“Perhaps they deliberately came tonight to avoid you,” I snapped.
He shrugged. “That is likely true. They have no love for me. Why are you so angry? I would have warned you if I could, but once inside, it was too late.”
I opened my mouth to deny anger, then realized he was right. My temper had risen from fear.
“That was unnecessarily dangerous,” I said, forcing myself to be calm. “You deliberately frightened them. Why?”
Domick’s eyes were like the holes of the Blacklands as he stepped out into the night. “The people back there are not bad folk. They are just poor and ignorant. They speak too freely of matters better left unsaid. I am trying to teach them to keep their mouths shut.”
“And what if there had been trouble in there? What would Mika have done? Would his job protect him if someone decided to take offense to his bullying?”
“You don’t seem to grasp what it means to be employed by the Council,” Domick said softly. “There is little it would not protect me against.”
I snorted in disbelief. “Only those high up in Council employ warrant that sort of protection. Not a sweeper of floors.”
“You think that after so many seasons of faithful service the Council would not reward a loyal worker?” Domick asked quietly.
A chill crept along my veins. “You mean …”
He laughed hollowly. “Let us say that it has been some time since I have swept a floor in the Councilcourt, Elspeth.”
I licked my lips. “The people back there believe that you are a torturer. Why didn’t you coerce them against believing such a rumor? It can’t help you to spy. What possible advantage could it give you to let them think it?”
“The protection and power wrought by fear,” Domick said. “But even if the rumor had served no purpose, I cannot stop it. I could not coerce everyone to disbelieve a rumor that is so universal.”
“This … this rumor that you are a torturer … how did such a thing begin?”
He did not answer, and my heart began to beat unevenly. “Domick, what is it you do at the Council now?”
“I am not a torturer,” he said at last in a grim voice. Then his eyes went over my shoulder. I turned to see a hooded figure standing in the rain.
“Look, there is our man,” Domick said. “Brydda has sent him to collect us.”
10
IDRIS BOWED, HIS round face lit by the sunny smile that I remembered from my last journey to the coast. “It is good to see you again, Elspeth.”
The young rebel had appeared outside The Good Egg wrapped up in a cloak and gestured for us to follow. It was not until we reached a small dark hovel, a few streets away from the inn, that he had drawn back the hood of his coat to greet us.
“What is this place?” I asked as the blond rebel turned to the door of the hovel. It seemed to be nothing more than an abandoned husk and was surely far too small to be useful as a safe house.
“It is just a house,” Idris said, forcing the sagging door open and ushering us before him. Inside the front hall, it was dark, and we stood in silence as he found and lit a lantern. The hall was empty, its walls scored black from fire. Idris removed his cloak and carefully hung it on a wall peg. Following suit, I remembered that he had always been meticulous and slightly plodding.
He brought us through empty, musty rooms to the back of the place, saying, “There are any number of houses standing vacant since the plagues.” He pointed to an outbuilding’s door, under which a slice of light showed. “They have proven very useful to us as temporary residences.”
“Don’t people wonder at seeing lamps in abandoned houses?”
Idris shrugged. “No doubt, but it does not matter. We rarely spend more than a few days in any one. This is the last night we will spend here.” He pushed open the door.
The room behind it was a complete contrast to the great, warm homelike place Brydda had used as a headquarters in Aborium. It was bare but for a number of rough stools and chairs drawn around a little fire, a table piled with scrolls and maps, and a small supply of firewood stacked up on the floor. It was clearly hastily assembled, and no attempt had been made to render it comfortable. The room was dimly lit by a single guttering candle stuck in a mug on the table and by the warmer glow of the fire. Black cloth had been tacked over the only window, but as soon as we entered, Idris extinguished the brighter lantern he carried, the gesture belying his unconcern about being seen.
“Where is Brydda?” I asked.
In answer, the large-backed chair directly before the fire swiveled to reveal the big rebel holding a knife.
“Little sad eyes,” he said in his rumbling voice.
