Page 73 of The Runaway
“Go home, Lucas,” Gabriel said. “You’ve got no idea what you’re dealing with here.”
Having unloaded the luggage, Elroy was now waiting patiently, looking a touch agitated, but knowing better than to interrupt an argument between alphas. In some circles, his silence would have been considered simple good manners, but Gabriel found himself a little frustrated with the man’s refusal to speak up. He could have used an extra voice to talk some sense into Lucas, to persuade him to go home again. Because for all the fear and uncertainty in Lucas’s eyes, Gabriel could see he was a long way from giving up.
“If Adalene gets to go, then I should get to go,” Lucas said next. He wasn’t quite pouting, but he was getting close.
Gabriel glared at him. “Why? Because you think you’ve got to be better than an omega woman?”
“Because I know I’m not better than her,” Lucas said. “But she’s still got the courage to go and try and make the world a better place, and ever since you arrived, you’ve been having arguments with Antoine about the best way to treat omegas and which bits of the world are the most awful, and I have to listen to all this stuff, but I don’t get to do anything about it, and I’m terrified of dying in Paris, but there are hundreds of omegas who don’t get the choice to stay home and frown about how bad the military’s decisions are, because they’re going to be shot if no one does anything about it. I don’twantto go. But Ineedto, because it’s the right thing to do.”
God damn it. The heartfelt rant actually made sense. Lucas was aware of the dangers, as much as Niles and Adalene were, at least, and he felt a real conviction about not turning a blind eye to the world’s ills.
Gabriel looked over at Niles. This wasn’t his decision to make alone. As Lucas’s older brother, Niles should have a say in the matter.
Niles stood there scowling, his arms folded across his chest. After a prolonged pause, he let out a long, slow breath. “Antoine’s not going to be happy about this,” he said, “but I think we should let Lucas come. Christophe and Antoine always taught me that we have a responsibility to do the right thing, and to not just stand by when someone is doing something that makes the world a worse place. I think if we give Lucas a couple of serious lectures on the way about what it’s going to be like and the fact that he needs to follow your instructions in order to avoid getting his arms ripped off, he should be okay. Or as okay as the rest of us, at least.” Because there were no guarantees on that count.
“Fine,” Gabriel said. “You can come. But I’m sending a letter with Elroy back to Antoine to tell him where you are. And that is a lesson that I want you to remember. The far wiser course of action would have been to discuss this with usbeforejumping onto the back of the carriage, not waiting until we got to town to spring this on us. I fully expect that Antoine will have some stern words and sterner punishments for you the instant we get home.”
“Yes, sir,” Lucas said, contrition all over his face. “It won’t happen again.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Ears pricked, eyes scanning the surrounding buildings, Gabriel led their motley group along the street, heading towards the centre of Paris. It was somewhere around three o’clock in the afternoon, the streets busy with all the usual suspects – shoppers, merchants, rich folk showing off their clothes, poor people begging on street corners. Youths with wary looks loitered about, preparing to make trouble, and pickpockets did their best to go unnoticed, waiting for an opportunity to strike. God, he hated the city.
But even here, for all its apparent normality, the signs of the riots were still evident – boarded up shop windows, bricks scattered in the street, the burnt out shell of a carriage abandoned on one street corner. As they got closer to the centre of Paris, it was only going to get worse.
It had taken them three days to get to Paris. The first ride they’d bought had got them half way there, but after that, it had been difficult to find a carriage willing to take them. Most of the merchants were currently avoiding the city, and those who were braving the journey didn’t often have room for five passengers.
“How do you know where you’re going?” Adalene asked at one point, as they wove through the crowded streets. They’d been dropped off at a post office nearer the outskirts of town and had had to come the rest of the way on foot.
“I grew up around here,” Gabriel said. “Not right in the centre of Paris, but close enough that I know the general layout. Fairly soon, it won’t be an issue, though. We’ll just follow the sounds of the shouting.”
