“Aster, what do we do?” Tansy asked, her face broken by fear. After speaking privately to Monroe, Aster had gathered all her friends backstage so they could discuss what to do next. But Aster felt as if she’d been thrown into the ocean with stones tied around her feet: there were no good options, only the panicked thrashing of the damned.
She should have known their good luck had been too good to be true.
“What choice do we have? We have to let everyone go,” Clementine whispered. The thick, bloodred stage curtains would muffle their conversation, but even so, they could not risk being overheard. “You said he said they’ll let us live if we let everyone go—”
“You really believe that?” Raven cut her off.
“If they’re going to kill us anyway, we might as well go down fighting,” Mallow said. She stabbed the tip of her knife into the warped wooden floor, a declaration of war.
“They won’t want fighting,” Derrick reminded her. “They won’t want to risk the hostages’ lives. We still have that critical advantage. This is a show of force, yes, but ultimately, nothing’s changed.”
“Everything’s changed,” Zee argued. “Our people on the outside don’t stand a chance against the army’s numbers, and their weapons are just as advanced as ours. The Reckoners will be massacred. We can’t risk our allies’ lives in the hopes the army’s bluffing.”
“And what about us?” Violet asked quietly. She glanced at Aster. “Are we bluffing?”
Aster’s tongue felt like it was stuck to the roof of her mouth. She pried it free.
“About what?” she managed.
“About hurting the hostages—killing them, even—if the army tries to force entry.”
The circle fell quiet. Aster could hear the blood pushing sluggishly through her veins. Every heartbeat was an effort. She could not seem to form thoughts, let alone words.
“If we kill any of the landmasters, whatever amnesty Lockley’s offering goes up in smoke,” Tansy said finally. “Maybe it’s an empty promise anyway, but … right now, it’s all we have.”
“So what, they let us live?” Raven shot back. “What’s the point, if they send us to a prison camp? If they still get to pass their awful laws? I’d rather die than let that happen—and I will, if I have to.”
“If we turn ourselves in, we may be able to convince them to let the rest of the Reckoners go,” Aster said at last. Her voice felt thick and halting, as if she were talking in her sleep. “We’re the ones they want. We’re the ones who started all this. As long as they capture us, they’ll be able to spin this as a victory, and they’ll be glad to have avoided a prolonged and costly fight with our people—even if it’s one they’d be sure to win.”
“Aster’s right. We have no other choice but to turn ourselves in. For our allies’ sakes,” Tansy urged. She looked around the circle. “We’ll survive this, we will. And we’ll find a way to keep fighting, just like we always have. We may have lost this battle, but that doesn’t mean we give up on the war. No—we settle in.”
They all fell quiet again. It was a cruel thought, “settling in.” For more suffering, for more loss, for more failure. It was not what any of them deserved. Aster’s chest felt like it was caving in on itself, grief and anger threatening to crush her. Raven was right: she would rather die.
But that would not be the brave thing to do.
“All right,” Aster whispered, wiping away the wetness at her eyes.
Mallow looked around, panicked. “All right, what? We’re handing ourselves over? Right now?”
“No, not now, please, let’s at least take all the time we have. I just mean … all right. I’ll do it.”
She stood to leave before any of the others could see her break down any further, their murmurs of dismay chasing her. The ancient floorboards creaked with every step she took
“Everyone, just—go back to your posts for now. We’ll talk more later,” Violet said finally, and Aster heard hurried footsteps as Violet ran after her. She made it as far as an old grand piano upstage before Violet caught her.
“Aster…” Violet’s hand slid over her shoulder. The gentleness of her touch was Aster’s undoing. A wrenching sob forced its way past her lips. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks. Violet pulled her into an embrace, and Aster melted into it.
“I should have seen this coming, Violet. The Nine warned us—Sid warned us—”
“And still they joined us in this fight, because they know, as we all do, that the landmasters need to be stopped. And by bringing everyone together, you’ve gotten us closer than anyone ever has, Aster. This is good work we’ve done.”
