by Leyland, L J
When we were all beautified and Aiden’s hair had been shorn, the woman (whose name I had discovered was Sandrine) stood back and clapped her hands together. ‘Beautiful!’ she exclaimed.
She arranged us in order of height and squealed with happiness. ‘Oh, I am a genius. She’ll be so pleased with my work. Come now. It’s time to meet your guest. Please, please, please behave. She’s very important and you’ll make me look bad if you’re naughty.’
‘You’re not responsible for us, why should you look bad?’
Sandrine looked shifty. ‘She has very exacting standards, that’s all. Follow me!’
We trailed out of the room, following her like the Pied Piper. Our new shoes clicked on the floor and I reached for Edie and Aiden’s hands. We were heading for a part of the Complex that I hadn’t seen before. The Mayor’s private living quarters.
Sandrine flashed an ID badge to a Parrot standing guard on the door. He opened it and we stepped into a long corridor, carpeted in plush red pile. The walls were painted white with golden rails running along each side. Beautiful landscape portraits lined the walls as though they were windows showing gorgeous views outside. But the corridor was windowless. On either side, white doors were evenly spaced and electric chandeliers tumbled down in an avalanche of crystals from the ceiling. I stepped gingerly onto the carpet. Never before had I felt carpet underfoot. It was so soft and squidgy that I wanted to lie down on it and roll around on it like Wolf used to do on our fur rugs. It looked softer than my bed. Sandrine led us to a room at the end of the corridor. She was nervously tucking a piece of hair behind her ear and tugging at the collar on her suit.
‘Do I look OK?’ she whispered at me.
I raised an eyebrow at her and shrugged. How the hell was I supposed to know what Metropolites thought looked attractive? She took a deep breath and knocked.
A beautifully suited butler answered the door. He stood aside to let us in. The sweet smell of vanilla met me and my feet walked on creamy marble. It was the state room. The room rivalled the Great Hall for grandeur – the Great Hall that I had smashed to smithereens a week ago. Was that only a week ago? It felt like years.
This room was just as beautiful but far less breakable. There was little glass and more marble. Everything was so shiny; the marble floor, the chandelier, the mirrors that lined the walls. It was as though we were inside a jewellery box. I was so busy taking in the beauty that I didn’t notice the most exquisite jewel of all, standing in front of a marble throne at the far end of the room. A lady dressed in white and decorated with diamonds. A lady with waist-length blonde hair which was interwoven with tiny white flowers and pearls. A lady with the same wry set to her features that I had seen in Edie and in Aiden’s faces. The same expression I knew occupied my own features. My brass binoculars and golden gun lay on a tiny marble table next to her throne.
She took a step forward and said, ‘My children.’
Then, my mother, Regina, smiled.
Chapter Thirty-three
Regina stroked Edie’s hair as she cried. The make-up Sandrine had applied to her little face had rubbed off onto Regina’s white dress, exposing the child underneath. Regina didn’t seem to care that there was a beige stain where Edie had buried her head against her. Who on earth puts make-up on a thirteen-year old? I clenched my fists and fought the urge to smear my own make-up. This whole situation was surreal. Why on earth had we been primped and pampered for this? Who was this stranger comforting Edie?
‘All right now, Edie, come here,’ I said quietly.
She didn’t let go.
‘I said, come here, Edie. Let go now.’
I yanked her arm and tore her away from Regina. Edie collapsed into me and began sobbing. That’s the way it should be. I should be her comforter, not the stranger in front of us. What had that stranger ever done to win Edie’s trust? Nothing. I was the one who had raised her, cared for her, watched her, been her mother.
I fought down a feeling of resentment against Edie. It seemed almost traitorous that she had chosen this stranger to go to for comfort over me. I looked the stranger in the eye. They were green like emeralds but strangely vacant, like the hard, shiny transparency of diamonds. On either side of her temple there were little pink scorch marks, perfectly round. What on earth had caused those?
‘I have some explaining to do,’ she said. Her voice was brittle and stiff.
