The Madman's Bridge: FireWall Book 1

by Mark Johnson

  “Polis Sumad will deliver the boy to the Gods, Sarra. He’s not in pain. Swap his headscarf for yours. We sleep late, pretend we know nothing, then leave after noon. I’ll explain to Renev. Leave the mechanism in his bag.” She paused, looking down at the dead man. “We learned much, and almost nothing.”

  “What did we learn?” Sarra wasn’t certain what meaning could be gathered from Beveng’s horrible end.

  “The Enemy is preparing to besiege HopeWall, Sarra.” Miss’s eyes hadn’t moved from the dead man.

  “What makes you think that? HopeWall’s a day from here.”

  “HopeWall conceals things even you haven’t unraveled, Sarra.”

  Miss ushered her from Beveng’s room, before Sarra could ask what she meant.

  Back in their cramped quarters, they removed their bloodied clothes and soaked them in the washbowl. Sarra had to leave twice to empty the washbowl and refill their water bag, wandering the Wall’s empty, dark ground floor in a daze. Her bare footslaps on the uncarpeted back room corridors were the only sounds. Until this night, she’d not known Miss had perfected a vibration weave to extract fresh blood from clothes.

  When Miss was convinced they’d rinsed out the blood, they left their garments to hang on metal hooks, and settled on thin mattresses under threadbare blankets.

  But Sarra couldn’t sleep. Beveng’s startled face remained whenever she closed her eyes. She kept thinking her hands were sticky, kept blaming herself for the death, not understanding why. Not because her mistress had inadvertently killed him with her artefact, but some other reason. Something deeper within her mind, hidden beneath that strange line where her childhood memories stopped. She pulled her mattress closer to Miss, not knowing why she cried, why her heart ached, why she hurt so much but had no words. Tears would have to do.

  “The bodies,” she said.

  Miss sat up on her mattress.

  “They made the blood,” Sarra said. “Underground.” The words were true. They’d just tumbled out her mouth, but she didn’t know how they were true. What did they mean?

  “Hush child.” Miss held Sarra’s head to her neck, stroking her hair. “I know blood scares you. I know why. It’s not your fault.” So many times in the past ten years, mostly in the first few years at HopeWall, Sarra had slept in Miss’s own bed after crying late into the night. Never knowing why.

  Miss pulled away, leaning off the mattress, and rum-maged in her bag. “Here child, look at this again for me.”

  Sarra examined the strangely comforting small red owl figurine Miss had slipped into her palm.

  “Miss, what is this artefact?” she sniffled. “Why haven’t I ever seen it?”

  “Because child,” Miss said gently, “it helps you forget.”

  4

  Gray-haired heads dominated the tower’s conference room, bent in conversation and filling it with low, urgent murmurs. Sarra and Nocev stood at the back, hands at their waists in a show of demure patience, unnoticed by the Tower Elders and the Wall Councilors.

  “You were with Miss,” said Nocev. “What upset her so much?”

  Sarra sighed. Nocev wasn’t the first to ask that over the last two months. “Nothing! The smuggler died in his sleep, so we couldn’t follow him. I mean, yes, that’s odd, but it doesn’t mean the Enemy was at work. It could’ve just been poison. The only thing we know is that Renev, out in MarverWall, picked up unusual chaos energy clusters. Somehow that was enough to make Miss paranoid, even though the same kind of thing is reported, what, five times a week all over the Territories.”

  There should have been more to the story, but that was all Sarra remembered. It seemed an essential detail had gone missing somewhere, but she couldn’t think what that might be. Every time she thought back to MarverWall, she was convinced she’d forgotten something. Like she’d had a dream in which an important question had been answered and she were on the verge of remembering.

  “Anyhow, she was staying up most nights, running repeater stone messages and checking monitor stone networks. I found her asleep one morning, drooling in her trancing chair.” She gestured toward the old women at the table. “Miss was working this lot up with her claims the cadvers were about to attack us, and trying to convince them to call Pilgrimage. She commissioned reports from every head weaver in the repeater stone network. But she found some huge chaos pulses and told the weaver at TannenWall where to look for cadver barrows. That’s when they found the first… problem barrow.”

