“So what is it?” I ask.
The Mayor looks my way. “What’s what?”
“This.” I gesture at the building. “What’s it sposed to be?”
“You finish building it, Todd, and I promise to invite you to the grand opening.”
“It’s not for the Spackle, tho, is it?”
The Mayor frowns slightly. “No, Todd, it’s not.”
I rub the back of my neck with my hand and I can hear some clanking in Davy’s Noise, clanks that are gonna get louder if he thinks I’m messing up his moment of praise. “It’s just,” I say, “there’s been frost the past three nights and it’s only getting colder.”
The Mayor turns Morpeth to face me. Boy colt, he thinks. Boy colt steps back.
I step back without even thinking.
The Mayor’s eyebrows raise. “Are you wanting heaters for your workforce?”
“Well,” I look at the ground and at the building and at the Spackle who are doing their best to stay at the far end, as much away from the three of us as is possible to do when there are so many crowded into such a limited space. “Snow might come,” I say. “I don’t know that they’ll survive.”
“Oh, they’re tougher than you think, Todd.” The Mayor’s voice is low and full of something I can’t put my finger on. “A lot tougher.”
I look down again. “Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”
“I’ll have Private Farrow bring in some small fission heaters if that will make you feel better.”
I blink. “Really?”
“Really?” Davy says.
“They’ve done good work,” the Mayor says, “under your direction, and you’ve shown real dedication these past weeks, Todd. Real leadership.”
He smiles, almost warmly.
“I know you’re the kind of soul who hates to see others suffer.” He keeps hold of my eye, almost daring me to break it. “Your tenderness does you credit.”
“Tenderness,” Davy snickers.
“I’m proud of you.” The Mayor gathers up his reins. “Both of you. And you will be rewarded for your efforts.”
Davy’s Noise beams again as the Mayor rides outta the monastery gates. “Didja hear that?” he says, waggling his eyebrows. “Rewards, my tender pigpiss.”
“Shut up, Davy.” I’m already walking down the guide wall and towards the back of the building where there’s the last of the clear ground and so that’s where all the Spackle are having to crowd themselves. They get outta my way as I move thru them. “Heaters’re coming,” I say, putting it in my Noise, too. “Things’ll be better.”
But they just keep doing all they can not to touch me.
“I said things’ll be better!”
Stupid ungrateful–
I stop. I take in a breath. I keep walking.
I get to the back of the building where we’ve leaned a few unused guide walls against the building frame, forming a nook. “You can come out now,” I say.
There’s no sound for a minute, then a bit of rustling and 1017 emerges, his arm in a sling made up from one of my few shirts. He’s skinnier than ever, some redness still creeping up his arm from the break but it seems to be finally fading. “I managed to scrounge some painkillers,” I say, taking ’em outta my pocket.
He snatches ’em from my hand with a slap, scratching my palm.
“Watch it,” I say, thru clenched teeth. “You wanna be taken away to whatever they do with lame Spackle?”
There’s a burst of Noise from him, one I’ve grown to expect, and it’s the usual thing, him standing over me with a rifle, him hitting me and hitting me, me pleading for him to stop, him breaking my arm.
“Yeah,” I say. “Whatever.”
“Playing with yer pet?” Davy’s come round, too, leaning against the building with his arms crossed. “You know, when horses break their legs, they shoot ’em.”
“He ain’t a horse.”
“Nah,” Davy says. “He’s a sheep.”
I puff out my lips. “Thanks for not telling yer pa.”
Davy shrugs. “Whatever, pigpiss, as long as it don’t screw up our reward.”
1017 makes his rude clicking at both of us, but mostly at me.
“He don’t seem too grateful, tho,” Davy says.
“Yeah, well, I saved him twice now.” I look at 1017, look right into eyes that never leave mine. “I ain’t doing it again.”
“You say that,” Davy says, “but everyone knows you will.” He nods at 1017. “Even him.” Davy’s eyes widen in a mock. “It’s cuz yer tender.”
“Shut up.”
But he’s already laughing and leaving and 1017 just stares at me and stares at me.
And I stare back.
I saved him.
(I saved him for her)
(if she was here, she could see, see how I saved him)
(if she was here)
(but she ain’t)
I clench my fists and then force myself to unclench them.
New Prentisstown has changed in the past month, I see it every day as we ride home.
Part of it’s winter coming. The leaves on the trees have turned purple and red and dropped to the ground, leaving the tall winter skeletons behind them. The evergreens have kept their needles but dropped their cones and the reachers have pulled their branches tight into their trunks, leaving na**d poles to sit out the cold. All of it plus the constant darker skies makes it look like the town’s going hungry.
Which it is. The army invaded at the end of harvest, so there were food stocks, but there’s no one left in the outer settlements to bring in food to trade and the Answer are keeping up their bombs and food raids. One night a whole storehouse of wheat was taken, so completely and successfully it’s obvious now there’s people in the town and the army who’ve been helping ’em.
Which is bad news for the town and the army.
The curfew got lowered two weeks ago and again last week till no one’s allowed out after dark at all except for a few patrols. The square in front of the cathedral has become a place for bonfires, of books, of the wordly belongings of people found to have helped the Answer, of a bunch of healer uniforms from when the Mayor closed the last house of healing. And practically no one takes the cure no more, except some of the Mayor’s closest men, Mr. Morgan, Mr. O’Hare, Mr. Tate, Mr. Hammar, men from old Prentisstown who’ve been with him for years. Loyalty, I guess.