"Whoa, don't shoot!" Chase said with his hands up. Keira stood behind him.
"What are you guys doing, sneaking up on me like that?"
"What are you doing here after I told you what a bad idea this was?" Keira asked.
"I'm sorry, but if I don't do this, I won't stop thinking about it."
Chase shook his head. "I swear, you and your brother must love getting in trouble. Didn't you learn from the other time?"
Keira zipped her hoodie up. "I have. Let's go."
"No, I've come this far. I'm doing this." I turned and continued walking down the beaten path.
Keira and Chase groaned, but they followed. We walked a few moments in silence until Chase cleared his throat. "You know, you two are on your way to the Upper Estates. You can get away with this kind of stuff. I, on the other hand . . ."
The last thing I needed was to feel guilty about Chase getting in trouble. I wished he hadn't come. "No one's holding a gun to your head."
"Yeah, like I'm going to let you two go to Litropolis alone."
"We've been there on our own before," Keira reminded him.
"You do realize this is a repeat offense," Chase said unnecessarily, "punishable by prison or execution."
"You really think they'd execute a few teenagers?" Keira asked.
"They'd execute anyone," I answered. We'd all seen that with our own eyes.
A year and a half ago, a man named Ares and his family lived down the street from us. He and his wife Dolores had three kids; ten, nine, and seven. Ares had been close friends with my father until the day he'd made a terrible mistake.
Ares had once been tight with Mr. Dunningham. He had been one of the lucky few dispatched to collect lives after a plane crash. When he got back, he held out on Dunningham instead of handing over all of the lifestones. Apparently, he was saving them for some kind of underground operation he and a few other Grim men had planned on running. They planned on selling extra lifestones to the people of Litropolis for double what Dunningham would give them. I didn't know how that would work since those people were so poor, but Father said they were desperate enough to come up with the money somehow.
Anyway, Ares should have known better than to try to hide lifestones from the Lord of Death. He could sniff them out like his bloodhound, Blue. Ares was found out, but he wouldn't give the names of his cohorts. I admired him for that. I remembered the day when we were all required to assemble in the square. There was a stand set up for the execution. Ares, his wife, and their three children trudged across the platform while we waited.
Before an execution, Grims with years left must go through the subtraction process. If a Grim had less than one hundred years, they could be killed.
I remembered the feel of the crowd. Some people were sad. Most were angry. My father was one of the angry ones. He said Ares was a traitor. That may have been true, but I didn't think his actions warranted death, especially for his wife and children, who had nothing to do with it.
The Watchers began with the children. Dunningham wanted to make sure Ares suffered the full extent of his crimes by watching his children die. The Watchers lined the three little ones up side by side. Samara, the seven-year-old, was to be first. Samara was a sweetheart. She would often come with Ares when he visited with Father and beg me to paint her fingernails. She stared into the crowd with her tiny porcelain face, not shedding a tear.
Ares and Delores had to be held back from trying to protect their children. I closed my eyes and covered my ears. The first shot pierced the air. I pressed my fingers into my ears until they hurt. The second shot made me fall to my knees. My body couldn't hold me up anymore. Bram called my name, but I ignored him. On the third shot, I tore my hands from my ears only to wipe the tears away. By the fifth shot, I had become numb.
I'd knelt until we were dismissed. I pulled the hood of my cloak over my face and turned, careful not to catch a glimpse of the dead bodies on the platform. I walked quickly, pushing my way through the crowd. I didn’t want my family to see I had cried. No one was supposed to be crying. The execution of a traitor was a joyous occasion. I hated Nowhere for a long time after that.
"Nobody's getting executed," I assured my friends. "We'll be fine."
We reached the stone wall. I kept my eye out for the spot where the cement blocks could be removed. It took us a little longer to push the blocks away than it had taken Bram, but we got through.
On the other side, Keira brushed the dirt from her knees. "How do you propose we find this kid's mom?"
That was a good question. "We'll just ask around. Everyone knows each other."
I spotted a woman holding a stick with chunks of meat over a tin can of fire. She looked aged, as did many of the people of Litropolis. The woman was silver-haired with bulged and wrinkled skin. Her fingers were abnormally curved and deformed. People in Farrington and the Upper Estates didn't look like that. Her appearance was the result of someone who was running low on years.
