Crewel (22 page)

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I knew you could do it, but I had no idea
you
knew.’

‘It was a happy accident,’ I say. I’m instantly drawn back to the stolen moments spent with Jost in my room. I look away so she won’t see me blush.

‘Are you leading with your left hand?’ she asks.

I pause and consider the question. ‘I don’t honestly know. We were taught to lead with our right on the loom, so I don’t think so. Does it make a difference?’

‘You’re left-handed,’ she says. ‘Crewelers always are. It allows us not to be constrained by the forward motion of time. That’s what helps us catch it.’

‘Should I always use my left hand?’ I ask, flexing my left hand’s fingers now and staring at them in wonder.

‘No.’ Loricel shakes her head. ‘It’s very powerful. If you can warp with your right hand, or using both hands at the same time, it’s much safer until you’ve truly honed your ability. The fact that you can warp without starting with the left is impressive. But be careful.’

‘Okay,’ I say, inhaling deeply.

‘There’s something else you have to understand about warping,’ she explains, holding out a hand in warning. ‘Yes, it pauses the moment around you. But it also puts you on a different time line. Within the warp, you can live a whole life.’

‘Can I die there?’ I ask. Would wasting away slowly with Jost be better than a quick, painless remap? I’d be dead either way.

‘Yes.’

‘And I would be dead everywhere – in the warp
and
in the real world?’

‘Yes,’ she says emphatically.

‘But the world outside,’ I say, biting my lip slightly in concentration, ‘is locked in that moment.’

‘That’s what you have to understand,’ Loricel says, leaning toward me. ‘Only the moment where you’ve caught the time is frozen. Essentially you’ve created a field of safety. The time and matter around it is frozen and no one can enter it. But merely in the immediate area where you’ve warped the weave.’

‘Outside that, time continues?’

‘Yes. And eventually the Guild would be able to break through your warp, but it would take a while.’

It’s a warning not to put too much faith in my happy little bubble. It can only keep me safe for so long and certainly not long enough to make much difference.

‘Can you move backwards along the time line of the warp?’ I ask, my voice filled with hope.

‘You already know the answer to that,’ she says, shaking her head sadly. ‘You can’t turn back time. We can harvest it, and stop it in the mining fields, but the time lines always move forward.’

‘Then Earth?’ I prompt.

She sits back in her seat and clasps her hands in her lap. ‘There are dead spots in the mining locations where the coventries rest. These are where we capture the time and elements for Arras. The drills create warps in those locations that freeze the Earth around them.’

‘But outside the warped areas, the rest of it is untouched? There could be people there still!’

‘I doubt that,’ she says with a hint of sadness. ‘The only people left on Earth were bent on its destruction.’

I frown, watching Arras spread around me through the wall illusion. What lay beneath it?

‘You know, I promised Enora I would never tell anyone I could weave without a loom,’ I confide.

Loricel gives me a sad smile. ‘She was protecting you. She knew it would mark you as a Creweler, but you must have known the Guild was aware of your talent.’

‘I didn’t want to worry her,’ I admit. ‘And I thought maybe if I pretended not to know they would think they had made a mistake.’

‘Your mentor did the best she could in the situation, as did you.’

Kind, protective Enora. Only one thing I’ve learned today comforts me. ‘So Enora,’ I say slowly, ‘was reabsorbed.’

‘Part of her was,’ Loricel says.

Some part of her escaped. This makes me smile.

‘Adelice,’ Loricel says, breaking into my thoughts, ‘did she say anything to you before she . . .’

‘No.’ I focus on the memory of our last meeting, combing through the conversation in my head. ‘She was acting strangely though. I knew something was different.’

‘Cormac is obsessed with why she did it,’ Loricel confides. ‘He cannot confirm whether her suicide was prompted by the procedure or by her guilt over her relationship with Valery.’

‘Is that why Valery was ripped?’

‘He was angry,’ she says. ‘The remap should have reprogrammed Enora, but Valery reached out to her. He blamed her for Enora’s confusion, but he can’t be sure what caused Enora to act.’

‘Then Pryana tattled.’ It’s the only way Cormac could have known that Valery had approached Enora after her remap. I should have known from the smug look on her face at dinner. ‘I guess a vendetta outweighs someone’s life.’

‘Do not discount the power of paranoia either. If this girl was raised to be an ideal Eligible, she probably bought into all the nonsense the Guild sells its citizens,’ Loricel advises.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘Pryana, Valery – they were just pawns in Cormac’s and Maela’s games. They did this to Enora.’
And they’re going to pay
, I add silently.

Loricel leans forward and takes my hand. ‘There’s no way to know for sure what happened, because we haven’t found any evidence. No note. No diary. Not a thing.’

