by Jane Higgins
I looked at her composed face and bright, enquiring eyes. I heard my father saying, When I came out of the Marsh, Elena was dead and you were gone, and I knew exactly what kind of friend Frieda had been to my mother.
‘I do have a question,’ I said.
‘Yes?’
‘When you befriended my mother, did they give you a promotion? Or did you have to wait until you’d delivered me to Tornmoor?’
She absorbed that without a flicker. Someone knocked on the door. She called, ‘Yes!’ and said, ‘A friend of yours, I think.’
No. Not exactly. Jono, and a buddy.
‘Escort Mr Stais to his room.’ Frieda nodded at me. ‘Think well.’
They took me back through the white corridors; when we got to my room the other guy left. Jono made some excuse about catching up with me, and stayed behind. He said, ‘Sol’s dead. And that’s down to you. Happy?’
I hit him.
I remember thinking once that in a fight with Jono I’d come out with fewer teeth than I took in and not so many limbs in working order. But no. Jono had learned how to fight so that he left no marks. Just immobilization for an hour or two.
When I could move again, I crawled into the bathroom where I threw up, then sat under the shower feeling it drum on my body. I thought about the Moldam doctor and his painkillers. About Levkova. Vega. My father. All those people. Lanya.
CHAPTER 43
‘Where are we going?’ I said to the next agent that arrived to take me somewhere. I knew he wouldn’t tell me, but I was going to keep asking questions just in case, one day, one of these people slipped up and said something to me.
He took me to the door of the hospital chapel. I had time to take one deep breath, and then I was standing inside, in a dimly lit space with the smell of polished wood and candlewax in the air.
Ahead of me at the end of the aisle was a small coffin that I knew must be Sol. Standing around it were people I had known for most of my life. Dash and Jono. Mr Hendry. Mrs Hendry. Fyffe.
Seeing them standing there, part of my brain looked for Lou. He was always with them when we were all together, making everyone laugh, or groan, at his latest pun or practical joke. And Sol, who made everyone laugh just because he was a sweet kid.
Mrs Hendry gripped her husband’s hand and put her other arm across her midriff, holding herself together, but only just. She was a thin, gray, heartbroken version of the smiling woman who had welcomed me for the holidays when I was seven and kept welcoming me almost every summer for years after that.
Now she looked down the aisle and said in a strained, cracking voice, ‘Why is he here? Why did they bring him here?’
I couldn’t move.
I looked at Fyffe and she looked back at me. I thought of all the times in Moldam when it had been too dangerous or too difficult to speak and we’d just looked at each other: over the table in the dining hall, over the body of the dead soldier in the infirmary, across the yard at Goran’s, and in the upstairs room with the doctor holding a syringe in his hand. Now Fyffe looked back at me and that gave me ballast, because even though we had failed, I knew the weight of what we had done.
What I didn’t know was whether Fyffe was watching me and thinking of all the experience that ran between us, or if she held me responsible for Sol’s death.
Mr Hendry put a hand on the coffin, as though he had to protect it and its precious contents from me. He looked past me to the agent standing at the door and said, ‘You! What do you think you’re doing? Take him away!’
I was about to turn and run when Fyffe walked towards me.
Mr Hendry said, ‘Fyffe! Come back here.’ Jono hurried after her and took her arm but she shook him off.
She walked all the way down the aisle and right into my arms.
She cried and cried. We both did.
At last, she wiped her face on her sleeve and tried to smile at me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’
She took a shaky breath. ‘Not your fault.’
‘Fyffe!’ called her father.
I kissed the top of her head and stood back from her. ‘Don’t get into trouble on my account.’
She tugged my sleeve. ‘We’re taking Sol home tomorrow night. Come and say good-bye.’
I looked at Mr and Mrs Hendry and shook my head. ‘I can’t, Fy. I can’t.’
Jono arrived at her shoulder saying, ‘Fyffe. Your mother wants you.’
