The Hand That Delivers

Every day, Wren would wake up to the sound of the Tyche Party’s anthem blaring through the speakers that filled every street in Ariste between 7:00 a.m and 7:30 a.m. She would toss and turn for a few minutes before getting out of bed to brush her teeth and wash her face. Over her usual breakfast of overnight oats, Wren would turn on the TV and watch the morning news and Alvar Order broadcast.

The Alvar Order was the official religion of Ariste, led by Lily Fabian Finn, the High Priestess of the Order. Lily’s word was law, truth, and gospel; after all, it came from Eir the Maker herself. That’s why Tobias Adler won the election and sat as Chancellor of the Tyche Party and the nation of Ariste. She was the second face of Adler’s campaign, urging the people that Adler was chosen by Eir to lead the nation out of the Sixth Depression.

Liore, Ariste’s capital city, was where Lily Fabian would float through her commune in robes of white, leading her sheep to salvation through her wisdom, teachings, and regularly scheduled media appearances on the Tyche Network, the number one rated broadcast channel across the nation. There were all types of rules espoused,, but one was repeated more than any other:

Do not bite the hand that delivers.

That first one was mostly inspirational trite about maintaining honesty and integrity as prescribed in Eir’s Commandments, but it was that second one that caused the most trouble. It was code for never, ever speaking ill of the Party and the Order. It was simple: Eir, in all Her infinite and divine wisdom, chose Chancellor Adler to deliver his people through Lily Fabian, so disrespecting either of them was effectively blasphemy and treason. 

Wren couldn’t fathom how people believed in any of that.

“Delivered yesterday, today, and tomorrow by Eir’s hand,” Lily proclaimed on the TV, standing against what appeared to be a lush field of green and sunshine. 

With a mirthless smile, Wren glanced out her window at the uniform dull red buildings against the backdrop of smog and gray that sprawled for miles. 

The TV screen suddenly turned black and flickered a few times before coming back on. It’d been happening a lot more recently. Probably the hackers that Adler denounced a few days ago.

“Now, we stop to hear a message from your Chancellor.”

The screen then shifted from Lily Fabian to Tobias Adler seated behind a large wooden desk in a crisp suit with Ariste’s white and blue flag behind him. His dark blond hair was combed back, not a strand out of place, and his face was severe, as if about to deliver bad news. 

“Today, my fellow Aristens, I sit before you with an urgent warning. Our nation rose from the ashes and above our enemies, withstanding grave and terrible attacks from outside and from within. As countries around us continue to fall and succumb to their base urges, we must remember the foundation of honor and integrity on which our great nation is built,” he said solemnly. “We must remain united in the face of oblivion. We must stand together. These repeated acts of vandalism, breaches of security, and violence throughout our streets will not go unpunished and I say to all the self-righteous traitors and infidels that walk in our midst, I promise that the hand of judgment and retribution will be swift and unforgiving.”

That brought an end to the morning broadcast. Wren exhaled in relief; if only the TV’s came with an on and off button that she could control. 

Wren didn’t know when she first realized she was an atheist, that Lily Fabian Finn’s impassioned sermons had no effect on her. She used to think she was the strange one, being the only person in the pews not crying and sobbing after being supposedly struck by Eir’s love. She thought something was wrong with her. 

“There’s nothing wrong with you, darling,” Grandpa Robb used to say. “You might even be one of the normal ones.”

It was because Grandpa Robb said stuff like that that her parents eventually stopped letting her see him. She wasn’t even allowed to say goodbye to him before he died. Her parents used to say it wasn’t his fault; after all, he and Grandma Vera defected to Ariste from Rodal after the former launched a full-scale attack on the latter. They were never truly Aristens even though their children were.

“Off to work?” 

Wren looked up from breakfast to see Ma standing in the kitchen door. It was rare that her mother could be on her feet these days. Must be one of her good days. 

“You sure you should be out of bed?” Wren asked as she walked over to the kitchen and placed her dishes in the sink. 

“Dear, I’m fine,” Ma chuckled. “Now that your father’s gone, you’re the one worrying about me now.” 

“Well, can you blame me?” Wren replied. 

Her mom shook her head, “I suppose not. I don’t think ‘cancer’ and ‘worry’ are ever that far from each other.”

“Yeah. Shitty cancer gene,” Wren grumbled. 

“Language.”

Wren grinned. Even though Ma was sick, she was still a mom. That part of her never changed over the years, as she went in and out of remission. 