‘Are you saying someone else—’

‘No,’ she says. ‘Enora took her own life, but her initial map showed she was conflicted. Her thoughts were unbalanced, but none of her answers indicated that she was suicidal.’

‘Of course,’ I say, dropping Loricel’s hand. ‘She was living a lie.’

‘Perhaps, but, unfortunately, she left nothing behind. We cannot question Valery. If she said nothing to you –’ Loricel pauses meaningfully, as though she’s waiting for me to contradict this – ‘then we will never know.’

Even though I’m telling her the truth, Loricel’s gaze is so penetrating that I start to feel guilty. Shifting back on the divan, I press my lips together, trying to think of a way to change topics. ‘So are you going to train me?’ I ask.

‘You do not need training,’ she says.

‘But you said—’

‘I am buying you time.’ Her piercing look gives way to one of exasperation.

It only makes me feel worse. Loricel’s given everything for Arras, but I’m so selfish that she doesn’t expect me to sacrifice myself. All I can think to say is thank you.

‘Now go use it,’ she says, shooing me out of the studio.

I slip out of the tower and past the guard. He looks at me closely, the way men regard a weakling. The last thing I need is for him to send for an escort.

‘Loricel sent me for something in the lower studios,’ I lie.

I’m certain he doesn’t believe me from the way his eyes squint together, but he lets me go.

I rush back toward my quarters before anyone can reach me. Loricel might not believe Cormac is responsible for Enora’s death, but I saw what he did to her. Even if she felt trapped here, she wasn’t desperate. She seemed happy obsessively picking each outfit I wore, right down to the shoes. And she was so protective of me. She cared too much about me to just abandon me. She’d even gone to all the trouble of getting me a digifile when I had to travel around Arras, and she had warned me about Erik.

The digifile!

Suddenly the lift seems to slow down and the buttons light up for each floor in slow motion. Five more left. Four. I hate living so high up! As soon as the doors open I dash out. The digifile is resting safely under my pillow, and I snatch it up.

Sliding my fingers across the screen, I frantically open folders and programs. There are games. Catalogues. An application that patches me into the daily weather programming for each sector. Nothing. It was only a gift. It’s stupid to be so disappointed. Loricel’s pushing had me believing Enora cared enough to – I don’t know – tell me why, or at least say goodbye or something.

‘It can’t be,’ I mutter. Erik and Jost were so surprised to see me carrying the device on that trip – it must mean something. I wish I could go to Jost now and ask why they acted that way, but that would draw attention to him.

I pick the digifile back up and start combing through the programs more slowly.
A weather program.
I think back to the first time I met Enora, when she caught me weaving a thunderstorm. Scanning through the weather application, I find a file labelled
Precipitation
. The rest of the program is organised by date and month. I press down on the file and wait for it to load, my heart pounding at the possibility of answers or information. Even a simple farewell.

Inside there’s another file, marked
Thunder.
I open it and a dozen smaller files appear. The first reads,
To Adelice
.

I pull out every tailored suit in my wardrobe and hang them on my bathroom door. The digifile slips into most of the tiny pockets on each jacket, but I have to rip the basting stitches out of some. No matter what, I’m keeping the small pad with me from now on. I’ve renamed Enora’s note for added safety. At least now I know where to start, even if not much else is clear.

The digifile contains information that I’m pretty sure could get me killed. Maps. Tracking systems. But it’s Enora’s note that burns in my brain. I think I could stand to have them find everything in those folders but that. It’s too personal. But even though I’ve read it so many times I have it memorised, I can’t bring myself to erase it. It plays on repeat in my head, spoken in Enora’s soft voice. Her written words sound so much like her that reading them makes me hurt like I’ll break into pieces.

Her words offer small comfort, but they do give me hope. I choose a lavender suit to wear to dinner, and I’m sliding on the clingy skirt when there’s a knock at the door. Shimmying into the jacket, I stash the digifile in my left pocket, right below my heart.

Cormac’s at the door. This can’t be good.

‘Come in,’ I say, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice and failing. I giggle a little, hoping I look like the nervous, awestruck girls that made up my cohort. Although it may be a little late to go fanatic on him.

He enters without a word and wanders around the perimeter of my room, stopping to finger the suits hung over my door. ‘Packing?’

‘No,’ I say, grabbing the clothing to shove back into my closet. ‘I like to plan my wardrobe for the week.’

‘On Wednesday?’ he asks, calling my bluff.

I stuff the suits in with my other dresses and slam the doors to the wardrobe closed. Taking a deep breath, I whirl around to face him. ‘Can I help you with something?’

‘No,’ he says with a shrug. ‘It occurred to me I’ve never seen your quarters.’

‘Here they are.’

‘Amazing what technology can do,’ he murmurs. ‘Did you know that each room in the high tower is woven to appeal to the Spinster assigned to it? It’s very time-consuming to do so, but we want you to be happy here.’

