Wants of the Silent

by McPartlin, Moira;

  ‘Well, they have her now.’

  ‘We have to help.’

  ‘Looks like Dawdle’s working to get her released.’

  ‘And who’s Dawdle when he’s at home?’ Con asked.

  ‘Are you mad? He’s the High Heid of the Noiri. The Military know how powerful he is. If he can’t get her released, no one can.’

  It looked hopeless. The boat was beginning to rev. One of the Military on the pontoon was holding Dawdle back. Along the edge of the causeway rows of vans were lined up but remained a good distance from the action.

  ‘This can’t be happening. First Vanora, now Ishbel.’ I thought no one was listening until Harkin put her hand in mine and squeezed a reassurance.

  ‘We have to do something, they’re leaving with her,’ I said.

  Con looked back at the sight. ‘I’ve an idea.’ He turned to the woman. ‘Can you look after the girl?’

  ‘I’m coming.’ She let go my hand and squared to Con.

  ‘No!’ we all said. But her face was set. She had already proved tricky so we let her be.

  Con handed me the spyglass. ‘Let’s go, then.’

  I took one last look. There was no sign of Monsieur Jacques but a girl with red hair held on to Dawdle’s sleeve. I focused in on her face. It was the kid I saw on the dock at Dead Man’s Ferry waiting to be transported to the prison ship.

  As if she knew I was looking she turned her face to me and I could see those hateful eyes again. Just then an almighty explosion threw me off my feet.

  ‘We’re gubbed, that’s what we are,’ the driver said. Her deep voice had the burr of a Northern Celt.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ I couldn’t believe how calm Con sounded after what we’d witnessed.

  I lay on poverty grass with Harkin huddled into my side. We’d been like that since the explosions. A few white vans screamed past us heading into the northern wilderness. The rest remained at the pontoon. The damaged tower lay like a dead soldier, Noiri crawling over it like maggots on a carcass.

  I put my arm around Harkin, we needed to go, but she was shaking so much I’d no choice. She wasn’t crying, but she shivered like a jellyfish. My ears were still ringing from her scream. It’s a wonder she wasn’t hoarse.

  ‘What was it?’ I asked when the noise died down. One minute the Transports were in the bay, the next they were bits strewn over the water.

  ‘Snaf knows. It wasn’t us and I don’t think it was them.’ Con pointed to the chaos of the Noiri wreckers. ‘So it must have happened internally.’

  ‘Na, there was a rocket,’ the driver said. ‘Didn’t you see it?’ We all looked at her as if she were mad. ‘Suit yerself. I saw it and now it’s vanished. But it wasn’t one of ours. Look.’

  The RIB Ishbel had jumped from minutes before headed back to the pontoons where Dawdle’s men helped the three military crew from the boat.

  ‘Ishbel?’

  ‘The woman?’ Con pointed further south to the broken pier. ‘There.’

  ‘Where?’ I saw nothing but damaged wood and rotten spars.

  ‘Under, in the water.’

  A head bobbed like a curious seal, but with long strands of hair fanned out. She struggled to stay afloat with tied hands.

  ‘Come on! We have to help her.’

  ‘No,’ the driver said. ‘The place’ll be swarming with Military soon.’

  Con grabbed her by the lapels and propelled her to the cab. ‘Then we better hurry.’

  ‘The place is crawling with your men. How can it not be safe?’ I helped Harkin to her feet. The woman looked grim, her mouth downturned with the sour taste of my words.

  Con came to relieve me of the quivering Harkin but she wouldn’t let me go.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘Don’ know, something in her memory maybe.’ He touched her arm. ‘Come Harkin, it’s over, gonna have to move.’ For once his voice was tender.

  I wiped her face with the cuff of my jacket. ‘Go with Con,’ I tried to match Con’s gentle words. ‘You’re OK.’ Her face blanked me, but she allowed Con to take her hand.

  ‘M’on then.’ The driver twitched.

  As we drove down the hill towards the pontoon I saw white vans changing position. More left for the north, some moved forwards. A couple of Noiri operatives took the RIB back out to the bay and began salvaging. Bodies floated in the water. It was horrible.

