The Bridge

by Jane Higgins

  So I did. Scrawling on the back of an old requisition form. They sat round the table, watching. Even Jeitan came and looked over my shoulder. When I was done, the doctor gave a low whistle. ‘That’s some party trick.’

  ‘Where did you learn to do that?’ asked Vega.

  I shrugged. ‘It’s just patterns, and a good memory.’ My heart was thudding. Vega got up and walked away. He stood staring out the window. Everybody watched him. At last he said, ‘Where did you say you came from?’

  ‘Gilgate.’

  ‘Where in Gilgate? And you’re Nik who? What’s the rest of your name?’

  I held up the page. ‘Do you want this, or not?’ I put it back on the table because my hand was shaking.

  ‘I want to know who you are.’

  ‘I’m no one. Do you want this or don’t you? Because if you don’t, I’m going. I’m supposed to be gone by sunset.’

  ‘What’s in it for you?’ said Yuna. ‘Why would you help?’

  Levkova stirred. ‘How suspicious we’ve become. Does it matter?’

  ‘But don’t you think it’s strange?’ said Yuna. ‘Is this even accurate?’

  Levkova took the paper and studied it. ‘Yes, it is. It’s exactly right. I’ve done the same work myself, only much more slowly. But I haven’t seen this yet.’ She waved the paper at me. ‘This is one you looked at yesterday? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I only worked it out last night in that shed.’

  ‘In the dark?’ said the doctor. ‘Wearing the after-effects of a beating?’

  ‘Dark is best.’

  Levkova looked at Vega. ‘It’s your call, Sim.’

  Vega shook his head. ‘I don’t like it. He arrives here out of nowhere, with no papers, and no name that he wants to tell us. Three days later we’re outgunned on Council because of him, and now he’s decoding Remnant messages as though he’s written them himself.’

  They all looked at me and I felt like I had Remnant Spy inscribed on my forehead.

  But Levkova said, ‘It’s all we have. I think we take what we’ve been given, however unlikely. I’ll watch him.’

  Vega frowned, narrow-eyed, at me. ‘All right, Nik whatever-your-name-is, you stay. Here, with the sub-commander. But remember your cracked ribs, because if we discover you’re a spy, believe me, cracked ribs will be the least of your worries.’

  CHAPTER 24

  So, a reprieve. Of sorts.

  But the moment I showed my face outside I’d be gone, sent upriver to Gilgate, or worse. Contacting Fyffe was now a big problem. And urgent, because if she had seen one of Sol’s kidnappers down in the township we needed to get on that trail before it went cold. And if she heard I’d been sent up to Gilgate, she was likely to go it alone, or to act on that crazy plan of hers to hand herself in.

  That evening the light turned pale and gray and snow began to fall. Watching it gust in flurries at the window, I hoped that it would keep Fyffe indoors for the time it would take me to reach her. Levkova pointed me to Max’s room. ‘You can sleep here. There’s a mattress but not many blankets, I’m afraid.’ She rummaged in a cupboard and handed me an old army coat. ‘This will help. Don’t worry about Max, he doesn’t sleep much these days, so you won’t bother him.’

  She told me that he had been her assistant in active service years before, and a stalwart supporter of CFM since he was my age. Now he was dying – some kind of slow unpicking of his bones and muscles. ‘He has a lot of pain and we do what we can to get medicine. It’s not easy.’ He was sitting in the main room, a book on his lap, but his eyes were clouded over, as if they’d seen enough of the world, more than enough, and didn’t want to look anymore.

  ‘Long stories,’ Levkova said to me when he’d dozed off after a ramble about the Crossover – the mass expulsion of Breken workers from the city in ‘48. He’d been part of that. He was seventeen.

