Chaos Walking

by Patrick Ness

  “Mistress Coyle’s old house of healing,” I say. “That’s what Viola said. Mistress Coyle and the people from the scout ship will meet you there at dawn.”

  “Not exactly neutral, is it?” the Mayor says. “Clever, though.”

  He looks thoughtful for a second, glancing back down to the reports on his lap from Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare about how bad things are.

  They’re pretty bad.

  The square is a wreck. Half the tents were washed away by the water from the tank. Fortunately, mine was far enough back and Angharrad was safe, too, but the rest is a soggy mess. One wall of the foodstore collapsed cuz of the water, and the Mayor’s got men over there now, picking thru the leavings, seeing just how soon the end’s gonna come.

  “They’ve really done a number on us, Todd,” the Mayor says, frowning at the papers. “With one action, they’ve cut our water stores by ninety-five percent. At the most reduced rations, that’s just four days, with almost six weeks to go until the ships arrive.”

  “What about food?”

  “We’ve had a bit of luck there,” he says, holding out a report to me. “See for yourself.”

  I stare at the papers in his hand. I can see the squiggles of Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare’s handwriting skittering in blips and blobs across the page like the black micro-rats we used to get in the barn back at the farm, twisting and turning so fast when you lifted up a board it was hard to see a single one of ’em. I look at the pages and I wonder how the hell anyone can read anything when letters look like such different things in different places and are somehow still the same thing–

  “I’m sorry, Todd,” the Mayor says, lowering the papers. “I forgot.”

  I turn back to Angharrad, not believing the Mayor forgets nothing.

  “You know,” he says, and his voice ain’t unkind. “I could teach you how to read.”

  And there are the words, the words that make me burn even hotter, with embarrassment and shame and an anger that makes me wanna tear someone’s head right off–

  “It may be easier than you think,” he says. “I’ve been working on ways to use Noise to learn and–

  “What, in return for saving yer life?” I say, loud. “Don’t like being in my debt, is that it?”

  “I think we may be even on that score, Todd. Besides, it’s nothing to be ashamed of–”

  “Just shut up, okay?”

  He looks at me for a long moment. “Okay,” he finally says, gently. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Tell Viola I’ll meet them as they wish.” He stands. “And furthermore, that I’ll come accompanied only by yourself.”

  {VIOLA}

  “That sounds suspicious,” I say into the comm.

  “I know,” Todd says. “I thought he’d try to argue, but he agreed to everything.”

  “Mistress Coyle said all along he’d come to her. I guess she was right.”

  “Why don’t I feel too great that she is?”

  I laugh a little, which sets me coughing.

  “You okay?” Todd asks.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say quickly. “It’s Lee I’m worried about.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Stable but still bad. Mistress Lawson only brings him out of sedation to feed him.”

  “Jeez,” Todd says. “Tell him I said hey.” I see him look over to his right. “Yeah, just a damn minute!” He looks back at me. “I gotta go. The Mayor wants to talk about tomorrow.”

  “I’m sure Mistress Coyle will, too,” I say. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He smiles shyly. “It’ll be good to see you. In person, I mean. It’s been too long. Way too long.”

  I say goodbye and we click off.

  Lee’s in the bed next to me, sound asleep. Mistress Lawson sits in the corner, checking his condition on the ship’s monitors every five minutes. She’s also checking on me, trying out Mistress Coyle’s timed treatments for the infection in my arm, which now seems to be moving into my lungs.

  Fatal, Mistress Coyle said the infection was.

  Fatal.

  If she was telling the truth, if she wasn’t exaggerating to force me to help her.

  And that’s why I think I haven’t told Todd how sick I am. Because if he got upset about it, which he would, I’d have to start thinking it might all be true–

  Mistress Coyle comes in. “How are you feeling, my girl?”

  “Better,” I lie.

  She nods and moves over to check on Lee. “Have you heard back from them?”

