21
In the dorm that evening, there is a new kind of silence. Before we’ve not spoken to each other through fear, jealousy, anger, or simply because we don’t like each other. This evening, it is because there is nothing we can say. For me personally, it is a mixture of revulsion and relief at how close Imrin and I came to suffering the same fate. I remember hoping my thinkwatch would work outside the walls to contact my mother and Colt, but I would not have even got that far and the imprisonment and humiliation which will no doubt await Lumin’s family could have been set for mine instead.
As we are getting ready to go to sleep, an alarm sounds so loudly that I cannot hear the gasps of surprise around the room. People’s lips are moving, querying what is going on, but all I can hear is the ringing sound. In the gap around the door, a red light is flashing. We hear voices and footsteps for an hour or so until it is quiet again.
Because the noise has lasted for so long, it takes a few moments for my ears to recognise when the alarm has ended. I can feel the ringing long after I lie on my bed and close my eyes. I really want to sneak out to see if Imrin is waiting for me but I was already nervous after seeing what happened to Lumin. Now, following the alarm, I stay where I am, staring into my closed eyelids and wondering exactly what has happened.
The next morning, no one knows what to expect. The dorm door unlocks and, with the lack of any other instruction, everyone flocks to their various jobs. Porter is already in the laboratory but doesn’t greet us as Hari, Mira and I enter. The other two go into the back lab as I settle on my bench and continue working my way through the list of repairs that need to be done.
I am so used to working in silence that I jump a little when I hear the word ‘Silver’. I turn to see Porter holding his glasses in one hand, examining me. I have never seen him without his glasses before but it accentuates his wrinkles and he looks older. I’m confused by his gentle tone as he has never addressed me like that before.
‘It’s all right,’ he adds. ‘I know I’m just a grumpy old man.’
I want to tell him he’s not but, as a smile spreads across his face, it’s clear that he knows what I’m thinking.
‘You don’t have to pretend,’ he says. ‘I know you and Lumin didn’t really get on but last night was difficult for me …’
His voice cracks as he tails off.
‘I know he was good around here …’ I stumble over my words before I realise how uncaring that sounds.
Porter smiles weakly. ‘Now you know why I don’t allow myself to get too close to any of you. Many, many Offerings have come through here and one by one, you all go back out the door again.’
He sounds close to tears and I’m not sure how to react. I have come to know him as a crotchety, slightly eccentric old man who orders me around – but now he suddenly seems like a real person.
‘How did you end up with that?’ I ask, nodding towards his Kingsman’s uniform that seems more out of place than ever.
I know I am taking a risk but he glances down at himself and shakes his head. ‘Depending on your viewpoint, I was either in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time. After the war ended, it was chaos. Victor … the King … had come along and everyone was desperate for the fighting to end. That didn’t mean there was any structure in place, though. The whole country had been brought to its knees, so Victor chose people from both sides to come and work with him. I was in my early twenties and my father was one of the members of the nationalist government that was dissolved. Somehow I was one of the people who ended up as part of Victor’s team to help put everything back together. I was always good with the tech side of things, so I ended up doing this.’
‘Working with Offerings?’
Porter shakes his head and then wearily rubs the bridge of his nose. ‘Not at first. We had various people left over from the war – but Victor soon tired of them and demanded new, fresh young people be brought in. That’s where the idea of the Reckoning and Offerings came in. We would test everyone at the age of sixteen to find a selection of boys and girls across the country, then bring them here to help put everything together again. The core thinking wasn’t so bad, I suppose, a cross section of abilities, genders and backgrounds, but it didn’t really work out like that.’
‘Why?’
‘Have you ever heard of the saying “Power corrupts”?’
I shake my head.
‘I guess you wouldn’t have. We used to say it in the old days but it’s nonsense anyway. Power only corrupts if you’re corruptible in the first place. Victor always had a vicious, nasty streak about him but no one other than those of us who worked close to him ever saw it. To everyone outside, he was the conquering, uniting hero. As I, and others, got to know him, we realised that he only became that hero through chance. He just arrived at a time where everyone was ready to stop fighting and then, because of his bloodline, people thought he was something he’s not. Anyway, he gets bored. Once a year, thirty of you will be brought in and theoretically you are here to help us make life easier for everyone. In reality, hardly any of you get through twelve months before the next lot comes along.’
I have never heard anyone talk with such knowledge, although it is hard to detect whether Porter is angry; he simply sounds tired.
‘Was it always like this?’
Porter shrugs. ‘More or less. Any of us who said anything in the early days simply disappeared until it got to the point where no one spoke out.’
At this point, I sense a shame in his voice but it is no more than mine; he has been trying to keep his head down in much the same way that I have – except that he has been doing it for seventeen years.
‘What’s the Reckoning?’ I ask.
The question seems to take Porter by surprise as he blinks rapidly. ‘I, um …’
I half-turn back to my bench. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked …’
‘No, it’s fine.’ I spin back as Porter takes a sip of something from a cup on his desk and sighs deeply. ‘I’m not sure I can even answer that question. It was some sort of technology that was being worked on before the war started. I’ve always presumed it was being developed during it as well. There used to be a different Minister Prime …’
‘Really?’ I interrupt. I have only ever known the current one.
Porter nods. ‘Admittedly, this was right at the very start. This current Minister Prime’s actual name is Bathix but the first one was Xyalis.’
‘I’ve never heard of him.’
‘You wouldn’t have done. I think most of the people who were around then have largely forgotten. He was only in place for a few months but the Reckoning was based on his invention. Like I said, the Offering initially wasn’t necessarily a bad idea – it was never meant to turn into this. When Victor’s temper began getting out of hand, that was when Xyalis spoke up.’
