“Where are you…” taking me? he started to ask, but the answer came to him before he’d finished. Rita didn’t have anywhere specific that she wanted to go. Her only purpose had been to get him out, to walk along with him like this.
They took a number of corners before coming out to a tiny open space with various shops around it. They passed before an ironmongers, then a soap makers. All the products on display were coated with a thick layer of dust.
“I lost my parents too,” her confession came abruptly.
Mathias was puzzled. The gentle apothecary Henning. The spirited Doris. As far as he knew, her parents were alive and well.
He stopped. “What do you mean? Has something happened?” His hand came away from hers.
Rita stopped too, then turned around. “My current mother and father…aren’t related to me by blood.”
The area was quiet. There were no passersby or shop owners in sight.
“Why not?”
“My real mother, who gave birth to me…was in the Survey Corps. She died during one of her expeditions. My real father had trouble coping, so my current…sorry, I know this is confusing. He took some poison that Henning made. He killed himself.”
“Sorry, wait… Henning? Poison?”
“Yes.”
Rita looked away, focusing instead on the storefront of a bookshop that Mathias had visited a number of times. There was an old chair with a gray cat curled up on it.
“There were a lot of people in town who found life hard, who didn’t want to keep going. I think there still are. My father used to put together a remedy that helped them die without pain. Without ever telling the royal government.”
“But that’s…”
If such a thing came to light, he was guaranteed the death penalty. Mathias doubted it was for the money. Henning must have believed that he was helping his clients.
Mathias didn’t know what to say in response.
He could have brushed aside any straightforward attempts to comfort him. But this was something else.
“Don’t worry,” Rita spoke again. “He doesn’t make it anymore.”
“How long have you known this?”
“I only found out recently. Dad told me himself…and also that he’d given it without knowing my real father had a daughter.”
“You mean the poison?”
“The poison. He only found out about me after my father was dead, and deeply regretted what he’d done. He stopped making the poison and started raising me, as my new father.”
“Do you remember any of this?”
Rita shook her head. “Not really. It was so long ago. I think my memories of my real parents are all mixed up with my memories of Henning and Doris.”
“But why tell you now? I mean, Henning could have kept it from you, if you didn’t remember.”
“I feel the same. And I think Mom…Doris, was against the idea. But he told me anyway, in secret.”
“So Doris doesn’t know─that you know.”
“Probably not.”
The cat yawned under Rita’s gaze.
“Dad told me he didn’t expect me to forgive him. My reserve corps exams were coming up. He said if I got through, I’d be able to leave home and never return if I didn’t want to.”
“But!”
Mathias’ voice came out louder than expected. The cat pricked its ears.
Rita’s expression was gentle as she shook her head. “I wouldn’t do that, of course. Forgiving him isn’t even an issue. He’s my father now, and he’s important to me. I’m grateful to him. If anything, it’s my real father whom I can’t forgive.”
“Wha?”
“I didn’t want him to choose death. It was selfish of him.”
“Yes…”
It finally dawned on him─the reason why Rita had goaded him to come out. She hadn’t wanted to console him, nor had she wanted to cheer him up. She had wanted to tell him off, as his friend, for shutting her out and sulking by himself.
Less than five years had passed since then.
Gathered on the bookstore’s rooftop, Mathias and the other leaders gazed across the lines of buildings stretching away. A cloth tarp pitched above them kept the piercing rays of the sun at bay. A constant breeze blew up from the river, rendering the location sufferable even at midday.
White smoke climbed towards the sky from all across town. The residents were preparing their meals. The food supply might have been limited, but Quinta’s people still needed to eat, and anyone who assisted the Garrison received extra rations as a reward.
“That didn’t lead to much,” Klaus muttered wearily, perched on the edge of the roof.
He was an outlaw, one of a few Mathias had enlisted to help him escape Fuerth and travel back to Quinta. Short of stature, ill-natured, he had daggers for eyes. Ever since their first meeting, he had treated Mathias with disdain and never bothered to hide his misgivings. Yet Klaus was still with him, making common cause and even beginning to show a certain amount of trust.
