Crewel (23 page)

‘Family, Adelice. We can’t have young women running around town. We need them at home, having babies, and serving Arras. And I’m sure you know women here—’

‘But it takes away our skills.’

‘You’ve seen some action since you’ve been here,’ he accuses, ‘and you’re still weaving.’

The flush of my cheeks deepens. So much for being discreet. ‘I never crossed any lines.’

‘Maybe so,’ he says, but he shrugs as though he’s unconvinced.

‘So you’re going to allow Spinsters to marry?’ I ask, feeling a bit dizzy.

‘No,’ he assures me. ‘We need Spinsters to remain dedicated to their work, and our philosophy that a wife’s first duty is to her husband would be undermined by such a policy change.’

I exhale in relief. The thought of being forced into a marriage, of making Jost live through that . . . I can’t imagine a worse torture.

‘But a Creweler can be afforded special privileges,’ he says, and my heart jumps back into my throat.

‘You . . . want . . .  me . . . to . . . marry?’

‘Consider it an order,’ he says with a smile.

‘Or you’ll remap me,’ I whisper. ‘Do I get to choose?’ I struggle to hang on to the faint flicker of hope this thought offers me. No one could object to Jost. He might not like the constant grooming. But as much as I try to believe it’s possible, even if it were, I’d be putting him directly under the Guild’s thumb. No matter how much it may hurt him, it would be better if I were married to someone else.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?’ he asks with a cocked eyebrow. ‘Your choices aren’t as well conceived as the Guild would like.’

‘So you’ll choose for me?’ I ask slowly. No doubt it will be a political match.

‘We already have.’ He flashes a blinding smile. ‘Me.’

The blood rushing in my head drains out, and I grip the arms of my chair to stay upright.

Marry Cormac?

‘I’m only sixteen,’ I whisper.

‘We’ll wait for you to turn seventeen as custom dictates in the larger metros,’ he says in a casual voice.

I struggle to make sense of what he’s telling me. I stand to look out of the window. ‘But how old are you?’

Cormac scowls. ‘Renewal tech makes that a non-issue,’ he says through clenched teeth.

‘Not for me.’

‘What? You think you can go out and marry some young pretty boy?’ he asks, his voice rising steadily. ‘Let me make this clear: it has been decided. The Guild wants assurance that you’re being tightly monitored.’

‘And you’re just the man to do that,’ I say, narrowing my eyes.

‘You’ll enjoy the same privileges and get to have children.’

I choke back the stomach acid this statement sends shooting up my throat. ‘You can have kids?’

‘Of course,’ he says, straightening his tux jacket. ‘My genetic materials have been safely stored since I was a younger man.’

Much younger. Of all the possibilities I mourned when I was brought to the Coventry, having babies was not on that list.

‘So I’ll be’ – I search for the word, my thoughts moving too fast for me to latch onto them – ‘impregnated.’ My only solace is that if I can’t escape, traditional methods of procreation won’t be necessary. Although lying back on a medic table and letting some . . . 

‘Our biogenetics team has created a patch that will ensure I can procreate much the same as any young father.’ His black eyes gleam as he speaks.

I back slowly away from him. The thought of his body bearing down on my own – his aseptic stench smothering me – steals my breath, and I gasp.

‘And if I refuse?’ I ask, barely containing the hysteria I feel building in my chest.

‘We remap you,’ he says with an edge in his voice, ‘and then you marry me.’

I cross my arms over my chest, clutching my shoulders, and shake my head. ‘I’ll do anything you want except that,’ I beg, hot tears spilling down my cheeks. ‘I’ll be Creweler. I’ll be good.’

‘I’d hoped you would see reason,’ he snarls, moving toward me. ‘I would have preferred a wife with some spirit, but I’ll remap you and marry you next week if I choose to.’

He’s shaking me now, but I can only sob. ‘Please. Please. Please.’

My pleas are breathless, lost in his gruff attack.

‘Did you think,’ he says, his voice full of disdain, ‘we would let you run wild, screwing around with the servants and playing dress-up? Arras demands your service, Adelice.’

I wrench my arms free and fly from the room. Cormac doesn’t follow me. He’ll find me eventually; he knows there’s no need to exert extra effort now. Scrambling into the stairwell, where I’m protected from the view of security monitors, I tear at time and weave myself into safety. When I’m sure the moment is secure, I collapse onto the cold, hard landing and stare at the hourglass my father burned onto my wrist. How can I remember who I am if they’re determined to take it from me?

I’m out of time. Even if I can break out of the compound, Cormac will hunt me down. I think of Loricel’s resignation to her impending death, and for the first time I truly understand the relief she must feel. I wish I were dead.

I stay there, trapped in my own web, unable to move. There’s only one person powerful enough to help me now, but even she has nowhere to run.

I go to her anyway. 

