by Andy Graham
“You never were one for things like that.”
Rose’s hair whipped around her face in agitated curls. “We managed to get the crane working,” she said, her teeth chattering.
He didn’t know if she hadn’t heard or was ignoring him.
“The bridge between this tower and the one with the helipad is the only safe one, though. I’m not sure how good these towers would be in a coordinated attack. They’re not independent enough, too isolated. We decided the short-term risk was worth it. But they’re too vulnerable. You could stake them out—”
“I’m sorry.” He took her hands in his. “For what I said downstairs. It wasn’t fair.”
Her eyes met his. “Not all of it, no, but you were right to say some of it.”
He pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and buried his head in her hair. Over the sound of the wind and the distant screech of fisher gulls, he could hear her crying.
“It’s the wrong way round,” the child’s voice in his head piped up. It sounded petulant and whiny. “She should be comforting you.”
“Kids dying before their parents is the wrong way round, too,” he replied and slammed the door on the kid’s voice.
Rose’s room was part office, part sleeping quarters, part war room. A narrow set of bunk beds were bolted to one wall. Clothes and a few possessions were spread out on the top slats: sewing kit, solar-powered battery charger and a palm-sized one-shot pistol with a stubby muzzle. What every mother needs, Ray thought. There was even a book: The Unrecorded History of Ailan. His linear brain struggled to process that title. The book was made of real paper and thicker than his fist. That was it, all she had. She’d always claimed that anything that couldn’t fit into a box and a bag was too much to own. (She’d only added the box once she’d had the boys.) Rose’s shadow swayed drunkenly on the walls, dancing with the bare light bulb swinging from the ceiling. That, in turn, was the tower’s subtle answer to the waves and wind.
“Yes, I’m sure these towers are safe,” Rose replied again. “They’ve stood this long, why do you think they’ll fall down now? You’re not that heavy, nor that special.”
“Thanks,” he answered wryly. “Just what every child wants to hear from his mother.”
A fleeting smile crossed her face.
“Please tell me you have more people in the Resistance than just the ones I’ve seen.”
“Not many. We have pockets and safe houses in most cities, but we’re stretched thinner than I’d like. The government are very efficient at rooting us out. I’m surprised we’ve lasted this long.”
“Equipment?”
“Old. Mainly stuff we’ve been able to steal or borrow. The woman running the safe house in the capital has managed to get us a bunch of weapons and other toys recently. She jokes she can get us a nuclear submarine if we wanted, but we don’t have people skilled enough to crew it.”
“The choppers?”
“Two. One is held together by tape and prayers. The other we have on semi-permanent loan as a favour and a pilot who is driven by payback.”
“Who?”
“Skovsky Senior, from Axeford.”
“I remember Skovsky Junior. We served together.” I knew his sister, too. Ray’s toes curled as he remembered the send-off she’d given him under the Arch Trees. That had been the night before he’d left for the army, the last time he’d seen her alive. He poured them both a steaming cup of coffee, lifted his leg onto a chair and reached for an ice pack.
Rusty hinges squealed as the door opened. Stella popped in to see if they’d made a decision about Jake, her son. When she saw the ice on Ray’s ankle, her face took on an expression Ray was beginning to dread. In a vaguely hectoring tone, she explained the ice may numb the pain, but it just delayed the healing process rather than facilitating it. With no news about Jake, she left just as hurriedly as she had arrived. Rose’s eyebrows shot up when she saw him tying the ice to his ankle.
“You heard the doctor. She said it numbs the pain. That’ll do for me.”
“That’s not all she said,” Rose replied.
“Sod science.”
“Glad to see you’re embracing progress.”
“I’m still coming to terms with Stella’s pain babble, Rose. I’m not ready for another all-you-know-is-wrong speech that ice doesn’t work. It feels good, isn’t that enough?”
She eased herself back onto her bunk. Any discomfort at the use of her name was hidden. As the steam from her mug writhed up past her face, she spoke. “I guess I should tell you what I’ve been doing.”
