Shades of Grey (40 page)

DeMauve was sitting on a raised dais, with the Council in a semicircle in front of and below him. As he spoke, they pulled long faces, shook their heads and gave out accusatory “tuts.” We were still muddied and bloody: I had got away with only bruising, and Violet had a hastily stitched gash on the back of her head. Her hair, which this morning had been so perfect, was now matted with blood.

“Puce’s femur may take a month to be completely right again,” said Turquoise in a sober tone, “and every day away from work is a day lost to the Collective. Finbarr Gardenia’s collarbone was pushed through the skin—he may be permanently lopsided. What do you say to that?”

“Pardon me?” I said, for I had been thinking about the wheelbarrow again.

“I was asking,” repeated deMauve in a testy manner, “how you felt about all the injuries?”

“It would have been a lot worse if I hadn’t introduced my
priority
queuing system,” I replied, feeling impulsive.

“We’ll get around to your queuing presently,” barked Gamboge, who had been glaring at me dangerously since the moment I walked in, “and remember where you are.”

“Violet,” deMauve continued as he turned to his daughter, “do
you
have anything you’d like to say?”

“The girls’ team was merely acting in self-defense,” replied Violet innocently. “The boys’ team went completely loco—it was all we could do to avoid extreme injury.”

“We will take that into account,” said her father, “but witnesses attest to
both
teams fighting after the whistle had blown—and your team did almost as much damage as Russett’s.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” she pointed out. “It wouldn’t be the boys-versus-girls match if we didn’t shatter a few shinbones and hand out a concussion or two.”

“That’s as may be,” said Prefect Sally Gamboge, who had been perusing the Rulebook to more fully understand the regulations regarding on-pitch violence, “but only as long as the ball is in play. As soon as you ignored Daisy’s whistle, you became
personally
responsible for your teams.”

“We are especially disappointed with you, Violet,” added Yewberry. “Russett here is clearly an irresponsible, oafish hub-dweller
. You
should have known better.”

I saw her fume quietly to herself. Both Violet and I knew who was really to blame, but the Rules were the rules, and Courtland was pretty much untouchable. We’d just have to take what they were handing out. I hadn’t fully understood why Jane had joined in the melée, but then I’d realized: Whereas Courtland had caused trouble to punish
me,
Jane had caused mayhem to get at the
prefects
. The incident would affect their end-of-yearreportand, more important, their Peace Dividend from Head Office. A year without any aggression could be worth ten thousand bonus merits, split on a sliding scale between the prefects and the village.

Turquoise asked us both to wait outside for a moment, and we stood, bowed contritely and trooped out.

“Pea brain,” said Violet as soon as the door was closed. “I am
so
going to make you pay for this.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked. “Ban me from the orchestra?”

“For starters,” she said, annoyed that I had thought of it first. “But I shall also instruct my many close personal friends not to cooperate with your chair census. Your stay here will be an empty, hollow experience without my kind patronage.
And,
” she added, “I am scrubbing you as a friend. I expect you are devastated.”

“I can think of at least eighty-seven worse things,” I told her, “beginning with yellowless custard.”

She narrowed her eyes at me and made a petulant
harrumph
noise. The door opened, and Mrs. Gamboge told us we could return. We filed back in and sat when instructed.

“Do you have anything to say before we prescribe punishment, Master Russett?” asked deMauve.

“No excuses, sir,” I murmured. “I will endeavor to improve myself.”

“Miss deMauve?”

“It’s a plot to discredit me,” she blurted, pointing a finger at me. “I’m not a bad person.
Everyone
wants to be my friend. I would never have done anything that—”

But even her father had had enough. He put up a hand to silence her.

“Violet deMauve,” he said, “we are deeply disappointed that you failed to control your team as soon as the game had ended. As a respected Purple, you are expected to be an example to others. However, we have also taken into consideration your abundant good works for the community and the pleas for leniency on your behalf by many worthy members of the Collective. You will be fined . . . one hundred merits.”

