A World of Ash: The Territory 3 (16 page)

“You’ve certainly done something I would never have imagined,” Knox said, “uniting the slums into something more than a rabble.”

Hank laughed. “They’re still a rabble,” he said. “I just point them in the right direction.” He glanced at Lynn. “Terry was right about one thing, though. You are showing a lot of belief in this boyfriend of yours.” He had clearly been standing on the other side of the door listening to their conversation.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Lynn said quickly, almost completely automatically. Her face had grown flushed, which was stupid because she had nothing to be embarrassed about. Squid really wasn’t her boyfriend.

“I remember you saying you believed in him,” Hank said. “When we first met, you said you were going with him to Big Smoke.”

Lynn nodded. “That’s right.”

“Seems to me you haven’t made it that far.”

“I’ve been out beyond the fence,” Lynn said. “Though I never made it to Big Smoke. I was captured by the Church and brought back to Alice to stand trial for treason. I still believe in Squid. He’s made it to Big Smoke and got the weapon. I know he has.”

“And now you’re here again.”

“I escaped,” Lynn said, “was rescued really. We’re here because we had a plan to help get everyone from the slums inside the city. We were betrayed, though, by those on the inside, and now that plan is stuck inside with them. We’re trapped out here but we still want to help.”

“What help do you think you can be?” Hank said.

“We will render whatever assistance we can to a defense against the ghouls,” Knox said. “If Lynn is right, and Squid has found the weapon, then maybe we don’t have to hold them off forever.”

“We’ve got a plan,” Hank said.

Knox nodded. “So we’ve heard. You’re going to attack the main gate.”

“Aye,” Hank said. “We’ve had enough. If they’re not going to let us in then we aren’t going to knock on the door politely anymore.”

“That plan is folly,” Knox said. “How will you gather a force with any discipline here?” He gestured to the slums around them. “What organization do you have? The main gate will never fall under a haphazard offensive. If we’ve heard whispers of your plan, you can be assured the Holy Order has too. They will mount an impenetrable defense.”

“You should not speak about folly,” Hank said. “I know you would have been there when that plan was drawn up to send the Diggers to their deaths. If that folly hadn’t happened then none of us would be in this godforsaken situation in the first place.”

“The Administrator acted on the information he had at the time,” Knox said. “We all did.”

“Don’t defend him,” Lynn snapped. “He’s an idiot, and an evil bastard too. He’s the one who left us stranded out here, or have you forgotten that already?”

“Lynnette, we still don’t know that.”

“Listen,” Lynn said, turning back to Hank. “You let me go after I attacked you because you believed that perhaps two ex-Apprentices could really save the people of the slums. I’m asking you to trust me again. If you launch an attack against the main gate you will be slaughtered. You might as well smash your heads against the Wall. I have another idea.”

“You need not worry about the organization of our attack,” said Hank coldly. “To your neat Insider eyes this place might seem disgusting and chaotic, but not to me. I see the web that spreads over this place. The lines of communication that tie us together as a community. Our attack will not be haphazard. Besides, we cannot wait on tales of prophecy and magic weapons. The ghouls are a week away at best. We must act now and we must risk the odds.”

“Just hear me out,” Lynn said, pressing the man. She felt a growing panic inside her stomach. She did not want to bear witness to another failed attack and see the resulting slaughter a second time. She had seen enough death from those who’d thrown themselves at their enemy. “You need to consider defense here in the slums. Think about how you can protect the people out here.”

“Ha,” Hank said, his disdain clear. “What can we possibly do? Our hope for safety lies within the Wall, and we’re willing to fight to get it.”

“I’m just saying—”

“No,” Hank said, raising his hand and cutting Lynn off. “I know you think you’re helping, but you’re not. The decisions have been made. The plan is already spreading through the slums. We attack the main gate tomorrow. It’s too late to stop it now, and I wouldn’t even if I could.”

“Mr. Barton,” Knox Soilwork said. “I believe—”

“Chief Minister,” Hank said, “you should know that I’m far more likely to listen to Lynn than you. She may have held a sword to my throat but I respect her intentions. I believe she truly does want to help us. On the other hand you and your Administrator had many years to help those living beyond the Wall, and you did nothing. If she cannot convince me then you certainly won’t.”

Knox sighed. Lynn knew how he felt. She felt the same way. Hank was being stubborn, though she could hardly blame him. She understood how it felt to have the world against you and to be forced to do whatever it took to avoid being smothered by the weight of it. The Insiders had never showed any real intention of helping the slum-dwellers before; why should Hank think they would now? If he felt like he needed to take safety by force, then he would. She supposed she respected his intentions, too, but she knew they would come to nothing.

“Very well,” Knox said. “We have shared our concerns. If we cannot sway you then what can we do to help?”

“Just stay out of the way,” Hank said. “And thank me when you’re back inside that Wall.”

