The Continent (The Continent #1)(82)
AS I CLIMB INTO THE CAR, MY SHIELD OF ANGER and confidence all but evaporates. I sit sobbing, crumpled against the fine leather seat, my heart aching with the sting of lost opportunity. How truly I believed that the Spire would rally for the Aven’ei—all those years in school, the values of kindness and generosity so deeply encouraged, all those years, believing that the Spire truly was a pinnacle of freedom and hope. How desperate I was to return to the Continent with good news, like some champion of the people. I am a fool.
A gentle patter of rain begins, drumming a melancholy beat upon the roof of the car as though to commiserate with me. The driver waits patiently on the other side of the glass partition, no doubt wondering why I have not given him an address. But I don’t care. I can’t bring myself to go back to the estate just yet. Sitting here so near the Chancellery gives me a false sense of security, as though I could dash back up the steps, return to the Grand Hall, and somehow convince the officials to change their minds.
But I can’t change their minds. Save for Mr. Lowe, not one of them so much as considered my request. And why should they listen to me? A girl of sixteen, barely a woman—one who was left to die on the Continent, only to inconveniently survive and return to tell the tale. I suspect they would have offered me a handsome package of compensation, had I stayed to listen. As though money, opportunity, or position would somehow erase the Aven’ei from my memory.
And Noro…oh, Noro. What will he say when I return? Will he truly be angry with me for coming back? Does he not understand that my fate is bound to his as surely as the sun must rise each day? For he and Keiji are my family now, all that is left to me in the world. And if they must suffer death at the hands of the Topi, I will not stay in the Spire to survive them. All may be lost, but love remains.
A soft knock at the window startles me, and I peer out to see Mr. Cloud ducking down, a newspaper held over his head. I open the door at once and scoot away from the window.
“Mr. Cloud,” I say, wiping the tears from my face. “Get in, please! You’ll catch your death out there.”
He bustles into the car, closing the door behind him and exhaling deeply. “What a lot of charlatans they are at the weather bureau,” he says, scowling. “‘Clear skies throughout the afternoon,’ eh? I should think not. Anyhow, I saw the car still parked at the curb and I thought I would just check—why, Miss Sun! Whatever is the matter?”
He pulls a clean white handkerchief from his breast pocket and hands it to me; I accept and dab at my eyes, feeling all the more miserable for his kindness.
“The Spire won’t help,” I say. “Only the West was willing to offer any kind of assistance. The rest overruled it, and in a terrible hurry.”
His face is grim. “I feared as much. There’s no gain to be had in helping the Aven’ei, and if there’s anything a politician cares about, it’s what good a thing can do for him.”
“Oh, Mr. Cloud, what am I to do?” I begin to cry again, sobbing softly into the handkerchief.
He puts a firm hand on my shoulder. “You just go about your business, and sleep well at night knowing you’ve done all you could do.”
I sniffle. “But I’ve got to go back now and tell them what has happened. Any hope they might have had will be dashed forever. I’ve failed them all. And every last one will die, because I could do nothing to save them.”
“Dearest girl,” he says, “if the Aven’ei are to fall, it is because the Topi insist on making it so. You are not responsible. And…well, I don’t like to overstep, but I do wish you would not be quite so determined to go back there. Is it your heart that compels you? The young man who brought you to Ivanel?”
“It is Noro and all the rest,” I say. “I do not belong in the Spire, Mr. Cloud. I feel at odds with the very air here in the East.”
“Well. I can’t say I’m glad to hear it. But I think I understand.”
I sit quiet for a moment, my eyes fixed on the little rivers of water meandering along the windows. “I shall be dead soon,” I say finally. “It’s a strange thing to know.”
“Is there truly no hope?”
I give him a sad smile. “Once, I would have said that hope is unceasing—that it is born of the goodness in the world, and nurtured within our hearts.” My voice falters, for I am on the brink of tears once again. “But I feel no hope now, Mr. Cloud—only certainty that there is none to be had. The Topi have seen to that. And so has the Spire.”
The Chancellor, as it turns out, is in no hurry to accommodate me. For two weeks, I wait with a restlessness that borders on insanity. I pace the hallways of the estate, doing my best to avoid the sour-faced butler and the retinue of servants. Each day, I am assured by the Chancellor’s secretary—an obsequious man called Mr. Vane—that my travel arrangements are well in hand, and that he will notify me as soon as the matter has been settled. And each day, no plans are announced.
When night falls, I ache for the comfort of Noro’s arms. I miss the cozy security of my little cottage, and the vastness of the southern plains. I long to walk beneath the trees of the Continent with their leaves of gold and red, savoring a few moments of beauty before winter comes. Before the Topi come. Autumn is full upon us now, and the days slip through my fingers as I wait, and wait, and wait.
I think of defying the Chancellor’s order to conceal my survival. I have an aunt in the South, and cousins who live there as well, although I’ve never been terribly close to my extended family. My friends, though…it hurts to know that they are here, but I cannot reach out to them. To all, I am merely dead: a tragic story, a girl who once was. I ache to tell them that I live, that I think of them still—especially Evangeline—sweet, lovely Evangeline, who was so excited about my grand adventure to the Continent. But as much as I hate to agree with anything uttered from the lips of the Chancellor, I know he is right: to be resurrected only to die a second time would be a cruel thing, a conscious inflicting of further grief. It is better that no one know I survived the crash.