Violet looked shocked. I think she thought she’d get off without a scratch, and in many ways, she had. She must have had twice as many merits as I did, and would doubtless have many opportunities to earn more. Still, dishing out a hundred wasn’t so bad—I’d still have enough for residency.

“Edward Russett,” said deMauve in the sort of voice one generally uses for announcing the onset of the Mildew, “we hold you chiefly responsible for this farrago. Your poor judgment, failure to properly control your team and inadequate leadership skills have led to the worst case of on-pitch violence this village has ever seen. You are fined . . . two hundred merits.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. It was bad, but I had almost thirteen hundred merits, so two hundred still left me eleven hundred—enough for residency. I would still be able to get married, one of the perks afforded those who prove themselves Worthy.

We should have been dismissed then, but we weren’t.

“In addition,” said Sally Gamboge, “we find your meddling with the gracious clarity of the queue lines here in East Carmine severely disturbing. The Rules often work in mysterious ways, and impetuous acts that
seem
to offer short-term benefit sometimes have unforeseen consequences that bring only disunity.”

“Luckily for you,” added deMauve, “you applied for a Standard Variable application, and according to the Rules, we cannot demerit you.”

I may have smiled at this, which was probably a mistake.

“But now,” said Yewberry, “we come to the most serious of the charges laid against you.”

I looked at the prefects in turn. I couldn’t think of anything that I had done that wasn’t somehow deniable or difficult to prove. The prefects could be harsh, but they had to be fair and respect due process. If they didn’t, I could make a complaint to the mutual auditor in the next village, and the prefects could be up for a demeriting themselves.

“I regret to inform you,” continued Yewberry in a sarcastic manner, “that the Last Rabbit has died. Not of old age, as was predicted, but by choking—on a large dandelion leaf.”

“That’s too bad,” I said in a quiet voice, attempting to fill the unnatural silence that had descended on the room. Then I
understood,
and my heart fell. “When did it die?”

“The day before you got here,” intoned deMauve gravely. “If you had visited the rabbit as you’d claimed, you would have found that out for yourself.”

“You
lied
to us!” cried Violet. “All that talk of its being furry and the teeth and the little white tail—well! I am
so
disappointed.”

“We are all disappointed,” said deMauve, “and quite frankly, Edward, your father shares our disappointment. You have boasted of your rabbit connection all around the village and even spoken of it to the juniors during teaching—which is a hideous breach of trust that I hope I never live to see repeated.”

I hung my head, for it was all true. I
had
lied. But the crunch came with a copy of the telegram I had sent to my best friend, Fenton, listing the rabbit’s bogus Taxa number. Lying was one thing, but Fraudulent Gain was quite another. I was in very serious trouble.

“Do you deny these charges?” asked deMauve.

I couldn’t, and said so. In respect of this, I was fined an eye-watering six hundred merits, bringing my total loss to eight hundred. In any less well-merited individual, it would have been Reboot. That wasn’t going to happen to me, as I still had just under five hundred left. But crucially, I’d have to be up to the thousand-merit threshold again before I could even
consider
asking Constance to be my wife, and even with extra Useful Work and no hiccups, it would still take me the best part of three years. And Constance wasn’t a “waiting” kind of girl. Worse, I had been hoping a positive Ishihara would have her father sending me an Open Return; I needed to get out of here more than ever.

I removed my
1,000 MERIT
badge and handed it over.

“You will also be instructed to wear this for a month.”

Yewberryhanded me a badge that simply read
LIAR
, and, taking a deep breath, I pinned it on, just below my
NEEDS HUMILITY
pin. I’d only worn a
LIAR
badge once before, and hadn’t enjoyed it.

My immediate thought was of how to regain the lost merits. I thought of Courtland and his proposal regarding the theft of Lincoln, or even of getting him the spoons from Rusty Hill. But I wasn’t going to be bullied into anyone else’s Rule-bruising schemes. Besides, those would be cash merits, not the ones that count—the ones in the back of your book. But what I said next surprised even me. “I’ll lead the expedition to High Saffron,” I said in a loud, assertive voice.

