by Jane Higgins
Lanya had folded up. Her whole body was shaking. One side of her face was a mask of blood and her breath came fast. I knelt in front of her, held her shoulders, and tried to see the damage. ‘Lanya?’
She opened her unbloodied eye and, miraculously, gave me half a smile. ‘Good?’ she whispered.
‘Amazing. You are amazing.’
Jeitan shouted, ‘She all right?’
‘She’s hit,’ I called back. ‘But not bad. Have you got him?’
‘You’d think he was dying from all the moaning. Broken leg, maybe worse, if we’re lucky. Can you come down? And find his gun!’
‘In a sec.’ The bullet had burned a graze above Lanya’s temple. I undid the bandana from her neck; my fingers were shaking so bad it seemed to take forever. I pressed the bandana against the bleeding and she flinched. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. You hold it. Hold here. Press.’
She pressed, flinched again, half-smiled again. ‘You keep patching me up.’
‘You keep fighting people. Or dancing at people. One or the other.’
‘I’m dizzy.’
‘I’ll get you home.’
I half-walked, half-carried her down the stairs. Jeitan was sitting on DeFaux. He’d tied his belt around the man’s hands and, yes, there was a lot of moaning going on. I sat Lanya on the bottom stair and wrapped her in my coat. I recovered our guns and DeFaux’s small pistol, then crouched beside Jeitan and looked at our man. ‘He wasn’t going to shoot anyone at long range with this,’ I said. ‘Where’s his real gun?’
‘It’ll be hidden upstairs,’ said Jeitan. ‘You’re going to have to get help.’
‘Will you be all right?’
‘Give me his gun.’ He took it and aimed it experimentally at DeFaux’s head. ‘With any luck, he’ll try to escape.’ He looked at me and grinned. ‘Good work, City boy.’
Vega stood in the light of a huge bonfire in the middle of the square and conducted his squads as though they were an orchestra. They’d tamed the riot and now they were mopping up, helped by the dark and the cold – it was starting to snow. I remembered what Vega had said to Terten at the hearing: the army was his. He was right. If the rioters had been hoping for assassination and mutiny, they were twice out of luck.
He beckoned me over.
‘We found him,’ I said. ‘Jeitan’s got him.’
He was speechless for a moment, but he recovered soon enough. ‘Damage?’
‘Lanya’s hurt, but not bad. DeFaux too, thanks to her, but not bad either.’
He motioned to one of his deputies to take charge. ‘Custody for anyone who wants to be trouble. And get me a medic.’ He called up two others to go with us. ‘Now. Show me.’
I led him back through the swirling snow. Lanya, Jeitan, and DeFaux were all as I’d left them. The flash of enmity between DeFaux and Vega was impressive – history there, for sure. Lanya was a mess of blood, but she held out a hand to me and let the medic take a look. ‘Not too bad,’ was the verdict, ‘but get her home.’
Pretty soon, Vega had us all heading in different directions: Jeitan to round up Benits I and II for questioning, DeFaux to custody, a squad to search the building, Lanya and the medic back to Levkova’s lodging, where I was heading too.
‘Stais!’ No one had called me that since school. I turned back to Vega. He gave me that look – the calculating one that bounced off my bones – and said, ‘I see it now. It’s time you met your father.’
CHAPTER 35
My father was at Levkova’s. He’d arrived early in the morning and gone straight into a meeting with others in the CFM leadership, the ones Levkova had called together from Ohlerton, Gilgate, and Ferry Junction. Max told me this when I came down to the kitchen. He put a big mug of tea in front of me and said, ‘Stick around, youngster. There’s someone here you want to meet.’
‘Is he here? Where?’
But he put a hand on my shoulder. ‘They’re in the study, four of ’em got here. They’re meeting with the Commander and Tasia. Patience. They’ll be busy for a while yet. They don’t get together too often, and Remnant’s stepped up a gear. They’ve got a lot of talking to do.’
Which left me sitting, then standing, then pacing in the hallway. My stomach was churning, and the hall was too close and airless.
