Page 29 of Arch Conspirator
But as close as I was to them, standing on the balcony right above their heads, I could tell that the people were not here for a spectacle. They shuffled, restless. Muttered. Pointed as they took note of the guards positioned at the perimeter of the square. Directly across from me, elevated a foot above the crowd, was a platform. It stood between the people and the hill that led down to the Trireme. The guards kept the people from climbing on it; it was where Kreon and Haemon and I would stand to watch the ship launch.
The ship was huge. Even though it was a ways off, across the square, down the hill, it loomed over us all. Bigger than most of our buildings. I had gone the night before with Kreon to make sure it was all in order. His instructions up until that point had been to ensure the Trireme was ready to launch at all times. He had never known when its launch would be most useful to him.
I had gone to persuade him that now was not the time. He had been angry with me for contradicting him in public, at the hearing, but his anger was a cold, lifeless thing. It made him into stone, and now he wouldn’t listen. I knew him, and I knew I had made him impossible to reach by daring to disagree with him at that pivotal moment, yet I still had to try. Not just for our niece Antigone, who I liked well enough, and not just for a young woman who had wanted to honor her brother—but for Kreon himself.
This crowd was not gathered for a spectacle.
They were gathered to see if the thing that horrified them would really come to pass.
And that was not a crowd that would favor Kreon.
“They told me you were up here,” Kreon said, his hand finding the small of my back. “What are you looking at, Wife?”
We were a love match. My father was too negligent in hisduties—too lost in moonshine—to arrange a match for me. My mother, hanging on my every word, would simply do as I said. My cousin took me to a party, thrown in an abandoned building in the Neïstan District. In those days people were dying faster than they were being born. A lot of buildings were abandoned. Empty. Crumbling. If we weren’t careful, analysts said, we would lose valuable genetic diversity and we would not be able to survive. That was why the compulsory child-bearing regulations began.
But the party—
There weren’t many girls there. It wasn’t what respectable girls did. But at that time, I was tired of being respectable, so I went. All the boys there were military. It was the only way to look clean-cut—the uniforms were better maintained than most people’s hand-me-downs and repurposed old clothing. Kreon was one of the only ones who looked like he needed to shave. His jaw was strong; so was his brow. When he met me, he bowed a little, like I was a queen. The others teased him for it, but I thought it was sweet. There was always something sweet about him in those days. Awkward. Sure of himself in his work, but with me, so careful, like he thought he might break me. It was nice to be taken care of. I had always done the caretaking. After all, I was the prophet of my house. God’s Chosen.
Now, I wished Kreon would see me that way, just long enough to correct his mistakes.
“I am looking at trouble brewing,” I said to him. One last try.
“They seem peaceful enough.”
“They’re not,” I said sharply, and I glared at him. “For years you have instructed them to value not the minds of people who bear children but their bodies. Now you seek to dispose of one because she cares for her brother—”
“Because shedefied me—”
“They do not see that part! They see only that you are carelesswith a precious resource. That you seek obedience without rational thought!”
“Obedience,” he said, and he put his hand on my elbow and drew me closer. “Obedience is essential to our survival.”
I tensed. In all our years, Kreon had never hurt me, never grabbed me. This was not like him.
“That may be,” I said, and I pulled my arm free. “But you cannot force people to see the world your way.”
I saw Haemon standing near the platform. He crouched down beside it, so that for a moment I thought he was tying his shoelace. But no—he was looking at something beneath it, something I couldn’t see. He straightened, and looked up at the balcony where we stood. I could not read his expression from here. But I saw things clearly; I always had.
“I must go speak with our son,” I said.
Walking through the crowd, my suspicions were confirmed. There was a buoyancy to crowds that waited in eager anticipation. It was absent here. The tension here was that of a finger on a trigger, a wire pulled tight enough to snap. A soldier escorted me across the square, but shoulders still bumped me from all angles. Voices chased me all the way to where Haemon stood, waiting for us on the platform. His face was drawn. When he set a hand on my shoulder to steady me as he kissed my cheek, it was shaking. I frowned up at him.
“I don’t know what you’re doing,” I said. “But if it’s making you look this sick, I’m sure you don’t want to do it.”
“My father is about to kill my betrothed,” he said. “How else am I supposed to look?”
I was not used to words failing me. But this was an extraordinary situation. I pursed my lips and by that time, Kreon was making his way through the crowd.
He was flanked by soldiers, but the simmer of the crowd reached a boil when he was among them. People edged closer, pressing against the men that protected my husband. One man threw himself at Kreon, and a soldier’s retaliation was swift. He brought the butt of his gun down on the side of the man’s head. The man collapsed into the crowd, disappearing. Kreon made it to the platform as the crowd roared. I saw the injured man resurface with a red streak of blood on his face.
The shouts were deafening. The soldiers held their weapons crosswise, the rifles becoming a barrier. Kreon’s eyes were too wide, the whites showing, as he looked back at the Trireme. He took the radio communicator from his belt and held it up to his mouth. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I reached for him. His arm felt like steel beneath my fingers.
Our eyes met.
“If you do this,” I said to him, “they will revolt.”
The platform beneath the Trireme roared to life. A flame ignited beneath the ship. Smoke curled over its base. At the sight of fire, the crowd erupted. The wall of sound was like a physical thing; it pushed me into Kreon.
