The Silent Years [The Complete Collection]

by Jennifer R. Povey

  She pulled it out, making sure to step against the wall by the door, so anyone looking through it or under it would see nothing.

  It was a folded piece of paper.

  "I know you don't trust me right now. I don't trust me right now. But we're going to get you out. Take his offer."

  It wasn't signed, but presumably came from Tom himself. Who else would assume she wouldn't trust him?

  Now, this could be a way to make sure she chose exile so she could be quietly killed or otherwise taken out of the picture. Left for the Silents, maybe. Or, she thought with a sudden shudder, they could cut her tongue out and then she would be mistaken as a Silent. She hoped she had a nastier mind than her enemies.

  Helen didn't think they would kill her by deceit, though. There was no reason to. She knew they could readily get away with the traditional "killed while trying to escape." Everyone would know, but nobody would ever really know for sure. They'd do it in her prison cell if that’s the route they were going to take.

  Maybe they couldn't actually bring themselves to kill a woman. Sometimes men like that had a twisted gallantry. Sometimes, they would protect a woman from everyone else while beating her themselves. After all, she was their property, to do with as they wished. Some of these people beat dogs, too. She hoped they weren't beating the horses.

  She half hoped there was a major incursion and these men had to let the women help. Not that she wanted anyone else hurt or killed, just for them to be taught a lesson that they could not just be the strong protectors and that it was always best to let everyone help in defense.

  Of course, maybe they had a point on population growth. Keep the women constantly pregnant... Except then, more of the women would die. Did they care? Probably not.

  When somebody came to feed her, Helen risked talking to him. "Hey."

  "I'm not supposed to talk to you."

  "Could I have a copy of your laws?" A request that was not just harmless, but might even lead them to think she was coming around or at least making an effort to understand.

  He grunted, but about ten minutes later, he came back with a small book. It was a hardback notebook, such as they used to sell kids to make class notes in. The cover was patterned in feathers.

  At least reading it would give her something to do.

  -#-

  "No man is to allow his daughter to remain unwed after her seventeenth year. Should he do so, then the council will find a husband for her." For sons, Helen noticed the limit was twenty-five. It was an older pattern from a time when it was normal for girls to wed older men. What was normal anyway? What you were used to.

  Women were not permitted weapons or to go beyond the inner perimeter without a male escort. There was no provision for divorce for either gender, and she rather suspected male adultery was tolerated and female adultery resulted in murders without conviction. A man might take a second wife if his first marriage had lasted five years without children.

  Had they already forgotten it was the man who was sterile more than half of the time? Adding a second woman to the marriage was likely just removing another fertile woman from circulation. Then again, bringing in a second man would ruin the first’s machismo.

  She'd bet they'd hate being accused of lacking virility. One more thing occured to her to worry about. The invaders were all white - not surprising given there was a tendency for the races to segregate now. Would Eamon and his family be treated all right? No, nobody was going to be treated all right.

  Would they be treated worse? Quite probably, she thought with more than a little sadness. That was too often the way of things. Hopefully, Eamonn would have the sense to leave before anything could happen. He'd considered doing so before, but had always decided to stay.

  If he could get away. Easton had made it clear he didn't want anyone leaving. Would anyone who tried be shot?

  She read another paragraph, almost at random. "Children belong with their mother, for that is the stronger bond, unless she is found to have done something to cause them harm."

  Interesting. Not entirely a man's paradise after all, then. No father's rights here. Or was it a way to tie the woman down to the children?

  She understood it after a moment. They thought — genuinely believed — they were returning to the natural pattern of primitive humanity. If that was true, then it would be more stable than an equal society.

  Natural was not always good. Natural was women and infants dying in childbirth.

  She flipped to another page, but this one was about treating livestock properly. Women, livestock, it was the same difference as far as she could tell. The book was a tidy description of how to run a community. Despite the prejudice and misogyny written into it, it was more organized than she had been in Bruceton Mills. Of course, dictators did get the trains to run on time. A little disorder was a small price to pay for freedom.

  Finally, Helen put down the book and tried to sleep, but only managed some fitful napping. The light was still on.

  Thus silent hours passed. Helen had no clue whether it was day or night. They might be trying to deliberately confuse her. It was equally possible that they had forgotten to turn the light off. At one point she got up and hunted for a switch again, even though she was sure she remembered there wasn't one in the storeroom. She tried to reach the bulb to unscrew it, but it was just too high and they had not left anything she could stand on.

  She was desperate for sleep, but equally desperate for knowledge and understanding. She needed to know what was going on outside. Nobody was going to tell her. She hoped at the very least some had got away to warn other communities.

  She could do that if they exiled her, except that they did not allow women weapons. Would they release her without any way to defend herself from the Silents? Maybe that was the fate Tom had in mind for her after all. If she chose imprisonment, she would live a while at their pleasure. She would also be completely helpless. They would be able to kill her, and they wouldn't need to tell anyone.

  Was he trying to save her or doom her? She could not tell.