  ‘I don’t mind long stories,’ I said. And that was no lie. I didn’t know the stories every Breken kid had chewed on since they’d cut their teeth. What I did know was that Max’s story didn’t mesh at all with the history I’d been taught. The Crossover – the expulsion of workers and the closing of the bridges – yes, I knew about that. That’s when the gates were built, Cityside and Southside, on every bridge. But, as Max told it, there was a general strike leading up to the Crossover – a strike for wages. Not higher wages, just wages, rather than food and rent vouchers. I knew nothing about that. Or about the demonstrations and rioting that followed. Or about a massacre by city forces that ended it all. The survivors carried their dead back over the river. Every Crossing since then – like the one for Tamsin that Fyffe and I had seen – was an echo of that first one. Max was old and rambly, but he didn’t strike me as deluded or dishonest.

  ‘Well,’ Levkova was saying, ‘you are more polite than many. What about your own?’

  ‘My own what?’

  ‘Story, Nik. Your own story.’

  ‘Oh.’ I shook my head. ‘It’s short and boring.’

  ‘I wonder.’

  After a while I said, ‘Do you know any Citysiders? Did you ever meet a good one – an honorable one?’

  She paused. ‘Once or twice, long ago. But when it came to allowing us freedom across the river – even they struggled with that. They’re born to privilege, Nik. They can’t let it go. You must never trust one. But I’m sure you know that.’

  I wanted to tell her. I was inching towards it. Inching got me as far as saying, ‘My friend, the one I came here with – she’s working in the infirmary. I need to tell her what’s happened, where I am, otherwise she’ll think I’ve been sent back to Gilgate.’

  She shook her head. ‘Wait a day or so – they’ll be watching her.’

  A day or so was impossibly long. I lay awake that night, counting minutes, and when I was sure that Levkova and Max were asleep I threw on all the clothes I had and went to look for Fyffe.

  The snowstorm had passed, leaving a clear, freezing night. I breathed out white fog, and my boots crunched on frosted ground. I hid inside the coat’s big collar and deep pockets and stuck to the shadows. There were still people about, heading back from patrol or venturing out for a smoke. They stood together in threes and fours stamping the ground and talking about the explosions upriver, the snow, rationing, and hungry kids; about who was sick and who needed medicines that weren’t there, had never been there because of the city blockade; about the ones they’d buried and the ones they expected to bury before winter’s end.

  My head was full of those conversations by the time I got to the infirmary, and I thought how ordinary they sounded. So much about these people was ordinary. No one was dancing gleefully on the grave of the city, no one was eating children. But for all that, someone here had Sol, and I had to get him back.

  I found a boarded-up doorway on the end of the riverside wing and crouched on the step, watching the infirmary. Now and then its door opened in a rectangle of yellow light, and figures hurried down the steps and away into the dark. I waited until the sky began to pale. I didn’t see Fyffe.

  Max was dozing in his armchair when I went back to Levkova’s. I put a brick of peat on the fire and sat in front of it wondering what to do. The flames struggled back to life and I decided that if I couldn’t find Fy by the end of that day, I had to tell Levkova who we were and ask her for help. And hope she’d be so busy with her own troubles she wouldn’t care where we came from.

  ‘Long night, youngster,’ said Max.

  ‘Yes, sir. Sorry I woke you.’

  ‘No, no. Way you creep around, you’re not gonna wake anyone. Scare the life out of someone maybe, way you appear like that, outta nowhere. But you’re not gonna wake anyone ‘cept maybe the dead. But tell me now.’ He sat up and put what looked like a prayer book aside. ‘You’re afire with something. Comes in the room with you. Follows you round. Is it a girl?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘No
one’s wound that tight over nothing.’

  ‘I’m cold, that’s all.’

  ‘You don’t want to tell, that’s fine by me. But a secret like that, it weighs you down. Hollows you out.’

  ‘Aren’t you cold? Do you want this coat?’

  ‘No. She gave it to you.’ He sat back. ‘Safan’s, that was. A good man. They had a child – him and Tasia. Pia, they called her. She was a sweet thing.’ I knew as soon as he said that, that I didn’t want to hear what was coming. But he told me. ‘They came on a sweep one day. City boys. Guns and uniforms. Sky-high confident, like they always are. Said they was looking for bombs, like they always do. Tasia was away from home, but Safan was there, and the child.’ He peered in my direction. ‘Your age she was. And the city boys. Your age too. Her father fought, as any man would. Tasia found them when she came home. Long ago that was. Long ago. Where are you going?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘You’ve just come in.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Cold out there, youngster. Wrap up.’

