I licked my lips. I hadn’t realized this was why he lived with his aunt and uncle. “They’re not good places, Dwight.”
“I know. Will you tell me anyway?”
So I did.
As we kept working, I told him about solitary, where I’d been beaten and had no sanitation, no food. About seeing bodies carried out. The executions; the hunger; the cold. The severed heads that still haunted my nightmares.
When I’d finished we’d completed the front page, yet neither of us had reached for the ink. Dwight leaned against the table, pale.
Why were words so inadequate?
“Maybe she didn’t suffer much,” I said softly.
Dwight swallowed. “That’s what my…well…what someone I dated last year said once. He said that if I don’t know, why assume the worst?”
From his expression, the memory of the guy he’d dated wasn’t helping either. He gazed down at his ring.
“When Mom gave me this, the Guns were at the door,” he said at last. “She just said, ‘Hold this for me, okay?’” He grimaced. “I’ve wanted to ask you for a while now. Stupid.”
I was so awful at this kind of thing. “Listen…maybe it’s better to know,” I said roughly.
Dwight gave me a quick glance. I’d never noticed how blue his eyes were before.
“Do you believe that?” he said.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “But I would have had to find out too.”
He nodded slowly. Then he sighed and straightened. “Anyway. What the hell. This paper isn’t going to ink itself.”
“I can tell you’re trying to think of a terrible pun,” I said after a pause, and he grinned gratefully at me.
“Ain’t no such thing,” he said.
Though things didn’t go back to normal between Hal and me, they at least eased – on the surface anyway. We were able to receive letters sometimes now too, passed along to us from person to person via the outside network. Ma’s last letter had reached me in June.
She’d asked me to keep Hal safe – a thought that haunted me.
Ingo had finally received word from his family too. His relief had been palpable when he’d shown me the letter during one of his brief stays at the safe house, translating as he read. They were all fine, his mother wrote, and overjoyed that he was alive.
His sister Lena had enclosed a separate note that made him laugh: It’s just like you to decide to stay when I miss you so much. Be careful, you big idiot, or I’ll have to come over there myself.
Hal’s frustration at not doing more hadn’t escaped Mac’s notice. Though Mac still didn’t want my fifteen-year-old brother involved in a murder plot, he started giving Hal other jobs whenever Sephy could spare him – letting him help print new editions of Victory, delivering messages via the tunnels. He drove with Dwight sometimes, too, to learn the Resistance’s routes and safe houses.
Ma’s plea goaded my conscience, but we were all in the same danger. “He’s the steadiest kid I ever met,” Mac told me once. “I wish to hell that times were different for him.”
During those long, hot months I was aware that the Resistance was growing behind the scenes, becoming dozens-strong. And occasionally members were captured. Pierce always crowed about it during her wireless broadcasts; they were shot and strung up for all to see. So far there was no one I’d known, or who’d had vital information. Neither fact was a comfort. It felt as if a noose were slowly cinching around us.
I met other key members that summer: Roddy, Anton, Ernest, Mabel, Jimmy, Susannah. All different ages and races, linked by their determination to bring down Pierce – their willingness to risk their lives. Ernest and Mabel ran the other main safe house; Victory was written there.
Anton was around Ingo’s age and, like him, Germanic – he’d come from a village not far from Ingo’s, though his family had moved to New Manhattan when he was fourteen. In snatched moments from Ingo’s escape work, they talked sometimes in their native Germanic, playing chess occasionally.
I liked listening to the guttural-sounding language – liked hearing Ingo’s voice saying such unfamiliar words. Other times, Ingo would play his guitar, or the two of us would just sit and talk.
Whenever he was back, it felt as if I could breathe again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
June – July, 1942
Collis glanced up and down the gold-edged palace corridor. Deserted. He eased open a wood-panelled door and slipped inside a small meeting room. He locked the door behind him.
