CHAPTER 23

A Hole in the Heart

“TELL ME SOMETHING, old boys . . .”

Cyril was soaking in a warm tub. Guts and I were glowering in the room’s two comfy chairs, trying not to stare at him.

He had hair on his chest. A lot of it. I didn’t know you could get that kind of chest hair by sixteen. Or “three months short of seventeen,” or whatever he was.

“Why do you despise me?” he asked us.

I didn’t even know where to start. And it didn’t seem like a good idea to answer him. I was still a little shaken up by how easily he’d squashed both me and Guts at the same time.

“Wot’s ‘despise’?” Guts asked.

“‘Hate,’ my friend.” Cyril tilted his head back, rinsing the soap from his long, pretty-like-a-girl hair. “I mean, it’s rather mystifying. We’ve only just met. And we’re all playing for the same team, as it were. So what have I done to get on your wrong side?”

“Moved in on his girlie,” said Guts.

“Guts—!” It was the last thing I wanted Cyril to hear.

Too late. The handsome ape’s eyebrows sprang up as he gave me the kind of look that made me want to slug him all over again.

“Ahhhh . . . Suddenly, it all makes sense. Did you and Millicent have some kind of fling?”

I stared at the floor, trying to figure out how to convince my face not to turn red.

“Not—I—just, no—nothing.” The whole Lothar the Lone, stiff-and-formal thing wasn’t working out at all.

“My friend, I am terribly sorry. I had no idea she was spoken for.”

He didn’t look sorry.

Cyril got up from the tub, grabbing a fluffy towel to dry off his ridiculously tall, muscular body. Then he wrapped the towel around his waist and used a second one to dry his hair as he asked, “How old are you?”

“I’m a . . . bit short of fourteen,” I said. It was more than a bit. It was nine months at least. I tried to sit up straight so I looked taller.

“Ah! A younger man.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Millicent’s fourteen and change, isn’t she?” He was putting on a pair of trousers from the luggage that had just been delivered to the room. They were, as I could have guessed without even a glance at them, very fine trousers.

“Well, look, my friend—if that’s what this is all about, it’s out of our hands, isn’t it?”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“I mean, you can’t dictate what’s in a woman’s heart. Or a man’s, for that matter . . . Until I came back from school this last time, I’d never thought of Millicent as anything more than a sort of little sister. It was quite a surprise to discover she’d blossomed into such a fetching young lady . . .”

He paused, three buttons still left unfastened on his silk shirt, and stared off into space with the sort of smirk that made it hard for me not to leap up and take another swing.

But I still hurt in about four different places from the last time I’d tried that.

“And that spunk!” Cyril went on. “Of course, some men might be put off by her outspokenness. Threatened, I suppose. Personally, I find it rather captivating . . .”

He kept smiling at nothing for a few more seconds. Then he shook his head, like he was snapping himself out of it, and gave a little chuckle.

“My point is—if you’re the man for Millicent, there’s not a thing I can do to change her mind. And vice versa.”

“Wot’s that mean?” Guts wanted to know.

“‘Vice versa’? Means the other way around.” Cyril finished buttoning his shirt and walked over to me with that stupid grin still on his face.

“Look, there’s no point in us getting bent out of shape with each other. It’s all up to Millicent. What say we leave it to her, and agree to be friends regardless of how the chips fall?”

He stuck his hand out. I almost didn’t shake it, but then I realized this was my chance to make up for the last handshake.

I got him by the middle of his fingers, the same way he’d grabbed mine back at the jail. Then I squeezed, hard enough that his smirk disappeared for a moment.

At least I could feel good about that.

CYRIL HAD JUST GOTTEN his boots on and was yammering about a “spot of lunch” when there was a knock at the door.

Guts answered it. It was Millicent. When I saw her step into the room, my heart started to thump.

“Hello, darling,” Cyril said in a chipper voice.

“Hi.”

But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at me.

“Can I talk to you? Alone?”

I followed her into the hallway. It was empty except for the two of us.