“We accept,” said deMauve before I could change my mind. “We will pay one hundred merits, as agreed.”

“I’ll go for nothing less than six hundred.”

There was an outburst of guffawing at my outrageous suggestion.

“The impertinence of the boy!” Turquoise blurted out.

“Such ungratefulness!” said Yewberry.

Loudest of all was Sally Gamboge: “We don’t deal with liars!” DeMauve, however, was more considered in his response. “What makes you think you’re worth six hundred merits, Edward?”

Without thinking, I blurted out, “I’m at Alpha threshold. You know as well as I do that sending expendable lowbies on a jaunt like this is a waste of time. Even if there
is
red in abundance, they’d never even see it.”

The prefects looked at one another uneasily. If I
was
Alpha threshold, then my offer made excellent sense. Although I could see only the one color, it would at least give an
indication
of the total volume to be found. But more important, High Saffron was the key to East Carmine’s fortunes, and they knew it. And if I was the key to High Saffron, I had something to bargain with. It was a brilliant move on my part—if you didn’t count the almost-certain-death aspect of the plan.

“You are pre-Ishihara and have no color rating,” remarked Gamboge. “How can we be sure this is not a lie as well?”

I looked around the room, which contained not just the seven hundred and eighty-two volumes of
The Word of Munsell
(unabridged) but shelves and shelves of unsurrendered tosh—Previous artifacture that was too brightly colored to keep legally but too perfect, pretty or rare to have scrunched, squeezed, rolled and enriched. That they could keep it at all was thanks to a loophole. The items were simply listed in the Accessions Ledger as “awaiting sorting.”

I scanned the items on the shelves and pointed out the one with the subtlest red tone—a small milk jug, which shone out at me from a display of shiny grey pottery. They all looked at Yewberry, who frowned. “I see only the merest
hint
of redness in it,” he confessed, “and I am 71 percent.”

They all stared at me, and I was surprised myself. If I was more than 71 percent redceptive, then I could be prefect.

“Pay him the six hundred,” said Yewberry, “and send him to High Saffron.”

Courtland’s assertion that the Outer Fringes were Reboot with a small
r
was true. I was here to stay and Yewberry knew it. Little wonder he was eager for me to go on a trip with a low possibility of survival. There was silence in the room for perhaps half a minute, as the consequences of my potential rating were absorbed. Mrs. Gamboge simply glared at me. I don’t think she liked the idea of a Russett being prefect—my father had shown a sense of fair play that I hardly thought she’d welcome, and Courtland would have told her of my suspicions regarding Travis. Chromatic politics. You couldn’t get away from it if you tried.

“You are a very impertinent young man,” observed deMauve quietly, “but you have pluck, I’ll grant you that. Four hundred.”

But I was going to stand firm on this. I
had
to get back above residency.

“Not a cent below six hundred, sir.”

“To hear you barter like this is disgraceful,” remarked Yewberry with an angry tremor to his voice. “An upright member of the Collective would have
volunteered
his services, happily and without cost.”

“As you did, sir?”

He went so red that even the worst lowbie in the village could not have failed to notice.

“Very well,” said deMauve, looking ruffled, “six hundred it is.”

 

We were dismissed, and after bowing again, Violet and I left the room. In the corridor outside, I felt Violet clasp my forearm. Half expecting some further admonishment or even a slap, I started to walk faster, but in an instant she had swung me around, placed her hands on my neck and pulled me toward her. Oddly, it took me a moment to realize what she was doing, and despite her offensively brash exterior, her lips were soft and her kiss, while lacking passion, was extremely professional. Since kissing the head prefect’s daughter was not something I’d ever thought I’d end up doing, I placed both Constance and Jane at the back of my mind and gave as good as I got. I like to think I did all right with the kiss, despite little experience in these matters beyond what Lizzie the maid had taught me. It would have been unthinkably rude to pull away, so I waited until she relaxed, then gently separated myself.

“You dark red horse, you!” she said, giving me a shy smile and a playful jab on the sternum. “Why didn’t you tell me you could see so much red?”