  Nocev nodded. “Mother thought those stories were all made up. Until Miss messaged her. I mean, what kind of thing can make a cadver stay still while its skin is flayed off?”

  “Seven cadvers,” Sarra corrected her. “All skinned, probably alive while it happened. And Miss said golem can’t do that. Or shouldn’t. But she was right and, as soon as more discoveries came in, the Elders suddenly had no problem endorsing her call for Pilgrimage.”

  A tall Tower Elder, Miss Amblev, entered the council chamber and joined her usual group, which was huddled with their backs to the rest of the room.

  “I’d hoped HopeWall would’ve changed,” Nocev muttered, “but I get in last night and they put me in this hideous beige curtain.” She dusted her skirt. “The Territories prepare for siege, and their first priority is making me forget the Gods gave women curves. Now I’m stuck wearing this for six months!”

  “But at least we aren’t stuck in novice dresses anymore,” Sarra said.

  “Hooray.” Nocev rolled her eyes. “A fitted skirt and a white blouse. This changes everything.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Sarra said. A drop of sweat snaked from her armpit to her waist. “How’s your room?”

  Nocev wiped her brow, the moisture darkening her blonde fringe. “Cramped and hot. At least I’m not a novice, sleeping ten inside a cupboard anymore.”

  Sarra wiped a hand over her brow and gestured to the meeting room. Twenty bodies in one stone room made a lot of heat. “I’ve been doing this ever since I made initiate,” she whispered back. “Tower attendance is so dull. Oh, it’s your turn.”

  “Why bother with this meeting at all?” Nocev whispered to Sarra. “Terlent’s going to complain no one’s following the rules. Miss Harient will reply that isn’t important if we’re not ready for the cadvers, and Hapev’s going to threaten to lock the gates until she’s certain we can feed everyone.”

  “Fill the cups before they notice, Nocev.”

  Nocev gave a vacant smile. “In OremWall, I was running the communications and monitoring vibration stores for my mother. Here?” She picked up the large earthenware water pitcher with two hands. “I refill the cups of old women, while they argue whether novice girls should be allowed to hug their fathers and brothers.” She made her skirt swirl, but only a little dramatically. “And back home, I could wear real clothes.”

  With willowy grace, Nocev made her way between the plastered stone walls and the age-darkened wooden table, unobtrusively filling earthenware cups. The windows behind her displayed the Wastes’ muted reds and yellows colliding with a cloudless sky.

  It was wonderful to have Nocev back at HopeWall for Pilgrimage. Sarra had missed her. She’d even missed the barrage of complaints that accompanied Nocev everywhere. And now, they were novices no longer, and — best of all — both apprenticed to Miss Harient.

  They’d be able to stay up late together and have the occasional cup of wine, while wearing their own clothes and getting to listen to a wave receiver in one of the common rooms. They’d never had such freedom!

  It had been a long year since Nocev had passed her initiate exams and left the Tower for an apprenticeship in her home cluster. While Sarra’s initiation had made life easier, even their frequent messages by repeater stones hadn’t been enough to replace Nocev being right there, with her.

  At the far end of the room, Miss Harient pushed back her wooden chair and rose.
She shuffled her papers and waited for quiet. Nocev completed her circuit and rejoined Sarra at the back of the room.

  “Good morning, Elders. Councilors.” Miss exhaled heavily through her nose and squinted at the papers in her hand. “We have much to discuss. We will begin the day by hearing submissions from LawMiss Terlent, then WallMiss Hapev, then ProvisionMiss Curlev.” Miss gestured to Miss Terlent, a grandmotherly-looking woman, with a temper to strip a tree of its bark.