  ‘These guys are the pits,’ I heard Con say at my shoulder.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ The driver bristled.

  ‘Look at them. Your Noiri pals.’

  They watched as the Noiri hooked bodies into the RIB like a catch. They rifled their clothes, digging fingers into the corpse’s mouths.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘Looting the bodies, even checking for gold teeth.’ Con said. ‘Vermin.’

  ‘Only doin a job,’ the driver said. ‘Trying to find cause.’ But I noticed she didn’t look.

  I had no words.

  ‘Know what I think?’ Con suddenly said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This was a Hero in Death job.’

  My mind melted at these words. Hero in Death. The status my own mother was given. Ordered to strap bombs to herself and detonate within range of her target, killing herself in the process.

  ‘A suicide mission, has to be.’

  ‘How? On both Transports?’ This seemed incredible.

  ‘What about the rocket launcher?’ the driver insisted. Con ignored her and I couldn’t understand why.

  ‘But who?’ I asked. ‘Hero in Death is State policy.’

  The driver flicked her gaze between the road and the Noiri who still worked their way through the bodies, pulling other materials onto the boat, salvaging what equipment they could.

  The main man, Dawdle, stood on the pontoon also watching them while the girl with the rust hair rushed up and down the pontoon shouting into the water.

  ‘She’s looking for the woman.’ Con had noticed her too. ‘Move it!’ he roared.

  The driver booted her engine, heading for Dawdle’s men.

  ‘No! Head for Ishbel.’

  She swung the wheel and miraculously for once did as I asked.

  ‘Who did it then?’ I asked the driver who I suspected was not as clueless as I’d thought.

  She chewed her cheek. ‘I reckon it was The Prince.’

  The Prince – again. It was like some myth they had created to relieve their stupid lives. But that was what Vanora was too; a myth and she was real enough even if what she stood for was not exactly as everyone believed of her.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Dunno but they say he’s all over the place. They say he’s working his way north. Collecting an army of water reffos as he goes. Seems he’s reached here now.’

  ‘What about the Noiri in the south?’ I asked. ‘Why don’t they work with him?’

  The woman skewed her mouth in thought. ‘Maybe they do. Dunno. Not much down there now. Too much water. Too much pollution. We have one water operation but it’s hard to operate without vans, see. Everything is moving north, chased by the rising water. Lots of water reffos.’

  ‘How do they feed?’

  The driver shrugged. ‘Dunno. Mebbes someone helps thum. The Prince, maybe. The State maybe.’

  As we raced past the last of the white vans, Con roared, ‘Good pickings, boys.’

  Men secured ropes and pulleys to the tower. Heavy duty saws sparked. Noiri operatives swarmed over the base of the tower like flies on a turd.

  ‘They’re bringing it down.’ The driver confirmed my suspicions.

  As soon as the van stopped I jumped out. ‘Give me a rope.’

  The driver threw me the tow rope. I tied one end in a bowline around my waist and the other to a board on the pontoon
, then launched myself into the freezing water before I had time to think. Breath was whipped from me. I touched something hard on the bottom, any shallower would have broken me. I surfaced, the water was filthy. I tried not to swallow. Ishbel was only metres from me, still struggling to keep her head above water. She watched me breenge towards her. When I almost reached her she smiled. Her cheek was busted and her left eye was starting to swell closed.

  ‘Come to rescue a damsel in distress?’

  If that had come from anyone else I would have thought she was being smart and left her to get on with it. But she genuinely wanted saved and everyone else had failed her.

  ‘They’ve all been prisoners at one point, I guess.’ Meaning they couldn’t go into the water without sinking like stones.

  ‘And they couldn’t have thrown a rope?’

  Her arms and feet were tightly bound. My penknife sliced through the rope on her wrists. I took a breath and ducked back into the filthy swill to slice the rope from her ankles.

  As soon as she was free she struck out for the pontoon.

  The girl with the rusty hair waited. I saw her eyes widen as she recognised me.

  ‘Dawdle, it’s Ishbel,’ she shouted and he came running.

