SIXTEEN
OUR WALK FROM UNION CENTRAL, through the corridor littered with Harvey’s wanted posters, and to the public square downtown is much longer than we anticipate. Emma and I find a small piece of shade blanketing a bench and sit. I face the golden statue, but Emma leans her back against my arm, swings her feet up onto the seat, and gazes off in the opposite direction. Her hair no longer smells like Claysoot soap—that scent is long gone, replaced with something foreign—but I kiss her head anyway. We sit there, in a comfortable silence, for quite a while.
“You know, I haven’t found any answers yet,” she jokes. “It’s very disappointing. I’m starting to think you just wanted an excuse to spend time with me.”
I smile as she twists around to sit properly. “Maybe I did.”
The square has steadily filled with civilians since our arrival. Now, their numbers border on crowded. They shuffle in, forming a line leading up to the platform and pushing each other aggressively as they jockey for position. A wall illuminates with a familiar message: Water distribution today. Segments 1 & 2 only. Must present ration card.
The Order members come next, filing from between various buildings, cars bringing up the rear. Those on foot take their place on the raised platform, weapons ready. The instruments are the same as the ones I saw during our initial drive into Taem, and again, the Order points them at the growing crowd. Taem’s citizens are a steady pulse, filtering by our bench and surging toward the stage. They all hold red slips in their hands, papers that must be their ration cards. A middle-aged man, looking desperately nervous, races by us, crushing my feet as he does.
“Watch it,” I say.
He looks back at me, eyes livid, and mumbles something. Then he runs off, disregarding the line and pushing his way through people. The bag slung across his back swings wildly, hitting anyone standing too close. Up ahead, the distribution begins, a single jug of water handed to each civilian in turn.
Emma and I decide to leave—it’s getting far too crowded—but our progress is slow. We are fish going upstream, an unyielding current of bodies pressing against us. Just when we have reached the outer perimeter of the square, I hear the shouts.
“Stop him! Stop that man.”
Behind us, things remain relatively calm, the crowd still moving toward the stage. And then a ripple, a small steady thing in the center, which grows larger and larger, people parting in its wake. The voices keep yelling. “Stop him! Thief!”
And then I can see him, the same man that trampled over my feet. He is sprinting from the crowd, pushing over anyone in his path. He clings to not one jug of water but two.
The Order members on the stage are frantic, fighting their way into the crowd and after the thief. I look back to Emma and see the man barreling toward her. She is blocking the alley he approaches.
She attempts to jump out of his way but is too slow. The thief throws his shoulder into her and she crumples. As the thief rushes by me, I stick my leg out and trip him. Water jugs tumble from his arms, contents spill from his bag. He stumbles to his feet and takes off down the alley, but I am quicker. I lunge at him, seize the back of his shirt, throw him against the wall.
“You should really watch where you’re going,” I snarl.
“Please,” he says. “You don’t understand. My wife. My kids. They’re sick.”
His eyes no longer look livid. They look broken. They look moments away from hopeless. I peer down the alley to where Emma is climbing to her feet. Her white pants are torn, blood dripping from her knees. I shove the man into the wall again. The Order is coming. I can hear their shouts.
“Please,” the thief begs. “We need the water.”
“It seems like everyone needs it.”
“What would you know?” he says, eyeing my uniform. “Living in that place, following the orders of a corrupt man.”
The first Order member rounds the corner, and the man wriggles in my grasp.
“Please. My son, he’s just five. There’s still time. Just let go. Tell them I stabbed you. Or kicked you. Or spit in your eye.”
I almost do it. I almost let his shirt slip from my fingers—his words sound so sincere—but Emma falling is replaying in my mind, her body being thrown to the side by the thief’s frame. I hold his shirt just a second longer, and then an Order member arrives. He presses the thief into the wall. I watch his cheek scrape the brick while his hands are bound with not rope but an odd chain of metal links, two of which are snapped closed around his wrists.
“Turn around,” the Order member says. When the thief doesn’t, he is shoved. Hard. He hits his head on the wall and with fresh blood trickling into his eyebrows, he continues to beg.
“Please. We need it. You don’t understand.”
“Turn around.”
“I’ll do anything. Just let me bring the water to my family first.”
“Now!”
The thief puts his back to the wall. He is crying, blood mixing with tears. The Order member steps back and repositions his weapon.
And then there is an explosion, a noise so loud it rattles the space between my ears, echoing for an eternity. I blink, and when I open my eyes, the thief is on the ground, dead. There is no arrow, no spear, no knife. Nothing. Just a gaping hole. I stare at his bleeding skull until I turn to dry heave against the wall.