Lynn stood. “I’m sorry you think you need to do this, Hank.”

“That’s fine,” he said.

“No,” Lynn said, beginning to walk out of the room without turning back to look at him again, “I’m sorry about what’s going to happen to your people.”

As they walked outside past the watchful eyes of Terry and his companion Lynn continued to move with purpose.

“What are you intending to do?” Knox asked, his voice stepping across the thin fence between concern and annoyance.

“I’m going to stop this slaughter.”

Brick had never seen the city of Alice. Of course everything he’d seen since leaving his mother and traveling as a boundary rider with Burley West had been new, but this was a different kind of new. This was not some small town left abandoned as the population fled inward. In the end all those places had started to look the same. No, this was the mighty walled city of Alice. It was the place to which the population had fled. Every child in his small outpost town had wanted to see Alice. They had all spoken about it from time to time, bragged about family members who’d been there. He wondered how many of those who’d wanted to go were there now, gathered outside the giant Wall with all the others.

The sun was on its downward arc and Brick, guided by Captain Pratt, flew the small airship the captain insisted on calling
Mary’s Revenge
directly toward it. The sky along the horizon was bright, lighting the scattered clouds pink and rendering the city a detail-poor silhouette. Brick could still see the Wall, though. It stood straight and tall, encasing Alice like a massive box, and even with the advantage of height Brick could see very few of the buildings inside, only the tops of the tallest structures. Around the outside of the Wall the opposite was true – there were so many buildings of wood and iron blending together in an untidy, seemingly endless sprawl that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the next began.

Brick could not look away as they approached, stunned by the sheer scale of the place. Captain Pratt was standing beside him, his hand on the back of his chair. He used the other hand to push up the front of his hat.

“Alice,” he said. “Wasn’t sure I’d ever see this place again.”

“You don’t sound very happy to be back,” Brick said. There was a part of him that desperately wanted to go home. But he thought he understood at least a little of how Captain Pratt felt. He knew that without his father there, going home would never be the same. Maybe Captain Pratt felt a little like that too.

“I haven’t been here for a long time,” Captain Pratt said. “Not since I left. My wife and son never even lived here and yet it still brings back memories of the past, memories of them.”

“Your son?” Brick said. “You never said you had a son.”

Captain Pratt looked down at him. A reluctant half-smile creased the corner of his mouth. “No,” he said. “I hadn’t intended to tell you either. I don’t like talking about him.”

“Did the ghouls get him too?”

“What did I just say?” Captain Pratt snapped.

“My father was killed by ghouls,” Brick said. “He’s probably part of the horde now, did you know that?”

“No,” Captain Pratt said. “You never told me that.”

“I know what it’s like for the ghouls to get someone you love.”

Captain Pratt looked out toward the city. “I’m sorry to hear that, Brick.”

Brick worked the controls of the dirigible as they flew on in silence. Captain Pratt had been nice to him during their journey. He said he was his first mate and had never once threatened him but still, Brick had seen the way the pirate watched him. Not all the time, but every now and then Brick would look around to see Captain Pratt staring at him intently. It made Brick uncomfortable. He had thought it was because Captain Pratt was a dangerous criminal, but maybe it was something else.

As it grew dark Captain Pratt told Brick to sink the dirigible down close enough to the ground that they could drop anchor.

“We’re close,” he said, “but we’ll wait the night here. I think it would be best if we approach in daylight.”

They dropped anchor, letting it trail through the topsoil and dig its bladed edges into the sand. The anchor would hold them in position above the ground and ensure they wouldn’t drift as they were pushed by the gentle night-time breeze and wake up somewhere completely unknown in the morning.

They slept in the open air, as they had done every night, eating crisp bread so stale it was far more crisp than bread. Their food had reached the point of being so old that it was almost inedible. There was very little water, too, but Captain Pratt told Brick they were close enough to Alice that it didn’t matter anymore. Soon they wouldn’t need to ration their supplies and scavenge anything they could from the places they flew over. Brick nodded without answering. He couldn’t help but wonder, even if Captain Pratt did find this girl he was looking for, what would happen to him after all that? Was he going to be stuck as Captain Pratt’s first mate forever? That didn’t appeal to Brick at all. Brick’s father had wanted him to fly dirigibles, but he certainly wouldn’t have wanted him to be flying one as a pirate. Brick knew his father would be looking down on him with the Ancestors and he didn’t want to disappoint him. If he truly wanted to make his father proud he knew he would have to do something about Captain Pratt.

*

When the sun rose again the next morning and lifted the black from the world, replacing it with the soft hues of morning light, Captain Pratt nudged Brick awake and they set about raising the anchor and continuing their flight to the city. There was an anxiousness about Pratt that Brick was sure was a sign of his increasing need to find the girl Lynnette. The captain seemed to think that finding her would bring back all the things he said he had lost, but even Brick knew that wasn’t possible.

