by Kekla Magoon
Her shouting had apparently drawn a few bystanders. When she stepped out of the office, the assistant and the press secretary, Bill Pillsbury, were both standing there.
“I was coming to see him,” Pill told the assistant. “But perhaps I’ll give him a private moment or two …” He scooted into the hallway, just behind Merryan as she left.
“Try not to take it personally,” Pill said, catching up to her quickly with his long-legged gait.
“He really doesn’t care about anyone,” Merryan blurted out, glancing over her shoulder. “How is that possible?”
Pill sighed. “Your uncle is a complicated man.”
“He’s a tyrant.”
Pill glanced up and down the hallway. He placed a hand on Merryan’s shoulder and eased her into a quiet office.
“He does care about you, I’m sure.”
Merryan shook her head. “Not about me. Not about the city, the people—”
“Shh. It’s best not to speak of some things.”
Merryan blotted tears from her eyes.
Pill patted her shoulder awkwardly. “He’s not been the same since she died, you know.”
“My dad used to say that, too,” Merryan agreed. “But this is the only way I’ve known him.”
Pill studied the girl thoughtfully. “Perhaps you remind him too much of what might have been. He was quite looking forward to fatherhood, I think.”
“Fatherhood?” Merryan echoed.
Pill’s face folded into a frown. “Oh. I’ve let the cat out of the bag, have I?”
“I don’t understand,” Merryan said.
“Their child would have been about your age, I suppose. A boy, I think. Poor lad died with his mother.”
This was news to Merryan. The story she knew was that her aunt had fallen ill, a couple of years before she was born. But really, she had died in childbirth?
“Anyway,” Pill said. “Back to work. Keep your chin up, kiddo.”
As she headed toward the door, his voice followed her. “Everyone is all right, including you.”
She turned around. “What?”
“Everyone is all right,” he said, gazing at her meaningfully. “That is to say, the important thing is just to be yourself. People will care about you for who you are. In fact, it’ll be hard to stop them from caring.” He smiled wryly. “You’ll see, in time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Live Oaks
A commotion outside the tent startled Tucker awake. The other men shifted restlessly. They glanced at each other in fear.
“What’s happening?” Tucker asked.
“It’s better not to know,” Robert answered. He moved toward Tucker’s cot. “Stay behind me. It’ll be okay.”
Another man joined him, their bodies forming a wall in front of Tucker. Tucker fiddled with the corner of his thin blanket.
The tent flap parted and two MPs walked in. The one with the mustache seemed to be in charge. He looked around. “Where’s the kid?” he demanded.
“I’m not a kid.” Tucker stood up from behind the men. Robert shielded him with an arm as he tried to push between them.
“Nice try, Loxley,” said the one with the mustache.
“Take me,” Robert offered. “It ought to be my turn.”
“Nah,” said Mustache. “We have our orders. Anyway, the governor has something special planned for you. When the time is right.”
“It’s okay,” Tucker said, even though he had never felt less okay about anything. The MPs seized him by the shoulders and led him outside.
“Stay strong!” Robert’s voice followed him through the canvas.
“Where are you taking me?” Tucker asked.
“You don’t know?” Mustache smiled coldly. “Why ruin the suspense?”
Laurel stood next to the fountain, feeling uncertain. Back home in Sherwood, there was no problem a good toothbrushing couldn’t solve. It gave her time to think. And plan. By the time she was tossing the floss away, she usually knew what to try next.
This trick didn’t work so well in Castle District. Laurel’s teeth were clean, but she still had no idea which way to run.
She climbed to the top of the fountain, the highest thing around. Water flowed over her hands and feet, making the concrete slick. Balanced on her toes near the apex, she studied the view in all directions. City buildings poked up all around.
There was one crop of very tall, shiny buildings straight ahead of her. That must be the downtown part of Castle District. Behind her stood rows and rows of houses. Their rooftops arced upward, following the slight rise of the earth leading to the governor’s mansion, shining gold atop its hill.
Laurel shivered. Well, at least now she knew which way NOT to run.
In the distance, to her left, sparkling water gleamed. To her right, leafy greenery stretched as far as her eye could see.
What had Robyn said about the map? Castle District had a lake on one side and a forest on the other. Laurel remembered that Robyn’s big fancy house backed up against the woods. And on the other side of those woods would be Sherwood.
Laurel skidded down the fountain and splashed out of the pool. She picked up her backpack and scurried in the direction of the woods.
Laurel strolled the neighborhoods, combing up and down the streets. The houses were all big and fancy but seemed to get bigger and fancier the closer she got to the woods. Robyn’s street, she remembered, had houses with gates and walls and fences. Those would be the houses closest to the woods, she figured.
Once she found the house, she could go through the woods behind it to get to Sherwood. The trail she’d followed with Robyn dumped out at Tent City. Exactly where Laurel wanted to be.
But it wasn’t one long street of houses. It was all kinds of different small neighborhoods, broken up by patches of fancy shops and intersecting streets. The houses were far apart, too, with lawns as big as some school playgrounds in Sherwood.
