Noam went still. His feet grew roots into the floor, tethering him in place as his breath went cold in his lungs. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Lehrer glanced back at him. “What do you think?” He turned toward Noam more fully, and Noam wondered if he could see how Noam’s skin prickled with a sudden chill. “By the time I realized how bad Dara’s problem had become, it was too late. When he tried to get sober, he nearly died.”
Noam chewed the inside of his cheek. “I knew he drank a lot, but ...”
“Dara was an alcoholic,” Lehrer said flatly. “And an addict. Although perhaps I should sayis.”
“Well, he’s clean now. He only drinks soda at meetings.”
Lehrer waved a hand, cigarette scattering sparks into the dim air. “It won’t take. Believe me, I tried. That boy could barely keep himself alive without my help. Wouldn’t even eat unless I forced him. And then he managed to go fevermad—despite my warnings. Despite everything I taught him about the dangers of using his magic in excess.” Lehrer tapped his tongue against the backs of his teeth. “Reckless.”
There was a lot Noam could have said to that. None of it was likely to help his case, to convince Lehrer he could be trusted to stay in place with Dara and the rest of the Black Magnolia. So instead he nodded and carried his wet trousers into the closet, dumping them in the hamper atop his sodden shirt. He stared down into the basket for a moment, wondering how the hell this had become his life. His laundry mixed in with Lehrer’s. His pajamas folded on the bottom shelf in Lehrer’s closet.
Only he knew exactly how it happened.
Reckless,Lehrer’s voice said again in his head.
Noam grabbed a pair of flannels from the shelf and yanked them on with quick, violent motions. Lehrer was still reading those papers when Noam emerged. He didn’t look up when Noam walked past, or when Noam crawled into the bed and tugged the covers up to his hips.
Once, a couple months after they got involved—before Noam had discovered Faraday and remembered the truth—he’d sat on the sofa while Lehrer paced the living room holding a similar stack of papers, reading aloud his speech for the next Remembrance Day. It was in many ways a thinly disguised attempt to rally Carolinians against Texas; Texas had just threatened a trade embargo, an issue Lehrer hoped to use to fuel patriotic sentiment.
Noam was idly scrolling through his phone, reading headlines but not much else. Lehrer kept reading over the same phrase again and again, experimenting with different pitches, different gestures to punctuate his words.
“Let me be clear,” Lehrer said, with a sharp downward stroke of his hand like the fall of a blade. “These threats by Texas are nothing more than a blatant declaration of antiwitching bigotry—”
“War,” Noam said.
Lehrer paused, glancing up from his speech. Noam put down his phone.
“Texas has declared a war on witchings,” he said.
A small smile cut across Lehrer’s mouth, and he turned away. But when he gave that speech on Tuesday, he said, “Let me be clear—with these threats, Texas has declared a war on witchings,” and by five all the news outlets were repeating those words as zealously as if Texas had coined the term themselves.
Noam would like to think that was the start of his moral decay, the night he’d find at the root of all his own evil. But he knew that wasn’t true.
It started in a cold November courtyard, his face turned toward the starry sky and Lehrer’s marked hand heavy on his shoulder.
It started the moment they met.
The outbreak happened fast.
The first case came from near Atlantia’s southern border—or what used to be Atlantia’s border but was now Carolinia’s border—and from there it spread like fire in dry grass. The response from Carolinian government was just as immediate: quarantines were drawn up, red wards stuffed full of patients, a zone of two hundred square miles sprayed with disinfectant. The images coming out of the south showed crowds of faceless Atlantians all wearing gas masks, wide black glass where their eyes ought to be.
“This outbreak demonstrates that the annexation of Atlantia has come at a critical point,” Lehrer said in a speech that Wednesday, filmed in the courtyard of the government complex; the light wind rippled against his coat, the effect framing him against the ancient brick walls like a figure out of legend. “With Carolinian technology and Carolinian medicine, we can control the spread and prevent further deaths. We are confident that this outbreak will remain isolated to the far southern zone.”
Noam knew what Lehrer expected from him. He was supposed to get up on his soapbox in Little Atlantia and parrot the same speech.Better than dying,he was supposed to say. Remind people to be grateful for Carolinian interventionism. Remind them it could have been worse.
This was just more proof Lehrer didn’t know him at all. That despite everything he said—all those soft touches and sharp smiles, all the times he told Noam they were so alike, all those times he saidI trust you—all of it was in service ofthis. Using Noam’s loyalty to Atlantia for his own twisted ends.
Noam ended up on a soapbox, all right. But this time it wasn’t out in public where Lehrer’s spies could watch and report back, where anyone could film him and upload his speeches to the internet to spread Lehrer’s message from Noam’s mouth.
No—this time Noam met them in back rooms of old warehouses, in the meal line at the Migrant Center, in Cajun restaurants and barbecue joints. He couldn’t tell them the truth—Lehrer did this; he caused the outbreak himself just so he could play the hero—but he could do the next best thing.
He could tell them to fight back.
It wasn’t like Noam thought this wouldn’t get back to Lehrer eventually—he wasn’t that naive. But.
This was Noam’s fault, really. For not killing Lehrer when he had the chance. For not having found the vaccine yet. For encouraging silence and complacency while Lehrermurdered his people.
