Give the Dark My Love(58)

THIRTY-FIVE


    Nedra



I was waiting at the iron gates before the sun rose the next morning.

“You’re up early,” the gatekeeper said. He was friendlier than he had been when I first met him, so many months ago with my trunk and my ideals and my ignorance.

He moved in aching slowness. I knew Grey would be waiting for me at my dormitory, expecting another day at the hospital. But I couldn’t see him, not today.

I slipped through the door before it was fully open. Heading downhill, I chased the sunrise. Behind me, long streams of sunlight spilled onto the street, but in front of me it was still dark, the oil lamps flickering. I ran to the shadows.

Blackdocks was not quite awake yet, but a few ferries cut through the hazy water. I found a bench overlooking the main dock. My eyes went north, to home, where my family waited for me to finish an education I was no longer sure I wanted.

The sun finally caught up with me.

Light spilled over the water first, twinkling up through the caps of the small waves in the bay before turning the air golden, burning away the fog.

The housing units uphill seemed to wake all at once, people pouring from the buildings and heading to the factories along the waterfront. It was particularly cruel, I thought, that the workers resided uphill, giving them an easy walk to work, but a harder climb to get back home after they were tired and broken.

Younger boys and girls started walking up and down the streets, shouting the headlines of the news sheets they sold for a copper coin. “Wasting Death claims life of government officials! Epidemic growing!” a girl said, her voice pitched low but loud. She stood on the top of a stack of news sheets and waved one around emphatically. “Governor Adelaide shows signs of illness after recent hospital visits!”

I couldn’t afford to spend a copper, but I did it anyway, tossing the girl a coin and taking the news sheet from her hand. I scanned the top stories. Lord Anton’s infection was worsening, and he wasn’t expected to make it. Other politicians—notably a handful that were close to Anton—were also infected or dead.

Governor Adelaide’s photograph from her coronation with the Emperor dominated the front page, along with a story detailing all the work she’d done for the sick since the plague first hit Lunar Island. She’d spent her own personal funds supporting the hospital, pled in the council for stricter governing of the factory owners, and often visited the sick.

The Emperor was distinctly left out of the article, save for a single line that read only, “His Imperial Majesty currently resides in the castle but has distanced himself from Governor Adelaide after her personal alchemist declared her too ill to continue with her charitable works.”

I turned to the back of the news sheet and saw a map of Lunar Island. It was larger than the one Master Ostrum and I had hung in the school lab, and it had more details on the northern villages. A list of names ran down the side, and I scanned for my parents, for my sister, for anyone from my village, but my eyes blurred. There were too many names to keep count.

“Make way!” A large cart parted an ocean of people walking toward the factories. Two draft horses pulled the wagon, and a driver sat on a raised seat. “Make way, make way,” he shouted impatiently. He finally broke through the crowd of people, and the empty wagon rattled on the cobblestones toward one of the factories.

It stopped at a three-story-tall warehouse with black draped over the windows. The man bellowed for someone to hurry up, and the doors opened.

I watched as people dragged bodies from the factory. They were thrown haphazardly onto the back of the cart, arms and legs spread wide, ashen faces staring in all directions with unblinking eyes. As soon as the wagon was full, the driver turned the cart around, driving it straight to a large ferry that had no seats or benches.

I watched from the road as the skipper and the driver dumped the bodies from the wagon and onto the boat. They were nearly done by the time I reached the dock. The skipper pushed off from the dock, his boat cutting through the water like a knife. I watched until I couldn’t see it anymore, even though I knew where it was going: the field Dilada had helped clear, the new grave where victims would be out of sight and out of mind. I wondered how many hundreds were there already, how many had been so swiftly forgotten.

Grey sat down beside me.

“Nedra?” he asked, leaning over to brush my hair from my face. “I thought you were going to wait for me at Yūgen, that we would walk down here together.”

“Sorry,” I said hollowly. “I needed some time to think.”

He saw the news sheet in my hand. “I read about that this morning. Everyone’s talking about how the governor is sick. Tomus was going on and on about how the Emperor will take over if she dies.”

This is why citizens accused Governor Adelaide of being negligent for not appointing a Lord Commander, a second-in-command to run the government if she was incapacitated. I wondered what would happen if the Emperor took control. The girls in the history study group probably would say this would be the tipping point toward revolution.

What did it matter, though?

“Is everything okay?” Grey asked.

I looked him in the eyes. “No,” I said.

He frowned, but I could see he didn’t want to talk about what had happened at the lab. He leaned down, bumping his forehead against mine, and we stayed there for several long moments, willing the world to not exist outside our touch.