The Ask and the Answer (20 page)

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I wait for the fight I'll put up. But then the feet walk away. "Who was that?" Todd asks.

"Mistress Wyatt," I say, and I can hear the surprise in my own voice.

"And then the bombs started going off," I finish, "and he only called for me twice, early on, to ask me if I knew anything and I didn't, I truly didn't, and then that was it. Nothing. That's all I know about him, I swear."

"He ain't barely spoken to me since the bombs neither," Todd says, looking down at his feet. "I was worried it was you setting 'em off."

I see the bridge blowing up in his Noise. I see me being the one to do it. "No," I say, thinking of the note in my pocket. "It wasn't me."

Todd swallows, then he says simply, clearly, "Should we run?"

"Yes," I say, betraying Corinne so fast I feel a red blush of shame already coming over me, but yes, we should run, we should run and run.

"Where, tho?" he asks. "Where is there to go?" I open my mouth to answer-But I hesitate.

"Where are the Answer hiding?" he asks. "Can we go there?"

And I notice some tension in his Noise, disapproval and reluctance.

The bombs. He doesn't like the bombs either.

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I see a picture of some dead soldiers in the wreckage of a café.

But there's more, too, isn't there? I hesitate again.

I'm wondering, just for the briefest moment, just as if it's a fly I'm brushing away, I'm wondering-I'm wondering if I can tell him.

"I don't know," I say. "I really don't. They didn't tell me in case I couldn't be trusted." Todd looks up at me.

And for a second, I see the doubt on his face, too.

"You don't trust me," I say, before I think to stop.

"You don't trust me neither," he says. "Yer wondering if I'm working for the Mayor right now. And yer wondering what took me so long to find you." He looks down sadly at the floor again. "I can still read you," he says. "Nearly as well as my own self."

I look at him, into his Noise.
"You
wonder if I'm part of the Answer. You think it's something I'd do."

He doesn't look at me, but he nods. "I was just trying to stay alive, looking for ways to find you, hoping you hadn't left me behind."

"Never," I say. "Not ever."

He looks back up at me. "I'd never leave you neither."

"You promise?"

"Cross my heart, hope to die," he says, grinning shyly.

"I promise, too," I say and I smile at him. "I ain't never leaving you, Todd Hewitt, not never again."

He smiles harder when I say
ain't
but it fades and then I see him gathering his Noise to tell me something, something

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difficult, something he's ashamed of, but before he does, I want him to
know,
I want him to know for
sure.

"I think they're at the ocean," I say. "Mistress Coyle told me a story about it before she left. I think she was trying to tell me that's where they were going."

He looks back up at me.

"Now tell me I don't trust you, Todd Hewitt."

And then I see my mistake.

"What?" he says, seeing the look on my face.

"It's in your Noise," I say, standing up. "Todd, it's all
over
your Noise.
Ocean,
over and over and over again."

"It ain't on purpose," he says but his eyes are widening and I see the door of his cell left unlocked and I see a man in the cell with him telling him where I am and I see asking marks rising-

"I'm so
stupid,"
Todd says, standing, too. "Such an effing
idiot!
We need to go. Now!"

"Todd-"

"How far away is the ocean?"

"Two days' ride-"

"Four days' walk then." He's pacing now. His Noise says
Ocean
again
,
clear as a bomb itself. He sees me looking at him, sees me seeing it. "I'm not spying on you," he says. "I'm
not,
but he musta left the door open so I'd-" He pulls his hair in frustration. "I'll hide it. I hid the truth about Aaron and I can hide this."

My stomach flutters, remembering what the Mayor said to me about Aaron.

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"But we have to go," Todd's saying. "Do you have any food we can take?"

"I can get some," I say.
"Hurry."

As I turn to leave, I hear my name in his Noise.
Viola,
it says, and it's covered in worry, worry that we've been set up, worry that I think he was sent here on purpose, worry that I think he's lying, and all I can do is just look at him and think his name.

Todd.

And hope he knows what I mean.

I burst into the canteen and run to the cabinets. I leave most of the lights off, trying to keep quiet as I grab meal-packs and loaves of bread.

"That fast, huh?" Corinne says.

She's sitting at a table far back in the darkness, cup of coffee in front of her. "Your friend shows up and you just leave." She stands and walks over to me.

"I have to," I say. "I'm sorry."

"You're sorry?" she says, eyebrows raised. "And what happens here, then? What happens to all the patients who need you?"

"I'm a
terrible
healer, Corinne, all I do is wash and feed them-"

"So that I can have time to do the very little healing that I'm capable of."

"Corinne-"

Her eyes flash.
"Mistress Wyatt."

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I sigh. "Mistress Wyatt," I say and then I think and say it at the same time. "Come with us!"

She looks startled, threatened almost. "What?"

"Can't you see where this is all headed? Women in prison, women with injuries. Can't you see this isn't going to get any better?"

"Not with bombs going off every day, it isn't."

"It's the President who's the enemy," I say. She crosses her arms. "You think you can have just one enemy?"

"Corinne-"

"A healer doesn't take life," she says. "A healer
never
takes life. Our first oath is to do no harm."

"The bombs are set for empty targets."

