Chapter 11: The Veil Holds

Namgung said nothing else, because two of his gray suits were already walking up the aisle toward the back of the hall.

Gyu-ho turned for his doorway.

A third gray suit stood in front of it with his hands folded.

So they had planned this before the perilla, he thought, before Namgung had any proof at all.

"Seller," said the first suit, reaching him. "The Director asks you to come with us."

"I can't," Gyu-ho said.

"That isn't a question," the suit said, and took him by the arm.

The second one took hold of the hood and pulled.

It didn't come off.

His fingers slid off the gray cloth, and he stared at his own hand.

"It's the Tower's," Gyu-ho said. "Not mine."

"Then you'll wear it down the stairs," said the first suit.

"Breach bait," the second one muttered, wiping his hand on his trousers.

The radio said that about the people a breach took.

They walked him toward the dark gap in the wall beside the lot door, one at each arm.

Their grips were polite and very strong, the grips of men who had cleared nine floors to stand here.

He thought of the slab and the hound, and how little either would count for in this hall.

At the gap, the man on his left stepped down onto the first stair.

Gyu-ho walked straight into stone.

It was a wall to him, smooth and cold, though the gray suit stood in the stairwell a step below with his mouth open.

"There are no stairs for me," Gyu-ho said.

He had known it for weeks, from the voices going down past him in the dark.

"Then you'll stay right here in the hall until we work out how," said the man on his right. "However long that takes."

He meant it.

The hall had no stream and no soil, and the Market only opened on Saturday nights.

If they stood in front of his doorway, he would never see his field again.

His perilla would drop its seed with nobody there to pick it.

Grandma would never hear another word from him, and she would wait anyway.

Something white and humming came between his face and the gray suit's.

It was a spear of light, two meters long and guttering at the tip.

It came out of Bom's right hand.

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