The Bridge

by Jane Higgins

  ‘You and your lines of command. How do you ever get anything done? Okay, let’s go and see.’

  He shadowed me to my shed, shoved a spare set of clothes at me and pushed me into the washroom. I peeled off my alcohol-sodden gear, winced a bit, craved a hot, or even a luke-warm shower, dragged on clean clothes and emerged to a watch-tapping Jeitan. ‘You still look like shit,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. Sorry.’

  ‘And you’re walking like someone stood on you.’ When I didn’t answer he said, ‘Are you going to tell me this isn’t just the after-effects of cheap juice?’ I couldn’t see the point in having this argument and besides I was trying to focus on why I’d ever thought turning up for the hearing was a good idea.

  Remnant, of course. I had to find out what I could about them, and get a look at their leaders. And I had to hope that someone would challenge them on their rumored windfall. And I had to avoid getting either cast out or shipped off to Gilgate.

  Jeitan was busy grumbling. ‘Go on. Tell me. One of your drinking buddies take a swing at you? Who was it? What did you do to deserve it?’

  But we’d arrived and I didn’t need to answer.

  We stopped at the end of a long corridor that was almost empty. We were at the end of the south wing of the main building and we seemed to have left behind all the people hurtling about clutching urgent memos or waving the latest incoming from over the bridge. A bored guard slouched in front of a heavy wooden door. He nodded to Jeitan and frisked me. Felt like he hit every bruise. And he found Coly’s knife.

  ‘Ah,’ said Jeitan, as if this confirmed his high opinion of me. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He gave me a what-are-you-hiding? sort of look.

  ‘Nothing!’ I said.

  But he shook his head. ‘I was right, wasn’t I? Someone took a swing at you. Come on.’ He pushed open the door. ‘In.’ He nodded for the guard to follow us.

  Levkova was there. And Commander Vega. They were sitting at a long table with a motley collection of others – twelve in all. Lanya stood at the head of the table flanked by a tall, fine-boned woman, a Pathmaker for sure. When we came in everyone turned, like puppets on a single string, to stare at us.

  This was their Council room, but in its doppelganger over the river I knew it as the staff library. And maybe it had been a library here too: empty shelves lined the walls and the air had that musty old-book smell. The room was all dark wood, real wood. Tall windows reached up to a high ceiling but all except two were boarded up. Sunlight poured through those two onto the table, casting the rest of the room into shadow. No rugs, pictures, or books in sight. The room was stripped, like the rest of that place, hunkered down without extras of any kind. Battle-ready.

  One of the men, a bull of a guy – huge shoulders, no neck – beckoned me over and spoke to Vega.

  ‘This him?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And you brought him across.’

  ‘I put him in a squad. We lost five people on Saturday. Replacements are hard to find.’

  ‘A question of judgment, Commander. Poor in this case.’

  ‘With respect, Councillor, nothing has been proved.’

  ‘We’ve seen the digi-graph—’

  ‘Shadows.’

  ‘And he was seen drunk last night.’

  So the vodka wasn’t just someone being clumsy. ‘Who by?’ I said.

  They looked at me like I was from off-planet. No-neck said, ‘Be quiet.’

  ‘And at the Crossing?’ said a man down the end of the table. ‘Drunk then too, I suppose. And the girl?’

  ‘She gave me food when I was hungry,’ I said. ‘That’s all. And I wasn’t drunk.’

  No-neck barked, ‘I said, be quiet!‘

  I looked at Lanya. She was staring at the table. The woman beside her put an arm around her shoulders. ‘We have no doubt where the blame lies, Councillor.’

  Then, as if they’d rehearsed it, the door guard said, ‘Sir, found this on him.’ He tossed Coly’s knife on the table. It spun and slowed to a stop, neatly folded and lethal, its tiny flick-switch glinting.

  Twelve pairs of eyes accused me of crimes against decency and clean living.

  No-neck sat back, folded his arms, and smirked.

  Vega sighed. ‘You’ve proved nothing. He’s a scavenger. You may loathe that – I do – but it’s no surprise he carries a knife. It doesn’t mean he used it on the girl.’ He glanced at Lanya. She gave a single shake of her head. Her keeper glared at me.

