Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [142]
Wataru took a step closer to the bars. “Where did you find Meena? What did you threaten her with?”
The brothers looked at each other for a moment, then pointed their fingers at Wataru and laughed uproariously.
“Stop that!” Wataru shouted.
The older brother’s face suddenly went serious. He stepped up to the bars and muttered something in a low, poisonous voice.
“What did you say?” Wataru asked, leaning closer.
The boy spat on his face at point-blank range.
“Ack!”
As Wataru wiped his face, the brothers laughed again. “Just watch. When we ankha have brought the south together, you’ll all be sent to the camps. You can lick our boots three times a day for your meals.”
“Boots?” The younger brother said, howling with laughter. “You mean butts! They can all live in our latrine and eat whatever drops down!”
Trone put his hand on Wataru’s shoulder. “Back to the office.”
Wataru nodded. Kutz stood a while longer, looking with weary eyes at the two boys before turning to follow.
“I’ve heard about conditions up there from refugees, but still…” Kutz frowned as she collapsed in her chair. “Even if it’s all true, what makes boys like that tick, I wonder?”
“You’re seeing the shallow pool that is us, Kutz,” said Gil. “Sadly, we all have it in our natures to be like them.”
It was true that the Northern Empire had suffered greatly due to its discriminatory policies against non-ankha peoples. Their workforce had dwindled, and their strength had weakened. Things were so bad, they couldn’t even grow enough food to feed their own people, the high chief explained to Wataru. “There are formal trade agreements drawn between the North and the South. Only the agreed-upon amounts of food and supplies may be exchanged. Still, that does not cover their need, nor do the supplies reach all the peoples of the north.”
So northern merchants had formed alliances with treaty-breaking smugglers in the south and lined their pockets with black-market trade.
“But of course, this contraband entering the North is far overpriced, again, not reaching the hands of those who need it most. Thus, the refugees come.”
“So who exactly lives well in the Northern Empire?” Wataru asked.
“A circle of privileged elites,” the Highlander replied slowly. “The family of the current Emperor Agrilius VII, nobles, politicians, officials, and the wealthier merchants.”
Gil nodded in the direction of the holding cell. “My bet is that the parents of those two boys belonged to that elite class. That’s the only way they would have been able to raise the funds necessary to purchase passage to the south. Not too high-class, of course. Perhaps the father was a petty official of some kind. I would assume some venture of his didn’t pan out, and washed up, he found himself unable to stay where he was.”
“You’d think they would come here and absorb what was different from the empire in the north. Why can’t they let go of their prejudices?”
The official’s lip curled in a faint smile. “Not all refugees from the North are like those two brothers, you know.”
“Yes, of course, but…”
“Failure and disillusionment are realities, but ideologies are made of dreams. And dreams, it would seem, do not fade easily,” the high chief explained. “Those two could not find success in the North with its prejudiced system. Yet still, those ideas were burned into their hearts from a young age. Such things are hard to give up. That is why, even though they may change their location to the south, those same ideas stick with them here. Doubtlessly, they would like to claw their way up to being privileged elites in our land and repeat the same mistakes their parents made.”
“Stupid,” Wataru spat.
“Stupid, indeed. As foolish as the North’s policy of discrimination against non-ankha. Yet, Wataru,” the Highlander leaned forward, his voice still calm, “that which is foolish is sometimes far stronger than that which is right, possessing an uncanny power to move men’s hearts. And foolish ideas have always found easy purchase on small parts, hearts with holes, hearts like hollow, barren trees waiting