Scorched Earth

by Tommy Wallach

“No,” Clover said. “It’s just me.”

  He reached the workshop floor. Mitchell stood before a thick chunk of cherrywood held in a vise. His disappointment radiated even as he tried to summon up a smile.

  “Clover. Thank God you’re safe.”

  “It’s good to see you, Mr. Poplin.”

  Mitchell was transformed since Clover had seen him last. The ruddy vigor that used to belie his age was gone, transformed into a pallor bordering on translucence, an existential thinness. He’d grown a wild silver beard that sparkled with wood shavings, and his clothes fairly hung off him; if the scene in the kitchen was anything to go by, he probably wasn’t eating much. Clover saw the minute hesitation in the old man’s eyes—a fear of what he might learn—before he overcame it. “My granddaughters—are they with you?”

  “No. Flora’s still… away.”

  “But you saw her? She’s all right?”

  I have no idea. “She’s fine. Right as rain.”

  “And Gemma?”

  “Gemma…” His father had taught him to be sparing with his lies, that even hard truths carried within them some intrinsic value that counterbalanced the pain they might cause. But faced with a lonely old man who’d survived his entire family, Clover’s resolve collapsed. “Gemma’s watching after her sister. The two of them had to stay out east, to do some work for the Protectorate.”

  Mitchell coughed gruffly, as if this might mask the wetness in his eyes. He fitted the saw back into the groove he’d already cut in the wood. “So I imagine you’ll be looking for a place to stay.”

  “If you don’t mind. And it’s more than just me. My da, too.”

  “Your da?” Mitchell looked at him as if he might be crazy. “Your da?” he repeated.

  “It’s a pretty long story. They’re still questioning him over at the Bastion, but he’ll be free by the end of the week. Chang wants him to give a sermon next Sunday.”

  “Daughter’s love. Daniel Hamill alive.” Mitchell made the sign of the annulus on his chest. “If that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is.”

  “My brother’s here too. In the Anchor, I mean. But the Protectorate—”

  “I don’t want to hear one word about that boy,” Mitchell interrupted. “Not a single goddamned word.”

  “Why? Did something happen between you two?”

  “Morning after Flora’s birthday, I woke up and both of ’em were gone. Haven’t seen either one since. She never woulda left the house on her own, not without telling me. Which means your brother convinced her somehow.”

  “He wouldn’t have taken her unless he had a good reason.”

  Mitchell didn’t look convinced. “Anyway, the upstairs bedrooms are all made up. You’re welcome to stay in either one. Until the girls get back, of course. Then we’ll find somewhere else for ya.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Poplin.”

  “My pleasure.” The old man considered for a moment, then set his saw down again. “Hey, what do you say we go out to the pub and get some food? All of a sudden, I’m hungry as a goddamned wolf.”

  * * *

  Clover paced the hallway between the front door and the kitchen: back and forth, back and forth. There was so much to say, so much ground to cover. He couldn’t imagine lying to his father as he’d lied to Mitchell, yet to tell the whole truth—all the people he’d hurt, the crimes he’d committed, the lustful and impious thoughts he’d entertained—seemed just as unimaginable.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  “That must be your da!” Mitchell shouted from the workshop.

  “I know it is!” Clover shouted back, too nervous to be polite.

  Standing at the door, he pulled his shirt down and straightened his spine. He tried on a smile and quickly discarded it as false. He was scraping the dirt out from under his fingernails when a second, more emphatic knock made him jump.

  “Sorry,” he said, undoing the latch and opening the door.

  His father stood on the landing, flanked by two soldiers. He looked a lot healthier than he had the night of the raid on the Mindful safe house; Chang had probably held on to him this last week so he could be cleaned and fattened up—otherwise folks might get to thinking the Grand Marshal had tortured a war hero.

  “Hello, Son,” he said.

  “Hey, Da.”

  Clover gave in to his emotion, practically leaping into his father’s arms in full sight of the soldiers. Tears sprang to his eyes as he squeezed for all he was worth, breathing in the familiar smell, feeling the ticklish rasp of beard on his cheek. Finally embarrassment overcame him and he let go; easy enough to do, as his father hadn’t ever embraced him back.

