The Ask and the Answer (9 page)

91

And I understand without having to be told that one depends on the other.

The warmth is starting to spread up from my stomach, making everything seem slower, softer. The lightning in my side is fading, but it's taking wakefulness along with it. Why
two
doses when that would put me to sleep so fast? So fast I won't even be able to talk to-

Oh.

"I need to see him to believe you," I say.

"Soon," he says. "There is much to be done in New Prentisstown first. Much to be undone."

"Whether anyone wants it or not." My eyelids are getting heavy. I force them up. Only then do I realize I said it out loud.

He smiles again. "I find myself saying this with great frequency, Viola. The war is over. I am not your enemy."

I lift my groggy eyes to him in surprise.

I'm afraid of him. I am.

But-

"You were the enemy of the women of Prentisstown," I say. "You were the enemy of everyone in Farbranch."

He stiffens a little, though he tries not to let me see it. "A body was found in the river this morning," he says. "A body with a knife in its throat."

I try to keep my eyes from widening, even under the Jeffers. He's looking at me close now. "Perhaps the man's death was justified," he says. "Perhaps the man had
enemies."

I see myself doing it-

I see myself plunging the knife-

I close my eyes.

92

"As for me," the Mayor says, "the war is over. My days of soldiering are at an end. Now come the days of leadership, of bringing people together."

By separating them,
I think, but my breathing is slowing. The whiteness of the room is growing brighter but only in a soft way that makes me want to fall down into it and sleep and sleep and sleep. I press farther into the pillow.

"I'll leave you now," he says. "We will meet again."

I begin to breathe through my mouth. Sleep is becoming impossible to avoid.

He sees me starting to drift off.

And he does the most surprising thing.

He steps forward and pulls the sheet straight across me, almost like he's tucking me in.

"Before I go," he says. "I have one request."

"What?" I say, fighting to keep awake.

"I'd like you to call me David."

"What?"
I say, my voice heavy.

"I'd like you to say,
Good night, David."

The Jeffers has so disconnected me that the words come out before I know I'm even saying them. "Good night, David."

Through the haze of the drug, I see him look a little surprised, even a little disappointed.

But he recovers quickly. "And to you, Viola." He nods at me and steps toward the door to leave.

And I realize what it is, what's so different about him.

"I can't hear you," I whisper from my bed.

He stops and turns. "I said,
And to-"

"No," I say, my tongue barely able to move. "I mean I can't
hear
you. I can't hear you think."

93

He raises his eyebrows. "I should hope not." And I think I'm asleep before he can even leave.

I don't wake for a long, long time, finally blinking again into the sunshine, wondering what was real and what was a dream.

(... my father, holding out his hand to help me up the ladder into the hatch, smiling, saying, "Welcome aboard, skipper...")

"You snore," says a voice.

Corinne is seated in the chair, her fingers flying a threaded needle through a piece of fabric so fast it's like it's not her doing it, like someone else's angry hands are using her lap.

"I do not," I say.

"Like a cow in estrus."

I push back the covers. My bandages have been changed and the lightning pain is gone so the stitch must be repaired. "How long have I been asleep?"

"More than a day." She sounds disapproving. "The President's already sent men by twice to check on your condition."

I put a hand on my side, tentatively pushing on the wound. The pain is almost nonexistent.

"Nothing to say to that then, my girl?" Corinne says, needle thrashing ferociously.

I furrow my forehead. "What's there to say? I'd never met him before."

"He was sure keen to know you though, wasn't he? Ow!" She breathes in a sharp hiss and sticks a fingertip in her

94

mouth. "All the while he's got us trapped," she says around her finger. "All the while we can't even leave this building."

"I don't see how that's my fault."

"It isn't your fault, my girl," Mistress Coyle says, coming into the room. She looks sternly at Corinne. "And no one here thinks it is."

Corinne stands, bows slightly to Mistress Coyle, and leaves without another word.

"How are you feeling?" Mistress Coyle asks.

"Groggy." I sit up more, finding it much easier to do so this time. I also notice my bladder is uncomfortably full. I tell Mistress Coyle.

"Well, then," she says, "let's see if you can stand on your own to help with that."

I take in a breath and turn to put my feet on the floor. My legs don't want to bend very fast but eventually they get there and eventually I can stand up and even walk to the door.

"Maddy
said
you were the best healer in town," I marvel.

"Maddy tells no lies."

She accompanies me down a long white hallway to a toilet. When I've finished and washed and opened the door again, Mistress Coyle is holding a heavier white gown for me to wear, longer and much nicer than the backwards robe I have on. I slip it over my head and we walk back up the hallway, a little wobbly, but walking all the same.

"The President has been asking after your health," she says, steadying me with her hand.

"Corinne told me." I look up at her out of the corner of my eye. "It's only because of the settler ships. I don't know him. I'm not on his side."

95

"Ah," Mistress Coyle says, getting me back through the door to my room and onto my bed. "You do recognize there are sides then?"

I lie back, my tongue pressed against the back of my teeth. "Did you give me two doses of Jeffers so I wouldn't have to speak to him for very long?" I say. "Or so I wouldn't be able to tell him very much?"

She gives a nod as if to say how clever I am. "Would it be the worst thing in the world if it was a little of both?"

"You could have asked."

