tomorrow,” I say quietly. “And I’ll be… a while. Weeks, probably.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“It… shouldn’t be.” It’s just a runic fight, after all. Except for the assassins. “But I’ll be careful anyway.”
“That’s good.” He sighs. “Spike worries about you, even if she won’t admit it.”
“And you?” I can’t help but ask.
“I’m trying not to.” His lip quirks. “Trust, right?”
“Right.”
I should leave. This went better than I deserved. But the sick weight of guilt still presses on me, and I can’t help picking at the scab.
“Can I ask you something?”
Somi raises his eyebrows.
“If you killed Rotwurm—”
He laughs out loud. “What, with my rolling pin?”
“Just hypothetically. Two hundred stripes. What would you do with it?”
“Buy more mash,” he says promptly. “Give the bread away, not just to the kids but to anyone who needs it. Turn that pile across the alley into another bakery, train up some new people, make more.”
“Even two hundred stripes wouldn’t last long when you’re giving it to everyone in sight.”
“Probably. But a lot of people wouldn’t go hungry in the meantime.”
“But”—prod, scrape, until I find the pain—“you know it wouldn’t work. I mean, they wouldn’t let you keep it.”
“Who?”
“Uncle Claw. One of the scavenging gangs. Someone. They’d see what you had and come and take it.”
He frowns, as though that genuinely hadn’t occurred to him. “So what would you do with a fortune?”
“Get out of here. Out of the Heap. Up to Yesod, maybe.”
He snorts. “You think two hundred stripes is enough for that?”
“Maybe.” I shake my head. “You haven’t seen what it’s like up there. Everything is… clean. Parks. Trees. No Twisted. It’s safe. People don’t hurt you just because they can.”
“Except for the Arbiters. You really think they’d let you live in peace? A Heaper with a sack full of bits?”
Probably not. “You were the one who always wanted to go up there. You wanted to see the stars, you said.”
“You can’t see the stars, even from Hod,” Somi says. “Besides, I was eight years old. Do you want me to remind you of all the stupid shit you said when you were eight?”
I wince.
“Besides, if I left, what would happen to Ema and Athie and the other kids?” Somi goes on. “They’d starve. What’s the use in saving ourselves if we leave everyone else behind?”
I don’t have an answer. Or, rather, I do, but not one that I can tell him.
To do what he wants doesn’t take just money, it takes power. Without that, there’s always someone who can take everything from you.
If I win the Ascent, Ky will be back on the Hod Council, with Arbiters at her beck and call.
It doesn’t get more powerful than that. And she’ll owe me everything.
That is what will keep us truly safe; being at the top of the pile instead of the bottom.
Then if Somi wants to come down to the Heap and hand out bread, he can, and he can make Uncle Claw lick his boots in the bargain.
It doesn’t banish the guilt, but it makes it bearable. It’s still a bet, but the prize is worth it.
Spike didn’t take it nearly as well. When she learned we were leaving again and for how long, she ran to her room and slammed the door so hard the walls shook.
Now, approaching the innermost ring of Yesod, my throat gets thick at the thought of her scrunched trying-not-to-cry face.
I try to focus on the luxury around me instead.
All of this—the magnificent houses, the sunlamps, the lawns, the dogs—is what I’ll win for her.
She’ll be well-fed and well-clothed and safe.
No more hiding from Twisted or when Clawmarks come knocking.
It’s worth the cost, it’s worth the risk. It is.
The biggest houses on Yesod rest one face against the tier’s inner wall, and the very biggest of all—mansions that would swallow Venci’s fighting pit ten times over—are closest to the stairways that descend from Hod.
There’s nothing so crude here as the fences and razor wire of the lower crossings.
The people of Yesod would no more climb up to Hod uninvited than they would pull down their pants and take a shit on the dinner table; no physical barriers are necessary.
Which is not to say the entrance is unguarded, of course.
Our Yesod escort stops at the bottom of the broad marble steps.
The officer gives Ky a neat salute and holds it while we climb alone, Star’s bladed feet click-clicking on the stone.
My chest tightens. For a boy from the Heap, Yesod was a dangerous, forbidden place, but this stairway represents nothing less than the edge of my world.
It’s just a stairway, another part of me admonishes. And the people up there are just people. All they have is a lot more money than anybody else.
“Don’t say a word until we’re in private,” Ky whispers. “Assume anybody who offers you anything is lying.”
Lovely.
[Observation: not so different from down below, then.]
We reach the top.