At a gesture from Jios, the adults sat, the child wandering behind the sofa which held his father. Jios looked to Yamar, who half-rose and pointed his palm towards Kay. “This is Kay. She does not use a family name. She is well known in Celest as a finder of children, what the Home Guard call a fetch. I enlisted her help in a search for a Farrow woman who may be able to help us uncover some rumors concerning a plot against the Dynasty. Kay is of mixed-blood and has allies among the Farrow. She has lived in Celest some ten years. Through her involvement in our search, she became entangled in the massacre of the Coulet House and is the only living witness. She has a story I felt you should hear.”
With Jios and Tems staring at her, the child playing in the background, she began haltingly telling her story. She started with her unauthorized entrance to the House Renlan. Talked about the Doctor Banden Milo and the Straps. Ended with the room in the Coulet House, her hanging of Reagan just before the Home Guard entered.
“Why did you destroy the writing on the wall?” Tems asked when she was finished. No challenging of her account. It seemed Yamar’s statement of belief in her went a long way.
“I think it was a major part of the Red Canopy plot to undermine the refugee vote.”
“And do you have strong feelings on the refugee vote?” Tems spoke with a quiet authority.
“I do,” Kay said.
“Why?” Tems asked. “Yamar mentioned enemies outside the walls. You have done well for yourself in Celest. Why do you want the Dynasty to allow the Farrow to stay? As it is now, my understanding is most mixed-bloods have a reasonable acceptance within Celest. That may change if the Farrow become a larger part of our society. They face becoming an underclass. Social and economic battlelines will be drawn. The people who draw such lines rarely care about how long someone has been here, what they might be entitled to. You may lose your business. Your friends. Your acceptance. Why put those at risk? Do you stand to gain? Do you imagine yourself providing services as some sort of cultural ambassador? The Farrow have gold.”
Kay shifted uncomfortably. The conversation had quickly strayed from the topic of House Coulet. “I’ve seen their gold. That isn’t what motivates me. I’ve also seen their children.” She couldn’t stop her eyes from straying to the young Dynasty child, still busily playing on the floor behind the seating area. Tems and Jios followed her eyes. “They have thousands with them. Some his age. Would you hand them to the Winden?”
“Why are they our problem?” Jios asked. His voice was louder, cut across the quiet of the apartment in the deep night. “We did not invade their lands. They have come uninvited to ours. We bear no love for the Winden, but it is not our job to right their wrongs. The Farrow will weaken us. Too many mouths, not enough workers. They have fighters, war-hardened, but how do we use fighters we cannot trust? We would deplete our armies attempting to govern the Farrow’s integration. The Winden will look to us next. We can’t be weak when they do.”
“Why would the Farrow necessarily weaken you? There are things they do better than Gol. The society could be stronger with the two races living together.”
“They have no love for the Dynasty. They will threaten our traditions, our beliefs.”
“So you’re going to send a race off to be exterminated by your enemies because you’re afraid of losing your position above the masses?” Kay tore off the last words. She was set to press her point, but she saw that the child had stopped playing in the background and was standing near Tems, looking closely at her. When she quieted, he approached.
He reached out a small hand and pointed to her bracelet. He touched it with one finger and gave her a shy smile. “May I have this?” he said.
Kay gently touched his hand. “No, my love, it is very dear to me.” She returned his smile as he turned back to his game, apparently satisfied by the brief exchange.
Tems followed the child with his eyes, then turned back to Kay. “The Dynasty has a range of options. What would you have us do?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been asked before.”
“I am asking you now.”
Kay’s stress was rising. She longed for a drink to occupy her hands. She caught herself fidgeting with the bracelet again. That must have been what drew the child’s attention to it. “Find some way to integrate them. They don’t have to be on equal footing. Just don’t make them leave. I don’t know. Give them some land.”
