The Jewel Read Online Free PDF Page B

behind a podium and gives the usual speech. He is a large man, with wire-rimmed glasses and a brocade waistcoat. On his left hand is a ring—a ruby sits like a fat, glittering cherry, encircled by tiny diamonds. I can’t take my eyes off that ring. It could feed three families in the Marsh for a year.
    He has a bland, droning voice, and the wind picks up most of his words and carries them off. I’m not listening anyway—it’s pretty much the same speech year after year, about how noble the tradition of surrogacy is, how essential we are to the continuation of the royalty, how esteemed we’ll be in the eyes of all the residents of the city.
    I don’t know about the Bank and the Jewel, but I’m fairly sure the rest of the city couldn’t care less about the surrogates, unless you live in the Marsh and it means losing a daughter. None of the lower circles—the Smoke, the Farm, and the Marsh—are allowed to have surrogates. Sometimes parents try to hide their daughters, or pay off the doctors who test them. The blood test that indicates surrogacy is mandatory for every girl in the Marsh once she reaches puberty. They don’t know why only girls from the poorest circle have the strange genetic mutation that causes the Auguries, but the royalty won’t let anyone slip through the cracks. If you’re caught trying to avoid the test, the sentence is death.
    I shiver, remembering the first public execution I ever witnessed. It was seven months ago. A girl had been caught after three years in hiding. They brought her to the square in front of the gates of Southgate—we were kept behind screens, transparent on our side but opaque on the other, so that the gathering crowds couldn’t see us. I searched for my mother in that crowd, but she wasn’t there. It’s nearly an hour’s walk from our house to Southgate. Besides, she probably wanted to keep Ochre and Hazel away. She and Father never attended the public executions—“grotesque,” Father used to call them. But I remember being curious, wondering what they were like.
    Seeing one, though . . . I understood what he meant.
    The girl was wild, long black hair tangled around her face, framing eyes of a brilliant, almost shocking, blue. There was something fierce and untamed about her appearance. She couldn’t have been more than a few years older than me.
    She didn’t fight or struggle against the two Regimentals restraining her. She didn’t cry, or beg. She looked strangely peaceful. When they put her head on the block, I could swear she smiled. The magistrate asked her if she had any last words.
    â€œThis is how it begins,” she said. “I am not afraid.” Her face saddened, and she added, “Tell Cobalt I love him.”
    Then they chopped her head off.
    I forced myself to watch, to keep my eyes on her mutilated body and not cringe and look away, like Lily and so many of the other girls did. I thought she deserved to have someone be as brave as she was, as if it would somehow validate her life and death. It was probably a stupid idea—I had nightmares for a week—but I’m still glad I did it.
    Whenever I think of her, I always wonder who Cobalt was. I wonder if he ever found out that he was the last person she thought of before she died.
    I turn my attention back to the man from the Jewel, who finishes his speech and wipes his glasses with a silk handkerchief.
    There are only twenty-two surrogates going to the Auction from Southgate this year. Most are coming from Northgate and Westgate. Our train is a plum-colored steam engine with only three carriages—much smaller and friendlier than the train my father took to work.
    Our head doctor, Dr. Steele, shakes the fat man’s hand, then turns to address us. Everything about Dr. Steele is long and gray—long chin, long nose, long arms, gray hair, gray eyebrows, grayish eyes. Even his skin has a grayish