The Strength of the Few (Hierarchy, #2)

by James Islington

FEAR, MY FATHER ONCE TOLD me, is simply our realisation of a lack of control. And that is why when we are afraid, sometimes the only way we can cope—the only way to dull the edge of that lack—is to put our faith in those who appear not to suffer it.

We knew the truth, of course. Had been subjected to a hundred lectures dissecting why people submitted to the Hierarchy. Fear, naturally, played its part—but not always. Sometimes it was greed loosely masquerading as ambition. Sometimes it was misplaced faith that others would behave fairly and rightly. Or social pressure, the inevitable belief that the majority cannot be wrong. The reasons were complex and many-faceted and unavoidably varied from person to person. But we never mentioned those during our childish vents as we watched the sun set over the domain of our enemy. Easier to despise than understand. Easier to mock than empathise.

“None slower than the impatient, you know.”

“Just something my tutor used to say. Usually after my father passed through for his weekly critique. He used to tell me that I was so worried about being good enough, it was distracting me. That I was so focused on where I needed to be, I couldn’t see the space in between. ‘Improvement is not a destination,’ and all that.”

“We all fumble in the dark for ways to say that one man is better than another, and the Hierarchy fumble more than most. Their formulas and measurements make sense in the broad strokes; in the building of infrastructure, in the arrangement of an empire, averages are an acceptable metric. But men are still men. Strong and flawed and unpredictable, day to day. To weigh their potential without knowing their spirit… it cannot be done.”

“But they will always judge you on the how. On the after. You have to make them believe, my dear boy, whenever they see you step out onto that stage. Because it is faith that makes us cheer, and a triumph forgotten is no different to defeat.”

“No. Never. Rule a man, and he will do whatever you can imagine. Befriend him, and he will do more.”

ONE OF THE GREAT SYTRECIAN philosophers once argued that the concept of home is, at its core, about safety. That no matter how familiar you may become with a place, no matter how long it is your abode—if it ever loses its sense of comfort, you can no longer truly call it by that name.

A MAN WHO IS CHASED may be free. A man who chases never is.

Grief, my mother once told me, is love’s most honest expression. The last and hardest aspect of truly, truly caring for someone. She said it at her own mother’s funeral rites, tears in her eyes even as she tried to comfort a boy too young to understand why he was so sad, why his grandmother couldn’t be there anymore. She explained through choking sobs that without grief, love would be meaningless. Because it is impossible to truly love something that cannot be lost.

Just because you are not right for a place does not mean you were never meant to be there.

“Small men so desperate for power that they will take it from wherever they can. How did we get here?” “By telling them it’s the only way to get it, and that it’s all that matters.”

“When you have lived your whole life within the greatest empire of your time, it is hard to believe it will end. You think it is a thing of permanence, of immutability. Its existence contested but never truly threatened. And even if they did believe?” My father’s eyes shine in the firelight as he watches my analysis. A pride there that warms me. “If enough of the Hierarchy truly believed that in order to save the world, they had to stop using what let them rule it?”

“The oldest argument for doing something wrong is that everyone is doing it. To dismantle what they have built would have required the agreement of every man who had spent his life building it,” agrees my father softly. “It would have required them to give up all they have striven their entire lives to gain. And they would have needed to do it, largely, for the benefit of those at whose expense it originally came.”

“A society cannot make a man a monster, Diago. But it can give him the excuse to become one.”

“Poor luck?” He holds me back to take me in once again. “No. Poor luck is being the Octavus who sees the truth of the Hierarchy. It is being the farmer, or soldier, or merchant who comprehends the absurd power of those above them, but has no way of convincing them to act. It is being those of us who know these great and terrible dangers are coming and cannot do anything about them. Poor luck? Poor luck is being powerless, Diago. Poor luck is being without choice. So many of us are aware of these currents, but are able only to drown in them. Millions upon millions of people have poor luck. But you are not one of them.”

“Freedom is as much about leaving things behind as it is about not being chained.