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“We have a lot of questions, Albert,” Dante says. “Not the least of which is why you’re living here.”
“Instead of the cold prison?” Albert guesses. “A concession for good behavior. The Guild of Twelve Nations views me as a threat intellectually not physically. As long as people are kept away from me, I’m not a risk.”
“And your guard and his family?” Jost asks.
“Lucas and his family are simple people. Lovely supper guests, but not terribly interested in physics and my scientific mumbo jumbo.” Albert pauses, his cup hovering near his lips. His whiskers tickling its rim. “I do hope you have not hurt them.”
“We sent them away,” I assure him. “We’re not here to hurt anyone.”
“A curious method of revolution.”
“We’re not here to hurt anyone who is innocent,” Dante corrects.
“But what is innocence?” Albert muses. “Ignorance?”
“Maybe,” Dante says, shifting in his chair.
“Or good intentions?” Albert adds.
I look across the room at my companions. Only Erik seems at ease, blowing steam off his tea and taking shallow sips. The rest roost with their shoulders hunched, hanging on Albert’s every word.
“Maybe a gut reaction,” I offer. “Lucas was acting on orders. Something we can all forgive.”
“You have acted under orders then?” he asks.
I remember the thick, coarse strand I removed from the loom under Loricel’s watchful eye. I had acted under orders with good intentions, but under Albert’s piercing gaze, I don’t feel absolved.
“I have,” I admit, “but not anymore.”
“And that is how you became a rebel,” he says. “Did you flee from Arras or were you born of Earth?”
“We’re refugees,” I tell him.
“So m
any of you and so young. How did you discover the truth?”
“I was taken into service,” I begin.
“A renegade Spinster? Delightful.”
“Adelice was set to be the new Creweler, and she can alter.” Erik jumps in. I flash him a look for interrupting me, but it’s clear he thought I should cut to the chase.
“Then you are the one I’ve waited for.” Albert’s words are so soft that I’m not sure anyone else heard them, as though they were meant only for me. “Do you each bear the mark of Kairos?”
“No,” Dante says. “Only Adelice and I do. The true rebellion died out years ago, but we are rebuilding. Although another man pretends to have the same agenda as our predecessors.”
“There is a false rebellion now?” Albert asks questions with the interest of a man awoken from a long sleep. He has no idea what’s happened in the outside world since he was left here.
“A man named Kincaid wants to find the Whorl,” I tell him.
“I know Kincaid,” Albert says darkly. “If he’s fallen from the Guild’s favor, he’s no one to trifle with.”
“Unfortunately we learned that the hard way,” I say.
“So this is it?” Albert asks. “The final withering offspring of rebellion.”
“No, there are more of us, but not enough to stand up to the Guild.” Dante has told me of the expectations he had when he came to Earth, of the stories his mother—my grandmother—whispered to him of a powerful legion of men who could free Arras. But they were only stories, and the rebellion was once a fledgling barely able to stand on its own legs.
