The August 5 (10 page)

“Today, we are at the cusp of an Innovation Revolution. In recent years, we have seen the advent of horseless carriages, better weapons to keep us safe, and conveniences in our homes. To continue progress, we must have a strong economy. Everyone must do their share and maintain their proper place. A tower without a foundation is nothing but a pile of rubble. The estate system is the foundation of our tower. We are building that tower brick by brick, and at the top is the promise of peace and prosperity for all who have played their part.

“This year, we will study the beginnings of the estate system and learn about the men who had to forge the Zunft by becoming martyrs to the cause. You will see why your heritage is so important from a historical perspective. You will understand why the Zunft is a cause worth fighting for, although I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that. Given recent events, you have seen what can happen if we are not vigilant against the threat that lurks beneath our feet.

“You received the reading assignments from the steward last week,” Rannigan said. “I trust you've done the reading.”

Students shifted uncomfortably. Tommy suspected that very few of them had done the reading.

“Well, we shall see,” Rannigan said, pulling out a sheet of paper from his binder. “Welcome to the question-and-answer session. We will do this periodically to support your personal reading. When I call your name, stand up.”

The professor ran his finger down the sheet and called out: “Thomas Shore.”

Tommy took a deep breath. With a last name like his, he was bound to attract attention. He'd done the reading, but he hoped he wouldn't make a fool of himself in front of the lads. Tommy stood at attention. He fixed his eyes on Professor Rannigan and did not fidget.

“Relax, Mr. Shore. You're not going to war,” Rannigan said with a pleasant smile.

“Yes, sir,” Thomas said.

Rannigan consulted his notes. “What was the Battle of the Hannon?”

Tommy felt a rush of relief. The reading had covered this, and besides, it was an event that took place less than ten miles from his home. His tutor had taken him to the site of the battle as part of his studies.

“It was when a small group of landowners led by Alexander Carver defeated cottager bandits who were killing women and children on the coast of Aeren.”

“Who was Alexander Carver?” Rannigan asked.

“He is known as the father of the Zunft,” Tommy said.

“And his name is the origin of the name of your father's political faction, the Carvers. Isn't that correct?”

There was a ripple of interest among the students. Colston Shore had published a manifesto of his beliefs a few years earlier, but it was never well circulated in the islands. There were only fifty copies ever printed and a large stack of them were in his father's library in Aeren. As far as Tommy knew, that manifesto was the only place Colston had ever explicitly said where the name Carvers came from.

“Did you not know that?” Rannigan asked, addressing the entire lecture hall. “Yes, the Carvers are named for our forefather, Alexander Carver, who defeated the bandits at the Hannon. Many consider that moment to be the birth of the Zunft. Any questions?”

No one raised a hand, and Professor Rannigan nodded for Tommy to sit back down.

“Good job, Mr. Shore,” Rannigan said, glancing down at his book again. “Let's see, who's next? Charlotte Ramsey.”

The blond girl seemed to shrink into her seat for a moment. Then she stood up and the lecture hall became unnaturally silent.

“Did you do the reading?” Rannigan asked. When he was quizzing Tommy, he had sounded easygoing and cheerful. Now his tone was hard, like he was talking to a disobedient child.

“Yes, sir,” Charlotte replied.

“Did you understand it?” Rannigan asked.

Charlotte hesitated and then replied, “Yes, sir.”

“Why did you pause? Did you read it or not?” Rannigan asked.

“Yes, sir. I read it and understood it.” There were titters among the students behind her. Tommy could see the side of her face and at the sound of laughter, her cheeks flushed red.

“Are you sure? There was some complicated material there.”

“Yes, sir.” This time, she didn't hesitate.

“Who was the leader of the bandits at the Battle of Hannon?” Rannigan asked.

Tommy thought back to the reading. He didn't remember it saying anything about the opposing leader. He'd wondered how the bandits had amassed such a large force, but the reading hadn't explained that either. After a long uncomfortable silence, Rannigan shook his head in disgust and threw out another question to Charlotte.