“A New Farrow?” Tems had the slightest tone of mockery. “The question we face runs much deeper than just the issue of the refugees. We set a course for the future of Gol. We have been a culturally isolated society for a long time. Our walls are a part of who we are. It will be difficult to change that overnight. Especially when we are not the ones choosing the manner in which we take on that change.” He looked at Jios, then back at Kay. “The difficulty our society has with outsiders, that is one of the reasons we’ve turned a blind eye to the presence of mixed-bloods in Celest.”
“I don’t understand. Are you saying you allow mixed-bloods as some sort of test? An experiment?”
“Those are simplistic terms. We have allowed your kind among us in part to stretch the tolerances of the Gol. Give us a proving ground to help make decisions such as these we face. If it were not for the mixed-blood having paved a path, even a winding and uncertain one, the very idea of welcoming the Farrow would repel our society. It would not be an option to be placed before the Dynasty. It would be unthinkable. It has also given us a chance to observe the ways in which our society has gained from mixed-blood and ways it has lessened.” He gave her a long look. “Let me ask you this. What if we didn’t stop by ordering the Farrow off? What would you do if we took our policy one step further? If we followed Red Canopy’s position? Removed the Farrow from our lands and with them all the mixed-blood in Gol.”
The unwanted and unwelcome image of the noose, the one that had been intended for her in the Coulet House, came to her. Would she have the courage to take her life before she ended up taking someone else’s? “It would be my worst nightmare.”
“I didn’t ask how you would feel about it. I asked what you would do.”
Don’t lie, Yamar had said. “I would stay. I would hide.”
Jios leaned forward. “If the Dynasty takes a stance against Farrow blood, the people will adopt it fervently. There will be no place to hide. They will root out those who hide underground. They will drag their neighbors into the courts. Those who cannot prove pure Gol lineage would be made illegal and taken to the gates, then the borders. The Dynasty would not stoop to the level of implementing the policy, but we would charge those below us with carrying it out. I imagine someone like you would be branded and exiled.”
An image arose in Kay’s mind, the crowds who had howled for Keara the Bug’s blood chanting for Kay. “That would make two countries I’ve been exiled from. Rejected by both sides of my blood.”
Jios frowned. “Yamar tells us you are deserving of respect. The brief introduction you heard is not the extent of what he has told us. He has told us you have helped many Gol families find their children. He has told us you have saved many lives. When I hear this I form an image of a person. I do not expect this person to have a criminal past. Why were you exiled from the Farrow?”
Yamar’s guidance was getting harder to follow. Kay spoke haltingly. “I started fires. Compulsively. I couldn’t help myself. I was angry and afraid and stressed. I wanted to burn down the city.”
From the look on everyone’s faces, Yamar included, this was news to the room. “Setting fires is not cause for exile,” Tems said.
“It is when they kill people. And you can’t seem to stop.”
“But you have stopped, yes?” When Kay nodded, Tems continued. “I’m trying to understand. Why did you do it?”
A question she’d long tried to answer herself. Kay looked around, wishing she could see the Fire Eye. Find something to calm her. “I don’t know. I needed them. I needed something.”
“And do you ne
ed them any longer?”
“No. Now I need to fix any damage I did.”
“And you do this by finding children? This is why you are a fetch?”
“Yes.” She looked at the bracelet on her wrist, the one with marks for every child she’d found. She felt foolish and exposed. She’d never said it so plainly, reduced it to words.
“So what would you do, if we exiled you? Would you join the Farrow in a search for a new home? Would you help them find any children who get lost on the way?”
“No, I would die.”
“Why?”
“Because I need the Fire Eye to survive. If you take it from me, I’ll eventually return to the way I was.”
“What if we took a more reasonable stance? What if we allowed the mixed-blood to stay and set a quota on the Farrow? Some few could stay, especially those our society would value, say the doctors and blacksmiths, but the others would have to leave Gol lands? What would you do?”
“I don’t know.”
Jios took over again. “You can do better than that. Imagine tomorrow I walk into the Dynasty chambers and advise them all but a few of the Farrow must go. The mixed-bloods like yourself can stay. It takes time and is messy, but one day, a month from now, you look out over the city walls and see the Farrow camp uprooted and moving west, never to return. What would you do?”
