“Why haven’t they come already?” I asked. “People must know there’s a mine here.”
All she did was wink at me and touch the side of her nose.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
But that was all I got, because information is her most valuable resource, isn’t it?
At breakfast, I get my usual snubbing by Thea and the other apprentices I recognize, none of whom will say a word to me, still blaming me for Maddy’s death, blaming me for somehow being a traitor, blaming me for this whole sodding war, for all I know.
Not that I care.
Because I don’t.
I leave them to the dining hall, and I take my plate of grey porridge out in the cold morning to some rocks near the mouth of one of the caves. As I eat, I watch the camp start to wake itself, start to put itself together for the things that terrorists spend their days doing.
The biggest surprise is how few people there are. Maybe a hundred. That’s all. That’s the big Answer causing all the fuss in New Prentisstown by blowing things up. One hundred people. Mistresses and apprentices, former patients and others, too, disappearing in the night and returning in the morning, or keeping the camp running for those that come and go, tending to the few horses the Answer has and the oxes that pull the carts and the hens we get our eggs from and a million other things that need doing.
But only a hundred people. Not enough to have a whisper of a prayer if the Mayor’s real army comes marching down towards us.
“All right, Hildy?”
“Hi, Wilf,” I say, as he comes up to me, a plate of porridge in his hands, too. I scoot over so he can sit near me. He doesn’t say anything, just eats his porridge and lets me eat mine.
“Wilf?” we both hear. Jane, Wilf’s wife, is coming for us, two steaming mugs in her hands. She picks her way over the rocks towards us, stumbling once, spilling some coffee and causing Wilf to rise halfway up, but she recovers. “Here ya go!” she practically shouts, thrusting the mugs at us.
“Thank you,” I say, taking mine.
She shoves her hands under her armpits against the cold and smiles, eyes wide and searching around, like she eats with them. “Awful cold to be eating outside,” she says, like an overly friendly demand that we explain ourselves.
“Yup,” Wilf says, going back to his porridge.
“It’s not too bad,” I say, also going back to eating.
“Didja hear they got a grain store last night?” she says, lowering her voice to a whisper but somehow making it louder at the same time. “We can have bread again!”
“Yup,” Wilf says again.
“D’you like bread?” she asks me.
“I do.”
“Ya gotta have bread,” she says, to the ground, to the sky, to the rocks. “Ya gotta have bread.”
And then she’s back off to the dining hall, not another word, though Wilf doesn’t seem to much mind or even notice. But I know, I definitely know that Wilf’s clear and even Noise, his lack of words, his seeming blankness doesn’t describe all of him, not even close.
Wilf and Jane were refugees, fleeing into Haven as the army swept behind them, passing us on the road as Todd slept off his fever in Carbonel Downs. Jane fell ill on the trip and, after asking directions, Wilf took her straight to Mistress Forth’s house of healing, where Jane was still recovering when the army invaded. Wilf, whose Noise is as free of deception as anyone’s on this planet, was assumed by the soldiers to be an idiot and so allowed to visit his wife when no other man was.
When the women ran, Wilf helped. When I asked him why, all he did was shrug and say, “They were gone take Jane.” He hid the less able women on his cart as they fled, built a hidey-hole in it so others could return for missions, and for weeks on end has risked his life taking them to and fro because the soldiers have always assumed a man so transparent couldn’t be hiding anything.
All of which has been a surprise to the leaders of the Answer.
But none of which is a surprise to me.
He saved me and Todd once when he didn’t have to. He saved Todd again when there was even more danger. He was even ready the first night I was here to turn right back around to help me find him, but Sergeant Hammar knows Wilf’s face now, knows that he should have been arrested, so any trip back is pretty much a death sentence.
I take a last spoonful of my porridge and sigh heavily as I pop it into my mouth. I could be sighing at the cold, sighing at the boring porridge, sighing at the lack of anything to do in camp.
But, somehow, Wilf knows. Somehow, Wilf always knows.
“Ah’m shur he’s okay, Hildy,” he says, finishing up his own porridge. “He survives, does our Todd.”
I look up into the cold morning sun and I swallow again, though there’s no porridge left in my throat.
“Keep yerself strong,” Wilf stays, standing. “Strong for what’s comin.”
I blink. “What’s coming?” I ask as he walks on towards the dining hall, drinking his mug of coffee.
He just keeps on going.
I finish my coffee, rubbing my arms to gather some heat, thinking I’ll ask her again today, no, I’ll tell her I’m coming on the next mission, that I need to find–
“You’re sitting out here all by yourself?”
I look up. Lee, the blond soldier, is standing there, smiling all toothy.
I immediately feel my face go hot.
“No, no,” I say, standing straight up, turning away from him and picking up the plate.
“You don’t have to leave–” he’s saying.
“No, I’m finished–”
“Viola–”
“All yours–”
“That’s not what I meant–”
But I’m already stomping back to the dining hall, cursing myself for the redness of my face.
Lee isn’t the only man. Well, he’s hardly a man, but like Wilf, he and Magnus can no longer pretend to be soldiers and go to the city, now that their faces are known.
But there are others who can. Because that’s the biggest secret of all about the Answer.
At least a third of the people here are men, men who pretend to be soldiers to shuttle women in and out of the city, men who help Mistress Coyle with the planning and targets, men with expertise on handling explosives, men who believe in the cause and want to fight against the Mayor and all he stands for.