by Erica Rue
“But you weren’t. You’re safe. We’ll all be safe soon.”
A man appeared in the doorway and said, “Found her.”
“Bring her in, then.” Elijah turned back to Lithia, an arrogant smirk on his face. “The question you might expect me to ask is, ‘Where’s Cora?’ but I already know the answer to that. You people really are predictable.” Lithia could have kicked herself. He had barely looked at her, yet he knew. “You may have fooled the guards long enough to get in here,” he said, “but I’m not deceived. It’s shoddy work, really.”
“Where’s Evy?” Lithia gritted her teeth in anger, and her query came out almost as a growl.
“She’s safe. Lithia, right?”
She exchanged a look with Theo. That had been fast. Too fast. Had he found Zane, too? Had there been enough time to get everything into place? She turned back to glare at Elijah.
“I have questions for you, too, so I’m glad you’re here,” he said.
“Great! We can take turns. I’ll go first. Do you feel guilty?” Lithia asked. “All that Aratian blood is on your hands. You let the Vens in. Or was it Asher? Did you lead the Vens to your friends on the farm, too, then leave them to die? Remember how horrible the farmhouse smelled, Theo? That was probably Asher’s fault.”
Asher looked caught between grief and anger, but before he could respond, his father intervened. “Child, that’s quite enough. Asher, why don’t you get cleaned up?”
“Green Cloak scum,” Lithia wrinkled her nose as Asher walked by.
“That’s enough out of you,” Elijah said. He waded up a ball of cloth and stuck it in her mouth. “I think I’ll save my questions for another time. There will be plenty of it, after all.” She tried to bite him, but choked on the dry cotton. He tied a scarf tightly around her mouth, and she gagged. Pain crackled through her chest. She had to calm down and focus in order to breathe, but the anger mixed with the pain made it difficult.
Through it all, Theo remained relaxed in his seat, almost as if he didn’t register what was happening to her.
Cora was led in, also bound. Lithia’s heart sank. She’d hoped their ploy would buy her cousin enough time to find her family, but they had failed. Another chair was set next to Lithia, and Cora took it, glaring at Elijah much like Lithia still was. She felt a pang for her cousin, trapped in her late father’s office, a room full of memories, facing the Green Cloak leader.
“Where’s Evy?” Cora demanded. “Where are my aunt and uncle?”
Elijah chuckled, looking from Cora to Lithia. “You two are quite alike, in more than appearance. They’re fine. I don’t plan to hurt them.”
“Then why are you here, in my father’s office?”
“Because I’m taking over.”
“You can’t do that,” Cora said.
“Neither can you. Or your uncle. We have proof that the Farmer was a liar. You have no right to rule.”
“I agree,” she said.
Elijah tilted his head. “What game are you playing now?”
“No games,” she said, turning instead to look at Lithia. “I have no blood right to rule. I’m not ready to take on the responsibility of Regnator. But one day, I hope our people will choose me.”
“Well, that was a lot easier than I thought,” he said.
“I’m not finished. You are a Green Cloak. You are unfit to rule.”
“More fit than a petulant child like you,” he replied.
“So you don’t deny it? That you’re a Green Cloak.”
He smirked.
“Did you detonate the flaminaria mines early? Or were you the one who opened the secret gate after I sealed it?”
Elijah leaned forward, a sneer on his face. “Child, I handed Delia the knife she used to slit your corrupt father’s throat.”
Everything in the office went still, like the calm before a storm. Theo strained against his bindings, but they held firm. He spat on the desk in front of Elijah. Lithia turned to Cora with muffled pleas to keep her calm, but Cora already was. Her jaw was clenched, and her mouth twitched, but she was reining in her rage. “Justice will find you.”
“Here’s the deal I have for you,” Elijah said, ignoring her threat entirely. “Give up your right to the title of Regnator, and let everyone know that you took care of the last of the Green Cloaks out at the farm.”
“So they won’t come for you?”
