Ethan grieved, Jim slept, and I waited.
When Mark came in, I was reminded that Charles’s face had looked like a mask, because I saw Mark’s mask slip away. Mark looked tired but noble, grieving but patient, and then the door of his home shut behind him.
The mask dropped. His face fell into a different expression, closed off and betraying nothing but impatience. I did not think there was much else to betray. There were small, straight lines bracketing his mouth, nose, and eyes that told the story of his character to me, that gave an air of cruelty to his stern, handsome face already. But it would be years, I thought, before the lines became so pronounced that nobody would be able to look on his face and find it possible to trust him.
The first thing he said, to everyone’s surprise, was my name.
“Lucie, you know quite a few of this family’s secrets already. Naturally we trust you with them, and naturally we would be deeply wounded if you betrayed them. Now, however, your silence is not going to be enough. If you wish to leave, we will let you. If you stay, I will consider that a promise that you mean to support us in our plans.”
Ethan turned his face toward me for the first time in hours and whispered in my ear so softly that his breath barely stirred my hair. “You should go. I don’t want this for you. All I want to do is protect you from things like this.”
I had told Ethan, Let someone try to part us, and I had meant it. I did not answer him with words. I simply tightened my grip on his hand.
“Excellent. Now, Ethan: the doorman has been dealt with. Nobody knows you were the one who found Charles’s body, so nobody can suspect that you let in the rebels or wielded the knife yourself.”
A shudder of horror passed through Ethan. I held his hand as if I could hold him together, as if no matter how he shook I would not let him shake apart.
“In the eyes of the public, you have become a tragic orphan. Here’s how we’re going to use that.”
I wondered if the doorman had been killed or simply bribed.
“We are going to redeem our family’s name and build something from this disaster,” said Mark. “You, Ethan, are going to go to work for the council as a page. I want you in the public eye, serving the Light in small, useful ways, until all doubt of you is slowly removed as sympathy for you rises.”
“I can’t even do magic,” Ethan said.
“Half the council can’t do magic,” Mark told him. “That does not matter. What matters is that you uphold the Light.”
Once, everyone on the council had worn rings of Light, but they had passed power down to sons and daughters who did not. Now some of them wore rings and some did not. Magic was like beauty: you were pleased to be born with it and happy to marry those who had it, and you hoped your children would be blessed with it if you were not. But you could be powerful without it, as long as you were rich and committed to keeping the structure of society exactly as it was.
It made no difference to me. A man was not any better simply because he wore the rings and wielded magic. Mark Stryker was proof enough of that, and Charles Stryker had been too. Was life any fairer back when all the council had magic? Or before the magic came, when power depended on wealth and cruelty alone? Had anything ever been fair, in the history of the world? I didn’t think so.
I knew what Mark intended for Ethan. People would look at him, the orphaned boy in the public eye, and pity him. It was not a glamorous job he was being given, and that was smart, but it was a job that made Ethan’s allegiance clear. The shadow of suspicion that had fallen on him would vanish. Ethan was young and handsome, ten times as charming as Jim, and dating me, Lucie Manette, the Golden Thread in the Dark. He could make the whole Stryker corporation look good. Mark’s plan was for him to be a figurehead, and at the same time to make accusations against Ethan look absurd.
“Uphold the Light,” Ethan said. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you will follow my lead. The filth of the darkest streets are rising up, and they need to be put down and shown their place. Do you want the same thing that happened to Charles to happen to me, and your cousin? Do you think that the people who came for your father’s blood will show any mercy to you? There’s no mercy in them. We stamp them down or they stamp us out.”
Mark took a deep breath and gave us the smile he usually saved for the cameras.
“Stop being a child, Ethan. Start being your father’s son.”
He stood at the glass window overlooking the city, framed against a new day and a brightening morning. He looked supremely confident. I knew Ethan would join the council: I knew none of us had any choice but to do what Mark wanted. What else could we do? Ethan’s father had been murdered, Ethan was under a cloud of suspicion, his doppelganger was wandering the streets of the city, and ultimate power lay in Mark Stryker’s hands.
I took a deep breath. “What can I do to help?”
“I’m glad you asked me that question,” Mark Stryker said. “I do think you owe us, Lucie. All this nastiness is being done in your name, and it reflects very badly on us. You must want to make up for that. Don’t you?”
“She doesn’t have to make up for anything,” Ethan said loudly.
“I’ll do whatever I can,” I said, even more loudly.
“I thought about you making a public statement,” Mark said. “But considering how the interview went, that might not be the wisest course of action at this time. We do not want anything to seem coerced. What we want is to see you by Ethan’s side, serving willingly as his partner. What do you think might accomplish that, Lucie?”
“She doesn’t have to do anything!” Ethan shouted.
“I’ll do it with Ethan,” I said. “I’ll serve as a page as well.”
Mark Stryker smiled. I feared him and hated him so much, I would have done anything he wanted.
Even then, even when I had seen Charles Stryker lying in his own blood less than a day ago, I believed the Light Council was too strong for their power to ever be broken.