 “Come on, let’s get you back to bed. I’ll make you tea and some porridge before I leave. Try your best to keep it down.”

Ma nodded. “I’m sorry, Wren. I really am.” 

Wren frowned. Ma had been apologizing a lot recently and it was always… weird. She always seemed like she wanted to say something more, but would shake her head and deny it. As much as Wren wanted to dwell, she had to get to work. 

As one of the Party’s officially approved artists, Wren had it relatively better than, say, an artist not approved by the Party or just anyone working in a cubicle. She was technically a government employee, meaning she had pretty good health benefits, which allowed for better treatment for her mom. Wren came from a family of artists going back generations, so naturally, she gravitated towards that world, becoming an artist for Artists for Ariste. 

Wren was never good with words, but found that she expressed herself better through drawing. Of course, a job where you were effectively told what to draw stunted that creativity, but Wren had to pick her battles and weight her options.

Option 1: Make what she’s told to make, and get a pay cheque.

Option 2: Don’t make what she’s supposed to make, lose her job, which will stop paying for her mother’s chemo, but it’s not like that would matter anyway since without a job, the two of them would eventually get thrown into the streets, where the Catchers would eventually place them in one of the camps. 

Wren was one of the painters at her branch and one of the more senior employees at the studio, having worked there since she was 20. Now eight years later, Mr. Kimbly trusted her more, meaning she was the only one that was allowed to access the Nexus. Truthfully, it was mostly because Mr. Kimbly was too old to understand how most technology worked, so he delegated that task to her. Nexus was the platform on which all artworks were posted and displayed across the public TV screens between broadcasts, meaning it was Wren’s job to not only create art but also post it, along with the works of all her coworkers. Every piece was credited to the Artists of Ariste; individual credit was not necessary in a united front.

Of course, Wren had to go through months of testing and clearances to ensure she could be trusted to access the Nexus, but she considered herself a pretty good actress.

It’s not that Wren was against the Party or the Alvar Order; she was just ambivalent. People could believe whatever they wanted, but it just didn’t make sense to her. Maybe it was Grandpa Robb’s influence or maybe she was born that way, but she just didn’t feel strongly about anything really.

As she walked into the studio that morning, only four other artists were busy chiseling, painting, and inking away at their stations. Mr. Kimbly was making his rounds as usual, making sure everyone was on task. Wren told Ma that he was like a hawk in both appearance and behavior, with a large hooked nose, piercing eyes, and horrible screech when he got angry.

“Wren!” 

Daisy Temple was the one expectation of Wren's “Don’t interact with coworkers” rule. With a head of fiery red hair and a perpetual smile, she was bright, cheerful, and wonderfully dim. Wren found it somewhat comforting that she didn’t have to be as cautious around her considering the woman had the attention span of a goldfish. 

“Did you hear? There was another riot in the Rector District,” Daisy said, her eyes almost glassy with worry as she fiddled with her chisel. “Plus the vandalism at Liore Hall and the shoe bomb at the library. It’s just so scary.”

“That so?” Wren said absentmindedly as she hung her coat up in one of the lockers that lined the wall by the entrance and made her way to her station, which consisted of a desk, a tablet, stylus, and charger. 

“Why would they do things like that? Doesn’t Sister Lily always say Ariste is paradise? Doesn’t it make you wonder?”

Uh-oh. 

“No, no, it doesn’t,” Wren said quickly, eyes following Mr. Kimbly, who was walking in their direction. 

“No, I just mean —”

“Mean what, Ms. Temple?” 

As terrifying as Mr. Kimbly was from afar, circling the room like a bird of prey, he was much scarier up close, with eyes that bugged out of his head and a mouth that seemed a bit too big for his long and gaunt face.

“Nothing, Mr. Kimbly,” Daisy responded.  

“We all have a lot of work to do without all this needless chatter, Ms. Temple. So, if you would just go back to your station, everyone could get a lot more done,” he said with a smile that was a bit too toothy, like he had a few more extra teeth than a normal person should have. 

So she did. Wren did her little tablet drawings. She would go home and take care of Ma. She would pretend to care about the sermons. She would be mildly tuned into the reports of riots and vandalism to know which streets to avoid on her way to work.

That was Wren’s everyday life. Was it monotonous? Yes. Was it safe? Yes. Did she want it to change? 

She wouldn’t have a choice. 