  “We’ll be outside, should you need us,” one of the soldiers said.

  Clover frowned. “You’re staying?”

  “The Honor remains a prime target for the Mindful,” the other soldier explained. “The Grand Marshal has ordered a full-time escort for the time being, to keep him safe.”

  “Right,” Clover’s father said. “To keep me safe.” He began to close the door but stopped halfway. “And I’m not an Honor. Not anymore.”

  “No?” said one of the soldiers. “So what should we call you?”

  “How about Daniel Hamill? That’s my fucking name.” He shut the door the rest of the way.

  Daniel Hamill. It had an unpleasant civilian ring to it, a crudeness in keeping with the shocking exchange Clover had just witnessed. Only a few people had ever had leave to refer to Clover’s father that way: his wife, Eddie Poplin, a few select Honors and bishops. It was the name of an ordinary man, where Clover had always seen his father as something closer to a god. Now it was Daniel Hamill who turned to face his son. Daniel Hamill who coughed, the sound of it thick and worrisome. Daniel Hamill who sighed ruefully, as if disappointed in something, and walked into the kitchen.

  Clover followed, heart in his throat, anxious for reasons he couldn’t entirely understand. Mitchell could be heard hammering away downstairs. Clover had asked for some time to talk to his father alone, but he regretted it now; it would’ve been nice to have a third person there, to help alleviate the tension. His father sat down at the kitchen table and regarded the board of cheese and sausage that Clover had prepared. He picked up a slice of meat with his left hand, and Clover saw where Lila had amputated the index finger at the distal phalangeal joint. Suddenly he felt a little less guilty for what he’d done to her.

  “I want you to tell me everything that’s happened since the last time I saw you,” Daniel said, his tone flat and even. “Don’t leave out a single detail. I’ll know if you do.”

  Clover had hoped there would be more small talk before they reached this point, but no part of this reunion was going how he expected, so he began to relate the events of the past year. It was uncomfortable talking about himself like a character in a story, particularly as this fictional Clover approached his fatefully immoral decision to walk with Irene in the Maple Garden; he was surprised that his father was able to restrain himself from giving an impromptu lecture on the dangers of lustful thoughts. He went on, describing the scene outside Sophia and how it felt when Clive’s bullet ripped through his shoulder. Here, at least, he’d expected some kind of reaction, but his father’s expression remained unreadable. He grew more confident, efficiently laying out how he’d spent his days at the academy, how his father’s Filia had led him to Lila’s study, and the truth of what had transpired there. He paused after that, waiting for judgment.

  “Go on,” was all his father said.

  He rounded out the tale quickly—the unwitting poisoning at Edgewise, his return to the Anchor, and finally, his unlikely plan to free his father by leading the Protectorate to the Mindful enclave.

  “I think you already know the rest,” he said quietly.

  “Yes. I think I do.”

  They were quiet for a few moments. Clover picked up a cube of cheese that crumbled into tasteless paste in his mouth. He felt exhausted, exposed. There could be no recovering from so
much truth telling; now Daniel Hamill had proof of what he’d always suspected—that his youngest son had no moral center, no faith, no hope of redemption in the eyes of God and his Daughter.

  “I’m proud of you,” his father said gruffly.

  “Proud?” Clover was surprised to find himself less than overjoyed at this unexpected vindication. “I killed innocent people. I betrayed my own blood.”

  “You survived. In spite of everything.”

  “You used to say life was about more than just living.”

  “I didn’t know anything back then. I was a child.” His father’s tone was bitter and self-deprecating. “And what of Clive? I know where he is, but not how he got there.”

  “I haven’t been able to piece it all together, but it seems like he and Flora got in some kind of trouble with the Mindful. They ended up on the run with Paz.”

  “Is there something going on between her and your brother?”

  “You’d have to ask him.”

  “What about Flora and Gemma?”

  “Clive lost track of Flora at the tooroon. And Gemma—she’s dead.”

