Deathless Divide (Dread Nation, #2)

by Justina Ireland

“Questioning the truth of things doesn’t change them.

“Sometimes, when the world doesn’t make sense, it’s easier to pretend like there are other forces at work. But there ain’t. That’s just life.”

The mayor talks like we are old friends, and I lean back on my bunk, because I learned long ago that you should never trust a man who treats you like a longtime friend.

“Your father is sentencing this whole town to death,” I mutter. “There ain’t any kind of inoculation against fear and false confidence.”

“You help as much as you can—but no more. You don’t think those founding fathers wrote all those pretty words about independence just to help the poor, do you? The books are right there in the library, Jane. They did it because they didn’t want to pay taxes, to have some king tell them the price of tea. And for that, they went to war, and hundreds of people died. If that ain’t capitalism, I don’t know what is.”

He is trying to protect me, in the simple way men are always trying to protect women: by stealing away their freedom.

People in the West will tell you it’s the Indian you need to fear, but no Indian has ever been half so vicious as the white man. And the dead? Well, they took their cues from the best.

is so terribly wrong that even in a city with strong walls and its back against the ocean, where people from halfway around the world can live in luxury, there are still people struggling.

“I’m afraid that the past few years have taken quite the toll on the colored population here. Most folks came here to flee slavery, but the work they found wasn’t much better. When the dead rose there was an opportunity to work the patrols, but that was before the Chinese took over most of those jobs. Now the Chinese do all the menial work, leaving no real way for the Negro to thrive. It ain’t like white folks are hiring us to do anything more than clean their houses.”

Now, let me be clear that I do not hold truck with a lot of that Bible nonsense, and I ain’t sure why any kind of benevolent God would let mankind carry on the way it’s wont to do. But Katherine believes, and so I pray for her because she cannot do it for herself.

Sometimes the people we love fiercest leave the world like a whisper.