“You’re not Eldest,” Bartie points out. “You’re still Elder.”

I shake my head. “In name only. I can rule without taking on the title.”

“Titles confuse me.” Bartie picks up The Republic again, closing it and staring at the cover. “This book talks about aristocracy and tyranny like they’re two different things, but I don’t see a difference.” He slides it across the table. “There are other forms of government, though.”

“What are you saying?” I ask warily.

Bartie stands and so do I. “You don’t have to be alone in this,” he says. “Look at the reality of the situation. Even if you are the one aristocrat on this ship, the one leader—you’re sixteen years old. Maybe you will be a great leader . . .”

“Will be?” I growl.

He shrugs. “People don’t respect you now. Maybe in another five or ten years.”

“People respect me because of what I am!”

Bartie drops the book on the table; its thud echoes on the metal surface. He heads toward the door, shouldering past me when he nears. “You’ve given us all the chance to think, to choose for ourselves what we want.” His voice is quiet, almost a whisper. “I respect that. But you’ve got to realize that maybe, when we’ve had a chance to think about it, we’re not going to choose you as our leader.”

Bartie picks up two books from the table—the history of the French Revolution and a book from the science room, Technical Instruction on Communication Systems. He abandons Plato’s Republic on the table and carries the other books across the room without speaking. When the door zips closed after him, though, it feels as if there are a lot of words drifting through the silence he leaves behind.

The last cause of discord. Individual thought.

He has no idea that I haven’t slept a full night in three months. That I do nothing but try to figure out how to keep a ship full of angry, passionate, self-aware people from self-destruction. That now, on top of everything else, I have the dead engine to worry about. All he sees is my failure.

If I can’t rule without Phydus, that’s all any of them will ever see.

Failure.

For giving them back their lives and not being able to save them from themselves.

When I step back outside, I have to blink to adjust to the brightness. Everything seems calmer here, more still, almost reverent. The Recorder Hall wasn’t loud, exactly, but it wasn’t quiet, either.

Something catches my gaze. I turn slowly.

Beside the door to the Recorder Hall is a painting, a portrait of me, held in a place of honor. It was one of the last paintings Harley ever made.

And someone’s shredded it.

It looks as if a giant claw of knives ripped through the canvas—five long gashes slice through my face and chest, spilling out strings and dried paint like bleeding wounds. The background behind me in the painting—a mirror of Godspeed’s fields and farms—is mostly untouched. Whoever did this took care to dismantle my face and leave the rest of the painting unharmed.