“Are you?”
He chuckles, and it’s the least funny sound I’ve ever heard. I can’t see a thing without the glasses, and when he shuts the door, I hear something I shouldn’t. An extra noise. Metal scraping on metal.
“Keep a hand out,” Reddix says, “if you are not used to the dark … ”
I let him get a few steps ahead, pull out the glasses and take a quick look at the door. He’s put a thick metal pin through the latch. Nathan is not coming through that, and there’s not a thing I can do about it, not without Reddix hearing me. I’m cussing in my head again. I drop the glasses back into my shirt and follow him down the steps, his voice still coming soft through the black air.
“The city is almost clear of Outsiders and the gates will soon be shut. But there will still be a few of the Knowing in the corridors. We’re going to walk quickly, as if you’re my help. Keep three paces behind me, eyes lowered. Your face will be remembered, of course, and eventually they will Know that I was with someone who does not belong. But in just a little while, none of us will remember anything, will we?”
I don’t answer. Four levels down and we are off the stairs, through a door and into one of the carpeted tunnels. I adjust my pace behind Reddix. The Knowing all tend to wear clothes that reflect and shimmer, I suppose because of all the lamplight. But Reddix is wearing pure black today, his eyes painted heavily to match, and he’s wound black and silver strings through his braids. Two Knowing come walking together down the hall, and I keep my eyes down, but only until they pass. This place is a maze. I need to see where I’m going and memorize the way, or I won’t get back to that door and all this will be over before it’s even begun. I can hear my pulse in my ears.
We go down some stairs, along a corridor, and back up again, and I’m swearing so hard I think my lips are moving. He’s taking me in circles. On purpose. But I know where I am. That was the entrance hall at the end of the corridor, with the soaring ceiling and marbled walls sloping up to the gates. I could get back to the kitchen stairs from there.
I have more of a memory than you think, Reddix Physicianson.
We go down one more level and take a right. This corridor is empty. Quiet. Reddix pauses, and when no one comes from either direction, he puts a key to a door on our left. There’s an empty flat here, like Sam’s uncle’s, only instead of the river rushing beyond the room’s double-paned doors, I can hear echoing voices. A crowd. I go to the doors, stand to one side to look beyond the edge of a damp curtain. The Forum. I suppose I knew there were more of the Knowing. But seeing them is different. There’s a family below me, a father retying the ribbon on a child’s hair braids.
“Wait until she is in the Forum,” Reddix says. “If you cannot see her, wait until she steps up onto the platform for Judgment. Then go out onto the balcony and drop the Forgetting. There will be no need to speak.”
Yes, I really think there will be a need for it. But when I glance back at Reddix, I see something that surprises me. Emotion. Raw. Like a thirsty man who smells water. He wants me to throw that bottle down.
“Do not give them time to hurt her, Earthling,” he says. “They will, if they think justice might be thwarted. When the time comes, act quickly. Please.”
He goes without another word. And he locks the door behind him, and I don’t have a hairpin this time. I don’t have anything.
I never can decide whether I pity or hate Reddix Physicianson more.
And if I don’t work fast, this is going to go very badly.
Mother dresses me with care, arranging the red dress just so over one shoulder. She doesn’t braid my hair, but gathers the top half high on my head, letting the ends hang down, tendrils escaping all around my face. It’s not very proper at all, and maybe that’s her point. If she could Know how well I’m caching my true feelings right now—and the memories this room brings me—she would be pleased. She would not be pleased to Know that her knife is now under the red dress, tied to my thigh with a scarf.
“Mother,” I say. My voice sounds like the gristmill Outside. “Why did you choose Nita as our help?”
Mother puts a finger beneath my chin, tilting my head, and the soft paint across my eyelid is like a caress. “We Knew, of course, that she was from a family of rebels. But after my first disappointment, it was important to find out what kind of blood ran in my second child. The Wardens only create situations, darling, not the choices. And at some point, enough was enough, wasn’t it?”
Disappointment. She means Adam. Her son, who she executed. Brutally. Like Nita. The hatred I’ve been caching blazes hot as Beckett’s fire in the ruined city, and with it comes a grief so painful I have to dig a nail into my palm. But I breathe, tell my memories Not now, and I am back in control. But I will have to feel those things. Later.
My mother wipes the brush against the rim of the jar. “It is difficult being the judge of New Canaan,” she begins, wiping the brush again. And again. “Choosing the chosen is not an easy task. I hope you realize that, Samara. Like the picture tiles. One cannot think only of a piece, even if the color and shape is beautiful. One must think of the beauty of the whole, decide which piece detracts from that, and then remove it.”
Like Adam. Like me. But all I say aloud is, “Like Ava Administrator.”
“Oh no, darling,” says Mother. “Ava was very different. She had such an incredible mind, as did two of her children. Creative, problem solvers, traits the Knowing need to perfect. It was important to study them. For the good of us all.”
This makes me so sick I’m having difficulty playing my part. “And this is why you closed the Archives, then,” I whisper.
“Yes,” she says. “Exactly so.” I close my eyes while the eye brush runs slow across the other lid. “Our family profession was not as important as keeping minds focused … ”
The minds you are forcing to be that way, I think.
“… and it was a profession not strictly necessary for the building of a Superior Earth. And though most of the more … sensitive of the books had already been removed, bits of information were cropping up, and secrecy for the NWSE is key. It has been so since the First Warden, in the old city … ”
“Janis Atan,” I say.
She pauses her painting to look at me. “Perhaps I should have tried to bring you in early. It worked for Reddix. But it was such a mistake with your brother … ” She shakes her intricately braided head. “People have always been too narrow-minded to see the vision, to understand the greater good. The writings of Janis Atan were rediscovered at a time when life in the old city had become impossible … ”