Reign of Outlaws Page 11

  Robyn paced the rooftop behind her. “You’re getting one of the stage, and several of the crowd?”

  Scarlet nodded. “Front of stage, back of stage looking over the crowd, two wider angles on the square.”

  “Why haven’t they started it? We have to get the actual thing on tape.” Frustrated, she kicked at pebbles on the black tarred roof.

  “If it happens,” Scarlet said. “I’ll get it.”

  Robyn stared at the screens. Tucker’s cries.

  It would happen. It had to.

  Five minutes later, it happened.

  The low sound started from somewhere in the crowd. They would never be able to determine where.

  Clicking, shushing. The snapping of fingers, the rubbing of palms. Simple sounds, alone. Simple movements. But rising from the crowd together, the sounds formed a gently symphony. A noise like breeze through leaves, raindrops falling on roofs.

  The MPs surrounding the square looked toward the sky, as if expecting to get wet. But the sky was clear.

  “Those who wish to step out of line,” yelled the man onstage. “All you dissidents, and would-be dissidents, hear me. Those who would stand with the hoodlum will pay the price.”

  The whip cracked down over Tucker.

  “Never forget what will happen!” the MP shouted.

  “We will never forget,” said the crowd.

  The MP’s whip faltered. Usually the crowd stood silent.

  The words rippled back and out, echoing over the square.

  “We will never forget.”

  “We will never forget.”

  The sounds of rain intensified. The workers kept snapping fingers, rubbing palms, slapping their thighs, stomping their feet until the air filled with thunder, as if a real downpour was imminent.

  “The storm is coming.” The words rippled through the crowd. “The storm is coming.”

  “Stop them,” the lead MP ordered.

  The other MPs looked around, uncertain. The noise was coming from everywhere.

  “Stop them!” he repeated. He shoved the two MPs nearest him into the crowd. But the workers nearest the edge stood firm and quiet. The rain came from within them. The rain could not be stopped.

  The MPs pushed past the edges of the crowd, trying to get to the culprits at the center. In doing so, they found themselves surrounded.

  “For Sherwood, unite,” called a voice from somewhere.

  “For Sherwood, we fight,” the workers responded.

  “Don’t just stand there,” the lead MP ordered. “Stop this!”

  But they couldn’t.

  Fear grew in the eyes of the MPs. The terror that the few feel when the many begin to show hints of disobedience.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  A Show of Force

  The MPs tossed Tucker back into the tent, dropping a small package of medical supplies alongside him. The other men rushed forward to help him. In the lantern light, his wounds glowed red and gold. The men helped him ease onto the cot, and began cleaning the wounds with damp cloth. They had been ready for him. This was their weekly routine.

  “These wounds look worse than usual,” one man said.

  Robert nodded as he tended to Tucker. “What happened?”

  “I didn’t cave,” Tucker said. “I didn’t give up any information.”

  The men exchanged glances. “Information?”

  “Is he delirious?” another man whispered.

  “It’s supposed to be just a simple beating. To show that they hold all the power,” said a third man.

  “It wasn’t just,” Tucker whispered. “She wanted to know things that I know. She’s going after Robyn.”

  Robert’s face tightened. “The girl.” He motioned the other men to step back, so only he and Tucker were speaking.

  “What do you know about Robyn?”

  Tucker shook his head, then winced in pain. “No. I won’t tell you.”

  “It’s safe to tell me,” Robert insisted. “I would die before I let anything happen to Robyn.”

  “It was weird,” Tucker said. “She must be trying every angle to find her.”

  “She?”

  “The sheriff.”

  “You saw the sheriff?”

  “She questioned me.”

  “Why would the sheriff question you?”

  “I know things.”

  Robert acknowledged that with a nod. “I mean, why now? Why not on the way here? After they captured you.”

  “I won’t let them find her,” Tucker promised. He closed his eyes and let the pain overtake him. “I will never tell what I know.”

  The video recordings came through clean and crisp, better than Robyn had imagined.

  First, they’d cut and spliced the feed from the different cameras to show the best angles.

  “Editing is not my expertise,” Scarlet muttered as she rewound the clips yet again.

  Robyn turned her face away from the image of Tucker, beaten and swollen, hanging on the stage.

  “I could leave that part out.” Scarlet spoke quietly, her voice thick. A moment of silence passed, while the video scrolled without sound.

  “We have to include it,” Robyn said. “They need to understand.”

  Scarlet selected a few frames of Tucker and the MPs, but the majority were of the crowd. The film had captured a grainy, silent record of their rhythmic protest—

  Silent.

  Robyn’s stomach knotted and she reached around Scarlet and pressed the Replay button.

  “Hey,” Scarlet complained. “I’m working here.”

  Security cameras recorded no sound. The people watching the video would have no idea what was going on.

  “We blew it.” Robyn’s heart sank toward her toes. “No one is even going to hear the rain.”

  Scarlet grinned. “You underestimate me.”

  She punched a button on the console, and a little door popped open. A data card slid out, the kind that might’ve held photos on an old camera. When she popped it back in, the sound of the snapping, clapping crowd-effect rainstorm filled the room.

