Jonah stared at her, his heart thudding unhappily. This was who he should have been trying to win over, all along. In this room, she wasn’t the highest rank at all, yet she was directing the others. He could see that now. Why hadn’t he spotted it earlier?
“You’re a traditionalist,” he breathed.
Kanina rolled her eyes much as Seaver had done. “A quaint term that belies standards and traditions that kept this ship safe and productive for over two hundred years until Victore came along and decided she didn’t like her ordained role.”
“But you’re the chief of an institution, the very thing she created.”
“I would have been Master of Accouchement anyway,” Kanina shot back. She glanced at everyone else. They were all watching her, including Seaver, who was grinning. He was enjoying this.
“It is an institutional policy, Mr. Solomon, that we remain politically neutral,” Kanina added. She smiled and there was no amusement in the expression this time. It was one hundred percent malicious. “Each institution is a silo of knowledge, expertise and wisdom. We do not profess to know anything about other professions, as you do.”
Jonah frowned. Something was tugging at him, making him want to pause the meeting while he teased it out. Something Kanina had said. He could barely process what she was saying now, except to absorb that she was saying no in the most demeaning way possible.
“We do not have the expertise to control or even influence Bridge policy and leadership decisions.” She looked around the room. “I believe this meeting is at an end.”
“You gave Tomas Averill the AI selection list,” Jonah said.
For the first time, Kanina Ole’s smile slipped. She glared at him. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Now he’s really reaching,” Seaver added.
Jonah shook his head. “You knew you would have been selected for Accouchement under the old system. That means you have been accessing the AI reports. You gave the report to Averill, to stir him into screaming about it.” He looked at all of them in turn. “You’re not politically neutral at all. You’ve already sold your souls to the patricians.”
The others all glanced at the ground or away. Only Kanina Ole’s gaze stayed steady. Defiant.
Jonah felt sick. “If Averill takes the captain’s chair, he’ll dismantle the institutes and bring back the mentor and protégé system. That’s the price of your loyalty.”
Kanina’s smile was back to full wattage. “The price of your loyalty is already familiar to you, Mr. Solomon. If you continue to follow the path you are taking, it will be more than Lieutenant Fitzgerald who suffers for your sins.”
He swallowed, his heart pistoning, slamming against his chest. “You arranged the murders.”
She contrived to look shocked. “Murder as a political tool? What will you think of next, Mr. Solomon? That creative mind of yours can invent anything, can’t it?”
He understood the implied threat. They would discredit him, make him look delusional or worse, if he persisted in opposing the patricians.
“You don’t understand,” he said slowly. “I’m not patrician and I’m not plebeian. I just want the ship to survive what is coming.”
“Very noble of you,” Seaver said. “We’ll write it on the memorial page of your Forum profile once you’re gone.”
Jonah took a step backward, toward the door and escape. Then another. “I could threaten you, too. I could promise that if ever I am in a position to make your life hell, I will. I don’t have to do that, though. You could have been the third corner of a stable power base on the Endurance. Instead, you’ve chosen for yourselves and your institutions a future of obscurity and living in the shadows. It’s so short-sighted it’s pathetic. I wish you well.”
He saw their collective look of shock before he turned and got the hell out of there.
Suddenly, the need to see Marlow was shouting at him. He wanted to assure himself she was safe.
* * * * *
Jonah splurged on a cab back to the Esquiline. He strode through the marketplace as quickly as he could. There were far too many people milling about the public spaces, clumping in groups with their heads together and looking worried. Some of the faces Jonah recognized as Capitolinos. They would be from the wall districts and still without access to their apartments because of the investigation. They looked the least happy of all the disgruntled faces he saw.
As he passed, he saw heads turn, then bend to speak to one another. His arrival had been noted.
No one tried to talk to him, which was even stranger. His heart, which had already been zooming along in the aftermath of the meeting with the chiefs, picked up a notch higher.
Was something about to happen? Tension seemed to be crackling in the air all around him. These people weren’t shopping. They weren’t socializing, either.
He slowed down, trying to sample conversations as he moved past. As soon as he drew closer to any groups, their conversation halted. Some of the groups separated, their members walking swiftly in opposite directions.
Jonah’s uneasiness grew. He kept on as straight a line as he could for Marlow’s quarters, which he could see just ahead.
Then he spotted Marlow herself. She was standing at a stall, negotiating for a pair of grapefruit the stall manager was holding in his hands, holding out a small object on her hand and talking. The stall manager was shaking his head. He had the sort of look on his face that told Jonah that Marlow could offer him nothing that would sway him to part with the fruit. It was Marlow herself he was objecting to.
Jonah came up behind her and grabbed her elbow. “Leave it,” he said in her ear. “He’s never going to give them to you. Come with me.”
She looked around at him, startled, although she was moving with him. “I’ve known these people all my life…” she said in a bewildered undertone.
“Don’t say anything. Not until we’re inside,” Jonah replied.
She nodded, a furrow appearing between her brows.