“Why does it matter what I would do? You’d be feeding tens of thousands of lives to the Winden. It would be a death sentence on what remains of that people. My people.”
“You speak of a culture that rejected you.”
“But it’s not up to me! It’s up to you to decide.”
“Yes. It is.” There was a long pause. Kay thought of the children. Her pledge to protect them. The leather bracelet on her arm suddenly felt like a shackle. The weight of her past deeds tying her down, never getting any lighter. She looked at the Dynasty child watching them. He was the same age as those kicking a ball at the orphanage. She thought of leaving Celest, leaving the Fire Eye behind.
“There are children out there too. I would go with them. I would keep them safe as long as I could. And when I started to lose my mind I would leave them. And I would find my way back into Ferris, if it is still occupied by the Winden. And when I got there, I would find the biggest building I could with as many Winden in it, and I would burn it to the fucking ground. I’d burn the whole fucking city to ashes.” She had tears in her eyes.
“The Winden have children too. You would have them die?”
She nodded, dislodging a few stray tears. “I’d burn the whole fucking city down. Thousands upon thousands of people screaming for death as the fire eats their flesh, begging to get out, to get away from Keara the Spark. And we’d all die. And the next time the Fire Eye opens above Celest, it will rain blood and fire down on you, and on the Dynasty, and you would look up and say ‘what the fuck have we done?’”
“You paint a vivid picture with words.”
Kay saw the cold, dark expression on Jios’ face. He was a man unused to threats. For a moment she remembered the way the lanterns had run up against the city walls to have their fires doused on the night of the Opening. She felt just as powerless, adrift among forces that might stoop to examine this strange, stray orphan, but would never truly hear her. “Well, you asked. Are we finished?”
Jios looked around, getting a nod from Tems and Yamar. The child behind them looked stunned. “I believe we are. Have a safe journey home.”
Chapter 25. The Overlook
Yamar made no move to leave with her. Others bearing the Wrang triangles waited outside the apartments to walk her down to the carriages out front. They offered a ride but Kay declined and began the long walk home. It was downhill, and a far better view of Celest than she was accustomed to. The night air was comfortable. She realized, with surprise, that she still had her weapons. She’d been allowed to keep them at the Home Guard and then even in the presence of the Dynasty. For all the show of security, they were truly spoiled with a compliant populace. Lucky that no Gol would dream of harming the Dynasty.
Kay glanced up towards the Fire Eye as she walked and decided to take a detour to the Goet Overlook where she had met the pretend Ban Terrel and this had all started. By the time she got there the sun was threatening in the east. The plaza empty, she climbed the stairs up to the Overlook. The Fire Eye felt close in the sky above her. But for once, something held a larger piece of her mind.
Was she not even considering the Fire Creep’s offer? A chance to achieve some mastery of the spark inside her? A chance to leave this petty, hateful world, so desperate to divide her, behind? She knew she couldn’t trust him, but the flame, the one the Fire Creep had willed into the air between them, it had pulsed in time with her heartbeat. It had known her. Her blood, her soul, her body, and it had asked nothing of her, simply falling into beat. A comfort, given that her blood had engendered so much rejection and controversy. It was an offer of freedom. The power to move beyond that.
She recalled the Gol Home Guard with spit on his lips, the suspicious glances of the couple that helped her in the plaza. The impassioned faces of the Red Canopy listening to the doctor describe a paradise that was made by putting her and her kind on the other side of high walls. Randall Lenz isolating her when she was a child, attacking her, finding justification in the color of her skin. Maggie calling her a haught. Alban using her. All her life her blood had been an issue for others to make what they would of it. A cause to hate or ignore. To hang or burn. She’d never understood it. Her blood was red. She was alive and she’d earned her place and her peace.
