‘HESTIA, WHAT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?’ Rhoad said. ‘I am not running a campaign on merit. Nothing is about merit in this world. It’s about stories. And what sort of story does it tell when the daughter of a candidate for the Chancellorship rolls her eyes behind him while he is giving a speech?’
‘I wasn’t rolling my eyes.’
‘A photographer was there, Hestia. The one photograph of me addressing the people, on the front of newspapers across the Collective, and what is in the background? My loving family? No. My slightly intoxicated wife and my daughter rolling her eyes.’
‘I think Mother looks nice. You can’t tell she’s intoxicated unless you know that she tilts a bit to the left after she’s been drinking.’
‘Hestia.’
‘What do you want me to say? That I’ll sit behind you with a prim smile and white gloves, gazing adoringly at you, every time there is a camera in the audience?’
‘I don’t think you understand what is on the line here. It isn’t just my campaign. It’s the future of the Collective. You want to live in some backward country all your life? Or do you want to be part of moving the world forward?’
Elwyn thought this was as good a time as any to open the door. Cronus Rhoad looked slightly purple with exasperation, running a hand through neatly combed hair that was coming undone. Hestia stood in the centre of the room, feet planted, jaw set. She looked different than the first time Elwyn saw her. She had seemed sweet with her goat, but now defiance was her crowning trait; she inhabited every inch of herself the way small, strong creatures tend to do, the bees and the hummingbirds. The tips of her fingers, the ends of her hair were alive with an intensity that most people never reached, not even in their marrow.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said to Elwyn.
Rhoad now turned, looking calmer, but no more welcoming. ‘Explain yourself,’ he said. ‘Who are you and what business do you have in my house?’
‘I’m Elwyn, and—’
‘It’s the goat boy. The boy who brought back Willoughby,’ Hestia said curtly. Her eyes, bright as a cat’s and yellow-flecked, were scrutinising him.
‘Well, what is he doing here?’ Rhoad said, taking a bracing sip from his drink.
‘I’m not a boy. I’m sixteen. And I’m here for a job.’
Rhoad put a manicured hand to his temple. ‘You come into my private residence, unannounced, uninvited, and ask me to give you a job? Do you have any idea who I am?’
‘You’re Cronus Rhoad. I tried the front door, but your… that old woman wouldn’t let me through.’
‘Out,’ was Rhoad’s answer, turning his back to Elwyn.
‘I can’t—’
‘Out.’
‘I can’t go until you give me a job,’ Elwyn said.
‘Out,’ Rhoad said calmly, but his face was purpling again, and his lean height seeming to stretch taller. Then Hestia turned to the window.
‘What is that sound?’ she said. And despite the situation, they all quieted for a moment, because a noise could be heard beyond them, a sound outside the open windows, distant yelling. They went to look out and from their high, hilltop perch they could see the town square below filling with red-hooded figures.
‘Hestia, stay here while I find out what’s going on,’ her father said. But Hestia was already out of the room and heading to the front door. Elwyn followed her, something in her drawing him. He felt a dangerous thrill, and instinctively reached into his pocket where he still kept his old sling. He had been taught since birth to always heed that instinct, to never be unprepared.
‘Hestia!’ Rhoad called out from the front door. ‘Come back. Get inside.’
But she was running, and Elwyn started running, too, as they went over the river bridge. He didn’t want to stop her, he just wanted to be there with her, to see what she saw. People from Liberty gathered in the park along the river – near enough to see the protest, far enough to feel safe. There was curiosity in their whispers, but more than that, there was fear, a fear Elwyn didn’t understand.
It was nearing evening and the sun was getting lower, emblazoning the red of the protesters’ cloaks and masks. There was something thrilling in the sound they made, in the red they wore. Elwyn and Hestia reached the group of protesters that was huddled around the town hall. They heard mutterings that someone inside had closed and bolted the doors. Elwyn caught a glimpse of his uncle behind the curtains in the hall window.
‘This is the county seat, not just for the rich, but for all of us. We demand to talk to the people who signed these orders,’ cried a man at the front of the mob. He stood on the steps and lifted his arms, igniting a roar through the crowd. The voice was familiar, but Elwyn didn’t have time to place it. Hestia had disappeared, swallowed up as if by a great red shouting mouth.
Elwyn followed into a chaos of bumping and shouting that vibrated with life like a nest of field ants. The sound and the smell of the crowd – dew and campfire – filled Elwyn. His adrenalin was high as he pushed his way through, searching. He could hear Hestia’s father’s voice calling her name, just barely audible over the noise. But soon all other sounds were drowned out by the chanting of the crowd: ‘Our lands, our plans! Our lands, our plans!’
People joined the man at the top of the city hall’s steps. They pushed on the doors, and someone grabbed a large stick and began to bash the windows in. Elwyn couldn’t hear the sound of them breaking, but he could feel it through the ground, like he felt the vibrations of the horses’ hooves nearing in the stones below his feet. Between the jostle of people, Elwyn could see Cronus Rhoad climbing the steps of the city hall. Protesters were ramming the door. Rhoad seemed to be trying to say something, but like everything else, it couldn’t be heard. The rattles and drums and horse sounds of the local militia joined the cacophony just as the doors to the city hall broke. The red people pushed in.
Elwyn stood on a bench, finally spotting Hestia’s auburn hair in the sea of surging red. But from his perch, he saw something else, too. As the militia closed in, one of the people cloaked in red pulled out a revolver. He raised it above his head and shot it straight into the air, shouting something inaudible. Meanwhile the Hill people in the city hall were dragged out. Timothy was first, tears slicking his pink face as he was forced to stand. Elwyn’s stomach churned.
The revolver was no longer aimed at the sky. It was aimed at Elwyn’s uncle. And Elwyn, without stopping to think, grabbed a rock and put it into his sling. Within seconds, the stone was flying through the air towards the hand that held the gun, and hit it perfectly. The weapon fired as it dropped. Elwyn could hear a yell and saw Rhoad crumple as the misfired gun lodged a bullet in his foot.
Hestia ran to her father. Elwyn tried to follow, but between them the militia was beating the protesters. They fled, many with darker red stains on their red clothes. But as they ran, one of them stopped in front of Elwyn; the eyes, barely visible through the holes in the cloak, were wide.
‘Elwyn. What are you doing here? Whose side are you on?’
But a militiaman came towards them, and the person who spoke to Elwyn vanished into the chaos of the crowd. Elwyn was kicked in the head – by who, he never saw – and collapsed on the ground. As he fell, it was the sound of the man’s voice that echoed in his head, a voice as familiar as it was unplaceable in the mayhem that surrounded him.