Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) (13 page)

“On my behalf?”

Richard moved an ivory bishop across the board with unflinching confidence, nestling it between a black pawn and rook. He then sat back and smiled, looking very pleased with himself. “Yes,” he said.

John growled and leaned over the desk. “You had no right to do that.”

“He’s on catering duty. He was handing me smaller portions just for sitting in here with you all day. I’m not feeling faint all week again because you can’t say sorry.”

“He doesn’t deserve an apology, he was wrong.”

“You were both wrong. You got into a fight.”

“It wasn’t a fight.”

“You punched him in the face while trying to convince him that violence was wrong.”

“I was drunk,” John blustered, flapping his hands. He glanced at the door and saw that he was being watched. “Oh,” he said. “Hello.”

“Afternoon,” Norman and Sarah chorused.

Richard beckoned for them to enter, his gaze lingering on Sarah for a moment.

John, in a silent display of superiority, swept his hand across the chessboard and captured Richard’s bishop, replacing it with a knight that had been previously invisible to everybody else.

“Wait, what?” Richard said, glancing down at the board, his expression one of absolute blankness. He stared from the victorious knight to the bishop clutched in John’s hand, and then cursed.

John rubbed his chin and began pacing, a snide smile upon his lips.

Richard fumed, planning his next move. “You went out yesterday,” he said to Norman, leaning forwards.

“That’s right.”

“Anything interesting happen?”

Norman sensed all ears prick up at once.

He sighed, now aware of how far Allie’s words had spread. He cursed her and prepared himself for a swift bout of damage control. “Nothing. There’s nobody out that way these days,” he said. “The locals moved up the coast after winter set in.”

“No trouble at all?”

“No.”

Nobody said anything, but Norman could almost hear the indignation of their thoughts, almost as clearly as if they’d shouted into his ears. Their eyes told the truth—even Sarah’s. They knew everything.

Allison Rutherford was clearly a force that needed to be contained at any cost.

Richard nodded with transparent, mock satisfaction. Norman braced himself. The door to further questions had been opened. “The scavenging details just seem so desperate, after all the effort that’s been put into cultivating our own food supply. And frankly I’m shocked that there’s so little out there. I haven’t heard of a famine striking anywhere before this for… what? Twenty years? And now there’s nothing left at all?” He looked to John for confirmation.

John grumbled in agreement.

“It never rains, it pours, I suppose,” Richard finished.

John grumbled once more. “It could have been a lot worse for us if it had come even a year earlier. I don’t think that our stores could have kept us going this long if it had.”

Norman shrugged. “The land’s stripped bare. We had to go all the way to the coast just to get a few bags of fruit and venison.”

The two men frowned and shared a glance. Richard was still planning his next move, but his gaze now wandered the room, distracted.

“There’s really nothing at all?” John asked. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Even the sea’s dead. No fish since winter…since Southampton went quiet.”

He mused and muttered for some moments. “We knew the mass exodus from the south must have been caused by something, but still—
everywhere
?”

“I miss Market Day,” Sarah said mournfully. “The bakers from Whitstable—so much better than Hubble’s dusty loaves, theirs were—the millers from Blean, and the Torquay tea-runners. People used to come from all over to see us—see the libraries and the electric lights. Petham, Broadoak, Adisham… They can’t all have gone away.”

“They’re probably all dead,” John said.

Sarah looked wounded. “That’s callous.”

“It’s not callous to state the truth. The trade routes are long gone. Whoever survived winter moved north, or away from the cities. The rest died. It’s that simple.” John shrugged. “And we killed them.”

All eyes turned to him, stunned.

Norman felt a lump form in his throat, and found his gaze trained on the floor.

John’s maroon pug of a face had creased into a thin smile, and he pressed on—though it seemed that he now spoke more to himself than them. “Our best estimates put the population at—what—fifty thousand? That puts about ten thousand over the South, who can only occupy land away from urbanised areas. But even a handful of communities like ours make up at least half of that number, and each one draws its food from the most productive remaining rural areas. When our crops were hit so hard last year, we took what we had to.” John’s brows flickered skywards. “Everybody else lost out.”

There was a long silence.