  ‘Ish.’ Was relief there? Or was salvage still on his mind?

  They both hauled her out and then me. ‘Where the snaf did you come from?’ Dawdle said, grabbing my sleeve with more force than was needed to get me on dry land. My clothes were soaked and stinking. I shrugged him off and pushed him aside.

  ‘Doing what you failed to do.’

  He glared at me as he shook a blanket one of his men handed to him and draped it round Ishbel.

  ‘Come on Ish, let’s get ye dry.’

  She coughed and spat.

  ‘Where can we get dry?’

  Dawdle whirled on me. ‘Not you.’

  ‘Dawdle,’ Ishbel crackled. ‘He’s just saved me and in case you forgot, we were looking for him. You remember Sorlie.’

  Dawdle peered at me. True, he’d only seen me once or twice. My encounters with him at the Base had been brief. Times when he delivered mysterious packages to Ishbel.

  ‘Ah thought it was a child.’

  ‘I’m not a child.’

  She put her arm around me. ‘We found you.’

  ‘Eh no, I found you.’ I expected a smile but she went limp and I only just managed to stop her hitting the deck before Dawdle stepped in and lifted her in his arms and carried her to a van.

  ‘Get a move on, we need tae get out o’ here,’ he called behind him.

  *

  I banged on the cab wall. Dawdle opened a small sliding door. ‘What now?’ he shouted.

  ‘Where’s Con and Harkin? I need to say goodbye.’

  ‘No need, they’re up here wi me.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We need tae get out o’ here, the Military’ll be crawling all over soon. Only one place they won’t go, and your Con and Harkin are takin us there.’ He slammed the sliding door, plunging us back into semi darkness. I leaned back on the cab wall. Of course: Steadie. We were headed for Steadie.

  Rusty handed me a blanket without looking. Even though I recognised her as the one from Dead Man’s Ferry dock, there was something else familiar about her. She knelt beside the unconscious Ishbel, untangling her wet hair, combing it dry with her fingers. Ishbel wasn’t out for long; her eyes flickered after a couple of minutes. She took the girl’s hand, unravelling her fingers from her hair.

  ‘Help me up,’ she croaked. It was a gentle request and unnecessary because she seemed more than able. She’d always been more than able.

  ‘I can’t believe I’ve found you.’ I knew I was grinning like a daftie, but so what?

  Once sitting, Ishbel took a drink of the puri-water the girl handed her. A touch of colour rushed to Ishbel’s pale cheeks. She held a hand to her bruising.

  ‘I wonder how long that putrid water will take to work out of my system.’

  ‘And mine,’ I said. And she smiled at my bigging up.

  ‘What happened?’ Ishbel asked me. ‘How’d you get here?’

  ‘I could ask you the same.’ When she stayed silent I said, ‘Do you know where Vanora is?’

  ‘No, I got word to find her. Tell me.’

  ‘I’ve no idea where she is. She’s been kidnapped.’ I couldn’t believe it. Ishbel was here. ‘It’s good to see you, Ishbel.’ I should have said more. I should have hugged her, told her what I’d been through and how much I’d missed her but I didn’t. The Rusty girl glowered at us.

  ‘You were on Black Rock, Ishbel. I saw you.’

  She nodded. ‘I know you did. I went to help you – and to bring Scud back.’ Did I imagine Rusty bristle at Scud’s name?

  ‘Scud? Is he OK?’ I’d hated to leave him behind, he’d been such a good native, so brave.

  The girl stiffened again and this time Ishbel put a hand on her arm, the girl pulled away and hugged herself tight.

  ‘Reinya is Scud’s granddaughter.’

  ‘Granddaughter?’ But of course I saw the resemblance, the fierceness in the eyes even with Scud’s altered state. I wanted to ask more but Ishbel turned her back on the girl and closed the subject of Reinya.

  ‘Scud’s safe but in a bad way with chemical withdrawal. Kenneth should be with him now. He’ll save him, I’m sure he will.’

  The mention of Kenneth forced me to tell. ‘Ridgeway’s dead.’

