Arch-Conspirator(24)

And he wouldn’t, of course. Like the path that was leading me to the Trireme, Haemon’s course was already set. Neither of us could change it now.

“Fine,” I said. “Then there’s someone you should meet, and I can tell you where to find him.”





13

Haemon




The symbol for the North District, where I found myself in the early hours of the morning, is the sphinx. Head of a woman, body of a lion, wings of a bird. Best of all worlds, Mom liked to say; everybody should be so lucky. Sphinxes were known for being merciless as well as tricky, tellers of riddles and killers of men, and I’d found that the symbols for the districts reflected their personalities—or maybe the personalities had grown around the symbols.

Either way—I knew to be wary of the North District. I was the High Commander’s son, after all. So I went with a knife at my hip and my eyes open. I took the path she’d told me to take, which sidestepped the worst parts. It carried me down narrow alleys with laundry hanging overhead, around sharp bends with bulging mirrors attached to the corners of buildings so you could see who was coming the other way, under wires that dipped too low so neighbors could share electricity illegally. Everything smelled either like trash or like stew, and the worst was when you got a whiff of both at once.

I ended up at Parthenopaeus’s house, a green door with the little pot of pinkish rocks next to it. There were stubs of corn-silk cigarettes among the rocks. I knocked before I could really think about it, and then I thought about it afterward. Knocking here was basically treason. That was how Dad would see it. I could still turn around, probably, without anybody knowing, but I still had this feeling that he would know. He knew more than people thought he did. He was always having people followed, or “disappeared,” hence all the monkshood in the greenhouse—great for poisoning someone so nobody would know it. Wasn’t hard to poison someone in a city where people died all the time.

Anyway, the door opened. A little old lady stood inside the foyer, her face crumpling in like a collapsed cake, a scarf covering her hair. She stared up at me without speaking.

“I’m here to see Parth,” I said. “Antigone sent me.”

“That girl’s nothing but trouble,” she said.

I smiled a little. “I like her just fine.”

“Then you’re nothing but trouble, either. Come in.”

She shuffled away from the door, and I bent my head to step into the house. All I knew about Parth was that he was big and not as stupid as he pretended to be—that was Antigone’s description. I wasn’t quite ready for all the people in the house—men, all of them, except for the old woman, draped over couches and chairs, or crouched around the coffee table playing a board game I didn’t recognize. One of them stood up, and he was big, taller and broader than me, his head shaved.

“Who’re you?” he said. I was pretty sure this was Parth.

“Antigone sent me,” I said.

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“I’m Haemon,” I said.

“Kreon’s boy?”

“Yes and no,” I said.

“What the hell kind of answer is that?”

“There are sons and there are sons.” I shrugged. “Whose boy are you?”

He narrowed his eyes at me, and then motioned for me to follow him into the next room. It was hard to find a path across the space—it wasn’t a big living room, and there were six people in it, all staring at me like they wanted to burn holes in my skin. I stepped into the kitchen and I was relieved to close the door behind me. Parth had gone right to the sink to wash a plate. He pointed with wet fingers at one of the chairs.

“Sit,” he said. “You said Tig sent you?”

“I didn’t know anybody but her siblings called her that.”

“They don’t, I guess,” he said. “Thirsty?”

“No, thank you.”

He wiped his hands off on a dish towel and turned to face me. He didn’t sit down, just leaned against the counter and folded his massive arms.

“Well? What are you here for?”

“Do you know what happened to her yesterday?”

“Heard she got caught trying to suck out Pol’s genes,” he said.

“And she was sentenced to execution via Trireme.”

“As I understand it, the word ‘execution’ was never used.”

My chest tightened.

“She’ll spend years alone in space,” I said. “And then starve to death up there.”

This, at least, seemed to sober him. He looked down at his toes.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Listen, she was never all that friendly to me, but I wouldn’t wish that on her. Or most anyone.”

“Well. I don’t intend to let it happen.”

The faucet was letting out a slow trickle of water that tap, tap, tapped on the bottom of the sink. Parth sized me up.

“How do you mean to stop it?” he said. “What your daddy wants to happen pretty much does happen, dunno if you’ve noticed.”

“I don’t know how to stop it,” I said. “That’s why I’m here, talking to a rebel leader.”

Parth laughed.

“What gives you the idea I’m that?”