The Creweler’s studio walls are blank, and the loom sits empty. Loricel must be at dinner with the others. Maybe they’ll assume I’m with Cormac and not come looking for me. The screens in the room reflect the default program, and I take a deep breath and consider where I should look first. I only have to tell the walls where I want to be and the tracking program will display that place. These walls can show me anywhere in Arras, but I’m not sure how long I have with them, so I better make my time count.

‘I am in the great hall at dinner,’ I command, feeling a little silly.

The walls shimmer and the great hall weaves itself across the space. I stand in the dead centre, the table stretching out around me. At the far end Loricel sits, speaking to no one. Meanwhile the other Spinsters make lively conversation that I can’t hear. Each woman’s skin is a pale version of its natural colour – chalk white or dusted chocolate or muted honey. I watch as one girl throws her head back, and in my own I hear a maniacal cackle as others clap and wave their hands in exaggerated gesticulations. This is how they close their day: at a long table filled with puddings and roast meat and delicate breads filled with sweet cream. A few gulp down thin red wine. One snaps her fingers and a young man appears to refill it. His face is blank, except for the dullest hint of disgust in his electric-blue eyes.

I stare at him. Dressed in his evening suit, he bears little resemblance to the scruffy boy who carried me across that stone cell, but his eyes are the same as the day we met, the day he bandaged my hands, the day we kissed. I have to turn away or I’ll rip right through the wall to get into his arms.

All around, eyes fix on me. I feel exposed, but then I realise I’m standing in the spot where the main dish will be placed, a large ham or turkey or duck. One by one, the Spinsters seated near this spot begin reaching out towards me, their hands returning with knives and forks full of steaming, white meat.
I’m being eaten alive.

I bite my lip to keep from laughing and focus on what I now know. I have located both Jost and Loricel. I want to follow Jost, but this is my only chance to find the information I need to get to Amie if I want to pull her location up on the loom.

‘Show me the offices,’ I command, and the scene shifts to a busy building where smartly dressed men and women bustle about with stacks of papers. It’s a scene outside the Coventry. My command must have been too vague.

‘Show me the offices inside the Coventry,’ I try, and the image flickers to nothing.

Pulling the digifile from my pocket, I slide open the secret file and am delighted to discover that Enora included a map of the compound. I shift the image, searching until I find what I’m looking for: the research laboratories. Next to them I spot a single room twice their size. It’s marked ‘repository’. They’re both located near the clinic where I was mapped. Calling up the labs on the wall, I see a few men clad in white jumpsuits busily working with tubes and looms. Their workday must not end at the traditional time. I close my eyes and mutter, ‘Repository.’

I can’t look. Something about the large block on the map raises the hair on my neck. Slowly I open my eyes. Large steel shelves rise up in neat, symmetrical rows, lined with thousands of tiny metal boxes. Moving closer, I examine them to find each is labelled with a sequence of fourteen numbers and letters. It takes me a moment to realise I’ve stopped breathing.

Fourteen.

03212144
WR LM LA

The sequence drilled into my head as a child.

‘It’s how we’ll find you if you’re ever lost,’ my mother said.

It’s how they find each of us.

Date of birth. Sector. Metro. Mother’s initials. Child’s initials.

I stare at the box in front of me. Whose sequence is this?

My hand reaches out to open it, but my fingers hit the wall screen.

‘It’s an illusion,’ I remind myself. The screens look so vivid that for a moment I thought I could reach out and riffle through the boxes.

I nearly drop the digifile from my sweaty hands, trying to find the information on the map, but thankfully it’s there: a list of coordinates that will call up the Coventry’s weave on the machine. Sitting at the loom, I punch in the codes and watch as the Coventry’s weave spins across it. Next to me the command panel blinks red, flashing a reminder: partial within boundary diameter. It means I’m looking at a piece of the weave that contains the very location I’m in. Maela showed us this piece before, but I wonder now, as the warning light flashes at me, if I’m risking its stability to manipulate the compound from within the compound itself. But I can’t think of a better – or safer – idea. And, I argue to myself, why would Enora have given me this info if I wasn’t meant to use it? But . . . if I’m being honest, this is possibly the stupidest plan ever. I’m not sure if it’s possible to remove a piece from the loom’s weave and place it into the room’s actual weave. Probably because no one has ever been desperate enough to try it. Except me.

I run my hands along the top of the loom, the weave shocking the tips of my damaged fingers. Slowing them to a soft trailing motion, I adjust the view on the loom, zooming into the weave until it focuses, mirroring the map Enora left me on the digifile, and then I see the outline of the repository. Keeping my fingertip carefully on the spot, I tease a few strands of the area out, carefully, so as not to remove the entire room from the weave, which would surely draw immediate suspicion. Holding it delicately in my left hand, I reach up into the air with my right, and concentrating until the room’s weave shimmers into view, I draw apart the strands of this room, hoping my theory is correct and that I can transplant threads from the loom into the weave of Loricel’s studio. If so, then I hope to create a rift between her studio and the repository that will allow me to enter the secure facility. I weave the strands from the repository into this space and cautiously peek through.