“What was Alexander Carver's station at the battle?” Rannigan asked.

The reading hadn't said anything about that either. Tommy wasn't even sure what Rannigan meant by
station
.

“He was their leader, sir,” Charlotte said.

Rannigan laughed derisively, and many of the students followed suit. “Yes, Charlotte,” he said. “As Mr. Shore pointed out, he was their leader. Do you know what I mean by station?”

“No, sir,” she said quietly.

Rannigan slammed his hands on the podium. “I asked if you understood the reading!” he said loudly, and Charlotte flinched. “And you said yes. Yet here you are, utterly lost, wasting my precious time and the time of these students who are serious about their studies.”

Tommy was shocked. He hadn't asked fair questions. Why was he giving her such a hard time? Charlotte bowed her head, and students snickered in the back.

“Women play a foundational role in the success of the Zunft, of that there is no doubt. It is an important role that must be protected and maintained. A tree must bear fruit for a healthy society. The women of the Zunft are the roots of that tree. What is the role of a tree's roots? They furnish the tree with what it needs. Everything has its appointed place, and if we alter that, then the tree begins to die.”

Rannigan glared around the hall. His eyes deliberately avoided Charlotte, even though he was addressing her.

“Everything has its proper place. You understand that, don't you, Charlotte? You're such a smart
girl
after all.”

He said
girl
like he was saying something dirty. Charlotte's shoulders were hunched and she continued to stare at the floor. Tommy wondered how she had felt this morning as she got ready to come to class. He doubted she had expected this. Tommy's hand shot up in the air. “Sir?”

The entire class, even Charlotte, looked at him in surprise. Tears were running down Charlotte's cheeks. Tommy couldn't imagine anything more embarrassing than crying in the lecture hall, and he thought desperately for a way to divert attention away from her.

“Excuse me, Mr. Shore,” Rannigan said. “I wasn't finished!”

“I was going to say that it's the same with the cottagers and appointed places. Natural laws…” Tommy trailed off as his classmates stared at him like he was insane.

“Well, yes,” Rannigan said, obviously unsure how to respond to the son of the chief administrator. “That was the point I was getting to.”

“The cottagers are trying to cut the tree down!” Tommy said, slamming his fist on the desk and making everyone around him jump. He had no idea what he was doing, and he could see Dennett and Giles staring at him like he was insane. Well, they couldn't argue with the anti-cottager rhetoric, and he'd distracted them from picking on Charlotte.

After a moment of silence, Rannigan seemed to warm to the situation. “Mr. Shore has an excellent point. It is your job to be vigilant against transgressions wherever you see them. And sometimes they can be right in front of you.”

Outside, the bell in the tower began to chime, signaling the end of class. Charlotte, who was still standing, grabbed her notebook and rushed toward the exit before anyone else moved.

“Miss Ramsey?” Rannigan called when Charlotte reached the door. “A word, if you please?”

Charlotte froze near the entrance. By now, the other students had filed out of their seats and toward the exit. They passed Charlotte as if she were nothing more than a chair or a hat stand.

“Don't forget to do the reading, lads,” Rannigan called. Tommy tried to catch Charlotte's eye on his way out, but she stared at the floor with her back to Professor Rannigan. Tommy crossed the threshold into the weak morning sunshine. He suddenly imagined what Charlotte might have looked like when she was a little girl, sitting at her mother's knee while her mother brushed her golden hair and wished all good things for her beautiful daughter.

11

COLSTON SHORE, ILLEGITIMATE LEADER?

In light of the new information regarding the kidnapping of Hywel, the administration of Colston Shore should be called into question. Hywel was unable to attend to his duties at the Chamber because of violence and imprisonment, and yet his faction deserts him and flocks to this questionable leader. What, exactly, did Shore offer them for this treasonous behavior? Until Hywel is safely returned, all acts passed by Colston Shore should be null and void, and the administration of Hywel continue in absentia. Shore's Ancestral Homes Act is a blatant attempt to deport cottagers from the city and turn them into slaves for the profit of the estate system.