“Revenge.”
“Partly. I also want to give the Donian tribes their freedom back.”
“By causing civil war?”
“Bethina Laudanum has been a plague on our family since before I was born, since before she was president.”
Ray blinked, wrong-footed by his mother’s argument. “What has she got to do with the Donian?”
“She is the incumbent of a line of people who have oppressed the Donian, enforcing our form of democracy on a people without asking. Her nefarious schemes and plots have caused them and us more problems than any one family deserves. I suspect that what I know is just the tip of the iceberg.”
“And now we’re back off the Donian and on us. Can you please argue in a straight line?”
“You remind me of your father, you know,” she said, smiling. “That’s the kind of thing he’d have said.”
“That was the first time you’ve ever volunteered information about him.”
Rose’s smile faded. They sat in silence, listening to the creak and groan of the towers and the caw of the birds outside. “Would I risk civil war to get revenge?” she asked after her drink was half finished. “Could I ruin Ailan to free the people of the Donian Mountains?” She buried her feet under a blanket. “I used to think I would, but I’m not sure even I am that self-centred any more. Sacrificing my relationship with you was bad enough. Sacrificing a nation’s children to satisfy my urges and greed would be unforgivable. I’d have been a terrible politician.”
“Not everyone in government is bad. That Prothero guy seemed OK.”
She flinched. “He was, wasn’t he,” she said softly.
“What does that mean?”
“Just that we’re running out of time. I’m running out of time.”
Ray shook his head. The urge to shout at her was creeping back up on him. “You’re arguing around corners again.”
“I meant that those politicians too honest to be bought off or play the system don’t get elected or die young. Like David, David Prothero.”
“I used to believe in absolutes, too, it’s easier. It doesn’t work like that.”
“You can’t beat the system from the outside.”
“You’re doing it again, Rose. Ducking the question.”
“It’s all different facets of the same answer. You’ve got to be part of the game to change the game, otherwise you get no say on the rules.”
“Rose,” he snapped. She went quiet. “Please, get to the point.”
She was still. The room was filled by the regular click clunk of a clock. She swung her legs off the bed and looked him straight on. “I guess I need to tell you the rest.” She spoke quickly, as if worried she was about to change her mind. “Four main things kept me away from Tear all these years. I was trying to find my father, I was trying to find your father—”
“You’re chasing ghosts.” He shoved his mug away from him. “Stann’s son, my dad, was shot for being a deserter. Your dad volunteered to go to the uranium mines.”
“To work on some kind of energy solution to supplement the elecqueduct he came up with?” Do you really think that’s even vaguely credible?” Rose asked.
“That’s what all the records say. I’m not sure I ever believed it—”
“So why did you?”
He shrugged. “I was too caught up in doing what I was told before. It’s kind of a big deal in the military.”
<
br /> “Is that the only reason you never questioned these things?” She was leaning towards him, eyebrows drawn down tight.
Ray let out a low laugh.
“What?”
“I guess I know who I got this bloody-minded persistence Stella complains about from.”
The frown lines in her face softened.
“No, it’s not the only reason I never questioned it. I was worried about where the answers would take me,” Ray said. “The truth can have harsher consequences than lies.”
“It’s crap,” Rose said flatly. “The story about my father. Do you seriously expect me to believe that Rick Franklin volunteered to go work in a mine full of poisonous rocks and gas? Leaving his wife, who he doted on, and his daughter behind? I was only five. What Bethina Laudanum told my mother and me back then was a lie, but I haven’t found anything to contradict it. Not in the history books or on the Light Net. It has to be lies. Who in their right mind would volunteer to do such a thing?”
“I don’t know. I never met Grandad Franklin and Stann won’t talk about him anymore. At least he’s stopped saying that not even a pig would shit on his shadow.”