I went outside and sat on the steps. Across the road a man was trying to fix his wreck of a car, and three others stood around him, smoking, laughing, offering advice and friendly abuse. A couple of old women in black came out of a little church down the way. Its dome, which probably once shone gold or bronze, was stripped to a dull gray base.
At last the study door opened. Jeitan came out with two women and a man. They were deep in conversation as Jeitan ushered them into the kitchen and I heard him say, ‘Max will look after you.’ Then he came down the hall to me. ‘Your turn. In the study. But wait in the hallway till you’re called.’
Easier said than done. I leaned on the door Jeitan had come out of and listened. I heard a voice I didn’t know. A man’s voice. And Levkova’s. The man was talking but I heard only fragments, as if he was pacing towards the door and then away. ‘No, of course I didn’t… what Elena wanted… a child grown fat on their lies… or a feint, it would be a potent weapon for them…’
The churn in my stomach climbed up my throat. I gripped the door handle hard. Levkova was saying, ‘I don’t think—’
‘What don’t you think?’
‘He doesn’t strike me as either of those.’
‘Don’t go soft on me, Tasia.’
‘Will you see him?’
‘I’ll have to.’
Yes, I thought. Yes, you will. I opened the door. The man stopped pacing and looked at me. Levkova bowed to him and headed for the door, but he said, ‘Stay, Tasia. Please.’ Commander Vega was across the room by a tall window.
My father was white, an easterner for sure. His hair was gray, but his face wasn’t old. It was strong and hard. Battle-hungry. He was lean, like all of them, and tall, and his stare was sharp and calculating.
‘Sit down.’ He nodded towards a chair in front of a wall of shelves crammed with books and watched me cross the room. I sat on the arm of the chair and dug my fists into my pockets.
My heart beat hard.
He went back to pacing. ‘So, then, here’s my dilemma,’ he said, like I was part of the conversation he’d been having with the others. ‘I’m telling you this because, if you’re a soldier you’ll understand. If you’re not… well… My dilemma is this: even if you are who you say you are, I can’t know what you are. Twelve years in an ISIS school is too long.’ He glanced at me. ‘In any case, I don’t have time to find out. Regardless of who you are, if they’ve sent you, that means they’ve found me. That would be a useful thing for us to know.’ He drew on his cigarette and breathed out a cloud of smoke. ‘They say you speak Breken. Have you understood me?’
I nodded.
‘What did they tell you, in the city, about me?’
‘That you,’ I cleared my throat and tried again, ‘That you were dead… in the… in the uprising in ‘87.’
‘Do you remember Frieda Kelleran?’
‘A bit, not really.’
‘She didn’t visit you?’
I shook my head.
‘Did anyone else?’
‘Visit me? No.’
‘It was not my wish to put a child in that school. When I got out of the Marsh, I was told what Frieda had done. Then it was too late.’
‘Why too late?’ I asked. He studied his cigarette as it burned down to his fingers and didn’t answer. ‘What was it too late for?’ I said. ‘To get me out? You had moles in there. You were planning to blow it up. How hard could it be to get one kid out?’
‘Nik…’ said Levkova.
He stared at the cigarette. ‘That child is lost to us.’
My throat closed.
‘Tasia tells me you claim to remember Elena?’ He rolled another cigarette and lit it. Watched me. Waited. ‘
What do you remember?’
I watched him back.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘This is a test, right?’
‘I’m wondering what you remember, that’s all.’
I headed for the door.
‘Wait!’ he said. ‘It’s a simple enough question. Why not answer it?’
I stopped in the doorway. ‘What would that tell you? That they’ve briefed me well? She’d be a key piece of intelligence, wouldn’t she? Looks. Quirks. Habits. Manners. There’s bound to be an ISIS dossier about her for just this purpose.’
‘So you don’t remember—’
‘Or I haven’t read it. Which do you think?’