  ‘Oh no. Oh, poor Kenneth, I don’t think he knows.’ I’d forgotten how emotionless Ishbel could be.

  ‘No.’

  She looked worried.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She bit her lip, fooling no one. ‘Where are they taking us?’

  ‘Steadie. It’s a radioactive reservation. It’s mostly safe but there are no go areas so the Military steer clear.’

  Ishbel began to laugh. ‘I remember a time where you would run a mile from radioactive material.’

  ‘Yeah, well, priorities.’ I pointed to the cab wall. ‘And these guys know what they’re doing.’

  She nodded and settled back, taking another swig of water. I told her about the kidnap and my stay at Steadie.

  ‘Do you have no clue to her whereabouts?’ I asked.

  ‘No, and Monsieur Jacques has disappeared too.’

  She shifted, knelt up, pulling a chess piece from her back pocket. When she held it up I could see it was a white queen.

  ‘Did you place this in the wrong square as a signal – for me to find.’

  ‘No. We never got as far as the tower. Why, what was wrong with it?’

  ‘It’s the odd piece from home, the one your father replaced.’

  ‘But I don’t understand. Where did it come from?’

  She shrugged, ‘I don’t know, but that wasn’t all. It was the set up. The king and queen in the wrong squares, the way I always confused them.’ She squinted at me. ‘I was sure you left it.’

  I shook my head. ‘Could it have been one of our surveillance guys? They watched everything at the Base.’

  Ishbel shrugged again. ‘Possibly, but they weren’t that bright.’

  She sat back. ‘I thought it was you.’ She rubbed the piece as she used to do with the pebble from her homeland. The pebble she gave to me to remind me she would be coming back to Black Rock for me. I had left it in Vanora’s base in Freedom, along with my DNA passport. Would we ever get back there?

  She put the piece in her pocket. ‘No matter, I’ve found you now.’ I could see why she thought it was a signal but to me she was clutching at straws.

  *

  The van rumbled over the rough road, every now and then we would be thrown from one side to the other. Each time I slid near the girl she backed further into the wall as if she wanted it
to swallow her whole.

  ‘There’s something else, Sorlie,’ Ishbel said after a while, her eyes closed, not wanting to meet mine. ‘Merj is still alive.’

  I felt my heart thud to my boots.

  ‘How?’

  She opened her eyes. ‘He made it back to his homeland. They’re healers and are busy fixing him up – as well as Scud.’

  ‘He’s in the same place as Scud?’

  ‘Yes, and Kenneth. But I think he’ll behave, he’s still pretty wounded.’

  ‘What are we going to do about him?’

  ‘Nothing yet. He’s safely out of our way but you’ll need to watch your back and so will I.’

  She told me about being on the beach that night, about throwing the butterfly bomb that maimed Merj.

  ‘You saved my life.’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe you would have beaten him fair and square, you were doing OK.’ But we both knew what rubbish that was.

  ‘Kenneth will alert us if Merj tries to leave. ‘

  ‘Unless he sees to Kenneth first.’

  The girl in the corner suddenly jerked from her place. She held her hand up to her mouth and retched.

  Ishbel crawled to her and handed her the towel she had been given and made her sip some of her water.

  ‘Come and sit with us, Reinya,’ she said but the girl shook her head and glowered at me as if I were a rabid dog.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘She’s been through a bad time in the prison ship.’ Ishbel lowered her voice. ‘She’s been caught. She went with her mother, to protect her. Her mother’s dead and now I suspect the girl carries her reward for that care in her belly. She’s only fourteen.’

  ‘It used to happen all the time at the Base.’ The words were out before I could stop them. ‘It’s so wrong.’

  ‘Yes it is and yet all native women suffer the same threat.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  She glowered at me, letting her native reserve slip. ‘What do you know?’

  Exactly, what did I know about her life? Even though she had lived with me since I was a baby, I knew nothing.

  ‘What do you think we are fighting for?’

  ‘What about the rest of the native army?’

  ‘All of them. The injustice of what happens to our women, our children, our men at the hands of the Privileged. That is what we are fighting for.’ Her amber eyes no longer had faraway trapped in them; they held the here and now.