And then I see Todd.
I say his name out loud and Bradley zooms in to where I’m pointing. My heart rushes as I see how he leans into Angharrad, and he’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive–
“That your friend?” Simone asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s Todd, he’s–”
I stop because we see the Mayor riding over.
Riding over to talk to Todd, like it was just a normal day.
“Wouldn’t that be the tyrant, though?” Simone asks.
I sigh. “It’s complicated.”
“Yeah,” Bradley says. “I’m getting that impression.”
“No,” I say firmly. “If you ever doubt anything here, if you ever not know what to think or who to trust, you trust Todd, okay? You remember that.”
“Okay,” Bradley says, smiling at me, “we’ll remember.”
“But there remains the bigger asking,” Simone says. “What do we do now?”
“We were expecting dead settlements and hopefully you and your parents in the middle of it all,” Bradley says. “Instead we got a dictator, a revolutionary, and an invading army of natives.”
“How big is the Spackle army?” I say, turning back to the projection. “Can you fly up?”
“Not much higher,” he says, but he dials some more and the probe moves up the zigzag hill, cresting the top of it and–
“Oh, my God,” I say, hearing Simone take in a breath.
Reflected in the light of both moons and of the campfires they’re burning and the torches they’re holding–
A whole nation of Spackle stretches back down the river road above the falls in the upper valley, far, far bigger than the Mayor’s army, enough to overwhelm them in a flood, enough to never, ever be beaten.
Thousands of them.
Tens of thousands.
“Superior numbers,” Bradley says, “versus superior fire-power. A recipe for unending slaughter.”
“Mistress Coyle said there was a truce,” I say. “If there was one before, there can be another.”
“What about the competing armies?” Simone asks.
“Competing generals, really,” I say. “If we can sort those two out, then it’ll be easier.”
“And maybe we should start,” Bradley says to me, “by meeting your Todd.”
He dials the remote again until the view zooms back in to the men on horses, on Todd next to Angharrad.
And then Todd looks up, right at the probe, right into the projection–
Right into me.
We see the Mayor notice and look up, too.
“They’ve remembered we’re here,” Simone says. She starts back up the ramp into the scout ship. “I’ll get something for your ankles, Viola, then I’ll contact the convoy. Though I don’t even know where to begin explaining . . .”
She disappears into the ship. Bradley comes over to me again. He reaches over and gently squeezes my shoulder. “I’m so sorry about your parents, Viola. More than I can say.”
I blink away fresh wet from my eyes, not just at the memory of my mum and dad dying in our crash, but at Bradley’s kindness–
And then I remember, almost with a gasp, that it was Bradley who gave me the gift that proved so useful, the box that made the fire, the box that made a light against the darkness, the box that eventually blew up a whole bridge to save me and Todd.
“It flickers,” I say.
“What’s that?” he says, looking up.
“Way back on the convoy,” I say, “you asked me to tell you what the night sky looks like by firelight, because I’d be the first one to know. It flickers.”
He smiles, remembering. He breathes in deep through his nose. “So this is what fresh air smells like,” he says, because of course it’s the first time he’s ever breathed it. He spent his whole life on a ship, too. “It’s different than I expected.” He looks back at me. “Stronger.”
“Lots of things are different than we expected.”
He squeezes my shoulder again. “We’re here now, Viola,” he says. “You’re not alone any more.”
I swallow and look back at the projection. “I wasn’t alone.”
Bradley sighs again, looking with me. It flickers, he says.
“We’ll have to build a fire so you can see for yourself,” I say.
“See what?”
“That it flickers.”
He looks at me puzzled for a minute. “What you said earlier?”
“No,” I say. “Just now, you said–”
What’s she talking about? he says.
But he doesn’t say it.
And my stomach turns in a knot.
No.
Oh, no.
“Did you hear that?” he says, looking even more puzzled and turning around. “It sounded like my voice . . .”
But how could it be my–? he thinks and then stops.
He looks back at me.
And Viola? he says.
But he says it in his Noise.
He says it in his brand-new Noise.
[TODD]
I hold the bandage to the wound on Angharrad’s flank and let the medicine enter her bloodstream. She still don’t say nothing, but I keep my hands on her, keep saying her name.
Horses can’t be alone and I need to tell her I’m part of her herd.
“Come back to me, Angharrad,” I whisper into her ears. “Come on, girl.”
I look over to the Mayor, talking to his men, and I try to think how the hell it came to this.
We had him beat. We did. Beaten and tied up and we’d won.
But now.
Now he’s just walking round again like he owns the place, like he’s completely in charge of the whole goddam world again, like what I did to him and how I beat him is of no concern at all.
But I did beat him. And I will again.
I untied a monster to save Viola.
And now I’ve somehow gotta keep hold of the leash.
“The eye in the sky is still there,” he says to me, walking over and looking up to the dot of light the Mayor’s pretty sure is a probe of some kind. We first saw it hovering over us an hour ago when the Mayor was giving orders to his captains, telling ’em to build a camp down here at the bottom of the hill, to send out spies to see what we’re up against and send out other troops to find out what’s happened to the army of the Answer.