The next day Niko spent a strange morning in the breakfast room. Ari was remorseful, Malik was miserable and Duc appeared entirely unconcerned and Jared wolfed down his breakfast as if someone was going to steal it in that brief moment it was between the plate and his lips.
Afterward she left the hotel with Jared, who had been lucky enough to have his papers and identification already prepared before he’d entered the city, tagging along behind her.
“Where are you going?” He asked after they’d been walking aimlessly for a couple of minutes.
“I’m looking for something.” Specifically she was looking for the plaque Ben had quoted from to get them into the city. She remembered he said that it was in the middle of a square but she had no idea how many squares were in the city not to mention which one to go to.
Eventually she broke down and asked for directions and was pointed toward Amaryllis Square to the west of the city, where the homes of many Council members were. For a moment they distracted her. There was nothing that said that inside those homes resided authorities that refused to help anyone outside of the city walls but gladly wrested anything it could away from Outsiders.
According to the Director the Council along with every Circle in the city and their families was coming to the hotel in two days for the ceremony so she supposed she was going to have to get used to them.
The whole expanse of the square lay beneath an overhang. It was completely glass and slightly domed so that the rain never settled on its surface but rolled right off creating long furrows at the edge of the square that were filled with salt by the Grey-men.
The glass was probably treated somehow because the sunlight that slipped through its panes was a pale golden color making the square feel warm and inviting as well as protecting the mosaic embedded into the ground.
No salt covered the square ground and she wondered what it must feel like to city dwellers used to the constant crunch of salt beneath their boots. The lack of salt made the mosaic easier to see and she saw that there were two figures being depicted. One was of a woman with dark skin and wild hair, a determined expression rendered in tiny colored squares. She held a sword in one hand and a coil of rope in the other. She stood over a monster lying down in a bed of fire but it didn’t look defeated even with its mouth taped shut. It looked at the woman with flames in its eyes, biding its time and waiting to break free. In the middle of the square was a low pillar made of dark grey stone. She walked toward it tramping across the devil and his sealed mouth. There were four symbols etched onto the pillar, one for each Circle: Rose, Azure, Dark and Pale.
The plague was a dull brassy color; it read exactly as Ben had quoted to the Official. She ran her fingers over the raised letters. Jared gave the inscription a glance and quickly grew bored. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and turned his attention to the buildings surrounding them.
“Do you ever wonder what’d it’d be like to burn this all down?” He asked.
She shrugged. “The Grey-men would put it out before it gets too far.” Despite their near whispers her eyes darted around before checking to see if anyone else was listening to their conversation.
He looked up at her with one brown eye. “You really think so?” But he didn’t ask it as if it was a genuine question. He spoke as if part of him was laughing at her trust. What had the Gemini done to him?
Instead of pity she gave him a flat look. “I saw one who tried to keep working even as a Slither attacked him.” That had been horrible to watch. “So yeah, I think so.”
“They’re not all mindless like that.” Jared said absently kicking at the pillar. “The ones in Gemini aren’t.”
“Are there a lot of Grey-men there?” She asked. What she really wanted to ask was if they’d all lost an eye like he had but she assumed pointing out his self-mutilation would not get her the answers she needed.
He continued to kick at the pillar. “I guess. They don’t like to be called Grey-men. They’re the smart ones, not like that guy over there.” He pointed to a Grey-man who did look particularly mindless, re-salting a single spot over and over again as people hurried around him and trampled across his work.
He fell when one of the passersby bumped into him. The Grey-man caught himself before any part of his body could touch the ground and his façade of blankness cracked briefly as he glared at the person who’d almost knocked him down.
“Maybe he’s not so dumb after all.” Jared said thoughtfully and Niko wondered if he had been alone would he have tried to talk to the man.