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.