Chapter Fourteen On the Other Side of the Bars
Chapter Fourteen
On the Other Side of the Bars
Samina was a fool. After the abduction, Hasan had explicitly forbidden any of the gang members from interacting with Poppy Sutherland.
“She asks far too many questions,” he’d said, “and while they may seem harmless or even innocent, she is not to have any answers. Nothing she can report back to her fiancé after this is over. Understood?”
Samina had nodded with everyone else, but in the end, her morbid curiosity and a seven-year-long grudge had led her down here.
At first, she’d told herself she just wanted a look.
She’d stood off to the side of the cell door, studying the other woman in silence.
Peeking through the bars, Samina was unwantedly taken back to the last time that she’d seen Poppy, through the wrought-iron gate of the Sutherland estate.
Oh, she hated how every reminder of that day evoked the same, raw animal feeling of desperation that had driven her back to the Sutherlands a decade after they’d fired her mother.
The grief, the hunger, the rage that twisted her insides every time she looked at her little brother and counted his ribs.
She had gone there because she was at her lowest—but she hadn’t yet known that there were far deeper places to sink to.
Now, almost a decade later, everything had changed.
Perhaps that was what had driven Samina to move without thought, revealing herself to Poppy—to show her just how different things were.
But standing across from Poppy Sutherland, divided only by metal bars, Samina couldn’t help but feel as though everything were exactly the same.
Though Poppy now wore cotton clothes instead of silk, she still held herself carefully, as though she were a doll and someone else had positioned her limbs for her.
“Samina?” Poppy asked. “That is you, isn’t it? What are you doing here?”
Her question almost made Samina laugh out loud. In a way, Poppy’s actions were the very reason that Samina stood in this hallway.
“I work here now. For the Jackal.”
“As a maid?” Poppy asked, her voice curling up with uncertainty.
“No,” Samina said. “I’m part of his gang.”
“How did you become a—a criminal?” Poppy’s eyes were wide with dismay.
This made Samina laugh humorlessly. “Don’t you remember? My first criminal charge was ‘stealing’ a necklace from the Sutherlands—a family heirloom, so I’m told.”
Samina watched the blood drain from Poppy’s face.
It was the admission of guilt that she had been looking for.
For seven years, she’d wondered if Poppy had truly betrayed her, and now, she supposed she had her answer.
“I hope you like your cell,” she said, injecting as much contempt into her tone as possible.
“It’s nicer than the ones I’ve been in.”
“Wait.” Poppy stepped forward. “If you work for the Jackal, then surely you must know why I’m here. What does he want from Richard? When will I be freed? How many days have I been here? Do you know if anyone’s looking for me?”
Belatedly, Samina remembered what Hasan had said—she asks far too many questions, and she is not to have any answers. Samina had already erred by coming here, and she could not afford to make any more mistakes because of Poppy Sutherland.
“Why should I tell you anything?”
“I won’t tell anyone you told me, I swear,” Poppy said.
“Just like you didn’t tell anyone about the necklace?” Samina shot back. “I owe you nothing. Nothing.”
With that, Samina turned and raced away, ignoring her name as it echoed down the hallway after her.
· · ·
Seeing Samina had rattled Poppy to the core, and her parting words now shook her severely again.
What had she meant, about the necklace? Poppy knew the incident she was referring to—after all, it was her ultimate shame, the reason her father had decided to send her away.
Poppy remembered it all too well, but she had never told another soul about it.
Samina had caught Poppy alone, near the gates of the estate.
She hadn’t recognized her at first—it had been a decade since she and Nanny were exiled, and Samina had changed.
Her frame was thin and bony, and her haunted eyes, shadowed by dark circles, were too big for her angular face.
But when Poppy looked at her properly, there was no doubt: This was the girl she had spent her early childhood with.
Of course, Poppy had asked about Nanny. “How is she?”
“Dead,” Samina said bluntly. “My mother is dead.”
Poppy reeled back as if Samina had physically struck her.
In short, sharp sentences, Samina laid out the events of the last decade: how her mother had been unable to find respectable employment after being fired by the Sutherlands, how she had worked as a maid in a merchant’s household until she became pregnant and her belly was too big to hide, how after Samina’s half brother was born, Nanny had been forced to work in various factories to make ends meet.
“She got injured in a machine accident at the auto parts factory,” Samina said. “It got infected. We spent all our savings on her medicine, but she passed away three months ago.”
Samina’s mother wasn’t the first factory casualty that Poppy had heard of.
Her father had told her the story of her own biological parents’ demise, lost to a fire in a textile factory in Andhra, a city south of Marnapur.
Just like Poppy, just like thousands of kids on the island, Samina had become an orphan born of an industrial accident.
“I know we’re not really friends anymore,” Samina said, twisting her hands together, “but I want, just once, to take something back to my brother that I didn’t find in a trash can. It’s hard, finding work. The only places that will hire me are the factories, but after what happened to Ma . . .”
Poppy knew what her father would say: Handouts enabled laziness. The Founder decreed that everyone had a part to play, and those who did not play their part should not be encouraged by blind charity. She had promised to accept the Founder and his teachings, hadn’t she?
“I can’t get you food, Samina.”
Samina deflated, becoming impossibly smaller. “That’s okay. I shouldn’t have asked. You probably have other things to worry about anyway.” She offered Poppy a weak smile. “You look really pretty, Poppy. So grown up.”
Though Samina’s words had a genuine air, Poppy cringed.
