Page 13 of The Sixth Fraction

It takes me a few seconds to piece it together. Dauntless wall guards have regular guns, with lethal ammunition in them. But those weapons are well controlled. Regulated. Or they’re supposed to be.

“A wall guard brought in a lethal weapon by mistake?” I guess. It’s the only explanation I can think of.

My father shakes his head. There’s a soft look in his eyes that I don’t like. Like he pities me.

“No,” he says. “It wasn’t a mistake. One of those factionless stole a gun from the wall, and after that woman fell from the rafters, they retaliated. They turned to violence.”

Factionless. I see the factionless all the time at the donation center. Sad and shuffling. Weighed down by the world. It doesn’t make sense to me, at first, that my father thinks there were factionless at the Choosing Ceremony.

But a moment later I feel foolish. Of course they were factionless. They were screaming “Death to factions!” They were cutting down the faction banners. They were hanging their own banner instead.

I think of the woman I saw. The factionless woman who may or may not have been Evelyn Eaton. She was carrying a gun. I can’t remember, now, what it looked like. Whether it was lethal or not.

“That banner,” I say.

“A sick joke. But what more can we expect from the factionless? Moral corruption is what got them where they are.” He spits the words, and in his agitation he drops the soapy bowl he’s holding and it breaks.

I jump back.

“I’m sorry.” My father plants his hands on the edge of the sink and leans into them, his head hanging. “I’m sorry, Beatrice. I shouldn’t lose my temper.”

“It’s all right.” I wrap my arm around him and rest my head on his shoulder. “It’s all right.”

I could never be a Candor. It’s too easy for me to lie.

The funeral is in the morning, and even though everyone in Abnegation shows up, it’s a quiet affair.

Funerals are a regular part of Abnegation life. They always go the same way: The body is cremated and placed in an urn; people bring food to the family of the deceased and sit with them; there’s a religious service, and then the family makes a memorial stone.

With the exception of Evelyn Eaton’s funeral, every one I’ve attended has been framed as a natural conclusion, a candle that’s run out of wick. Not Robert Black’s. The mood of the pre-funeral meal is shock, not sorrow. The sermon at the service is about tragedy, not remembrance. And the procession through the streets of the Abnegation sector—led by Robert’s mother, clutching his ashes to her stomach as if she’s remembering how it felt to carry him inside her womb—is tense.

The procession ends at the workshop, where Mr. Black mixes the clay in its mold, and Susan pries the urn out of her mother’s clenched hands to remove its lid. Mrs. Black is shaking too hard to help, so Susan is the one who pours Robert’s ashes into the clay and helps her father mix it and forms the stone with her small, delicate hands.

It will dry for a few days, and then someone will fire it, and then someone else will use it to build, like it’s any other brick. Even in death, a member of Abnegation is expected to serve the community.

At breakfast the morning after, I’m staring across the table at Robert’s unoccupied chair when there’s a knock at the door. I don’t recognize the woman, but my mother calls her “Tabitha” like she knows her, and she has a hushed conversation with my father in the entryway. I can hear only my father’s side of it; he’s never been any good at talking quietly.

“This is cruel,” he says, and then, “Fine. Fine.”

The door closes, but my father doesn’t walk back into the kitchen right away. I exchange a look with Caleb. He shrugs. Susan keeps eating her oatmeal.

I hear my father’s sigh before he walks back in. When he does, he lingers by the door for a moment.

“Caleb, Beatrice. Susan,” he says. “I’m afraid I need to talk to you.” He hesitates again, and my heart races. Whatever he’s about to say, he really doesn’t want to say it. “As you already know, the Council has decided it’s not safe to gather for another Choosing Ceremony. I’ve just been informed that each faction is conducting theirs separately. Today.”

My spoon clatters against the side of my bowl.

“What?” Now I know what my father was calling “cruel.”

Susan, I notice, is still taking bites at regular intervals.

“They already put it off for two days,” Caleb says, his voice soft. “Initiation needs to start, Beatrice.”

“Two whole days to grieve, how generous—” I’m about to continue when I notice Susan is raising her eyebrows, the way she often does when she wants to say something.

She looks at Robert’s empty seat, and says, “Weeds grow, flowers bloom, fruit ripens.” She rests her hand on the back of the chair. “And they don’t ask us when they should.”

There’s no arguing after that.