‘Come back and sit—’
‘I remember her voice in my ear saying my name. I remember her hair reaching down to her waist when she let it out. I remember her smell, like soap and linen. I remember the orange scarf she wore when she went to market and the gold pins in her ears. I remember her fear when men came pounding on the door and wrecked the place – for you? Was that? Looking for you. And I remember the sound she made after they’d gone. I remember her. I don’t remember you.‘
Enough. More than enough.
I left.
CHAPTER 36
If you climb the Southside riverwall at the western boundary of the Moldam district and work your way past the smashed-up signs telling you not to and through the barbed wire strung across the top, you can drop down onto a narrow stretch of bank where things wash up and get caught in the reed clumps that grow there. Bits of make-shift boats and rafts, bodies sometimes, and pieces of them, mines escaped from their moorings. The bodies get fished out when someone notices them, but the mines are left alone. There’s too many, they’re too dangerous to defuse, and detonating them could destroy the wall. To the right is the Mol, Moldam Bridge, in all its glory. And a way off west, to the left, hazy in the river spray, are the bridges at Bethun, Sentinel and, a long way lost in the distance, St Clare.
The riverbank was clear of boats and bodies that day, picked over by scavengers who’d left nothing but gravel and clay and a few tufts of spiky grass. In among the reeds I could see the glint of a couple of small metallic disks untouched by any scavenger. Mines. I wondered if they really would take out the riverwall. I sat down and scooped up a handful of gravel and threw a pebble at the nearest one. I was pretty sure it would take more than a stone. Anyway, my aim was off.
Across the water the city shimmered in hazy afternoon light. I imagined I could see Bridge Street, a dark narrow strip going up from St Clare gate through Sentian. North-east of that was Watch Hill and, beyond that, Pagnal Heath. The trees would be bare now, and there’d be a blanket of snow except on the walkways where it would be shovelled sideways into muddy piles. Not many people would be out in all that wide, empty space. But well before the heath, if you turned left at Weston, and took the short cut through the alleys, Kemryn, Ry, Madan, you’d come out on Tornmoor Avenue. Walk up Tornmoor for about five minutes and you arrive at the school gates. I stood there once, with Frieda Kelleran – stood and looked up the tree-lined drive towards the library. Memory flickered. She wore black gloves and a long gray coat, and she held my hand as we walked up the driveway. At least I think she did. Maybe I’d made that up. Maybe she never existed and it was all a lie and ISIS was playing a very long game after all.
When I hauled myself back to the riverbank, Eleanor was there – Elena – my mother, whose right name I hadn’t even known. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. Threw another stone. She didn’t speak, just sat there and looked across the water.
‘Nik! Hey! Hey!‘ Lanya’s face peered over the wall above me. ‘What in the holy name of God are you doing?’ She rolled over the top of the wall and dropped beside me, hit the handful of gravel out of my grip and grabbed my hand with both of hers. ‘What’re you doing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Those are river mines. Did you know that? You did know that.’
‘It’d take more than a stone to set one off.’
‘How do you know? You have no idea.’
‘What d’you want?’
‘To stop you making a horrible mess – that would be a good beginning.’
‘Too late.’
‘Come with me! We’re going back up.’
‘No.’
‘Nik! This is no place for anyone.’ She still had hold of my hand.
‘I’m okay here.’
‘No, you’re not. You’re really not. And I’m not either. This place is for ghosts and lost souls. It’s not for us.’
‘You’re a Maker. Were. You should be used to them.’
‘In their right place. That’s what Makers are for. To help make the paths for them to go to the right place, so they don’t come wandering in places like this.’ She stood up and pulled on my hand. ‘Please?‘
‘You shouldn’t even be up,’ I said. ‘And you’re freezing. Do you want my coat?’
‘I want you and me back over the wall.’ She crouched down again. ‘Right now. That’s what I want.’
She was staring at me hard and gripping my hand. She had a white gauze patch across her temple that made her eyes look blacker than ever, and the beads in her hair were trembling like all the fire in her was about to burst alight.
She tried again. ‘Levkova says, please will you come back. You got a “please” out of Levkova! Come and talk to her.’
‘No.’
