Chapter 45: Persuasion
I was a hypocrite of the highest order. Every clean breath I took, every calorie of energy in my body, was paid for with stolen coin. And here I was, about to lecture the very boy whose crimes kept me alive. It was biting the hand that fed me, and I knew it. My very survival was thanks to Jared's thievery. Without it, he would starve, and I would have already perished. It was his only skill, the only trade this brutal world had taught him.
But the image of those angry, desperate faces in the bathhouse lingered in my mind. The men he had robbed were not rich factory owners; they were poor, working folk, just like us. Those few coppers could have been the difference between a full belly and a hungry night for their families. I had deflected their anger, but I had not erased their loss. The money was gone, and it could never be returned. And I hadn't truly saved the bathhouse, either. Its reputation was now stained. The customers who had been robbed would not return, and the story of the "bathhouse thieves" would spread through the tenements like a contagion. Theft was a destructive act, a small gain for the thief that caused a much larger ripple of misery. I knew it was wrong, but how could I tell him to stop? If he stopped, we would die.
I had intended to keep my thoughts to myself, to choke down the bitter taste of my own hypocrisy. But Jared, with his uncanny perception, had seen the trouble in my eyes. And so, the words tumbled out.
“Did that man… the detective… did he really know it was me?” Jared asked, a flicker of his old fear returning. Sebastian’s sudden, ghostly appearance had clearly unnerved him. He had been caught before, in his younger, clumsier days. He’d been beaten for it, but never killed. The fear of that pain, of that humiliation, still lingered like a phantom ache.
“Think of it as a matter of business, Jared,” I began, choosing my words with care, framing my argument not in the language of morality, but in the cold, hard calculus of risk that he would understand. “A rich man's purse is a prize. He might not even notice it's gone. But a poor man's last few coppers? That's not just his dinner; it's his life. You steal that, and you make an enemy who has nothing left to lose. An enemy who will raise a hue and cry over a single coin. It's bad business.” It wasn't a lecture against stealing; that would be absurd. It was a lesson in strategy. I was appealing to the very logic he himself had used earlier: who else are we supposed to steal from, Parula? The poor? Stealing from the unjust, from the corrupt fat cats, was a necessity of our survival. I could make my peace with that. One big score could keep us safe for months. But this petty theft from other poor souls… it was dangerous, it was inefficient, and it created enemies we didn't need.
“Alright,” Jared said, though his agreement was reluctant. “If you say so, Parula.” For him, thievery was no longer just a means to an end; it was a habit, an instinct. This was the lesson MacDuff had beaten into him since childhood: produce, or be punished. It didn't matter from who, or how. An empty hand at the end of the day meant a beating. His thievery wasn't greed; it was a flinch, a deeply ingrained response to the threat of pain. He saw an opportunity, and he took it. It was what he knew. It was how he had survived.
In that moment, a wave of self-loathing so intense it almost choked me washed over me. I didn't hate Jared. How could I? I hated myself. I hated my weakness, my uselessness, my dependence on this boy who was being forced to walk a filthy, damnable path because I was too frail to provide another. No more. I had to do better. I had to get stronger. I had to find a way to save us both. My time in this world had just begun, but already, the clock was ticking.
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