Page 45 of The Sixth Fraction

Rory blinks at me for a second. “Whatever, you basically have to have something to offer that no one else can. I intend to offer my superior plant identification skills.”

“So you can . . . brew them some herbal tea?” Colin asks.

Rory smacks his arm. I finish eating my bread, watching the Foxes as they get in line for breakfast. Their shadows slant across the white pillars.

At least now I know who I need to talk to. The gun that fired at the Choosing Ceremony was stolen from the wall, and this is a guild of factionless thieves. Maybe one of them knows who killed Robert and why—and what it’s supposed to lead to.

Chapter 16

Tris

Over the next few days, I look for the Foxes I saw bring stolen food into the Rookery dining room. But I don’t see them again. The problem with a group of people who are used to disguising themselves as faction members, I discover, is that they’re hard to pin down. And the Foxes as a group seem talented at being forgettable.

But I’ve also been too busy to think about much other than survival. Every morning before sunrise, I go on a run with the others—running, Rory tells me, is an essential skill for a factionless, in case I need to run for a train . . . or run from a Dauntless sentry.

After I run I help Rory make breakfast, and then I learn about some other part of factionless life I didn’t know about before: the solar panels, the water purifiers, the apiary, the compost heap.

There are so many things that need to be done in any given day. Trash has to be removed from the premises every few days, which means someone has to bring a truck—stolen from Amity, no doubt—in the dead of night to pick it up. There are huge vats in the basement where we wash sheets, clothes, and towels, and someone has to stir them, wring everything out, and hang them up to dry. Someone has to bring the solar lamps to the roof every morning and inside every evening. Someone has to scrub the toilets. I never knew how much work it took to keep the world running.

After chores are done, though, Jove leads mandatory field trips every evening to the other parts of this secret machine the factionless are building, circuit by circuit: the Conservatory, a glass structure on the edge of the marsh where the modest crops the factionless are capable of growing are starting to flourish; and the Museum, huge and half-ruined and bustling.

I hear about all the guilds, too. Not just Healers, Travelers, Makers, and Foxes, but also Gardeners, who grow our fresh food; Foragers, who search abandoned buildings for useful things; and Teachers, who run the factionless school. I try to imagine a place for myself, but the only thing I can think about is the Foxes, the gun in Evelyn’s hand at the Choosing Ceremony, the question of who that bullet was really for, if not for Robert.

The evening of the fifth day, I stand at the sink down the hall from the faction failures’ dormitory and drink one glass of water, and then another . . . and I think of Caleb.

We used to do this every year, the night before our birthday, so we could wake up before sunrise. Abnegation doesn’t formally acknowledge birthdays, but exceptions are made for children, who get honey in their oats and a special look in the mirror and don’t have to do chores. I remember passing the water glass back and forth to take turns drinking.

I wonder where he is now.

The method still works: I wake before dawn, slip on my shoes, go to the bathroom, and then walk down the winding stairs to the atrium. Even the stairwell is beautiful in the Rookery, the wood paneling beneath the windows intricately carved, the metal supports on the banister patterned with flowers.

Today, with any luck, I’ll get one step closer to finding out who took the gun that killed Robert . . . and why.

I go through the atrium to the dining room, and then, just as I planned, I pull the basket of cleaning products out from under the sink, slide it into the next cabinet over, on top of the dish towels, and then I fold myself into the space I left behind. It’s a tight squeeze, but I can still close the door behind me.

It’s rare that being small comes in handy, but this is one of those times.

It smells like soap and rubber gloves and rot under the sink, but from here I can hear the Foxes arriving for their morning meeting.

“Are you starting the coffee?” one of them asks, and I try to place his voice in my mind, but I come up empty. I take slow, quiet breaths through my nose, and go still.

“Duh.” That’s Gretchen, the woman the Mender summoned to look at me in my Erudite jacket the other day. “You still at Erudite today?”

I hear shuffling, and then—beans poured into a grinder.

“Still trying to crack the same nut,” the other voice replies. “You?”

“Teaching strays how to throw a punch.”

“You couldn’t pay me to do that job.”

My neck is starting to hurt, bent at such a severe angle under the sink. The grinder turns on, so loud I want to cover my ears. It rattles the entire cabinet.

“Yeah, I’m a real hero. I hear Evelyn’s coming today? Wonder what she’s after.”

“She’s always got messages to send.”

“Well, she’s too recognizable to send them herself. Crap, we’re out of clean mugs.”