  Chapter Eight

  Three days later, Helen stood blinking in the daylight by the gallows; the invaders had seen no reason to take them down.

  She shook her head. There was a tribunal of three men facing her. One of them, who's name she didn't know, listed her crimes. A show trial. They'd pretended to discuss for an hour while she stood there, exposed. Nobody tried to save her. Nobody dared.

  It was Easton himself who pronounced sentence. "For behavior akin to that of a woman of the time before, for breaking the natural laws of man as they did, and for being a disruption of the peace of the settlement, Helen Locke is hereby sentenced to perpetual exile."

  She stared into the crowd; everyone was tense, and there were a few faces missing. Eamon and his wife were not there. Some people had managed to keep their children away, at least. "Can I address the people?" Helen asked.

  "Most certainly not," Easton snapped. "Take her."

  Tom Milkins and another man stepped forward. They put her on a horse, but did not give her the reins. Apparently, this was to be a death sentence...no weapons and no supplies. She did not have even the means to seek a decent ending for herself. Tom and his companion were armed.

  Well, it was better than being locked in that room. She did not have much of a chance out here, but she had a small one.

  Tom and his friend took her out on the road. They had control of her horse, for what it was worth. Finally, they were out of earshot.

  They had not gone so far as to tie her hands to the saddle horn. "Back on the winning side, Tom?"

  She could at least make them wish they had gagged her.

  "Hush a few more," was all he said. He seemed to have more confidence now, quite a bit less weasel-like. Back in his own world and element.

  But around the next corner, he stopped. "Okay. Seems we pulled that part off." He offered her a pistol. "Please don't use it on me."

  She took it, aimed it at him
for a moment, then let it fall to the side. He flinched. "Give me a good reason not to?"

  "The fact that I just saved your life. Helen, this is Kirk. He's been tired of how Charles acts for quite some time."

  "And," the thus-named Kirk said, "I know the truth about his house of cards."

  "House of..."

  "Those laws mean nothing. These men are bandits trying to create a country, but there's nothing behind them. Most of them have been thrown out of their various settlements for either being too harsh on women—rape, that kind of thing—or just generally troublemakers. Even the coolemees don't want them. Charles' little right hand man shoots black people for fun."

  "Eamonn and Latisha..."

  "That's where we're going," Tom said, handing her the reins. "We got them out before anything could happen, and a couple others that we thought were in real danger.

  "And what did you get thrown out for?"

  He looked away, then: "Horse rustling."

  She laughed. She could not help it. "So, what, you're nothing but a lousy thief who fell in with these guys 'cause nobody else would have him and used the first opportunity to quit."

  "Oh, I liked them for a while. I really did come here to spy on you. Then I realized I had a chance..."

  "And blew it by panicking when they showed up."

  He did not deny it, but rather nudged the horse forward along the road. It was the northern road, winding a little. The hooves echoed on the solid parts of the hardtop. In some places, it was more crack than surface.

  The Romans had built better roads, Helen thought wryly. She began to relax. She could not get away, even with a gun. Whichever one she did not shoot would take her out. She was no longer sure she needed to, though. She could kick the horse in the ribs and try to run. Did she trust Milkins? Of course not. A horse thief, a spy, and a defector? But she had a better chance with him than alone.

  She'd sooner trust Charles Easton, who had smiled as he spoke a sentence that was death, without guilt for them. He had smiled the same way in the time before when he had tried to cop a feel with his wife right there.

  She could trust nobody but herself right now. The horses sped up to an easy, ground-covering trot. Her back was jarred, but she was forced to tolerate it. The one thing she would not do was show weakness. "Won't they be expecting you back? And what happened to John Mark?"

  "They think we're riding the perimeter. We won't be gone that long...and I'm afraid Mark's dead. In the first battle."

  Mark was dead? He'd known her so long. They had been, if not friends, at least trusted colleagues. She did not have time for grief now, though, so she locked it away inside herself. Later, she would mourn.

  "Be careful." If Charles suspected them, then surely he would send decent trackers to follow this route. It would be even easier to track them now that they had turned off the road and down what might have been a deer trail. It was so overgrown she had to duck close to the horse's neck more than once to avoid low branches and trailing vines that kept threatening to strangle her. One piece ended up in her hair. She did not bother brushing it out, suspecting it would only be replaced quickly if she tried.

  They reined into a walk, and there was silence. Then, a human voice rang through the trees.

  It was Eamon. Never had a sound been so good to her. All Helen could manage was to slip down off her horse, step forward and...stare at him.

  There were no more words.

  -#-

  They had set up a sort of half tent over the walls of what had been a small house. It had probably been quite a nice place once, but it made her feel completely naked all the way out here. She was used to having more than the three armed adults - no, five, counting Eamon and Latisha. But five of them and two children too young to be trusted with guns. It would not take a major incursion to kill them.

  Going back to Bruceton, though, was a death sentence. "Perhaps we should go on, find a safe place for the kids."

  "We're working on getting them to safety," Eamon said. "And perhaps we should, but the bad guys are more vulnerable than we thought."