He left the lights off, the thick curtains drawn. In the gloom, a mural showed Kay with a scorpion perched on one hand and the scales of justice dangling from the other. She was Scorpio, with Libra rising. “It means I’m ruthless but like nice things,” she’d smirked once.
Neither of them believed in astrology, yet that was a pretty damn accurate description.
The thick rug muffled his footsteps as he went to the mural. He snagged a glass from a nearby table and pressed it against the wall. One of the scorpion’s black eyes was covered by an almost-invisible panel. He stroked it open and peered through into the next room.
Sandford Cain’s private office. Cain sat in one of two plush armchairs, speaking in an undertone to another man opposite him. His associate’s suit was as expensive as Collis’s own – Giordanni, thought Collis automatically – and one dark eyebrow had a scar through it. He murmured something back.
With practised ease, Collis alternately put his ear to the glass cupped against the wall and watched through the peephole.
“Who the hell is he?” the stranger was saying.
“Nobody. Johnny’s old good-luck charm.”
“Right. Well, he’s someone now, my friend. If she goes, will he try anything?”
“Not if he knows what’s good for him. I tell you, he’s negligible.”
“He’s another wrinkle. I don’t like wrinkles.”
“Let me worry about that.”
They were talking about him. Despite himself, Collis felt anger at Cain and grim pride at the stranger’s summation: he’s someone now.
Actions were what counted, he reminded himself sharply. Not his stupid, automatic thoughts.
Cain rose. He glanced towards Collis and Collis froze. But Cain was only crossing to a sideboard. Collis hardly breathed as Cain stood scant feet away and poured a pair of drinks. The clink of crystal came clearly. Collis could see a small, pale mole beside Cain’s nose that he’d never noticed before.
Cain turned; he went back to the table and handed the man a drink. Whiskey. Collis stifled his immediate urge to have one himself. “The question is, how?” Cain said, swirling the amber liquid.
“How suspicious do you want it to look?”
“I don’t really care. The bitch shot me.”
“She’s got a lot of support though. Keaton.”
General Keaton was the head of the military, and Cain’s friend was right. As Collis had found out soon after waking up that first day, Kay had wasted no time in getting Keaton on her side – increasing his salary, letting him know that the military would be supported throughout her regime. Keaton didn’t like Cain, who’d spoken out against him in the past.
“I’ll take the chance.” Cain took a swig of his drink. “I’m not carrying on as lackey to a twenty-year-old girl.”
“Hey, she ain’t doing so bad,” smirked the other man. “Gunnison would be proud of his little mistress, rest his nutty soul.”
“Yeah, she slept her way to the top – but she won’t stay there.”
“You pissed because she’s sleeping with Mr Negligible instead of you?”
Collis tensed. To his relief, Cain said, “We don’t know that.”
A chuckle. “The guy’s twenty-one, in her office all day, and easy on the eye. Hell, I’d do him.”
As the conversation continued, the two men ruled out shooting Kay from the park as she stood on her balcony – too uncertain, given the distance and the number of Guns she always had patrolling. Similarly,
Kay had taken a leaf from Johnny’s book and had everyone who came into contact with her searched, so attacking her elsewhere was tricky too.
“Good old-fashioned poison, I’m telling you,” said the other man in an undertone. He drained his drink. “Easy to smuggle in and untraceable if you do it right. You could even be the one to find the body and try to revive her. Boohoo, too late, how sad.”
“Good,” said Cain. “I can’t risk an all-out coup at this point. When?”
“Give me a few days. I’ll arrange it.”
“You’ll be well rewarded.”
“Oh, I know that, buddy.”
The meeting ended soon after, with Cain showing the man to the door. Collis heard the sound of their murmurs from out in the corridor. Then Cain re-entered the room. He ran a hand through his hair and smiled – one of the first times Collis had ever seen him do so. It sent a shiver down Collis’s spine.
Cain sat at his desk and started to write something.
Collis drew away from the wall and eased the peephole shut. Without a sound, he put the glass down. He went over to a table near the curtained window and hefted himself softly onto it.
