“Ready?” Ezra asked.
Positioning myself in front of him, I said, “Not particularly.”
Ezra fished out the small weapon Nikola had given him and held it to my temple. “I hate pistols.”
I hoped his hands were steadier than mine. “Please don’t discharge that thing.”
“I unloaded it,” he muttered. “I’m notthatreckless”
Ahead, the sole figure sitting on the loading dock spotted us and rushed to his feet. “No deliveries today!” the man shouted. Then he stumbled back, seeming to notice the pistol. He looked over his shoulder at the double doors leading into the House’s storeroom. By his drab clothing, he was a House servant.
“Stay right there,” Ezra called out. “Or the Conductor dies. Do you understand me?”
The servant slowly raised his hands. “I understand.”
“Good.” Ezra briefly gestured with the pistol. “Don’t make a sound, and I won’t hurt you. Take the line and tie us off.”
“Please,” I added in a warbling voice. “He kidnapped me at the exposition. Please do what he says.”
Moving jerkily, his eyes constantly darting to Ezra’s weapon, the servant jumped onto the raft and tied it off. He crept back onto the dock on his hands and knees and sat back on his heels, looking terrified.
“Tie him up,” Ezra told me, gesturing at a coil of rope on the dock.
I did as he told, but once the servant was restrained, I couldn’t help speaking to him. “I know you were a Conductor or a Transistor once.
You deserve to be free, not trapped here lighting lamps and cleaning up after people who don’t even look at you.”
I’d never looked a House servant in the eye. No one had. They’d simply been part of the small world around us. I’d let them move around me like living dolls, like they hadn’t mattered. I’d never forgive myself for that.
“Who are you?” the servant asked, sounding bewildered.
“I’m a friend of Gertrude’s. Do you know her?”
The man hesitated, but I could see the recognition in his eyes.
“Jo, we need to move,” Ezra said.
“What are you going to do?” the servant asked, looking between us nervously.
I had no way to answer that question. I didn’t know. We were here to rescue Julian, but there was no chance we’d easily get in and out with him. And there was no chance I could walk away from this place without leaving it inoperable in my wake. Now that I was here, I knew that in my heart.
“I’m going to get you out,” I said, swallowing to steady my voice. “The servants, the Generators, the children. Anyone who wants to be free of this terrible place.”
“Gertrude is with the little ones today,” the servant whispered, looking up at the House’s high back wall as if expecting it to topple on him in retribution. “They were attacked this morning. Don’t hurt them.”
“I won’t hurt the little ones,” I said. “I promise.”
Ezra pulled me toward the door. “Jo, come on.”
“Radiance caused the wasting,” I hurriedly said as Ezra dragged me away. “The Elders have known that all along. Progress is poison!”
With that, we pushed through the double doors and entered the House of Industry. The smell of dried goods brought me back to being thirteen, resentfully stacking crates of apples and sacks of wheat flour. Itwas cool and dark in the storeroom. At the far end, two House servants were gathering produce into baskets. They hadn’t noticed us.
Ezra trembled beside me. I could barely make out his whisper. “It hurts in here.”
There was nothing I could say to that. Radiance pulsed through every floor, every room. It powered the great ovens in the kitchen and lit every lighting fixture. And in the catacombs below us, radiance was cultivated and stored by Generators who never saw the sun, who were lost to the madness of their own power.
“Listen, the servants won’t be wearing black,” I whispered to Ezra.
