Arch-Conspirator(7)

The attendant gestured to us, and we followed her down a long, dim hallway to one of the examination rooms. This was a place for everything related to childbearing. Jocasta had once worked here, hidden in the back so none would see that the laboratory was occupied by a woman. I came with her once to look at her work, but I couldn’t make sense of all the glass tubes, the worn books, the glowing microscope.

We stopped before the laboratories this time, and the attendant led us into an examination room. It was small, with an exam table and a stool and a small cabinet full of equipment. Lying atop the table, her body covered in a white sheet, was Clio, daughter of Heli, steward of the Seventh District.

She was hardly more than a child, her cheeks round, her body slender as a deer. Her eyes were unfocused and red with tears. A clump of hair clung to her lip, unnoticed. She saw Kreon, and she struggled to sit up.

“Please, be still,” I said. “We come as friends.”

Kreon raised an eyebrow at this, but didn’t contradict me.

“Is my father angry with me?” she said, her voice small and scraped.

“Does he have reason to be?” Kreon said.

“I don’t—” She choked a little, and looked away. We waited in silence for the end of the sentence, which didn’t come.

I laid a hand on Kreon’s shoulder.

“Let me speak with her,” I said.

“Heli asked—”

“Heli asked you to handle this personally,” I said. “And what am I but an extension of you?”

Kreon’s eyes softened by a fraction. He nodded and stepped out of the room. I could feel something ease in the air after his departure, like a strong wind had settled.

I drew the stool to the side of the exam table, and perched on top of it. Clio’s hands were folded over her abdomen, her nails bitten down to the quick. There was a poster on the wall beside her, a diagram of the woman’s reproductive system. Poised above the pink of the uterus was a slim needle—an Extractor, to show the correct angle of approach.

“I came for a pregnancy test,” Clio said. “The Archivist called my father.”

“I see.”

“At first, he thought—” She closed her eyes. Tears ran down her temples and into her hair. “He called me a wild girl.”

“But you aren’t,” I said.

She shook her head.

“And now your father is at home sharpening his blade,” I said. “And he wishes to know where to point it.”

Clio’s eyes were hazel, an in-between color. One moment they were blue, and the next, brown.

“Is it strange,” she said, “that I am not eager for this man’s death?”

I reached for her hand and she gave it to me, letting me lace my fingers with hers and squeeze.

“We punish few crimes as severely as this one,” I said. “As bearers of children, we are sacred vessels in need of protection.” It was a line directly from a pamphlet my mother gave me when I was ten years old and started to bleed. I quoted it without meaning to. It was so embedded in my mind, in my memory. “If we didn’t punish this crime with death, it might become more common. And that would compromise the vigor of our society. With each violation of that vigor, we become more fragile and susceptible to loss. So this is not about revenge, Clio. It is about stability. Do you understand?”

She squeezed my hand so tightly it caused pain. She squeezed her eyes shut, too, her body braced against whatever came next.

“Eneas,” she said, the name breaking from her like a scream.

I kept hold of her hand.

“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve done everything you were supposed to. Okay?”

She nodded, and when I opened my hand, she opened hers.

“Do you want me to call your mother here?” I asked as I stood.

“My sister,” she said. She was still tense, bent inward like a hand cramping after too much writing. I had done that to her, I knew. In the service of law and order, but not in the service of her. Guilt rose up in me like bile from a sour stomach, and I swallowed it down.

“I’ll let them know,” I said, and I turned toward the door. Just before I opened it, her voice stopped me.

“I have to keep it. This … soulless thing,” she said. “Don’t I?”

I looked at my hand on the handle. Trembling.

“Every life is essential,” I said quietly.

I left.





5

Ismene




“You can’t stay for dinner?”

She wrapped her arms around my waist and pulled me back against her body. She was warm. My height, perfectly aligned. I felt her mouth against my shoulder, against my throat. I smiled, turning my face so she couldn’t see it, and covered her hands with my own.

She was a singer. I heard her once while walking through the market, in the evening when I was long past my unstated curfew. The sun had set, but there was still some light in the sky, and as I moved through the crowd a rich alto reached my ears. I followed the sound to her—she was picking through an array of scarves at a woman’s clothing stall, her fingers long and elegant. When she caught me staring, she raised an eyebrow. What? You have something to say, rich girl? When I stammered through an apology, she only laughed.

She hummed now, and I felt the vibration of it against my back.