  I stood in the archway to the graveyard and looked across the compound. There was movement here and there in the gray nearly-light – people coming out of prefabs pulling on boots and jackets and stomping off in clouds of breath to visit the washrooms before the rush to get ready for drill. I thought about how close I’d come to telling Levkova who I was. But now, I never could. Because who could forgive what we’d done to her family? Wouldn’t you want revenge? If two city kids came asking for help, why would you show any mercy at all?

  CHAPTER 25

  I turned away from the buzz outside and went back into the house. I couldn’t face Max or Levkova, so I scrambled over the barricade of broken furniture that lay across one of the hallways and groped my way in the dark to the end of it. There I found a door and, through it, a cavern of a room. It was empty except for a couple of benches along one wall. The leaking roof dripped into puddles and dribbled down the windows frames. But those windows. They hit me with a memory of home – of school – sharp as the pain in my ribs.

  It must have been a chapel once. The windows were tall stained glass with figures just showing themselves against the early light outside. How they’d survived when so much else was rubble I don’t know. But survived they had and, now, with the sun starting to light them up, they took me straight back to morning prayer at school.

  Dash and Fyffe and Bella sitting in their pew, two rows in front of Lou and Sol and me. The sun shining through the golden windows, Fyffe’s hair glowing like a halo. Stapleton droning on at the pulpit, bald head gleaming, big white hands gripping the red cover of the lectionary, and none of us paying him any attention. Too busy watching each other.

  ‘Hey!’ said a voice behind me. I jumped about a mile.

  Lanya stood in the doorway. She lifted her chin and watched me, wary.

  I said, ‘You make a habit of creeping up on people and giving them heart failure?’

  She gave half a smile and came two steps into the room. ‘You didn’t swear this time.’

  Like a Citysider. No.

  ‘I thought you’d gone,’ she said. ‘Been exiled.’

  ‘I was. I’m like your knife wound. I don’t exist.’

  She began to walk around the edge of the room, still watching me. She had a dancer’s walk, light on her feet. As she reached the far end the east window lit up with the rising sun. She stopped under that window, closed her eyes and lifted her face to the light. She glowed black-gold. For maybe a whole minute she stood motionless, her braids falling back, like she was soaking up the sun, recharging.

  The east window was gold with three monks in brown robes holding red bibles and looking at rows and rows of black birds. Lanya opened her eyes and looked at it. ‘Birds,’ she said. ‘In a holy window. Why?’

  ‘It’s St Francis,’ I said. ‘Preaching.’

  She turned to me. ‘To birds? How do you know that?’

  I shrugged. ‘Just do.’

  ‘Well, why then?’ she said. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘No idea. Maybe they’ve got some repenting to do. Maybe they’ve been pecking holes in the grapes before the harvest, or shitting on some laundrywoman’s washing.’

  She laughed. ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘He’s saying it’s all about bread. Which gets their attention. But then he says it’s the bread of heaven that they need, and they’re thinking, no, thanks very much but if it’s all the same to him they’d rather have the bread left over from breakfast.’

  She laughed again; then she stopped and said, ‘That makes you sad. Why?’

  ‘I knew a window like that once. It’s gone now.’

  ‘Bulldozed?’

  ‘Blown up.’

  She nodded and resumed her walk around the walls. The room was quiet except for the drip of water into puddles, and still, except for the clouds of our breathing. She arrived in front of me. ‘You didn’t tell,’ she said.

  ‘At the hearing? They weren’t the sort of people I’d want to tell anything.’

  ‘Does Levkova know you’re still here?’

  When I didn’t answer, she said, ‘If she’s hiding you she must have a good reason.’ She tilted her head and studied me. ‘I didn’t know you’d been ambushed. They told me after the hearing. I’m sorry. Are you hurt?’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘What will you do now? Aren’t you going back to Gilgate?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. What about you?’

