Because they forgot, her mind answered. It took them less than a generation to forget everything they should have learned.
But that wasn’t strictly true. The parents, the generation that had made the Crossing, they had deliberately hidden the past from their children. Katie had learned something of world history in her schoolwork, but the brutal period just before the Crossing—the guns, the surveillance, the poverty—Katie had no sense of these things, and neither did her peers. The generation that was beginning to rebel against Tear’s socialism had no familiarity with the flip side of the coin. Tear had had access to the ultimate cautionary tale, but he had wasted it, allowed the warning to vanish.
But you remember, Kelsea, Carlin whispered. By the end, you might even know it all.
What can I possibly do with that knowledge?
There was no answer, only the jailor’s face, staring up at her. His corneas were a deep, dark red; he had tried to claw his own eyes out. Kelsea cast around for the piece of uncut sapphire and found it still lying in the back corner of her cell.
“What are you?” she asked. She began to pick it up and then froze, feeling her breath halt. The door of her cell was wide open, the jailor’s key ring still dangling from the lock.
Her first impulse was simply to bolt from the cell, but Kelsea forced herself to hold still, to assess the situation. She had some sense of the layout of the dungeons, but none of the castle beyond. How far would she really get?
Don’t be a coward. You have an open door!
At the thought of the Tearling, longing seemed to wrench her heart. She generally avoided thinking of her kingdom in concrete terms; in this dark cell, it seemed like a good way to go mad. But now she closed her eyes and saw the Almont stretching before her, miles of farms and river, and then New London, her city on a hill. Very different from Tear’s, this city, and sinking just as surely, but there was still good there. When the Mort had reached the city and they had brought the last refugees inside, the Keep had been filled to capacity and there were still two thousand people without shelter. They could not sleep in the streets, for the temperature was dropping to freezing at night. Arliss had been at his wits’ end, but at the last moment, Kelsea remembered now, the merchants had come forward, the guild of New London shopkeepers, and offered to house them all in their homes and shops. Her kingdom might be flawed, but it was still worth fighting for, and more than anything, Kelsea simply wanted to go home.
But acting on desire had gotten her into trouble before. Thorne’s face flashed before her again; sometimes Kelsea felt that she would never escape him, and perhaps that was fitting, for when she had killed him, she had been thinking not of the kingdom, but of herself. She could not afford to make such a mistake here. She could not help her kingdom when she was dead, and she was currently alive on the Red Queen’s grace. An escape attempt would crush their fragile détente. As much as she wanted to, Kelsea could not simply flee and hope for the best. For her kingdom, she had to stay.
She could at least get her jailor’s body out of her cell. But another look at him convinced Kelsea of the futility of that. The floor around his corpse was covered with blood. No, they would find him, and they would find him in her cell. There was no way to prevent it.
You have an open door! her mind hectored.
“Maybe just a look around,” Kelsea whispered, and realized in horror that she was speaking to the jailor as she skirted his corpse to reach the door. “Just a quick look around, see what’s what.”
She tiptoed out of her cell. The corridor to her right was dark, but to her left, far down the hallway, there was a hint of flickering torchlight near the stairs. Otherwise, the long line of cells was still, and she heard no sounds of movement. The jailor had made plenty of noise as he died, but screams were hardly uncommon in these dungeons. It didn’t sound like anyone was coming to investigate. Cupping her hand around her candle flame, Kelsea moved toward the light.