  “The Mayor’s agreed to everything,” I say, coughing again. “And he’s going to come on his own. Just him and Todd.”

  Mistress Coyle laughs in an unamused way. “The arrogance of the man. So certain we won’t harm him he’s making a show of it.”

  “I said we’d do the same. Just you, me, Simone and Bradley. We’ll lock up the ship and ride down there.”

  “An excellent plan, my girl,” she says, checking the monitors. “With some armed women from the Answer just out of sight, of course.”

  I frown. “So we’re not even going to start out with good intentions?”

  “When will you ever learn?” she says. “Good intentions mean nothing if they’re not backed up with strength.”

  “That’s the way to endless war.”

  “Maybe,” she says. “But it’s also the only path to peace.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I say.

  “And you keep on not believing it,” she says. “Who knows? You might just win the day.” She makes to leave. “Until tomorrow, my girl.”

  And in her voice I can tell how much she’s looking forward to it.

  The day the Mayor comes to her.

  [TODD]

  The Mayor and I ride down the road towards the house of healing in the cold darkness before dawn, passing the trees and buildings I used to see every day when I rode to the monastery with Davy.

  It’s the first time I’ve ridden here without him.

  Boy colt, Angharrad thinks and I see Acorn in her Noise, Acorn that Davy always rode and tried to call Deadfall, Acorn who Viola now rides and who’ll probably be there today, too.

  But Davy won’t. Davy won’t never be nowhere again.

  “You’re thinking about my son,” the Mayor says.

  “You shut up about him,” I say, almost by reflex. And then I say, “How can you still read me? No one else can.”

  “I’m hardly just anyone else, Todd.”

  You can say that again, I think, to see if he hears it.

  “But you’re quite right,” he says, pulling Juliet’s Joy by the reins. “You’ve done exceptionally well. You’ve picked it up far faster than any of my captains did. Who knows what you’ll ultimately be capable of?”

  And he gives me a grin that’s almost proud.

  The sun ain’t yet risen down at the end of the road in the direkshun we’re headed, just a vague pinkness in the sky. The Mayor insisted we get there first, insisted we be the ones waiting for ’em when they showed up.

  Me and him and the company of men following us.

  We reach the two barns that mark the turning to the house of healing and head down it towards the empty river. The sky is still mostly dark as we come round a bend and see it.

  It ain’t what we expected. Instead of a house of healing where we could go inside and have our meeting, it’s just a charred wooden frame, its roof missing and burnt debris strewn across the front lawn. At first I think the Spackle musta burnt it down, but then I remember the Answer blew up everything as it marched on the town, even its own buildings. It musta helped that the Mayor had turned it into a jail and not a place where you’d ever really want to be healed any more.

  The other thing that ain’t expected is that they’re already here, waiting for us on the drive. Viola’s on Acorn, off to one side of an ox-pulled cart with a dark-skinned man and a solid-looking woman who can only be Mistress Coyle. The Mayor wasn’t the only one who wanted to get here first.

  I feel him b
ristle beside me but he hides it fast as we stop, facing them. “Good morning,” he says. “Viola, I know, and of course the famous Mistress Coyle, but I don’t believe I have the pleasure of the gentleman’s acquaintance.”

  “We’ve got armed women in the trees,” Viola says before she even says hello.

  “Viola!” says Mistress Coyle.

  “We’ve got fifty men down the road,” I say. “He says we’re sposed to say it’s for proteckshun against the Spackle.”

  Viola nods at Mistress Coyle. “She just said we were supposed to lie.”

  “Which would be difficult,” the Mayor says, “because I can see them clearly in the gentleman’s Noise, to whom, I repeat, I have not been introduced.”

  “Bradley Tench,” the man says.

  “President David Prentiss,” the Mayor says. “At your service.”

  “And you can only be Todd,” Mistress Coyle says.

  “And you can only be the one who tried to kill me and Viola,” I say, holding her gaze.

  She just smiles back. “I don’t think I’m the only person here this morning guilty of that.”