  They launched into an argument about whether they could believe Coly’s evidence, and whether scum from Gilgate should ever be allowed into Moldam. I moved three paces to the wall and leaned on it. It was either that or fall over.

  When I looked up they were still in full cry, except Levkova, who was watching me. I looked away, back to the action and wondered how grim it could all get. Very grim, was my guess. And if they hauled Fyffe in and quizzed her, we were dead. Her Breken wasn’t fluent enough and we hadn’t put together any kind of backstory these people would believe.

  I focused on No-neck; I recognized his voice. This was Terten, the guy who’d heavied Levkova in the CommSec office a few nights before. A Remnant bullyboy. I wondered if he had Sol hidden somewhere. And if he did, had he seen him or talked to him? Or would the actual living, breathing child that was Sol be so far down the line that this guy could profit from him and never even know who he was?

  Terten was enjoying himself. He stood up and leaned over the table. ‘This much is clear. You, Commander Vega, are not fit to head this Council.’ He turned to the rest of the table, opened his arms wide and launched into full preacher mode. ‘My friends, we must not stumble now.’

  ‘We are not stumbling!’ said Vega.

  But Terten rolled on. ‘Our victory lies in God’s hands. But here is dishonor at our very heart. Sin of the most shameful kind has wormed its way into our core…’

  He seemed to make an effort to look sad but, really, he looked gleeful. He walked around the table and paused behind Lanya. She hugged her arms tight and stared at the ground; she looked like she was trying to make herself as small as possible. He walked on. ‘Do we stand by? No! We excise the rot. We cast it from us. We cauterize the wound.’

  A depressing amount of nodding rippled round the table. I knew they flogged criminals on Southside – sometimes to death. Or they cast them out, exiled, without food or water, into the borderlands in the far south. I had no allies here, and no leverage at all. A lone scavenger from Gilgate would be insignificant collateral damage in the power game they were playing.

  ‘Councillor!’ Levkova broke into the monologue. ‘Please sit down. You judge too quickly. We have no clear evidence.’

  Terten arrived back at his chair. He leaned on it and his beady eyes scanned the rest of the Council. He ignored Levkova. She sighed and shot a look at Vega.

  ‘Compromise!’ bellowed Terten. ‘Is that our banner now? Mealy mouthed compromise? The sub-commander would have it so. And if we compromise here, in safeguarding our own purity, what then in our dealings with the city? My friends, we have been led down the path of compromise for too long. Do you have courage, do you have faith enough, to strike out on a better path?’ His stare shifted to pick out each person round the table. ‘I say we vote. Now. For a strong path, a pure path, a righteous path, a path that will lead us to victory.’

  Levkova tried again. ‘Councillor, your sloganeering will cost lives. I make no apology for seeking to exercise judgment and pragmatism in this uprising. You glorify righteous confrontation, but you do it on the bodies of our children.’ She looked at Vega again.

  Vega spoke up. ‘Returning to the matter at hand, Terten. Of course, the safety and honor of our Makers is vital. But we have no real evidence here. And we have other urgent matters before us. City forces are regrouping at Sentinel, Clare, and Torrens Hill—’

  But Terten interrupted, ‘For continued poor judgment, now evident in bringing dangerou
s elements to our district and failing to safeguard our Makers, I ask Council for a vote of no confidence in Commander Vega as its head.’

  There it was. An ambush.

  They went around the table. I didn’t know who was who, but I could count. Seven ‘ayes’ and five ‘nays’. The independents had caved to the threat of appearing weak and gone with Remnant.

  Terten smiled, smug as all hell. ‘As deputy, I will take the chair until we make a full appointment. Next: I seek sanction on those involved in this scandal – this boy, and this girl.’

  ‘Aye, aye, aye…’ Twelve ‘ayes’ and no ‘nays’. Even Vega and Levkova voted in favor of punishing us. I sucked in a breath and willed Lanya to look at me, but she wasn’t risking that.

  ‘I seek this sanction,’ said Terten. ‘The boy to be flogged and cast out.’

  My mouth went dry. The ‘ayes’ began again, one by one, round the table. Lanya looked at me.

