Page 50 of Star Bringer
“If that’s the case, why do the people here on Askkandia—even here in Rangar—have the best lives of anyone in the system?” I ask as we skirt a man sitting in the street in a dirty brown robe.
The princess looks horrified—though I don’t know if it’s by him or my words.
“That can’t be true,” she tells me, looking around at the trash on the street and the people dressed in rags.
I shrug. “Your dear mama raised taxes a few years back, and it squeezed the last bit of life out of a lot of these places.Most people were already at the poverty level, so it hit hard. Add into that the grain rationing, and everyone’s fucked right now. If all they can afford is bread and now that’s not available, what do you think is going to happen to them?”
“But we needed theCaelestis.She’s our one hope of saving the system. We all have to make sacrifices.” Her conviction might be more believable if I hadn’t just peeled a bunch of jewels off her damn dress.
“Yeah? How about you, Princess? What sacrifices have you been making? You ever gone hungry?”
“I’m hungry now.”
“Not the same thing—you know we’re going to solve that problem as soon as we find a place to buy food. But what if this was your everyday life?” I don’t wait for an answer. “Just imagine we didn’t have a pocket full of shiny gems you used to decorate your dress. Imagine you had to live here in Rangar forever, with no way out except death. And then consider that just one of your shiny buttons could probably feed a family for a year.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “So, you’re going to sell them and give the money away?”
She’s got me there. “No. But at least I don’t pretend to be acting for anyone but myself.” And Max and Milla, though I leave that unsaid. “I don’t go around pretending that I’m taxing the ordinary people into starvation for their own good while I sit in my gold-plated palace and look down on them all.”
“It’s notgold. And I don’t look down on them.” She nibbles at her bottom lip in that way she does when she’s nervous—or thinking deeply about something. “I feel pity for them.”
I grunt. “It’s pretty much the same thing, isn’t it?”
She doesn’t answer for a long time. Then, as we turn down a particularly dismal looking street, she whispers, “You really hate the Ruling Families, don’t you?”
I do, but telling her that right now feels a lot like kicking her while she’s down. “Don’t take it personally. I hate a lot of people.” Like anyone who tries to tell me what to do. “I’ve always had a problem with authority figures.”
“But someone needs to be in charge; otherwise, it would be chaos and anarchy.”
“Yeah, but they don’t have to get super-rich at the expense of everyone else—that’s gross. And they should be elected by the people.” I say the last just to wind her up. I mean, I sort of think it, but I’ve never had any real interest in politics. You look after yourself, and everyone else—if they’ve got any sense—does the same.
I stop walking as I realize I’ve left her behind. She’s stopped in the center of the street, and she’s staring at me, face eerily blank.
“That’s…” She obviously can’t think of a word bad enough.
“Seditious?” I suggest. “You’d be surprised how many people think the same thing.”
“Are you a rebel?” she asks, and she sounds genuinely horrified.
“Hell no. I’m just trying to make a living any way I can.”
Her shoulders slump. “But you hate everyone, and you don’t hate the rebels, even though they’re evil.”
“Nah. Your mother is evil. Dr. Veragelen is evil. The rebels are just trying to free the peasants from the yoke of oppression and all that shit.”
“They murdered my father.”
I didn’t know that, and I can hear the echo of pain in her voice, but lots of people die. My mother was murdered right in front of me when I was eleven—and that wasn’t even the worst thing that happened to me that year. Or some years since.
“What about me?” she asks after we walk a couple of blocks in silence. “Do you think I’m evil?”
“Not yet. But I do think you’re willfully ignorant, and it’s a slippery slope from there into the abyss.”
“Wow.” She reels back. “Glad your opinion of me is so high.”
Maybe I shouldn’t be talking to her like this, but life’s too short to waste it on lies. Especially when she’s literally in a position to do something about all these things that seem to horrify her so much.
“Come on, Princess. You’re supposed to be heir to all this, and yet you know nothing about how ‘your people’ live. I bet you never question your mother or the decisions she makes.”
