Preserving Hope Page 18

  When the tears ended, there was silence in the room. And then to Will’s surprise, Elizabeth began to laugh. It wasn’t a joyful laugh, meant to express happiness or humor, but a laugh of realization, that everything was not what it seemed.

  “What is it?” Will asked, baffled.

  She sat up, moving away from contact, and turned to look at him. There was a faint flicker of the fire he’d seen in her eyes when he’d first arrived, enough to let him know that she wasn’t completely defeated. “It won’t work.”

  “What won’t work?”

  “The zirple.”

  Will paused. “But Roland said—”

  “Roland is wrong. Zirple is the second step in the process, an important one, but it’s useless without that first step. He likely went through the first step and didn’t know it, or thought he’d gotten very sick when in reality he was suffering through the first step in the process. Or maybe, just maybe, zirple works if you use it long enough, years and years. Zirple was one of the first things they forced on me when I was very young, and it did nothing for me, or to me. Then I did that first step, and after that, the zirple worked well, and very quickly. My father has been at it for three months and barely has enough Energy to warm his fingertips. It shouldn’t take that long. The others have gotten it less frequently than he has, and as such they’ll take even longer to see anything happen.”

  “So there’s another, secret ingredient?” Will asked.

  She nodded, then frowned. “I don’t want anybody to find out, though. I’d tell you, but…”

  “But I don’t need it.” Will thought for a moment. “There’s no need to tell me; I don’t want to ever have the chance to let slip the name. I imagine it’s still in the Schola?”

  She gave him a vague look.

  “Maybe you should start moving it to your room. The same way you’ve moved the money from Arthur’s room. When we come here the next time, bring it with you and leave it here. Or let me know — in my head — where it is in your room and I’ll move it here. Just make sure that you only do a little at a time.”

  Elizabeth nodded again, smiling, and Will understood. She’d already done that.

  “I told Eva the secret ingredient, but not about the zirple. And now that makes me worried.”

  “How so?”

  “What if Father doesn’t prevent her from getting the zirple? She’s used the first ingredient. If she takes the zirple now, her Energy will develop rapidly. She might even do some… you know… magic without meaning to, and people will see. My father… he killed my mother for just talking about hiding things from him. If Eva’s the only one to develop any noticeable skills, more quickly than anyone else, after she’s been denied zirple for so long… I’m afraid something similar will happen to her.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m worried about something bad happening to Eva. That means I’m not like him, right?”

  He put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps it means you’re like your mother.”

  Her eyes glazed over, and it was apparent that she was reliving memories made with the woman called Genevieve, Arthur’s wife and Elizabeth’s mother, a woman who had died at the hands of a violent mob before Will had arrived.

  “She was the only one who always cared about me,” Elizabeth whispered. “Others did eventually, people like Eva, but Mother always did. She hated what Father was doing to me, but when she tried to talk him out of it he got… scary. She was afraid of being hurt herself, and that’s when all the time in the Schola started. I wanted to be angry with her, but she was so angry with herself that I couldn’t bring myself to add to it. So she did the only thing she thought she could… she went with me, and experienced everything I experienced. I didn’t like to hear her scream, when some of those foods would burn so badly, and make us sick. I didn’t want her to be hurt too. But it helped to know that at least one person cared, and at least one person knew how I felt. I wished she had found a way, and the courage, to make it stop at the beginning, but when she couldn’t do that, she did the next best thing. It was her form of courage.”

  She took a deep breath. “We figured out what happened at the same time. It was an especially nasty bit of food, a berry that smelled worse than manure, and tasted like… I’ve never tasted anything so awful. She was ill that day, and it was the only time she didn’t go with me, but she took it two days later. It was the same experience for both of us, though. When we swallowed it, it started burning us up from the inside out.”

  Will blinked. This sounded like what he’d gone through with the Purge.

  “Neither one of us could move, so people had to carry us back to our room. Father only said that he hoped I wouldn’t be out of work for long. He didn’t care that we were suffering, especially not Mother.” She glanced at Will, her eyes dead of emotion. “I guess that’s not a surprise to you, is it?” She sighed. “When we woke the next day, our bodies were trying everything to get that berry out of us. It was awful. We were so weak we couldn’t even make it outside to go the river that morning, and neither of us ate or drank anything. By the next morning, we were well enough to go to the river, but still pretty tired.”

  “A few days later, somebody had me try the zirple again. This time, it didn’t taste so bad. I acted like it did, because I was so used to everyone picking the most foul things that I just assumed I’d gag on the taste. But it wasn’t bad. Mother ate it as well, and she kept her face without expression.”

  “The next morning, we found we could read each other’s thoughts. Not well, but enough. We realized that the combination was needed: the berry first, and then the zirple. Each time we’d go to the Library, one of us would grab some of each, not enough for anyone to notice. The Travelers had brought home a large amount of the berry, so nobody noticed that it was disappearing slowly. We ran out of the zirple after a year or so, but the initial combination was enough that we didn’t really need to take it anymore. Nobody noticed we were getting stronger, because we were very good at making sure we looked worse and worse as we felt better and better.”

