“It’s not,” Mistress Coyle whispers back, going behind me and unzipping my pack.
“Are you sure?” I say. “The bombs you blew up the tower with were–”
“There are bombs and there are bombs.” She makes a few adjustments to the contents of my pack, then turns me around to face her. “Are you ready?”
I look over to the house, where anyone could be sleeping inside, women, innocent men, children. I won’t kill anyone, not unless I have to. If I’m doing this for Todd and Corinne, well, then. “Are you sure?” I ask.
“Either you trust me, Viola, or you do not.” She tilts her head. “Which will it be?”
The breeze has picked up again and it blows a bit of the sleeping Noise of New Prentisstown down the road. One indefinable, snuffling, snoring ROAR, almost quiet, if such a thing could be.
Todd somewhere in it all.
(not dead, no matter what she says)
“Let’s get this done,” I say, taking off the pack.
The rescue wasn’t a rescue for Lee. His sister and his mother weren’t among the prisoners saved or the prisoners who died. It’s possible they were in the one prison the Answer didn’t manage to break.
But.
“Even if they’re dead,” he said, one night as we sat on the shore of the lake, throwing in stones, aching again after yet another long day’s training. “I just want to know.”
I shook my head. “If you don’t know, then there’s still a chance.”
“Knowing or not knowing doesn’t keep them alive.” He sat down, close to me again. “I think they’re dead. I feel like they’re dead.”
“Lee–”
“I’m going to kill him.” His voice was that of a man making a promise, not a threat. “If I get close enough, I swear to you.”
The moons rose over us, making two more of themselves in the surface of the lake. I threw in another stone, watching it skip across the moons’ reflections. The camp gave a low bustle in the trees behind us and up the bank. You could hear Noise here and there, including a growing buzz from Lee, not lucky enough to qualify for Mistress Coyle’s ration.
“It’s not what you think it’s going to be like,” I said quietly.
“Killing someone?”
I nodded. “Even if it’s someone who deserves it, someone who will kill you if you don’t kill them, even then it’s not what you think.”
There was more silence, until he finally said. “I know.”
I looked over at him. “You killed a soldier.”
He didn’t answer, which was its own answer.
“Lee?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell–?”
“Because it’s not what you think it’s going to be like, is it?” he said. “Even if it’s someone who deserves it.”
He threw another stone into the lake. We weren’t resting our shoulders on each other. We were a space apart.
“I’m still going to kill him,” he said.
I peel off the backing paper and press the bomb into the side of the well, sticking it there with a glue made from tree sap. I take two wires out of my pack and twist the ends on two more wires already sticking out of the bomb, hooking two together and leaving one end dangling.
The bomb is now armed.
I take a small green number pad from the front pocket of my pack and twist the end of the dangling wire around a point at the end of the pad. I press a red button on the pad and then a grey one. The green numbers light up.
The bomb is now ready for timing.
I click a silver button until the digits count up to 30:00. I press the red button again, flip over the green pad, slide one metal flap into another, then press the grey button one more time. The green numbers immediately change to 29:59, 29:58, 29:57.
The bomb is now live.
“Nicely done,” Mistress Coyle whispers. “Time to go.”
And then after almost a month of hiding in the forest, waiting for the prisoners to recuperate, waiting for the rest of us to train, waiting for a real army to have life breathed into it, there came a night when that waiting was over.
“Get up, my girl,” Mistress Coyle said, kneeling at the foot of my cot.
I blinked myself awake. It was still pitch black. Mistress Coyle’s voice was low so as not to wake the others in the long tent.
“Why?” I whispered back.
“You said you’d do anything.”
I got up and went out into the cold, hopping to get my boots on while Mistress Coyle readied a pack for me to wear.
“We’re going into town, aren’t we?” I said, tying my laces.
“She’s a genius, this one,” Mistress Coyle muttered into the pack.
“Why tonight? Why now?”
She looked up at me. “Because we need to remind them that we’re still here.”
The pack rests empty against my back. We cross the yard and sidle up to the house, stopping to listen for anyone stirring.
No one does.
I’m ready to go but Mistress Coyle is leaning back from the outer wall of the house, looking at the white expanse of it.
“This should do fine,” she says.
“For what?” I look around us, spooked now that there’s a timer running.
“Have you forgotten who we are?” She reaches into a pocket of her long healer’s skirt, still worn even though trousers are so much more practical. She pulls out something and tosses it to me. I catch it without even thinking.
“Why don’t you do the honours?” she says.
I look in my hand. It’s a crumbling piece of blue charcoal, pulled from our wood fires, the remains of the reacher trees we burn to keep warm. It smears dusty blue across my hand, across my skin.
I look at it for a moment longer.
“Tick tock,” says Mistress Coyle.
I swallow. Then I raise the charcoal and make three quick slashes against the white wall of the house.
A, looking back at me, by my hand.
I find myself breathing heavily.
When I look round, Mistress Coyle’s already off down the ditches of the drive. I hurry after her, keeping my head low.
Twenty-eight minutes later, just as we reach our cart, deep in the woods, we hear the Boom.
“Congratulations, soldier,” Mistress Coyle says, as we set off back to camp. “You have just fired the first shot of the final battle.”