They'll Paint You a Monster

Chapter 3

Ember

Lily coughed miserably into her elbow. Sal and Ember looked on in commiseration. Pat had let them bring Lily supper when she missed both dinner with the acolytes and the common supper in the mess hall. Now Ember knew why.

"She can't work like this," Ember sighed, turning back to the invalid. She longed to reach out and comfort her, like Velma had when Ember had caught a nasty cold last year, but Ember knew better. That was how illness spread. That was how factories shut down and food ran out and towns were lost. "Lily, you need to sleep. You'll recover faster if you let yourself rest."

"No," Lily croaked. "No, Em, I can't—"

"She's already been sick twice this month," Sal whispered, grimacing.

"Oh," Ember felt another pang of sympathy. "That's bad luck, Lil." After three absences a month, workers were labeled 'unreliable' and sent to early retirement.

For Ember, the idea of retirement had a blurrily pleasant feeling to it, sort of like a good dream on a hot day with a full stomach. When you retired, you no longer had to work. You went to live in a special town with a lot of other retirees that had no factories or shifts— only the mess hall that would be cleared in the evenings for group card games. Retirement was the reward for a life of hard work. Ember knew she would retire eventually, but she definitely couldn't bear the thought of early retirement— not only because of her craft and the troupe, but because it sounded extremely boring.

Still, she intended to put a positive face on it for her friend. "Early retirement won't be so bad—" she began, forcing a smile.

"NO!" Lily shrieked, subsiding into a fit of coughing.

Ember stared at her in stunned surprise.

"No, please," Lily continued when she finally caught her breath. Her eyes were wet with tears. Ember didn't know if she was in pain from her coughing or somehow afraid of retirement. Maybe Lily hated boredom even more than Ember did.

"Well..." Ember turned to look questioningly at Sal.

Sal swallowed, pulling his collar away from his throat. "Ember, I realize we haven't known each other long, but... there is something we could do. Well, something you could do."

Ember stared at him blankly. She turned to look at Lily, who looked more wretched than ever— but now, she was covered with shame beneath her red nose and puffy eyes.

"It would only be for two days at most," Sal continued hurriedly. "Then the monthly tally will reset, and hopefully Lily will be recovered by then. One of Lily's mates— a lad named Jonah— is taking her morning work. He took her evening work today, too, but if he does it again, their foreman— a specialist called Madame Curator— is likely to notice."

"What... do you mean..." Ember trails off, looking from Sal's anxious face to Lily's miserable one. It seemed incredible, what they were asking.

Covering a shift wasn't as bad as stealing— the perpetrator wouldn't be terminated immediately, but their retirement would be delayed several years as a punishment. And the person they were covering for would be retired early anyway. Ember always thought that people would just take the early retirement if they needed to. But Ember had never really considered it, even when she found a family in the troupe, because there seemed no chance of getting away with it. Her shiftmates on the conveyor belt would notice. What would be the point?

But here, at the isolated castle, things were different than in town. The Merrit folk had already struck her as surprisingly clannish and candid, and that kind of loyalty meant that no one would turn Ember in. It was almost like a troupe— one you were born into. Though Lily's tasks would be new to Ember, she had been learning new things for the last two weeks outside the castle, so the acolytes' work inside couldn't be too difficult. The only risk came from the acolyte's strange specialist foreman— a stern, distracted woman with silver hair and anxious hands, who Ember had seen gliding by once or twice on her way to the mess hall.