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“As if I would trust your insight,” Hannox says. “May I please finish my job, sir?”
“It’s a necessary evil,” Cormac says to me, waving Hannox off to finish his work.
“Everything with you is a necessary evil,” I say angrily.
“I’m not interested in continuing this petty fight.”
I’m too furious to find the words to tell him that my being angry that he killed an innocent man is not a petty misunderstanding. Instead my hands ball into fists, but I force them to stay at my sides.
“That’s better,” Cormac says, grinning at my attempt to control myself. “I’m glad you’ve finally learned your place.”
A wall of guards surrounds us, and Cormac paces the small space until the all-clear is given. Somehow I manage to bite back the told-you-so trying to escape my lips. A group of ministers wait as we enter. Circles ring their eyes and their suits are wrinkled. Cormac strides past most of them without even a glance. He only stops to shake hands with the man at the head of the line.
“Grady, what happened?” he says as the man falls into step beside him.
“The reconditioning program failed, Cormac,” Grady responds in a what-can-you-do voice.
“But how did it come to this? My reports say there’s been a full blackout for over five hours,” Cormac says. The chumminess is gone from his voice.
Five hours. It’s been less than an hour since we reached the loophole, but a considerable amount of time must have passed in Arras before the news reached us on Earth. Days go by in Arras before the people on Earth blink, thanks to the difference in the speed of time in each world. When the Guild created Arras, it forced time to pass twelve times faster there than on Earth in an effort to quickly establish supremacy over the world they had left behind. But the divergent timelines have prevented Cormac from receiving the initial reports in a timely way. Three days have already passed. No wonder everyone is tense.
“It’s complicated. I didn’t expect you to come,” Grady admits. He tugs at the tie around his neck. It probably feels like a noose.
“You hoped I wouldn’t come,” Cormac corrects him.
“No, but I don’t think it’s necessary for you to be here,” Grady says.
“Because you have the situation under control?” Cormac asks. “You don’t, Grady. Your city is shut down. Arras relies on your sector to provide seafood as well as paper supplies. Of course I had to come. When a sector minister loses control of his entire population, his boss has to step in.”
“And he’s your boss,” I say in a mocking tone. If Cormac could have prevented this by stepping in, why hadn’t he done it before?
“Stay out of this, Adelice,” Cormac warns me.
“No,” I say, wiggling between the men. “You don’t get to come in here and act like this is all his fault. How long have I heard you whispering about problems in the Eastern Sector? If you want us to fix this, we need to address the real problem here.”
Beside Cormac, Grady turns away but I spy a smile tugging at his lips.
“She thinks she’s cute,” Cormac tells him. “Adelice, do I need to give you another reminder of my attitude toward traitors?”
I shrink back a bit and glower at him, wondering who he views as a traitor in this scenario.
“The reconditioning didn’t work, Grady?” Cormac asks, bringing the conversation back to its original topic.
“No, sir,” Grady says, and the tension between them thickens. Cormac is asserting his authority over the man by reminding him how he failed.
Grady ushers us into his office and offers drinks, but even Cormac refuses as we take our seats. Cormac sits behind the desk, and Grady is forced to sit next to me. He doesn’t relax into his seat, and from my vantage point I can see his feet are tapping nervously on the floor.
“How did this start?” Cormac asks.
“As you know, we’ve had some dissent among the working-age women in the Sector.”
I’d heard Cormac speak of this before, on the night of the State of the Guild. It seems like a million years ago, and while I know that’s not the case, I also know it’s been an issue for at least two years.
“They were refusing to marry,” I say out loud, recalling information Cormac had shared with me.
“They never stopped.” Grady’s voice sounds weary as though he’s borne the weight of this for far too long. “We introduced new incentives—”
“You tried to bribe them,” Cormac cuts in. “You gave them more pay, Grady. The only thing that taught them was that they could get what they wanted by being obstinate.”
