Exodia (20 page)

When the volume of their grief exceeds
what I can stomach I reach over and pat them both and offer a
single word repeated. There, there, there, like the calming rhythm
sung to a baby. I take Katie’s hand. “Tell us what happened.” And
before she speaks I know exactly what transpired and I see the
round-faced guard, the Blue lieutenant, the horse, the blood, the
cold slaughter. My stomach twists with nausea.

Katie tries to begin, drops my hand to
take her sister’s, and makes an accusation, “You shouldn’t have
left us.”

“
I’m sorry, I’m sorry,”
Kassandra wails.

There’s a knock and the door opens.
Barrett’s head is down, but he speaks with mature authority. He
tells me I must leave, that Mira will stay with the girls and that
Harmon and I can take our threatening weapon and speak our cause to
Truslow, but first we must get to the safe house.

I leave the room without a word and
Mira goes in with the baby. Lydia’s nowhere to be seen. Barrett
rushes out the door. I glance at Harmon whose frowning face seems
too sad for what he knows–the abbreviated version that Barrett
revealed in the truck–but perhaps he has a gemfry gift beyond what
I can guess. Or perhaps he simply reflects my own expression. He
turns and follows Barrett outside.

I close my eyes and listen. The sobs in
the room nearby are what I expect, but fainter sobs from above
reach my ears, and then footsteps. I’m frozen to the spot, both
hoping and fearing that Lydia’s returning to the
kitchen.

A tall thin woman comes into the room,
eyes like Lydia’s, but with a stern, pinched look on her face. I
nod, briefly smile, but of course my words catch in my throat. She
introduces herself as Lydia’s mother, Jenny Sroka. She bends her
left arm as if to greet me in the customary way, then changes her
mind and thrusts out her right hand. Her grip is strong, her
fingers warm in mine, but I’m still reluctantly quiet.

When I finally say my name she jerks
her hand away. There’s a second, maybe only half a second, which is
just enough time for me to read her thoughts. She hates me. She
doesn’t even know me and she hates me.

I don’t know what I should feel now
besides fear. To meet with Truslow, the cruelest man alive, should
have me quaking, but it is Jenny Sroka’s grief that makes me
tremble.

“
I’m so sorry for your
loss,” I say. I picture the birthing clinic in my mind, the letters
carved into the wall that Lydia had me trace:
Dalton Battista is not Lucas Sroka
.

Tears spring to her eyes. “It was a
long time ago. And it wasn’t exactly your fault. Your mother was
only trying to save you–as I would have tried to save Lydia’s
brother.”

“
You knew my mother?” She
won’t look at me now.

“
Yes, I knew Jacky. Some of
us knew what she did, knew the Culling Mandate was because of you.”
Her voice grows as tight as her fists. “I carved your name
everywhere. I tried to stop the madness, the killing of the
innocents. It didn’t stop.”

Chapter 11 The First Plague

From the fourth page of the
Ledger:

When he saw that the ruler
brought more trouble upon the people he asked, “Why did you send
me? Why haven’t you rescued these people?”

TRUSLOW MAKES US wait two days before
he’ll see us. Two days full of hourly reports that describe
hard-hearted strikes against our people: a new tax, a higher toll,
another right repealed, a punishment imposed, a penalty for this or
that. And worse things on this second day: raids, imprisonments,
executions.

We walk through the capitol gates,
Harmon and I, with only Barrett and two others as unarmed escorts.
Harmon carries the case which will have to pass inspection before
we can enter. A slight breeze sends my hair across my face and
hides my identity from the duty guards, men I’ve known since I was
little. I brush the strands aside and they look me full on and are
surprised. Harmon says he is Harmon O’Shea and I am Bram O’Shea and
the guards laugh. I say, “Dalton Battista,” and I ache to show them
my red elbow, but they push us on and give Barrett and the others a
thorough search.

A crowd has followed us and they
bravely line themselves along the fence, hushed and expectant. The
doors ahead burst open and at least twenty soldiers precede the
Executive President and his son, my former classmate. The soldiers
take their positions and hold their nano-guns ready, most of them
pointing at the crowd but the ones next to Truslow aim directly at
us. I wonder why he meets us here, outside; my grandfather never
would have allowed a crowd to watch.

We stop a respectful distance away. I
stare at my old classmate, Jamie. He stands shoulder to shoulder
with his father, equally rigid, face taut. I expect to see him
break out of this serious mask at any second, come running up to me
and give me that old grin, but he remains unmoving as if he’s
lifeless or under some spell.

Truslow speaks. “Show me this powerful
new gadget.”

“
Mr. Executive President,”
Harmon begins, and I’m so thankful that he speaks for me, “we have
a simple request. Our people, the Reds, need to rest, recharge
their panels, so to speak, and then they will work all the harder
for you. Give us, please, just three days that we might have a
festival.” The festival was Ronel’s idea, Harmon told me last
night, a festival to be held in the fields to the north where we
would have a three day head start on escaping Exodia.