Page 75 of The Verdant Cage
I’m answered with a crash coming from the Seingalts’ kitchen. I rush toward it.
David is kneeling on the floor, trying to stack things in his arms. I drop to help him before seeing what they are: brightly colored packages from Beyond. Metal cylinders with labels for Chicken Noodle Soup, Baked Beans, and something called Water Chestnuts.This is food!
David’s eyes are red-rimmed, his thin mustache glistening with moisture. Had he been the one crying?
“Please,” he says. “Don’t tell. I can explain.”
“I already know about the secret room you found in the basement.” Disgust twists my mouth. “And the Before Times bounty inside it.”
“I get it,” he says, noting my expression. He stands, picking up the cylinders and stacking them in the open cupboard they must have fallen out of. “I despise myself, too. It happens so slowly, you don’t even notice it at first. Inch by inch, you become comfortable getting a little bit more than everyone else. After a while, your brain does a neat trick and tells you that you’ve earned it, even though you’re not doing anything different or better than everyone else around you.” He shrugs. “Once you convince yourself it’s your due, you’ll fight to keep it.”
My mouth feels dry. “People are going hungry in the Valley.”
David nods, facing the cupboard, and continues stacking. The colors of the containers are shocking to me. The red and white of the soup, golden edging on the beans, the vivid blue of something called SPAM. When they’re all stacked back inside the cabinet, he closes it and turns to me.
“I wasn’t always like this,” he says. “Weak, I mean.” He shoots me a sad smile. “When Joanne was alive, we balanced each other out. Everything was better then.”
He’s flirting with heresy by suggesting her Harvest was anything less than an honor, but I’m far past caring about that. “You could redistribute the food you found,” I suggest. “Share what remains with everyone. Go back to the way things used to be inside the Wall.”
“Oh, to have the clarity of a child,” he says sadly.
“Screw you,” I spit back, shocked at my words and then, almost immediately after, angry I didn’t say worse.
He holds up his hands. “I didn’t mean it as an insult. There’s things you don’t know, that’s all.”
“Like the fact that the Vex is a mass poisoning? Which I assumeyouknow, too, since I saw your tracks by the quarantined well.”
His shoulders slump. “How did you figure it out? About the Vex?”
“Lucky guess,” I say. That’s all the man deserves. I can’t believe how much I’d still respected him, even five minutes earlier. All because he was a Record Keeper. “What’s its purpose?”
“That, I don’t know,” he says, his expression morose. “I’d been hoping to find out, but I didn’t uncover anything when I went to look that day. Did you?” He sounds hopeful.
I shake my head, furious. The herbicide was found in the vault. David must know more than he’s letting on. I decide to try a new approach. “So how long has Jarek been the one really in charge?”
David’s bearing changes, his face hardening. I’ve gone too far. “You will not tell anyone about the food you saw here,” he commands.
I wonder how and when Jarek wrested such power from the Record Keeper House. How long he waited for his turn on the Council of Elders. Is that what Jonas had seen in the vault? Definitive proof of Jarek’s control?
Those of us inside the Wall. We’re not what you think.
“I need to get to work on the census,” I say, by way of a response. “I have a lot of houses to visit today.”
I move to collect my paperwork. David follows me, though instinctively I know the interrogation is over. I gained nothing of value, only further disappointment in my leaders.
“I’m sorry about Marina,” he says, clearly trying to make himself feel better with a meaningless, unrelated apology. “I know she can be a bit much.”
I don’t even give him the courtesy of a nod. A person in power choosing to do nothing in the face of injustice is a million times worse than a teenager misbehaving.
46
Throughout my census duties, heavy emotions drag at me: my worry for Jonas, fresh grief over my father’s death, fear of the control Jarek’s accumulated. It’s all I can do to stay inside my own skin until early afternoon.
Everyone makes it to training today, even Oscar, who’s supposed to be working on my dress. Reatha greets us but seems distracted, returning to the cave almost immediately. Marie settles in to watch us from the sidelines, her grin so wide it nearly splits her face open when I produce the three potato rolls I snuck from last night’s dinner.
“One for each Chemist!” she exclaims.
“That’s right.” When she runs inside to share them with her mother, I wonder aloud where Albert is.
