The Strength of the Few (Hierarchy, #2)

by James Islington

WILL, WE WERE TAUGHT OVER and over at the academy, is a gift. Not just in the sense that it is something good and wondrous, but that it is literally a gift: it can only ever be given, never taken. Another of the great lies of the Hierarchy. Possibly their greatest. And yet, perhaps, also their greatest truth. Like any power, it can be coerced. Fought for. Demanded. Requested under false pretences. But in the end, it is always the giving that is the important part. It can be reluctant. It can be because it is expected, pressured. It can even be a last resort against death itself.

I have seen what a life without fear can be like, now.

But I am done with fighting. If the only way to find my way back to Gráinne, Onchú, and the children is to disappoint—to be seen as lazy and unreliable, as well as crippled—then I will do it. I have done worse. I have suffered far greater indignities.

But I’ve been leaning on them to help me process what we’re learning. Using the shared experience to help me accept Veridius’s claims, knowing that there will be many, undoubtedly far less rational conversations to come about what we’ve heard here tonight. They will never know how grateful I am that I do not have to go through this alone.

But eventually, I tell them. I tell them until my voice is hoarse and there are tears running down my cheeks. I tell them about my life on Suus. The invasion. The Hierarchy and their terrible power. Why I have the scars on my back, which they have all seen but never pried about. The running, the Academy. The Labyrinth and my being brought here. I leave nothing out. Once I start, it is impossible to stop. It flows out of me. I am not sure why the dam breaks, tonight. Perhaps it is the rush of the fight. Perhaps it is the comradery I feel, that we all feel. But whatever the reason, for the first time, I keep nothing back. And they listen. Not disbelieving, not judging. Not, I truly believe, caring that I am so different from them. When I am done, I feel naked. Not vulnerable, exactly. But exposed. It has been almost five years since I have been honest about who I am. Five years since I wasn’t hiding something. I am almost lost without the need to lie.

“But sometimes, talent and empathy fight for the same air. You always found things so easy that your expectations of others got skewed. You never really understood what they can and cannot do.” He lays a hand on my shoulder. “This is all to say, Son—it has to be you. You. Not just because you find yourself in this situation, not just because you are lucky. But because you are one of the very few who could. You have always been a marvel. And that gift, that talent, isn’t costless.”

“Tea. It is as unpleasant as it smells,” I assure him, keeping to his right and doing all I can not to seem like I’m shielding something from him. “But it helps with the aches.” I motion with my stump. Draw his eyes away. “Ah.” Just slightly uncomfortable, as almost everyone is when I call attention to the missing limb.

Perhaps because he emotes so little, Eidhin has always seemed a rock against the waves of grief and depression. But now, talking to his father, I wonder whether I have perhaps been paying too much attention to my own burdens, and not enough to my friend’s.

Marcellus once again wearing his tinted glasses despite the dim, an affectation I find especially annoying on him.

passed. I have spent months working around them and for them. Observing and learning. They are just men. Not even particularly smart men, in many cases. Grasping and charismatic, ruthless and quick with words, but here thanks more to their bloodlines than intellect. “I understand your concerns, but the fewer people who know, the safer my contact will be.”

But it is a memory. A memory. I cannot help but bring it to mind but I am not there, anymore. I am not there. It is a past pain.

I consider my actions in a hollow, detached way, as though none of these events are real. I suppose that is what my mind is doing. Pretending this is all some nightmare, until such time comes that I can afford to accept otherwise.