She could only imagine how she must have looked to Samina, wearing the latest fashions, living in the largest house—the house that Poppy had inadvertently gotten her banished from when she’d exposed Nanny.
And now, Nanny was dead, and Samina and her brother were starving, scavenging for scraps, while Poppy ate three meals a day.
The guilt burrowed into her resolve, eating it away.
What her father didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.
“I can’t give you food,” she repeated, lifting her fingers to the back of her neck, “but I can give you this, if you think it will help?”
Samina’s eyes grew wide as saucers as Poppy unclasped her gold chain and held it through the gate, the emerald pendant swinging back and forth. Samina had refused at first, but Poppy had insisted she pawn it and use the money for food.
She thought she’d done the right thing. Her chest felt lighter, and she slept easier knowing that she had atoned for what she had done to Nanny ten years ago.
That feeling of relief had evaporated like dew in the morning sun the moment her father had summoned her to his office, the emerald pendant dangling from his fingertips. The pawnshop owner Samina had sold the chain to had reported her to police, who had traced the owner back to Clarence.
“Will Samina go to jail?” Poppy asked.
“Damn it, Poppy,” her father said. “Even in your questions, you show a blatant disregard for our property. No, the girl will not go to jail—since she’s under sixteen, she’ll be sent to an orphanage instead. What is it to you?”
Poppy had tried to explain, then, about Samina, and who she was, but the revelation only made him even angrier.
“That woman was a traitor. She taught you heresy, Poppy. Do you still feel for her, even now? I thought you were changed. But perhaps not enough distance has been put between yourself and those wretched tales.”
Her father had written Headmistress Thornhaven that very night, and within a fortnight, they were on the docks, her trunks packed and loaded on the ship behind her.
Though her father’s anger had cooled by then, the intensity in his eyes remained just as bright as he clasped that same emerald-and-gold necklace around her neck.
The metal was cold as ice against her skin.
“Make me proud,” he’d said, and then it had been time to board.
She’d worked every day to make him proud—to prove that she had learned her lesson, would not repeat the same mistakes.
But she had made mistakes regardless, planted seeds of doubt that Richard now sought to water.
He was likely dragging her name through the mud this very second, so that even if she escaped, it would be impossible to show her face.
Without anyone to advocate for her, what would her father decide?
They had been separated seven years. Her term reports had always been excellent, but the headmistress had never missed an opportunity to write home for every infraction.
Was three weeks long enough for her father to see the change in her?
To know that she could never commit the crimes Richard had charged her with?
Her lungs constricted. She flung herself down on the hard cot.
Poppy couldn’t go back to Welkland. She had lost seven years of her home and family to exile, and she would not allow it to happen again. She had not pushed herself so hard at Thornhaven, swallowing racist vitriol—
Thornhaven! Poppy scrambled upright. Richard had instructed his accomplice to write to a cousin in Welkland, who had attended Thornhaven at the same time as she had.
Only one woman at Thornhaven fit that description: Geraldine Alderfort.
Poppy’s heart sank. Richard had allied himself with the Alderforts.
If he was forging alliances with the other First Families, then he’d been gearing up to take the viceroy’s office for a while now—much longer than their brief courtship.
Poppy wouldn’t let him have it. She would die before she let Richard inherit her father’s office. He was untrustworthy, manipulative, vile—the least worthy successor she could possibly imagine.
I would have made a better successor.
The rogue thought rushed through Poppy’s mind with a vicious edge that shocked her. She tried to shove the idea back down. It was preposterous—there had never been a female viceroy, and certainly not a Virian one.
But why should that stop her? She had all the trappings of a proper heir: She was her father’s eldest child, she had an education just as extensive as most of her peers, if not more, and she cared deeply about the future of her island.
Had her father not said something similar at dinner the day she had returned?
The possibility had certainly threatened Richard, so much that he had mentioned succession laws to his accomplice the night of the party.
If he had taken her father’s words seriously, perhaps she should too.
The more Poppy thought about it, the harder it was to silence the idea.
The role of viceroy would bring her more stability than any husband.
She’d hold the highest-ranked office in the land, answerable to none but the Welkish emperor.
No one could exile her. She would be in charge, free to roll back the brutal, ineffectual laws that held the colony back.
The export crisis, the famine—she could pass new laws, increase the food supply, distribute resources to those who actually needed them, not just the police.
She could do so much more than build orphanages.
She could send Richard off to Welkland, where he could never threaten her again.
But for any of this to happen, she had to get out of this cell. And if it meant using the last tool she had available to her, the one she had sworn to never use again, well, so be it.
Poppy closed her eyes and reached for her unnatural powers.
Holding her breath, she tentatively explored the walls of her cell with her mind.
Her stomach turned in response, but she ignored the discomfort, pushing harder.
Her senses found moisture, cool and smooth, in the ceiling.
It flowed in a cylindrical shape—a pipe.
If she could stop it from moving, and create enough pressure, she could blow a hole in the ceiling and escape.
She pushed on the water with all her might, forcing the flow to halt.
Pressure built as the water accumulated behind her block, but she held firm, even as spots danced in her vision.
Come on. The water tested her, seeking a way out.
She gagged, the nausea disrupting her concentration.
As she slumped back onto the cot, something gave way in her mind.
The pipe burst—but not with the satisfying, room-destroying explosion she’d been aiming for.
Water trickled from a small fissure in the pipe, pooling in the space between the upstairs flooring and the cell’s ceiling. It was trapped.
Just like Poppy.
She turned and retched over the side of her cot, then promptly passed out.