Faintly, the sound of traffic drifted up from the streets below. There was a hanging point nearby: the street lamp at Can-Amer and 60th. Until two days ago, a body had hung there – a woman executed for aiding Discordants.
Collis sat in the gloom for some time, thinking.
The broad space of the underground rendezvous point felt clammy. “So you tipped her off?” said Mac, his features half-shadowed in the lantern-light.
They were sitting on a length of abandoned pipe – the same place Collis had sat when they’d met down here before, with Amity and Weir. Collis tried not to think about the look of finality on Amity’s face when he’d asked if they could talk.
“No choice,” he said, tapping a fist against his opposite hand. “If Pierce is taken out with Cain still there…”
“Yeah, I get you. That was always the problem with getting rid of Gunnison, too.” Mac sighed and pushed the brim of his fedora up. “Must have helped on the trust front though,” he added with a rueful smile. “Not a lady alive who doesn’t like being warned about a nice poison-plot.”
“Sure, it helped.” Collis glanced down at his gold cufflinks – the finest he’d ever owned. The weeping walls depressed him. They reminded him too much of the coal mine at Harmony Three, where he’d been incarcerated for almost a year when he was seventeen.
Not that he’d worked in the mine long. He’d made himself too useful to the Guns for that, hadn’t he?
He straightened. “She’s put extra security in place,” he said shortly. “She hasn’t let on to Cain that she knows, but he’s obviously guessed. He’s eased off for now – he doesn’t know who the mole was.”
“She’s not getting rid of him?”
Collis shook his head, recalling Kay’s fear and anger. “She’s looking for a way. He’s got too many supporters in the palace to do it easily.”
Mac snorted. “Knew it was on the agenda. She’s not a lady who likes sharing power, is she?”
Thinking of the many conversations that he and Kay had had on the subject of doing away with Cain, guilt touched Collis. Just tell Mac about your deal, he thought. His friend, a seasoned double agent, must suspect anyway…yet somehow Collis couldn’t admit the extent to which he’d become entangled with Kay Pierce. His own motives felt murky to him.
Actions, not thoughts, he reminded himself grimly. He was here now; that was all that mattered. But the idea of losing Mac’s good opinion paralysed him.
“I brought the map,” Collis said after a pause. He reached in his pocket and handed it over.
Mac studied the hand-drawn map of the palace intently. He rubbed his jaw. “So the secure meeting room is in the works?”
Collis pointed to a chamber. “Right over that section of the tunnels you told me about.”
“Yeah, good…it’ll take a few more months for us to be ready, though. We’ve got to have the city on our side.” Mac handed the map back. “Got it. Thanks.” Mac never forgot anything – never took notes.
“Got a light?” asked Collis.
Mac passed his silver lighter over and Collis set fire to the map. Watching it burn, he said, “It’ll take time from my end too. Getting the two of them and all their cronies in one room won’t be easy.”
Mac smiled. “You’ll manage it, pal. You’ve got the golden touch.”
Memories of that very morning came to him – Kay had said something similar. He grimaced. “Yeah, Mr Glib…that’s me.”
“You okay, buddy?”
Collis let the paper burn almost to his fingers before he dropped it and ground the charred remains out with his heel. “It just…gets me down, you know?” he said at last. “Being in there on my own.”
“Tell me about it,” said Mac mildly. “I’ve been there. Hard to hang onto your soul.”
This was so similar to what Collis had been thinking that he couldn’t go anywhere near it. He gave a casual shrug.
“Yeah, I’ll be all right. What the hell, it’s only a soul.” He handed the lighter back. He hated asking but couldn’t help himself. “How’s Amity?”
Mac’s eyes were sympathetic. He smiled. “Fine. Doesn’t like broadcasting, but has lots of opinions on it anyway.”
Collis felt his own lips tug upwards. “That sounds familiar.”
Mac scratched the back of his neck. “I like her a lot,” he said finally. “And I like you too. So that makes it kind of tough.”
Collis tried to sound flippant and failed. “What – that she hates my guts?”