Emma shakes the entire way back. She doesn’t cry, but at least her reaction is better than mine. She’s showing fear or remorse or nerves or something. I do nothing but look blankly ahead, wondering what on earth happened, wondering if I’m somehow responsible. Everyone wanted water. Everyone was waiting in line. He stole something. He was a thief. But did he deserve to die over a jug of water?
I keep the thoughts to myself because I fear that if I speak them aloud, Emma might collapse right beside me. We walk to Union Central, my arm wrapped around her and the blood drying on her pants. I take her to her room, which happens to be on the same floor as mine, just in a different wing, and then march straight to Frank’s office. I pound on the door until someone comes and tells me Frank doesn’t have time to talk to me. I demand to see him. They tell me to leave. I demand some more.
I end up sitting on the floor outside his office, arms folded across my chest. I doze off momentarily and wake to a foot prodding my side.
“Gray.” Frank stands above me, a pile of documents in hand.
I scramble to my feet. “I need to talk to you.”
“I’ve heard. I only have a moment, but, please, come in.”
We sit at his desk, and when he puts the papers on them, everything suddenly looks out of place, that one disorganized pile throwing the entirely methodical room out of orbit. Frank leans back in his chair, places his fingertips together in a calming wave, and says, “So, Gray. What can I help you with?”
“There was a man today, in town. He was—”
“Shot,” Frank finishes.
“But there was no arrow.”
“This is true. You carry a bow in Claysoot, correct? You shoot arrows?”
I nod.
“In the Order, we carry guns. We shoot bullets.” He lifts his shirt, and removes something from a belt at his waist. It is much smaller than the weapons the other men had carried in the public square. Frank points it away from us and slides a slender box from its base before pulling back on the weapon’s top. He fishes something from the gun, gold and glinting, and hands it to me.
It is small in my palm. So small I wonder how it killed the thief. But it had also traveled unbelievably fast, erupting from the gun and hitting its mark so swiftly I couldn’t even see it happen. Small and powerful. Quick and deadly. It makes my bow and arrows look laughable.
I let the bullet roll from my palm and onto the desk. “He didn’t deserve to die,” I say.
Frank smiles, a kind one, the way my mother used to when Blaine or I was acting up and she had to scold us but didn’t really want to. “Sometimes we have to do things that are not completely agreeable.”
“No,” I say firmly. “It didn’t have to be that way. His family was sick. He just needed a little extra water.”
“They all want more water, Gray. Each and every one of them. And what I wouldn’t give to provide it. But we only have so much. He took what was not his, and, sick or not, he is not privileged to receive any more water than his neighbor. Surely you understand.”
“But he never even got to defend himself.”
“He was guilty,” Frank says.
“But what if he wasn’t? What if it isn’t that black-and-white?”
“It is. He was fleeing with the water. He knew what he did was wrong.” Frank leans forward on the desk and lowers his face to meet mine. “You did the right thing by stopping him, Gray. Taem is a more just place today because of your actions.”
I nod, but the thief’s final words echo in my mind. His begging, pleading. I feel like I’m missing a critical piece of the puzzle, like I’m staring at the situation from an incorrect angle and if I could only get a better view, it would all make sense. The only thing I know for certain is that I don’t agree with Frank. No matter how obvious something may seem, there are two sides to every story, and the thief never had a chance to tell his.
I want to tell Frank this, and yet he’s been so good to me. He’s clothed me and fed me and he’s trying to free the rest of Claysoot, all while juggling his own country’s problems. Maybe he’s justified in having the Order act so swiftly. What do I know? Claysoot is so small, and things here are far more complex.
“What you saw is not typical, Gray,” Frank assures me. “We reserve such treatment for thieves and criminals only. The corrupt.”
I nod, but something has sprouted in my gut, a tiny seed of doubt, a seed that feeds off an idea the thief had planted. What would you know . . . following the orders of a corrupt man?
I excuse myself and head for the door. Before I step into the hallway, Frank calls after me. “And, Gray? I don’t know how it happened, but we must have mixed up your access codes during your Cleansing. The front doors should not have opened for you. Taem is often in an unsettled state, the world beyond the dome even more so. I can only ensure your safety if you stay here, in Union Central. I’m sure you’ll understand when I ask you not to wander until further notice.”
Just yesterday I might have thought his words endearing. Today they sound like an order, a demand.
“Absolutely,” I say.
But when the office doors click shut behind me, I head straight for Emma. There is a seed in my gut and only she will know if I should stamp it out before it has a chance to secure its roots.