AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She does not, will not let herself think of her friends as they were, alive and happy. Not Ramy, torn down in his prime; not Robin, who brought down a tower upon himself because he couldn’t think of a way to keep on living. Not even Letty, who remains alive; who, if she knows Victoire lives too, will hunt her to the ends of the earth.
Letty, she knows, cannot allow her to roam free. Even the idea of Victoire is a threat. It threatens the core of her very being. It is proof that she is, and always was, wrong.
She won’t let herself grieve that friendship, as true and terrible and abusive as it was. There will come a time for grief. There will come many nights on the voyage when the sadness is so great it threatens to tear her apart; when she regrets her decision to live; when she curses Robin for placing this burden on her, because he was right: he was not being brave, he was not choosing sacrifice. Death is seductive. Victoire resists.
She cannot weep now. She must keep moving. She must run, as fast as she can, without knowing what is on the other side.
She has no illusions about what she will encounter. She knows she will face immeasurable cruelty. She knows her greatest obstacle will be cold indifference, born of a bone-deep investment in an economic system that privileges some and crushes others.
But she might find allies. She might find a way forward.
Anthony called victory an inevitability. Anthony believed the material contradictions of England would tear it apart, that their movement would succeed because the revels of the Empire were simply unsustainable. This, he argued, was why they had a chance.
Victoire knows better.
Victory is not assured. Victory may be in the portents, but it must be urged there by violence, by suffering, by martyrs, by blood. Victory is wrought by ingenuity, persistence, and sacrifice. Victory is a game of inches, of historical contingencies where everything goes right because they have made it go right.
She cannot know what shape that struggle will take. There are so many battles to be fought, so many fights on so many fronts – in India, in China, in the Americas – all linked together by the same drive to exploit that which is not white and English. She knows only that she will be in it at every unpredictable turn, will fight until her dying breath.
‘Mande mwen yon ti kou ankò ma di ou,’ she’d told Anthony once, when he’d first asked her what she thought of Hermes, if she thought they might succeed.
He’d tried his best to parse Kreyòl with what he knew of French, then he’d given up. ‘What’s that mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Victoire. ‘At least, we say it when we don’t know the answer, or don’t care to share the answer.’
‘And what’s it literally mean?’
She’d winked at him. ‘Ask me a little later, and I’ll tell you.’
