by Patrick Ness
“When you sit there quietly,” he says. “I know you’re reading me.”
“Sorry,” I say, looking away and coughing some more. “I’m just worried. This has to work.”
“You gotta stop thinking you’re responsible,” he says. “You were protecting Todd, that’s all. If it had taken starting a war to save my mum and sister, I wouldn’t have hesitated.”
“But you can’t make war personal,” I say, “or you’ll never make the right decisions.”
“And if you didn’t make personal decisions, you wouldn’t be a person. All war is personal somehow, isn’t it? For somebody? Except it’s usually hate.”
“Lee–”
“I’m just saying how lucky he is to have someone love him so much they’d take on the whole world.” His Noise is uncomfortable, wondering what I’m looking like, how I’m responding. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“He’d do it for me,” I say quietly.
I’d do it for you, too, Lee’s Noise says.
And I know he would.
But those people who die because we do it, don’t they have people who’d kill for them?
So who’s right?
I put my head in my hands. It feels really heavy. Every day, Mistress Coyle tries new approaches to the infection, and every day I feel better for a while but then it comes back a little bit worse.
Fatal, I think.
And still weeks until the convoy gets here, if they can help at all–
There’s a sudden crackle over the comm system of the ship that makes us jump. “They’ve done it,” Bradley’s voice says, sounding surprised.
I look up. “Done what?”
“They’ve got one,” Bradley says. “To the north.”
“But,” I say, looking from screen to screen, “it’s too early. There wasn’t–”
“It wasn’t Simone.” Bradley’s voice is as confused as I am. “It was Prentiss. He captured a Spackle before we even set the plan in motion.”
[TODD]
“Mistress Coyle’s gonna be fuming,” I say, as the Mayor keeps shaking hands with soldiers who come up to congratulate him.
“I find myself strangely calm about that prospect, Todd,” he says, taking in his victory.
Cuz it turns out there was still that squadron of soldiers to the north, wasn’t there? Twiddling their thumbs, being laughed at by Spackle who snuck by ’em on a regular basis to attack the town.
Mistress Coyle forgot about ’em. So did Bradley and Simone. So did I.
The Mayor didn’t.
He watched tonight’s big plan being made over the comm by Simone and agreed on the time and place where Mistress Braithwaite could plant her decoy bombs. And then when the Spackle figured out that one part of the valley on the northern road was vulnerable to attack cuz we were busy pretending we weren’t watching the south, just like we wanted ’em to think, they sent forward a small group sneaking past our soldiers like usual, like they’ve done a dozen times before–
Except this time, they didn’t find us so agreeable.
The Mayor moved his men to exactly the right place and they surged round in a flanking movement, cutting off the Spackle’s route and mowing most of ’em down with gunfire before anyone knew what was going on.
All but two of the Spackle were killed and those two got marched thru town not twenty minutes later to a ROAR from the watching army. Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare took ’em to the horse stables behind the cathedral to wait while the Mayor finishes getting the congratulayshuns of all of New Prentisstown. I take the long, slow walk thru the crowds with him, handshakes and cheering and backslapping everywhere.
“You coulda told me,” I say, raising my voice above the clamour.
“You’re right, Todd,” he says, stopping to look at me for a minute as the people keep swarming round us. “I should have, I apologize. Next time, I will.”
And to my surprise, it sounds like he means it.
We keep on thru the crowds and eventually we make it round to the stables.
Where a couple of really angry mistresses wait.
“I demand you let us in there!” Mistress Nadari says and Mistress Lawson beside her harrumphs in agreement.
“Safety first, ladies,” the Mayor smiles at them. “We have no idea how dangerous a captured Spackle might be.”
“Now,” Mistress Nadari says.
But the Mayor’s still smiling.
And he’s followed by a whole city of smiling soldiers.
“I’ll just make sure the situation is safe before I do that, shall I?” he says, stepping to one side of the mistresses, who are then held back by a line of soldiers as the Mayor goes inside. I follow him in.
And my stomach grabs itself into a tight fist.
Cuz inside are the two Spackle, tied to chairs, their arms bound behind ’em in a way I know only too well.
(but neither are 1017 and I don’t know if I’m relieved or upset–)
One of ’em’s got red blood all over his naked white skin, the lichen he was wearing torn off and thrown to the ground. His head’s up, tho, his eyes wide open, and I’m damned if his Noise don’t show all kinds of pictures of us paying for what we’ve done–
But the Spackle next to him–
The Spackle next to him don’t look too much like a Spackle no more.
I’m ready to start yelling but, “What the hell is this?” the Mayor shouts first, surprising me.
Surprising the men, too.
“Askings, sir,” Mr O’Hare says, his hands and fists bloody. “We’ve learned quite a lot in a very short time.” He gestures at the broken-looking Spackle. “Before this one unfortunately succumbed to injuries sustained during–”
There’s a whooshing sound I ain’t heard in a while, a slap, a punch, a bullet of Noise from the Mayor, and Mr O’Hare’s head snaps back and he falls to the floor, quivering like he’s in spasm.
