Daybreak (28 page)
A pause, an answer, and then a nod or a head shake from Shine. She nodded ten times—eight men, one woman, and the boy all passed her judgment. Two men and a woman remained.
“They lied,” Shine said decisively. “I don’t know if they’re loyal to Jack, but they’re
not
loyal to you.”
not
loyal to you.”
Pen clutched Tru’s hand, but she didn’t speak up. This wasn’t the time for the Orchid to intervene. She hadn’t founded this camp or led these people. Arturi needed to show strength here or he’d lose his supporters.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Oddly, he remembered Abraham Lincoln had said that in some speech he’d studied in school.
Wonder what Honest Abe would make of the Changed world?
Then he realized Arturi might be the Abe Lincoln of their time, which gave him a weird, proud chill to witness the small man make what might turn out to be a historic decision.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Oddly, he remembered Abraham Lincoln had said that in some speech he’d studied in school.
Wonder what Honest Abe would make of the Changed world?
Then he realized Arturi might be the Abe Lincoln of their time, which gave him a weird, proud chill to witness the small man make what might turn out to be a historic decision.
The female suspect clung to her partner’s hand, tears in her eyes. For their part, the two men seemed stoic and resigned. They didn’t speak a word in their own defense. They didn’t plead for their lives.
“Are you newly come to the camp?” Arturi asked each in turn.
At first the question puzzled Tru. Surely Arturi knew everyone already, but the theater inherent in the commander’s bearing provided the answer. If they were fresh refugees, they might not feel a connection to the leader yet. Arturi wanted no possible room for public doubt when the time came to render judgment.
“No,” came the reply, thrice over.
“That’s true,” Shine said.
“Are you loyal to Jack?” The question had to be asked.
There could be no doubt in the crowd’s mind. Arturi did all he could to keep from being perceived as a tyrant. Again, they said no. But even Tru could see the sick fear boiling away beneath their eyes. He didn’t know why they bothered. If he knew somebody could tell the difference between truth and falsehood, he’d come clean and die spitting defiance. But not everyone shared his brand of crazy.
Shine shook her head. “They’re lying.”
Arturi pronounced their fate to a crowd as silent as the grave. “Then hang them all.”
TWENTY-NINE
The blindness faded during the trial. Almost as if each of Shine’s stark replies held magic of a healing kind, Pen could see a little more and a little more. The first thing she glimpsed with clear, stark precision was the grief on Arturi’s face. Jovial and kind, he had been reduced to the role of a judge where the stakes were life or death.
She turned to Tru, blinking a few times to bring his features into focus. When had she ever seen him appear so solemn? But he was a survivor. He would soak this into his soul, blunting the edges until the memories became easier to carry. That was his strength, even more so than the lion he carried beneath his skin.
Arturi, however . . .
“Do you trust me?”
Tru frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”
She touched his cheek. The place around her heart tightened as he leaned into that caress. “I need to go to Arturi. Now. Alone.”
“Enough with the Orchid crap.”
“Not like that.” She glanced to where Arturi oversaw the preparations for the hangings. Preacher, Shine—no one even looked at the leader who was being consumed by his responsibilities. “He needs a friend. Someone who won’t judge him.”
Tru adjusted where he sat, forearms draped over his knees. The sun was setting, which cast his features in a deep blood orange. Even his irises took on that glow, making him seem even more like a big cat. He released the tension in his jaw on a heavy exhale. “Do what you need to.”
She was tired. Exhausted, even. But not like she suffered after using her magic to excess. Her mind had been worn down by the emotion of the previous few weeks. All new. All hard to interpret. But she had nothing on Arturi’s pain.
With a kiss to Tru’s bare forearm, she stood and made her way across the small central clearing. Smoke hung heavily in the air as the dead were cremated. Smoldering piles of canvas marked where four residential huts had nestled beneath a scrub tree. But most of the island’s scars would not show. They would be housed inside disillusioned hearts. Particularly Arturi’s.
