The August Five Part 8

"Gavin, please tell me," Tamsin said. She could tell by his forced cheerfulness that something was terribly wrong. "Is this a conversation you want to have in front of an audience at the cafe?"

"I guess not. If you don't mind a short walk, we can talk on my front porch," Gavin said.

"You have a front porch?" Tamsin asked. "Such things don't exist in the city."

"You'll see," he said. "It's close."

She followed him through the crowds along Linden Boulevard. They turned right at Shadow Bridge and then took the North Wall Quay until they reached a block of low-rent flats near the harbor. They ducked inside one of the small covered markets that sold mainly rugs and cheap wooden furniture. Gavin led her through the crowded stalls and out the back into a dingy corridor that led to a public stairwell. At the top of the stairs, they crossed a rickety walkway over an alley that ended at a private stairwell up to the roof. Gavin used two separate keys, one for the bottom of the stairs and one for the door at the top.

They came out on the flat roof of a one-story building squeezed between two taller buildings. A small shedlike building with a blue door stood at the far corner of the narrow roof. There were no windows on either of the neighboring buildings, only red brick walls towering on either side. A large kitchen garden planted in wooden boxes dominated the center of the roof. Two carved benches faced each other with an outdoor fire pit. She wondered if that was Gavin's only way to cook hot food.

"Your front yard is lovely," Tamsin said honestly. This secret little place felt like another world.

"It's hard to grow a garden up here. With these walls, I only get sun for a few hours a day, but you should come back in the spring. I'm not a bad gardener, when I find the time."

"You live in there?" she asked, pointing to the shed.

"I sleep in there. It's basically what it looks like, a shed with a cot. I'd offer you tea, but there's no water."

"I'm fine," she a.s.sured him, as they took a seat on a bench next to the fire pit. "Please, talk now."

"I wanted to be the one to tell you." He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "They're blaming your father for the kidnapping of Hywel."

"What?" She unfolded the paper, which was torn from the Chronicle. It described the charges against Michael Henry. Tamsin stood up and wandered a few steps toward the brick wall that was the side of the neighboring building. She wanted to hit something or stomp something to pieces with the soles of her boots. She wanted to destroy ... something. She squeezed her eyes shut, but she could feel that Gavin had come to stand beside her.

"I feel so helpless," she said.

"You're not helpless," he said.

"I want to scream from the rooftops," she said. She finally opened her eyes. Gavin was staring at her with so much concern, she wanted to shove him away and embrace him at the same time. "But who would care if I screamed?"

"You'd probably get us both arrested," he said. "Come on, sit down."

"They arrested Father at the customs house," Tamsin said furiously as Gavin led her back to the bench. "How could he have been there and kidnapping Hywel at the same time?"

"I don't think they care much about logic," he said. "I read the legal charges. They're saying he orchestrated it before the Rising."

"That's a lie!" Tamsin cried.

"I know," Gavin a.s.sured her. "We all know."

"He respected what Hywel was trying to do," Tamsin said.

"That's what he told me as well," Gavin agreed.

"Before this, there was a chance he wouldn't be executed," Tamsin said. "It was a small chance, but no Zunft died in the fire, right?"

Gavin gave her a funny look, but Tamsin continued. "And making martyrs of leaders hasn't worked in the past. I mean, the War for Aeren might never have happened if the Zunft hadn't slaughtered the rebel leaders."

"Except that war turned out well for the Zunft," Gavin pointed out. Both the cottagers and the Zunft considered the War for Aeren the decisive event that ensured the Zunft's control over the islands. Beyond that, the two sides' accounts of the war varied a great deal."

"I know!" Tamsin said defensively. "We lost the war, sure, but more cottagers joined our side when the Zunft began executing our leaders and made martyrs out of them. Their brutality turned sympathizers into rebels!" I hoped maybe..."

"He wasn't ever going to get a pardon," Gavin said. "You have to be realistic about that. They weren't going to forgive and forget."

"I have dreams of destroying the Zunft," she said. "I see an army of cottagers overrunning Seminary Square. We march up to the prison compound, and I smash open the gates and Papa strolls out of there. I dream about walking with him on Giant's Ridge, across a free Aeren."

"Oh, Tamsin," Gavin said. "Those are the fantasies of a child, not the realities of our time. Your father had dreams like that, too, and-"

"I know!" Tamsin interrupted. "I know the world isn't like that. He's going to be tried for treason, whether they're pinning this kidnapping on him or not."