She nodded and said to me, ‘I don’t believe them. What they’re saying about you. I don’t believe it. I’ll come and see you tomorrow, before I go.’ She shrugged off Jono’s hand and walked alone back to her family.
In my room, when I could think clearly again, I thought this had been Frieda’s doing. Her message wasn’t exactly subtle: take what she offered or she would make sure that Mr and Mrs Hendry would hate me for life. But what would Frieda make of Fyffe not following the script? I was afraid for Fyffe.
When Jono came to my door the next morning, I said, ‘If you’re taking me back to see the Hendrys, I’m not going.’
But Jono stood in the doorway looking straight ahead and said, ‘Mrs Kelleran wants you to meet someone.’
Curiosity, and an aversion to getting beaten up again, got the better of me. I followed him. He took me to a white room with no windows and no furniture. Just the eye above the door. A woman sat on the floor. The Breken woman from the bridge. She wore civilian clothes – a gray tunic and black leggings. Her feet were bare.
She stood up, waited for Jono to leave, then held out a hand. ‘Suzannah Montier.’ So this was her. CFM’s leader-in-waiting. She had a warm, quiet voice and a cool grip.
‘Nik Stais,’ I said.
She raised an eyebrow, then nodded up at the eye. ‘They’re watching. They want to find out if we know each other.’ She bowed to the eye. ‘We do not.’
‘You’re the hostage.’ I said.
‘I was the hostage, yes.’ She studied me. ‘You have a famous name.’
‘So do you.’ I sat on the floor, opposite the eye, so I could watch it the way it watched me.
Suzannah said, ‘My father and Commander Stais were friends. Did you know? The last time I saw them together was at a Crossing, the last Crossing of the ‘87 rebellion. My father asked Nikolai to speak.’ She smiled, remembering, then walked across to the eye and spoke to the watchers. ‘Do you know what he said? He said, “Freedom.” And “Justice.” He said, “We’ll feed our families with the work of our hands. We’ll build a common life. An honorable life. Not of plenty, but of sufficiency.” He said that, and I believed him.’
She swung back to me. ‘I still do. Despite all this. So, Nik Stais, who are you and where do you fit?’
‘I’m no one. And I don’t fit anywhere.’ And because it was too hard to think about that, I said, ‘Why are you here? Why did you stop?’
‘Stop?’ She set off around the room on her bare, silent feet.
‘On the bridge,’ I said. ‘You could have run. The triggers weren’t working. Why didn’t you just run?’
She glanced at me and kept on walking. ‘And then what?’
‘You’d be free. You’d be home.’
‘And that child? Shedding his life’s blood in your arms? No. Our people killed an innocent. By the logic of this war, the city must strike back.’
‘Well, yes. Exactly that. And now here you are – right in their firing line.’
‘It looks that way.’ She leaned on the wall. ‘Who jammed the triggers?’
‘I did. Vega’s idea.’
‘You saved my life.’
‘CFM want you back. It’ll be harder now, to try for talks. The city’s digging in. Remnant has CFM in its sights, and it’s winning. It must have been a Remnant gunman that shot Sol.’
She nodded and resumed her walking. ‘Remnant has won this round. So, how does it stop – this suicide march? This death for a death?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t stop. Not til
l one side’s crushed the other.’
‘And then what will we have? Will we have peace?’
‘No. I don’t know. Of a kind.’
‘Of a kind.’ She stopped in front of the eye. It stared at her, crowding the room with watchers: Frieda, the doctor with her notebook and little torch, Dash, Jono, others, lots of others.
Suzannah watched back for a while then turned away. ‘Yes. Peace without justice, if it’s the city that wins. Peace without mercy if it’s Remnant. Which would you choose, Nik?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t get to choose.’
‘But you do. You choose where you stand and who you stand with.’ She was watching me and reading my mind. ‘You can’t not choose. To walk away in disgust – that is also a choice. You are entangled, Nik. Like all of us.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘What about you? Which would you choose?’
‘I choose justice.’ She looked at me. ‘And mercy. That, we can call peace.’