With Chase and Keira on my heels, I moved toward her. I cleared my throat, and the woman jumped. That was unusual. It was hard to sneak up on a Grim.
I felt bad for startling her. "Excuse me. Can you tell me where I can find the families of two boys named Starkin and DeCarlo? Someone named Claudia?"
The woman looked at the three of us apprehensively. Then she looked down at the meat and shook her head. The woman probably thought we had bad intentions and wasn't willing to rat out her fellow Litropolites.
"Please," I pleaded. "It's very important. Something happened and their families should know. Starkin asked me to relay the message. He told me his mother's name is Claudia."
The woman thought for a moment before pointing straight ahead, which really wasn't helpful.
"Straight where?" Keira asked. The woman pointed to the right.
"We go straight and then make a right?" I asked to clarify.
The woman nodded. I thanked her and left her alone. Her fear of me made me uncomfortable.
It took us about five minutes to get to the end of the street, navigating through people preparing their suppers over tin can fires. Again, all eyes were on us as Litropolites wondered what we were doing in their city. We made the right and found ourselves at a dead end. One tent sat at the corner right, before a brick wall.
"Think that's it?" Chase asked.
"We'll see," I answered, walking toward the tent.
I knelt at the opening. A woman sat on the ground with a whining infant cuddled in her arms. There was a girl who looked about ten and a boy who looked about Dorian's age. There was no place for me to knock, so I had to speak to announce my presence. "Good evening. Are you Claudia?"
The woman nodded. "Who are you?"
The children stared at us, and the baby quieted. "I'm Naomi. This is Chase and Keira."
The woman narrowed her eyes. "Why are you looking for me?"
"Your son asked me to," I answered.
She looked at her children and then at me before handing the baby to the girl.
I backed up, and she crawled out of the tent and walked us a few feet away. "What happened to my boy? Is he dead?"
I shook my head. "No, no, but the Watchers did take him to Gattica." We all knew going to Gattica was only a little bit better than being dead.
Claudia gasped and touched her heart. "For what? What did he do?"
"He was involved in a fight. They took his friend DeCarlo also," Keira answered.
Claudia bowed her head and wept. She was beautiful, with short curly hair that framed her pale face. If not for the dark circles under her eyes, she would have been prettier. She had probably been up all night worrying about her son. In my hurry to fulfill Starkin's wishes, I hadn't realized I was basically telling a mother she would never see her son again. There were no visiting hours in Gattica.
I looked at Keira and Chase, but they only shrugged. I rubbed the woman's back.
"What did he do?" she asked aga
in. "What could he have possibly done for them to do this to him?"
Keira had already answered that question. I didn't know what else to say. "Um, I'm really sorry."
Chase, Keira, and I backed away.
"How do you know what happened?" the woman asked.
I'd been hoping to avoid that question. "We were there."
"Who was he fighting with?"
I couldn't very well tell her it was my brother and that he, in fact, had started the fight.
"We don't know. We were just passing by," Keira answered, saving me.
"Do you know where DeCarlo's family lives?" I asked.
Instead of answering, the woman rounded the corner to another tent. We followed.
"Nila! Nila!"
Another woman dressed in black rags stumbled out of her tent. "What? What's the matter with you?"
"The boys, the boys! They took them to Gattica!" Claudia shouted.
Nila, who I assumed to be DeCarlo's mother, buckled. Chase caught her and held her up.
"Gattica? For what? They're good boys. They're good boys!"
From what I could tell, Starkin and DeCarlo had only been trying to protect the honor of their city, so I believed Nila.
"Fighting," Claudia answered. "You better believe, if they were taken in for that, they were fighting someone outside of Litropolis."
DeCarlo's mother nodded. "Yes, and they would never leave the city so someone was in here who didn't belong." She looked at us accusingly. We were where we didn't belong as she spoke.
Chase grabbed my arm. Overcome with guilt, I turned away from the women. If Bram hadn't come here to get a tattoo, their sons wouldn't have been taken away.
The three of us, holding hands, made our way back to the exit. I was grateful I hadn't come alone.
"You tell your Lord," DeCarlo's mother shouted. We stopped and turned to her. "You tell your Lord, it's only a matter of time. We will have our day of vindication. Justice will be served!"
Chapter 9
Naomi Grim (The Silver Scythe Chronicles) Part 1 Page 10