It’s not a bad first try, except that I’ve woven it in upside down and I’m looking at the ceiling, the storage units suspended overhead. There’s no way I can open those boxes this way, so I step back through to Loricel’s studio and fix it.

There’s a faint hum filling the other room, and I shiver as I step through. It’s at least thirty degrees colder in here than any other space in the compound. I pull my jacket tighter and step up to the nearest shelf; there’s only one way to find out what’s in there.

The boxes latch on the right side, and I have to try twice to raise the tiny lever. In response, the front of it slides away, revealing a small crystal cube. I reach in to pull it out. A thin strand of light shimmers, suspended in the centre and woven into a delicate knot. I turn it over in my hands and the thread doesn’t move. It’s too thin to belong to the person with this identifying sequence. I’ve seen individual threads after removal, and they’re comprised of several strings knitted together; I’m sure that this is only part of the ripped thread. On the bottom, I notice an etched code composed of a series of numbers and varying bars. Sliding my digifile next to it, I open a folder labelled
Tracking
and press the small screen up to the code. A pulsing icon flashes immediately and then a new dataset appears:

Active?

The strand is too thin to be the banker’s remains. If he was removed two years ago, why is he listed as active? I hold the cube up to the repository lights, but no new information appears. I save the dataset to the digifile to study later and place the cube back in the box.

I tiptoe down the narrow aisle, afraid even my light footfalls might attract attention in this section of the compound. As I get further from my entry point, I begin to worry. What if Loricel returns to her studio, or someone else walks into the repository? Starting to head back to investigate closer to the rift, I glimpse the shelves one row over. Squat metal rectangles, not square boxes, compose these units. I dart quickly to them. Each is labelled with an identifying sequence, but there’s no storage cube inside. Instead a thin plastic card pops out of the cubby. Fumbling with the digifile, I scan the card and wait as the dataset loads.

The file includes a picture of a young girl. According to her PIS, she’s only two years old now. This is what I’ve been looking for: records of children who have been rewoven to foster families. Amie’s information will be in here, too. I push Annelin’s card back into the cubby and bump the latch on the next file. The small door slides open, and before I can close the lever, the next card ejects all the way out. Reaching down I pick up the card and scan it. Maybe there’s a pattern to the alterations. The first line of the dataset stops me in my tracks. Although it’s not Amie.

It’s Sebrina Bell.

Bell.

I jam the buttons linked to the attached image files. The girl in this image is an infant, her cheeks both dimpled and a wisp of dark curls falling across her forehead. She seems too little to smile, but she is grinning like she’s staring at someone she adores. Someone like her father. Her eyes are a sparkling, deep blue. I know those eyes instantly. They must run in the family.

It’s Jost’s daughter – the one who disappeared right before his eyes. I choke back a sob. Clutching the card to my chest, I scan through the data on the digifile:

All the resentment I’ve felt toward Cormac bubbles up and mixes with this information. I slip the card into my pocket and lean against the shelf trying to slow my ragged breathing. I’ll save the file in a minute; I still have to find Amie.

July 24th. Her sequence begins with 0724. The other girls’ information was filed according to the sector of relocation. I scan each row of files until I find the cubes for the Northern Sector. Rushing down the row, I scan the tiny compartments, watching the numbers build in size. I’ve reached 0618 when I hear a door click to the north of me. I hold my breath as the tap of dress heels echoes in the silent room.

Creeping to the edge of this unit, I peer around the corner. No one. Snaking along the side, I steadily move back to the opening I’ve left between the repository and Loricel’s studio.

The door clicks open again. I wait, praying the intruder is gone, but instead I hear another person call out and the first person heads back toward the door. I press against the side of a shelf, not daring to move forward. Two male voices echo through the room, but I don’t pay attention to what they’re saying. I hear their footsteps coming nearer to my hiding spot. I slip to the next set of shelves and wait breathlessly, gauging how close they are to me now. Then to the next. And the next.

I’ve reached the rift when one of them shouts. My hand grips the card in my pocket; I forgot to shut the door to its cubby. I throw myself through the rift as the repository lights brighten; they’re looking for me. Pulling the repository’s threads from the spot where I wove it into the fabric of Loricel’s room, I clutch the strands against my chest. As soon as I’ve put the strands back in their place, completing the repository in the compound’s weave, the loom whirs to life and dismisses the piece. I drop to the chair and listen for approaching guards. No one knows I can do this except Loricel, but how long before someone becomes suspicious? And even if they aren’t looking for me, this is the first place they’ll come to find out who’s responsible.

But when no one appears, I relax. It’s only then I notice her lounging on her sedan, stroking a fluffy ginger cat. ‘Loricel,’ I gasp. It comes out in a gurgle of apology and surprise.