  Vega stood up. ‘No. No one will be flogged over this.’ He leaned over the table into Terten’s face. ‘The Council may be yours now, Terten, but the army is not. This was a Crossing – an army matter. My troops, not your fanatics. While I head the army, I control its discipline. Sanction, yes. But there will be no flogging.’ He pointed at me. ‘The boy goes back to Gilgate. The girl to her family.’ He stood back and looked around the table. Not too many of them met his eye. ‘This is not the end of this discussion. But I have better things to do than battle over polemics and preaching at this table.’ He left. Stormed past us without even a glare. Jeitan watched him, mournful as a lost dog.

  Levkova said, ‘If the Council permits, I will ensure the boy returns to Gilgate.’

  ‘By sunset,’ said Terten and no one objected.

  Victory to Remnant.

  CHAPTER 23

  Exiled. Banished. Cast out. Call it what you like. It amounted to abandoning Fy and Sol. I stood outside the Council room with Levkova and Jeitan. They held a murmured conversation and I concentrated on staying upright. A fog had come down between me and the world and the corridor ahead looked hazy and gray. Two things were depressingly clear, however. I was no closer to knowing whether the rumored Remnant windfall existed, let alone whether it pointed to Sol. And I was being sent away.

  I was trying to put together a coherent sentence to ask Levkova if I could please take Fyffe with me, remembering that I had to call her Sina and wishing that my brain would unscramble, when Levkova turned to me. ‘Nik. I’m sorry. This is not your fault. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time and they’ve seized their chance. Jeitan, we’ll go to my quarters. We must feed him at least.’

  ‘Feed him to what?’ muttered Jeitan.

  Levkova smiled. ‘Come with me.’

  We walked out of the building and across the grounds without speaking – slowly, at her pace, which I was grateful for because I was finding it harder and harder to walk at all. On the way, Levkova crooked a finger and collected a kid maybe ten years old. She berated him mildly for not being in the schoolhouse. He grinned and jigged along beside us, chattering at Jeitan. But Jeitan was stony faced and silent.

  We went through an archway in the brick wall that ran along the river side of the compound. Down the slope in front of us, stone markers grew out of rough cut grass with a few spindly trees scattered among them. Levkova lived in an old brick house on the edge of that graveyard. The house must’ve been impressive once: the entrance opened into a high atrium with hallways leading into shadows but they were roped off and barricaded with wrecked furniture. The air smelled of damp and rot.

  She took us through a small door off the atrium and into a room that was old like its owner but, unlike her, shabby and comfortable: there were armchairs, a couch, a table, shelves and shelves of books, and tall windows with the sun streaming in. She called, ‘I’m back!’ and someone answered from another room. She disappeared into it.

  I sat on the floor in a patch of sunlight and closed my eyes. Breathing was hard work, sharply painful every time. Before long, Levkova came back. ‘I did tell you to watch your back,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah. I remember.’

  She turned to the kid she’d collected. ‘Go and get Dr Mayur for me. Quick now.’ So he scuttled off and I sat in the sun and concentrated on breathing. The next thing I knew the room was full of people. Commander Vega had arrived. He was being called Sim, and Levkova was Tasia, so I figured we were among friends. Jeitan was still there, and two others I didn’t know. One was a young woman called Yuna. She was dressed in squad clothes and she paced up and down in that small space like a fuse burning down to its fuel, her arms crossed, her head bent as she listened to Levkova report on the Council meeting. And there was a man about Vega’s age. He crouched in front of me. ‘Nik, is it? Can you get up?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I need to take a look at you.’

  ‘Why?’

  He gave a half smile. ‘Orders.’

  Levkova looked up from her reporting and pointed to a door. ‘Go in there.’

  ‘See?’ he said.

  I didn’t move. I’d done enough stupid stuff. I didn’t feel like adding to the list.

  He fished in a jacket pocket and held up a little container. Rattled it. ‘Painkillers. Scarce and pricey. Why Tasia’s wasting them on you I do not know. But I suggest you count yourself lucky and let me take a look at why you need them.’

  Okay. That was convincing enough for me.