  She’s smaller than I expected. Or maybe I’m just bigger. After all Viola said she’s done, leading armies, blowing up half the city, putting herself in place to be the next leader of the town, I expected a giant. She’s stocky, sure, like a lotta people on this planet, it’s how you look if you have to work for a living. But then there’s her eyes and they look at you and don’t brook no arguments, don’t look like they ever doubt themselves, even when they should. Maybe they’re the eyes of a giant after all.

  I ride Angharrad over to Acorn so I can properly greet Viola, already feeling that warm rush I get whenever I see her but also seeing how sick she’s looking, how pale and–

  She’s looking back at me, puzzled, her head tilted.

  And I realize she’s trying to read me.

  And she can’t.

  {VIOLA}

  I stare at Todd. Looking at him and looking at him.

  And not hearing him.

  At all.

  I thought it was just horrors from the war, traumatizing him, shocking him into blurriness, but this is different. This is nearly silence.

  This is like the Mayor.

  “Viola?” he whispers.

  “I understood there was to be fourth member of your party?” the Mayor asks.

  “Simone decided to stay with the ship,” Bradley says, and even though I’m not taking my eyes off Todd, I can hear his Noise is full of Ivan and the others, who threatened outright violence if we left them unable to protect themselves. Simone finally had to agree to stay behind. Bradley’s the one who should have, of course, his Noise blaring out every second, but the hilltop folk, led by Ivan, weren’t going to stand being protected by the Humanitarian.

  “Most unfortunate,” the Mayor says. “The townsfolk are obviously hungering for strong leadership.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” Bradley says.

  “And so here we are,” the Mayor says. “At a meeting that will set the course for this world.”

  “Here we are,” Mistress Coyle agrees, “so let’s get started, shall we?”

  And then she speaks and her words are enough to even make me stop looking at Todd.

  “You are a criminal and a murderer,” she says to the Mayor, her voice calm as a stone. “You committed a geno­cide of the Spackle that brought this war on us. You imprisoned, enslaved and then permanently marked every woman you could get your hands on. You have proven power­less to stop the Spackle attacks which have cost you half your army, and it can only be a matter of time before they rise up against your leadership and decide instead to rally around the superior firepower of the scout ship, at the very least to survive the remaining weeks until the convoy of settlers arrives.”

  She smiles through this whole speech, despite how Bradley and I are looking at her, how Todd is looking at her–

  But then I see the Mayor’s smiling, too.

  “So, why, exactly,” Mistress Coyle says, “shouldn’t we just sit back and let you self-destruct?”

  [TODD]

  “You,” the Mayor says back to Mistress Coyle, after a long, silent minute, “are a criminal and a terrorist. Rather than work with me to make New Prentisstown a welcoming para­dise for the incoming settlers, you instead tried to blow it up, deciding you would rather see it destroyed than let it be something you didn’t choose yourself. You killed soldiers and innocent townsfolk, including an attempt on the life of young Viola here, seeking only to overthrow me so you could set yourself up as unchallenged ruler of some new Coyleville.” He nods at Bradley. “The scout ship crew are clearly only supporting you reluctantly, after you no doubt manipulated Viola into firing that missile. And how many weapons do they have after all? Enough to defeat a hundred thousand, a million Spackle who will come in wave after wave until all of us are dead? You, Mistress, have as much to answer for as I do.”

  And he and Mistress Coyle are still smiling at each other.

  Bradley sighs loudly. “Well, gosh, that was fun. Can we now please get on with the reasons why we’re here?”

  “And what might those exact reasons be?” the Mayor asks him, sounding like he’s talking to a child.

