Guardian by Alex London Read Free Book Online Page B

vertical white stripes around it, signifying her place on the Council.
    What the Council was going to do to him for letting Syd be attacked, he couldn’t know. In denouncing Finch, Syd had really denounced Liam for failing to protect him. And failure was never tolerated. It could lead to reassignment to a work camp; it could lead to a public whipping; it could lead to a sudden and permanent disappearance. The Advisory Council was unpredictable.
    Unpredictability was, in fact, a tenet of their philosophy. They claimed that it strengthened the revolution. A storm cannot be bribed nor can a flash flood be infiltrated. The Reconciliation modeled itself on natural disaster.
    Lightning strikes might have been more predictable.
    Before they did what they would with him, Liam figured he could, at least, let Syd know whose side he was on, whose side he’d always been on.
    He took a deep breath.
    “He goes by Syd,” Liam said.
    “Excuse me?” Chairwoman Pei lowered her hands to her lap.
    “With respect, Chairwoman.” Liam cleared his throat. “He prefers to be called Syd.”
    The chairwoman’s eyes darted to Syd. Syd too looked at Liam with surprise.
    “Yovel was the name given him by his late father in service of the revolution,” the chairwoman said. “Sydney is the name given him by the patrons of the old system. It is his proxy name. The Reconciliation does not recognize these names.”
    Liam shrugged. He gave Syd a small smile.
    Syd knew what he had done. Chairwoman Pei, as leader of the Advisory Council, could order the death of almost anyone for almost any reason.
    Anyone except, of course, Syd.
    He’d been angry and felt helpless and wanted to punish Finch for how he felt. Instead, he’d punished Liam.
    “Syd is my name,” he announced. He put himself between Liam and Chairwoman Pei. “It’s the only name I’ve known and I intend to keep it.”
    “I understand you feel attached to this name,” the chairwoman told him. “But we are a new organization now, with new structures, and new expectations. Your personal preferences must be subordinate to the needs of all. Your stubbornness undermines what we are trying to build. If the people are to abandon faith in the return of the networks, if we are to stamp out these Machinist cults, then the people must believe in something else. They must believe in
our
symbols. In Yovel.”
    “I never asked to be your symbol. I’m seventeen. I just want to be like everyone else my age.”
    “Everyone else your age obeys the advice of the Council!” The chairwoman threw her arms in the air. “We have countless seventeen-year-olds in our ranks—Liam, here, is seventeen. He obeys. The Purifier you are so quick to denounce, he obeys too! Why should we expect different from you?”
    “Because”—Syd cleared his throat—“like you said, you need me. I’m of vital symbolic importance.”
    A few counselors shifted uncomfortably on their knees. Syd might have been just a teenaged boy, but to many of them, he was still Yovel, the savior, and they didn’t like to see him get a public scolding.
    Chairwoman Pei, for her part, appeared to relish the opportunity. Syd knew by the way she adjusted her posture that she was fighting the urge to have him beaten to death by the Purifiers behind her. Teenagers were moody and demanding. The chairwoman would certainly have preferred a martyr to a flesh-and-blood teen.
    “Anyway, what happened with Finch today wasn’t Liam’s fault,” said Syd. “I snuck away from him. I—” Syd had to find the right words here, the words that would undo the damage he’d done by letting his anger cloud his judgment. He had to get Liam out of the bind he’d put him in and had, in spite of himself, to keep them from executing Finch. Syd didn’t like having a bodyguard around all the time, but no one deserved to die for it. “I shouldn’t have let myself get dragged into a petty argument with a Purifier. I provoked Finch and I deserved to be