It was a dark and old November day when it happened. The chemo stopped working. The doctors told her to prepare for the worst. Wren’s life soon turned into a different kind of routine, a worse kind: waiting for her mother to die.

“You know, darling, I’m the one who’s dying and you look worse than I do,” Ma joked one morning as Wren wiped her forehead with a clean washcloth. 

“I can’t believe you’re in any mood to joke,” Wren muttered. She was scared that if she spoke any louder, she’d cry.

“I’m sorry,” Ma apologized. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s not your fault,” Wren sighed. “Stupid cancer gene.” 

At this, Ma was quiet.

Over the next few days, Ma got weaker and weaker. Everything got harder for her, from eating to speaking, but Wren, like any daughter about to lose their mother, continued to stupidly hope. It wasn’t until the night before Ma’s death that Wren’s world changed completely.

Deathbed confessions. It was something that she had heard of but never something she ever thought she’d hear. Wren’s father died in an accident, so she never got to hear his final words. She never liked to think about these moments, but at most, she figured her parents or any loved one would just express their love one final time. 

That’s not what Ma did. 

“It’s not a gene.” 

Wren was doodling by Ma’s bedside one night when Ma suddenly spoke for the first time that day. Her voice came out strained and hoarse, as if every word hurt to say.

“There’s no cancer gene. We had to cover it up.” Ma wheezed. “It was the thinners. For the paintings. Benzene. Cheaper.” 

Ma was a state-approved painter. State-approved painters used state-approved paint thinners. 

Wren wanted to scream, to punch something. But as her mother lay dying, she had to compose herself. That could come later. 

“Shhh, don’t speak. I know. I know.” 

“No, no, you don’t,” Ma choked out. “Grandpa Robb — my dad —”

Tears welled up in Ma’s eyes as she spoke of Grandpa Robb. Wren’s stomach dropped.

“It wasn’t a heart attack. They killed him. They killed him because he joked too much. Said too much. Disparaged too much,” Ma cried. “Work party. Drunken rant. I’m.. sorry.” 

The ringing in Wren’s ears worsened. It was too much all at once. The monotony, the boredom, the safety. None of it mattered. 

Ma died the next morning and was buried quietly in South Liore cemetery. There was no funeral, no procession. Just Wren standing over her headstone alone with the revelations Ma decided to unveil within a span of five minutes. 

Wren took the shortest route home, which meant she had to pass the city square. She hadn’t been there in years, but everything looked the same. The same dull red uniform buildings, the same people walking to and from work because everything needed to be in service of the Party. If you had time to leisure, you had time to work. As she made her way through the sterile streets, the afternoon broadcast started. Lily Fabian Finn spouted off about the importance of honesty, which was deeply ironic and incredibly infuriating. What? The Party wanted to save a few bucks so her mom had to die? What used to be ambivalence was turning into a white-hot rage with every passing moment. 

Wren went back to the only thing she knew: work. She went back to the studio and continued to do her job, but something had changed. She tried to go back to her previous life, stick to her routine, but too much of her life had been changed by the very things that made her life monotonous. 

To say she wanted to scream was an understatement. She wanted to stand atop the tallest building with a megaphone and shout all her grievances, but was that who she was? Wren’s entire life was built around ambivalence and staying out of trouble, but it didn’t matter that she did. She still lost the people that mattered most. 

Wren wasn’t going to scream from the highest building. Why, that would be blasphemy, treason, and she’d probably be sniped before she could even finish getting the words out. No, she was going to do it her way. Tobias Adler and Lily Fabian Finn had done too much damage with their stupid Party and Order. The rioting, the vandalism, it made sense to Wren now. The blood of so many was on their hands. 

Stealthily sneaking canvas and paints home from the studio, she began her work. It would be bold. It would be big. 

It would be her final piece.

It would bite the hand that delivered. 

***

It was a sunny, wonderful day for once, and Daisy was skipping through the city square to go to work when all of a sudden, the screens stopped displaying the usual Tyche Party artworks and turned black. People stopped walking in their tracks to look. This had never happened before. 

All of a sudden, the screens came back on with a single image. It was an oil painting. The entire canvas was covered with people, all standing up straight, staring forward, dressed in red. Some were wearing sweaters, some were wearing dresses, but they were all the same shade of crimson. At the center of the painting stood the unmistakable figures of Chancellor Tobias Adler and High Priestess Lily Fabian Finn, dressed in snow white robes. Underneath the canvas were simply the words, scrawled in red:

The Blood of the Innocent is on Your Hands.