Jasper took an unconscious step back.
“Rich, mate. You’ve been part of my family since we were ten. I love you like a brother, you know that. But I can’t let you hurt her. My father wouldn’t want you to—”
“Your father? What do you know aboutyour father?” Richard hissed. “I am more his son than you could ever be.”
His face was transformed, rigid and white.
“He trusts me with things. Things he’s never told you. I used to wonder why. After all, you’re his ‘real’ son. And then I saw. It’s wasted on you. All you want to do is run away on your little boat. Play with your camera. Maybe that’s why he never told you.”
“Told me what?”
“He told me when I was ten. After my dad’s funeral, when he was driving me back to school. About our ritual, and what we owe to the Society. He said my father wanted me to know. But it had to be a secret, because you weren’t ready yet.
“I would have told you. I waited years. Every term at school. Every holiday I spent at your house. For you to ask a single question. But you never did. You just take everything your father’s built for you, and never once asked where it all came from.”
“Where what came from? Why are you saying this?”
Richard laughed, a bitter, mirthless thing. And as he told Jasper the truth of what the Turnbulls were and what they did, it struck Emma then that there were two types of evil, among these boys raised to have everything. It was easy to hate Richard’s type. Wielding the knife, plotting the Society’s rise to power, sacrifice by sacrifice. But what of Jasper, and the others like him? Coasting through life on golden waves of luck. Enjoying privileges without the pain of interrogating them. Because it was fun, being rich. Being sought after. It was convenient to think that this was the natural order of things: a little unfair, perhaps, but out of one’s control. And that, in itself, was an evil. To be able to look away, to avoid seeing where your joy had been sucked from someone else’s marrow. Emma felt a prickling of guilt: She wasn’t sure she’d been all that innocent of that herself, in her mortal life.
Jasper shrank from Richard, shielding his face as if to ward off the words. “No. I don’t want any of this.”
“It’s not about what you want,” Richard said, implacable. “It’s about the country, and what’s best for it. We’ve spent generations,centuries, keeping it stable. We have to do what it takes to protect it. You and me. We’re meant for it.”
“But killing people—” Jasper looked sick.
“Look, that’s an extreme—oh, you should hear your father explain it. Like he says, you have to make tough decisions when you’re the ruling class—” Emma twitched, and Richard smiled.
“‘Ruling class.’ It’s become such a dirty term, hasn’t it? We pretend it doesn’t exist anymore. But who’s in charge, Emma? Who is it, in your Parliament and your news reports and your boardrooms, hmm? What do they have in common?”
He tapped Emma on the nose with the knife, and she flinched. He turned back to Jasper. “We’re still there for a reason. We rule because we know how to. We’re brought up for it. We give up so much, to run the country for people who’d rather spend their time watching reality TV than make a single difficult choice to keep the economy going. We’re the only ones willing to do what it takes. To make the necessary sacrifices.”
Emma held still. She only needed Richard’s attention to slip, just a little. If she got out of his hold, she was quick enough to outrun him.
“I don’t know, Rich. It doesn’t sound quite, like—fair.”
“Fair? What’s fair? Maybe it’s unfair we get the best schooling because our parents can pay for it. But that has still made us the best. The most qualified. What are we meant to do at the top, hand things off to people who aren’t as prepared, aren’t as good, just because it would be nicer? History isn’t nice.”
But history had always been written from their perspective. The Turnbulls, and people like them. So whose fault was that? Emmanever got to finish the thought. Because Richard dropped the knife. Because crashes rippled through the air. Because framed in the doorway were three figures with axes in their hands. And boars’ heads.
But the Boars were never allowed in the Library. The Night City would not permit it. Which meant that something, somewhere, had gone terribly wrong.
Richard went slack. Emma ripped herself from his grasp and plunged blindly into a dark reading room. Behind her, someone started to scream.
CHAPTER 39
The group found the Library unlocked. They forged into the deep-sea silence, the bookcases dark alleyways around them. Nat forced them on the darkest route of all, where the firework-stained light from outside barely reached. Hugo took out his phone, but its anemic glow only lit a few steps ahead.
“I hear her again. That way, through the theology rooms.” Nat veered off through an archway.
“Can you tell me why, exactly, we’re following a sound that none of the rest of us can hear?” Venetia hissed.
“We can’t let him go alone,” whispered Julia. “I don’t think it’s safe here.”
Venetia glanced at the darkness around them, then gave a laugh that almost succeeded in sounding careless. “What? There are four of us and one of Richard,” she said, at a normal volume. Julia flapped her hands frantically, miming silence.
Venetia ignored her and spun on her toes through the archway,pale hair floating behind her. “Scared of the dark, Julia? It’s just a library. What is there to be afraid of?”
Hugo lifted his phone. Its glare glinted off two murderously sharp tusks. More emerged from the darkness. Poleaxes gleamed. Heavily booted feet stepped into the light.