  "We can't take them. Not when everyone back there thinks they're under the thumb of a new country, or at least the beginnings of one. Not when they have all the guns and have disarmed most of our best fighters."

  "Never been on the bottom, have you?"

  She shook her head. "I guess not." She hadn't. Middle class family, good university, career. She remembered Easton's words: a belief that women out of their place had caused the disaster. No, it was idiots who thought they could turn a wild thing into a weapon, who thought they could domesticate a virus.

  "Then you don't know how to fight back. I do." He regarded her, his face weathered by work more than by age.

  Helen hardly looked young herself. "I still think we need more people."

  "We do. But it's proving hard to get them out. This guy's no fool. He's taken all the kids and put them in some kind of barracks. Who the heck is going to leave their kids? He says it's for ‘education.’ Really, it’s retraining."

  "So he can turn them against their parents? Got it."

  "Funny thing is: there seem to be more kids than there should."

  No. She chased the thought away, but it came back, pushing through her mind. "Wildlings. They were catching wildlings."

  She could not use those kids in some kind of plan. That would not be right, even if they were wildlings. Even if they were as tough as they claimed to be. They were still...

  "Wildlings..." Eamon tailed off. "One day, we'll have to do something about them."

  "Maybe. Maybe not. Hasn't humanity been split into the farmers and the nomads before?" She did wonder if the wildlings would not simply grow up and develop their own society. Some of them were old enough to start breeding. They would be the gypsies of the new world.

  "Point. But they do steal sometimes."

  "The point is moot for now. We have our immediate problem." She felt herself slipping back into leader mode. It was easy to be in charge. "Do we have any other guns we can count on?"

  "Not yet."

  "And none of us..." She sighed. "There's only one person who can do it. I'm too recognizable, and you stand out like a sore thumb."

  "Do what?"

  "Get guns to the women and maybe even some of those kids."

  Eamon frowned, then nodded. "Tom could do it, if we can get hold of the guns. And some of the wildlings would probably prefer bows."

  She had not thought of that. "Got it. But we'd have to trust Tom Milkins, and I think we know at this point he's only on one side." She did not feel she needed to say more.

  "That may not be such a bad thing. We know what he's like, maybe..." He sighed. "What do I know?"

  "A lot more than I thought you did. I should get you on the council." She meant it.

  He laughed shortly. "Your whites only club?"

  "You're the only black in town. I don't fully grasp why you stay."

  "Because the kids like it here," he admitted. "Who am I to argue with my own children?"

  She considered that. "Never having had any, I don't know."

  "It's a shame. You've missed out."

  -#-

  Tom showed up alone the next day, looking distinctly unhappy. "Charles is already going too far."

  "With the kids, or something else?"

  "Oh, he's brainwashing the kids, or trying to. I don't think he's got very far yet, and I don't think he's going to." That thought seemed to cheer him up. "I'm talking about the three women he's had publicly beaten so far. If the husband won't do it, one of his cronies will. He seems to think now he's got more people..."

  "I doubt he had many women with him before."

  "A couple. I think he's starting to buy into his own crap."

  "People like him usually do. People start saying these things for power, and end up drinking their own Kool-Aid." "Yeah. So what the heck do we do?"

  "Get guns to the women and the wildlings somehow."

  "The wi
ldlings? Some of those kids are wildlings?"

  Tom, you missed the memo, she thought. Out loud, she said, "Yeah. They'll fight, as little as I want to ask them to."

  "I don't trust wildlings, but you're right. They'll fight...then take off."

  "Rich of you to say that."

  He blushed quite a bit.

  "Wildlings have never given us any trouble. All they want is to live the way they're choosing to live. I can respect that."

  "They're just gangs."

  "I'm not sure of that. We have some kids who've left them and joined us, and the wildlings have never tried to reclaim the kids." Some of the kids talked about the romance of running away with the wildlings. "Give it a generation and they'll be putting up sideshows for us." Or not. Who knew what culture they would develop? Who knew if they would have anything to do with other folks?

  Tom laughed. "Some of them probably had parents who did. I suppose you're right."

  She glared at him, not liking the "blood will tell" implications of his speech.

  "I don't care if they run off with a gun or two as long as they help us on their way out. I think they will." What had happened to Irene? She did not know, but she did care. The kid was probably in that barracks, planning something.

  Tom nodded. "And arming the women makes sense, but we're going to need to find the weapons."

  "Why not just take some of theirs?" That would be a two-pronged attack. Helen regarded Tom evenly. "You must have access."

  "Not directly. It's too risky for me to try."

  "You want us to trust you, then start walking your talk. Start taking some risks for something, stand up for something in your life, dammit." There was something about him, standing there, smug as they came, that made her want to scream and yell at him. Men, she thought to herself. Men who had...

  ...no more clue how to be on the bottom than she did. That thought got her back under some control. She no longer quite wanted to strangle him, just beat him up a little.

  "Like you have, Mayor Locke? You've built yourself a nice, cushy life, and now it's been taken away from you. Were you ever anything but a tin pot dictator?"