Frieda shrugged. “Take it out of your hide?”
“You could,” Emily agreed. It was precisely what Frieda’s family would have done. “But in the meantime, your bills come due. You have to pay ten crowns yourself to your creditors. And you can’t pay them, because you gave me the money. There’s a limit to what you can get out of my hide. Perhaps I don’t own my house, or tools…perhaps I don’t own anything. Or maybe I abandon ship and run before you can start tearing me to pieces. What do you do then?”
“My creditors try to take it out of my hide,” Frieda said.
“Precisely,” Emily said. “Do you own a house? They’ll take the house. Or…or whatever you have. That’s the threat. It isn’t just about large sums of money evaporating into thin air…it’s about what happens when that money is never repaid.”
They reached the end of the tunnel and made their way through a set of complex wards and into the house. Emily had expected someone to meet them at the far end, but the house looked deserted. They walked to the door and opened it, recoiling in shock at the sudden noise. A small procession was making its way through the streets, chanting a single word over and over again.
“Justice! Justice! Justice!”
Emily fought the urge to cover her ears as the procession marched past the door. It was led by the Hands of Justice, but hundreds of others from all walks of life had joined the chanting parade. A set of grim-faced stewards ran from place to place, pushing and shoving marchers in and out of line; a handful of young girls in flowing white dresses handed out pamphlets to interested onlookers. Emily took one absently and scanned it, noting that the claim that ‘Justice’ had killed hundreds of sinners. It was long on gruesome detail and short on accurate facts.
This can’t be true, she thought. We’d be seeing statues everywhere if hundreds of people had been killed.
She folded up the pamphlet and pocketed it, then hurried down the street. It was barely mid-afternoon, but crowds were already forming everywhere. There was an ugly note in the air, something she remembered from Farrakhan. The city was on edge, again. She hoped they could get back to Caleb’s house before something happened. It felt as though they were standing on a powder keg.
We are, she thought.
There was another batch of letters waiting for her when they reached Caleb’s house. Sienna passed them to her without comment, muttering something about impudent correspondents when she turned away. Emily looked past her, hoping to see Caleb, but there was no sign of him. Karan was the only one in sight, sitting on a sofa darning her socks.
Emily sat on the chair and glanced through the letters. They were all the same, inviting her to dinner with vague promises that it would be made worth her while. Sighing, she started to write out another set of polite, but firm, rejections while Frieda read her book and made notes for her fourth year project. Emily envied her. She didn’t have to worry about banking problems and financial disasters…
“Dinner time,” Sienna called. “Come now if you’re coming.”
There was no sign of General Pollack, Caleb, or Marian at the table. Conversation was stilted: Sienna seemed occupied with some greater thought, while Karan and Croce kept throwing odd glances at Emily. Emily felt uncomfortable, wishing she could speed up time in order to escape. She’d never known what to say at the dinner table.
A messenger arrived midway through the meal, carrying a note from Markus.
Vesperian refuses to talk, it read. Now what?
Chapter Fourteen
“WAKE UP,” FRIEDA SAID. “EMILY?”
Emily opened her eyes. “What ... what time is it?”
“Time to get up,” Frieda prompted, quietly. “You have to get dressed.”
Emily nodded as she sat upright and stood. Sienna had taken one look at her when she’d come down for breakfast, deduced that Emily hadn’t slept well at all and ordered her back to bed after a light snack. Emily had been too tired and restless to argue, but when she’d returned to her bed she hadn’t been able to sleep. She’d been too busy trying to figure out a way to defuse a ticking time bomb. And yet, she must have slept. Her watch insisted that it was after midday.
She stumbled into the bathroom, removed her nightgown and splashed water on her face. It didn’t help. The face she saw in the mirror looked pale enough to pass for a vampire, with dark circles around her eyes. She rubbed her eyes in annoyance, then stepped under the shower. She’d been told, in no uncertain terms, that she wasn’t to use a glamour or anything else to alter her appearance during the funeral. It was, apparently, tradition.
“Hurry,” Frieda called. “We’ll be leaving in thirty minutes!”
“I know.” Emily stepped out of the shower and looked at herself, critically. The cuts and bruises were fading, thankfully, but she still felt tired. “I’m coming.”
Frieda pushed past her into the shower as Emily entered the bedroom. The mourning clothes were already waiting for them, hanging behind the door. Emily pulled on an undershirt, then took the larger of the two black robes from the hook and pulled it over her head. It was shapeless, as shapeless as the robes she wore at Whitehall. Karan and Marian had spent the last two days sewing them for the funeral. It looked simple, yet there were a handful of complex designs stitched into the cloth. They weren’t magic, as far as she could tell. She had no idea what they meant.
She tied her hair back, then inspected herself in the mirror. There was no sign that she was wearing anything underneath her robe, thankfully. Imaiqah had joked about wearing her robes and nothing else at school, but Emily knew she couldn’t do the same. Someone might just try to levitate her and flip her over. They’d get in awful trouble, she knew, yet it might not be enough to deter some of the boys. Or even some of the girls.
“You look like a ghost,” Frieda said, coming back into the bedroom. “It isn’t going to be that bad.”