Aster did not think so. Things were worse than they’d ever been.
“It’s like Tansy said…” Violet went on, “… we’ll keep fighting. We always find a way.”
Aster sighed, her breath shuddering. “I am so tired, Violet.”
“I know.”
Violet held her for a moment longer, then stepped back, still gripping Aster’s shoulders. “What do you need from me?”
Aster searched for an answer, but she couldn’t seem to think clearly anymore. Her head felt too heavy for her, pounding with every heartbeat. Her empty stomach clenched in agony. And beyond the curtains, in the ballroom, McClennon was still crowing victory. He had never stopped.
“I’LL BUILD A WELCOME HOUSE IN YOUR NAME, LUCKERS! DON’T YOU WORRY! I’LL MAKE SURE YOU’RE NEVER FORGOTTEN!”
The sound of his cackling raised Aster’s hackles.
That was the greatest injustice of them all, wasn’t it? That Jerrod McClennon should walk away from all of this. That he should prosper, even, from it. It would only strengthen his campaign against dustbloods. He did not deserve such freedom, this man who had taken welcome houses nationwide and lowered the working age to thirteen, who had tortured Violet for months and offered her up to his nephew like a piece of meat. Elizabeth had sold her soul for him, and he had shot her in the back as soon as she ceased to be useful. He did not deserve freedom. He did not deserve even to live.
Aster could perhaps endure whatever suffering lay in store for her, but not if McClennon was there to bear witness.
She wet her lips, meeting Violet’s eyes. We both know I’m bound for hell, she’d said. I’d just as well have it be for you.
Perhaps they could go together.
“Violet…” Aster said slowly. “I need you to help me kill McClennon.”
* * *
They asked Derrick to get his uncle alone for them.
“Are you certain, Aster?” Derrick whispered. “I meant what I said when I told my uncle I’d see him dead, but that was before the army showed up on our doorstep. Now I wonder if this might not only make things worse.”
“Worse for the three of us, maybe. But not for anyone else. They won’t be a part of it. I can’t risk their amnesty,” Aster explained.
“They’ll be blamed anyway.”
“Not if we play this right,” Violet assured him. “None of us will be blamed.”
Derrick was quiet for a long time, seeming to turn their words over in his mind.
“It’s just…” he said finally, “… it’s just that there is the easy thing, and there is the right thing. It seems to me that the easy thing is to try to kill my uncle now, and likely die in the attempt and so spare ourselves much suffering … but the right thing is to go peacefully with the others, as we promised them we would, and save this fight for another day, when we’re sure we can win.”
Aster’s felt the sudden heat of frustration, partially because she knew Derrick was right. But that didn’t necessarily mean they were wrong.
“We’re never going to be sure,” Aster said. “And we may never get this close to him again. If we accomplish nothing else after all this, let’s at least be able to say we ended this man’s reign of terror.”
“And that’s why you’re doing it?” Derrick asked shrewdly. “This isn’t just some sort of … elaborate … suicide mission?”
“No, Derrick. I do not intend to die for Jerrod McClennon.”
He exhaled and nodded. “Very well … what’s your plan?”
“All we need from you is to convince your uncle that you’ve come around,” Violet said. “Tell him whatever he needs to hear—that you never meant things to get this far, or that you’ve been a double agent this whole time, or that you only did all this as some sort of twisted way to get his attention and prove yourself because you actually look up to him. Whatever. Beg him, if you have to. And make sure you’re seen doing it. Then you’re to bring him down to the auction room—this time tell him that’s where we’re keeping his raveners, and you want to let them out.”
The auction room: the place where, at the dawn of the Reckoning, thousands of dustbloods had been brought from the government’s prison camps and sold to enterprising landmasters as private labor. There were few enough dustbloods left in the government’s care now, and the space had become more ceremonial than anything in recent years.
