Chapter 79:
And it was perfect.
Just picture it. Four elevators set against the curve of the wall, their golden doors inlaid with gold-plated squares stamped with reliefs of the first oppressor Sarana. Vek’s elevator doors opens up into the bay, the elevator bay, oh rock-god, how many times in an elevator bay had Vek been spat upon and struck and shoved and shamed? How many nightmares of Vek’s had taken place in an elevator bay? But now the bay belongs to the serfs, the whole damn floor belongs to the serfs and it’s a flaring senior Rajas House with living-wood caryatids of all the important queens crossing the floor marking the end of the bay and behind and through the caryatids is the bar room to the left and the dance room to the right and a hallway between them, all filled to bursting with serfs, serfs sitting on bar stools, serfs standing on nested tables in the dance room, serfs crowded against each other in the hallway between the two rooms, serfs leaning against the caryatids facing the elevators looking out into the bay and as for Vek, he’s joined them, he’s at the front right up against a dragged-in lacquered table, and yes, the table makes it hard to get in and out of the bay and up and down the elevators but it’s still easier than when it was checkpoints! And look, there’s Jethra, her face beaming bright, and it’s good to see even Hurez on the other side of her, and oh, Iolo from their squad is to Vek’s left, his smile wide enough to split his face as he pushes through the crowd to get to Vek, and then Iolo’s right there, next to him, and they can’t say anything to each other, can’t hear each other above the shouts and laughs and discourse all around, but it doesn’t matter, they’re both here to listen to a serf share his opinion and then hear another serf share hers and then another serf and on and on everyone getting to talk and share and think and choose.
Choose. Picture it. Getting to choose.
And oh! There’s a speaker up on the table now, her feet skidding against the varnish of the tabletop, and she’s calling out above the noise and the chatter and she’s talking about dorm rooms, how they need to be shared among the serfs and not among the regents and doctor-priests and oh, she’s being booed and someone is shouting, “The doctor-priests and regents are serfs!” and she’s shouting back, “They’ve lived in better places than us for all these years, if they were true serfs they wouldn’t be the first to scramble for even better places, they’d give up the dorms to us, the ones who’ve suffered the most!” and there are cheers, lots of cheers, cheers so loud that nobody can hear what she’s saying anymore and so she throws up her hands and someone helps her down and now it’s Iolo himself getting up on the table and he’s waving his hands and calling for quiet and just as the crowd begins to hush Iolo screams. “Kill all the Rajas! Kill all the Rajas!”
Kill all the Rajas?
Everyone is silent now. Everyone can hear Iolo speak. “Why are we feeding them? Why are we guarding them? We moved them out of their dorms into the barracks for what – to keep on serving and protecting them? My fellow serfs, it’s been eight diurnals, eight diurnals since the Uprising’s happened. What can you honestly say has changed?”
Vek can’t answer, he doesn’t know, he never knew Iolo could talk like this, he’d always been friendly to Vek but he’d always been quiet, soft-spoken, and now he’s standing up before a crowd and his face is shining and his words are striking Vek with the force of a blow, and he knows there’s an answer, he knows it was on one of Lady Nari’s exams, but he can’t remember it now, all he can feel is the sweeping emotion in his heart, all he can see is Iolo’s fist in the air, all he can hear is the cry being taken up to “Kill all the Rajas!” and Vek can’t help but wonder, why not?
***
“What do you mean, why not?” Zedid all but screeched at him. “Rock-god, Vek, you’re –” She grabbed his hand and yanked him down so they were both seated on her new Rajas bunk bed. It was as nice as Vek had expected, all sleek and downy comforters. “You’re practically Lady Nari’s favorite agent,” she hissed through her teeth. “And you’re telling me that what Iolo said today turned you into a Watcher?”
Vek blinked. “I’m her favorite agent?”
“Not the point right now, Vek.”
