Chapter 22: The First Lie

At dusk Jonas walked me across the camp with his hand on my elbow.

It was not a grip.

It was the touch of a man making sure I did not stumble, and I let him.

Three hundred people were already filling the lodge square.

They stood in rows under the lamps, quiet, looking at the platform where Calvin and the General waited.

I carried nothing in my hands.

The ledger was inside my sweater, flat against my ribs, and the white test strip was folded in my boot.

Between the last barracks and the square stood a checkpoint of two sawhorses and a lantern.

A sergeant in gray stepped out from behind the sawhorses.

He was a big man with a flat face, and I had seen him standing at the General's elbow every day.

"Mercer," he said. "Halt."

Jonas halted.

"The General wants the accused searched before she goes up."

"The General said I'm her escort."

"Orders are orders. Does she have anything on her?"

Jonas's hand was still on my arm.

He looked at the sergeant, steadily, and I felt his fingers tighten once.

"No," he said.

And I heard him.

It was the first time.

For six days I had listened for that voice every time he opened his mouth.

I had learned his silence by heart, and I had come to love it.

Now his voice came up behind my ears, flat and quiet and so close that I felt it in my jaw.

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