Havoc (7 page)

I got up and lit the kero lamps hanging from hooks on the walls. Their oily tang
stung my nose and eyes and made my head pound. I hung one at the fireplace next to
Lanya, but she waved it away. She'd hardly moved since I'd come in. Head on knees,
she could have been asleep or angry or anxious or, most likely, fed up with the lot
of us. I sat back down, closed my eyes and thought about sleep.

Listening to the talk at the table I realised that I missed Vega's hard-nosed intelligent
risk taking. He pushed things forward, carried you along, even if it was you that
ended up taking the risk.

They left at last, not much further forward than when they'd arrived. Levkova turned
to me. ‘Well?'

I stared at the ceiling. ‘Yes,' I said. ‘It makes sense. But how?'

‘That's for you to work out.'

‘Oh, good.' I looked at the rain on the windows and tried to think, but my brain
had shut down.

‘Later,' said Levkova, taking pity for once.

Lanya disappeared without a word into the little sunroom off the kitchen where she
slept when she stayed over, and I hauled myself up the stairs to my own bed and crashed,
fully clothed, face down on top of it.

CHAPTER 09

Options, options. Like Lou used to say, when considering an escape from school,
try something so obvious they won't expect it. Try walking out the gate.

‘Okay,' I said to Levkova at the kitchen table next morning. ‘Let's forget about
trying to go through the wire and across Curswall Bridge.'

I glanced at Lanya. She was concentrating far more than was necessary on spreading
jam on a piece of bread. She'd been extra polite to me all morning.

Levkova said, ‘As long as it's soon. Kelleran won't be wasting time and we can't
either. What are you thinking?'

‘The Mol.'

Lanya looked up. ‘What?'

I said, ‘What's the only bridge gate on Cityside that won't be guarded anymore? And
what's the only strip of river where there are no mines because they've all been
detonated and not replaced yet?'

‘Oh,' said Lanya. ‘Are you going to swim?'

‘The girl under the bridge,' I said. ‘How did she get there? What if she had a boat?'

‘Are you serious?'

‘What girl?' asked Levkova, and listened while we explained.

Lanya said, ‘Suppose this girl did have a boat, and suppose you found it, and it
was undamaged, you're talking about sneaking out right under the eye of their army.'

Levkova was watching me with a calculating frown.

‘I think it's worth pursuing,' she said.

The makeshift infirmary was a cluster of dust-coloured tents pitched on land that
used to be a park west of the shantytown, in the older part of Moldam. I told a medic
that I wanted to see the girl who'd been found under the bridge, and she laughed
and said, ‘Who doesn't!'

She pointed me towards a queue outside one of the tents. About two dozen people were
sitting, standing, shifting from foot to foot, patient the way people are patient
in queues on Southside. ‘There's not much point, though,' she said. ‘Girl swallowed
the river—she's got God-knows-what running through her at the moment and she's sick
as a dog. You won't get any sense out of her for a couple of days at least. And even
then…' She paused and studied me. ‘You're that Cityside boy, aren't you?
She's got
no Breken, but she does speak some Anglo, so you probably could talk to her. But
not for two days. At least.'

I couldn't wait two days.

I went over to the queue and asked what they were waiting for and they said, ‘A blessing.'

‘A what?' I said, but all I got in answer were stares and thumbs pointing me to the
back of the line. Then this guy came out of the tent. I knew him, vaguely. Sandor
something. He was a couple of years older than me, and he was making a name for
himself as a doer of deals. A smooth talking southerner, his dark hair cut carefully,
always dressed to impress—doing well for himself, but then you looked closely and
saw the mending on his clothes and how threadbare it all was. It wasn't your pockets
and your wallet that you watched when you saw Sandor sliding through a crowd, more
like your life savings and your hopes for the future—for a little cash, or not so
little, he'd turn your dreams into schemes that couldn't go wrong. So he said.

Now he stood at the front of the queue and told the people that he'd seen the girl,
that she was called Nomu, and that she'd blessed him and spoken to him from a trance-like
state about the angel Raphael. They watched him, almost with reverence, and when
he'd finished, people reached out to touch him. A neat trick: he'd become sacred
by association. He walked down the queue
talking to people and nodding like he understood
their problems and was sure he could help them, for a small price no doubt.

He saw me watching him; I should have just left but when he got to the end of the
queue I said, ‘Why do you do that? Feed people that stuff? You don't believe any
of it.'

He looked at me, sly and sideways. ‘Nik Stais, right? Why do you care?'

‘Did you really see her—the girl?'

‘Who wants to know?'

‘Me, obviously.'

He looked around and waved at someone in the queue. ‘And why would you be interested
in her?'

I nodded towards the tent. ‘How did you even get in there?'

‘Well,' he looked extra pleased with himself, ‘I rescued her last night. Risked my
life to do it.'

He peered at me. ‘What's funny?'

‘Nothing. Never mind. Did she tell you anything, apart from that she was sent by
an angel?'

He turned his back to the crowd. ‘Look, these people have just had the shit kicked
out of them and they're locked in like it's the Marsh or something—they want to be
told everything will be okay. I'm telling them. You got a problem with that?'

‘No, no, you go for it,' I said. ‘But I know who got her off the bridge and I know
a medic who will
swear it wasn't you.'

‘So?'

‘So, tell me what she said to you. Did she say where she'd come from? How she got
here? Why she's here?'

He shrugged. ‘She might have.'

