The Ask and the Answer (16 page)

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leaves the room. "Don't be too bothered about her," Mistress Coyle says, sitting down. "She's always hated me."

"She hasn't. She's just had a hard time of it, that's all."

"How hard?"

"It's her place to tell you, not mine. Drink up."

I take a drink. It's sweet and wheaty-tasting, the bubbles sharp against the roof of my mouth but not in a bad way. We sit and drink for a minute or two.

"Have you ever seen an ocean, Viola?" Mistress Coyle asks.

I cough away a little of the beer. "An ocean?"

"There's oceans on New World," she says, "big as anything."

"I was born on the settler ship," I say, "but I saw them from orbit as we flew in on the scout."

"Ah, well, then you've never stood on a beach as the waves came crashing in, the water stretching out from you until it's beyond sight, moving and blue and alive and so much bigger than even the black beyond seems because the ocean hides what it contains." She shakes her head in a happy way. "If you ever want to see how small you are in the plan of God, just stand at the edge of an ocean."

"I've only ever been to a river."

She puffs out her bottom lip, regarding me. "This river goes to the ocean, you know. It's not even all that far. Two days on horseback at most. A long morning in a fissioncar, though the road's not that great."

"There's a road?"

"Not much left of it anymore."

"Is there something there?"

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"Used to be my home," she says, shifting in her chair. "When we first landed, going on twenty-three years ago now. Meant to be a fishing settlement, boats and everything. In a hundred years' time, it might have even been a port."

"What happened?"

"What happened all over this planet, all our grand plans just sort of falling by the wayside in the first couple of years in the face of difficulty. It was harder to start a new civilization than we thought. You have to crawl before you can walk." She takes a sip of her beer. "And then sometimes you go back to crawling." She smiles to herself. "Probably for the best, though. Turns out New World's oceans aren't really for fishing."

"Why not?"

"Oh, the fish are the size of your boat and they swim up alongside and look you in the eye and tell you how they're going to eat you." She laughs a little. "And then they eat you."

I laugh a little, too. And then I remember all that's happened.

She looks at me again, catching my eye. "It's beautiful, though, the ocean. Like nothing you've ever seen."

"You miss it." I drink the last of my beer.

"To see the ocean once is to learn how to miss it," she says, taking my glass. "Let me get you another."

That night, I dream.

I dream of oceans and of fish that will eat me. I dream of armies that swim by and of Mistress Coyle leading them. I dream of Maddy taking my hand and holding me up from the water.

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I dream of thunder making a single loud
BOOM!
that almost breaks the sky in two.

Maddy smiles when I jump at the sound of it. "I'm going to see him," I tell her.

She glances over my shoulder and says, "There he is."

I turn to look.

I wake but the sun's all wrong. I sit up, my head feeling like it's a boulder, and I have to close my eyes to make everything stop spinning.

"Is this what a hangover feels like?" I say out loud.

"There was no alcohol in that beer," Corinne says.

I snap my eyes open, which is a mistake as black spots form everywhere in my vision. "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you to wake up so the President's men can take you."

"What?" I say, as she stands. "What's going on?"

"She drugged you. Jeffers in your beer, plus bandy root to disguise the taste. She left you this." She holds out a small piece of paper. "You're to destroy it after you read it."

I take the paper. It's a note from Mistress Coyle.

Forgive me, my girl,
it says,
but the President is wrong. The war is
not
over. Keep to the side of right, keep gathering information, keep leading him astray. You'll be contacted.

"They blew up a storefront and left in the confusion," Corinne says.

"They did
what?" My
voice starts to rise. "Corinne,
what's going on?"

But she's not even looking at me. "I told them they were

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abandoning their sacred trust, that
nothing
was more important than saving lives."

"Who else is here?"

"Just you and me," she says. "And the soldiers waiting outside to take you to your President." She looks down at her shoes and for the first time I notice the anger, the
rage
burning off her. "I expect I'll be interrogated by someone less
handsome."

"Corinne-"

"You'll have to start calling me Mistress Wyatt now," she says, turning toward the door. "That is, in the unlikely event that both of us get back here alive."

"They're gone?" I say, still not believing it.

Corinne just glares at me, waiting for me to rise.

They're gone.

She left me here alone with Corinne.

She
left
me here.

To go off and start a war.

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13 SPLINTERS [TODD]

"FISSION FUEL, SIR, soaked into clay powder to make a paste-"

"I know how to make a bush bomb, Corporal Parker," says the Mayor, surveying the damage from his saddle. "What I do not know is how a group of unarmed women managed to
plant
one in full view of soldiers under your command."

We see Corporal Parker swallow, actually see it move in his throat. He's not a man from old Prentisstown, so he musta been picked up along the way.
You go where the power is,
Ivan said. But what about when the power wants answers you ain't got? "It may not have been just women, sir," Parker says. "People are talking about something called-"

"Look at this, pigpiss," Davy says to me. He's ridden Deadfall/Acorn over to a tree trunk, near where we've stopped across the road from the blown-out storefront.

I chirrup to Angharrad, using my one good hand to tap

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the reins. She picks her feet lightly over the bits of wood and plaster and glass and foodstuffs that are scattered everywhere, like the store finally let go of a sneeze it was holding in. We get over to Davy, who's pointing at a bunch of light-colored splinters sticking straight outta the tree trunk.

"Explozhun so big it rammed 'em straight into the tree," he says. "Those bitches."

"It was late at night," I say, readjusting my arm in the sling. "They didn't hurt no one."