Even so, it seemed a fitting place for McClennon to face a reckoning of his own.
Derrick had begun to sweat. “He will not believe me.”
“Make him believe you,” Aster said. “You can do this, Derrick. You are more than a match for him. You always have been. And when we’re done, we’ll all of us be free of him.”
“Yes…” Derrick nodded slowly. “Yes, we’ll be free of him.”
“Can we count on you?” Violet asked.
He looked back and forth between them, red webbing the whites of his eyes, but the blue of them bright with anticipation all the same. “Always.”
They clasped arms and parted ways.
Aster and Violet hurried through the hallways. If the ballroom was the heart of the capitol building, the auction room was its stomach, where people were broken down and fed to the rest of the Scab. It was a dark, circular room, with ascending rings of benches and a raised dais at its center: the auction block.
“I don’t like this, Aster … I feel like I’m walking through the Veil,” Violet murmured, her shoulders hunched inward like a child’s in the cold. “These aren’t even my dead, and I can feel them calling to me.”
“The dead belong to all of us,” Aster said softly, remembering what Eli had once told her. “And your heart is nearer to theirs than you may think. We were auctioned, too, after all, on our Lucky Nights. The practice of buying and selling people like animals … it started in places like this.” Aster’s face screwed up with sudden regret. “I only wish we could have ended it here, too.”
“We’re ending one of the longest legacies of it with McClennon. Let that be enough for now.”
They sat together in the front row of seats before the auction block. Aster pulled her knife from her boot and set it on her lap. Baxter McClennon’s knife, once. There was a certain symmetry to that that pleased her—it would be their own blade that killed them.
And yet, as many times as she’d imagined this moment—as sure as she was that this man deserved to die—her stomach churned at the thought of plunging the knife into his chest.
“I can do it, you know … if you want…” Violet offered haltingly. The sound of her own voice in the large, empty space seemed to spook her. “I can be your shadow, Aster. Let me be the one who stays in the dark.”
“No, this time it has to be me,” Aster said. “I could never ask this of someone else, not even you. But … thank you, Violet. I mean it. Not just for today … for everything.”
“It’s not enough. I was going to take you away from all this. I promised.”
Aster’s throat swelled painfully as she thought of her dream, already fading, of the two of them free one day. Somewhere, anywhere. Ferron, maybe, with Clementine and all the others, far beyond the reach of the evil memories that plagued them. For one brief, euphoric moment, she’d actually allowed herself to believe.
“It’s just enough that we’re together,” Aster said finally.
Their fingers intertwined.
The minutes passed with agonizing slowness. As the time neared half an hour, Aster began to feel a worm of worry.
“What the hell is taking Derrick so long?” she muttered.
“It hasn’t even been thirty minutes. Give him some time. You know how that boy likes to talk.”
But Aster’s dread only grew as the hour mark approached. She could not even tell how much of it was her own and how much had simply seeped into her bones from this evil place. Spots swam in her vision and formed twisted faces. Her skin prickled with phantom sensations. A rabbitlike panic was beginning to take ahold of her.
“We should go,” she said finally. “Something’s gone wrong—”
Derrick entered the room, his uncle at his side. His left eye had been blackened, but he caught Aster’s gaze and nodded at her.
Aster felt the fog of her mind clear. She sat up straight, gripped the hilt of her knife.
“Where are the raveners?” McClennon asked. Despite the punishment of the past three days, he still walked with strong, confident strides. He stopped when he spotted Aster and Violet. Confusion clouded his face. “What are they doing here?”
“Keep walking, Uncle,” Derrick said coldly.
Aster and Violet stood.
“No,” McClennon said, stepping backwards. “Turn around. This is a trap, son.”
“Yes, and it’s me who’s laid it.” Derrick shoved him between the shoulder blades. McClennon whirled around to face him, realization and rage rising in his cold blue eyes.