If he lost hope . . .
The whole community might topple.
In years past, people had opportunities to try and waste and fail. They’d only start again. But who knew how many more chances humanity had left? Pen had traveled the length and breadth of North America, much like Tru, their lives crisscrossing. She’d seen isolated clusters of human beings huddled against the world. A few rare instances had even permitted skinwalkers and practitioners of magic to live among them.
Never once had she seen a place this civilized, this integrated. A place so full of potential.
Her knees shook as she walked to Arturi. A part of her did not want this task. To kill in self-defense, or to kill O’Malley’s people as she aided those who’d been taken . . . that seemed easier. Standing by to watch three seemingly ordinary people hang would take another level of strength. For Arturi, and to honor what he’d worked to build, she would do it.
She took his hand.
Arturi seemed to pull himself out of a daze. He looked at her, then down at their joined hands. “Penny.”
“We’ve made it through dark times together. Before.”
“We did. Now I feel crazy for a different reason.”
Cold shivered under her breastbone. “Oh?”
“This,” he said, waving his other hand at the whole scene.
What he indicated encompassed good and bad. The people who held guns on his behalf and the traitors who awaited their fate. Huts decorated with paint on the canvas stood alongside those stained by black smoke. At the mess hall, a duty roster waited. The provisions tent provided a rudimentary commerce system that gave everyone an incentive to work. And babies. Children. Everywhere.
Pen felt a foreboding she couldn’t understand. “What about it?”
“What’s the use?”
She flinched.
He shook his head sadly. “I mean it, Penny. What use is struggling to build, when destruction is so much easier. I wonder if it’s our nature.”
Tru had often accused her of being unable to open up. She knew he was right. That impulse to hide her feelings was not easy to overcome. Safer to hide it deep down.
Which is why her anger and frustration came as such a surprise.
“Don’t you dare,” she whispered, words clipped. “Don’t you
dare
give up on this.”
dare
give up on this.”
“I can’t argue now. Please. Stop.”
“No, I won’t.” She jabbed a finger toward the scene before them. “Look at what you’ve done here.”
“I’ve lost control here.”
The dejection in his voice sent a shiver up her back. This was beyond a simple case of regret or loathing in anticipation of the hangings. It was even more than losing Zhara. The combination of events was crushing him. But what would these people be without their leader?
“You’ve lost no such thing,” she said. “Otherwise today’s anarchy would’ve continued. You would’ve been facing the complete destruction of the island, not a few charred huts. Settlement gone. Little experiment over.” She nodded toward the quiet crowd that awaited his direction. “They need you, or there’s nothing left here.”
He turned stricken eyes away from his followers, leveling his gaze at Pen. Tears shimmered, unshed. “And tell me how I’m supposed to lead them when she’s gone?”
“Zhara?”
“Yes,” he said tiredly.
Pen blinked. A deep grief tugged at her, but not just for Arturi. She grieved for Tru and the family he’d lost. When a man’s reason for living was gone, what purpose did he have? Tru had buried everything, just kept walking. On an instinctual level, she knew that Arturi was not that strong. He could lead hundreds, one day maybe thousands. But he needed a personal connection to make it real.
She had that in common with him. The world had become, to her, a series of distant encounters and deeds done. Tru had shown her another reason for fighting. Maybe Zhara had provided her husband with the same earthly grounding. Everything else became . . . theory. All purpose with no heart.
“We’re ready, sir,” said one of his men.
The condemned stood on stools beneath the island’s largest tree. The willow dripped thousands of limp limbs, its leaves shimmering with countless tiny movements. By contrast, the three prisoners didn’t move. They waited with their hands behind their backs and their necks bound by nooses.
Arturi’s expression took on a hard gleam. He strode forward and regarded each of the traitors in turn. Pen could only watch, unsure of his state of mind. She glanced back to where Tru sat with Adrian. They looked so mismatched—the tall, wiry man and the round-faced boy who worshipped him. A twinge of affection for both nearly drove her to abandon Arturi. She wanted to go and hold them both close.