“We’re meant to be after peace here!” the Mayor shouts at the other men, who look back in sheeplike astonishment. “I did not authorize torture.”
Mr Tate clears his throat. “This one has proven tougher under interrogation,” he says, pointing at the one still alive. “He’s a very hardy specimen.”
“Lucky for you, Captain,” the Mayor says, his voice still hot.
“I’ll let the mistresses in,” I say. “They can treat him.”
“No, you won’t,” the Mayor says, “because we’re letting him go.”
“What?”
“What?” says Mr Tate.
The Mayor walks behind the Spackle. “We were to capture a Spackle and let him go back with the news that we want peace.” He takes out his knife. “And so that is what we will do.”
“Mr President–”
“Open the back door, please,” the Mayor says.
Mr Tate pulls up. “The back door?”
“With despatch, Captain.”
Mr Tate goes and opens the back door of the stables, the one that leads away from the square–
Away from the mistresses.
“Hey!” I say. “You can’t do that. You made an agreement–”
“Which I’m keeping, Todd.” He leans down so his mouth is next to the Spackle’s ear. “I assume the voice can speak our language?”
And I think, The voice?
But already there’s a low flurry of Noise back and forth from the Mayor to the Spackle, something deep and black and hard flowing twixt ’em so fast no one in the room can follow it.
“What are you saying?” I say, stepping forward. “What are you telling him?”
The Mayor looks back up at me. “I’m telling him how desperately we want peace, Todd.” He cocks his head. “Don’t you trust me?”
I swallow.
I swallow again.
I know the Mayor wants peace to get the credit for it.
I know he’s been better since I saved him after the water tank.
I also know he ain’t redeemed.
I know he ain’t redeema
ble.
(ain’t he?)
But he’s been acting like it.
“You’re more than welcome to tell him, too,” he says.
He keeps his eyes on me and makes a flick of his knife. The Spackle lurches forward in surprise, his arms suddenly free. He looks round for a minute, wondering what’s coming, till his eyes fall on mine–
And in an instant, I try to make my Noise heavy, try to make it loud, and it hurts, like a muscle I ain’t used in too long, but I try to hit him hard with everything that’s true about what we really want, whatever the Mayor mighta said, that me and Viola, we do want peace, that we want this all to be over and–
The Spackle stops me with a hiss–
I see myself in his Noise–
And I hear–
Recognishun?
And words–
Words in my language–
I hear–
The Knife.
“The Knife?” I say.
But the Spackle just hisses again and breaks for the door, running away and away and away–
Taking who knows what message back to his people.
{VIOLA}
“The nerve of it,” Mistress Coyle says through clenched teeth. “And how the army was frothing around him. Just like the worst days of when he ran the town.”
“I wish I could have at least had the chance to speak to the Spackle,” Simone says, back after an angry cart-ride through town with the other mistresses. “Tell them all humans aren’t alike.”
“Todd said he was able to get across what we really wanted,” I say, coughing badly. “So we have to hope that’s the message that gets through.”
“It if does get through,” Mistress Coyle says, “Prentiss will claim all the credit for it.”
“This isn’t about who scores the most points,” Bradley says.
“Is it not?” Mistress Coyle says. “Do you really want that man in a position of strength when the convoy arrives? Is that the settlement you’re after?”
“You say that as if we have the authority to relieve someone of duty,” Bradley says, “as if we can just waltz in here and impose our will.”
“Well, why can’t you?” Lee says. “He’s a murderer. He murdered my sister and my mother.”
Bradley makes to respond but Simone says, “I tend to agree,” weathering the shocked thunder of Bradley’s Noise. “If his actions are endangering the lives of everyone–”
“We’re here,” Bradley interrupts, “to establish a settlement for almost five thousand people who deserve to not wake up in the middle of a war.”
Mistress Coyle just heaves a heavy sigh like she wasn’t listening. “Better go out and start explaining to the people why it wasn’t us,” she says, heading out of the little healing room, “and if that Ivan says anything, I’ll smack his hick face.”
Bradley looks over to Simone, his Noise full of askings and disagreements, full of things he needs to know from her, pictures of her popping out all over, pictures of how much he wishes he could touch her–
“Would you stop that, please?” Simone says, looking away.
“Sorry,” he says, backing up a step, then another, then leaving the room without saying anything more.
“Simone–” I say.
“I just can’t get used to it,” she says. “I know I should, I know I’m going to have to, but it’s just . . .”
“It can be a good thing,” I say, thinking about Todd. “That kind of closeness.”
(but I can’t hear him any more–)
(and he doesn’t feel close at all–)
I cough again, bringing up ugly green stuff from my lungs.
“You look exhausted, Viola,” Simone says. “Any objections to a mild sedative to help you rest?”
I shake my head. She goes to a drawer and takes out a small patch, sticking it gently under my jaw. “Give him a chance,” I say, as the medicine starts to take hold. “He’s a good man.”
“I know,” she says, as my eyelids start to droop. “I know.”