  Her eyes ceased blinking, and the pure terror on her face was unavoidable. “After a typical day of work a few months before you showed up, Mother and I were talking about the horrible tastes and smells, and joking about how nobody in our community would have the persistence or courage to actually eat any of those things even they did work. And Mother said that whatever we might figure out, we should never share with Father or any of the others, because they were unworthy to develop the skills described by the Travelers and Father. Father walked by our window at the moment she said that, and heard her. That’s why he did it, that directive he heard her give me to never reveal anything I might learn. Father burst into our room — my room now — and hauled Mother into the courtyard and after his shouting drew a crowd, Father told everyone that she’d told me to never share anything I learned with anyone. He said that was against what we stood for. He said other things, but in the end, what matters is that he got the crowd so angry that they beat her until she stopped breathing.”

  Elizabeth looked at him. “She could have saved herself. She could have told them that we had figured it out, because at that moment they suspected nothing, thought she was speaking about a potential situation in the future. If she told them then what she knew, she would have lived. She didn’t. She had long since figured out what Father is truly like, something I took too long to understand. She knew that allowing him to have that information would be disastrous. And so she said nothing, and I lost my mother through her final attempt to hide my secret and save my worthless life.”

  She looked at the ground, took a deep breath, and continued. “I told Eva because I needed to believe in someone, and I needed someone to know who and what I truly am. She’s said nothing to anyone; well, she’s probably talked to you, but only because you figured everything out immediately. She’s the closest thing to a friend and a parent I’ve had since Mother died. And I don’t want her to suffer the fate Mother suffered. That
’s why I want to be a Trader, Will. I need to watch out for her, and be with her. She’s the only one who knows everything. If she goes… I don’t know that I’d care to live. It will mean that all of the decent people in this community besides you are gone, and Father will have won.

  “Father won’t let me die, but he will not spare others the same fate. If Eva… shows, or if I do… his rage will mean the death of someone. He’ll not let it be me, though. We need to keep Eva away from him as much as possible if she starts taking zirple, or she’ll be dead soon after.”

  XVII

  Finale

  Arthur moved to consolidate his power by working to ensure that the two people most likely to disrupt it had their credibility destroyed.

  The man spoke on many occasions about the fact that the Traders had no marketable skills, and relied upon the talents of others to earn their money. If the metal smiths and carpenters and weavers did not create any products, the Traders would have nothing to trade. Yet the skilled workers could, in fact, trade themselves and retain all of their profits, not just a portion. Why share anything with the Traders, Arthur asked, when all of the profits rightly belonged to those who created the products? With their growing zirple-enhanced skills, they’d be able to trade at a similar profit level; the Traders, meanwhile, who averaged winning the zirple lottery about once per month per Trader, would fall behind and have to beg others to hire them to perform chores to earn an income. If Eva and Will, potential threats to Arthur’s leadership role in the community, were begging for jobs, it would effectively destroy any such illusions of supplanting Arthur.

  Long forgotten was the first Trading mission Will participated in nearly three years earlier, where they’d generated massive financial gains for everyone, and the successive Trading missions in which ever-greater profits were derived. With the notable exception of Elizabeth and the Traders, everyone was dressed in finery and owned many changes of clothing and shoes, boots, silks, comfortable pillows and warm blankets for their rooms. A few had even purchased one of the few handmade books available in the era. They were able to read only after Will and Eva had taught them. When Will thought back to the wide availability of electronic books in his time, or even those which might be on his paper scroll computer, he could only marvel at the technological differences in the eras.

  Such advances were far from his mind now, as were the joyous exultations greeting their returns from Trading missions, for the villagers considered them a lower class of citizen now. The zirple was having its impact, slow though it might be, and with each passing day new members of the community boasted of feeling a small, strange warmth in their bodies, and of being better able to sense the thoughts and emotions of their neighbors. It had taken at least six months of zirple usage to achieve this development, however, and Will was able to tell that they were only able to read general intent, not precise thoughts.

  Still, it was enough development to most of them that they felt emboldened to adopt an air of superiority toward the “less skilled” among them. They’d avoid looking at the Traders, for they believed the Traders to be their inferiors now, chosen by nature through Arthur’s lottery to fall behind in developing these new abilities. Will thought that perhaps, in light of the wealth the Traders had brought to all of them, that there might be some compassion — and learned that the thought that his neighbors possessed compassion was a terrible mistake. Arthur had by now convinced everyone that the Traders had been skimming profits for years, taking advantage of the illiteracy of the majority of residents to claim lower profits in their trades than they’d actually earned. He noted the ease with which all of them had paid for Elizabeth’s services — and in the case of the newcomer Will, above-market rates at that — despite not having any product of their own to sell. Arthur ignored the fact that the Traders did not spend their earnings on ostentation or excess, and were thus able to afford the things they valued. Clearly, they must be stealing earnings from the truly talented in the community.