‘I love my room,’ I tell him, and it’s the truth. The cosy room with plush, oversized cushions is my home. It’s the first place that has ever belonged only to me. But I would trade it for the cramped bedroom I shared with Amie in a heartbeat.

‘It’s nice,’ he says, glancing around him. ‘Not my taste exactly. I tend towards a more modern look.’

He drifts over to sit on the edge of my bed, and I make a mental note to send for fresh linens as soon as he’s left.

‘Can I order something for you?’ I ask.

‘Martini. Neat.’

I repeat this to the companel – having no idea what a neat Martini is – and make sure the kitchen staff knows it’s for Cormac. Then I wait by the door for it to arrive. It comes with the customary speed of anything meant for an official, and I let the valet bring it to Cormac.

Taking a seat in a chair by the hearth, I start counting each breath I take and release. I get to twenty before he speaks.

‘No doubt Loricel warned you about the remap,’ Cormac says, but he doesn’t wait for me to confirm this. ‘I want you to know there are other options.’

‘And the price?’ I ask, keeping my eyes level with his.

‘See that’s what I like about you – all business.’

Something in the way he says ‘like’ sends me recoiling back into my chair, but I keep my mouth shut.

‘The Guild needs to know that you can be counted on to serve the people of Arras,’ he says, setting his drink on the tray. ‘Right now your loyalty is debatable.’

‘I haven’t done anything to make them question me,’ I say in a voice that dares him to deny it.

‘You ran,’ he reminds me.

‘My parents forced me to run, and I was scared enough to listen to them.’

‘So otherwise you would have come here and been a good girl?’ he asks with a smirk.

‘I guess we’ll never know.’ It’s true I didn’t immediately go to the door when they came, because I expected my father to. I thought they’d cry, and I’d look scared, but I was planning to leave with the retrieval squad. There was no other option in my head until I was pushed into that tunnel.

‘You were never meant to fall in line,’ Cormac says, standing and walking to the fireplace, which is steps from my seat. Leaning on the mantel, he hovers over me, and I shrink further into my chair.

‘So how do I prove myself?’ I ask. Or at least buy myself some time?

‘Do you know yet why a Creweler is so integral to the continuation of Arras?’ he asks.

I’m confused by the sudden shift in conversation, but I regurgitate what I’ve learned from Enora and Loricel.

He puts up a hand to halt my description. ‘Yes, that’s what a Creweler does, but why we need her is something else entirely.’

‘To protect the innocent,’ I murmur.

‘Yes, but such a concept is vague to someone too young to know true tragedy,’ he says.

My parents. Enora. My sister rewoven into a stranger. How can he suggest I don’t know about tragedy?

He watches my reaction to this proclamation, but when I don’t respond, he wets his lips with his tongue before he continues. ‘You think you know loss, but before Arras and the Guild of Twelve, wars spilled blood all over the Earth. Entire generations of young men died so that other men could gain more power.’

I bite my tongue and stare back at him. Loricel has already told me all of this, but to my astonishment, I realise that he believes what he’s saying. As though he’s different from those evil men.

‘Dictators murdered women and children for having different skin colours or holding different beliefs.’ He pauses and moves a step closer to my chair. ‘Because we didn’t have the capacity to control peace.’

Control
– the word that haunts me. That’s the true difference between Earth and Arras. Men like Cormac can remove taints and troublemakers and differences much more efficiently than our ancestors on Earth.

‘And are your choices better than theirs?’ I ask, gripping the arms of my chair firmly.

‘I make choices for the good of the many,’ Cormac says, but his eyes flash and he switches tactics. ‘In Arras, we ensure food is administered and available to everyone. There’s no risk of famine. We control the weather and avoid the dangers of too little water as well as the hazards of unregulated weather conditions. In the past, humanity was at the whim of nature, but now nature serves us.’

‘Perhaps there was a purpose to the natural order of things,’ I say in a soft voice, but he ignores me.

‘Families don’t watch their loved ones decline and individuals are free from the fear of unexpected death,’ he continues. ‘We’ve cured most serious illnesses with renewal technology—’

‘And the ones you haven’t?’

‘Our citizens are relieved from their pain,’ he says without missing a beat.

‘You mean you kill them,’ I accuse.

‘We remove them from a conscious state where they would exist in pain. We’ve streamlined the burdens of old age.’

My hand aches where my grandmother’s fierce grip clasped it, and I shake my head at his lies. There’s no way he’s younger than she was. The Guild’s interest lies in removing the unnecessary matter in the weave. ‘Have you ever lost anyone?’ I ask.

‘Not the same way you have,’ he admits, ‘but you should know better than anyone the pain of unexpected death.’

‘Unexpected death’ is such a political way to put it. ‘No, have you ever lost anyone to removal?’ I clarify.