Chapter Eleven
MARK TOLD ME TO BE QUIET WHEN WE SERVED the council, and I did what he said. Ethan was just as quiet as I was.
The meetings were held in Stryker Tower. It made sense to gather there. The tower was one of the most notable buildings in the city, a column of steel and glass that people could look toward as they had once looked toward old idols, pyramids, the sun itself.
And any foes, no matter how powerful, would be less able to fight the Strykers on their own turf. The very people who served the coffee were Stryker employees. Now the people making copies and taking minutes were one of the Stryker heirs and his girlfriend. Mark had everybody at a psychological disadvantage.
At the head of the table sat Anton Lewis, the abbot of Light, with his brilliant rings casting light upward onto his soft, jowled jaw and his wet, trembling mouth. He was said to be the most powerful Light magician in the city and to act as a channel between the people and the Light. Years ago, he had tried to enact reforms of the treatment of those in the Dark city, laws that would abolish the cages and allow Dark and Light citizens to travel more freely between cities.
The rest of the council had made sure those laws did not pass, and Anton Lewis’s failed attempt had only made the Dark city more discontent. They hated him for trying and failing more than they hated anyone else. My Aunt Leila had despised Anton Lewis more than all the other members of the council combined, unless you counted his wife. She was a former supermodel who had been known as Bright Mariah and whom the Dark city called Bitter Mariah.
She sat at the council table, her silver-fair hair and makeup always impeccable and her clothing as clearly expensive as if it had been made with gold thread. I had seen pictures of her when I lived in the Dark city, and had hated her shining face and all the useless finery she was draped with, as if she was more a mantelpiece full of baubles than a woman.
Aunt Leila thought that Anton was a coward and Bitter Mariah was worse than that. I’d agreed with her, once, because I’d a
greed with her about everything.
I’d seen a lot of women dressed expensively since those days, and I did not think finery made Bitter Mariah guilty. Then again, I did not think she was innocent. She supported and upheld the Light Council and all their cruel laws: she was just as guilty of murder and callous indifference as the rest.
There were many other faces, among them David Brin, who administered the city finances, and Gabrielle Mirren, the moderate of the council who was kept on for her popularity and whom Mark did not allow to speak often.
I had seen these people, mostly old men with expensive suits that were sleekly smooth at the shoulders and straining at the stomachs, on television many times while I was flicking through channels. It was strange to be in their immediate presence, to hear the small bad jokes they told and the way they grunted, or scratched at their heads. Brin peeled and ate oranges throughout the council sessions, leaving spirals of orange skin in a heap at his place every time.
It was like being in the teachers’ lounge at school, staring around in startled amazement that those in authority were just people, flesh and blood and often boring, just as likely to be stupid or wrong as anybody else.
And yet these people held all our fates in their hands.
“Obviously, one of the first things we must do is restore order to our cities, both the Dark and the Light,” said Mark Stryker.
The first meeting we attended was all about putting more Light guards on the streets of the Light city—to reassure citizens that they were being protected, of course. I saw Ethan open his mouth several times, but I sent him imploring looks and he stayed quiet.
Gabrielle Mirren said at one point, “We don’t want people to feel as if we are tyrants—”
“But we cannot allow them to think we are weak,” said Brin. He got a nod from Mark for his trouble.
I walked home that day and saw the new Light guards patrolling and people rushing for home with their eyes on the ground. It reminded me of being back in the Dark city, everyone being guarded and watched as the buried were.
It was like Manhattanhenge, but the streets were filled with fear instead of light.
The second meeting was full of plans for the Light city as well. It was not until the third meeting that the council talked of what to do with the Dark city. There had always been guards patrolling the streets, and a garrison of guards at the gates examining everyone who went out and came in, but now the cages were gone and there was rioting inside the walls.
The Dark city was under martial law, and the garrisons needed new officers. Mark Stryker said we needed to send in people we could trust, who would control the situation. I did not know most of the names discussed, and I sat there with a distant expression on my face. I looked at the rings on my fingers as if they were strange new constellations, their light coming from a very long way away, beautiful but basically useless.
“What the Dark city needs is a firm hand,” said Mark Stryker. “It is regrettable, but some harsh measures will have to be taken.”
“The people of the Dark city live harsh lives already,” said Gabrielle Mirren, but she did not protest when Mark read out the names of a few men that even I recognized by reputation: men who sent people to the cages without trial and armed all their guards with both the whip and the sword. They were sending in troops to crush the rebellion.
People who passed out pamphlets or spoke out against certain laws would be arrested. Aunt Leila will be taken in for questioning, I thought. I could imagine what they might do to her. She could disappear like my mother had.
“These are men who can annihilate the sans-merci,” said Mark.
I kept silent but looked at Ethan. He must have seen the horror on my face. I saw the angry look on his.
“And anyone else who gets in their way,” Ethan said recklessly. I reached out and touched his arm because I wanted the support, and as a warning.
Mark looked up at Ethan, a sudden sharp glance that showed exactly how much he did not appreciate having his decisions called into question in front of the council and by a member of his own family.
