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‘Stories?’ My voice is barely a whisper.
‘Horrible stories. Families wiped out, towns rewoven. They were whispered tales, shared between desperate men. I was conflicted, so I did nothing.’ Done with my hands, Jost sits on the edge of the tub. His blue eyes burn like the tip of a flame, looking out past this room into the ruins left behind him.
‘Did you tell your wife?’ I stumble on the word, and doubt about Jost, about being here now, creeps into my throat and sits like a lump.
Jost shakes his head, but his gaze remains distant. ‘No, I didn’t want to worry her. I should have, but I was scared to repeat what I had heard. Turns out I was right. There are Spinsters trained to find these plots and anti-Guild groups.’
‘Yes, we learned about it in training. The tapestry begins to bleed and stain. When people are loyal, their threads remain true to their original colour.’
‘I bet Rozenn’s was the most beautiful thread imaginable,’ he says with reverence.
Hot tears prick at my eyes when he says her name.
‘I wonder what Saxun looked like when they came.’
‘I can’t imagine. I’ve never seen a taint,’ I admit. ‘My parents trained me for eight years to fail the testing, and no one came for us. I don’t know how deeply spread the staining has to be before it’s identified.’
‘Were your parents openly anti-Guild?’
I shake my head. Despite their actions, I can’t claim them to have been rebels. ‘No, they never spoke against the Guild. They were very careful about that. And besides, my mother was just a secretary and my father was a mechanic.’
‘Was?’
‘I wasn’t the only one punished,’ I say quietly. ‘I assumed you knew.’
‘I guessed,’ he says. ‘Anyway, the town of Saxun was filled with rebels. Your parents were only two people.’
I think of the tunnels under my house. They had to lead somewhere. There’s still a lot I don’t know about my parents. ‘I guess a little treason can be overlooked.’
‘But only a little,’ he murmurs.
‘Yes.’ My smile is ragged around the edges. ‘What happened?’
‘The Guild made an example of the town.’ Jost’s voice fades, and I lean in to hear him. ‘They ripped out our sisters, our mothers, our daughters . . .’
‘Your wives,’ I add, and he nods.
His head drops and the distance between us is gone. When he speaks again, his words are broken. ‘I saw it. You have no idea, Adelice. What it’s like to see that.’
I recall being sent away from my grandmother’s room. How the nurse closed the curtain and waited with her back turned as though she couldn’t stand to look.
‘She was on the dock, waiting with the other women for us to come in for lunch. She just slipped away. First her legs faded, and she looked so confused that I screamed for help, but there was nothing we could do. Those of us on the boats watched it happen. Her mouth disappeared next and she couldn’t cry for help. The last thing to fade was her body.’ He makes a choking noise and I realise he’s crying. ‘She was holding our daughter.’
I weep with him. For his loss and for the confusion I feel. This isn’t the boy with the crooked grin who fed me sweet potatoes, and my grief isn’t just because of what the Guild did to him but because of how different we are. I cry because I’m a stupid girl who can’t curb the jealousy and inferiority I feel towards Rozenn for getting him first. And for the distance that will always exist between us. He was a husband, a father, and I’m nothing and never will be. I guess the Guild assigned us our roles after all.
‘It was the last time I saw either of them. She was sixteen, and my daughter was three months old.’
I have no words to comfort him so I take his hand and hold it softly in my bandaged one.
‘I’m here because it’s the last place they’ll look,’ he confides, finally answering my question.
‘Look for what?’ I ask, unsure I want to know the answer.
‘Revolution.’
14
I dream of people I love. I am five, and my mother puts on cosmetics at the bathroom sink, but every cosmetic detracts instead of enhancing. The mascara erases her lashes, the rouge hollows her cheeks, and the lipstick removes her smile. She brushes her copper-red hair and the locks fade into air. Her decapitated body turns to me and gestures for approval, and she asks, as she did every day: ‘How do I look?’
