Page 30 of Poster Girl

“I bet you were great at that,” she says. “I bet you would have shushed your own mother at the dinner table if she dipped even a toe into sedition.” Knox frowns, sits back. “Well, maybe not. I bet you at least did the cost-benefit analysis—negative DesCoin for disrespecting your elders versus positive DesCoin for defending the state.”

Sonya never scolded her mother—she never had to, as Julia was more careful to respect the Delegation than even August had been. But she remembers the mental math. She still does it all the time.

“Anyway,” Knox says. “It seemed so nice, so clean, to put you Delegation children in the Aperture—to do the same damn thing to you that the Delegation did to us, hold you responsible for your family. Heap their crimes on your head. Only...”

Knox tilts her head.

“It’s still not really justice, is it? Because all of you fucks livingin the Aperture get to just remake your little kingdom in there,” she says. “Which brings me to an interesting cost-benefit analysis of my own—because I don’t want to help you earn any freedom, Sonya Kantor. But I also think it would be more of a punishment for you to reenter the real world than to spend the rest of your life in that birdcage.”

Sonya’s drink has lost its frost; water beads on the bowl of the glass and runs down the stem. She came here empty-handed, with nothing to trade.

“Maybe it would be simpler,” Sonya says, “if you considered Grace Ward’s parents.”

“Nothing simple about them, either,” Knox says. “Reuniting them forces a new awareness of all those years stolen from them, in retaliation for something that’s not even a crime anymore. That wasn’t a crime for everyone even then—weren’t you a second child?” She clicks her tongue. “But your parentsearnedyou.”

They had showed her the permit once.Exception to Protocol 18A,it read at the top. The blanks were full of her parents’ information, her sister’s. DesCoin amounts at time of application. Height, weight, existing health issues. All the right criteria met.

Alexander takes the silver device from his pocket, along with the length of cord and the headphones, folded up neatly. He puts them on the bar top and slides them toward Knox.

“She called them yesterday,” he says. “So I’m pretty sure they want to find her, and she wants to be found. There’s a recording of it on this thing.”

For the first time since Sonya walked into the bar, Knox hesitates. She picks up the silver device and looks at it, the cord still stretching across the sticky bar top.

“Mr. Price,” Knox says, after a moment, wagging a finger at him. “You’ve got a point, clever man. You ought to thank him, Sonya, he’s a better negotiator than you are.”

Knox expects her to actually thank him, Sonya knows—to prove that she will be obedient. Knox is her puppeteer in earnest now, a performer with a captive audience.

“Thank you,” Sonya says, terse.

Alexander looks down at the glass that the bartender put in front of him. He doesn’t respond.

“All right, then, let’s settle up your bill,” Knox says. “I require that my Delegation clients pay in advance, you see. In your case, you’re going to finish that drink...” She slides Sonya’s glass closer to the edge of the bar. “And then you’re going to sing me a song.” She smiles. “A Delegation song.”

She glances at Alexander.

“They’re illegal now, of course,” she says. “But God, I miss that good old-fashioned propaganda, don’t you?”

Every song on the radio had once been approved by the Delegation, for the most part a perfunctory process as long as there was nothing scandalous in the lyrics. But there were a few commissioned by the government to promote good values—five, maybe.

Knox went on: “Which one do I miss most? Probably ‘The Narrow Way,’ what a catchy little dirge it was.”

It’s possible Sonya’s mother wasn’t humming “The Narrow Way” on that last day, that it was one of the others, and she has just heard them all so many times that they are stuck together in her mind like a box of birthday candles melting on a stovetop.

Sonya wonders if Knox knows how this song haunts her. Could she know?

“Fuck you,” Sonya says.

Knox laughs again, but there is flint in it, this time.

“That’s the price,” Knox says. “Pay it, or fuck off.”

Alexander, now employed by the government, could object to the illegality of performing the song—but he doesn’t, and Sonya doesn’t expect him to. She thinks again about Vasilisa, sent again and again into the wood by the stepmother that wanted her dead. That story ended in fire. There’s no reason to expect there won’t be fire in this one.

Sonya tips the entire drink into her mouth at once. It scalds her throat on the way down. She’s glad for the muddle it brings to her mind when she steps away from the bar and faces the room. It’s stilltoo dark to see anything concrete—instead, she gets impressions of people, the flutter of fingers, the white of an eye, the flash of a leg.

Won’t you come with me

Along the harder road?

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