"Let's not give up hope yet," Gavin said. "Mr. Leahy is talking to his contacts. Maybe if the kidnappers hear that your father is taking the blame for their actions, they'll release Hywel. It's not much, but it's something."

"I wonder who these 'cottager extremists' are," Tamsin said. "They want money and weapons, which makes them sound organized. But we don't know anything about them."

"They've made a new demand," Gavin said. "They're asking for the dissolution of the estate system in exchange for Hywel's life."

Tamsin shook her head miserably. "They might as well ask for the moon on a silver platter. I want to see my family. I want things to be fair."

"Since when is the world fair?" Gavin asked.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tamsin said.

"If fairness is your benchmark, you'll spend your life bitter and angry," Gavin said.

"Then what should be my benchmark?" Tamsin said. "You're the editor of an illegal newspaper. If you're not going for fairness, then what are you doing?"

"I'm trying to get the truth out there to as many people as will listen," Gavin said. "I don't expect all wrongs to be righted and then we'll all live happily ever after."

"What do you want your life to be like?" Tamsin said. "Are you going to cower like my mother and hope for the best?"

"Why do you think your mother is cowering?" Gavin asked.

"She isn't out there on the streets trying to make a difference, not like Papa," Tamsin said.

"She's taking care of her family," Gavin said. "Raising you. And she did a d.a.m.n good job of it."

"It's not enough," Tamsin said.

"I disagree." Gavin shrugged. "Bringing children into the world and doing your best to make them happy and safe-that seems pretty n.o.ble to me."

"The world isn't happy and safe!" Tamsin practically shouted. "That has to change first."

"Do you mind another walk?" Gavin asked after an uncomfortable silence. The sun had gone behind the building and she was visibly shivering. "I want to show you my backyard."

Tamsin smiled weakly. She was embarra.s.sed by her tirade, but Gavin didn't seem angry at all. "Front porches. Backyards. Such things don't exist in Sevenna," she said. Gavin smiled gently and offered her his hand. "Wait and see."

Gavin took Tamsin to the secret offices of the JFA Bulletin, which were located in a cavernous cellar beneath an abandoned gla.s.sworks factory. A blocky printing press took up one entire wall. The contraption was about twelve feet long and seven feet high and mounted on a metal frame. Two huge rollers were suspended above a mesh cage, which caught the pages while they were still damp with ink. A complicated system of ink troughs, pipes, and vats b.u.t.tressed the rollers. A long wooden table stood against the far wall. It held the cases of lead type and composing sticks. Rolls of cheap brownish paper were stacked up near the entrance, ready for the printing of next week's Bulletin.

"Where do you get your paper?" Tamsin asked. Paper was extremely expensive and cottagers were prohibited from buying or selling it without a permit.

"There's a mill south of the city," Gavin said.

"Bookless?" Tamsin asked. Bookless meant off the books, a nonregistered business that operated outside official channels of commerce. A bookless shop had to piggyback onto a sanctioned business, so it was like two stores running out of one building. In Sevenna, all cottager businesses had to operate this way or risk being shut down by the Zunft. In his articles, her father called this a two-headed economy. One head smiles and nods at the master. The other keeps its eyes down and its mouth shut.

"No, Mr. Leahy's uncle works there," Gavin said. "He tells the owners that he buys it to sell to the fish markets."

On one table, piles of handbills were waiting to be folded. An imperfect portrait of her father smiled up at her under the words: Justice for the August Five! Come to a Demonstration on Sat.u.r.day in Mast Square. Speak Out Against the Ancestral Homes Act!

"Nice portrait," Tamsin said, trying to sound positive, but the image of her father made her homesick. "Who does your art?"

"A kid named Theodore," Gavin said. "He does these amazing story pictures, too. You should see them sometime."

"Story pictures," Tamsin repeated, not sure she knew what he meant.

"It's stories told in a sequence of pictures instead of words," Gavin explained. "He sells a monthly packet of them with Navid and his friends."

"Hasn't the Zunft outlawed them yet?" Tamsin asked. Every time a new art form became popular, the Zunft tried to regulate, squash, or otherwise hinder the cottagers' creation of it and access to it. It was even illegal for cottagers to buy paint because the Zunft said they would use it to deface public buildings.

"Well, they probably would, except Navid's not political," Gavin said. "He draws talking animals with clothes and flying rovers-that sort of thing."