“Yes. I’ll let you and your aunt and uncle desert to the Ficarans. I’d planned to buy their goodwill and further cooperation by returning their guns—”
“That you stole in the first place,” Theo interjected.
“Yes, but since you already returned their weapons, I’ll be keeping Evy here as collateral. Try anything, tell anyone, and we’ll see how many bugs she can catch with a few missing fingers.”
Cora was losing her control. “If you harm even one fingernail, I’ll—”
“You’ll what? Declare war? With what army? Your haggard recruits that wouldn’t even fight the Vens with you? The Ficarans don’t have the men or supplies to fight us, and they’re enjoying the food shipments that are a part of the alliance your uncle brokered.
“I’ll admit, we made a mistake believing in the Vens, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Farmer lied to us. Our society is built on lies, and now someone has to dismantle those lies, starting with the Regnator’s family.”
“If you hate the Farmer so much, why do you support the Matching?” Cora demanded.
Elijah shrugged. “I needed the men’s support. Not everyone helping me is a Green Cloak. Change will be incremental. The Matching will go eventually, once I no longer have use for it.”
Cora looked at Lithia, eyebrows raised. Lithia nodded at her. Their part was over. Now if only Zane, Bel, Oberon, and Jai could hold up their end of the deal.
“Now that’s over with,” Elijah said, getting up and removing Lithia’s gag, “I’ve got some questions for you.
“Elijah,” a man called from the door. “We found more.” Their captor left the office to have a hushed conversation in the hallway. Lithia was glad for the removal of the gag, but had nothing helpful to say. She had a feeling she knew what the man had meant by ‘more.’
“A third group,” Elijah crowed as he reentered the room. “That’s more than I gave you credit for. I didn’t find Jai’s absence suspicious, but now I see I should have worried about him a bit more.”
Lithia could see the concern in the downcast corners of Cora’s mouth. She grimaced. If they had found Jai, then they had found Zane and the others, too. She checked the time. It hadn’t been long. Zane was good, but was he that good? Had there been enough time? There was no way to tell if they’d finished what they set out to do.
“Thank you, by the way,” Elijah said, “for returning the storage device with all the images. It will make this go faster. In fact, your friends even fixed the… holoprojector? I think that’s what they told my men it was. Even showed us how it works, after a little prompting, of course. It’s time that the Aratians knew the truth. And I’ll be the one to bring it to them.”
In another minute, two men came to escort Lithia, Cora, and Theo to a new location.
“I’m going to have my guards unbind your hands,” Elijah said. “If any of your try to run or fight, just remember, I have Evy. I have what’s left of your family. I expect your cooperation.” He turned to Cora. “I hope you’re ready to be unmasked.”
Lithia discreetly tapped her manumed, though she couldn’t know yet if Zane and the others had accomplished their mission.
38. LITHIA
The square was packed under a cloudy sky. Lithia thought there was a higher percentage of women in this crowd than at the Matching. The battle against the Vens had left a deep mark.
While they had been talking in Michael’s office, Elijah’s men had been gathering the Aratians. A small stage had been erected in front of the Temple, its backdrop of undyed, off-white curtains an obvious contrast to the colorful swaths of fabr
ic the settlement had used during the Matching. Lithia could see the holoprojector on the opposite side of the stage, but she had been confined to the wings. She checked her manumed; she was unable to connect to the holoprojector.
She needed to get closer. When Elijah led Cora onto the stage, Lithia followed. The guard watching her was too slow to pull her back, and by the time he had regained control of her movement, it was easier to walk her to the other side. To the audience, nothing would seem amiss. Lithia cursed under her breath. She was still too far from the device to connect. Meanwhile, her guard was standing so close she could smell his stale breath.
Benjamin was already there. He looked paler than usual, but began to deliver a brief speech that had undoubtedly been written for him by Elijah. He paused before reading the final lines into the handheld amplifier: “And so, today, I step down as Regnator. Now, my niece Cora Bram has a few words.”
