Squid had never heard the word “democracy.” People choosing their own government; that didn’t sound like anything that would happen in the Territory, but the more he thought about it, the more Squid realized that it was a much better idea than just making someone the Administrator because their father had had the job before them, especially if that person was him.
Ernest led the group down the path of stones set in the grass toward the front of the Council Building. Squid felt a nervousness rising within him. He thought back to when he had been taken to see the Administrator, and had had to face down that large man and his intimidating stare. Not just any man, Squid thought, his father. He was concerned that the ruling council of Reach would be much like the Administrator – a symbol of power, held high above all the other people in the Territory – and maybe they wouldn’t help at all, but as he and the others were led through the doors and into the building Squid soon began to think that maybe that wouldn’t be the case. The Council Building had none of the formality of Government House. The ceilings were low and the walls adorned with occasional paintings or hangings, nothing like the high-bannered ceilings and rows of portraits decorating the Administrator’s domain.
Ernest strode confidently. He didn’t move the way the Holy Order or the Diggers had done as they had walked around Government House; even they trod carefully around that place. He took them to a single wooden door, no bigger or more decorative than any other. A plaque affixed to the door read “Council Meeting Room.” He turned back to Squid and the others.
“Just wait here a sec and I’ll check whether they can see you now.”
Ernest knocked.
“Enter,” came a voice from inside.
Ernest did so, disappearing into the room and closing the door behind him. Squid could hear muffled voices beyond. It was only a moment before Ernest emerged again.
“They’re happy to see you now,” he said. “Come on in.”
The Council Meeting Room itself was simple, a small room with a large window looking out on the grass and trees at the front of the building. The sun, very low in the sky now, shone yellow and bright through the window, the wooden grilles separating the window panes casting a pattern of shadow over the large table in the center of the room. Five people sat around the table, three men and two women. Two of them, one of the men and one of the women, were young, much younger than Squid had expected, really only a few years older than him or Nim.
“Hello there,” one of the men said, an older gentleman with salt and pepper hair and streaks of gray through his short black beard, which he wore in the same style as Ernest. “My name is Charles Westermill, Chair of the Reach Council of Five. You must be our guests from the Central Territory. It is quite a surprise to have you here. We’re not in the habit of receiving visitors from your direction.”
“No,” Squid said, “normally we’re not allowed beyond the fence.”
Charles Westermill nodded. “Yes, I understand you live under the strict rules of your church, but First Sergeant Durst here tells me you escaped.”
Squid nodded. He didn’t like lying, but at the time it had seemed like a better idea than trying to explain everything that had happened. He didn’t suppose he could change that story now, and anyway, he was beginning to see it might actually be a fairly accurate description.
“And you want to go to New Sydney?”
“That’s right,” Squid said.
“On what business?” another of the councilors asked, the younger woman. She had a long blonde plait that hung forward over her shoulder. In many ways she reminded Squid of Lynn; in fact, he was pretty sure that was exactly what Lynn’s hair would look like if she grew it long again. It was pretty hair. He felt a pang in his stomach. He missed her.
“There’s a prophecy,” Squid said. “The prophet Steven said that the survivor of a great battle would be a boy who would find a weapon that would destroy the curse of the ghouls.”
“And I suppose that’s you?” asked the youngest man on the council, who couldn’t have been much older than twenty.
Squid nodded. “That’s what people have told me.”
“What battle did you survive?” the man asked.
“There was a horde of ghouls, thousands and thousands that got through our fence. The Diggers – our fighting force – went to battle against them but were destroyed.”
Charles was nodding knowingly. “That enormous pack of suckers that came through a number of months ago. We lost many Runners to them. I’m sorry to hear they made it through your fence. I have certainly never seen or heard of a pack so large before.”
“Runners?” Mr. Stix said. “You send people out there, to distract them?”
“That’s right,” Councilor Westermill said. “Mostly they have committed a crime and are serving as a Runner to have their crimes remitted. They’re well trained. It’s a dangerous job, of course, but a necessary one. They lead ghouls away from our borders, try to drag them into the desert and lose them out there.”
“And that just sends them toward us,” Mr. Stix said, sounding somewhat angry.
“Possibly, but almost every envoy of Reach who has gone to the Central Territory, be it by accident or with an offer to trade, doesn’t return. Those who do make it back speak of barely escaping your red-cloaked Holy Order, who attempt to capture or kill them on sight. Let’s not get into a discussion of relations between our two settlements.”
“Most people aren’t like that,” Squid said. “Most people in the Territory don’t even know you’re out here, and they don’t like the Holy Order. The fence breach has left many innocent people in danger. The horde of ghouls is heading for Alice, and too many people will die if I don’t find this weapon.”
“Generations of people have searched for the cure in New Sydney,” the young woman said. “None has succeeded. We can only conclude it isn’t there.”
Squid looked at her. “I have to at least try.”
Charles Westermill looked to Ernest, who still stood beside Squid near the door. “Do you vouch for them if we give them supplies, First Sergeant?”
“Aye,” Ernest said.