Laurel paced along the winding roads until she found a place that felt familiar. A gated driveway. Glossy white bricks three stories high. The plaque on the gate had a big L followed by lots of other letters.
L for Laurel, she thought, satisfied. She began to scale the gate.
She peeked over the wall. An MP van was parked in the driveway. Lights were on in the house.
Laurel gulped. How could she have forgotten this inconvenient detail? Robyn’s house had become an MP barracks. They’d had to hide from the MPs last time they were here. And Laurel knew, too, that there were cameras monitoring the driveway and all the entrances.
You can get out of anywhere if you’re small, Laurel thought. Maybe you could also get in anywhere.
She swung her legs over the gate and beelined across the lush grass toward the tree line.
When she reached the relative safety of the woods, Laurel paused to catch her breath. The manor house seemed still. If any MPs had spotted her crossing, they gave no indication of it.
The sun had not set, but it would soon. Under the trees, everything was already cast in spooky shadows. Laurel inched her way deeper, because she had to, but her heart raced and she kept trying to open her eyes even wider.
She emerged into the small clearing at the ring of Live Oaks. The huge, sturdy trees felt familiar and safe. She had been here with Robyn, and that made it better.
The rest of the woods were too dark and scary alone at night. Daylight would be better. Laurel climbed the thick trunk of Robyn’s favorite Live Oak, curled into a branch, and tried to sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Interrogation
So much for flying under the radar, Tucker thought. He was staring at Marissa Mallet, sheriff of Sherwood.
The room was small and white, like a doctor’s office but without the right furniture. It smelled musty, not at all like medicine, but Tucker had a suspicion he would be feeling some pain pretty soon. He rocked in place on his chair, testing its strength. His hands were bound behind him.
“You are in
possession of some materials that interest me,” Mallet said. She paced the room in front of him, menacingly calm.
“That seems unlikely.” Tucker was confused. “I don’t have anything you’d want.”
“We’ve raided your home,” Mallet said.
Tucker’s brain flashed over the contents of his apartment. He could think of nothing related to the Crescendo, or Robyn. “Then you’ve already seen everything I own,” he said.
“I’m interested in your reading material. The books you checked out of the library.”
Now Tucker was really confused. “For my dissertation?”
“Apparently.” Mallet stalked closer. “Tell me about it.”
Of all the surreal experiences … Tucker shook his head. Prison camp seemed more believable than this scenario. Why would the sheriff of Sherwood possibly care about his dissertation? His closest friends barely cared about his studies.
“I’m studying the origins of the moon lore,” Tucker reported. He didn’t see any harm in saying it.
“The teachings hold significance to your rebels, do they not?”
Oh. “Uh—” Tucker stammered.
“Where are the books?”
“If they’re not in my apartment, it’s because I’ve returned them.”
“Try again,” Mallet snapped. “Where are you keeping these documents?”
Tucker’s skin prickled. He couldn’t tell her. If he confessed, Robyn’s hideout would be raided within minutes.
“I—I use a study carrel in the school library,” he offered. “Some of them could be there?”
Mallet raised her PalmTab and typed something in. “Good. Where else?”
“Nowhere else. My apartment. The libraries … I don’t know.” He was a good liar, he thought. When the cause was good, and the pressure was on, he’d done okay in the past. But sitting under arrest, facing the sheriff, was something different. He could tell she was not convinced by his story.
“Understand.” Mallet’s voice dropped. “We have methods for … inspiring people to talk.”
Tucker swallowed hard. “I don’t have anything to say.”
“Suit yourself.” Mallet pounded out of the room. The door slamming open punctuated her exit. It did not close on its own.
Tucker looked into the void of a dimly lit hallway.
Mallet’s voice floated back to him. “String him up,” she told the guard. “No mercy. I want him singing a different tune after the showcase.”
The guard said, “Yes, Sheriff.” He reached in with an arm and swung the door shut.
Alone now, in the quiet white room, Tucker struggled to calm himself. He pushed all thoughts of Nottingham Cathedral deeper and deeper into himself, as if to forget such a place existed. He told himself a new story, one about an abandoned shed in the Heights. A quiet place, perfect for isolated study. He thought warm thoughts about how much he loved to go there. He told himself the story over and over, trying to make it feel true. If they made him give up a story, he would only tell this lie.
Tucker drew deep meditative breaths. It would be okay. He was a doctoral candidate. He already knew a fair amount about withstanding torture.
True to her uncle’s word, the guard did not follow Merryan back to her room. This newfound freedom, which would have seemed totally normal a few days ago, made her think about where to go and what to do. She found herself wandering toward her uncle’s room.
Merryan thought about their old house. She’d rarely been in her uncle’s room there, either, but it had never felt truly forbidden. Not in the way this felt now.
She took a deep breath and eased the sliding doors open. His suite of rooms was quite a bit larger than hers. But much less lived-in. The only thing on the floor was a large woven rug and the legs of all the furniture. Otherwise, the room was very spare. Merryan scanned the neatly dusted surfaces of the oak dresser and coffee table. Barely a coaster. One small prescription bottle and a pair of reading glasses. But nothing to actually read.
