Burn (Pure #3)(42)

Weed nods. He lightly scratches his forehead. He says in an eerily calm voice, “I can make something good happen. I can save people. I can make good where your father failed.”

Partridge shakes his head.

“You think you can take over where my father left off somehow?” Partridge stands up, turns his back on Weed, crosses his arms on his chest. “I know you were the one who developed the pill,” Partridge says softly. He’s unable to look Weed in the eye. In this sentence, he’s acknowledging the fact that Partridge used the pill to kill his father, as well as the real possibility that Weed was an accomplice to this murder. It could be that Partridge and Weed are not as different as they seem, bound as they are in a moment in history—in an assassination.

“Without you,” Partridge says, “I couldn’t have done it.” He turns and glances at Weed, then looks down at the floor.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Weed says.

Partridge can’t stand the lies and denials anymore. He walks over to Weed, pushes him and grabs him by the shoulder. “Goddamn it! If you admired my old man so much, why’d you do it?”

Weed glares at Partridge, full of hate. He pulls his shoulder free of Partridge’s grasp.

“I said I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And then Partridge knows the answer. Arvin already said it: I can make good where your father failed. Weed wanted to take over.

Weed walks to the couch and sits down heavily. “You don’t know anything, Partridge. It’s the same old shit. You’re strolling along, being Willux’s son, and you haven’t done any homework.”

Partridge sits down across from Weed again too. He presses his palms together. “That’s not entirely true. I’ve been to my father’s secret chamber in his war room. I learned a lot there. In fact, your name appeared in a document there.”

“Of course it did! I’m in the thick of it, Partridge, and I have been for a long time. Even when we were both in the academy, I was already being brought into inner circles.”

“If I don’t know anything, Weed, how about you enlighten me? Go ahead. Lay it on me.”

“Well,” Weed says, “for one, your sister and her friends stole one of our airships. It was tagged, of course. We know its route. We know who they likely contacted—how they figured out where to find these other survivors is a mystery—but they actually do their homework, turns out.”

Partridge ignores the dig. “What the hell are you talking about? A route?”

“Across the Atlantic Ocean, and they’re on their way back.”

Partridge laughs. It’s ridiculous. “The Atlantic? In an airship? Not possible.”

“They took it to Newgrange, one of your father’s special locales. If you’ve been in his inner chamber, then you know he’s spared a few holy places and the people lucky enough to be there at the time.”

Newgrange. Partridge thinks back to all of Glassings’ lectures on ancient burial mounds and Partridge’s father’s obsession since childhood with domes. “But Pressia, Bradwell, El Capitan and Helmud—they went all the way there and back again?”

Arvin nods.

“Foresteed should have told me all this!”

“I’m sure it’s in the reports.”

“I don’t read those reports!” Partridge says to himself more than to Weed.

“And there. You’ve proven my point.”

“Newgrange,” Partridge says. “In an airship.” The world seems to open up. Pressia, Bradwell, El Capitan and Helmud—they’ve been across an ocean. “My God,” he whispers. “But they’re not back yet? It sounds dangerous.”

“Well, they got there and they’re in the air again. The question is why. What did they think they’d find there? And were they successful?”

“Is Foresteed on this, tracking their progress?”

“Foresteed doesn’t care much about your sister and her friends. He’s got other interests.”

“Like what?”

Arvin smiles. “You can ask him that yourself.”

“Arvin, listen. I think we could get a council together—people from the outside and the inside sitting down to talk. We can help each side to understand the other. That’s where my father really failed. These people are killing themselves, but if they knew some of the people out there, if they met Pressia—”

Weed cuts him off. “That’s nice, Partridge. But it won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“As long as the wretches wear our shared history on their skin, there will be no peace. Guilt, Partridge. You can’t live with all of that guilt without wanting to blame the victims and exonerate yourself. Human nature.”

“But…”

Weed wags his head, smiling. “Here’s an example. You want me to bring these people out of suspension. What the hell are we going to do with all these people? Huh? Some of them are deformed. Some are even wretches. What are you going to do? Get them jobs? Send them into grocery stores?”

“Why not?”

“I’ve spent the last few days stitching up slit wrists, staring into big, gaping gunshot wounds, pumping people’s stomachs. Because of you.”