“So why not group together, like us?” Richard said. “I can’t get my head around the tribal mentality. There’s safety in numbers: more hands to toil, more bargaining power, supply and demand, trade, mutual support—civilisation!” He frowned. “I just don’t understand it.”

“Of course you don’t, you’re just a boy,” John mumbled, poised over the chessboard. “That’s why I’m the Master and you’re the Student.”

“I’m still not happy with the title of ‘Master’,” Richard said with a heavy voice, his nose upturned. He moved a pawn and sat back, his hands behind his head. The smug expression remained upon his features long enough for everybody to have registered it, just in time for it to be swept away by the swift movement of John’s queen.

“Get used to it,” John said. “Western civilisation trumped the world’s tribes, hands down, but getting it started took millennia. Without places like this, mankind would have already slipped into a new Dark Age.”

Sarah tittered. “It’s all very well and good coming off high and mighty, but like I said, just last year people would have walked a hundred miles just to look at a light bulb. It was…magic to them. This place was magical.” She paused. “Our way of life hasn’t exactly spread like wildfire, has it?”

John turned his gaze upon her. “People won’t group together for a lot of reasons. First of all, it’s dangerous: if you get into trouble, you can’t run; you’re a bigger target; and you’re vulnerable to outbreaks of infection. And if that isn’t enough, you’ve got all of the troubles of organising sanitation, security, food and water, a law system, and all the other things we’re halfway through scrambling together.” He spread his hands. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

“Look who’s talking,” said Richard.

“Careful, boy.”

Richard shook his head, as though shaking off a fly. “It’s still better than huddling for warmth in some mud hut somewhere.”

“That’s arguable. All of the problems that we have potentially outweigh the benefits. We just haven’t noticed because we’ve had a run of extremely good luck, until now.”

“But for nobody but us to even
try
…”

John waggled a finger. “Don’t think that people haven’t tried to do what we’re doing before. There’s been a lot of time for that—decades. I haven’t been here as long as some. I’ve seen other places where the lights still burned. And I’ve seen every one of them fall. They’ve all failed, because none of them had what we have here.”

“And what’s that?”

“We’ve got Alexander.”

At first, John’s final words sounded strange, almost childish, plainly reverential. And yet, nobody felt the urge to mock them. As fresh silence settled, those words seemed anything but childish. They were what they were: the plain, naked truth.

“And we’ve got you, Mr Creek,” John finished, gesturing to Norman with the slightest of curtseys.

Norman had been waiting for it, but warmth spread across his cheeks all the same. He did his best to smile. “Sure,” he said, looking into the eyes of a genius, and seeing nought but another zealot.

John smiled, and turned to the chessboard. “Checkmate,” he said, lifting Richard’s king to his lips with a flourish.

Richard grumbled, and began to reset the board with a patience and dexterity that could have only come from a thousand repetitions.

By the time the final school bell rang, Main Street was thronged by workers coming home from the fields. Not a single murmur graced the air. All that was audible was the sound of clanking hoes and dragging boots. The field hands’ drawn, hangdog faces had been made identical by exhaustion and malnutrition, their work-weary eyes never leaving the ground.

Norman reined to a halt, descending from his mount to watch the solemn procession.

He’d made straight for the school after returning from the wilds with Lucian and Allie, not even stopping to stable his mount or deliver his sacks to the storeroom. Now, exhausted and ravenous, all he wanted was to crawl into bed with a loaf of the mill's bread—riddled with sawdust or not.

As the filthy folk passed by, a few glances were sent his way, pleading looks begging him for a word of comfort; forlorn and watchful, lest he’d become the prophet they craved during his few short hours in the wilds.

He could only blink and stare back at them, with shame pressing against the nape of his neck. Even as Sarah passed him, prancing off towards Robert—who stood silhouetted in the kitchen doorway—he remained slumped on his saddle, staring, clinging to the vague hope that his mere presence could buoy up the sullen droves.

He was eventually jarred from his trance by a grating racket.

“What’s all this hush?” shrieked a high-pitched, ancient voice. “At this hour? You should all be home preparin’ for End Day!”

