Page 83 of The Sin

“You didn’t know?” Her expression troubled, then brightened. “I’m just thankful you’re okay. You know the Sisterhood. They like to play their cards extremely close to their hand.”

While Roman had spilled his hand wide open, to save me.

I had so many more questions for my mom, but Roman was my top priority right now. “They took Roman. And Daniel.”

“Oh, that can’t be right.”

You don’t say! “Do you know where the Sisterhood is holding them?”

“We’re using the Guard Stations.” Mom paused to think, then said, “Knowing Geneva, she’ll want to keep the prestigious prisoners close. Probably the Guard Station across from Berkley House.”

The administration offices just off the main square? “Why Berkley House?”

“That’s where we’ve set up our temporary headquarters.”

Of course the Sisterhood had already set up headquarters. And of course everyone knew about it except me.

“I have to go,” I said and started down the steps.

“Wait!” Mom called frantically.

I turned to her and threw my hands up.What now?

“You can’t go out into the night like that,” she said. “Where’s your coat? And for goodness sake, you aren’t wearing shoes.”

I stared at her blankly.

“You’ll catch your death of cold,” she stated in her no-nonsense mother voice. “Here, take mine.”

I wasn’t cold, I wasn’t hot, I wasn’t anything that didn’t involve getting Roman out of Geneva’s clutches, but Mom was undoing the buttons of her coat to reveal a black chiffon dress beneath with absolutely no substance.

“I’ll get my own coat,” I sighed irritably and raced back up the steps, passing her into the vestibule.

It took me about five minutes to find the room where our coats had been taken hostage and to rummage through the rack for my faithful black, long-line coat. To spare Mom’s sensibilities, I even went hunting for my shoes.

That was five minutes to absorb the impact of seeing my mom carry that rifle, and assimilate what it meant. It wasn’t everyone except me who knew what was going on. My mom knew, because she was an active Sister. Not only that, she must be an integral cog in the Sisterhood wheel. She had to be, unless they were handing out rifles to everyone, and I doubted that was the case.

The Capra Foundation Building was a short walk from the square, although on the opposite end from Berkley House. I considered taking the side streets to skirt the square, but I wanted to get a measure of the mood and half of Capra would likely be in the square.

Mom walked with me. “I’m supposed to be patrolling the square, anyway.”

I side-eyed her rifle. “Do you know how to use that?”

“Of course not, darling.” She patted the weapon like it was a baby in her arms. “It’s not even loaded.”

Well, that was a relief.

At a glance, the festivities in the square resembled every other year. Citizens were out in full force. Popup stalls rimmed the cobbled area, selling everything from ciders to candies to bears carved out of wood with an Eastern Foundation flag sticking from their armpits. Red, black and gold bunting decorated the bandstand.

After that initial glance, however, the differences came fast and furiously. A group of early teens were on the bandstand, playing around the abandoned musical instruments. No street performers entertained the crowd. As for the crowd, they were almost exclusively congregated around the large screen on the clock tower.

My face was on the screen, although I couldn’t hear what I was saying until we drew closer to the rear stragglers of the crowd.

“It’s all lies,” I was saying, my voice coming at me from multiple speakers. “Our eggs don’t start off rotten. We are healthy for the first couple of years, until we reach the age of fourteen, maybe a few months more. That’s where Capra gets its supply of eggs from, harvested from young girls in The Smoke. It could be harvested from us. Itshouldbe harvested fromus. There’s no reason we couldn’t have children of our flesh and blood.”

Obviously I’d been playing on a loop all this time, but the crowd seemed spellbound, as if they were watching for the first time.

Then I saw why.

---