"Bitches," Davy repeats, shaking his head.

"You'll turn in your supply of cure, Corporal," we hear the Mayor say, loud enough so Corporal Parker's men hear the punishment, too. "All of you will. Privacy is a privilege for those who've earned it."

The Mayor ignores Corporal Parker's mumbled, "Yes, sir," and turns to have a short, quiet word with Mr. O'Hare and Mr. Morgan, who then ride off in different direkshuns. The Mayor comes over to us next, not saying nothing, face frowning like a slap. Morpeth stares viciously at our mounts, too.
Submit
, says his Noise.
Submit
,
Submit
. Deadfall and Angharrad both lower their heads and step back.

All horses are a little bit crazy.

"Want me to go hunting for 'em, Pa?" Davy says. "The bitches who did this?"

"Mind your language," the Mayor says. "You both have work to be getting on with."

Davy gives me a sideways glance and holds out his left leg. The whole bottom half is covered in a cast. "Pa?" he

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says. "If you ain't noticed, I can barely walk and pigpiss here's in a sling and-"

He don't even finish the sentence before there's that
whoosh
of sound, flying from the Mayor faster than thought, like a bullet made of Noise. Davy flinches back in his saddle, yanking the reins so hard Deadfall rears up, nearly dumping Davy to the ground. Davy recovers, breathing heavy, eyes unfocused.

What the hell
is
that?

"Does this look like a day you can take off?" the Mayor says, indicating all the wreckage of the store stretched around us, the husk of the building still smoking in some parts.

Blown up.

(I've been hiding it in my Noise, doing my best to keep it down--)

(but it's there, hidden away, bubbling below the surface-)

(the thought of a bridge that blew up once-)

I look back to see the Mayor staring at me so hard I'm

blurting it out before I can barely think. "It wasn't her," I

say. "I'm sure it wasn't."

He keeps on staring. "I never thought it might be,

Todd."

Fixing my arm didn't take very long yesterday once he'd dragged me cross the square to a clinic where men in white coats set it and gave me two injeckshuns of bone-mending that hurt more than the break but by then he was already gone, promising I'd see Viola the next night (tonight, tonight) and already outta reach of a million and

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one askings about how he came to be embracing her and calling her all friendly-like by her first name and how she's working as a doctor or something and how she had to leave to go to a funeral and-

(and how my heart just exploded from my chest when I saw her--)

(and how it hurt all over again when she left-) And then off she went somehow to a life of her own already being lived out there somewhere without me in it and then there was just me and my arm going back to the cathedral with the painkillers making me so sleepy I barely had time to fall on my mattress before blinking right out.

I didn't wake when Mayor Ledger came back in with his gray day-of-rubbish-collecting Noise complaints. I didn't wake when dinner came and Mayor Ledger ate both servings. I didn't wake when we were locked inside for the night
ker-thunk.

But I surely did wake when a
BOOM!
shook the entire

city.

And even as I sat up in the darkness and felt the queasy of the painkillers in my stomach, even without knowing what the
BOOM
was or where it had come from or what it meant, even then I knew things had changed again, that the world had suddenly become different one more time.

And sure enough, out we came with the Mayor and his men at first light, injuries or no, straight to the bombsite. I look at him on Morpeth. The morning sun's shining behind him, casting his shadow over everything.

"Will I still see her tonight?" I ask.

There's a long, quiet moment where he just stares.

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"Mr. President?" calls Corporal Parker, as his men take away a long plank of wood that was blown against another tree.

Something's been drawn on the trunk underneath. Even with not knowing how to-Well, even with not knowing much, I can tell what it is. A single letter, smeared on the trunk in blue.
A
, it says, just the letter
A
.

"I can't believe he's making us effing go back there one day after we fought off the attack," Davy grumbles as we make our way down the long road to the monastery.

I can't believe it neither, frankly. Davy can barely walk and even with the bone-mending doing its work on my arm, it'll be a coupla days before everything's back to normal. I can start to bend it already but I sure as hell can't fight off a Spackle army with it.

"Did you tell him I saved yer life?" Davy asks, looking both angry and shy.

"Didn't
you
tell him?" I say.

Davy's mouth flattens, pulling his sad little mustache fluff even thinner. "He don't believe me when I tell him stuff like that."

I sigh. "I told him. He saw it in my Noise anyway."

We ride in silence for a bit before Davy finally says, "Did he say anything?"

I hesitate. "He said,
Good for him."

"That all?"

"He said it was good for me, too."

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Davy bites his lip. "That's it?"

"That's it."

"I see." He don't say no more, just jigs Deadfall along a bit faster.

Even tho it was only one building that got blown up in the night, the whole city looks different as we ride. The patrols of soldiers are suddenly larger and there's more of 'em, marching up and down the roads and side streets so fast it's like they're running. There are soldiers on rooftops now, too, here and there, holding rifles, watching watching watching.

The only nonsoldier men out are hustling as fast as they can from place to place, staying outta the way, not looking up.

I ain't seen no women this morning. Not one.

(not her)

(what was she
doing
with him?)

(is she lying to him?)

(is he believing her?) "

(did she have something to do with the explozhun?)

"Did
who
have something to do with it?" Davy asks. "Shut up."

"Make me," he says. But his heart ain't in it.

We ride past a group of soldiers escorting a beat-up-- looking man with his wrists bound. I press my slinged arm closer to my chest and we keep on riding. The morning sun's high in the sky by the time we pass the hill with the metal tower and come round the final bend to the monastery.