  It was no surprise to Will, then, that he, Eva, and the other Traders were jeered at as they gathered with the rest of the villagers and prepared to head out for a Trading mission. Arthur, as always, felt the need to address the entire community first, adding to the notion that nothing of any importance happened in this community without his blessing. “This, my friends, will be the last time a dedicated team of Traders will represent this community in neighboring towns and cities, siphoning from the hands of our skilled craftsmen profits that should rightfully go to those who make the goods, rather than those who merely deliver them.” Cheers rang out, and Will didn’t need his empathy skills to know that his neighbors were eying him with suspicion, certain that Will and the others had somehow hidden money from them, money rightfully theirs. Arthur turned to the Traders, who stood before the community in threadbare clothing, looking decidedly less excited about this Trading mission than any other since Will’s arrival. Will allowed his face to reflect an air of bafflement at Arthur’s statements. “We wish you well, our decidedly untalented brethren, you who eat our food and avail yourselves of our hospitality. May you find friendly faces in the town you elect to visit, and may you keep excellent records of all transactions. I truly hope that you don’t find your numbers in disagreement with ours.”

  After suppressing the desire to levitate everyone in the community in the air twenty feet — and then let them fall — Will felt a chill, as Arthur’s thoughts projected his way. Will, in turn, projected the plan he’d seen to Eva, and then to Elizabeth, who would join them for the first time. He means to alter their records of agreed-to pricing while we are gone; they will claim a higher percentage of profits than they are due.

  Eva’s face twitched into a brief smile. We can play that game as well. We shall simply ask for receipts written showing a lesser profit than actually agreed upon.

  No! Will’s telepathic response was sharp, and Eva winced. We cannot match a wrong with a wrong. That makes us no better than them.

  Elizabeth’s telepathic snort was incredibly loud to his telepathic ears. Will smiled.

  So what do you suggest, Will? Eva asked. We must find some way to get enough money to survive.

  The answer came from the newest Trader. Perhaps… perhaps we can earn our own monies, monies they cannot make any claim against. Elizabeth’s idea both surprising and welcome, for Will had been uncertain how to answer Eva’s question.

  Will’s own fleeting smile flashed. What do you mean?

  Father says we are untalented. I believe we have talents we can use to our financial advantage.

  The exchange was rapid, taking only a few seconds, and there was no obvious delay between the end of Arthur’s speech and the Traders making their final climb into the wagons. The gates were opened, and Eva led the group out with Elizabeth riding next to her, followed by Aldus, Matilda, Will, Eleanor, and Gerald. All six wagons were heavily burdened with the wares produced by the community over the preceding two weeks, and each wagon needed two horses to pull it along. The snows had melted in the springtime thaw, and the muddy paths and heavy wagons were a poor mix. Travel was very slow-going, but none of them had any particular interest in completing the journey quickly. They’d made only half their usual mileage when they stopped and made camp that evening.

  “We’re going to Richland again,” Eva said. “If this is to be our final mission together, I’d prefer to work among friends.”

  “Perhaps we can stay there longer than usual,” Elizabeth mused.

  Will was surprised. When he’d mentioned permanent escape before, Elizabeth had been angry at him, angry that he failed to understand that she needed to remain in her home village in order for her efforts at redeeming the community to take root. Perhaps, as she’d recognized that futility, she’d become concerned about her own mortality, rather than converting those uninterested in changing their ways.

  Seeing his confusion, Elizabeth elaborated upon her idea. “I’m not saying we should move there. But, rather than trading a
nd returning as quickly as we possibly can… why not stay there for an extended trip and make our own money, money not related to trading those goods on our wagons right now?” She scowled. “Father means to rob us of our share of the profit, probably because some of it would go to me. I don’t want any of you suffering for agreeing to take me along.”

  After Eva assured Elizabeth that they’d all be fine, Will addressed Elizabeth’s idea. “That’s an interesting idea. You’re right; there’s no reason we have to Trade in a rapid fashion. We’re typically gone about a week, but that’s with better traveling conditions than these, and that duration assumes that we only spend a day in the city. Why not stay there a week or two?”

  “We need money for that, Will,” Matilda noted. “Where do you suppose we might get enough to stay in Richland for that long?”

  Will shrugged. “I’ve saved up quite a bit. And we’ve quite a few friends in Richland, as Eva said. I imagine that if we tell them we’d like to stay a few weeks, we could negotiate an excellent deal. While we’re there, we look at other opportunities to make money. We still do our best work Trading, of course, but that’s subject to sharing with the others and will probably be forcibly changed, and not to our benefit. Let’s spend two weeks earning our own money. We’ll store our own earnings elsewhere, outside the village, before we return. In that fashion, even if Arthur manages to manipulate events to extract all profit from the trades away from us, we’ll still have money to survive.” He glanced at Elizabeth. “Even if that means we move somewhere else.”