“And are you willing to take them to the outpost and show them the tunnels?”
Ernest turned his attention to Squid, thinking for a moment. “Aye,” he said slowly and not, Squid noticed, very enthusiastically. “I’ll take ’em to the tunnels, but I’ll be damned if I’m going down there with ’em. Sorry, Squid.”
Squid shrugged. “That’s okay,” he said.
“Good then,” Charles Westermill said. “We would ask only that if you do succeed where so many others have failed, then you return here so that whatever you find can aid us in our defense as well.”
“Of course,” Squid said. “There is one other thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“We need weapons.”
*
Mr. Stix had a smile on his face. He was looking down at the two mechanical pistols in his hands.
“Might not be mine,” he said, turning them over and then holding one out as if he was going to shoot, “but nice all the same.”
The Council of Five had been generous, allowing the group to choose any weapons they liked from the Border Patrol’s armory. Nim, Squid and Mr. Stix had each taken a shortsword and sheath to hang from their belts. Mr. Stownes had selected an enormous bladed cleaver that most people would struggle to carry, and strapped it to his back as if it were no heavier than a hatchet. He also took a mechanical rifle, and of course Mr. Stix had been overjoyed when he’d seen the two mechanical pistols.
They had spent the night on the floor of Ernest’s small house a few streets from the Council Building. The first sergeant had been kind enough to feed them what bread and cheese he could that morning for breakfast, and now that they had collected their weapons they were ready to depart. The armory had also provided each of them with a water bag and a backpack, as well as some dried fruits and meats designed to be carried on long journeys
beyond the borders of Reach. As they prepared to depart Squid felt better equipped and more confident than he had at any other time during his long adventure. The generosity of the Council of Five made him realize that the Administrator, his father, had set them up for failure from the very beginning.
“We’ll take my buggy again,” Ernest said. “It’s a bit of a drive to the outpost and then you’ve got to make it through the tunnels. We had best get moving.”
They drove through the streets of Reach and out toward the fence, this time heading in the opposite direction, further east. Squid watched the buggy’s large wheels turn beside him, throwing sand and red dirt in an arc that filled the air like a rooster’s tail. After three hours, perhaps a little longer, they came to a gate in the fence. Like the gate through which they’d entered Reach, it was manned by the white-uniformed Border Patrol, who opened it when they saw Ernest’s buggy approaching. They nodded their heads to him as he waved and drove through. Ernest turned the buggy in the direction of some large hills that were so far away across the almost flat ground that the color seemed to have faded from them. He pressed his foot down on the pedal that Squid had already figured out controlled the buggy’s speed and they accelerated away, faster and faster across the open ground. The body of the buggy sank low, the wheels undulating up and down on their springs as Ernest made little attempt to dodge mounds of dirt, rocks or clumps of grass.
“The outpost is beyond those hills,” Ernest called to Squid as the wind whipped past, trying to steal his words away. “We should reach it with a day of solid driving. You can see the city from there.”
Squid looked toward the hills. If they could almost see the city then Big Smoke was closer to the borders of the Territory than anyone had ever suspected. He willed his eyes to see further, to see some hint of this mythical city beyond, wondering what a city of the Ancestors would really look like, but there was nothing but the sky growing hazy with heat under the white morning sun. He knew it was out there, though. He could almost feel it. Finally, he was nearing his goal, for him, for Lynn, for everybody who lived under the constant threat of the ghouls.
CHAPTER 32
High Priestess Patricia walked gingerly along the side of the road toward the Great Gate. Her hip clicked with each step and there was a pulling sensation right up into her back. She could feel the piercing pain emanating from the top of both legs all the time now. With every step it felt as though something in the joint was tearing, and the pain threatened to make her collapse. She had woken that morning with her fingers so stiff she had been unable to bend them at all, and it had taken her several hours to work some freedom into them. In the end she had endured the agony of leaning against them on her desk and forcing them to move. Much to her disgust, she had begun to feel her knees and elbows beginning to deteriorate as well.
As much as her body screamed for it, she refused to stop and rest. She refused to adjust her gait or to react to the pain in any way. The doctor had given her a pain-killing ointment and a cane, but she refused to use either. She couldn’t display any hint of weakness, at least not yet. She would push the pain down for a while longer. She whispered a prayer, certainly not for the first time, asking Glorious God the Redeemer to hold her body together long enough for her to complete her mission. It filled her with anger that she could bend the entirety of the Central Territory to her will but she could not bend her fingers.
The common folk of Alice bowed and fussed and moved out of her way in fear and respect when they saw her. She would respond if any of them muttered a ‘Praise be to the Pure’, but otherwise she tried to ignore them. Like everything she did, it was a calculated action. The people seemed to remain much warier of her if she barely acknowledged their existence. The only interaction she was known to have with the population was if they were dragged in to stand as a defendant in the Supreme Court, and no one in their right mind would ever want to be there.