Watching him sheath the knife and rise, I thought the old nickname suited him better than it had ever suited me. The rebel leader seemed more hugely bearlike than ever, his hair falling almost to his shoulders in a great shaggy pelt of midnight curls. Yet there was a tinge of silver amidst the darker hair at his temples and in his beard, and fine lines about his eyes that I did not remember. The unsheathed knife told its own story. This life was taking its toll on him, as Domick had said. Brydda was like a lamp, with the flame burning dangerously low.
He gathered me into the affectionate ursine hug I remembered so well. That at least was unchanged, and my heart swelled with a gladness that startled me and made me feel absurdly like bursting into tears.
I watched as he greeted Domick with warmth and was interested to see that, for a moment, even the coercer lost some of his icy reserve.
“Let me give you both something to eat.” Brydda gestured to the fire where a battered pot hung. “It is only a broth, I am afraid. These days we do not have the time or leisure to feast.” The note of regret in his voice was palpable.
“I will do it,” Idris said, pushing Brydda’s hand aside and lifting the pot from the hook. He opened the lid and a delicious odor wafted out. My stomach, ever ready to herald its state, growled loudly.
Brydda burst out laughing.
“I have not eaten for ages,” I defended myself. “I do not feel so hungry when I am traveling, and we have just arrived.”
“I am the opposite,” Brydda said ruefully. He accepted a mug of soup from Idris and handed it to me. “I eat as though for ten men! Ah well, we are what we eat; that is evident. And how was the road?”
His eyes sharpened at this. He had switched effortlessly from friend to seditioner chief seeking information. I drank and thought a moment before answering. “It was emptier than usual. More soldierguards and fewer ordinary travelers. Toll gates were heavily guarded. I would say the Council is tightening up on travel, trying to keep a record of who is going where and why.” I glanced at him from under my lashes. “Perhaps trying to prevent rebel groups from liaising with one another. And from what I heard at the inn tonight, your people are, at least in part, the reason for an increase in soldierguard recruitment.”
Brydda nodded approvingly. “ ‘Little sad eyes’ I called you, but perhaps ‘sharp eyes’ it should have been. A good summation. And what do you think all these clues suggest?”
“That you have stepped up your activities and have been careless enough to let the Council know it,” I said promptly. “Or maybe you meant the Council to know it, for some reason. Or …” I hesitated to voice the third and obvious possibility.
“Or we have a traitor in our midst telling the Council they had best get ready for a fight,” Brydda finished bluntly.
“And had they?” I asked quickly. “Are your people planning to move openly against the Council?”
Brydda made a vague gesture. “I suspect the increase in recruitment is less for fear of us than the Council’s way of dealing with the number of people without work since the plague. So many who would have found work on farms have come to the city. The Council would have been wiser to restore the farms. But they are also making sure there are plenty of soldierguards if it comes to war over Sador—they covet the spice groves there.” Here his eyes sought Domick’s, and the coerc
er nodded confirmation.
I frowned at this further evidence of close interaction between the rebels and the safe house.
“The crime rate in the cities has tripled since the plagues,” Domick said. “And the Council reasons that employing more soldierguards will reduce the number of people out of work and will control those who have chosen robbery as a way of filling their bellies.”
The rebel chief drank some soup. “Not a bad stratagem, but of course one wonders where the coin is coming from to pay them.” He paused, seeming lost in thought for a moment.
“Then the increase in soldierguards has nothing to do with seditioners?” I persisted.
Brydda gave me a swift look. “I did not say that. It is true the Council have begun to regard us more seriously as a threat, and that may be another reason for their increase in recruitment. In part, this is unavoidable. We have heightened our profile among the people, for we will need them behind us when …” He stopped.
I turned to stare at the rebel chief squarely.
“Are you planning to attack the Council, Brydda?” I asked flatly.
“Of course. You knew that all along.”
I felt my temper rise. “Do not play word games with me.”
