The Song of the Jubilee (The Phantom of the Earth Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

revealed little of the mischievousness it normally did. Hans recognized it as fear, so palpable he could taste it. He raised his eyebrow, inclining his head. Murray gulped. He swiped his trimmed mustache and beard, nodding.
    “Then you know what I have to do.” Hans stepped away from Murray and the helpers, his dark green silk cape sliding along the ground. He rubbed the dirt from his hands in a round marble sink filled with warm water natural to the Hollow.
    Perspiration now dripped beside Murray’s close-set eyes, down his cheeks and neck. This time he wiped his face with his arm and the back of his hand. “The survival rate for an escape from the prison rivals that of Reassortment exposure,” he reminded Hans.
    It was true; a jailbreak from Farino Prison was a fool’s errand. The fortress was built and guarded by Janzers, who enforced the chancellor’s laws. Its millions of towerlike islands rose up from a vast prehistoric lake deep in far northern Farino Territory. But the Front needed Jeremiah. Hans could not fill the void his father left. No one could. And nothing, not his own hopes or the faith of all his comrades, would change that.
    “Nothing is forever.” Hans spoke with a Phanean accent, moving his forefinger in the infinity loops, just like Chancellor Masimovian. “Lady Isabelle and the chancellor have their weaknesses. So does Farino Prison. We need only find those weak points and exploit them.”
    Murray smirked. “You are your father’s son.”
    Now the helpers of the Leadership tied Murray’s boots and belts. They climbed their stools and set silk sashes across his shoulders, careful not to cover the Morelia spilota spilota woven into the fabric of his tunic from his neck to his waist. The boy lifted a petrified wood-link necklace from his pocket. Each piece of the necklace was a letter. He set it around Murray, latching it near his neck, while the girl flipped the letters here and there along Murray’s front, making sure the promise, a phrase long ago forbidden by Chancellor Masimovian, could be seen:

    WE WILL STRIKE THE IRON FIST
    FROM IT THE BLOOD OF OUR KIN WILL FLOW

    Can I risk so much for the Front’s cause? Hans thought as he read the message his father spread throughout the populace like a virus. If it comes to it, can I fight this war without my father, and without Mari’s support?
    Hans lived with Maribel Hunter, his eternal partner, in a clandestine unit in the Sixth Ward of Piscator City. She supported the Liberation Front, but not so much Hans’s decisions, especially lately. She was afraid for their lives, with good reason, admittedly.
    It seemed everything and everyone Hans loved was suddenly at risk. His younger brother, Connor, was especially vulnerable—not even fully developed yet and with no knowledge of the Liberation Front. Hans would have to do something about that once he returned to Piscator. For now, though, his people needed him. They needed to believe they had a chance. And so, Hans tried to put all his doubts aside, as Father would want him to. He dried his hands with a towel and turned.
    The helpers parted the curtains, and Johann Selendia’s inauguration began.
    He stepped along the limestone. Green bioluminescent falls sang down the walls. The luminous bacteria were native to the Hollow, while this water was stolen from the commonwealth’s coolant system—a spider web of carbyne piping supplied with water from the arctic bay above Area 55. Without it, the Hollow’s heat would kill a transhuman in days. And though this tunnel smelled mossy and musky, Hans never mistook it for a forest. He had grown up in Vivo City upon a man-made island in Vivo Territory, where fauna and flora of every type lived. One day, after the Liberation Front succeeded, Hans would return there with Mari.
    He entered the Hollow’s main cavern. Limestone pillars, stamped with fossilized fish, supported the world Hans had built with his parents and Zorian. It looked just like it had