There’s a ripple of unease, only for Tomas to step forward.
‘I’ll stay,’ he says firmly. ‘I’m near enough sixty, anyway. I’d like to be of service, if I can.’
‘I’ll stay,’ volunteers Hossein.
‘And me,’ hollers Katia.
‘And me.’
‘Me.’
‘Me.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ cries Thea, watching every villager volunteer. ‘Why would you die to save a murderer?’
‘Because otherwise we’d be the ones killing him,’ points out Magdalene, holding her son, Sherko, by the shoulders. ‘Kindness first, always,’ she adds.
‘We’ve made our decision, Thea,’ says Emory. ‘We’re asking you to abide by it. No more killing, not for any reason.’
Thea snorts in disbelief.
‘And what will you do with Hephaestus? Have you considered that?’
‘We’ll ask him to work,’ says Seth gruffly. ‘He’ll grow his own food, and find a hobby, just like us. There’s a lot he can teach us. He’ll be of service.’
‘He’ll kill you. Every one of you.’
Their certainty wavers, but every face looks to Emory for strength. Her eyes never leave Thea’s.
‘This is what we’ve decided,’ she repeats.
‘You’re all mad,’ says Thea, hurling up her arms in exasperation. She considers another argument, but their expressions tell her quite clearly that she’s flinging rocks into the sun.
‘Fine, if that’s what you want, we’ll make our home in the cauldron garden, but you’ll have to live with me telling you how wrong you were.’ She blows out a defeated breath. ‘Tell me everything and I’ll talk to Hephaestus. This will go better for all of us if he learns the truth from me.’
SEVENTY
Hephaestus’s head rocks forward, his eyes fluttering awake. He’s in the school, lying on the floor, a pool of saliva sticking his cheek to the dirty floor. Rain is drumming against the roof, ropes severed around him.
‘What time is it?’ he asks, pushing himself up.
‘A little after 9.30 a.m.,’ says Thea, from behind him.
He twists to find her perched on the edge of Niema’s desk, turning a mourning lantern around her hands, the memory extractor sitting on a Bible with a note sticking out between the pages. She’s watching him with a mixture of pity and anger, like he’s a tiger with a broken back.
None of this makes sense. How did he get here? He vaguely remembers chasing Emory, and then … he groans.
‘What did she hit me with?’
‘Prumulla,’ replies Thea. ‘You should count your blessings. If there’d been any more left at the lighthouse, you’d have slept for three days.’
Rain is slanting in through the door, soaking the desks at the rear of the classroom. It’s hammering down from a sky that’s bruised black, purple and green. Lightning is striking the balconies on the barracks, followed by thunder loud enough to shake the tiles from roofs.
He drags himself to his feet, feeling like he’s wearing his brain on the outside of his skull. The world is spinning, and he immediately falls sideways into the wall.
‘I have to …’
‘Silence Emory?’ she interrupts, putting down the mourning lantern. ‘Don’t bother. I already know about the experiments, and the bodies in the infirmary. She’s already told me everything you’ve been doing for Niema.’ Her cheeks flush red. ‘You lied to me about Blackheath and Ellie. I asked you to your face, and you lied.’
‘I had to.’
‘Why?’ Her voice cracks, the betrayal unfathomable.
‘Because if you had access to your old equipment, you’d have destroyed the fog by now,’ he admits wretchedly. ‘And then you’d have released the humans before we’d fixed them.’
‘Fixed?’ she repeats incredulously. ‘And what gives you the authority to decide what that looks like?’
‘Survival,’ he replies grimly.
His eyes drift to the memory extractor. He fixed it last night, and left it in Thea’s lab. There’s no reason for her to have brought it here unless …
‘It was me, wasn’t it?’ he says, deflated. ‘I killed Niema.’
‘Emory worked it out.’
‘How?’
‘The stab wound on Niema’s chest was at an unusual height,’ she says, miming it on her own body. ‘I’ll confess I didn’t think much of it, but when Emory found Hui, she noticed that she’d been injured in a similar place on the sternum. The two injuries matched the wound you gave Emory, last night. For anybody else to do that they’d have needed to hold the knife up near their shoulders, but you’re so much taller than everybody else.’
More thunder rolls across the sky, the mechanical clock rattling in the spire.
‘I can’t believe nearly dying was the clue she needed,’ he says, sighing. ‘Why did I do it?’
Thea hands him the Bible that Emory took from Niema’s dorm room. The letter his mother wrote to him, but never finished is sticking out between the pages. He reads it slowly until his eyes catch on the 5:5 scribbled on the back.
He laughs bitterly, scrunching it into a ball and tossing it into a puddle.
‘You know the reference?’ asks Thea.
‘It’s from the Bible,’ he confirms. ‘It’s Matthew. The meek shall inherit the earth. She was giving everything to the crums, wasn’t she?’
‘Seems that way,’ admits Thea. ‘The night she died, Niema tried to implant Abi in another human, but it didn’t work. Emory thinks that was the final straw. Niema had grown fond of the villagers and decided to give the world to the species she could control, rather than the one she couldn’t.’
‘They’re just things,’ he exclaims angrily. ‘It’s like leaving the world to your toys. What was she thinking?’
‘Before you murdered her, Niema brought Hui onstage to perform. We’ve always thought the villagers were unable to create anything original, but Hui had been composing a piece of music that was truly remarkable. I suspect Niema saw it as proof of evolution. Emory believes that you lost your temper, snatched the knife out of her daughter’s hand and attacked Hui. Unfortunately, your mother was standing right next to her.’
‘Are you telling me all of this happened because of a song?’
‘Not entirely. There were two smashed syringes in the exercise yard, and supplies had been delivered to Blackheath, and the cauldron garden. Once Hui’s performance failed to convince us of Niema’s plan, Emory believes that she ordered the villagers to restrain us, while she injected us with the prumulla. She’d made enough to keep us under for days, long enough for the fog to cover the island.’
‘She was imprisoning us?’
‘And giving Blackheath to the villagers to judge by the amount of supplies stored down there.’
‘What use would that place be to them? They can barely tie their own shoes.’
‘You’re forgetting that Niema left a memory gem behind. If it hadn’t been destroyed, they would have had an instruction manual for every piece of equipment down there. Emory thinks that Adil was supposed to deliver it, but his rage got the better of him. He ended up smashing it instead. It was probably as close as he could come to killing the woman he hated.’
Hephaestus balls his fists, wishing his mother had let him kill Adil when they had the chance. She always was too deferent to Abi’s advice. He warned her over and over again that leaving Adil alive was a bad idea.
‘Did Emory have an explanation for why Niema wiped our memories, or how her body ended up in the warehouse with her head caved in?’ he asks, as another blast of thunder rattles the desks.
Thea shrugs, tapping the memory extractor. ‘She’s still trying to piece that together, but we’ll have our answers after we’ve put this on you,’ she says, lowering her voice slightly in case Emory’s lurking somewhere nearby. ‘We need a confession and an execution to stop the fog. This will give us both.’