Norman turned to see Agatha standing across the street, waving her cane at the field hands. A hunchbacked old lady with skin like sodden laundry and a face made dull and slack by advanced dementia, she struggled forth. On any other day she was perpetually dazed, always getting lost, but today she seethed with fury.

“It’s our greatest festival, it is. Every year since the End, we’ve celebrated, and I’ll not have a bit o’ hunger see it forgotten.” She stepped forwards and began clawing at elbows as they brushed past. “It’s
tradition
. Get your heads up from the dirt and
smile
! Come on, now, dears. ’Tis End Day! Time to remember, to celebrate—”

“Hush your gums, you senile old coot! We’re not celebrating nothing,” exclaimed a sour-faced youth. His skin immediately drained of colour. It was clear that he had spoken before thinking, on impulse alone.

The comment nonetheless earned him a beating to the back of the head by no less than three nearby elders.

Agatha’s face had fallen. Her grey, cataract-ridden eyes widened. “How dare you gab to me like tha’, you little swine! Tomorrow’s all that connects us to what we’ve lost, all tha’ keeps the Old World alive. Are none of you going to take a stand?”

Some sent embarrassed glances her way. Most became only more fixed on the ground. None answered her. The procession sped along, trying to leave the wilted figure in its wake.

Agatha’s protests continued, diminishing with each repetition, until her shoulders slumped and her cane slowly drooped to the ground, defeated.

Then a resounding, steadfast voice rang out over the cobbles, “Mr Singh, how are the pastry cases coming along?”

Norman whirled to see Alexander standing a few yards away.

He strode across the street and laid his hand upon Agatha’s shoulder, then bent over her and whispered a few words that made her giggle like a little girl, looking adoringly into his eyes. Then he called Sarah and Robert from the kitchens and had them lead her home.

She went without a word, her eyes misty and vacant once more.

Once the trio had disappeared, he planted his knuckles on his hips and stared into the depths of the crowd. His eyes had become shards of flint. “Mr Singh?” he called. “The pastry cases?”

A weathered, white-haired man of Middle-Eastern descent answered with a wavering voice, “I have them ready, sir. Baked them firm yesterday evening—”

“Good man. Best get to it if we’re to see the End Day pies good and ready.”

The man jerked, as though struck. “But…but there’s so little food, there is. I’ve heard nothing of any filling, sir. Everyone says there will not be any feast this year…”

But Alex had turned to another face in the crowd. “Mrs Hadley, is your dear father still happy to have his band play for us tomorrow?”

The procession had slowed to a crawl. Startled, watchful looks were being thrown every which way.

A dirt-streaked, mousy woman appeared to shrink under his gaze. “He’s spoken of nothin’ else for days, Misser Alexander. He and the boys have been keepin’ me and the kids up for weeks with all their practissin! But…to be honest wi’ you, sir, I told them to quit it. Said there wasn’t going to be no celebratin’ this year—”

But Alexander had moved on once more. “Master Ishadore,” he cried, eyeing a passing boy of no more than eight years. “I trust you’ve been gathering mushrooms with your classmates, as I requested?”

The boy tittered at being addressed, but answered with pride, “For the last week. We’ve filled my Dad’s shed full. But, sir…the End Day celebrations are cancelled…aren’t they?”

Hundreds of pairs of eyes now turned from the ground just in time to see Alexander break into a good-natured laugh. “Oh, we’d never let a thing like a shortage in spuds scupper the most important day of the year. Now hop to it, all three of you. There’s work to be done!”

Those he’d spoken to jerked, open-mouthed, and then chorused, “Y-Y-Yes, sir, Mr Cain!”

Mr Singh scuttled off at full pelt, dragging his hoe in his wake and parting the crowd ahead with stifled apologies. Close behind him dashed Hadley and young Ishadore. Their harried cries were soon consumed by the growing noise of the crowd, which had come alive.

Alexander watched them go, and then turned his gaze upon the rest. “That goes for all of you. We’ll not let a poor harvest dampen our fair day, will we?”

A few muttered, “No.”

Alex raised his voice, the wide smile still stretched over his cheeks. “A little hunger isn’t going to keep us from celebrating what we’ve done—all we’ve accomplished.”