“She’s quite a girl,” the Mayor says, stepping up beside me.
“Yer not allowed to talk about her,” I say. “Not never.”
He lets that slide by. “It’s almost dawn,” he says. “You should get some rest. It’s been a big day.”
“One I don’t wanna repeat.”
“I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do about that.”
“Yes, there is,” I say, feeling better now that Viola’s said there might be a way outta this. “We’re gonna make a truce with the Spackle again. You just need to hold ’em back till we do.”
“Is that so?” he says, sounding amused.
“Yes,” I say, a little harder.
“That’s not quite how it works, Todd. They won’t be interested in talking to you if they think they’re in a position of strength. Why would they want peace if they’re certain they can annihilate us?”
“But–”
“Don’t worry, Todd. I know this war. I know how to win this war. You show your enemy you can beat him and then you can have any kind of peace you want.”
I start to say something back but I’m finally too tired to argue. I can’t remember the last time I slept neither.
“You know something, Todd?” the Mayor says to me. “I could swear your Noise is a bit quieter.”
And–
I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME.
He sends into my head again, with that same lightness, that same floating feeling–
That same feeling that makes my Noise disappear–
The feeling I didn’t tell Viola about–
(cuz it makes the screaming of the war disappear, too, makes it so I don’t gotta see all the dying over and over–)
(and is there something else there, too?)
(a low hum behind the lightness–)
“You stay outta my head,” I say. “I told you if you tried to control me, I’d–
“I’m not in your head, Todd,” he says. “That’s the beauty of it. It’s all you. Practise it. It’s a gift.”
“I don’t want no gift from you.”
“I’m sure that’s the case entirely,” he says, still smiling.
“Mr President?” It’s Mr Tate interrupting again.
“Ah, yes, Captain,” the Mayor says. “Are the first spy reports in?”
“Not yet,” Mr Tate says. “We expect them just after dawn.”
“When they’ll tell us there’s limited movement to the north above the river, which is too wide for Spackle troops to cross, and to the south along the ridge of hills, which is too remote for the Spackle to use effectively.” The Mayor looks back up to the hill. “No, they’ll attack us from there. Of that I have no doubt.”
“That’s not why I’ve come, sir,” Mr Tate says, and he holds up an armful of folded cloth. “It took a while to find in the wreckage of the cathedral, but it’s surprisingly unsullied.”
“Excellent, Captain,” the Mayor says, taking the cloth from him, real pleasure in his voice. “Most excellent indeed.”
“What is it?” I ask.
With a snap of his hands, the Mayor unfurls the cloth and holds it up. It’s a smart-looking jacket and matching trousers.
“My general’s uniform,” he says.
Mr Tate and me and all the soldiers nearby at their campfires watch as he takes off his blood- and dust-stained regular jacket and puts on a perfectly-fitted dark blue one with a gold stripe running down each sleeve. He smoothes it with his palms and looks back up at me, that amused twinkle still in his eye.
“Let the battle for peace commence.”
{VIOLA}
Acorn and I go back up the road and across through the square, the distant sky getting a pink tinge as dawn approaches.
I watched Todd as I left until I could no longer see him. I’m worried about him, worried about his Noise. Even when I left, it still had the strange blurriness to it, where it was hard to see details but was still just vivid with feelings–
(–even those feelings, the ones that were there for a minute before he got embarrassed, the physical feelings, the ones without words, the ones concentrated right on my skin, of how he wanted to touch it more, those feelings that made me want to–)
–and I wonder again if he’s in the same shock as Angharrad, if what he saw in battle was so bad, it somehow made him unable to even see it, even in his Noise, and my heart just breaks at the thought of it–
Another reason for no more war.
I pull the coat Simone gave me tighter. It’s cold and I’m shivering, but I can also feel myself sweating, which I know from my healer training means I have a fever. I pull up my left sleeve and look underneath the bandage. The skin around the band is still angry and red.
And now there are red streaks from it reaching down to my wrist.
Streaks that I know mean infection. Bad infection.
Infection that’s not being knocked back by the bandage.
I pull the sleeve back down and try not to think about it. Try not to think that I didn’t tell Todd how bad it was either.
Because I’ve still got to find Mistress Coyle.
“Well,” I say to Acorn. “She’s always talking about the ocean. I wonder if it’s really as far away as she–”
I jump as the comm beeps suddenly in my pocket.
“Todd?” I say, answering it immediately.
But it’s Simone.
“You’d better come straight back here,” she says.
“Why?” I say, alarmed. “What’s happened?”
“I’ve found your Answer.”
Before
(THE RETURN)
The sun is about to rise as I take some food from the cookfires. Members of the Land watch as I collect a pan and fill it with stew. Their voices are open – they could hardly be closed and still be members of the Land – so I can hear them discussing me, their thoughts spreading one to the other, forming one opinion, then a contrary one and back again, all so fast I can barely follow it.
And then they come to a decision. One of the Land rises to her feet to offer me a large bone spoon so that I do not merely have to drink the stew from the bowl, and behind her I can hear the Land’s voices, their voice, offering it to me in friendship.
I reach out to take it.