  “You recorded sound?”

  “Of course,” Scarlet said. “What kind of amateur do you take me for?”

  Robyn lay on her back on the server-room floor, listening to Scarlet pounding out keystrokes with the rhythm of a light rain. The room was silent other than the tip tap tip tap tip tap of her fingers.

  “Is this even going to work?” Robyn asked.

  “Everyone will see it,” Scarlet promised. “The feed from the governor’s mansion is not that well protected. We’ll be able to use the same system Crown uses for his creepy announcements. Every TV in Sherwood will light up. But I don’t want them to be able to trace the hack back to me.”

  “It’ll air more than once?”

  “As many times as we want.”

  It was like a freeze frame settled over the county. When the public loudspeakers hummed, and their private radios and televisions blurred with static, the people of Sherwood paused in fear. Mothers standing next to ironing boards, or bent over laundry baskets, held their breath. Plumbers squeezed up under sinks paused their wrenching against the pipes. Merchants froze in place with their registers active, stuck in the act of scanning a customer’s number. Here and there a vegetable-slicing knife slipped, nicking a fingertip.

  Shoppers in stores abandoned their baskets and clustered toward any available screens, ready for the inevitable. Pedestrians stopped on sidewalks to listen. Only the smallest of their children ran in circles around them and laughed, miraculously able to pretend nothing was happening.

  “Attention, Sherwood,” came the voice through the loudspeaker. An image rose on the screens, for those who could see it.

  The people braced themselves. What new horrors will Crown inflict now? they wondered. It took a moment for any of them to realize that the voice from the speaker was different. It was not Crown’s cool menace. It was warm and light, the voice of a child. A girl.

  “Attent
ion all who care about the future of Sherwood.” The screen cut to a green arrow painted on a brick wall. “We the people have something to say.”

  Images from the showcase began to play on the screen. The boy being beaten before a crowd. The girl’s voice said, “Governor Crown and his Military Police want to intimidate us with meaningless displays of their power. Today, we showed them what our version of power looks like.”

  The clip continued, as the workers responded with their sounds of a storm.

  “Remember that together we are many,” the girl said. “Together we stand strong against tyranny.”

  The workers chanted, on and on, in a loop. The girl’s voice echoed their cry. Soon, all across the county, whispered voices joined the chorus. “For Sherwood, unite. For Sherwood, we fight!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Fragments and Followers

  “This is unacceptable,” Crown thundered. “She cannot get away with this.”

  “She’s already gotten away with it, sir.”

  Crown glared at the underling who had brought him the news of Robyn’s video hack. “You may go.” The young man scurried out of the room, clearly relieved to be free of Crown’s rage.

  Crown turned to Bill Pillsbury, who was also in the room. “I mean there must be consequences. To stepping out of line in this manner.”

  “Naturally.”

  “I was being generous, allowing seventy-two hours for her to turn herself in. But the hoodlum has proven worthy of nothing less than the harshest judgment.” He punched a button on his desk. “Get me Mallet,” the governor barked into the intercom.

  Shiffley strode into the room. “Hold that thought. You asked me to handle the hoodlum. You didn’t want to call on Mallet anymore.”

  Crown acknowledged this by punching the button to disconnect the intercom. “We need a show of force.”

  “Such as?” Shiffley raised an eyebrow. Crown fought down a surge of frustration. If he said “show of force” to Mallet, she would know exactly what that meant. Damn it.

  “It needs to happen every day now.”

  “We agreed it best if the showcases are less frequent,” Pillsbury interjected “So they don’t become inured to it.”

  Crown nodded. “At least for a while. Until they show that they can behave.”

  Shiffley lit up his PalmTab. “So, we should—”

  “Take Loxley. Tonight.”

  “Robyn’s deadline is tomorrow morning,” Pill protested. “That would be going back on the timeline.”

  “The girl is not going to turn herself in,” Crown mused. “Not as things stand right now. No more games. She’ll know we’re serious.”

  “I agree,” Shiffley said.

  “So do I,” Pill acknowledged. “But I worry it looks like panicking. Not control.”

  Crown glared. “It looks like power.”

  “Very well,” Pill said hesitantly.

  “You aren’t convinced?” Shiffley asked. “We should all be on the same page about this.”

  No, Crown thought. You should all be on MY page.

  Pill shuffled, uncomfortable. “He’s a friend. I suppose in the end, it’s hard to forget that.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Crown replied.

  “We were all on the same side once,” Pill continued. “Do you ever think about that?”

  “About what?” Crown snapped. “How many former friends turned against me?”

  Pill held his instinctive response. Instead he said, “About how much the plan has changed since those days.” He smiled. “Those dreamy lads might not recognize us.”

  “We were shortsighted back then.” Crown laughed, a surprising small burst of joy that cut the tension in the room. “We have transcended what we once thought possible. Look at us now.”

  “Robyn will turn herself in, or she’ll see her parents suffer,” Shiffley said. “Right before her eyes. Ready the cameras for this one.”

  “Yes,” Crown murmured. “She needs to see firsthand the pain that will come down upon her father if this nonsense does not end. She needs to feel my rain.”