  Daniel looked to the stairs that led down to the basement. “Does Mitchell know?”

  “I couldn’t bring myself to tell him.”

  Daniel nodded. “Clover, I have one more question to ask you, and it’s an important one. I need you to answer honestly.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you still believe?”

  “Believe?”

  “In the religion you were raised with. In the Descendancy.”

  “Of course,” Clover replied immediately. “I mean, I had some doubts when I first got to Sophia, but they went away as soon as I found out what Lila did to you.”

  Daniel’s eyes betrayed his disappointment. Perhaps Clover hadn’t been emphatic enough. He tried to formulate a better response, some more enthusiastic proof of his faith and loyalty, but his father didn’t give him the opportunity. “I’m tired,” Daniel said, standing up from the table. “We should both get some sleep.”

  Clover felt a sting behind his eyes but refused to let it show; he’d hoped they would stay up all night talking. “Sure.”

  “I’ll say good night to Mitchell. You and I can speak more in the morning.”

  His father lumbered down the hallway like an invalid, like a stranger. Clover let a few tears fall, wiped them away with his sleeve. He went upstairs and undressed, washed his face in the basin. He’d just slipped under the covers when he heard it, a cry of anguish splitting the silence, penetrating wood and plaster and stone as if they were paper. A pain that shouldn’t have been inflicted; a truth that needn’t have been told.

  * * *

  On the walk from Mitchell’s house to the Delancey workshop, Clover could tell who was on their way to Notre Fille purely by the quality of their Sunday finery: a veritable rainbow of velveteens and crinolines, an exhaustive display of the milliner’s art, and a couple hundred white suits and frilly dresses containing an equivalent number of unhappy, uncomfortable children. The best and brightest of the Anchor were all turned out for Honor Daniel Hamill—heroic survivor of more than a year in Sophian custody—and his grand return to the ambo.

  Clover and his father had scarcely spoken since that first night, and when they did, the conversation was inevitably cursory and curt, as between two acquaintances with little in common: a reunion in name only. Daniel had spent most of his time locked in his room, preparing today’s sermon. He’d come downstairs to eat a couple of times a day, but always radiated an aura of aloofness that would brook no disturbance.

  So instead of reconnecting with his father, Clover had whiled away the past week with Kita, at least whenever she wasn’t putting in her hours at the family workshop. He knew he owed his and his father’s freedom to her, but it wasn’t gratitude that brought him to her doorstep each afternoon; he genuinely liked her. Their daily strolls around the Anchor even had the whiff of the romantic to them—or would have anyway, if not for the Protectorate soldier always keeping pace ten steps behind them to ensure they weren’t up to anything nefarious.

  Thankfully he’d been able to evade his escort this morning, and so he arrived at the Delancey workshop unaccompanied. One of Kita’s siblings told him he’d have to wait outside, as she was still getting ready. It was nearly fifteen minutes before he heard her voice on the other side of the door.

  “You better not laugh,” she said.

  “Why would I laugh?”

  “Just promise.”

  “Okay. I promise.”

  Kita pushed the door open a crack and slipped through. She’d been right to warn him; his first instinct was to laugh. It wasn’t that there was anything funny about a girl getting all dressed up; he’d just never seen her dressed up. She wore a black shift that was prettily frayed along the hem, and her hair had been combed into a braid of Gordian complexity, swooping in and out and back around again. Her bone-white shoes had little violet ribbons at the toes.

  “I see you smiling,” she said accusingly.

  Clover swallowed his amusement. “I’m just surprised is all. You look… I mean, it’s nice.”

  “I know it is. The lace alone cost two arms and half a leg.”

  He thought about offering his elbow to her but chickened out at the last second. Though he was ninety-nine percent certain that she liked him, that one percent of doubt kept him paralyzed. It was his first experience with someone maybe having a crush on him, rather than the other way around. Oddly, he found it just as disconcerting, if in an entirely different way. Poor Gemma, who’d endured his amorous attention all those years; he’d thought he was being so subtle, but in retrospect, she must have known all along.