Cora stood and spoke, reading off of a card Elijah had given her. In just a few sentences, she had also abdicated her role as leader of her people and called on Elijah to take over, since he had shown her the truth he was about to share with everyone else. That last bit left a bitter taste in Lithia’s mouth.
Elijah grinned, but it only made his nose look more crooked. “I want to show you all what finally convinced me that the Farmer was lying, what convinced me that the Farmer was not a god. As you watch, you may be alarmed, but remember: there will be a way forward that honors both the truth and our traditions.”
He nodded to one of his lackeys, who turned on the holoprojector. A crisp, three-dimensional image seemed to emerge out of the white backdrop. It was a smiling man, dining at a city cafe. In the background were cars and trams and the trunks of buildings taller than the Aratians had ever seen.
“Many of you remember this man as Miles,” Elijah said.
Murmurs coursed through the crowd as they tried to make sense of what they were seeing. Lithia saw some nods, but also some angry faces. They did not want to accept this.
She felt afraid for Benjamin and Cora. Would the crowd become a mob? This seemed too hasty, not the best way to transfer power. Would the Aratians blame them, turn on them, thinking they perpetuated the Farmer’s lies for their own benefit?
She might, in their position. That’s what scared her.
“Show them Mary,” Elijah said, nodding to his man at the holoprojector.
Another image came to life before the crowd. More murmurs. People were pushing up against the stage to get a closer look.
The next image, a laughing woman, appeared with no introduction, yet garnered gasps from the people.
Lithia watched heads turn, and cries of “grandmother” echoed through the crowd. It parted to let an old woman pass through, to get a closer look. She looked like she had been in the middle of preparing dinner when she was summoned to the square. A dirty, many-pocketed apron covered her clothes.
“What is this?” she asked, squinting at the holo-image. It was life-size, and Lithia immediately saw the resemblance between the old woman standing there and the young woman laughing. “I don’t remember ever being there. What is that place?”
It looked to Lithia like the woman in the image was enjoying a carnival.
These must have been the personal photos of the colonists Jameson recruited. He had kept them hidden, but someone had found them. Someone had kept them. Someone had figured out a piece of the truth, and filled in the gaps with whatever else they could find. They had swapped the roles of villain and hero, making the Vens into a force for truth.
The Green Cloaks had been wrong about so much, but they knew that they were right about at least one thing. The Farmer hadn’t swept them from a desolate universe into paradise. He had wooed them from full lives that they had lived on developed worlds, full of technology and wonders they would eventually forget.
The woman, the “grandmother,” stared, mouth agape, at what she was seeing.
Lithia heard a throat being cleared beside her. When she turned to Cora, she was met with two impatient eyebrows urging her forward. “Oh,” she murmured clumsily. She had been so wrapped up in the reveal that she almost forgot her part in their plan. Luckily, her guard had reacted in much the same way. His attention wandered enough for her to step toward the projector and establish a link. The Farmer might have done horrible things, but so had Elijah. He, too, would be exposed for what he was.
With a few taps on her wrist, the recording she had taken in Michael’s office just a few hours earlier took the place of the grandmother’s image.
The crowd rustled in confusion.
The angle of her camera had only captured a portion of Elijah’s face, but his nasally voice was unmistakable. This was not a holo vid, but that didn’t matter. The people didn’t need to see it in three dimensions to understand fully what was going on.
Lithia allowed herself a momentary glance at Elijah’s face. The would-be ruler gawked at the screen in realization. “Bet you’re glad for Zane’s help now,” Lithia muttered under her breath. The moment she had stepped into Michael’s old office, she’d begun recording. Elijah’s words came flooding back through the holoprojector’s speakers. Barely ten seconds of footage had played, showing nothing incriminating yet, but the murmurs of the crowd were mounting.
“Turn it off!” Elijah shouted.
Lithia’s guard moved forward to assist the man at the projector, but she couldn’t let them stop the playback. She shoved the guard, who fell off the stage and into the buzzing crowd.
“Let it play!” shouted Cora.