From the glare on Zedid’s face, it probably wasn’t, but still, Vek wasn’t about to ignore someone saying something like that! Or maybe he could. Yes, he totally could. “I didn’t say Iolo turned me into a Watcher,” Vek replied, trying desperately to remember what tenets of Watcherism Iolo had espoused. Weren’t Watchers all about the prophecies being fulfilled naturally? While Enablers – like Vek! – believed that you had to act to fulfill the prophecies? What did either have to do with keeping the Rajas around? “I said… I just said he had a point.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Watchers think we don’t need the Dome Ring, or queens anymore, that the bio-dome will work without them,” Zedid replied, still clearly outraged. “They think the birth of the Promised Daughter made the bio-dome into a self-sustaining structure. Come on, Vek, this was question #7 on the 4th exam!”
Vek didn’t remember that, but he did remember that Zedid had an uncanny ability to recall exactly what was asked and where in each of Lady Nari’s exams. “You know I don’t have every single test question memorized like you do. I just remember some of the answers, the ones that are important.”
“But this was important!”
Vek put his hand on Zedid’s shoulder. “Look, I’m the one Lady Nari goes to when she needs someone to go jump into something. You’re the one she goes to when she needs someone to write up another exam. Fair?”
“Fine, fine,” Zedid said, rolling her eyes. “Just don’t say that kind of thing out loud, it looks bad for Lady Nari to have her agents going around saying that the Watchers make sense. It’s bad enough that Iolo is doing it, and he’s nobody, just another one of her patronees.”
“Yeah, but nobody knows that I’m one of her agents,” Vek countered. “So it can’t look that bad.”
Zedid gave him a coy glance, then got up. Vek followed her out of the bunk. Everyone else had already left for breakfast; the other five beds were empty. One of them technically belonged to Vek but he’d been busy lately and had been falling asleep in random lounges. He liked this dorm, though. It had heavy duty blackout curtains currently doing a great job of blocking out the last of daysleep’s light, not to mention its chifforobe was stuffed with truly excellent Rajas clothing. One good thing about routing all the Rajas out of their dorms during daysleep was that most of them had been in their sleeping clothes. They’d left all their day clothes behind. Which was why Vek was at that very moment wearing white pantaloons and a purple-and-gold brocade zip shirt. Not the most comfortable outfit, maybe, but that wasn’t the point.
“So,” Zedid said, the coy look still on her face. “It turns out word is coming out about who Lady Nari’s agents are. I don’t know who started sharing, but both our names are out there.”
Vek was confused by Zedid’s obvious glee. “Isn’t that… isn’t that a bad thing?”
“Well, before the Uprising it would have been bad, but it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? I mean, it means you and I and our friends, like Leem and Seone, will finally get recognized for what we did before the Uprising. I mean, not that I care about that, of course,” Zedid added hastily. “What matters is the Uprising itself. But still. It’ll be nice not to have to hide it anymore. To have people, you know, maybe, thank us.”
What Zedid was saying didn’t sound very anti-casteist. And although he supposed it might be nice to not have to hide anymore that he was an agent, Vek wasn’t sure he wanted attention for it either. He hadn’t always done the nicest things before the Uprising. Not that anyone who cared about the Uprising would care, true. But he still didn’t really want it to come to light how many fingers he’d broken along the way. What if someone recognized him? Oh, so, it was you, Vek, Lady Nari’s agent, who attacked me in the Temple…
Vek was spared from having to come up with a response by a knock on the door. He went quickly to open it. “Anzana!” he said, opening the door wider. “Come in, come in.”
Anzana stepped in. She glanced around and nodded a greeting to Zedid. “I have a telegraph for you,” she told Vek.
“What does it say?” Vek asked, taking the envelope from her. Wait, it wasn’t open? All telegraphs for Vek were addressed and sent to Anzana so that nobody could trace them to Vek directly. She always opened them first – she had to, to make sure they were for Vek and not for herself or someone else. But this one wasn’t open, and it also had his name and handle scrawled across the sealed flap.
Vek broke the seal and pulled out the telegraph paper. Holding both the paper and the envelope in his pinkyless hand, he went and yanked open with his other hand the blackout curtain. There, by the window, he read the serf letters on the page. He frowned. “What are –”
“Don’t tell us,” Anzana said quickly.
“Huh?”
“Don’t tell us what it says.”
“I –” Vek hesitated, then nodded. Anzana was right. Even if apparently everyone and her sister was discovering that he was one of Lady Nari’s agents, that didn’t mean they had to know about his new position as an interrogator. He would find out what the crypts were – and who Op was – on his own.