‘Hey – unfair. You didn’t offer me the box set.’
She smiled. ‘No. Why not, do you think?’
‘I don’t know. It’s not possible?’
She nodded. ‘It’s not possible, if one side crushes the other. But if both sides meet, if both will negotiate, then, perhaps.’
‘That’s not happening, though, is it? And it’s not going to now.’
‘No. It won’t while we’re trapped in this… this dance. The suicide switch is well named, isn’t it? We seem hell-bent on killing ourselves.’
‘How do you change that?’
She folded onto the floor beside me. ‘You asked me why I stopped on the bridge. That is why. To make a chance for the city to break that circle. To say, yes, a child was murdered, but something new can come from that: a refusal to answer a death with a death.’
She looked up at the eye, staring the watchers down. Her hands gripped her knees; her breathing was short and sharp. I wondered if they could see that through the eye. But then she looked at me and smiled. She didn’t seem to have an insane spark of martyrdom in her eye.
I said, ‘That’s one hell of a gamble.’
‘It’s a way forward. It’s the only one I can see right now. There are days, many days, when I cannot see any way forward. It’s all too hard; it asks more of everyone than they can give.’
‘What do you do on those days?’
‘On those days, I tell myself: don’t look up, the mountain is too high; but choose for this day, for this moment, that’s enough. But, Nik, today is not one of those days. Today, I think, here is a chance to look ahead. Shouldn’t we make the choices that will lead us to peace?’
‘What if it leads straight in front of a firing squad?’
‘It’s a risk. I think it’s worth taking.’
The door buzzed and an agent came in, a senior agent by the look of him, dressed in black, with an assistant trailing behind him. He nodded to Suzannah, called her Ms Montier, and asked her to go with him, please.
‘Where?’ I said. ‘Where are you taking her?’
His glance passed over me as though I wasn’t there, but he spoke to her. ‘We wish to discuss the current situation. This way, please.’
Not a firing squad then. Not yet.
Suzannah put a hand on my shoulder and looked straight into my eyes, and that’s when I knew she was afraid. But she spoke calmly enough, a Breken parting, ‘Peace on your road, Nik Stais.’
CHAPTER 44
Dash came to see me a few hours later. I was back in my room, sitting on the floor, trying to make sense of it all. She was wearing her efficient persona. It suited her; always had. If she ever doubted where she fitted in the world, she never let on. She leaned on her crutches and studied me. ‘Well?’
‘What?’
‘What did you decide?’
‘I decided, no, I’m not going to ID those people.’
Her shoulders slumped. ‘Well, in that case, they’re right to be taking you to the Marsh. No, don’t look like that. They say it will help. It will, Nik. I mean, look at you – you look wretched. And that is a wretched decision.’
‘I thought the Breken had taken the Marsh.’
‘They did. They freed their people and looted it for medicine. And tried to burn it down. But we’ve taken it back, and part of it’s still operational. Just as well for you. You need help. They dug too deep – you’re not you anymore. You speak Breken in your sleep.’
‘How do you know that?’
She nodded towards the eye.
‘What do I say?’
‘They don’t tell me that.’ She limped to the bed and sat down. ‘Look. You’re home. You’ve had a terrible time but now you’re safe and you can rest and get well.’
‘Being locked up, spied on, and sent to the Marsh – this will make me well?’
‘And being used by the hostiles? How does that feel? Face facts, Nik. People here are going to wonder about your loyalties, aren’t they? Until you can prove which side you’re on.’ She took my hand. ‘You’ll sort it out in the Marsh.’
‘Which side do you think I’m on?’
‘Ours, of course.’
‘Ours meaning you and me, or you and ISIS?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It’s supposed to mean maybe those aren’t the same thing.’
‘Now you’re scaring me. Don’t you want an end to all this? The uprising quashed, no more bombings, safety for our families? Peace! Don’t you want peace?’
‘Sure, I do. What about the Breken?’
‘Disarmed, and back over the river.’
‘With the gates locked? And no access to medicine or decent food?’