“You mean Gabriele?” Mathias asked, still standing.
“Yeah. He didn’t know anything of use. Just spent the whole time racing from one place to the next.”
“I suppose.”
Mathias recalled their conversation from downstairs, earlier that morning. They had asked Gabriele about the exterior: about the other districts and villages, and whether he’d seen anything unusual or come across anybody who had the big picture.
Gabriele had sat himself among the mountains of stacked books and done little more than pout and whine.
“How should I know about the other districts? If I’d known how, I’d have gone to one ages ago. I didn’t know my left from my right when that guy there picked me up. Klaus, I mean. And the other villages… Wiped out, all of them. Hardly surprising, eh? I came across a few survivors like me, but they were all on edge. It’s a constant scramble, for food.”
He’d even wanted to know why they were bothering to ask questions in the first place.
“If you really want to know, why not go look yourselves? You can get out.”
To this Mathias had said, “True, we could use the Night Harvest, but there’s a limit to the amount of ground we can cover before dawn. We can’t move during daytime, not without a horse.”
“Right, I guess it’d be over if a Titan spotted you.”
“Exactly.”
“Why do you have to do all the investigating, anyway? Surely it’s the job of the officials. Them, or the military.”
“I believe Klaus already mentioned this. The situation in Quinta is far from normal.”
“A dictatorship, as they say. And what was it again…‘reign of terror’?” Nikki tested her new vocabulary.
Like Klaus, she had belonged to the band of outlaws. While it was a little hard to gauge what she was thinking─mostly she looked as though she wasn’t thinking at all─she had the ability, during critical moments, to keep a cool head and make the right decisions. She was also a master at picking locks and highly proficient with firearms.
Mathias spoke to “the young man from outside,” Gabriele.
“Rita─the person currently ruling over Quinta─has lost all interest in the outside world. She won’t send an envoy to the interior, nor will she survey the immediate vicinity. She simply runs the town as she sees fit.”
And it was all because of him.
Half a year ago, enlisting a band of criminals on the condition that he’d hand over the precious artworks hidden in the courtyard of his family mansion, Mathias had left the refuge of Fuerth to return to Quinta. Yet on arrival, as they were getting ready to cart out the various items, they had been spotted by soldiers on patrol.
Rita had been among them.
Rita…
She was Mathias’ childhood friend, the very person he had come back for, the reason he had decided to cross the exterior and put himself in danger.
Now she ruled Quinta.
It was there at the mansion that the accident occurred. Mathias’ gun fired. One of Rita’s subordinates, a boy soldier, died, his head blown away. With nothing else to do Mathias fled the scene. He had never intended to kill the young boy, but that would mean nothing to Rita. Her transformation, and the current state of Quinta it had brought about, was all his fault.
This, at least, was how he saw it. Nikki said he was being overly self-conscious, but he couldn’t shake the guilt.
It was the reason he’d founded the resistance movement. He couldn’t look the other way. He had a duty to restore the town to more normal conditions.
He was fortunate in that he had a good many friends and acquaintances in Quinta. And many were dissatisfied with the current state of affairs.
The number of sympathizers had grown with each passing day, so that now over a hundred civilians were clandestine comrades. They worked together to canvass new members, united in the cause of bringing down Rita’s regime.
It would be fastest to persuade Rita in person, but Mathias was sure she despised him with all her heart. He was a wanted criminal, and the posters on display across Quinta were marked “Dead or Alive.” The moment he showed his face, far from talking any sense into her, he would be cut to pieces by blades designed to fell Titans.
Gabriele nodded, looking satisfied with Mathias’ explanation. “So I’ve heard. And this woman is pretty young?” He’d been fanning his collar the entire time they’d been inside the bookstore, sending puffs of air into his clothes. He appeared to be from a village with a climate cooler than Quinta’s.