  Close to midnight, Robyn snuck out of the cathedral, bringing the green paint and the few scraps of moon lore cloth along with her. She retrieved them from their place on Tucker’s book table, where they sat alongside the box and stick from Bridger. The, so far, useless box and stick.

  Nessa would be broadcasting in a matter of minutes, once again calling on Sherwood to rise up and stand with Robyn. It was okay. She didn’t need to hear the radio message personally. She skirted the checkpoint in the alley and climbed to the roof of a neighboring building, where she could lay out the curtain pieces and study them in the moonlight.

  There were only snippets. One thing was immediately clear: these curtains had not been destroyed to be hidden and pieced together later. They had been sliced, torn, burned, shredded. They had not been meant to survive.

  The only fragments that made sense said:

  ARROW        HEART        FLAME        LIFE        SOUL

  Robyn repeated the words to herself, turning them over and over in her mind. Fresh despair sliced through her as the clock in the square rang out midnight. Thirty hours until Crown’s deadline. It wasn’t enough time.

  She tucked the scraps away and dashed across the rooftop to meet Scarlet. It was time to head toward the neighborhood they were assigned to tag.

  “Sorry, I’m late,” she whispered.

  “No worries,” Scarlet answered. They pulled out the first pair of green spray paint cans and descended to street level to get to work. “All right, so I’m going to do the row of shops east of Greenwood Street. You do west, and we’ll meet at the corner of Iron Avenue?”

  “That sounds right,” Robyn agreed. “See you there in a few.”

  They headed off in opposite directions. As Robyn prepared to turn down the cross street, she paused. The smell of fresh spray paint reached her.

  Something was off.

  Next she heard the telltale ball bearing rattle and hiss.

  Someone was painting in the wrong part of town.

  They’d been really clear about which sections of town everyone would handle. Key had drawn simple maps, taking into account checkpoints and reasonable walking distances, and other logistics. He was good at that kind of thing.

  “Scarlet,” Robyn whisper-shouted, waving at her to come back. Had they come to the wrong neighborhood?

  “Someone else is here?” Scarlet said, when she got closer.

  “I guess. Let’s find them.” They ought to catch up with whoever it was so they could figure out who was in the wrong place. The girls turned the corner and followed the sound and smell of the paint.

  “Over here,” said a voice. “Let’s do some on this wall.”

  “Okay, hurry,” responded another person.

  Something strange was happening. Robyn didn’t recognize these voices.

  She scurried ahead to the next intersection, but the taggers were already gone. Instead of chasing them, she stood and stared, with the mist of fresh paint still settling around her.

  Scarlet came up behind her. “Whoa. Who did this?”

  These arrows were not green. They were red and gold, and fancier than anything Robyn and her friends had drawn the previous night. Also on the wall was another moon lore symbol: the circle and crescent that represented the sun and the moon. An echo of the pendant Robyn had lost to Sheriff Mallet.

  Her hand automatically drifted to the place over her heart where it used to lie.

  She and Scarlet walked around the next corner, ready to paint their own simple arrows. But there were already arrows and moon symbols everywhere. On the next street, too. And the next.

  Scarlet looped an arm around Robyn’s back. “So … does this mean we can get some sleep tonight?”

  Robyn hugged her in return. “I think it means none of us will be sleeping much anytime soon!”

  The str
ategy was working. Nessa’s call had inspired the movement to grow.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Behind the Wall

  Robyn woke the next morning with the TexTer buzzing by her head.

  CEASE ANTICS. C WILL SHORTEN D.

  Forty-eight hours had already passed. How could he shorten the deadline now? If he did, wouldn’t he announce it for everyone to hear?

  Or, maybe not, if that would look too much like defeat. Robyn was in the process of proving she could do more harm in seventy-two hours than Crown could have predicted. She was getting the people of Sherwood ready to strike, beyond what she could manage herself. That had to bother him. Which was the whole point.

  And what would be the point of shortening the deadline, without announcing it publicly? If Crown killed her parents before the deadline, Robyn would never turn herself in.

  Now was the time to escalate antics, not cease them. Bill Pillsbury should know that. What if his TexTer had been compromised? She’d trusted him all of this time, but now she wasn’t so sure.

  Twenty-four hours remained. Robyn felt a little sick to her stomach. Once again she found herself second-guessing her choices. Perhaps they should be planning something bigger, something to really rattle Crown before the deadline.

  They’d stolen guns, but wouldn’t use them. They’d made a statement at the showcase. It had felt like a big deal at the time. Arrows appearing all over Sherwood was a statement unto itself.

  Was it enough? How much difference did a little paint really make? The whole of Sherwood wasn’t going to rise up within a day and march to the Castle District. It would take months, or more, to move people on that level. Why had it all seemed possible a few hours ago?

  Had it ever really seemed possible? Not without the help of the moon lore, the pendant. Not without bringing all the Elements back together. Impossible things.

  Robyn struggled again to put together the pieces she knew. She went up to the loft to look at Tucker’s books. She couldn’t look at them without thinking of what they had done to him at the showcase.

  The books smelled musty and underused. She cracked them open again and tried to find something, anything that related to the words on the curtain fragments.