“You’d have to ask her that. But listen, pal, you want my advice? I’d try moving on.”
Collis wondered if Mac suspected that, technically, he’d been moving on with a vengeance.
“Thanks for the advice,” he said.
“Not sore, are you?”
Collis looked down, lightly tapping his fingers together. “Not at you. Guy named Collis Reed I wouldn’t mind taking a pop at, though.”
Mac smiled slightly. “Nah, go easy on him. I hear he’s not so bad.”
Collis wanted to argue but didn’t. As idly as he could, he brought the conversation back around to the Resistance, and tried to find some small thing he could use that would keep Kay happy.
Four months ago, after Kay had told him that she knew he’d let Amity go, silence had pressed down in the bedroom.
Collis’s wound had been throbbing as badly as his head. His initial response – to feign offended anger – had died as he saw his Gun uniform lying on a chair.
The breast pocket was open.
He’d had a notepad in there; he had a sudden vivid memory of scrawling down the address of Sephy’s friends for Amity. Alarm pulsed. How deeply had his pencil scratched the paper? Was the top page indented with the address?
He couldn’t see the notepad’s outline in his pocket. Kay would have had no reason to take a blank one.
Oh, holy hell. She knew where Amity was.
Only seconds had passed. Kay’s expression was level, waiting for him to speak.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “I let her go.”
Kay raised an eyebrow. Collis went on instinct. For whatever reason, he’d sensed that she genuinely wanted him to work with her. And as he’d learned over and over – Amity flashed painfully into his mind again – someone who wanted to be convinced was easy game.
“I gave her some money and an address to go to,” he said. “She took them, all right – then shot me for landing her in Harmony Five. I was an idiot.”
“What address?” said Kay.
“Oak View, Morrison Road, Huntersville.” He prayed that Kay didn’t know Hal was there too – and probably Mac and Sephy by now.
From the slight flicker in her gaze, he’d been right; she’d known the address already. “You weren’t going to tell me?”
“No. You’d have had me shot.”
; She smiled at this. “Honesty. Good. I learned the value of that from Johnny, you know. I tried to deceive him too, when we first started.” She tapped her teeth with a fingernail.
“Oak View, Morrison Road, Huntersville,” she mused, drawing out the words. “Shall I send Guns there now?”
“Go ahead. I’m finished with the bitch.” Collis managed to sound bored. For Amity and the others to have a chance, he knew he had to play this perfectly. He’d only had one painkiller and longed for another.
Kay looked dryly amused. “So how much of your liaison with her was for show?”
As far as Collis was aware, Mac was the only one who knew he’d been in love with Amity since he was fourteen. “All of it, to start with,” he said. “But…I guess I came to care for her. Enough to not want her to die, anyhow.”
Kay wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t have thought she was your type.”
Collis tried to hide how startled he was that Kay had formed an opinion on this. “Oh yeah?”
“I was at her trial,” said Kay. “She’s awfully…intense, isn’t she? Doesn’t exactly seem a laugh a minute.”
Collis squelched a memory: Amity wearing only his shirt, laughing as he threw them both onto her bed back on the Western Seaboard base. Her face had been open, alive, her eyes sparkling.
“She’s not so bad, for a Discordant,” he said.
“Don’t bother pretending to believe in ‘Discordant’. We both know there’s nothing to it.”
He swallowed. “All right.”
Kay gazed out the window. “But, yes, these things can get tricky. Johnny and I…” She made a face and broke off, her face fleetingly angry, vulnerable.
“Emotion gets in the way,” she said finally. She paced a little, gripping her elbows tightly. “You know what the only useful emotion is? Fear. It keeps you on your toes. Ambition’s pretty helpful too.”
In a flash, Harmony Three came back to him. The water barrel had frozen once, and no one had bothered to get them anything else to drink. Collis thought of the man he’d betrayed to get out – and, despite his nightmares, as usual could feel only a weary thankfulness that he’d managed it.
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