“What are we going to do when we get there?” Brick asked Captain Pratt. “How are you going to find this girl?”

Captain Pratt placed his hand on Brick’s shoulder. Brick wanted to recoil from his touch. He didn’t like the way the captain kept doing that. It felt like he was treating Brick like a pet. He wasn’t going to be anyone’s pet. He wanted to tell Captain Pratt that they should just go straight over the Wall and warn the city about how far away the ghouls were, as his job as a boundary rider demanded, but he didn’t want to anger him, at least not yet.

“Like I said, Brick, a needle in a haystack, but I have confidence we’ll manage it.”

In less than an hour they were flying over the outskirts of the slums. Brick, still fascinated by the ramshackle and rickety community that passed beneath them, glanced down through the yellowed glass. It didn’t take long for him to realize that most of the people moving on the twisting pathways of dirt that formed the streets of the slums were heading in the same direction: toward the city.

To Brick it didn’t seem odd that people would be making their way closer to the city. They had to know the ghouls weren’t far away, and he knew the whole point of the entire population coming here was to seek the protection of the city. But as they flew closer still to the towering Wall that dominated the landscape, he saw the gathering crowd. At first, with a pang of sickening fear, he thought that somehow the horde had overtaken them during the night, wandering beneath them while they slept, and had already arrived to destroy the last people surviving anywhere in the world. After a further moment of observation, however, and a welcome reduction in his panic, he saw this wasn’t the case. This crowd did not consist of ghouls but of the people of the slums. They were gathering together in a large group a short distance back from the enormous gate. That did seem a little strange.

“What in Ancestors’ sin …?” Captain Pratt muttered. Then his eyebrows lifted and he nodded in a kind of impressed acknowledgment. “They’re going to attack the city.” He watched a moment longer, standing and leaning forward to look over the edge as Brick took his hands off the controls, letting the airship coast through the air under its own momentum. When Captain Pratt moved again it was with a sudden and unanticipated flurry. He tossed aside an empty water bag as he searched the floor around the dirigible’s seats.

“Where’s that telescope?” he said.

Brick leaned to the side and picked up Mr. West’s tubular telescope from the little cradle that was attached to his chair. It seemed the captain didn’t know much about what he claimed was his dirigible. Brick passed him the telescope and the pirate extended it with a click and raised it to his eye in one movement. Captain Pratt dropped the telescope, then raised it again, then dropped it again, then raised it.

“Well, two hells,” he said.

“What?” Brick asked, curious as to what had captured the attention of the captain so completely.

“Bring us down lower,” he said, “near the front of the gate.”

Brick did as he was instructed, guiding the dirigible downward in a gentle sweeping turn.

“Get us down there!” Captain Pratt barked, but Brick didn’t want to descend too quickly. He had thought himself quite adept at flying. He thought he’d managed it quite well since Captain Pratt had shot old Mr. West and thrown him overboard, but Brick didn’t have the confidence to try any crazy maneuvers, especially any that would take them rapidly toward the ground, because even though he’d lowered them enough to drop anchor every night, he’d never actually landed a dirigible. Every time they descended too quickly he couldn’t help but think of his father and what might have happened when his dirigible had fallen from the air and crashed into the Black Stump.

As they looped back around to the front of the mass of people, they were flying low enough that Brick could look down through the dirty glass and see the faces of those in the crowd as they looked up toward the airship. They seemed to be trying to see who was flying above them. There were no other dirigibles in the air, which Brick thought was strange. He’d heard Alice was always busy with bio-trucks and dirigibles constantly coming and going. His father had flown to the city once before, a few years ago now, and told him all about it when he’d returned home.

“There!” Captain Pratt said, pointing toward the front of the large gathering of people.

Brick immediately saw the girl Captain Pratt was referring to. It would have been hard to pick out a single person among that crowd, but there she was, easy to find because she stood almost completely alone in the space between the mass of people and the gate they were going to attack. It looked like she was either facing them down or leading them. It was hard to tell which. The only person beside her was a tall, dark-skinned man with white hair.

“Bring us around again,” Captain Pratt said. “A little lower this time, if you can.”

Brick did so, circling the
Mary’s Revenge
back out over the slums and then dropping altitude as much as he dared as they came back toward the gate. More faces turned to look up at them including, Brick saw this time, the girl. She had a sword in her left hand and held the right above her eyes to block the sun as she watched them. Even from here Brick could see the girl had a bandage on the fingers of her right hand, which held the middle two together as if she had only three fingers. She was dressed entirely in black and had short blonde hair cut in much the same way as Brick’s. She looked as though she was ready to fight.

“Well, I’ll be a ghoul’s uncle,” Captain Pratt said, laughing. “That’s her, that’s our girl. There’s our needle in the haystack, Brick.”