I heard Idris and Domick gasp aloud but did not take my eyes from Brydda’s.
“You mistrust me?” he asked sorrowfully.
“Never,” I said. “But I think you mistrust us. Or you think of us as fools to be put off. Don’t underestimate us, Brydda. We can read the signs as well as anyone, and rumor says the rebels prepare for rebellion.”
There was a charged silence; then Brydda sighed heavily. “Will you believe me if I tell you that no date is named as yet for rebellion?” he asked.
I hesitated, then nodded. “If you say it, I will believe it.”
“Good, for I do say it.” The rebel leaned forward to throw some wood on the fire; then he looked at me again. “Rushton sent you to ask about the alliance, didn’t he? That is why you are here?”
“One of the reasons,” I admitted, ignoring Domick’s involuntary movement at my side. “He wonders why you delay in responding to our offer of alliance.”
Brydda gave me a penetrating look, then sighed. “Perhaps I have underestimated you. There is a problem with the alliance, and that is why I have evaded Domick’s queries. I had hoped to be able to present Rushton with a united acceptance of your offer, but …”
My heart did an unpleasant dance. “You won’t accept us, then?” My tone was colder than I had intended, but it was too late to retract it. And in light of his words, perhaps it did not matter.
The big rebel leaned closer. “Elspeth, you talk as if it is my decision. It is not.”
“You are their leader.”
To my surprise, he shook his head.
“When first you knew me, I was the leader of a small rebel group in Aborium devoted to bedeviling the Herders,” he said. “But I was compromised. Just after we met, as you know, I left the Aborium group to be run by my second, a stolid, reliable fellow named Yavok. I took no one with me but Reuvan and Idris.”
Brydda was silent a moment, his eyes distant as he looked into the past.
“While in Aborium, I had come to know the leader of the Sutrium group, an old fox named Bodera, whom I learned to admire. I had told him my dream of uniting all the rebel groups, and when he heard I was to leave Aborium, he invited me to work toward that end with him in an organized effort to overthrow the Council. The most difficult thing is that each rebel group operates almost in isolation. Fortunately, Bodera was one of the first rebel leaders, and he knew all the others. They respect him tremendously, so he was exactly the right person to serve as a focus. It was only because Bodera asked it that the other rebels listened to my ideas.”
“Then he is the leader of the rebels?” I asked.
Brydda sighed. “No single person is the leader. That is what I am trying to tell you. But Bodera has great influence on the men who lead the various groups, and because of this, he was able to get the rebels to accept me as a sort of roving overseer whose task is to bring everyone together long enough to fight the Council. But it has been an uphill battle. And when Bodera dies, it is very possible the whole thing will fall apart.”
“Is he so old, then?” I asked, fascinated by this glimpse into rebel affairs.
“Old, yes, but it is not age that kills him. He has a peculiar slow form of the rotting sickness contracted when he was a boy on Councilfarms. In those days, they sent children with their parents if they were charged with sedition, rather than sending them off to orphan homes.”
From my own experiences in the orphan home system, I knew children mined whitestick, a poisonous residue of the Great White. In its raw state, the substance had to touch the skin in order to transmit its poisons, and we had been given gloves to collect it. Sometimes I still woke at night sweating because I had dreamed of touching it by accident, as so many orphans did.
Once collected, whitestick was sent to the Councilfarms where it was treated to strip away the poisons so that it could be used in medicines and as a power source. The transformation of whitestick was dangerous, because during the process, it emitted the poisons that, over time, caused the dreaded rotting sickness. This was why a long Councilfarm sentence was, in effect, a delayed death sentence.
Brydda blinked, searching for the tail of his narrative. “I have convinced Bodera of the need for an alliance with your people. But the leaders of the two largest rebel groups reject you.”
“Do they give reasons?”