But for the future, for a
good
future, she stayed put.
good
future, she stayed put.
“Do you have any last words?” Arturi asked one of the men. The husband and wife had refused to say anything to Arturi.
The second man sneered. “This settlement will burn, fearless leader. All of it.”
“Why do you hate it so?”
“This is no longer a world meant for sharing. It’s for taking.”
Arturi’s head bowed. His shoulders lifted on a heavy exhale. “Taking,” he said quietly, perhaps so quietly that only Pen and the condemned heard. “I suppose so. And now I take lives.”
He signaled to a nearby guard and turned his back to the willow. Pen met him there, stopped him with a hand to his shoulder. “You need to see this,” she said.
“Why? I cannot stand it.”
“You’re the leader, Finn. If you can’t watch the outcome of your own judgments . . .”
Tight lines scored either side of his mouth. He nodded. And when the bodies dropped, he watched the entire time. Until there was only stillness and quiet.
When it was over, she took his hand again. “But this isn’t the end. Tell me you realize that.”
“I know nothing now.” Blasted eyes begged for what she couldn’t provide. Answers. Comfort. The promise of a future. “What do I do?”
“Plan with me. Help me. Jack passed as human because someone wanted him here, hidden—maybe to stir discontent. He survived and returned, which means the boat didn’t crash in the storm. It
must
have been an O’Malley setup.” Energy zipped up from her toes as the scope of their task became clear. “You know he won’t have her killed. She’s like a toy he lost and wanted back. That means there’s a chance we can save her. And we can take him down. Once and for all.”
must
have been an O’Malley setup.” Energy zipped up from her toes as the scope of their task became clear. “You know he won’t have her killed. She’s like a toy he lost and wanted back. That means there’s a chance we can save her. And we can take him down. Once and for all.”
He shook his head. “This is our home. How do we mount an army with these people?”
“You knew I could lead, although I didn’t want to. And you know, deep down, that your people can fight. Don’t they have the same incentives? Loved ones taken? Lives threatened? A future to win?” She took his upper arms in her hands and gave a little shake. “Tell me how this is supposed to end, if not with us fighting.”
“Giving up.”
“That’s right. And you might as well have done that when the Change began and saved yourself the trouble. But then you wouldn’t have found Zhara.” She gentled her voice, feeling more than she should. Knowing she was talking about Tru, not just Arturi’s wife. “Tell me she isn’t worth fighting for.”
He paled in that peculiar way of his, where his freckles became even more pronounced. “I can’t do it alone. I would, but I’d die trying. I’m . . . Penny, I’m not a warrior. And I don’t want to fail her.”
“Don’t worry about that.” She smiled slightly. “We know warriors.”
Glancing toward Tru, he nodded. “You keep one on a leash.”
“Not even close,” she said with a laugh. “And don’t let him hear you say that. I’ll be dodging his wounded pride for days.”
“Thank you, Penny.”
“You’re the only person who still calls me Penny.”
“I’ll stop if you want.”
“Don’t you dare,” she said, echoing her admonishment from before. But this time she felt as if she’d truly connected with Arturi as a man. A person. Not the memory of a friend who had once inhabited her brain. She gathered him into an emotional hug—two lost children grown up. So many of those who’d survived the Change felt that way to Pen. Lost souls. Holding on to whatever good that was left.
“Good.” He stepped out of her embrace and straightened his shoulders. “Then we have work to do. May I borrow one of your knives?”
She watched with fierce pride as he took a blade and returned to the willow. He cut the ropes himself, as guards lowered the dead to the ground. “Dispose of them,” Arturi said. “Shine, take their possessions for the commissary. Their goods and their lives are forfeit.”
When Tru came up beside Pen, she leaned into his body. The strength she’d mustered to help buoy Arturi was quickly fading. They were signed up for a suicide run. One that would make or break the future of post-Change civilization. A shudder worked across her shoulders.
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