“Do you have an objection, Ethan?” he inquired.
I tried to get Ethan to look back at me, tried to get Ethan to shut up, but my wish for him to be safe was just as useless as my wish for Aunt Leila to be protected.
Ethan was looking at his uncle, his dark eyes steady: angry, but with a flame in them that burned beyond anger. “There are better people to send,” he said. “People who could bring peace instead of creating a wasteland.”
“By the Light,” said Mark, his voice amused. “And can you name some of these remarkable people who can turn violent and dangerous revolutionaries into courteous guests at a tea party? Feel free to speak, Ethan. Tell me who you would choose.”
Ethan said, “I would choose Jarvis Lorry.”
My hand clenched on his arm.
“My father hired him. He’s been working for us for more than a year now as our head of security in Stryker Tower, and in his position he has settled conflicts with former employees and disaffected crowds alike in a way that did not end in violence and did end with both parties satisfied,” said Ethan. “He’s absolutely honest, and concerned with justice above all. He will make sure the laws are upheld and the people of the Dark city are treated fairly. These people need help, not punishment.”
Gabrielle Mirren murmured agreement, and Mark’s eyes narrowed. “These people,” he pointed out softly, “killed your father.”
“The whole Dark city killed my father?” Ethan asked. “How did they all fit in the apartment?”
There was an uneasy silence then: people did not know whether to be horrified or to laugh. I was almost amazed at how Ethan refused to play the game of making people like him in order to achieve his ends. He could have done it. He was handsome and charming, and when he smiled at people, they wanted to smile back. He seemed to believe that it was beneath him in some way.
He was not like me. He would never have done what I did.
“What do you think of this?” Mark Stryker asked. It was the first time anyone had addressed me at the table.
Ethan squeezed my hand hard. I had sent silent messages to him for help, for quiet, so many times, and he had not listened. Yet I did not know how to refuse him.
Jarvis was a kind man. I was sure he was good at his job. I was sure that he would try to resolve matters in the Dark city without violence. And my Aunt Leila was still in there. What if sending him could save her?
But I was scared of the Dark city and scared of what might happen to Penelope’s husband and Marie’s father in it. I knew what happened to people with good intentions, down in the Dark.
I swallowed. “He and his wife were kind enough to take me and my father in when we arrived in the Light city—”
Mark’s eyes narrowed further, like a trap slamming shut, when he smiled. “Excellent point,” he said. “You are still very popular in the Dark city. Sending someone connected with you would be a good move for public relations. I suppose we can grant the man a promotion, considering the circumstances—and given Ethan’s enthusiastic support.”
I opened my mouth to say that was not what I meant, but I did not want to cross Mark in front of the council. I looked to Ethan for help, but Ethan’s face was set in determined lines. Ethan was getting what he wanted.
Mark smiled and kept his gaze fixed on me until I had to smile back. “I think this is an excellent idea. Don’t you agree with me and Ethan, Lucie?”
The word stuck like a piece of apple in my throat, but I forced it out. “Yes.”
I was not like Ethan. I would never dare argue with Mark Stryker or the Light Council.
“Then consider it done. No need to thank me,” Mark added, and kept smiling.
“Thank you,” Ethan said to me when we had left the meeting room. “I promise you this is the right thing to do. We can’t go on this way. The Dark city has to be treated more kindly, not less. We have to act.”
“
Don’t thank me,” I said. “Don’t tell me that this is the right thing to do. Promise me that he will be okay.”
Ethan was quiet for a little while. We got out of the elevator and walked through the glass and steel hall that led to the revolving doors. It was like walking through a greenhouse full of glittering metal and gleaming marble instead of flowers.
“I promise,” said Ethan.
Over dinner, we all discussed Jarvis’s promotion. I made the food carefully, made even the bread rolls from scratch, as if putting extra effort into a meal would make up for what I had done.
Penelope and Jarvis were both smiling and talking brightly. It was Marie whose small face showed distress. She kept looking warily back and forth from her father’s face to her mother’s, as if they were trying to trick her by smiling when their whole bodies were tense.
“Good bit more money in it. He’ll be able to keep me in the style to which I wish to quickly become accustomed,” Penelope said, and tapped her glass against Jarvis’s.
“Guess I’m doing a good job. Or somebody put in a good word for me.”
Jarvis twinkled at me, and I wanted to shout and disclaim responsibility, but I was responsible. If it wasn’t for me, Jarvis would never have met Ethan; Jarvis would not be involved with the Strykers at all.
“Didn’t need to. Anyone can tell good work when they see it,” I said.
We were all pretending, but there was a value to pretending. When you pretend hard enough, for long enough, you can convince yourself. It was not likely Jarvis could be anyone’s target—he was not even a Light magician. He would be trying to establish order, and doing it kindly. This job brought in a lot more money, and it was not so dangerous. Maybe it was not dangerous at all. Maybe Jarvis would be safe and Aunt Leila would be safe and Uncle Douglas would be safe. Maybe Ethan was right to hope and I was wrong to doubt and everything would be well.