Free The White Rose by Amy Ewing Page A

The voice is not Lily’s. It’s a man’s. I cringe at the use of my Lot number.
    I walk to the opening in the floor and look down. The man standing at the foot of the ladder has graying hair and wears gold-rimmed spectacles. He peers up at me curiously.
    “Who are you?” I ask.
    “I have been sent for you,” he says.
    Lucien’s voice enters my head. Remember the key. “Show me the key,” I demand, glad that I sound more confident than I feel, since I have no idea what to expect.
    I feel even less confident when he opens his tweed coat and begins to unbutton his shirt. He opens the shirt collar wide. At the place where his collarbone meets his shoulder, there is a tattoo of a small black skeleton key.
    “I work for the Society of the Black Key,” he says.
    “What’s the Black Key?”
    “He is not a what. The Black Key is our leader.”
    Of course Lucien would use a code name.
    “Come with me, 197,” the man says. “We don’t have much time.”
    I climb down the ladder as he buttons up his coat.
    “Don’t call me that again,” I say as we walk down the stairs to the front door. “I have a name. It’s Violet Lasting.” I’m done with being called anything but who I am. “What’s your name?”
    The man purses his lips. “You may call me the Cobbler.”
    “How long have you—oh!”
    Lily’s body lies crumpled at foot of the stairs. “What have you done?!” I run to her, tilt her head back, and nearly cry with relief when I feel her breath on my cheek.
    “She is fine,” the Cobbler says. “She will be awake in a few minutes. We have to go.”
    “What did you do to her?” I demand. “She was helping me.”
    The Cobbler shrugs. “A necessary precaution.”
    I stand up, my blood boiling.
    “This is not the time to be crying over a simple dose of sleep serum,” the Cobbler says. “There is work to be done.” He picks up a large brown parcel from where it sits by the door. “Carry this. Walk two steps behind me and keep your head down.”
    “Wait.” I am so tired of being told what to do, and I don’t even know this man, and he certainly doesn’t know me. So I’m going to do one thing before I leave with him. I bend down and adjust Lily’s body so that she’s in a morecomfortable position. I take her hand and squeeze it. “Thank you,” I say to her. Then I stand, take the parcel, and look the Cobbler straight in the eye. “All right. Let’s go.”
    We walk out the door, and I make sure to follow his instructions and stay a few paces behind him. The air is colder than it was yesterday and I clench my teeth together to keep them from chattering. I wish I had thought to borrow a coat from Lily.
    We make our way back through Landing’s Market, which is quieter today than it was yesterday. There are still some remnants of the search for Ash scattered about, a broken basket, a trampled cabbage. Half-torn signs hang from lampposts, with Ash’s face and the words WANTED. FUGITIVE. Two little girls are playing while their mother haggles over the price of potatoes. As we pass, I hear one girl say to the other, “I was the surrogate yesterday! Let me play the royalty this time.”
    My throat goes dry. Are these the sort of games children play in the Bank?
    I’m so distracted, I almost lose sight of the Cobbler as he turns onto a different street. I hurry to catch up.
    This street is wide and airy, much nicer than Lily’s, so I begin to understand why her area might be called the Cheap Streets. Though it’s ridiculous to think anything in the Bank is cheap. The houses have space between them, separated by hedges or high brick walls, but not like the ones that surround the palaces in the Jewel. These are clean and pretty and friendly, not topped with vicious spikes. Many of the houses are three or four storied, with wide porches and balconies, and some even have miniature turrets, like they’retrying to impersonate a royal home.
    The people on the streets are fancier, too—the men wear