The induction footage told us the King invented the Reckoning, which is what we have always assumed is true. I believe Porter when he says that isn’t what occurred.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
‘He was the first who went missing. One evening, he told us something had to be done, the next moment Bathix was in place and Victor carried on as if nothing had happened. Slowly but surely, the rest of us did as well.’
‘Was he killed?’
Porter glances towards the door and takes another drink. ‘I have no idea. With pretty much everyone else, their bodies were paraded to warn us of the consequences of going against the King. With Xyalis, he just disappeared. Nobody knows but I suspect he was killed in his sleep and it was only when that caused more passive dissent that Victor decided he would start making examples of people.’
‘I didn’t get on as badly with Lumin as you might think.’
My mention of the name brings Porter back to the present but he shakes his head gently as if it doesn’t matter anyway. ‘You’re doing the right thing, young Silver. Keep your head down, don’t be noticed, and don’t do anything stupid. I’ve been doing it for seventeen years.’
I’m almost embarrassed that he has noticed my nothingness. ‘What was the alarm for last night?’
‘Lockdown. We get them now and then, probably less often than we used to. There are still pockets of people not loyal to the King out there. We all know it but no one says anything. Sometimes, when it seems like there might be an eruption of violence close to the castle, the sirens sound and we’re all locked into wherever we are. It might last an hour or two, but anything up to a day or so. It always passes.’
‘There’s still fighting?’
Porter nods but it is still hard to take in. I have never heard of anything other than adulation for the King.
‘How long has it been going on?’
With a shrug of his shoulders and a puff through his lips, Porter seems dismissive. ‘I suppose it never stopped. I guess some people always knew we were replacing one system that didn’t work with another.’
He looks at me closely, before putting his glasses back on, and spinning back around to his work. ‘Don’t go thinking silly thoughts, Ms Blackthorn. You’re doing just fine.’
It is another hour before he speaks to me again, beckoning me over to Lumin’s old machine and bringing up the screen with the security cameras on that I worked on during my first day.
‘Seem familiar?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’
‘I knew you would be able to solve that test easily. I could see it in you as soon as you walked into the room and started looking at the spare parts.’
‘You noticed?’
‘More than you might think. Before he … before last night, Lumin was working on something for me far more advanced than that initial project. It’s easy to get the cameras to respond to your thinkwatches instead of the Kingsmen’s. What we can’t do, or what I’ve not had time to do, is to get them to switch off completely when there is nothing to see and then switch back on when there is.’
‘Why would you need them to do that?’ Porter squints at me over the top of his glasses, wanting me to answer my own question. ‘Because of the power issue?’ I add.
‘Exactly. You can’t have helped but notice how many cameras there are around here. They all use energy that could be better funnelled elsewhere. We’ve been trying to find a way that makes them go into a standby mode until it recognises one of your thinkwatches nearby. Then it will switch back on and continue to work as normal.’
‘Who monitors them?’
Porter looks at me more intently. ‘Dangerous questions,’ is all he says before returning to where he was working. I realise I am pushing it.
I’m not entirely sure where to begin but, as I begin to familiarise myself with the system, I notice I have far more access than I did the first time. And that’s when I have an idea …
As I enter the dorm that evening, there is a shock waiting as Jela sits on a bed directly opposite the door. She doesn’t look up as I say her name and one of the other girls gives me a shrug as if to say they have all tried that already. I cross to Jela’s bed and sit next to her, asking if she is all right. She doesn’t respond, instead reaching for a brush and running it through her hair while staring towards the windows.
‘It’s good to see you, Jela,’ I say, although she doesn’t seem to hear me.
She is wearing the same silvery dress as on the train when we first arrived, although it has lost a lot of the sparkle it once had and has a few grubby, grimy patches on it. Her blonde hair is longer than it was before but I can see a patch behind her ear that is bald where a large clump has been pulled out. The flecked colours around her eye have now faded into one large purple bruise and, as I rest a hand on her shoulder, she pulls away sharply and instinctively.
‘Sorry,’ I add, unsure of what else I can tell her.
To my surprise, she pushes the brush into my hand and I slowly and gently run it through her hair until it is knotless. She makes no sound as I place the brush on the bed next to her and say I am on the far side of the room if she ever wants someone to talk to.
Shortly after everyone has returned and we have shared out the thin helpings of bread and fruit, the door is heaved open and Ignacia enters. She looks angry and at first I think someone has been caught doing something wrong again. Instead, what she says is much, much worse.
‘Which one of you was wearing the long green dress last night?’
Suddenly it dawns on us all not only why we had to dress up the previous evening – but also why Jela has returned. In Porter’s words, the King ‘gets bored’.
No one speaks up, but the look on the face of one of the girls close to the door gives her away as Ignacia snaps: ‘Come on then, take the dress, it’s time to go.’
The girl murmurs an anguished ‘no’ but Ignacia is firm. ‘You can either come with me now, or I’ll call the Kingsmen in. Either way, it’s time to go.’
Her tone is harsh but I realise she is doing the girl a favour in some ways. Perhaps she approves of the King’s requests, perhaps not. Either way, she is doing what the rest of us who want to stay alive are doing – exactly what it takes.
The girl reaches into her cupboard and takes out a wondrous cyan silky dress, folding it over in her arms, before taking one final look at Jela and leaving the room.
As the door locks back into place, we look at each other and there is a bond we haven’t had before. Faith meets my eyes for the first time in a while in a knowing exchange of simultaneous sorrow and relief that it wasn’t us.
It takes far longer for everyone to finish shuffling around in their beds after the lights have gone out, which perhaps isn’t surprising; no one is having happy dreams tonight.
As it finally becomes late enough to sneak out, I sit at the end of the passage huddled under the blankets waiting for Imrin, knowing that somehow I not only have to find a way out – but that I have to warn my mother and Colt to find somewhere safe before I manage it.