“Not if we have your help.” I took a step closer to him. “I know you have soldiers loyal to you. If we fought together, we could succeed.”
“Half the army or more is loyal to me,” he said. “Your brother and the General are too caught up with their personal projects to stay in touch with the people on the ground. But being loyal to me doesn’t mean my men would fight alongside Omegas, for an Omega cause. You ask too much of them. And of me.”
“I don’t want to ally myself with you any more than you do with us.” I hadn’t meant for the disgust to be so audible in my words. I tried to moderate my voice. “You know they’ve already tanked the children?”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “That’s always been their strategy, thinking in the long term. Stop the Omegas at the source. You should hear the way they talk. Less resource intensive, the General said to me, if they’re tanked as infants. I don’t think they grow once they’re in the tanks, you see. So they stay small forever. Cheaper to feed. Take up less space.” He grimaced as he spoke, spitting out the words.
“How can you have heard them say things like that and not want to stop them?”
“You’re asking me to start a war. To set different factions of the army fighting against each other.”
“I’m asking you to stop an atrocity.”
That wasn’t entirely honest. An atrocity was unavoidable. If we fought to free New Hobart, many would die, and their twins with them. I was choosing those deaths over the endless not-quite-death of the tanks that would otherwise await the town’s inhabitants. I couldn’t remember a time when decisions had seemed uncomplicated.
“You wanted information,” I said. “You wanted my help. I’m giving you this: we attack in three days’ time—at midnight, on the new moon.”
It was in his hands now. This information could see us all killed, if he decided to betray me. I thought of how Leonard had reacted when we’d told him about the tanks and the refuges. We hadn’t asked for his help—we hadn’t needed to. We’d given him the information, and that had become an imperative. And I thought of Kip, and how his eyes had met mine through the glass of the tank. He had asked nothing of me. The knowledge that he was there, trapped, conscious, was enough. I knew that sometimes a moment could become a promise.
“It’s a fool’s errand,” the Ringmaster said. “Even if I wanted to help you, there’s not enough time to prepare. The soldiers in New Hobart are loyal to the General. I’d have to muster my soldiers from farther north. And for what? For an attack that can never succeed.”
“We don’t have any choice. Nor do you. You can’t step away now as if it’s nothing to do with you.”
He raised his hands. “It’s too soon. What kind of army can you have mustered, since the island?”
“Any later is too late,” I said. “You know that. They’ve taken the children. Soon they’ll take the others. And you’re going to sit back and watch us try. If we succeed, you’ll be glad, and you’ll use it to help you in your maneuvering against Zach and the General. And if we fail, you’ll wash your hands of it.”
“If you already have me so well figured out, what did you hope to achieve by coming here?”
I looked at his pale face, his hand tight around the stem of the wineglass. “Why are you so afraid of us?” I said. “When you first came to me, I’d hoped it might be compassion that made you want to stop the tanks. But it’s fear. You say you want to uphold the taboo. But your fear of the taboo is just fear of us. We’re what the machines wrought. We’re what you’re afraid of. But you can’t fight the machines unless you fight alongside us.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” he said. He pushed the wine away so hard that it spilled. I watched the red trickle down the stem of the glass and pool on the table.
“What did we ever do to you?”
He stared at me in silence for several moments. He wore a knife in a scabbard at his belt. Have I pushed him too far? I wondered. He could kill me in an instant. His soldiers would drag my body away, and he wouldn’t