I scoffed. Explaining? She had a lot more than just explaining to do if she thought she could win us over that easily. Explaining! It seemed totally inadequate. I wanted her to weep, to hurt herself, to kill herself, only then would that seem an adequate sacrifice for all she had done to us. Explain? Don’t make me laugh.
I built up the stone wall around me and placed Edie and Aiden behind it. There was no way she could get through it without an adequate explanation for why she had abandoned us and why the hell she was sat like the queen of Sheba in the Mayor’s private rooms.
‘Please sit,’ she said, indicating a group of sofas and chairs by a window.
A brief but potent urge to jump out of it came over me but I resisted. I just wanted to be anywhere but here. All the years of wondering and all I could think of when it finally happened was how to flee.
She poured tea into fragile china cups. Aiden looked at me for instruction. I nodded curtly and he lifted his cup. Edie was still sobbing too much to notice.
‘You look just like I did, Maida, when I was your age. I often wondered whether you’d take after me or your father. But I’m glad you take after me.’
A brick from my wall fell. It was too tempting. ‘My father?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘Yes, Maximillian. My husband. That’s why we’re here, of course. For the coronation. He’ll be crowned Imperial Monarch tomorrow.’
The entire wall tumbled down in a cloud of dust. Her tone was so matter-of-fact that she could’ve been giving me a shopping list rather than revealing everything about my past. I was briefly stunned into paralysis. My brain could not compute what she had just said and I struggled to find words. Her expression remained vacant.
‘What? What? You’re married to the Monarch? He’s … he’s our father?’
‘Yes, you’re part of the Royal Family of the Metropole. The new Imperial Monarch is your father,’ she said.
I leant forward and wedged my head between my legs to stop my world from spinning off its axis. ‘This is … it’s not true. It can’t be true.’ I fought to string together a coherent sentence but failed. Her revelation threw up all sorts of questions and they were all fighting to be heard first. I picked the most important one and hoped that it didn’t come out as petulant and childish as it sounded in my head.
‘If it’s true, then why the hell couldn’t you keep us? Why did you get rid of us? You abandoned us. Why?’ I was yelling now.
The chair that I had been sat on lay upturned on the floor. Had I done that? Had I thrown it? I was too angry to know. I couldn’t control my actions anymore. Tears were spilling from my eyes. It was too much. Everything I hated, the Metropole, the Parrots, the Monarch, was part of me. It was in me.
‘Maida, please. You’re making a show.’ Her voice was as hard as diamonds.
It shocked me that she could be so unfeeling. Her eyes were empty and cold, as if she was a stone statue. She pushed her blonde hair behind her ears and the little round scorch marks glowed pink against the whiteness of her face.
‘A show? A show for who? There’s no-one here!’ I cried, flailing my arms to show how empty the room was.
‘OK, just sit down. I didn’t get rid of you. I had to let you go for Maximillian’s sake, for the sake of the Metropole. At the time … Maximillian had other obligations. Another wife and family. He already had a Princess. He didn’t want any stain, any taint, on his reputation. No illegitimacy you understand. I tried to keep you, keep you secret at the court but then when the twins came … well … you know what we had to do.’
She talked about it like it was a b
usiness transaction.
‘Oh, this is rich. Royal bastards, is that what we are? Is that why you had to banish us to the slums? Bastards, that’s it?’
‘Not anymore,’ she said calmly. ‘We’re married now. That old witch died and now her children are the bastards. But you three … you three are legitimate now. That’s why we’re here. I have come to collect you. I will bring you back. You’ll love it there. We’ve come to rescue you, we’re here now.’
There was something not quite right about her words and actions. She was completely emotionless, devoid of any display of regret, happiness, sadness. It was as though she was reading from a script; as though someone had told her to say those words and she repeated them like a Parrot. I was at a loss as to why anyone would ever follow this emotionless robot into battle against the Metropole. Had Matthias’s parents and Grimmy really found her so inspiring as to want to die for her? To me, she was as charismatic and spirited as a sea slug.
