The Fandom(65)

‘You can help me on the bread store,’ Saskia says, gathering her streaked hair into a loose plait.

We approach a wooden stall boasting an array of loaves. That warm, yeasty aroma reminds me of a family holiday in Brittany. Dad was always dragging us into the boulangeries, and Nate would laugh every time he tried to say it, pronouncing it with a hard ‘g’. I get this spearing pain just thinking of Dad, baguette crumbs lodged in his stubble.

Saskia hands us some pristine white gloves. I inch my fingers into them and begin straightening the loaves, so fresh their crusts fracture beneath my touch. Nate picks up a French stick and grins, and I suspect he remembers the hard ‘g’ too.

I’m wrapping a loaf in a sheet of waxed paper when I spot Ash on a nearby apple cart. He sees me and raises a dark eyebrow. He walks over, his limbs fluid and natural, and presents me with an apple, scarlet against the white of his gloves.

‘Push off, Squirrel,’ Saskia says.

‘I just wanted to talk to Violet. I’ll keep it brief, promise.’

A guard loiters nearby and Saskia obviously doesn’t want a scene, so she returns to counting out the coins and mutters, ‘Five minutes.’

He helps me wrap another loaf, but remains silent.

‘I thought you’d be back with your ma,’ I finally say.

‘I wanted to check you were OK after . . . you know.’ He lowers his voice so Nate and Saskia can’t hear. ‘I think I made a mistake showing you those things.’

‘I wanted to know the truth,’ I whisper back.

Our fingers connect momentarily as we reach for the same loaf, the material of our gloves bunching together. He glances up and smiles.

A voice cuts through the air. ‘Where are your gloves, Imp?’

The guard looks straight at us. My heart leaps into my mouth. I glance down and see the white cotton of our hands. Which means he’s either talking to Saskia . . . or Nate.

I spin around, my worst fear confirmed, the peach of Nate’s uncovered hands peering through a light dusting of flour.

I watch the terror cross his face as he realizes the guard is addressing him.

‘I – I—’ His words knot together. ‘My hands were . . . hot.’

The guard narrows his emerald eyes. ‘Your hands were . . . hot?’

Nate’s body seems to shut down – chest stops rising, eyes stop blinking, fingers dig into the edge of the counter. I feel an overwhelming urge to rush to him, to scoop him up and protect him. But Ash whispers, ‘Don’t’, and the fear of making things worse stills me.

The guard tightens his grip on his rifle. ‘Have you been putting your grubby Imp hands all over our Gem food?’

Nate tries to shake his head, but instead just moves his eyes from side to side.

The guard scowls, his face pinched, like he’s just yanked a drawstring which connects all his features together. ‘Cat got your tongue and your gloves?’

Saskia steps forward, eyes lowered, palms up like she’s surrendering. ‘I’m so sorry, officer. I will see that he’s suitably punished. I will cane him myself when we return to our estate.’

I’ve never heard her sound so obliging. I guess she’s trying to save him from a worse fate than caning. Sweat pricks the back of my neck and I can feel my thighs beginning to shake.

The guard dismisses her with a wave of the hand. ‘Shut it, slave. Unless you want to lose your hands too.’

‘NO!’ It bursts from my mouth without permission.

The guard swivels. ‘Who said that?’

I open my mouth to reply, but the world looks kind of fuzzy and I forget where I am for a second.

‘I did,’ Ash says.

The guard laughs. ‘That’s a remarkably feminine voice you’ve got there, Imp.’ He glares at him. ‘Seems like we could do with a good amputation, just to keep you all in line.’

He hauls Nate from behind the stall.

The reality of the situation smashes into me and it feels like my body plunges into a vat of lava. Hot and brimming with outrage. ‘NO!’ I scream again. I lunge forwards, but Ash and Saskia hold me back. I kick and punch, trying to break free, but they’re too strong and I bounce between them like a pinball. Several guards arrive, pointing and laughing at my outburst.

‘They’re going to chop off his hands,’ I scream, trying to fish the sense from the words. The image of that Duplicate appears in my consciousness – half-formed, half-dead. Not Nate, not Nate. They can’t do that to Nate.

Ash smothers my mouth. ‘Violet, they’ll kill him if you carry on like this.’

But I can’t stop thrashing, just hoping that if I can somehow get to Nate, they’ll let me take his place.

They drag Nate over to a corner in the square, their giant bodies swamping him. Quite a crowd gathers, but even from this distance, peering through the spectators, I imagine I can see the smooth, adolescent skin of each finger stretching towards his nail beds. The white of his palms. The map of veins hovering just beneath the surface of his narrow wrists. Vomit rises in my throat and I begin to cough.

They shove him to his knees and twist a plastic tourniquet around his forearms. This can’t be happening. I suddenly feel strangely disconnected from my body; I don’t even know if it still fights, or just flops like a doll. I watch his sandy head bent low, tears plopping on the ground before him. I remember us high-fiving when he wasn’t even a year old, and then, when he was two, banging our fists together and shouting, ‘Spud!’ I remember his first piano lesson, his little fingers barely able to span a fifth. I feel something wet and hot leaking down my cheeks and on to my tongue. It tastes like brine.