  Miss Terlent stood solemnly. She was the unofficial leader of the more traditional Tower Elders. “Thank you, TowerMiss.” Her gaze extended over the table and past Harient, out through the windows to fix on the WestBarracksWall. “The influx of pilgrims is slow but steady. Already, in the two months since we declared Pilgrimage, HopeWall’s cluster numbers have risen from under four thousand to over six thousand, and thousands more may yet arrive. Most come by themselves or with their daughters, but many have brought their families.

  “The law is unclear on our position in relation to the families we have summoned from their home Walls. Women are allowed to visit the four BarracksWalls, but none are allowed to claim residence there. However, there are already reports of weavers spending time with their husbands.” Miss Terlent’s lips tightened. “The BarracksSirs seem not to have noticed these visits.

  “We are a cluster of laws and rules, without which we would be nothing. The men are restricted from HopeWall itself for very good reason. We are exclusively, impeccably, a Wall run by and for women. Our novices, apprentices and, indeed, the newly-come or returned weavers, cannot be allowed to see the BarracksWalls as an extension of this Wall.

  “In allowing weavers to visit outside, HopeWall’s sanctity is unthreatened, obviously. But what happens when the initiates decide they also miss their friends? Or the novices?” She spread her hands, suggestively.

  “It’s horrible,” Nocev whispered in mock outrage. “What if everyone started acting normally?”

  “Your suggestion, Terlent?” said Miss Harient.

  “I understand the troubles that would ensue, were we to permanently separate families,” Miss Terlent said, smiling for the first time, “We must roster the marital visits, so as not to encourage the younger generations to believe we are unconcerned about their welfare.”

  “Oh, spare me, you old bag,” Nocev muttered.

  It would have been fun to see Nocev’s reaction to some of Terlent’s other sermons delivered over the last year.

  “What if initiates or novices wish to visit fathers or brothers?” said Miss Rhylent, a Tower Elder, pushing her thick spectacles back up her nose.

  Terlent’s lip trembled. “Their visits can be rostered when convenient for their studies and duties.”

  “Which duties would then take precedence?” said red-haired Miss Handas, a Wall Councilor. “Tower vibration duties or Wall custodial duties?”

  And so the meeting went on, with protocols outlined for how uncles and cousins were to be treated, how forages were to be chaperoned, what rights and privileges were accorded novices, initiates and weavers, according to their rank. What the laywomen, who were not under Tower control, were allowed and were not allowed.

  And then there was more discussion.

  Sarra’s calves began to ache. She leaned back on the stone wall.

  Eventually there was agreement. WallMiss Hapev rose from her seat at the opposite end of the table from Miss, near Sarra and Nocev. The WallMiss had unusually large hands and little humor. The WallMiss was director and spokeswoman for all women who could not weave vibrations within HopeWall, leader of the Wall Councilors, director of Wall maintenance, and the broker of barter with the neighboring clusters for forage guards and Tower-produced vibrations.

  Hapev spoke with abrupt certainty. “The two farms are not running at capacity. The FarmMistresses assure me both farms will reach peak productivity within two months, but by then we will run out of food. If we are to feed the projected total populations of seven thousand within Wall and Barracks, we will need to triple forage productivity. That includes trade and barter projections with our usual partners.”

  Sarra stifled a curse. The Elders all spoke at once.

  “Impossible: the training is a priority…”

  “… not enough weavers to accompany every…”

  “… could possibly include augmentation vibrations to align with the rate of vegetable growth and…”

  “A forage every fortnight?” Sarra said quietly. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “This would never happen in OremWall,” said Nocev.

  Miss Harient brought the meeting to order. “Thank you, everyone.” She waited for silence. “ProvisionMiss Curlev has been appraised of the situation. She has a proposal.”

  Miss Curlev was rake-thin and wrinkled. “Thank you TowerMiss. To accommodate the challenges of feeding all within HopeWall’s authority, as well as the instruction and mentoring roles assumed by weavers, I propose making each rank within the Tower remit directly answerable to the immediately superior rank on matters of learning.”

  Sarra could barely make sense of Curlev’s words.

  “Oh, Gods no,” she said, when she worked it out.

  “Ah, babysitting novices,” said Nocev. “I didn’t have to do that in OremWall either.”