Her fingers went to trace the outline of the round marks on her temple but she quickly dropped them. I adopted my most obnoxious voice in order to provoke her into some sort of normal reaction.
‘You disgusting old tramp. You were his concubine? His whore? You think that makes me respect you in any way? You think I feel glad that some other poor children are made bastards and cast off now? You think that’d I’d follow you to the Metropole? Pathetic. What happened to you? I thought you were supposed to be a leader.’
Finally ; her emerald eyes briefly lost their hardness. Her mouth went slack and her eyes looked wistfully into the distance as though she was remembering something from a different life. She opened and closed her mouth like a fish, trying to form words which were different to the script she had been given. Panicked, I looked to Aiden. He shrugged and we watched in silence as Regina seemed to be having some sort of internal battle with herself, struggling to get words out. Finally she managed to force a sentence out.
‘You don’t know what it was like … you don’t know how I suffered … you don’t know what they did. I thought about you every day.’ She gave a little yelp and clamped her hands to her forehead as though her scorch marks burned. It was as though someone had held a cigar to her skin. She shook her head like a dog with water in its ears and her expression settled back into the granite-hard emotionless statue.
‘We got the Mayor and his Parrots to seek you out when we knew we were coming here. Maximillian wanted to bring you all back.’ She was back to the script. ‘When we contacted the orphanage a couple of weeks ago and discovered that you had been missing for years, we asked them to track you down. We were concerned that you had died.’
‘Oh, concerned. Is that all?’
She ignored my sarcastic interruption and carried on with her monologue. ‘The Mayor set detectives to look for you but in the end you walked straight into their hands. They said that someone of your description broke into the Complex and smashed their glass hall. They said that you had been seen in the Complex with a noble, the Mayor’s assistant. They couldn’t find you after you escaped so they watched him and hoped he would make contact with you. The next night, he led them straight to you. At a tavern. There, they heard about your plan to start a rebellion, to go to the Highlands to bring back a woman and to interrupt our coronation ceremony. They knew they would never bring you in quietly and therefore they waited until you had left for the Highlands before they brought in Edie and Aiden. We knew that you would let yourself be brought here once you knew they were taken.’
I stopped my pacing and grabbed onto the arm of Edie’s chair. I felt close to collapse. She had set the Mayor on us. She had made him follow us. She was responsible for the discovery of our plan. ‘You sent the Mayor looking for us? You set him onto us? You idiot! You’ve ruined everything! We had a plan! We were going to start a rebellion! Now look what you’ve done! My friends will die because you set him on to us. Oh, God, they’ll die because I’m related to you. It’s all my fault. No, actually, it’s all your fault!’
I jabbed a finger at her chest but she brushed it away unconcernedly. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her hands covered each side of her head where the marks were, as though she was trying to block out the sound of me.
I guess I hadn’t expected it to be easy, but I never expected it to be this hard. I was just so disappointed in her. I couldn’t believe that this robotic, unfeeling woman was my mother. I wondered then whether it was all a trick. Whether the Mayor had hired an imposter to confuse me. But she looked so much like me.
‘Maida, I know all about your plan and let me tell you that I’m glad I got here in time to stop you. I’m so glad that I will stop you making the mistakes that I almost made. Yes, I was foolish when I was young. I, too, once made the mistake in thinking that violence could solve a problem, but let me tell you something; there is no problem to solve. The Metropole is not the enemy. The rebels and the nobles and the rest of the people who stand against the Metropole are the true enemy. The Metropole is your family. It is the saviour of the people of Europa. It is your protector. You must not fight against it.’
Something suddenly clicked in my brain. The vacant eyes, the hollow speech, the little pink marks on her head. I looked at her in horror. ‘What the hell have they done to you? Are you brainwashed? What happened to you? People died for you. My best friend’s parents were hanged because of you and now you’re saying they died in vain? You don’t mean that. They’ve done something to you,’ I said.
‘I was shown the light before it was too late. I was taken out of the darkness and brought into the light.’
