“We’re being watched,” Lewis says. “But there’s no one there.”
Every day he asks Gawea to tell him more — about Oregon, about Burr — but she no longer wishes to talk. “Just wait and see,” she says. Or “It won’t be long now.” Or sometimes she says nothing at all.
He tries not to feel bothered by this. York’s death did something to her. She has regressed, grown guarded and reserved again, as if contained by her own personal wall, not wanting to let anyone get close. Sometimes her eyes look like black puddles that with a blink will go streaming down her cheeks. He hopes time will heal her, bring back the girl they were just getting to know.
Chapter 43
SLADE IS TIRED of clearing paths through the whores and beggars on the streets, shoving aside those bone-thin and swollen-bellied and bent-kneed rabble who ask him for money, for food, for water, for a fuck that might come with a favor. He is tired of people speaking to him with voices that range only between pleading and accusatory. He is tired of the blinding sun. He is tired.
So he goes where no one can bother him, to his windowless basement room, where the shadows are as deep and cooling as water. Here he keeps company with his dummies. He walks among them, the mannequins with cracked faces and glued-on hair and torn fingernails and the patchwork ensemble he gathered gradually for all of them. One was Jillian, a baker’s daughter, whose hair smelled like flour and whose breasts reminded him of mounds of dough. Another was Becca, the sister of one of his deputies, who liked to whistle when she walked, like a little bird beckoning him. And Manda and Ankeny. And now Ella — so fierce — his favorite so far.
His ears still buzz with the noise of the city — his mind still aches with the brightness of the day — but if he closes his eyes and stands as still as his dummies and breathes deeply through his mouth, he feels like he is drinking in peace, filling himself with a cool, blue calm.
Every day, he enlists more deputies. But he has no illusions about their loyalty. They are devoted only to the food and water that come with the job. And though a man with a weapon and a uniform is worth five without, his police force is outnumbered many times over. The Sanctuary could be overtaken, if only people weren’t so afraid. He must keep them that way, as a manager and profiteer of terror.
The other day, when he was walking without an escort through the Fourth Ward — a collection of deteriorating buildings full of cutthroats, gamblers, whores — someone hurled a bag of filth at him. It exploded against his chest and then plopped to the ground. He stood there a moment, incredulously wiping his hands through the oozing smear, before looking around and noticing the streets crammed with crook-mouthed, thin-eyed people who studied him with a collective ferocity that made him feel, for the first time in his life, small. He hurried away, knowing that they might be seconds away from swarming him. For all his administration, Thomas has relied on the enemy beyond the walls, but he must worry now about the enemy within them.
If Thomas knew about Ella, she would be dead. And if Ella were anyone else, Slade would have killed her himself. But so many months ago, when he first questioned her in the museum, he immediately noted her as a favorite, like a special passage earmarked in a book. It was a feeling he knew well — the same spark of recognition he experienced around Jillian and Becca and Manda and Ankeny. His gallery of favorites.
He can harm her. He can harm anyone. He has the power to accuse strangers, beat them senseless, cuff them and noose them, with nothing in the way of consequence except more hatred directed his way. He is omnipotent. And omnipotence comes with boredom. That is why the Greek gods used to assume human form. To play with stakes that at least felt more real. He likes to play. He likes reducing himself to a kind of suitor.
Of course she knew something about Lewis departing the Sanctuary. Of course he would communicate with her by owl. Of course she was responsible for the rabble-rousing graffiti. That was one of the reasons she was a favorite. Because she wasn’t a common fool like so many others, but a worthy adversary, a mind sprung with claws. Which made it his job to tame her, cow her.
He follows her sometimes. Through the sun-soaked streets, the cluttered aisles of the bazaar, not because he believes he will learn anything professionally valuable, but simply to make a study of her. He likes the way she marches instead of walks, always square shouldered. He likes the way she bargains with people — pointing a finger and setting her mouth — and the way she touches whatever interests her — a carved door, an overripe melon, a one-armed doll — lets her finger linger as if to taste.
This morning, after she collected her daily ration of water, he followed her back to the museum, trailing her like a shadow. She sensed him only when she keyed open her door, and by then it was too late. She turned in time to see him shove her inside.
Her jug fell and the cap spun off and the water glug-glug-glugged across the floor, and for a moment that was the only sound besides their breathing as he rammed her up against the wall with a palm cupping her shoulder, a thumb horning her clavicle.
Then he said, in a calm, quiet voice that hardly paused between words, “You stupid girl. You stupid, stupid girl. You think I don’t know about what you’ve been up to. You think you can go on pretending you’re not a part of what’s happening. Let me tell you something. Let me give you a little lesson. Some believe love is the most powerful of all emotions. But that’s just a nice lie people tell themselves. Terror wins. Terror beats love any day. No emotion can control a crowd, can imprint itself so fully onto the human mind. You run this museum, so you know all about this, don’t you? You know about how this country — if you can call it that, a country — has been held hostage by terrorism? The bombing of Pearl Harbor, the assassination of JFK, the terrorist attacks of September eleventh. Yes, I know a thing or two. I’m not as mindless as some people think. Those stories — of long ago and far away — might not seem real. But they happened. And when they happened, they owned everyone. They paralyzed everyone. By the millions. That’s what terror can do. That’s what I can do. To you. And to this city.”
He let her go then and stepped back and the last of her water hiccuped from the jug.
She rubbed her chest where his arm had been. “You’re a no-good bully. And you’re wrong.”
He laughed then. He couldn’t help himself. He outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds. He could crush her like a cockroach. But she would not flinch. She had such fight to her. “Oh, do tell. How am I wrong?”
“It’s like this. Terror might make someone kill, but love will make someone die. People die for love. They would give up anything for love, even their life. And don’t you see, that’s a denial of the most basic of all human instincts: survival.”
Her eyes wander away from his and seem to zero in on something, but when he turns, there is only an empty doorway. “What were you looking at?”