  “How about the avoidance of complete annihilation?” Bradley says. “How about creating a planet that has room enough for everyone, including the two of you? The convoy’s now forty days away, so how about a peaceful world for them to land in? Each of us has power. Mistress Coyle has a dedicated group behind her, though smaller and less well-equipped than your army. Our position is more easily defended than yours, but it lacks room to support a popu­lation that grows more restive by the day. Meanwhile, you’re subject to attacks you can’t combat–”

  “Yes,” the Mayor interrupts, “the military wisdom of combining our forces is obvious–”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Bradley says, and his voice gets hotter, his Noise, too, rawer and more awkward than anyone I’ve ever seen, but buzzing with a sense of how right he is, how sure he is that he’s doing the right thing, and how much muscle he’s got to back it up.

  I’m finding I kinda like him.

  “I’m not talking about military combinations at all,” he says. “I’m saying that I’ve got the missiles, I’ve got the bombs, and I say right now that I will happily leave you to your little conflict if you don’t agree with me that what we’re going to discuss here is a way to combine our strength to end this war, not win it.”

  And for the slightest of seconds, the Mayor ain’t smiling.

  “It should be easy,” Viola says, coughing. “We have water, you have food. We exchange what we have for what we need. We show the Spackle we’re united, that we aren’t going anywhere, and that we want peace.”

  But all I’m seeing as she says it is how much she’s shivering in the cold.

  “Agreed,” Mistress Coyle says, sounding pleased with how things have gone so far. “Then as a first point of negotiation, perhaps the President would be so kind as to tell us how to reverse the effects of the bands, which, as I’m sure was his intention all along, are now killing every woman who wears one.”

  {VIOLA}

  “WHAT?” Todd shouts.

  “I have no idea what she’s talking about,” the Mayor says quickly but Todd’s face is already a storm.

  “It’s only a theory,” I say. “They haven’t proved anything.”

  “And you’re feeling just fine, are you?” Mistress Coyle says.

  “No, but I’m not dying.”

  “That’s because you’re young and strong,” Mistress Coyle says. “Not every woman is so lucky.”

  “The bands are from a regular cattle stock you had in Haven,” the Mayor says. “If you’re saying I modified them to kill the women who were banded, then you are sorely mistaken and I take great offence–”

  “Don’t you get high and mighty with me,” Mistress Coyle says. “You killed every woman
in old Prentisstown–”

  “The women of old Prentisstown committed suicide,” the Mayor says, “because they were losing a war they started.”

  “What?” Todd says again, whirling around to look at the Mayor, and I realize this is the first time he’s heard the Mayor’s version of events.

  “I’m sorry, Todd,” the Mayor says. “But I did tell you what you knew was untrue–”

  “Ben told us what happened!” Todd yells. “Don’t you try to worm yer way out of it now! I ain’t forgot nothing about what kinda man you are and if you hurt Viola–”

  “I did not hurt Viola,” the Mayor says strongly. “I haven’t intentionally hurt any woman. You’ll remember I only started the bands after Mistress Coyle’s terrorist attacks began, after she started killing innocent townsfolk, after we needed to keep track of those who were attacking us. If anyone’s to blame for the necessity of ID bracelets–”

  “ID bracelets?” Mistress Coyle shouts.

  “–then point the finger at her. If I’d wanted to kill the women, which I did not, I could have done so in the first moment the army entered the town, but that is not what I wanted then and that is not what I want now!”

  “Nevertheless,” Mistress Coyle says. “I’m the best healer on this planet, and I’m unable to heal the infection. Does that seem likely to you?”

  “Fine,” the Mayor says, staring at her hard. “Our first agreement then. You have full and open access to all the information I have on the bands and on how we’re treating the women in town who are affected, though they are, I must say, not in anywhere near as perilous a state as you’ve suggested.”

  I look at Todd, but he obviously doesn’t know how true any of this is. I can hear a little bit of his Noise now, mostly worry and some feeling about me, but still nothing clear, still nothing like he used to have.

  It’s almost like the Todd I know isn’t here at all.

  [TODD]

  “Are you sure yer okay?” I ask Viola, riding up close to her, ignoring the others as they keep on talking. “Are you sure?”