  Novice training would cut into their time. Just because they were training learner weavers wouldn’t be any excuse for the misses to let the initiates out of their duties and chores.

  Gods, this was going to be a pain!

  Of course, Pilgrimage wasn’t supposed to be fun. The whole point of calling it was to fortify all the Walls in the Territories. Of course, she and Nocev would be busy. But teaching novices wasn’t the best use of anyone’s time, and HopeWall was as safe as anywhere could be in the Territories!

  Nocev made a growling noise, probably sharing Sarra’s thoughts.

  The following morning was typically cloudless, and the crickets typically deafening. Nocev and Sarra sat alone in one of the pavilions lining HopeWall’s empty middle area, known as the Commons. The pavilion had no walls, with six thick pillars supporting the roof.

  “The grumbling is for real this time, isn’t it? You hate being here,” Sarra said.

  Nocev studied the stone in her hand, absently turning it over and over. It was light green, with darker streaks within. “Being a novice was fun, Sarra, because it was different. I wouldn’t trade it. But going home after three years? I’d forgotten what freedom was. To dress how I wanted. To kiss a boy, or sleep in and not worry about dorm inspections?”

  “We don’t have inspections now we’re initiates,” Sarra said quickly.

  Nocev winced.

  Sarra replayed her words in her head and sucked in her breath through a grimace.

  “HopeWall isn’t all bad, Sarra. But I only came back because my mother wanted me apprenticed to Miss Harient. I was already an apprentice at my own cluster, and it was better. To not wear these clothes? To not have to treat men like they’re infected?” She took a breath. “The Elders strut like peacocks, the food is bad, the backstabbing’s worse and… all these pointless rules…”

  Sarra had always brushed off criticism of HopeWall as the excuses of the less talented. “You’ll not find vibrations like these anywhere,” Sarra said.

  “And that’s the only reason this place hasn’t fallen apart, Sarra. HopeWall manufactures complex vibration weaves cheaper than anywhere else. The Wall clusters near here have it so much easier than we do at OremWall because of all the trade here in north Humility Territory. But the trade-off is that HopeWall controls every Wall in eyeshot and stomps out new ideas everywhere it can.”

  “We don’t tell any Walls what to do.”

  “What happens to vibration barter costs if any Wall out here in the Wastes steps out of line, Sarra? The Elders do the exact same thing in the dorms, with electricity rations for
the bulbs. Remember the week after the pillow fight? Or the stinkbomb? Notice any patterns?”

  They were getting away from the point. “North Humility is the most productive area in all the Territories, Nocev. That’s because of HopeWall.”

  “And without HopeWall somewhere else would be the most productive.”

  “But not as productive as HopeWall! Your mother sent you to be a novice because of what you’d learn.”

  “You know what I learned as well as weaving when I was a novice? Rules, Sarra. Tons of glorious, time-wasting, Elder-flattering rules!” Nocev’s hands had taken on a life of their own, waving and chopping the air. “Half the things we do here are designed to show how wonderful the weavers are. But that weaver worship doesn’t exist outside HopeWall, Sarra.”

  “I know. I’ve visited OremWall before, Nocev. And —”

  “No one cares about weavers outside, Sarra! We live maybe twenty years longer than non-weavers, and that’s it. There aren’t any weavers outside who just do weaves, like here. Weavers forage, farm, weave cotton, and raise children just like anyone else. We aren’t bloody royals and we never will be.”

  Nocev was right. The Tower Elders considered themselves second only to the Gods and Polis Sumad. Ironic, considering how the Cenephan refugees were spat on by native Sumadans when they tried stepping over the border. But if HopeWall had its problems, it wasn’t without benefits.

  “You can’t get training or weaves anywhere else like this in the Territories, Nocev. HopeWall exists because it’s needed.”

  Nocev licked her lips. “What if there was another weaving academy, Sarra?”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll be eighteen soon enough. Has Miss talked to you about leaving the Wall?”

  “No. I mean, I think she wants me to stay.”