  When we emerged a while later Levkova and the others were sitting round the table – except for Jeitan, who’d taken up a position at the door as though he’d decided that these people needed a permanent guard. Levkova said, ‘Well?’

  ‘He’ll live,’ said the doctor. ‘Couple of cracked ribs. Bruising. Mild concussion. I think that’s all. If there’s anything internal it’s not obvious right now.’ He held up the painkillers. ‘Are you sure you want to give him these?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Levkova. ‘I am.’

  ‘Why?’ said Yuna.

  ‘He stumbled into one of our fights. I feel responsible. You don’t really think this was a drunken brawl?’

  ‘Looks like it to me,’ said the doctor.

  Vega broke the pencil he was fiddling with, said ‘Sorry’ to Levkova and looked at me. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to.’

  ‘Who, then?’ said the doctor. ‘And why?’

  ‘Makers,’ said Levkova.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know. It won’t go down well with anyone to say that. But they needed to absolve Lanya, and for that they needed a scapegoat. The girl wasn’t making accusations, so they improvised.’

  ‘You don’t believe that?’ he said.

  She looked at me. I don’t know what she could make of me from knowing me all of five days, but she said, ‘Yes, I do.’

  The doctor shook his head but he tossed me the painkillers. I closed my hand on them and felt an odd, and no doubt misplaced, sense of relief.

  ‘Let’s eat,’ said Levkova. ‘Here. I don’t think any of us wants to face the hall.’

  Lunch was served by an old man called Max. He was badly bent and lame and he was treated with such respect by everyone that I guessed he must be a relative or a friend of Levkova. He served up a stack of warm flatbreads, a spiced bean mash, and some fresh green leaves. Someone exclaimed over the leaves and Levkova was off then talking about her vegetable garden like nothing else mattered. Like the shifting of a deadly political balance between enemy factions was something that happened every morning of the week and didn’t deserve lunchtime comment. I picked at a piece of flatbread, thinking I should be famished. I wasn’t, so I retreated to an armchair and left them to eat and talk.

  When I woke up my ribs had stopped hurting, which made me feel stupidly optimistic for the nanosecond it took before I remembered Fy and Sol. Round the table they were onto politics and strategy: how to tip the balance back their way, how to restore CFM influence on Council. I didn’t listen too hard. I was doing my own strategizing
– I had to stop them sending me upriver to Gilgate.

  At the table, the doctor was saying, ‘They’re not so clean. We just need to catch them at something they shouldn’t be doing. How hard can that be? They’ve got enough rules. Surely they’ve got people breaking some of them?’

  ‘Of course they have,’ said Vega. ‘How else are they funded?’ He lapsed into an angry silence. I thought he’d probably been doing that a lot during the conversation.

  ‘The problem,’ said Levkova, ‘is making criminal connections at Council level.’

  ‘You’re the code-breaker, Tasia,’ said Yuna. ‘Surely you’ve found something useful?’

  Levkova shook her head. ‘Not yet. And if I lose CommSec, the backroom project goes as well.’

  ‘Has nothing come through all those memos?’ said Yuna.

  I sent up a silent prayer to Lou that this wasn’t a huge mistake and dived in. ‘Smuggling,’ I said.

  They looked at me like, who the hell are you to be entering this discussion?

  The doctor said, ‘And you know this how?’

  I looked at Levkova. She frowned. ‘Well?’

  ‘Your messages,’ I said. ‘The ones I’ve been sorting.’

  ‘Coded messages,’ said Yuna.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Those ones.’

  ‘They’re in code,’ she said, like I was very slow. ‘How many of those painkillers did you take?’

  The doctor turned back to Levkova and Vega. ‘So. What’s the plan?’

  ‘Wait,’ said Vega. And to me, ‘Explain.’

  I said, ‘Whoever’s been sending the memos – Remnant? – they’ve organized to get their people guarding the bridge gates tomorrow because they want to bring something over without being noticed.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said the doctor. ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. They’ve reduced their alphabet – doubling up on letters – some words are hard to pick if you don’t know them already. They called it DFO.’

  ‘DFO,’ said Vega quietly, staring at me in a way that made me deeply nervous. ‘Not it. Him.’ He held out the stub of the pencil he’d snapped. ‘Show me.’