“Stann Taille has been a bitter old man for many years, Tear’s rotten egg he used to be known as. There’s no going back there. And as for your dad, you know how I feel about official stories — they’re worse than all the myths and legends the government banned after the Silk Revolution.”
A silence blossomed, punctuated by the waves and the clock. The silence felt right, comfortable. They had exchanged more words today than in most of his adult life. The brief thud of helicopter rotors washed over them.
“That was two things,” he said. “What were the other reasons? The Donian?”
Rose scooped up handfuls of her sweater and wrapped it around her wrists like manacles. “They took care of me in a difficult time of my life. I owe them.”
“Repressed people struggling against evil overlords. Just your type.”
“Give over, Ray. Yes, there is that, but there’s more. And certain recent happenings have strengthened that bond.”
She paused. Ray considered pressing her on the point but decided to drop it. One baby step at a time, he thought. Uncomfortable as some of this was for him to hear, he guessed it was even harder for Rose to finally open up to him. She was cradling the mug to her chest, staring into the steam as if she could read the future from the shapes it left in the air.
“And the final reason?”
“I— That is, you—”
The door squeaked open and Rose clamped her mouth shut. Stella had returned, holding a crutch. Her hair was damp. Under the ruddy glow of the recently scrubbed, her face was drawn. She’d lost weight since he’d first met her in the Kickshaw, Ray realised.
Her eyes cut to the ice pack on Ray’s ankle. “You’ve had that on since I left, haven’t you?” she said in a voice forged by years on a hospital ward.
“Maybe.”
“Well, whether you believe what I said about ice and healing or not, freeze-burns fix nothing.”
Ray kicked the ice pack off. The skin on his lower leg was red, shiny and mottled. “Doesn’t hurt,” he said.
“Neither does frostbite.” She handed him the crutch. “She’s here.”
“Who’s here?” He glanced over at Rose, but she was staring at nothing.
“Martinez’s ‘some-two’.”
19
Return to Tear
The driver reset her navigation device for the trip home from Tear. The jeep engine was idling with a throaty purr, roaring every time she squeezed the accelerator.
“I’ll say one thing for the Unsung,” Nascimento said as he clambered out, “at least they get good gear. Nice to have real bullet-firing weapons, too, not those Hallowtide sparklers we had for a while back in the 10th. How much money do you reckon was spent on phasing those new weapons in and then ditching them when they realised they were not much use beyond lighting cigars? Are the military going to get a refund? A pay rise would be nice.”
“You’re talking aloud, Nasc. You realise that, right?” Orr said.
Nascimento sighed. “Give the hard-man routine a rest for a minute, Baris. It’s boring me now. You’re even less fun than Franklin was towards the end. What I’d give to have Aalok, Hamid and Brooke back. That unit had big balls and bigger banter.” He sighed. “No boobs, though. Never mind side-boob, Brooke didn’t even have front-boob.”
“Franklin went there.”
“No! Did they really get it on back in the mountains? I thought I was imagining all those sappy looks. They suited him much more than her. She looked as if her face was hurting every time she tried to smile.”
Back in the jeep, Seth put his phone down and gave the order they’d been waiting for.
Orr slipped his sunglasses on, despite the gathering gloom. “Let’s do this before Seth decides he wants in on the action and it gets messy.”
They moved out of the dappled evening shade of the huge tree in the village green (a wolfbark tree, Orr had called it), and skirted round a blackened circle of cracked stones. Their rifles were held across their chests. They were being watched. Neither needed to point that out. They had the silent understanding that came to those who worked, ate, slept and fought alongside each other under stressful conditions. “A bit like an old married couple,” Nascimento had joked in the jeep. “We argue all the time, don’t sleep with each other, but still understand each other too well to split up.”
“Doesn’t sound like my marriage,” Seth had pointed out.
“That’s ’cos it only happened in your head,” Nascimento replied.
“It happened, alright, then I left her.”
“How can that be if you didn’t split up?”
“We didn’t, I left her. That’s different. I won.”