‘We don’t lose in removal. We control,’ he says, his jaw muscles twitching. He’s a bit too fond of that word. ‘And yes, I had both my parents and my wife removed.’

‘Wife?’ I gasp. Cormac Patton: the ultimate bachelor. The idea of him settled down with one woman is incomprehensible.

‘I was married when I was very young,’ he says in a casual tone. ‘As you know, it’s expected that citizens form domestic units by age eighteen. I was no exception.’

Except that he’s always been the exception. The man flashes across the Stream with a fresh new girl at every Guild event. He’s the guy my father half-jokingly referred to as a lucky bastard every time we tuned in.

I try to picture the type of woman he’d marry. In my head, she’s a cross between Maela and one of the vapid rebound stewardesses. Insipid and evil – Cormac’s perfect cocktail. ‘What happened to her?’ I ask him.

‘She fell ill before renewal technology caught up with certain psychological ailments. I chose not to prolong her suffering.’ His tone is detached; he’s stating facts, but the muscles in his jaw tense and the veins from there to his shoulders go taut. This isn’t something he wants to talk about, which makes it the number one thing I want to discuss.

‘But she wasn’t dying,’ I say, my lip trembling.

‘No,’ he says, ‘but she was not a functioning member of Arras, and her condition prevented me from serving the Guild to my full capacity.’

I turn my head, afraid my eyes will give away my burning disgust. He got rid of her so he could advance politically and enjoy the benefits of being a widowed bachelor. ‘I guess that’s why you enjoy casual relationships with so many women,’ I say in a cold voice.

‘That’s the thing, Adelice. The time has come for the family unit to be promoted again in Arras,’ he says, switching on his politician’s smile.

‘I wasn’t aware it had stopped being promoted,’ I say, thinking of the marriage profiles advertised in the daily
Bulletin
. By now I would be attending courting appointments and searching for a compatible match. The thought sends a tremor through my chest as I imagine the life I never had.

My jibe only launches him into more rhetoric. ‘Our laws help us maintain the family, but there are an increasing number of unnatural threats to the traditional family dynamic.’

Like Enora.

‘We contain these dangerous proclivities as best we can, but the fact is that a number of dismissed women have refused to marry according to age regulations. In the Eastern Sector, this trend is spreading, and now young men aren’t even advertising marriage profiles,’ he tells me.

‘And you let them?’ I say, not hiding my surprise. ‘When the Guild has such persuasive methods at its disposal?’ Is this the taint I heard him discussing, or just a symptom of a larger sense of discontent?

‘Frankly, after Enora’s stunt, I’m concerned about the safety of our current methods. The process may have damaged her. The remains of her thread barely held together when we removed them from the weave. It might surprise you to learn we don’t want to remap the entire female population.’

‘But
you
would, though,’ I accuse, my blood boiling.

‘Of course, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for the good of Arras,’ he says, dropping his gaze to meet mine. ‘Someday you’ll understand this. Right now you can’t see past yourself. If girls stop marrying – if, Arras forbid, they live on their own – we can’t protect them.’

‘So you’re doing it to keep women safe?’ I ask.

‘Yes. When expectations are clear, they are easily met, but when we begin to bend the rules, we invite discord.’

I actually think Cormac believes what he’s saying, but I’ve seen the effects of these stringent rules. My mother being refused more children, our carefully segregated neighbourhoods, Enora trying to live a lie. Was quiet desperation the price of surface happiness? ‘Maybe they aren’t ready to get married,’ I say. ‘I wouldn’t have been.’

Cormac presses his lips together and watches me for a moment before responding. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Adelice, because the Guild has decided the best way to address this concern is to provide an example to these young women.’

‘What kind of example?’ I ask. I keep my voice steady.

‘The Guild has enjoyed success with most Eligibles through the elite treatment and privilege afforded Spinsters,’ he continues. ‘They’re excited to be taken to the Coventry.’

My pulse pounds in my ears, drowning out all the ambient noise. Only Cormac’s practised, smooth voice funnels through, like a mandatory Stream broadcast. ‘So it makes sense to give young women an example of perfect domestic tranquillity. We’ll market it the same way we do coming to the Coventry – that being married is a life of privilege. And we’ll use someone from the Coventry as an example.’

‘But Spinsters can’t . . .’ I’m too embarrassed to say it out loud.

‘Consummate the relationship?’ he asks, a smirk playing at his lips.

I give a small nod, but keep my eyes on my feet.

‘You’re not stupid,’ he says with a trace of annoyance. ‘You can’t possibly believe the whole purity-standards bit.’

‘Then why tell us that?’ More blood rushes to my face and settles on my cheeks. Generally, I don’t consider myself dumb, but I had, in fact, always believed the ‘whole purity-standards bit’.