A wave of horror swept over me as I remembered Rhian’s words when we were trapped in the cave. Light and darkness. Good and evil. How to tell one from the other? ‘What do you mean?’ I asked cautiously, not wanting to frighten Edie or Aiden.
‘On the eve of the most terrible mistake I had ever made, on the eve of my plan, they came for me. We had been discovered and the Metropole came for me. They took me, they loved me, they rehabilitated me. They showed me the light.’
‘Rehabilitated? Brainwashed, more like. Regina –’ I began but she cut me off in an angry voice.
‘No, I was rehabilitated! They showed me how they had acted to protect the people of Europa. Always to protect. They showed me how they had melted the caps so that the people of Europa could get the resources before anyone else. It was so brave of them to do that. See? That’s how they protect us. They always think of us first, always want the best for us. If they hadn’t have done that America or Asia would be the power in the world and we would be the savages. They showed me how they made work schemes so people could better themselves.’
‘Slavery!’ I cried.
‘No, people need direction for their own good. Without the direction of the Metropole people could chose the wrong path. Without the Metropole they are just lost souls. The Metropole shows them the light. I was a lost soul but now I am found.’
I shook my head, unable to speak.
‘And then Maximillian took me under his wing. I fell pregnant with you. And I knew then what it meant to protect someone. I knew I wanted to protect you from harm, to guide you, to guard you from everything. That’s when I knew for certain that the Metropole was our saviour. That’s when I knew that everything I once believed was wrong. The Metropole is the only way. It’s the only thing that protects us, gives us food, gives us homes, energy, education, a purpose. And that’s what I’m here to tell Brigadus about. They need to know this. And I want you to stand with me as I do it. Two ex-rebels, finding the light. Two ex-rebels, fighting no more. They would follow us if we both stand together. Maida, this is the only way to save Brigadus. We have to show them the light. We have to bring them into the embrace of the Metropole. Say you’ll stand with me?’
Oh, it was clever. It was so clever of the Metropole to capture the most powerful rebels and then brainwash them into being messengers for the regime. They knew the power the rebels had, the power to attract people, t
o guide them, to convince them. They knew that people would follow Regina and listen to her when she returned at the coronation ceremony. They knew that she was their best hope of subduing the Brigadus rebels. An ex-rebel turned Metropolite. I knew then that she could never be allowed to speak in front of the crowd at the ceremony. I had to stop her somehow, shake her out of these false memories.
‘Regina,’ I began, ‘you may have defected whilst your friends died for you, but I won’t do the same. I’ll die alongside my friends and you can watch how well the Metropole protects me then. Do you remember your friends? The Redmans? Grimmy?’
Her head gave an involuntary spasm as though she had been electrocuted. ‘Who?’
‘The Redmans. They had a son called Matthias. Grimmy, he was the inside man at the Munitions Factory. They were your friends, they helped you. Remember?’
Her expression crumbled into sadness and she slowly shook her head. ‘I had friends?’
I nodded and took her cold hands. It felt as though I had captured a moth inside my hands, they were shivering so much. ‘Friends that stood by you and died for you. They loved you.’
Little diamond tears fell from her eyes. She shook her head. ‘I don’t remember,’ she whispered.
‘Try,’ I urged.
There was the sound of male voices coming down the corridor. My heart quickened – there was no way that I was going back in that cell. Panicked, I scanned the room for an escape route but found none. Aiden jumped up and pointed towards the window. I dashed across the room, leaping over Regina who had sunk to her knees, grasping at her head and convulsing. She looked pitiful but there was no time to help her.
I swept the golden gun into a pocket of my shirt dress and Edie grabbed the binoculars. The window slid silently in its frame and I looked out. Only one storey up, thankfully. There was a stone ledge that circled the wall, leading to a drain pipe. I laughed at how pathetic the Mayor’s security was; an indicator of his arrogance that he thought no-one would attempt an escape. I pushed Aiden out and he scooted along the ledge. I smiled as I realised what a good rebel he would become – he didn’t even need instruction or encouragement to jump out of the window. It was a natural impulse for him.