That, as Nascimento’s father had once said, was a classic case of logic being tag-teamed by both semantics and pride.
Seth was in the back of the jeep, staring at the houses in the village with undisguised violent lust in his eyes. Nascimento was trying to get his head round someone marrying that evolutionary blackhole in a human suit when Orr spoke.
“It’s this one.” He pointed his rifle to a dilapidated cottage.
“C’mon then, happy pants. Let’s do it before Brennan phones and unleashes the beast.”
Orr kicked the gate open. It swung in a limp arc off one hinge. An emaciated boxing bag hung from a beam on the porch. Off to one side sat the skeleton of an armchair. Shreds of material hung off the springs that were covered in flakes of chocolate-red rust. Orr strode up to the door and booted it with his foot.
A dark shape behind a threadbare curtain twitched in the house to the right. A pair of eyes that couldn’t be in their teens blinked at them from behind the water barrel of the cottage to the left. Nascimento stepped to one side of Orr and eased the rifle on his chest. There was no need, but good habits and training saved lives.
Orr flicked the safety off his rifle and booted the door again.
“Alright!” a voice bellowed from the other side. “I’m coming.”
The door creaked open to reveal a gaunt face of angles and hollows. The white hair had been freshly — and clumsily, Nascimento noted — shaved into the high-and-tight that had been the fashion in the military since before records began. It looked odd on an old boy, especially a civilian.
’Cept he’s not a civvy, Nascimento thought. You could never truly be a civilian again once you had served and survived. And this man had given more than his fair share, that much was obvious from the half-hand and prosthesis he wore.
“Stann Taille?” Orr asked from behind his wrap-around sunglasses.
“Who’s asking?”
“Are you Stann Taille?” Orr repeated curtly.
“Go easy, Baris. He’s one of us.”
Stann’s coal-dark eyes flicked from side to side, taking in the two men and the jeep purring in the village green. “I got to say the welcome I got fr
om Field-Marshal Chester and her people was way smoother than this, boys. They didn’t have their safeties off their rifles either, Sub-Corporal,” he added, nodding to Orr.
“Field-Marshal Chester’s been here?” Nascimento asked, a chill creeping up his neck.
Stann’s head cocked to one side. “This morning. Thought you’d’ve known that.”
Nascimento’s eyes cut to Orr. The stocky man’s face flickered.
“Gotta say I didn’t expect you back so soon,” Stann said. “No matter. I’m ready, not got much to pack but me. I’m looking forward to seeing what you got lined up for me in the city, never had an office before. Do you think I’ll get a brass name plaque for my desk? I hear the VP’s got a great one.” He smiled, revealing two lines of yellow teeth. “’Bout time we vets got a little recognition. I’ll go get my bag.”
The door of the jeep shut with a thud of escaping air. Seth leant against the bonnet, picking dirt from under his nails with his serrated knife.
“Leave the bag. Come with us, please, sir,” Nascimento said hurriedly.
The lazy slump disappeared from Stann’s spine. He shifted his weight, left foot forwards, weight balanced evenly on his foot and prosthesis. “You boys aren’t from Field-Marshal Chester, are you?”
Nascimento took in the shrivelled boxing bag and the gloves that hung next to it like a pair of desiccated grapes. Ray was from Tear. His grandad, a former military boxing champion, had taught Ray how to box while still a kid. All those redacted silences in Seth’s instructions were suddenly very obvious. “You’re Ray Franklin’s grandad, aren’t you?”
“What’s the boy gone and done now?”
“You need to come with us now, please,” Nascimento said.
“I’m not going anywhere with you punks till you tell me what you’re up to.”
“Do you recognise this?” Orr made his rifle safe and held out a screen. On it was a picture of a blackened apartment. A steaming, charred corpse was splayed over the remains of a sofa.
“What you getting at, son?”
“This is Field-Marshal Chester’s apartment. That,” Orr pointed, “was her PA: Jann Rainehoff. This,” he swiped to another picture, “was found at the scene.”