BACK ON THE main island, Gismonde’s armored entourage crept up West Drive toward Transverse Road, making its way along the far edge of the Great Lawn refugee camp. Sonor Breece sat beside Gismonde in the plush rear seat. The driver was moving so slowly that children felt bold enough to approach the vehicle. The tinted one-way windows kept them from seeing in, but Gismonde could definitely see out. And even through the bulletproof glass and armor plating, he could hear their high-pitched chatter.
“Filth,” muttered Breece, staring out at the crowd on his side.
The bodyguard in the front seat bristled as small hands began pounding on the doors and hood of the vehicle. He raised his short-stocked automatic weapon.
“No,” said Gismonde. “Not today.” The car rolled forward. The windows were like picture frames filled with dirty, hungry faces. Gismonde closed his eyes.
A young boy in a gold robe stood in the opening of a high stone window, looking down. In the distance, snow-capped mountains loomed over flat steppes.
Below the window, a mob of peasants pressed against the high metal gates of the palace compound. The peasants looked skeletal and desperate. They spotted the boy in the window and began to shout at him in fury, hurling stones in his direction.
“Food!” they cried out. “Feed us!”
A young woman in a colorful gown snatched the boy from the window as a rock shattered against the ledge. Below, the force of the mob bent the gates down far enough for the boldest to climb over. Within seconds, the whole crowd spilled across the manicured courtyard, trampling flower beds and splashing through koi-filled ponds.
In the high-ceilinged chamber behind the stone window, the woman pulled the boy to a safe spot, out of sight from the mob. She brushed his fine black hair back from his face. There was fear in the boy’s eyes, and he could read it in hers, too. The woman reached into her pocket and pulled out a small glass vial.
“I’m sorry we can’t both live,” the woman said softly, “but if it has to be one, it must be you.”
She put the vial to the boy’s lips. He drank in the warm liquid. The boy’s eyelids fluttered, then closed. He fell limply into the woman’s arms. The sounds of the crowd had moved from the courtyard to the stone-lined corridors below. It was like an angry hum, rising up the staircase now. The woman moved quickly to the far end of the room, carrying her son.
With one hand, she lifted a wooden shelf. But it was not actually a shelf. A lever.
A section of the stone wall opened. Inside was a small chamber with a child-size bed, covered in thick velvet. The woman laid the boy down and smoothed his hair against the pillow. She stepped out and lowered the shelf back into position. The door swung closed.
The woman heard the pounding of a hundred footsteps in the hall outside, then rhythmic, heavy ramming against the door. She backed against the wall. As the door splintered in the middle, rough hands wrenched it off its hinges. The door fell with a loud bang onto the stone floor.
Inside his secret chamber, the boy’s chest rose and fell slowly. He was unconscious now, beyond hearing, oblivious to his mother’s final screams. It would be many years before he woke again. And when he did, he would be hungry too. For many things.
“Have a beautiful day!”
Gismonde was startled by the loud sound of his own voice. The driver had switched on the vehicle’s PA system, broadcasting the recording from powerful speakers concealed behind the armor.
“And you as well!” came the reply from the crowd outside.
“Have a beautiful day,” Gismonde’s voice repeated as the vehicle moved forward.
“And you as well” came the response from a new section of the crowd.
The pattern of call and response went on, repeated every few seconds or so, as the entourage moved through the masses.
Breece looked over at Gismonde.
“You will have the poor with you always,” he muttered with a sneer.
“Who said that?” asked Gismonde.
“Jesus,” Breece responded, “the Nazarene.”
Gismonde remembered the man, of course, just not all of his pithy sayings.
“Jesus was naive,” said Gismonde, looking out the window at the multitude. “Even ‘always’ has its limits.”