Though that was what troubled her more than anything else. The Supreme Court. She looked at the building, roped off from the street. It still stood, but had been severely damaged in the explosion that had rocked it a week ago. Every time she saw the shattered face of that building it reminded her of that failure. The Holy Order had still been unable to turn up any evidence of which terrorist group was responsible for the attack. It was just what she had hoped to avoid. An attack like that, an attack that seemed to have been a success, would give those members of the populace teetering on the edge of rebellion a glimmer of hope that maybe they could overcome her and her regime. They couldn’t, of course, but she could do without further malicious strikes against what she was trying to achieve. It was as if people didn’t appreciate that she was doing this for them, doing all this to ensure their survival.
The fact that the Administrator had disappeared in the confusion following the attack made it all the worse. It was possible he had just taken advantage of the chaos to slip away, but she didn’t think so. The bomb was timed too perfectly. She still believed the whole thing to have been a mask for his rescue. By whom she wasn’t sure, but she had her suspects. Several members of the government had gone into hiding and hadn’t been seen since the Holy Order seized control of the city, Knox Soilwork among them. Instinct told her this was his doing. It had to have been. He was the only one she really feared. Her only mistake in all this had been underestimating him, and she hoped it wouldn’t come back to bite her.
She looked over at the Wall beside her. It was crisscrossed with wooden scaffolding, and workers appropriated from all across the city moved over it, hoisting stones up or setting them into position. The sounds of shouting, banging, hammering and the smashing of stone echoed from every inch of the Wall every hour of the day. She would ensure that it was repaired and ready to hold the horde back from the city, and it looked to be coming along well. Certainly those who’d been forced to leave their ordinary jobs to work on it, and even more so those whose houses had been demolished for the bricks, stone and building materials necessary for the repairs, had been less than pleased, but as the High Priestess had told them, it was for the greater good. They would be thankful when the ghouls arrived that the Wall was ready to stand again. They would be thankful, or they would be left outside.
High Priestess Patricia spied Clergy-General Provost standing with a group of clergymen some distance away, observing the reinforcements being made to the Great Gate. She took a breath to steel herself against the coming pain in her hips and moved toward him. The general turned and saw her coming. He gave some final instructions to the red-cloaked clergymen before breaking away from the group to greet the High Priestess. His pale face had grown pink from the long hours he had spent out in the sun. For a man so good at his job in this place, his complexion was poorly suited to the conditions.
“Your Holiness,” he said, dropping his head in a bow of respect. “What brings you out here at this hot hour of the day?”
“How are the repairs coming, Provost?” High Priestess Patricia asked. “Will it be ready when the horde arrives?”
The general nodded. “It will,” he said. “The other three major gates have been sealed shut. The Great Gate is being strengthened and the work should be completed within days. The rest of the Wall has a little longer to go, but at this rate the entire thing should be ready within the fortnight.”
The High Priestess nodded. “Good,” she said. “Excellent. Any other news, Provost? No further dissidence from the population?”
“Some,” the general said, “but it is waning remarkably quickly.”
“A strong hand,” the High Priestess said. “A strong hand.”
“Yes, Your Holiness,” Clergy-General Provost said. The way he opened his mouth and then closed it betrayed the fact that he wanted to say more.
“What is it, Provost?” she said.
“It’s just,” the General said, “there is one other thing I have been meaning to discuss with you.”
“So discuss it,” the High Priestess said.
; Provost turned away from the Great Gate and lowered his voice, not that any of the clergymen or busy workers were near enough to hear what he said. “It’s in relation to the horde defense.”
“Yes,” High Priestess Patricia said, her patience beginning to wear thin. She was not interested in conversations that circled around the point, particularly from someone like Clergy-General Provost. “What is it?”
“Once the horde strikes, those who are left outside the wall will be overwhelmed.”
“Yes,” High Priestess Patricia said, her face becoming stern. Was her most trusted tool beginning to lose his sharp edge? Beginning to become soft? “That is how the impure will be removed from the Territory. It is God’s will.”
“Yes, High Priestess,” Clergy-General Provost said, “but their numbers are swelling as more and more refugees arrive from across the Territory.”
“Precisely. All shall be removed in one powerful cleansing.”
“But, High Priestess, they will all be turned. That will leave an even larger horde to encircle the city.”
“The Wall will hold them while the Holy Order beats the ghouls back,” High Priestess Patricia said.
“I have no doubt the Wall will hold,” Provost said, “but my concern is how long the city will be besieged by ghouls. Will we have the food and fuel to last?”
“God will provide,” High Priestess Patricia said. “God will provide to those of us of faith.”
“I –” Provost started, but then stopped himself. “Yes, Your Holiness,” he said.
High Priestess Patricia lifted her chin and stared into the general’s eyes. “Praise be to the Pure,” she said.
“Praise be to the Pure,” the general replied. He held her stare for a few moments before looking away.
High Priestess Patricia felt a wave of frustration roll through her. Even those she considered to be her strongest allies were weakening as the moment of their glory approached. This was yet another reminder that she could rely on others only so much. It was she, as always, who would be the strength of God on earth, the voice of the Ancestors, she who would carry them through what needed to be done. The Territory would be cleansed. She would see it done.
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