“Derrick, I swear to the dead, if you don’t—”
“Your prejudice has always been your weakness, Uncle,” Derrick interrupted. “You believed me when I begged your forgiveness because it fit your idea of how a man like me should be: weak-willed, cowardly, running at the first sign of real trouble. But I told you before, I am stronger now than I’ve ever been. You should have believed me then.”
McClennon swung a fist at Derrick with his one good hand. Derrick ducked it, then drove into his uncle with his shoulder and knocked him to the ground. McClennon grunted and cursed. They tussled. McClennon managed to roll Derrick over. He grabbed a fistful of Derrick’s hair and slammed his skull against the marble floor—
Aster and Violet sprinted forward. Grabbed McClennon, dragged him away. He thrashed like a wild boar. He was weakened by hunger and exhaustion—but then, so were they. Aster’s head spun sickly as she tried to keep hold of him.
“You ripping rat!” McClennon swore. “When your father finds out what you’ve done, he’ll kill you himself!”
“No one’s going to find out,” Violet said calmly. They had reached the auction block, and now Violet held him from behind, her arms locked under his armpits and around his shoulders, while Aster stood in front of him, the knife at his chest. “We’re going to make it look like Elizabeth was the one who killed you.”
His eyes were wild, his lips flecked with spittle. “Elizabeth—who the hell is Elizabeth—”
Anger welled up in Aster’s throat. She curled her lip. “Your head ravener. The dustblood woman you shot in the back. She had a name, you pig.”
“But why—”
“She was still in there,” Aster said, her voice raw. “She might even have turned against you. Now we’ll never know. But we can finish the job for her.”
For the first time, something like fear flickered across McClennon’s face. He stopped struggling, locked eyes with Aster.
“No … no, the law will be able to tell it’s a setup. Her body’s five days gone now—”
Aster cut him off with a sharp laugh. “Even Good Luck Girls know that raveners’ bodies don’t decay like ours, McClennon, what kind of fools do you take us for? The law won’t be able to tell shit. And you, being the fool you are, still haven’t told anyone that you already killed Elizabeth, have you? Too proud to admit you lost her loyalty.”
McClennon’s strained silence was answer enough. He wet his lips.
“What is it you want from me, then
?” he asked in a lower voice. “You want me to tell Lockley to stand down, is that it? You want to scare me into accepting your demands?”
“We know better than to try that,” Violet said into his ear. “You told us yourself: men like you don’t yield.”
“If we leave you alive, you’d only undo everything we’ve already done. Maybe we’ll never get to see our perfect future realized…” Aster pressed the point of the blade until it drew blood. “But neither will you.”
McClennon’s chest heaved. “You think you can kill me? With the Arkettan army outside these doors? If anything happens to me, they’ll shoot down every single one of you, no matter what lies you tell them.”
“Even if they do, this fight doesn’t die with us,” Violet promised. “There are thousands of people who believe in the Reckoners’ cause now. They won’t stop until they’ve won.”
McClennon cackled, a sound on the edge of hysteria. “I don’t care how many thousands of traitors you’ve turned. We’ve got boots on the ground now. You really think a bunch of scared, desperate dustbloods are going to be enough to stop the army? The army?”
That laughter again. Aster would cut it out of him if it was the last thing she did. She looked to Violet and found her brow arched in a question. Aster answered it with the arc of her blade.
“Glory to the Reckoning,” she whispered, and she drove the knife into McClennon’s heart.
* * *
It was no small task, setting up a convincing scene in which Elizabeth and McClennon had killed each other. It took them most of the rest of the day. Once they were done, they went about the much more difficult work of telling the others what they’d done.
“Zee,” Aster said once she had finally finished, “Elizabeth was your sister. If you don’t want her to be a part of this—”
“No, I—it’s okay.” He swallowed, shock written over his face just as it was on the others’. “After what he did to her … he deserves to have died by her hand, even if only in the story we tell. Let it be a lesson to anyone else who would try to use raveners to do their dirty work.”
The Sisters of Reckoning Page 34