It’s like I’m holding her right in my hand.
She shows me her comm with a little laugh and there’s my own face, looking surprised.
“The signal’s relayed through the probe,” she says, pointing back towards the city, where a dot of light is hovering far down the road. “Simone’s keeping it back so this one doesn’t get shot down.”
“Smart move,” says the Mayor, from where he’s been standing nearby. “May I see one of those?”
“Nope,” Viola says, not even looking at him. “If you do this,” she says to me, pressing her comm at the edge, “you can talk to the scout ship, too. Simone?”
“I’m here,” says a woman, popping up next to Viola on the screen in my hand. “Are you okay down there? There was a minute where–”
“I’m okay,” says Viola. “I’m with Todd. This is him, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Todd,” says the woman.
“Uh,” I say. “Hi?”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Viola says to the woman.
“I’ll be watching. And Todd?”
“Yeah?” I say, looking at the woman’s little face.
“You take care of Viola, you hear?”
“Don’t you worry,” I say.
Viola presses her comm again and the faces disappear. She takes a long breath and gives me a tired smile. “So I leave you for five minutes and you go off and fight a war?” she says and she’s saying it to be kinda funny but I wonder–
I wonder if seeing all that death is why she looks a little different to me. More real, more there, like it’s just the most incredible thing in the world that we’re both still alive and I feel my chest get all funny and tight and I think, Here she is, right here, my Viola, she came for me, she’s here–
And I find myself thinking how I want to take her hand again and never let it go, to feel the skin of it, the warmth of it, hold it tight against my own hand and–
“Your Noise is funny,” she says, looking at me strange again. “It’s blurry. I can feel the feelings there–” and she looks away and my face goes red for no reason at all “–but it’s hard to read clearly.”
I’m about to tell her about the Mayor, about how I sorta blanked out for a minute but when I opened my eyes again, my Noise was lighter, was quieter–
I’m about to tell her this–
But she lowers her voice and leans in close. “Is it like with your horse?” she asks, cuz she saw how quiet Angharrad was when she rode up, Acorn not even able to get a herd-greeting out of her. “Is it because of what you saw?”
And that’s enough to make the battle come rushing back to the front of my thoughts, rushing back in all its horror, and even if my Noise is blurry she must be able to tell cuz she takes my hand and it’s just care and calm and I suddenly feel like I want to curl up into it for the rest of my life and just cry there for ever and my eyes get wet and she sees and she breathes, “Todd,” with all her kindness and I have to look away from her again and somehow we both end up looking over at the Mayor, standing across the campfire, watching everything we do.
I hear her sigh. “Why’d you let him go, Todd?” she whispers.
“I didn’t have no choice,” I whisper back. “The Spackle were coming and the army was only gonna follow him into war.”
“But it’s probably him the Spackle want in the first place. They’re only attacking because of the genocide.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not all that sure about that,” I say and for the first time I let myself really think about 1017 again, about me breaking his arm once in anger, about pulling him from the pile of Spackle bodies, about how no matter what I did, good or bad, he still wanted me dead.
I look back at her. “What do we do now, Viola?”
“We stop the war is what we do,” she says. “Mistress Coyle says there was a truce, so we try to get one again. Maybe Bradley and Simone can talk to the Spackle. Tell them we’re not all like this.”
“But what if they attack again before you can?” We look over to the Mayor again, who nods at us. “We’re gonna need him to stop ’em from killing us in the meantime.”
Viola frowns. “So he gets away with his crimes again. Because we need him.”
“He’s the one with the army,” I say. “They follow him. Not me.”
“And he follows you?”
I sigh. “That’s the plan. He’s kept his word so far.”
“So far,” she says quietly. Then she yawns and rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I can’t remember the last time I slept.”
I look down at my own hand, no longer holding hers and remember what she said to Simone. “So yer going back?”
“I have to,” she says. “I’ve got to find Mistress Coyle so she can’t make it any worse.”
I sigh again. “Okay. Remember what I said, tho. I ain’t leaving you. Not even in my head.”
And then she does take my hand again and she don’t say nothing but she don’t have to cuz I know, I know her and she knows me and we sit there for a little while more but then there’s nothing for it and she has to go. She gets stiffly to her feet. Acorn gives one last nuzzle to Angharrad, then comes back over to pick Viola up.
“I’ll tell you how I’m doing,” she says, holding up the comm. “Tell you where I am. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Viola?” the Mayor says, stepping over from the campfire as she climbs on Acorn’s saddle.
Viola rolls her eyes. “What?”
“I was wondering, please,” he says, like he was just asking to borrow an egg, “if you could kindly tell the people on your ship that I will happily meet them at their earliest convenience.”
“Yeah, I’ll be sure to do that,” she says. “And in return, let me say this.” She points back at the probe, still hanging there in the distant sky. “We’re watching you. You lay a hand on Todd, and there are weapons on that ship that will blow you to smithereens just because I tell them to.”
And I swear the Mayor’s smile just gets bigger.
Viola gives me a last, long look, but then she’s on her way, back thru the city, back to find wherever Mistress Coyle might be hiding.