There were too many people and they were gathered together in thick bunches that made pushing through them or skirting around them difficult. Jonah turned to avoid a big cluster, his unease increasing, because it was forcing him farther away from Marlow’s quarters.
Where they being herded?
He risked a glance over his shoulder. The people he had already passed had moved in behind them, almost shoulder to shoulder.
They were being steered.
“Do you have your sticks?” he asked Marlow.
She didn’t look at him. She didn’t look behind them, or around, or anything but forward. She knew, then, what was happening. Her guard instincts had flared up. “I didn’t think I would need them to buy grapefruit,” she said quietly.
Jonah had no trouble hearing her because it was quiet all around them. He could hear the sounds of people talking farther away. They were too distant to have their attention drawn to this spot. Even farther, he could hear traffic on the Artery and a train pulling out from the Aventine South station, heading north and picking up speed. Beyond that was the deep, barely audible sound of the ship itself. It was the first time in years that Jonah had consciously heard the noise the Endurance made.
A bubble of almost total silence surrounded Marlow and him.
Ahead was a thick wall of people, all watching them approach.
Jonah squeezed Marlow’s arm and let his hand drop. He suspected he would need both of them free.
They halted in front of the wall of people. Jonah knew almost all of them, some of them by name only. They were a strange mix of patricians and plebeians from all four districts.
One of them was Tomas Averill.
Jonah had never met him face to face before. His presence here in the Esquiline was not a good sign.
Tomas’ narrow face twisted with vicious joy. He raised his finger and pointed at Jonah. “Anarchist,” he pronounced.
Everyone had moved in around them, circling them with a tight fence of bodies. They murmured and hi
ssed in reaction. Nobody was protesting.
Averill’s finger shifted to Marlow. “Murderer,” he said.
This time, a roar of fury washed over them.
Marlow glanced at Jonah. “There’s no way out,” she said quietly.
The people around them were waving their fists, edging in closer. They weren’t going to listen. They didn’t want arguments.
“He should be shunned and she should be executed!” Tomas cried.
The roar of agreement was ferocious. Jonah found himself with his back to Marlow, his hands lifted in defense.
Let them try.
His temper, which had been simmering since before his meeting with the chiefs, now surged to white hot.
Just let them touch her.
They might have stood in that tight circle forever, if someone farther back hadn’t tried to push their way forward. It drove one of the inner circle forward. Jonah saw it happen. Marlow, though, was standing at the wrong angle. She caught the movement out of the corner of her eye and reacted.
The man—Jonah thought he might be Cardwell, from the farm—staggered, trying to recover his balance, his head down.
Marlow took a step sideways, gripped the back of his neck and drove her knee upward into his stomach. He gave a sickly cough and fell, then curled up into a tight ball, his arms over his stomach. He was wheezing.
Marlow looked up and around, her hands out just like Jonah’s, only curled into fists. Her knuckles were white and she was breathing hard.
“Get her!” someone cried.
That was all it took.
The circle collapsed as everyone tried to reach for them at once. Jonah grabbed the nearest two and clubbed their heads together.
“Hey, that hurt, you patrician pig!” someone cried and Jonah heard a grunt and the heavy fall of a body.
“Capitol! Capitol! Cap—” Abruptly, the chant was cut off.
Jonah shoved a few more bodies out of the way. “They’re fighting each other!” he bellowed at Marlow.
She didn’t respond. He saw her glance toward him before turning back to bring down the next person to try to grab her.
Around them, the square had erupted into struggling, fights, screams and writhing bodies. It had suddenly shifted from a lynching to a riot.
Overhead, the sunlights switched off and the red alert lights flickered into life.
“Guards are coming!” someone shouted.
That didn’t check the fighting at all. If anything, it intensified.
Filtering through the struggling mob came streams of black uniforms. In the dim red light, they were black shadows. Only their badges on their pockets showed, gleaming in the light.
The presence of the Bridge Guard, which had quelled civil unrest for centuries, had no effect now. The fighting continued. If anything, it intensified.
“That’s her guard!” The cry came from the stall owner who had refused to trade the grapefruit with Marlow. Jonah saw him launch himself at one of the guards. A second one stepped in and hit him over the back of the head with his baton and he went down heavily.
Jonah rammed his shoulder into the chest of man between him and Marlow, then stepped closer to Marlow and punched her attacker in the face, making him stagger back. “Back to your quarters!” he yelled at her.
She nodded and moved with him in the right direction, until someone grabbed her arm and almost pulled her off her feet. Jonah turned back to help as she rammed her knuckles into her attacker’s eyes. Someone else landed on Jonah’s back, trying to claw at his eyes.
Glass smashed and tinkled and a roar of approval went up. It would take half-a-dozen men to break any glass window or object. The factions were coalescing.
Jonah shrugged off the man on his back and dropped him onto the floor, then stepped over him, looking for Marlow.
She had disappeared.
He looked around frantically. The fighting had spread beyond the market. He could see struggling bodies as far as his gaze could reach. How far had this spread?