Sure enough, after another ten minutes of marching along, the dull drone of hundreds of voices reached their ears. Another few streets trickled by, and the drone became a roar. Gabriel stopped, turning to the others. “Stay together. If I say we need to leave, then we leave. We can always turn around and come back again, but if we get caught in a stampede or shoved into a bonfire, then things go southreallyfast. You all understand me?”
The four of them all nodded, steely looks of determination on their faces. Even Lucas was more focused now, having lost his naïve excitement after an hour or two of Gabriel describing some of the horrors he’d seen during the war.
After only another minute of walking, they arrived at their destination, and Gabriel felt suddenly breathless as he took in the crowd. There must have been thousands of people there, crammed into the space between the buildings, waving placards, shouting slogans, stomping their feet to a universal beat. His heart rate doubled, and an odd mix of fear and excitement seeped into his veins. So many people, so many protestors, all here to raise hell and fight for the rights of the omegas who were set to be slaughtered. Perhaps humanity wasn’t a lost cause, after all.
But at the same time, people in large groups were an entirely unpredictable hazard, prone to making nonsensical decisions and feeding off the anger of the masses with no time spared for rational thought. Gabriel had witnessed such events in the army, when a battlefield loss turned into wholescale slaughter and a retreat order incited a stampede. Crowds of people could very easily become a death sentence, and it was going to be his job to keep his friends out of the worst of it, while still becoming one with the crowd to protest the injustice happening here.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Connor peering up at him with a concerned frown. “Are you okay?” He was barely audible over the crowd. “This is like being in the war, isn’t it?”
Gabriel took a steadying breath, feeling Connor’s mere presence as a grounding force. “It’s not quite as bad, but yeah, it’s kind of similar.”
“You don’t have to kill anyone,” Connor said, and Gabriel wondered how he’d cut through to the crux of the matter so easily. “It’s just a lot of shouting and shoving, then we go home and it’s all over.”
Gabriel managed a weak smile. “Thanks. That actually helps a bit.”
“We’re changing the world here,” Connor said, a gleam in his eye. “I know it’s hard, but if we get it right, it’s damn well worth doing.”
Gabriel looked over at the other three, waiting apprehensively to the side – Adalene with a fierce look in her eyes, Niles putting on a brave face, and Lucas, looking openly terrified. They all had their bags strapped to their backs and wore robust clothes of buckskin and wool, to provide at least a little protection from the jostling of the crowd. “Lets get to this, then,” Gabriel said. “That’s why we’re here, after all.”
The hours of the afternoon passed slowly. Connor, Adalene, Niles and Lucas spent the time shouting slogans, waving their fists and trying to glean any worthy gossip from the other protestors. Some, predictably, seemed to simply make up any news that suited them, but others had more factual reports from military insiders or from nobles who were keeping an eye on the situation. So far, the army wasn’t budging on its stance on shooting the remaining omegas, though it made the point that plenty of them were still for sale, for anyone who wished to purchase one. A few people were doing just that, where they had the funds to be able to, but the general feeling was that such measures shouldn’t be necessary. The omegas had a right to live, without waiting for kind-hearted strangers to pay for them.
But while the rest of his little group were busy protesting, Gabriel was keeping a keen eye on the surrounding situation, feeling out the mood of the crowd, and ever watchful for a breakdown of protocol that indicated it was time to beat a hasty retreat. The army had formed a firm line, preventing the protestors from advancing any further, but aside from that, they seemed to be keeping things fairly low key, making a half-hearted attempt at dispersing the crowd, but taking little action aside from that.
By the time seven o’clock rolled around, the day had progressed in a reasonably civilised manner. There had been a few scuffles between the military and the protesters, but no shots were fired, nothing was set on fire, and no one had started calling for revolution. All things considered, it had gone surprisingly well.
“We need to find somewhere to sleep,” Gabriel said, after having convinced the rest of the group to call it a night. There were some die-hard types still chanting slogans, and from the looks of it, they were prepared to spend the whole night out here, but Gabriel was inclined to get them all some rest while it was still a viable option. The next few days were going to be fraught with hazards, and a good night’s sleep may well become an impossibility.