—Angry Em,
JFA Bulletin,
September 12

A soggy newspaper lay in the gutter. It was an illegal cottager paper and like all the others, it would probably disappear quickly. The paper was cheap and the ink smeared, but Tommy could still make out the words of the headline denouncing his father. Hywel had been advocating freedom of the press before he was kidnapped. That was yet another issue that made Tommy's father hate the former chief administrator. Embarrassed to see his family name in such a state, Tommy ground the paper with his boot until it was a pulpy mess.

“What are you doing?” Bern asked impatiently.

“Making father proud,” Tommy muttered, but Bern didn't hear him over the roar of rover engines. A convoy of army vehicles bumped past them on their way to the Zunft Compound at the edge of the city, and everyone had to wait until they were gone to cross Linden Boulevard. Their street corner was getting crowded with commuters and Tommy studied the men waiting with them. Zunftmen in bowler hats with the
Chronicle
folded under their arms, heading home to the residential districts in North Sevenna. On the other side of the street, it was probably cottagers about to return home to South Sevenna.

The boys were headed to a dinner party at their father's town house a mile northwest of Seminary. Colston had sent a soldier to hand each boy a personal invitation, or a be-there-or-else summons, as Tommy preferred to think of it. They'd been at school nearly a month, and this would be their first visit with Colston. It would also be the farthest that Tommy had ventured into the city since classes began. Mostly, he stayed inside the Seminary walls. The library had the books he needed. The dining hall provided the meals, and anything else he could buy at the grocer's on the corner of Dawson Street. There was a large newsstand at the north end of Seminary Square near the front gates. Sometimes he went there to buy the
Zunft Chronicle
. He'd strolled through the shops along Dawson Street and up to the pocket park called Sebastian's Circle, but mostly he was too busy with classes to explore.

“What's your best class?” Tommy asked his brother.

“Not the History of the Zunft,” Bern said. “The Sleepwalker makes me want to jump off a cliff. You're so lucky you got Rannigan.”

Tommy thought about telling Bern how Rannigan had treated Charlotte, but the last rover bumped by and the boys set off for their father's again. Linden Boulevard was one of the main thoroughfares of the city, and it ran all the way down to the Lyone River across Fourth Stone Bridge and into the cottager district. This was the only section that was paved with cobblestones, but the rovers had tracked mud from the south along the road and by the time they reached the other side, Tommy's trousers were speckled with mud.

Once the boys crossed Linden, they had officially left the city center and entered the North District, which was the wealthiest quarter of the city. Most Zunft politicians and high-ranking officers kept their town houses in the North District. It was the only part of the city where the streets were well-maintained. The noise of the city faded as they strolled up the tree-lined avenues. The immaculate town houses and ornamental gardens formed a perimeter that blocked any view of the poor southern districts. From here, it was easy to pretend they didn't exist.

“Has Father
ever
hosted a party before?” Bern asked. “This is going to be hilarious.”

Hilarious
was not the word Tommy would have chosen when describing a formal evening with high-ranking Zunftmen and their bored families.

“I hate this sort of thing,” Tommy mumbled. His collar was too tight around his neck. He felt like he was choking every time he tried to turn his head.

“Why?” Bern could never understand Tommy's aversion to social events.

“I've got things I need to do,” Tommy said. “Don't you have loads of homework?”

“Oh, that reminds me—quit refusing the invitations from the lads,” Bern said. “It makes me look bad.”

“How does it make
you
look bad?” Tommy asked. “It doesn't have anything to do with you.”

“You're the son of the chief administrator,” Bern chided him. “You have to do certain things. Act certain ways. And if you don't, people will notice quicker than if you were a nobody.”

“I'm busy studying,” Tommy said. He didn't want to say that his engineering classes were much harder than he had expected and twice as boring as he had feared. “Surely that's an acceptable thing to do as a Seminary student.”