Brydda ran a huge hand through tousled curls. “You come to the heart of my reluctance to present you with the matter. Of the two who oppose you utterly, the first is Tardis, who runs the rebel organization in Murmroth. He has taken over recently from his father, who was a stiff-necked bigot. Tardis responded to the proposal of an alliance between rebel and Talented Misfit forces with predictable repugnance. He wrote that, Talent or no, Misfits are not true humans and he will not make an alliance with mutants. The one bright note is that, unlike his father, Tardis does not favor wholesale extermination of your people. His note said that we do not make contracts with cows or horses, and neither do we kill them for being less than human.” He smiled wryly. “I am afraid Tardis regards your ability to communicate with animals as further proof of your inhumanity.”
“And the other rebel leader?” I asked quietly.
“Malik. He is based in Guanette and runs most of the rebel groups in the upper lowlands and around the Gelfort Range.” Brydda’s voice held a flatness that told me he disliked this man. “He is more violent than Tardis in his rejection of Misfits. He thinks you are freaks and should be eradicated like poisonweed in a kitchen garden.
“There are others who oppose you, too, but they might be argued around. If not, they are less important. Tardis and Malik are the keys. Without them, there will be no rebellion.”
Brydda tugged at his beard, a familiar signal of his inner disturbance.
“Then there is to be no alliance?” I strove to sound undeterred.
Brydda sat forward in his seat in sudden agitation. “Do not think that! It is the very reason I have hesitated to tell Domick what has been happening. There is always hope.”
“What hope?” I demanded. “That boy you had guarding the safe house reacted like I was poison because he thought I was a gypsy. How is he going to react when he knows I am a Misfit? We can’t make your people accept us.”
With a wave of bitterness, I wondered what hope there was for Misfits to ever live normal lives if even our own allies thought of us as freaks. If we did trick them into standing beside us in battle, what would it ultimately achieve? Not the acceptance we dreamed of. And how long would it take before loathing tolerance became hatred and, once again, persecution?
“There is hope in gaining Bodera’s support of you,” Brydda insisted. “And there is always the possibility that we can change the minds of the other rebels. One of the main problems is t
hat the rebels still think all Misfits are shambling mental defectives. Second,” he said swiftly, forestalling my outrage, “your youth has convinced them that there would be no military gain in an alliance with you.”
“And in the face of this, you can say that there is hope?” I asked incredulously.
“I believe so,” Brydda reiterated firmly. “The first thing is to make my comrades think of you as human beings.”
“A simple matter.”
Brydda ignored that. “I think you should meet with them.”
“Rushton already did that, and it was obviously no use.”
He patted my arm. “I meant you specifically, Elspeth. Rushton was introduced to them as your leader, but the rebels think of him as your keeper, as if you were a troupe of trained bears. I think they need to meet a real Talented Misfit.”
“To what end?” I snapped. “Would you parade a freak before them to confirm their prejudices?”
The rebel shook his head. “I would have them meet and speak with a lovely young woman gifted with remarkable abilities. Not a mutated monster. I have not dared explain Misfit abilities in much detail, because they would only increase your monstrosity in the rebels’ eyes. But if they could meet you and accept you, then we could show them what you can do. After that, your age will not matter, I warrant.”
I sighed. He was right. It was worth a try, only because the alternative was too bleak to contemplate. “When would such a meeting take place?”
Brydda’s eyes sparkled. “There is to be a meeting of the rebel leaders soon. The day is not yet set, but it would be within a sevenday.”
I felt a sick thrill of nervousness. “Where?”
“It must be held outside Sutrium,” the rebel said promptly. He looked over his shoulder at Idris, who, though silent, had stood close to Brydda throughout our conversation.
The boy nodded, and Brydda reached out to ruffle his hair. In the wordlessness of this exchange, I saw the depth of the friendship between the pair.
“It is my strict policy to keep the locations of rebel meetings secret until the last minute so they cannot be revealed to anyone.” The big man shifted forward in his eagerness. “Think of it, Elspeth—all you need to do is convince one or two rebel leaders to regard you as human. At the worst, it will be a positive beginning.”