"My sisters would love it, but it doesn't help our cause," Tamsin said.

"What kind of stories would you tell?" Gavin asked.

"True ones," Tamsin said. "Like what the Zunft did to Navid's hands or the sinking of the Jubilee."

"You should write another treatise for the Bulletin," Gavin said. "A longer one, about whatever you want. Or come on Sat.u.r.day to Mast Square. Say a few words at the demonstration."

"My mother doesn't want people to know I'm in the city," Tamsin said.

"I understand," Gavin said. "If you change your mind, let me know. It might help sort things out in your own mind."

"It's amazing what you've done here," Tamsin said, abruptly changing the subject. She didn't want to give a speech. People would expect her to be amazing, like her father, and she wouldn't live up to him. "I can't imagine how hard it was to get those presses."

"Your father did that," Gavin said. "He knows a mechanist out of Norde. He helped us get the last three presses after the Zunft confiscated our other ones from us."

"Back on Aeren, we used to get shipments of machine parts from Norde," Tamsin said. "Mother would show us how to break them apart and sew the pieces into her stuffed toys."

"The ones she sells at Abel's Toys?" Gavin asked.

"You know about that?" Tamsin asked.

"Samuel Abel is one of our allies. We send messages through him all the time."

"We shipped the metal letters for the presses in toys, too," Tamsin said, pointing to the case with lead letters organized alphabetically in compartments. She picked up a tiny a and held it up in front of her eye.

"Each of these was carried across the Midmark Sea in a toy," she said. "Your spies are stuffed antelopes and fluffy racc.o.o.ns."

"A is for antelope? B is for bunny?"

"I don't think we were that systematic," Tamsin said. "And I cheated once. I was tired of sewing so I stuffed sixteen of these into a cat."

"Using toys as couriers was one of your family's more inspired ideas," Gavin said.

"Have you heard anything about the prison visit?" Tamsin asked. It had been Gavin who submitted the tangle of paperwork to request a visit with Michael Henry. So far, there had been no reply from the Zunft officials.

"I used your mother's address in Black Rock," Gavin said. "And the name of a relative. Your aunt, I think. If your mother hears something, she'll be in contact with you."

"Maybe my mother should go," Tamsin said. "Then she can yell at Papa herself instead of expecting me to do it."

"I don't think that's what she wants you to do," Gavin said. "Her feelings about the Rising can't be simple."

"Why didn't you join Father in the customs house?" Tamsin asked.

"Do you hate me for that?" Gavin asked.

"Why would you think that?" Tamsin said.

"Your father is my mentor," he said. "And my friend. He is the closest thing to a leader that we've ever had. But I believe the August Rising was misguided. He thought that he would make this grand gesture and all the cottagers would follow him."

"Why didn't they?" Tamsin asked.

"Well, on a very mundane level, not enough people knew what was happening," Gavin said. "I talked to him right after the Rising started in Port Kenney. It caught him by surprise, but he said it was an opportunity to show solidarity with the Aeren cottagers."

"That's what he told you?" Tamsin said, surprised to learn that her father had lied to Gavin. Michael knew all about what was happening in Port Kenney. He'd orchestrated it, and Tamsin herself had struck that match. Gavin obviously didn't know about her involvement either.

"Yes, he wanted me to join him and occupy the Grand Customs House," Gavin said.

"And you didn't?" Tamsin asked.

"No, Tamsin, I didn't," Gavin said. "Your father was angry with me about it, and I'm very sorry about that. But we weren't organized enough to make a grand gesture like that. I told him it was suicide."

"You think he made a mistake," Tamsin said.

"I understood his motivations," Gavin said. "He felt betrayed by his contacts in the Zunft, and he made an impulsive decision. It was a courageous gesture on the part of a good man."

Candlelight. She thought about the feel of the stone and the match in her hand. Had it been futile? Had anything been gained in that explosion of power and flame?

"I don't know why I did it," Tamsin said, choking on her words.

"Did what?" Gavin asked, and Tamsin remembered that he didn't know about Port Kenney. He didn't know her part in the August Rising.

"I can't talk about it," Tamsin said, realizing how stupid that sounded since she was the one who had brought it up.

"It's all right," Gavin said. "I understand."

"Someone told me to do something and I didn't question it," Tamsin said. "I didn't stop to ask why. I did it. People got hurt. And I might have been wrong. What does that make me?"