The black uniforms of Bridge Guards were everywhere, trying to quell the riot. In Jonah’s estimation, they were badly outnumbered yet that had never stopped them before. He had seen a single guard contain a whole room of tankball fanatics and bring them to their knees. That he loved that particular guard did not alter the fact.
He couldn’t see her.
Where was she?
Someone cannoned into him, almost taking him off his feet. Their attacker leapt at both of them and Jonah had to concentrate on getting rid of them. He started working his way toward the apartment. Perhaps she had made it out ahead of him. Perhaps she was somewhere else and safe.
* * * * *
In between bouts, Marlow looked at each of the civil guards near her. She specifically wanted to find someone from Cantrell’s squad yet they didn’t seem to be here. Perhaps they were controlling another district. They had been in the Capitol this morning—they might still be there.
Everyone she saw was from one of the other squads.
Then she spotted a face she knew.
Red Guard.
Her heart squeezed. If they were back in civil uniforms and Hayim was running the civil division, then they had control of the Bridge and the ship…except the people of the Endurance were fighting them.
The Red Guard saw her and strode toward her. His face in the red light was unreadable. The baton he raised toward her spoke volumes.
Marlow threw up her hands in the classic surrender position. “I’m just defending myself!” she cried, absolutely certain he would not hear her over the yelling and shouting and cries. Her raised hands would halt him, though. No guard would attack someone who was handing themselves over peacefully.
The baton came down.
At the last moment, Marlow realized he was attacking anyway. She gasped and dropped down and swiveled away from the curve of the baton. She heard it whistle through the air past her ear and her fear grew. A blow that hard could have killed her.
Maybe it was supposed to, the cool voice in her head suggested.
Now she was facing his flank, Marlow made a fist of her hand, the middle knuckle protruding, the other fingers gripping and stabilizing it. She drove it into the soft flesh below his ear, at the nerve center there.
The Red Guard dropped like a tankball in two gees.
Marlow didn’t stop to check on him. She had to get back to the house. She had lost track of Jonah but knew he would go there. There, they would have to reconsider what to do next. She could see up the length of the ship to the tall industrial structures of the Field of Mars. Everywhere, people were fighting. She could see market stall covers wobbling and collapsing and she could hear more. Breaking glass. The rip of solid objects being torn up or torn apart.
Why destroy the ship?
The answer came from the same cool place in her mind.
For weapons.
She whirled back to face toward the Palatine. The fighting and destruction was just as intense there. Maybe it had even spilled into the Palatine itself. No taxi-boat operator would take anyone down to the surface when they could hear and see the violence beyond the hub. There were stairs, though, that clung to the wall of the Palatine the rioters could use if they were determined.
If it was pissed-off plebeians trying to get to the Palatine, they would definitely be determined enough.
The fighting was spreading….
A hand clamped on her arm. “Gotcha,” a man growled.
She spun to face him, her hand coming up.
The guard was unknown to her and his grin was triumphant.
She rammed her fingers at his eyes.
Something smashed into the back of her head, sending colored sparks flitting through her vision.
Then she saw no more.
Chapter Fifteen
The front door of Marlow’s quarters swung open as he stumbled toward it and Jonah pushed his way inside and slammed it shut. He heard the security bars slide into place and was heartily gla
d that Marlow had upgraded the front door from the flimsy standard issue.
He put his back against the door and tried to get his breath back. His knuckles were stinging and at least one of the cuts on his face had started bleeding again. Or perhaps it was a new cut. The blood was hot against his skin and sliding down his neck. The coppery smell was strong. How badly was he bleeding?
He looked around for Marlow.
Erron stood up from behind the kitchen counter where he had been hiding.
“You let me in….” Jonah turned back to the door. “Marlow’s still out there. Let me out, Erron.”
Erron shook his head. “You have to stay here. You have to sort it out, after.”
Jonah stared at him. “Erron, open the damn door.”
“I saw her,” Erron whispered. “Just over there.” He pointed through the small window next to the counter.
“Then let me go and get her.”
“They took her.”
Jonah swallowed. “Who?”
“The guards. They were carrying her.”
Jonah’s heart squeezed. “Civil guards?” he asked.
Erron shook his head. “I know all the civil guards. These were wearing civil uniforms, only they’re not Mom’s people.”
“Red Guard,” Jonah breathed. He bent his head, as fear seemed to surge up from his chest, to steal his breath and fog his thoughts.
* * * * *
It took a long while for all her senses to come back on-line properly. Marlow was happy to let herself drift. Gradually, external sounds intruded, drawing her back to the present moment.
That was when the pain made itself known, too. She hissed as she moved her head and it throbbed so viciously she thought she might throw up. She held still until the throbbing faded.
Cautiously, she opened her eyes and recognized instantly where she was. Three years ago, when unrest and fan violence at tankball games had started to increase, the guard had been forced to start arresting ring leaders. Arresting people was not a usual practice. Most of the time, once the situation was resolved, they sent people on their way to get on with their lives.
The first arrest has delivered a related problem. Where were they to put the people they had arrested?
Yesterday's Legacy Page 16