She’d been given a gift, she was seeing for the first time. She could see farther than the others. It was no challenge to see better and deeper than people like Alban or Red Canopy, people who would paint anyone different as weak and flawed. But she could see farther than even those who were meant to rule from on high. The Dynasty had needed her in order to understand the implications of a course of action on a people that was not their own. By being a part of two peoples, a bridge between them, she never had the chance to reduce them to a tally or call them all enemy or ally. She knew every single person in and outside of Celest was a tiny beacon of light, a lantern struggling to reach the Fire Eye. She had transformed, from one society to another and back to something in the middle. And through it all she was still the same. Same skin, same face, same soul inside, trying to do her best in a scary and confusing world, just like everyone.
But she felt alone in her understanding, a quiet voice drowned out in the chorus of hatred. Perhaps the Fire Creep dwelled somewhere beyond that. The flame had asked nothing of her. It hadn’t assigned her a role or class she was not to drift outside of, walls she wasn’t to climb.
Had she done the right thing, making the case for the Farrow, the ones who’d thrown her from their country? The ones who threatened her place in this new home? Speaking her heart in front of those who would determine the fate of nations? Maybe her voice didn’t matter, another lamp extinguished against the walls. Perhaps she’d merely made a fool of herself, Yamar being forced to apologize for her blunt drama the moment she left. Sorry, I didn’t realize she was a firebug exile.
She wasn’t sure if any of it mattered. It gave her some degree of faith in the Dynasty that they had listened to her, even bothered to ask, but that may just be Celest rubbing off on her. Some part of her worshipping the Dynasty the way the rest did, believing they could do no wrong. The refugee situation didn’t allow for that kind of thinking. There was a wrong answer. Too many just couldn’t see the consequences of their actions and made their choices out of ignorance.
But there was kindness on both sides, enough to complicate the picture. Ewan and Lilian had given her what help they could. The way Amos had held her, so sure in a fight, but he held her like a flower he was scared would break. Abi and Joah's loyalty. There was good in the people she'd found. They’d shown it to her. Under pressure, under stress.
The Fire Creep had shown he
r nothing that could be trusted. She'd take the life she'd built, flaws and all. She'd defend it. Good thing she made up her mind well after already committing in the conversations with the Dynasty.
She might as well have taken the week off for all she’d done. Looking for a non-existent child. Finding a woman who seemed to be a dead end. Even Yamar had stopped caring about Margaret Jordene, hadn’t even pressed. Why had he cared in the first place?
At least she’d managed to spoil the doctor’s return to Celest. Whatever he’d done with the Winden, success or failure, he was surely furious to have lost the opportunity to pin House Coulet on Kay and the mixed-bloods. The thought of him accounting himself to the other members of Red Canopy gave her some pleasure. As did the thought of him receiving the ranks of the Straps, trickling into whatever headquarters they had, bruised, beaten, and leaderless. Maybe right now, he and the third man who’d been at House Coulet were arguing over whose fault it was this time. And likely unaware that the Dynasty now knew they were behind the Coulet family’s murders and would soon send the Wrang.
Kay spent a peaceful hour staring up at the sky. The Fire Eye’s brilliance faded as the light rose, and she turned to go, feeling slightly better.
…
Kay wasn’t sure about the safety of her office, so instead she went to The Harbor Grey. Her crew had anticipated her. Joah, Abi, and Amos were all in the bar, sharing a booth. They looked up expectantly as she walked in.
She slid into the booth, raising a hand to stall the questions. She waved to the bartender, who brought over a beer. She took a long drink. “Okay,” she said, lowering her glass. “Joah, run over to the Renlan House. Tell me what you see. I have a strong suspicion the Red Canopy is waking up to the sound of Wrang boots this morning. Abi, run by the bars outside the refugee council hearings. Tell me what the latest gossip is. The tide may shift today. Or it may not. But if you wanted to start spreading the story of how Red Canopy was behind the murder of the Coulets, feel free. You can name Doctor Milo. Both of you keep your eyes open and get back safe. Don’t take more than an hour or two.”
The Fire Eye Refugee Page 16