The walk-in closet was lined with clean pressed suits in varying shades of black and gray.
The bathroom had been neatly wiped and cleaned, with fresh towels installed. The same thing happened to her bathroom while she was at school each day, but even that didn’t end up so sterile. She had her rows of nail polish bottles on the counter, a dozen stray tubes of lip gloss, all kinds of lotions and things that smelled nice. Open a drawer, and hair ties would come springing out.
Here, there were empty drawers. A single bar of soap on a tray in the large, fancy shower. A razor and shaving foam in the cabinet over the sink. A toothbrush.
Merryan’s heart felt heavy. There was no warmth in this suite. Nothing to indicate a person who enjoyed anything about life. No secret drawer of candy. No folded photo of his lost love.
Was her uncle so cold that he didn’t keep a photo of his late wife in any room of the mansion? There wasn’t one in his office, she knew, but not even in his own room?
They shared this large house, and yet they didn’t know each other at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Showcase
Tucker strained his neck, trying to find an angle through which he could see past the black cloth blindfold. His hands were bound, his feet were not—but making a run for it would be impossible while he couldn’t see. He could dash off a cliff, or into traffic, or straight into the waiting arms of an MP who would make him pay for the moment of disobedience.
There was no wind, so it seemed unlikely that he was cliffside.
The whisper of traffic felt somewhat distant, the way it usually did in the deepest parts of Sherwood, far from the high-speed expressways that wound through Nott City. It was a vague brush of sound at the edge of his mind, noticeable only because he was listening for clues.
He began to hear sounds of people arriving. Snatches of voices growing closer, gathering. An ebb and flow of murmurs and silences. Not a joyful gathering. Something somber.
“Let’s go.” An MP nudged him to take a few steps. Tucker shuffled forward. His shin banged into something hard. “Climb,” the MP barked. Tucker carefully lifted his feet and climbed a short flight of stairs. He found himself standing on some kind of makeshift platform. Wooden planks bowed under his feet as he moved.
“Right here,” the MP said, placing a hand on Tucker’s shoulder. He bent down and clipped shackles to Tucker’s ankles. Metal cuffs that drew his legs apart such that he was forced to stand at ease. Not that he felt at ease. Quite the opposite.
The MP freed his hands from the ropes and clipped chains around his wrists as well. The cold metal pulled his arms wide like wings. Then the MP pulled the cloth off Tucker’s eyes.
He immediately wanted the blindfold back. He had already sensed what was happening, but to see it made it worse somehow.
He was chained in an X formation, like the Vitruvian Man. Standing on a platform—a stage—in front of a gathering crowd.
“Welcome to the showcase,” the MP told him. The gaze that fell upon Tucker’s face was cold, but thoughtful. “Don’t try to be strong. They want the crowd to know your pain. So the more you scream, the faster it’ll be over.”
The workers filed into the square. They moved slowly, to show their resignation, but not too slowly. After the long day’s work, they all just wanted to go home.
The workers had long since grown weary of this exercise. Crown’s weekly show of force, a reminder that they were all at his whim.
The space was ringed with MPs. Some stood on blocks, to better survey the crowd. Others nudged and corralled the workers into position. No one struggled. No one stepped out of line. The procession was smooth and routine.
The prisoner this week was young, far younger than any of the prisoners they had seen on display. Far younger than most of the workers themselves. This piqued their interest, briefly, before the worry and frustration settled back in.
Beneath the worry and frustration, a ripple of something else passed through the crowd. It was noticea
ble, but not quite palpable. Like a word caught on the tip of your tongue.
A ripple of anticipation. Excitement.
Because things would be different today, some of them knew.
The storm was coming.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Storm
“It’s recording,” Scarlet said. She knelt beside her portable computer console while Robyn looked on.
“Yeah?”
“See for yourself.”
The girls were crouched on the roof of a building nearby to the workers’ showcase. They had decided it was too risky to try to get closer. Instead, they had hacked into the surveillance feed from nearby cameras.
Scarlet’s console had four small screens, each displaying a different angle.
“How many cameras do you have going?” Robyn asked.
“I found ten cameras in the immediate area,” Scarlet answered. “I was able to piggyback on six, but I’m having trouble keeping the last one.” Her fingers flew over the keyboard. “I’m going to drop down to four. Less noticeable. More sustainable.”
She wasn’t really talking to Robyn anymore. “It’s enough, I think. A couple good angles.”
It was plenty.
Almost too much, really.
It was terrible, seeing Tucker up onstage, being punished for Robyn’s actions. His head was bowed and his back arched with each strike of the strap against it. When he cried out from the pain, it was desperate prayers to the sky, to the moon and the shadows that bore him.
It went against her spirit, not to try to save him. But she breathed through the awful sinking feeling. Pushed away the knowledge that she had let him down. Tucker was filling a role that had to be filled. It would be just as awful to see anyone else in his place.
The images didn’t stay long. Scarlet pecked and typed into black, flipping screens.
Robyn’s heart skipped. “Is it gone?”
“No, I just …” Scarlet’s voice trailed off. She was focused. Moments later she resurfaced to reassure Robyn. “It’s still recording.”