I slip into blackness, the blackness of sedation, feeling nothing at all for a long while, relishing the emptiness of it, just blackness like the black beyond–
But that ends–
And I still sleep–
And I dream–
I dream of Todd–
Just there, out of reach–
And I can’t hear him–
I can’t hear his Noise–
I can’t hear what he’s thinking.
He stares at me like an empty vessel–
Like a statue with no one inside–
Like he’s dead–
Like oh god no–
He’s dead–
He’s dead–
“Viola,” I hear. I open my eyes. Lee’s reaching over to wake me, his Noise full of concern, but something else, too–
“What’s happened?” I say, feeling the fever sweat pouring off me, how soaked through my clothes and sheets are–
(Todd, slipping away from me–)
I see Bradley standing at the foot of my bed. “She’s done something,” he says. “Mistress Coyle’s gone and done something.”
[TODD]
It’s a small sound and I shouldn’t be able to hear it, not thru the sleeping Noise of most of the camp.
But it’s a sound I reckernize.
A whine.
In the air.
Boy colt? Angharrad says nervously as I leave my tent and head into the dusk that gets colder with every passing day.
“It’s a tracer,” I say to her, to anyone, shivering a little, looking round for the sound, seeing the men from the army who are still awake start to look for it, too, till there’s a surge in their Noise as they see it arcing up in the air in a wobbly kinda way from the dry river bed near the bottom of the falls. It’s heading north, north to where some of the Spackle army are most likely hiding in the hills–
“What the hell do they think they’re doing?” The Mayor’s suddenly by my side, eyes fixed on the tracer. He turns to Mr O’Hare, who’s come bleary-eyed outta his own tent. “Find Mistress Braithwaite. Now.”
Mr O’Hare goes running off half-dressed.
“A tracer is too slow to do any real damage,” the Mayor says. “This must be a diversion.” His eyes drift to the damaged zigzag hill. “Would you please call Viola, Todd?”
I go to my tent to get the comm and as I’m coming out we hear the distant Boom of the tracer hitting some trees to the north somewhere. But the Mayor’s right, oxes could outrun a tracer so it’s only serving one purpose.
Diverting the attenshun of the Spackle.
But from where?
The Mayor’s still looking at the rough edges of the hill where the Spackle came from, a hill an army can’t march down no more–
Or up–
But one person could–
One person could climb up over the rubble–
One person without Noise–
The Mayor’s eyes go wider and I know he’s thinking it, too.
And that’s when it happens–
From the very tiptop of the zigzag hill.
{VIOLA}
“How did she do this?” Bradley says, as we watch the tracer arc through the sky on the viewscreens in the healing room, Lee watching it through Bradley’s Noise. “How did she arrange this without us knowing?”
My comm beeps. I answer immediately. “Todd?”
But it’s not Todd.
“I’d point a probe at the hilltop right now if I were you,” Mistress Coyle says, smiling back at me from the screen.
“Where’s Todd?” I cough. “How did you get a comm?”
A sound in Bradley’s Noise makes me look. I see him remembering Simone in the spares cabinet, fiddling with two more comms, but telling him she was just doing an inventory. “She wouldn’t,” he says. “Not without telling me?”
“We should look at the hilltop,” I say.
He presses a screen for control access, then steers a probe
over to the hilltop, flipping it to nightvision so everything turns green and black. “What are we meant to see?”
I’m getting an idea. “Check for body heat.”
He presses the screen again and–
“There,” I say.
We see a lone figure, human, slinking down the hill, sticking to the underbrush, but moving quickly enough that it’s clear it may not matter much if they’re seen.
“That can only be a mistress,” I say. “They’d have heard a man doing that.”
Bradley dials the probe up a bit so we can see the lip of the hill, too. Spackle are standing along the ragged ridge, looking north to the forest where the tracer hit.
Not looking down to the mistress fleeing beneath them.
And then the screen is filled with a single flash, the heat sensors overloading, and a second later we hear the boom come roaring through the speakers on the probe.
Which is when we also hear the huge cheer from outside the ship.
“They’re watching?” Lee says.
I see Simone in Bradley’s Noise again, along with a number of rude words. I pick my comm back up. “What did you do?”
But Mistress Coyle is no longer there.
Bradley dials the screen for a comm to broadcast outside the ship. His Noise is really rumbling, getting louder and more decisive by the second.
“Bradley,” I say. “What are you–?”
“Clear the immediate area,” he says into the comm and I can hear it booming around the hilltop outside. “The scout ship is taking off.”
[TODD]
“That bitch,” I hear the Mayor say, reading the soldiers around him. The square’s in chaos. No one knows what’s happened. I keep trying to call Viola but the signal ain’t getting thru.
“Usually when a man calls a woman a bitch,” a voice calls over from a cart pulling up near us at the edge of camp, “it’s because she’s doing something right.”
Mistress Coyle smiles back at us, looking like the dog who found the slop bucket.
“We’ve already sent a message of peace,” the Mayor thunders at her. “How dare you–?”
“Don’t you talk to me about daring,” she thunders right back. “All I’ve done is show the Spackle that those of us without Noise can attack any time, even in their own backyard.”