  ‘I’m not a Maker anymore. Just a plain person. So I’m joining a squad.’

  ‘To fight?’

  ‘Of course, to fight.’ She smiled and turned for the door. ‘I have to go to drill.’

  I watched her go, then I realized she might help me. I called, ‘Wait! Will you do something for me?’

  She came back into the sunlight. ‘I might. I owe you. What is it?’

  ‘My friend. Sina. She’s working in the infirmary. She might have heard I’ve been sent away. I want to let her know I’m still here.’

  She stood back and did that little bow. ‘I’ll find her and tell her.’

  ‘Today?’

  She nodded. ‘Today.’

  ‘Can you ask her to meet me here this time tomorrow? And can you not tell anyone else or Levkova will be sunk. And so will I. It has to be a secret.’

  Her eyes lit up. ‘I’ll play.’

  ‘It’s not a game!’ But I was talking to her back. And then she was gone. I stood there a while longer wondering how much of a mistake I might have just made.

  I was learning fast – if Levkova was caught hiding me, I wouldn’t be the only one in trouble. I don’t know if they’d cast her out into the snows, but I figured they might. Remnant were old-fashioned like that. She had told me that everything would be much stricter with Remnant running the Council. People who were caught stealing or fighting or trying to go over the bridge without permission – their whole family’d go to the back of the queue for medicines. Their rations could be cut to nothing for a week or a month so they’d have to beg from relatives and friends or people on the street. The worst offenders would be cast out and would have to leave with nothing to go to another bridge or south into the borderlands. And anyone caught helping, well, they got to go too.

  I headed back to Levkova’s rooms. She was making tea and she put a mug of it in front of me. ‘Drink.’

  When I’d finished, she said, ‘Now, tell me.’

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘Why you’ve been out all night when you have concussion, two cracked ribs, and I don’t know what other hurts.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m worried about my friend. I need to find her.’

  ‘What you need is sleep.’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Which is why the tea you’ve just drunk had a sleeping pill in it. Now go into that room and sleep.’

  Which couldn’t really be argued with.

  What happened next was maybe because the sleeping stuff mad
e me kind of drunk. When I got to the door of Max’s room I turned back and said, ‘I’m sorry about your family.’

  ‘Ah.’ Her eyebrows rose and she smiled a sad smile. ‘Max has been talking.’ She touched something at her neck and that’s when I saw that she was wearing a talisman like the one the dead boy in the infirmary had worn. Like I had worn, for most of my life.

  I said, ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Only if you put your head on a pillow straight afterwards.’

  ‘That talisman—’

  ‘This?’ She held it up. It was silver, like mine.

  ‘Why do you wear it?’

  ‘Hopeless, utopian optimism. I gave this one to Pia. And took it back from her when she was killed. There are, you know, too many parents wearing these nowadays. Why do you ask?’

  I sat down at the table because the sleeping stuff was making it hard to stand up. ‘I had one once. My mother gave it to me.’

  ‘Well, well. You are full of surprises. But I’m pleased to hear that. Your mother wanted good things for you. You don’t have it anymore?’

  I shook my head. ‘Someone took it. What d’you think my mother wanted for me?’

  She took hers off and held it in her palm. ‘The Southside Charter: Not crescent, not cross, but blessing for all. They were utopian, our forebears. But look at us now, at each other’s throats. Each to their own god and their own Rule, but space at the heart of every Rule for mystery, for the unknown. That’s the Charter. I hope that’s what your mother wanted for you – to know that no one’s god, no one’s Rule, can be the whole.’

  What my mother wanted for me. My mother.

  Levkova put the talisman back round her neck. ‘Now go to bed. If you fall over here, you’ll be sleeping where you lie.’

  I dreamed my mother’s voice, singing to me. When I woke up I couldn’t remember the words. Only that they were Breken.

  The light was fading and the room was full of shadows. I lay on that lumpy mattress, shivering under a coarse blanket and the army coat, and my first thought was that I’d dreamed the conversation with Levkova. And my second thought was that I knew I hadn’t.