‘At least come away from here. Look, she gave me this.’ She handed me a scrap of paper with an address scrawled on it. ‘She said it’s a safe place to sleep tonight.’
I scrunched it up. ‘I don’t need her help.’
‘You know, if once in a while you behaved like a normal person and took the help that’s offered, you might be amazed at the result.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning people would line up to help you.’
‘I don’t want help. I don’t want a listening ear, I don’t want people rallying round, I don’t want sympathy or advice or rescue.’ I pitched the paper into the river.
‘Fyffe needs you.’
‘No, she doesn’t. You’ll look after her.’
‘So, this is you running again, is it? Levkova told me – about your father. But how bad could it be? He’s your father! He’s here and not dead or disappeared. That makes you one of the lucky ones.’
When I didn’t answer, she stood up. ‘Come on! We’re going up. We could be arrested for being here. I have a father too, you know, and if I get into any more trouble he will not be happy. And my aunts will try to make him marry me off to someone safe.’ She dragged on my hand. ‘I’m not going without you.’
I let her pull me to my feet and we set off down the bank with Lanya still gripping my hand as though she thought she might lose me on the way. Back towards the bridge we found some stone steps with a locked iron gate at the top. We scrambled up and squeezed over the wall and through the wire, with only a few scratches.
On the other side Lanya leaned on the wall. She gave me this long look, like there was a lot to say and she wasn’t going to say any of it out loud. All she said was, ‘You scared me.’
‘It’d take more than a stone.’
‘You don’t know that.’
The guards on the bridge gate were watching us. ‘Let’s move,’ I said. We walked west along the wall, away from the bridge. All round us, the evening’s work was beginning: kids hauled pails of water to kitchens, men lit streetcorner fires, women hung lanterns in windows and from porches and conjured meals from scraps. Cookshops and coffeehouses were coming to life.
‘Where are you going to go?’ said Lanya.
Away, mainly. I said, ‘Don’t you have stuff you ought to be doing?’
‘I’m doing it.’
‘Being annoying? This is your job for the day?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Go and tell Levkova I don’t need a babysitter.’
‘She knows that. She only sent me to ask
you to come back. The rest is my own invention. Please tell me what happened this morning?’
‘Lanya…’
‘I don’t want to help. I just want to know.’ Which made me smile. She smiled back. ‘Well?’
‘No.’
‘And you think I’m annoying. Tell me about the city, then. Oh.’ She stopped. Coming down the road towards us was Coly, the toxic little creep whose fight with Lanya had set the whole Remnant takeover in motion. And he had friends with him, three of them. Lanya swore. ‘He’s seen us.’ She dived for the first alley on offer. I followed.
We raced past houses that were boarded up and derelict, but not empty. The families squatting in them hung lanterns in their porches to stake their claims. The first dark porch we came to we ran up the steps and crammed ourselves into the shadows.
Lanya blew out a breath. ‘I thought he saw us.’ She peered into the alley; her braids fell across her shoulder and the last of the sunlight shone gold on the back of her neck. She leaned back beside me. ‘I don’t see him, but we should wait a while. I hate him! His father’s high up in Remnant. He’s just the sort of person my aunts would match me up with.’ She shuddered and looked at me. ‘Sorry. Family quarrels.’ Then she smiled. ‘You can have family quarrels now that you have a father.’ She patted my arm. ‘You’ve already had one, I think? Don’t worry – I won’t mention him again. I’m not even supposed to know about him, so I’ll just…’ She zipped thumb and finger across her lips.
I looked at her smiling face and felt her arm press on mine. I wasn’t breathing properly and my throat ached. I looked away, out towards the alley. It was quiet. Coly hadn’t followed.
Lanya said, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’
She nudged me. ‘Well, think!’
I took a breath, and tried to ignore how close she was. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I have to find Sol. I’m not doing anything until I find him and get him home. Then I guess I could go back over the river. I’ll have to steer clear of ISIS because of… you know… him, but there’ll be no getting out of being drafted because, well, you just don’t get out of that, which means I’ll end up fighting hostiles – which is you, by the way, so…’ I shrugged, stuck.