Lithia made a dash for the projector stand. Elijah’s man tried to strong-arm her away from the Artifact, wrapping a hand around her wrist. Aid came from a stranger in the crowd who dug her fingernails into the tender skin at the back of his arm. He howled and released Lithia, who slipped past him to take up a defensive position at the holoprojector.
Now the crowd was curious. It won’t take long to reach the good part, Lithia thought as she dodged Elijah’s lackey. The playback continued.
Cora’s voice was clear in the recording. “So you don’t deny it? That you’re a Green Cloak.”
Everyone in the crowd fell silent as they saw Elijah’s smirk, his eyes eerily cut off by the angle of the manumed. The Aratians waited eagerly to hear his denial.
Elijah’s recorded voice boomed through the square: “Child, I handed Delia the knife she used to slit your corrupt father’s throat.”
When the revelation came, the crowd bristled. Their mood shifted as quickly as a cloudy spring sky turns dark and thunderous. Elijah saw his people souring against him and tried to find a way out
The crowd restrained him when he tried to leave the stage. His men didn’t try to help him.
“Kill Elijah!” a voice shouted.
“Wait! He has my wife and daughter!” Benjamin shouted, but the angry mob drowned him out.
In the pandemonium, the woman who had marveled at her old holo image came to the stage. “I have a question for the traitor,” she said, her voice as gnarled as her hands. She got up close, and Lithia was afraid she would not get to hear the question.
She saw Elijah’s eyes widen, and she took a few steps toward the stage.
The woman fumbled in the pocket of her apron. She pulled out a kitchen knife, dull enough to be kept safely in a pocket. If Lithia had been closer, she might have been able to stop it. The men holding Elijah in place had not seen it coming. The old woman was faster than anyone expected.
She plunged the knife, sharp enough for its task, upward into Elijah’s gut and raised her voice. “Do you know how many of my children and grandchildren died because of Green Cloak traitors like you?”
Asher shouted and rushed to his father’s side. The would-be Regnator collapsed to the floor of the stage.
A woman was let through from the crowd. A doctor, Lithia realized.
“He’s having trouble breathing,” the doctor said.
Lithia joined Cora in helping the old woman into a
chair. Cora took the bloody knife from her hand. The old woman was breathing heavily, as though stabbing Elijah had taken a lot out of her.
“Grandmother,” Cora said, “you didn’t need to do that. We could have put him in jail.”
“Your heart is pure, child. You would have made a good Regnator. I’ve known many good men in my years, and many more who’ve made mistakes, but that man would not have given up. Our prison could not have held him. Look at the minds he infected.” She gestured to the men the crowd had rounded up.
“I agree, but haven’t we lost enough?” Cora asked, looking hopelessly at the crowd.
“We have because of them. The Green Cloaks aren’t welcome here,” the old woman said.
The woman who had been tending to Elijah leaned back and shook her head. Asher sobbed. Theo was nearby, ready to restrain the boy if he tried something. For now, he seemed to be giving him a moment for his grief.
Lithia watched as the projector man she’d scuffled with tried to escape, concerned now for his own well-being. The rest of the Green Cloaks, at least the ones who had openly helped Elijah, were being rounded up by the crowd, and the Aratians were not gentle. They were mounting into a fury. Didn’t Cora realize that she needed to do something?
“Cora, you need to say something.” Lithia demanded. “They’ll listen to you.”
“I’m not the Regnator. Why would they listen to me?”
“Because you hunted the Green Cloaks to Raynor Farm. You helped the Ficarans kill the last of the Vens. You exposed Elijah as a traitor. You are Cora Bram, and that is all that matters right now. Do something!”
A wail of pain rose up from somewhere in the crowd. A Green Cloak was on the ground and at the mob’s mercy.
Cora was already moving. Not into the crowd, but to where the amplifier lay forgotten on the stage.
“STOP!” Her voice boomed with strength and authority, stunning the crowd into a moment of hesitation. “Take the Green Cloaks to the prison. I’m angry, too—furious, even—but we can’t give in to revenge. If we choose to condemn the traitors, then we will make that choice with our minds, not our hearts.