She frowned. ‘They’ll be better off than they are now. They’re starving, aren’t they? They can go back to the way things were if they agree to demilitarization. That’s fair, isn’t it?’
‘Is it? I don’t know. You’ll have to ask them.’
‘Well, I can tell you now, it’s the best offer they’ll get.’
‘Then I think they’ll keep fighting.’
‘You say that like you think it’s okay.’
‘No, it’s not okay. But what you’re offering isn’t peace.’
‘Listen to yourself!’
‘Do you know who I met this morning?’ I told her about Suzannah.
She sat and listened and said at last, ‘So she wants to be noble. So what? What about Sol? What about Lou and Bella? Shouldn’t they be avenged? I would avenge Sol. Show me a hostile, any hostile, and I’ll avenge Sol.’ When I said nothing, she said, ‘Aren’t you even angry about him?’
‘Jesus, Dash.’
‘I’m sorry, but we have to send them a message. They can’t just gun us down and get away with it. We have to respond!’
‘Sure, you have to respond. But do you have to respond in kind? And anyway, who’s they? What if – think about this – what if it was a Remnant gunman that shot Sol? What if he shot Sol, and got shot himself before he could shoot Fyffe. There were two shots. What if there are people over there worth negotiating with? People who aren’t Remnant?’
‘You talk like those are distinctions worth making.’ She grasped her crutches and stood up.
‘I think they are,’ I said.
‘They’re hostiles, Nik. That’s what they are.’
‘It’s not all they are. I found my father over there.’
She stopped and looked hard at me. ‘What?’
‘Over the river. I found my father. I’m Breken, Dash.’
She missed a beat, but recovered fast. ‘You can’t be. You’re one of us – you’ve always been one of us.’
I nodded. ‘That too. Go figure.’
‘This is crazy. Your father’s dead.’
‘He’s not dead. He’s a Breken strategist. They took me to meet him.’
‘You didn’t believe them, though, did you?’
‘Yes. I did.’
‘Did you believe everything they told you over there?’
&n
bsp; ‘They had nothing to gain by lying to me.’
‘Of course they did. You’re a brilliant mathematician. Anyone would fight to have your brain working for them. Think about it. If your father was alive and Breken, he would never have let you grow up in a city school. He’d have tried to get to you, wouldn’t he? To get you out. It doesn’t make sense. They lied to you. It’s what they do.’
‘You don’t know what they’re like.’
‘Yes, I do. And I know what you’re like, and this is not you. Go to the Marsh. Let them help you.’ The door buzzed and she looked relieved. ‘Oh, yes. You have a visitor.’
She nodded at the eye.
Fyffe. I scrambled up. ‘Hey.’ I gave her a hug. ‘How are you?’
‘All right. I’m sorry about last night in the chapel. The parents. Are you okay?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Course I am.’
‘He’s not,’ said Dash. ‘We’re taking him to the Marsh to recuperate.’
‘Oh, no!’ said Fyffe.
‘He needs help,’ said Dash. ‘He thinks he’s found his father. Over the river. Do you know anything about that?’
Fyffe shook her head, and looked at me anxiously.
‘No,’ said Dash. ‘I didn’t think so.’
‘Your father?’ said Fyffe to me. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I couldn’t tell you,’ I said. ‘He’s wanted by ISIS and he’s been in hiding. But now it doesn’t matter. They’ve got me talking in my sleep and I’ve told them all about him.’
‘Oh, Nik. That’s what all that business with your name was about?’
‘You don’t believe him,’ said Dash.
‘Why not?’ said Fyffe.
‘You people! What did they do to you over there?’
Fyffe turned back to me. ‘What will you do?’
‘You mean if I ever get out of the Marsh?’
‘Don’t be like that,’ said Dash. ‘We just want you back to your old self. We need you. We need that brain of yours. When you’re recovered they’ll take you on here, they told me.’
‘And you believed them?’ I said.
‘Of course.’
‘Do you believe everything they tell you here?’