"Wasn't time," she says, sitting down in the chair next to the bed. "We only know him by his history, my girl, and his history is bad, bad, bad. Whatever he might say about a new society, there is good reason to want to be better prepared if he starts a conversation."

"I don't know him," I say again. "I don't know anything."

"But, done rightly," she says, with a little smile, "you might
learn
things from a man who takes an interest."

I try to read her, read what she's trying to tell me, but of course women here don't have Noise either, do they?

"What are you saying?" I ask.

"I'm saying it's time for you to get something solid into your stomach." She stands, brushing invisible threads off her white coat. "I'll have Madeleine bring in some breakfast for you."

She walks to the door, taking hold of the handle but not turning it yet. "But know this," she says, without turning around. "If there
are
sides and our President is on one...." She glances back at me over her shoulder. "Then I am most definitely on the other."

96

7 MISTRESS COYLE

***

[VIOLA]

"THERE ARE SIX SHIPS," I say from my bed, for the third time in as many days, days where Todd is still out there somewhere, days where I don't know what's happening to him or to anyone else outside.

From the windows of my room, I see soldiers marching by all the time, but all they do is march. Everyone here at the house of healing half expected them to come bursting through the doors at any moment, ready to do terrible things, ready to assert their victory.

But they haven't. They just march by. Other men bring us deliveries of food to the back doors, and the healers are left to their work.

We still can't leave, but the world outside doesn't seem to be ending. Which isn't what anyone expected, not least, it seems, Mistress Coyle, who's convinced it only means something worse is waiting to happen.

I can't help but think that she's probably right.

97

She frowns into her notes. "Just six?"

"Eight hundred sleeping settlers and three caretaker families in each," I say. I'm getting hungry, but I know by now there's no eating until she says the consultation is finished. "Mistress Coyle-"

"And you're sure there are eighty-one members total of the caretaker families?"

"I should know," I say. "I was in school with their children."

She looks up. "I know this is tedious, Viola, but information is power. The information we give him. The information we learn
from
him."

I sigh impatiently. "I don't know anything
about
spying."

"It's not spying," she says, returning to her notes. "It's just finding things out." She writes something more in her pad. "Four thousand, eight hundred and eighty-one people," she says, almost to herself.

I know what she means. More people than the entire population of this planet. Enough to change everything.

But change it how?

"When he speaks with you again," she says, "you can't tell him about the ships. Keep him guessing. Keep him off the right number."

"While I'm also supposed to be finding out what I can," I say.

She closes her pad, consultation over. "Information is power," she repeats.

I sit up in the bed, pretty much sick to death of being a patient. "Can I ask you something?"

She stands and reaches for her cloak. "Certainly."

98

"Why do you trust me?"

"Your face when he walked into your room," she says without hesitating. "You looked as if you'd just met your worst enemy."

She snaps the buttons of the cloak under her chin. I watch her carefully. "If I could just find Todd or get to that communications tower..."

"And be taken by the army?" She's not frowning but her eyes are bright. "Lose us our one advantage?" She opens the door. "No, my girl, the President will come a-calling and when he does, what you find out from him will help us."

I call out after her as she goes, "Who do you mean by
us?"

But she's gone.

"... and the last thing I really remember is him picking me up and carrying me down a long, long hill, and telling me that I wasn't going to die, that he'd save me."

"Wow," breathes Maddy softly, wisps of hair sneaking out from under her cap as we walk slowly up one hallway and down another to build my strength. "And he did save you."

"But he can't kill," I say, "not even to save himself. That's the thing about him, why they wanted him so bad. He isn't like them. He killed a Spackle once and you should have seen how he suffered for it. And now they've got him-"

I have to stop and blink a lot and look at the floor.

"I need to get
out
of here," I say, clenching my teeth. "I'm no spy. I need to find him and I need to get to that tower and
warn
them. Maybe they can send help. They have more scout ships that could reach here. They've got weapons ..."

99

Maddy's face looks tense, like it always does when I talk this way. "We're not even allowed outside yet."

"You can't just accept what people tell you, Maddy. You can't just
do
that if they're wrong."

"And
you
can't fight an army on your own." She turns me gently back down the hallway, giving me a smile. "Not even the great and brave Viola Eade."

"I did it before," I say. "I did with
him."

She lowers her voice. "Vi-"

"I lost my parents," I say and my voice is husky. "And there's no way I can get them back. And now I've lost him. And if there's a chance, if there's even a chance-"

"Mistress Coyle won't allow it," she says, but there's something in her voice that makes me look up.

"But?" I say.

Maddy says no more, just walks us over to the hall window that looks out onto the road. A troop of soldiers passes by in the bright sunlight, a cart full of dusty purple grain passing by the other way, the Noise we can hear from the town coming down the road like an army all on its own.

At first it was like no Noise I'd ever heard, this weird buzzing sound of metal grinding against metal. Then it got even louder than that, like a thousand men shouting at once, which I guess is pretty much what it is, too loud and messy to be able to pick out any individual person.

Too loud to pick out one boy.

"Maybe it's not as bad as we all think." Maddy's voice is slow, weighing every word as if she's testing them out for herself. "I mean, the town looks peaceful.
Loud,
but the men who deliver the food say the stores are about to reopen. I'll bet