"Which aren't always empty, are they?" She shakes her head, her face looking suddenly sad, sadder than I've ever seen it. "I know who I am, Viola. In my
soul,
I know it. I heal the sick, I heal the wounded, that's who I am."

"If we stay here, they'll eventually come for us."

"If we leave, patients will die." She doesn't even sound angry anymore, which is scarier than before.

"And if you're taken in?" I say, my voice getting challenging. "Who'll heal them then?"

"I was hoping you would."

I just breathe for a second. "It's not that simple."

"It is to me."

"Corinne, if I can get away, if I can contact my people-"

"Then what? They're still five months away, you said. Five months is a long time."

I turn back to the cabinets, continue filling the sack with

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food. "I have to try," I say. "I have to do
something."
I turn back to her, bag full. "That's who
I
am." I think of Todd, waiting for me, and my heart races faster. "That's who I've become, anyway."

She regards me quietly and then she quotes something Mistress Coyle once said to me. "We are the choices we make."

It takes me a second to realize she's just said good-bye.

"What took so long?" Todd says, anxiously looking out of the window.

"Nothing," I say. "I'll tell you later."

"You got the food?" I hold up the bag.

"And I'm guessing we just follow the river again?" he says. "I guess so."

He takes a second to look at me awkwardly, trying not to smile. "Here we go again."

And I feel this funny rush and I know that however much danger we're in, the rush is
happiness
and he feels it, too, and we clasp hands hard for just a second and then he stands on the bed, puts a leg on the sill and jumps through.

I pass the bag of food to him and climb out, my shoes thudding on the hard mud. "Todd," I whisper.

"Yeah?"

"Someone told me there's a communications tower somewhere outside of town," I say. "It's probably surrounded by soldiers but I was thinking if we could find it-"

"Big metal tower?" he interrupts. "Higher than the trees?"

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I blink. "Probably," I say and my eyes open wide. "You know where it is?"

He nods. "I pass it every day."

"Really?"

"Yes, really," he says and I see it in his Noise, I see the road-

"And I think finally that's enough," says a voice from the darkness.

A voice we both recognize.

The Mayor steps out of the blackness, a row of soldiers behind him.

"Good evening to you both," he says. And I hear a flash of Noise from the Mayor. And Todd collapses.

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17 HARD LABOR

***

[TODD]

It's a sound but it's not a sound and it's louder than anything possible and it would burst yer eardrums if you were hearing it with yer ears rather than the inside of yer head and everything goes white and it's not just like I'm blind but deaf and dumb and frozen, too, and the pain of it comes from right deep down within so there's no part of yerself you can grab to protect it, just a stinging, burning slap right into the middle of who you are.

This is what Davy felt, every time he got hit with the Mayor's Noise. And it's words-All it is is
words-

But it's
every
word, crammed into yer head all at once, and the whole world is shouting at you that YER NOTHING YER NOTHING YER NOTHING and it rips away every word of yer own, like pulling yer hair out at the roots and taking skin with it--

A flash of words and I'm nothing-

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I'm nothing-YER NOTHING--

And I fall to the ground and the Mayor can do whatever he wants with me.

I don't wanna talk about what happens next.

The Mayor leaves some soldiers behind to guard the house of healing and the others drag me back to the cathedral and he don't say nothing as we go, not a word as I beg him not to hurt her, as I promise and scream and cry (shut up) that I'll do anything he wants as long as he don't hurt her.

(shut up, shut up)

When we get back, he ties me to the chair again.

And lets Mr. Collins go to town.

And-

And I don't wanna talk about it.

Cuz I cry and I throw up and I beg and I call out her name and I beg some more and it all shames me so much I can't even say it.

And all thru it, the Mayor says nothing. He just walks round me, over and over again, listening to me yell, listening to me plead.

Listening to my Noise beneath it all.

And I tell myself that I'm doing all this yelling, all this begging, to hide in my Noise what she told me, to keep her safe, to keep him from knowing. I tell myself I have to cry and beg as loud as I can so he won't hear.

(shut up)

That's what I tell myself.

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And I don't wanna say no more about it. (just effing shut the hell up)

By the time I get back in the tower, it's nearly morning and Mayor Ledger's waiting up for me and even tho I'm in no fitness to do anything, I'm wondering if maybe he played a part in all this somehow but his instant concern for me, his horror at the shape I'm in, it all sounds true in his Noise, so true that I just lie slowly down on the mattress and don't know what to think.

"They barely even came in," he says, standing behind me. "Collins just opened the door, took a look, then locked me in again. It's like they knew."

"Yeah," I say into my pillow. "It sure is like they knew."

"I had nothing to do with it, Todd," he says, reading me. "I swear to you. I'd never help that man."

"Just leave me be," I say.

And he does.

I don't sleep.

I burn.

I burn with the stupidity of how easy they trapped me, how easy it was to use her against me. I burn with the shame of crying at the beating (shut
up).
I burn with the ache of being taken from her again, the ache of her promise to me, the ache of not knowing what's going to happen to her now.

I don't care nothing bout what they do to me.

Eventually, the sun rises and I find out my punishment.

Put yer back into it, pigpiss."

"Shut it, Davy."