Rise An Eve Novel

pulling a sweater and pants from the closet.
    Charles followed me as I crossed the room to my dresser. He looped his tie around his neck, throwing one end over the other, moving his hands quickly until he slid the knot to his throat. “I’m running the construction sites. I’m not fighting a war against the rebels. I’m like everyone else inside this City, doing the best I can with what I’ve been given.”
    “That’s not good enough,” I shot back. This wasn’t his fault, I knew that, and yet he was here. He was the only person within range.
    Charles stepped away from me, his eyes small and narrow. He hated it when I did this, placed him on the side of the King, held him accountable for what my father had done. But he had been there, hadn’t he? If he’d argued for improved conditions at the camps, as he said he had, then why had things continued as they were? Why didn’t he, of all people, put a stop to it?
    I changed quickly, hiding from him in the cold, still bathroom. The quiet outside frightened me. It was no more than eight o’clock. If my father or the Lieutenant were giving speeches, they’d timed it before breakfast, when most of us were just waking up.
    I started out of the room and into the hall, moving past the row of suites. It wasn’t long before I heard the door swing open and the sound of Charles’s footsteps as he started after me. I didn’t bother to turn around. “What are you doing?” I said.
    “I’d ask you the same thing.”
    “I’m going downstairs to see what’s happening.”
    I kept walking, our steps in synch, until he darted up beside me. He was still straightening his tie. “I’ll come with you,” he said. The hallway was cool, the air raising goose bumps on my skin. At the far end of the corridor, near my father’s suite, I heard whispers of something, faint voices drifting out of the parlor. The soldiers who were normally stationed outside the elevator and stairwells were gone.
    We turned in to the room. A group was huddled around the window—some soldiers, some of the workers from the Palace kitchen. One of the cooks who’d been stuck inside the tower for days, awaiting the end of the siege, had her hand pressed against the glass, her eyes red.
    “What is it?” I asked. “What’s happening?”
    The soldiers hardly looked away from the window. I came up behind them, trying to see what was happening. Far below, the Jeep had made its way through the crowd, the soldiers swarming it as its back door swung open. It was impossible to tell who had gotten out, but as soon as the figure came into the crowd people started shifting, the shouts and yells blending together as one. A section of people came together then dispersed, like a great swarm of flies. “The rebel leaders,” one of the soldiers said, not turning to look at me. “They found them.”
    I felt the panic rising, my pulse throbbing in my hands. “Who are they?” I asked. “Where were they found?”
    I turned, looking at a few of the Palace workers. The cook, an older woman with a long white braid, cupped her chin in her hand. “Somewhere in the Outlands, I imagine.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke.
    Marcus, one of the servers from the dining room, had his lips pressed together in a straight line. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks slack. “Poor bastards.”
    “They’re not exactly innocent, are they?” one of the soldiers shot back. “Do you know how many people died protecting the City in just the past few days?”
    “Where are they taking them?” I cut in.
    A few people turned, studying me, but no one said anything. I went back into the hall, Charles following in my wake. I kept pressing the button on the elevator, listening to it ascend the tower. It wasn’t until we were inside, the doors closing behind us, that I spoke.
    “They brought them here, outside the Palace, to do what? Give the public a lesson? Show everyone what happens to people who disobey my father?” My stomach felt light as the floors flew past, one gone, then ten.
    Charles pushed his hair out of his face. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think we’d revert to that. There should be trials, at least. Innocent until proven guilty, wasn’t it?”
    “ Wasn’t it ,” I repeated. “ Past tense . I don’t think my father cares much for trials now.”
    We watched the numbers light up one by one, clocking our descent. When the doors opened to the main lobby, it sounded as if the crowd was inside.