Tell the Wind and Fire(41)
“I’ll do it with Ethan,” I said. “I’ll serve as a page as well.”
Mark Stryker smiled. I feared him and hated him so much, I would have done anything he wanted.
Even then, even when I had seen Charles Stryker lying in his own blood less than a day ago, I believed the Light Council was too strong for their power to ever be broken.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mark told me to be quiet when we served the council, and I did what he said. Ethan was just as quiet as I was.
The meetings were held in Stryker Tower. It made sense to gather there. The tower was one of the most notable buildings in the city, a column of steel and glass that people could look toward as they had once looked toward old idols, pyramids, the sun itself.
And any foes, no matter how powerful, would be less able to fight the Strykers on their own turf. The very people who served the coffee were Stryker employees. Now the people making copies and taking minutes were one of the Stryker heirs and his girlfriend. Mark had everybody at a psycho-logical disadvantage.
At the head of the table sat Anton Lewis, the abbot of Light, with his brilliant rings casting light upward onto his soft, jowled jaw and his wet, trembling mouth. He was said to be the most powerful Light magician in the city and to act as a channel between the people and the Light. Years ago, he had tried to enact reforms of the treatment of those in the Dark city, laws that would abolish the cages and allow Dark and Light citizens to travel more freely between cities.
The rest of the council had made sure those laws did not pass, and Anton Lewis’s failed attempt had only made the Dark city more discontent. They hated him for trying and failing more than they hated anyone else. My Aunt Leila had despised Anton Lewis more than all the other members of the council combined, unless you counted his wife. She was a former supermodel who had been known as Bright Mariah and whom the Dark city called Bitter Mariah.
She sat at the council table, her silver-fair hair and makeup always impeccable and her clothing as clearly expensive as if it had been made with gold thread. I had seen pictures of her when I lived in the Dark city, and had hated her shining face and all the useless finery she was draped with, as if she was more a mantelpiece full of baubles than a woman.
Aunt Leila thought that Anton was a coward and Bitter Mariah was worse than that. I’d agreed with her, once, because I’d agreed with her about everything.
I’d seen a lot of women dressed expensively since those days, and I did not think finery made Bitter Mariah guilty. Then again, I did not think she was innocent. She supported and upheld the Light Council and all their cruel laws: she was just as guilty of murder and callous indifference as the rest.
There were many other faces, among them David Brin, who administered the city finances, and Gabrielle Mirren, the moderate of the council who was kept on for her popularity and whom Mark did not allow to speak often.
I had seen these people, mostly old men with expensive suits that were sleekly smooth at the shoulders and straining at the stomachs, on television many times while I was flicking through channels. It was strange to be in their immediate presence, to hear the small bad jokes they told and the way they grunted, or scratched at their heads. Brin peeled and ate oranges throughout the council sessions, leaving spirals of orange skin in a heap at his place every time.
It was like being in the teachers’ lounge at school, staring around in startled amazement that those in authority were just people, flesh and blood and often boring, just as likely to be stupid or wrong as anybody else.
And yet these people held all our fates in their hands.
“Obviously, one of the first things we must do is restore order to our cities, both the Dark and the Light,” said Mark Stryker.
The first meeting we attended was all about putting more Light guards on the streets of the Light city—to reassure citizens that they were being protected, of course. I saw Ethan open his mouth several times, but I sent him imploring looks and he stayed quiet.
Gabrielle Mirren said at one point, “We don’t want people to feel as if we are tyrants—”
“But we cannot allow them to think we are weak,” said Brin. He got a nod from Mark for his trouble.
I walked home that day and saw the new Light guards patrolling and people rushing for home with their eyes on the ground. It reminded me of being back in the Dark city, everyone being guarded and watched as the buried were.
It was like Manhattanhenge, but the streets were filled with fear instead of light.
The second meeting was full of plans for the Light city as well. It was not until the third meeting that the council talked of what to do with the Dark city. There had always been guards patrolling the streets, and a garrison of guards at the gates examining everyone who went out and came in, but now the cages were gone and there was rioting inside the walls.
The Dark city was under martial law, and the garrisons needed new officers. Mark Stryker said we needed to send in people we could trust, who would control the situation. I did not know most of the names discussed, and I sat there with a distant expression on my face. I looked at the rings on my fingers as if they were strange new constellations, their light coming from a very long way away, beautiful but basically useless.
“What the Dark city needs is a firm hand,” said Mark Stryker. “It is regrettable, but some harsh measures will have to be taken.”
“The people of the Dark city live harsh lives already,” said Gabrielle Mirren, but she did not protest when Mark read out the names of a few men that even I recognized by reputation: men who sent people to the cages without trial and armed all their guards with both the whip and the sword. They were sending in troops to crush the rebellion.