Her hair was freshly washed, and when she turned toward me to speak, she tucked a lock of it behind her ear in that cute way that always made my stomach flutter. There were heavy circles under her big brown eyes, and a few red blemishes mixed in with the freckles that dotted her nose and cheekbones, but they didn’t make her look any less beautiful.

“I’m sorry I was cross with you before,” she began. “Kira told me how much you’ve done”—she was staring into my eyes, which made it hard to focus on what she was saying—“and what you’ve been through. And I know how much you care about me.” She took a deep breath. “And I care about you, too.”

Then why do you look so sad?

“When I thought you were dead . . . that he’d killed you . . .” Her eyes darted away, and she let out a little shuddering sigh.

“It was awful,” she whispered, staring down at nothing. She looked heartbroken.

“I’m not dead,” I said. “I’m right here.”

“I know.” She met my eyes again and tried to smile.

But she couldn’t quite manage it.

Something was wrong.

“Millicent . . . Whatever happened between you and—”

“No,” she interrupted. “Don’t. Please—”

“Don’t what?” I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice.

“Do you know how long—?” She stopped herself, then tried to start over. “But it doesn’t—it’s not just—the thing is . . .”

Her whole face was scrunched up in frustration. She couldn’t get a sentence out.

I’d never seen that happen before.

“It’s complicated,” she said finally.

Kira’s words from yesterday came out of my mouth almost as fast as they popped into my head.

“No, it isn’t,” I said. “It’s very simple.”

She started shaking her head again.

“It’s not—”

“It is!” I knew I shouldn’t be getting angry. But I couldn’t help it.

“Egg, please don’t—”

“Just tell me: him or me?”

“It’s not—”

“Him or me?”

“Nobody!” In an instant, all my anger got sucked away from me, to burn in the furnace that lit up behind her eyes.

“Savior’s sake,” she seethed, “can’t you see we’ve got more important things to deal with? It doesn’t matter what, or who—”

“I have to know!” I said. “I have to!”

“Have to know what?” she demanded. “What’s in my heart?”

She said heart with a little snarl, like she was mocking me.

“Yes!”

She glared at me for a long moment. When she finally spoke, the words came out trembling and tight.

“What’s in my heart . . . is a black, rotten hole. Because my whole life . . . everything in it . . . was built on a lie. And an evil one. And nobody—nobody!—will lift a finger to fix it! Not the Governor, not the soldiers, not one single stupid person back on Sunrise—even my mother! Who, when she finally admits to herself, after all these years, the truth of what he’s been doing up there in that mine—all she can think to do is run! To sail off to Rovia, and stick our heads in a box, and pretend that as long as we’re not part of it anymore, it isn’t our fault!”

Millicent’s eyes were welling up with angry tears. But behind the tears, that furnace was still burning. “But it IS. If we walk away, with our fine clothes and our porcelain plates, that we bought with HIS slave money—and we don’t do a blasted thing to stop it—we’re as bad as he is.”

She pressed the heel of her palm into her eye, wiping away the tears. “I don’t care if I have to do it myself. I’m going to get those slaves out of that mine. And until I do, nothing else matters. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“Will you help me?” she asked.

“Of course I will.”

And I meant it. It wasn’t until hours later, when I was lying in bed, unable to sleep for all the thoughts racing in my head about how difficult and dangerous it’d be trying to free those slaves, that a little part of me—a cynical, ugly part I didn’t much like—decided it was a neat trick she’d pulled. In less than a minute, she’d managed to quash my anger, shut down any questions about whether she favored me or Cyril, make me feel selfish for even thinking about it, and guarantee there was no chance I’d waver in my determination to help her.

But like I said, that was hours later. At the time, all I could do was agree without a second’s hesitation.

She hugged me—not an “I love you” hug, but a “thanks for sticking with me even if it gets us killed” hug—and when she broke the clinch, I had just one question.

“How are we going to do it?”

“That’s something we should talk about,” she said, which was as close as Millicent ever came to admitting she hadn’t the slightest idea.