  “Whatcha thinking about?” Kita said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Bull. I bet you’re thinking about what your dad’s gonna say at the service. Did he give you a preview?”

  “In a way.”

  Clover had woken that morning to find his father standing over his bed, wearing an expression stuck somewhere between anxiety and anger. “What is it?” he’d said.

  “You will not come to the service this morning,” Daniel replied.

  Clover sat up against the headboard, still dazed with sleep. “Why? Did I do something wrong?”

  “No,” his father said, then quickly reconsidered. “Yes. And we’ll discuss it when I get back. But you are not to leave the house until then. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.”

  Clover had given his father a good twenty-minute head start before ignoring this injunction completely.

  “I mean, does he really think I’m going to miss this?” Clover complained to Kita. “It’s ridiculous. I’m not a child anymore.”

  “You should go easy on him. You know what they did to him at Sophia.”

  “I guess. I just wish he wasn’t acting so strangely. It’s like he’s become a completely different person.”

  Annunciation Square was packed with those who’d come to hear Honor Hamill speak. They all jostled to get into the church first and nail down a prime spot, to see and be seen. There was Chang, surrounded by his honor guard and the members of his new Gloria—a sop to those who needed to believe the Church still had any sort of influence in the Anchor. By official decree, there would be no replacement Epistem or Archbishop elected or appointed; the complex checks and balances of tripartite leadership had given way to dull autocracy.

  By the time Clover and Kita entered the nave, the pews had already filled up. The spillover congregants were instructed to stand at the very back of the cathedral, just inside the doors.

  “I can’t even see anything,” Kita said. “This is stupid.”

  “It’s a sermon,” Clover replied. “There’s nothing to see.”

  “Can I get on your shoulders?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re in church!”

  “So?”

  “S
o no.”

  The crowd went quiet; something was happening. Clover got up on his tiptoes and craned to see between the two annoyingly tall men in front of him. Bishop Allen was already standing at the ambo. He looked thin and beleaguered. The wattle of loose skin under his chin shimmied as he scanned the audience.

  “Who is it?” Kita asked.

  “Bishop Allen.”

  “I thought he got kicked out of the Gloria.”

  “He did. I guess it didn’t take.”

  Someone nearby shushed them.

  “Welcome, citizens of the Descendancy, to this very special Sunday service,” Allen said. “It is my great pleasure to welcome back Honor Daniel Hamill, who was taken prisoner by Sophia over a year ago and subjected to all manner of gruesome horrors. He’s come here today to speak of his ordeal, and how we all must stand united against the threat of Sophia. Honor?”

  A thunderous wave of applause filled Clover’s ears as Daniel Hamill climbed the steps up to the ambo, shaking Bishop Allen’s hand along the way. He took his place and stood there in silence until the audience quieted down. It was an old trick, one Clover had seen his father employ hundreds of times before, but usually with a sort of beatific patience, as if he could wait forever. Today Daniel looked nervous, frantic even, his eyes darting around the room as if seeking out some enemy lying in wait.

  At last the Honor deigned to speak. “The Lord enjoins us not to hate our enemy, but to love them. So when I was first taken, I sought to love the men and women of Sophia, even as they tried to break me. Even as they did this”—he held up his mangled finger to a gasp from the congregation—“and much worse besides. But as the weeks passed, my resolve began to weaken. I believed the Daughter had forsaken me, and a hatred grew in me unlike anything I’d known before. I felt capable of any act of desecration, any act of violence. I was as ready to kill as I was to die. That was when Director Zeno, the leader of Sophia, began to bring me books, books I would never have been permitted to read in the Anchor.

  “At first I refused to open them. I tried to convince myself it was out of piety, but the truth is I was afraid of what I would learn. I was afraid those books would make me doubt. Then one night I dreamed I was walking in the garden with Aleph and Eva, and they reminded me that every human being is a descendant of those who ate from the tree of knowledge. I woke up hungry for revelation. I plucked the fruit from the tree, and it turned my conception of the universe upside down. It shook my faith to the very core.”