I closed my eyes, which wanted to be still sleeping, and tried to get a grip.

‘I'll do you a deal. Tell me what she said and I won't let on that it wasn't you
who rescued her.'

He thought about it and shrugged again. ‘Couldn't understand much of it. Her Breken
is really stink.'

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘That's probably cos it isn't Breken.'

He sneered and stepped away. ‘Okay, be a jumped-up little Citysider then.'

‘No! Wait. Sorry.'

‘You want to hear this or don't you?'

‘Yes, I do.'

‘Well, okay. She's real sick, so mostly she's rambling and talking gibberish—I don't
think she's one of ours, I think she's from City. My best guess—she was on a boat
from City and it got swamped by the wave from the bridge going up, she gets thrown
out and lands near the riverbank, crawls ashore.' His eyes narrowed at me. ‘Is it
a boat you're after? Think you can get outta here on a boat?' He hooted with laughter.
‘Things getting too tough? The City boy wants to go home.'

‘Yep, that's right.' I turned away.

He said, ‘You think I'm just a scavenger. You know the only thing worse than a Southside
scavenger? A Citysider pretending to be one.'

I walked away, but he must have rethought the possibilities because after a minute
he was back beside me saying, ‘Hold up! Wait! I'll help you find the boat if I can
go with you. It'll probably take two to handle it anyway.'

‘Sure,' I said. ‘We're under lockdown and you think we can just row away from here
without being shot by a Cityside grunt or blown up by a river mine. Besides, why
leave when you've got such a nice thing going here?'

‘Why leave?
Why leave?
Let me count the reasons.'

He stopped and his eyes got positively misty at the thought of the pots of gold just
out of reach on the other side of the river.

I walked and didn't answer. But he caught up again.

‘You know, that boat'll be long gone by now. There's scavengers here that put you
and me to shame. It'll be under lock and key for sure, if it's still in one piece,
smashed for scrap if it's not. That's if the soldier boys didn't find it first.'

When I didn't say anything, he said, ‘If it's been locked away by our people, I know
where it might be.'

‘Do you,' I said and kept walking.

‘I'll show you. You'll never find it on your own.'

I was trying to ignore him, but my feet slowed.

‘You won't,' he said and smiled.

I reported back to Levkova and Lanya. ‘Two days, at least, before she's well enough
to talk.'

I was standing in the back doorway of the kitchen looking out onto a riot of colour
and greenery that was fresh from yesterday's rain.

‘But,' I turned back to them, ‘I think she was on a boat, and I might be able to
find it.'

I sat down at the table and told them about Sandor. ‘Only thing is, if he helps me
find it, I'll have to take him with me.'

‘No.' Lanya shook her head. ‘He's a low-life. You don't need him. I'll help you look.'

She met my eye, at last, and gave me a small smile. ‘And then,' she said. ‘When we've
found it, I'm going with you.'

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘No.' I glanced at Levkova, who was watching us thoughtfully.

Lanya leaned over the table and whispered, ‘You are not my mother.' She sat back.
‘Think about it. Do you really want to be a lone brown male wandering the city streets?
You think they won't pick you up as soon as they lay eyes on you?'

I shook my head. ‘I wouldn't…I can't keep you safe over there.'

She smiled. ‘Look at you,' she said. ‘You look so sad.
You can't keep everyone safe
the whole time, you know.'

‘I haven't been able to keep anyone safe at any time. Maybe you noticed?'

‘I can take care of myself, thank you. Besides, you'll need someone to watch your
back.'

I looked at Levkova again, but she shrugged and said, unhelpfully, ‘She's right.'

In the half-light of dusk Lanya and I scoured the riverbank, upriver and down, separately
and together. We managed not to get caught, but we didn't find a boat. As it was
getting dark we admitted defeat and climbed back up the bank. On the river wall we
came face to face with Sandor, sitting there, kicking his heels.

‘Told you,' he said.

CHAPTER 10

The bridge girl's boat was lightweight carbon fibre, big enough for four people,
and even in the narrow gleam of Sandor's kero lamp we could tell it was not in great
shape.

We were standing in a hold dug deep into the riverwall about ten minutes walk downriver
from where the Mol used to be: the door looked like the entrance to an electricity
substation and was plastered with
Danger—Do Not Enter
signs.

We asked Sandor how he knew about it, but he just winked and looked smug.

He held up the lamp. ‘Look at this thing. Will it still float?'

I gave the crushed outboard motor a kick. ‘Well, we couldn't have used that anyway.'
I peered at the smashed searchlight. ‘Or that.'

Sandor leaned in and inspected the bent half-canopy
with its cracked windshield,
then glanced at me. ‘Might work. If we take off all this broken stuff.'

Lanya watched us, tight lipped and frowning. ‘Can you even row?' she said.

‘Sure I can.' Sandor lifted the lamp in her direction. ‘How do you think I knew this
was here? Boats go way back in my family.'

She snorted and walked over to me. ‘It's not a trafficker's boat,' she said. ‘It's
too smart. It's a boat for carting important people around. Who do you think that
girl is?'

‘Yeah,' said Sandor. ‘It's a Cityside boat, all right. You know what that means?'

‘As if we care,' Lanya muttered.

But Sandor was undaunted. ‘It means if they see us on the river, they won't blow
us out of the water right away. They'll wait till they find out who we are.' He slapped
the side of it and grinned. ‘Then, they'll blow us away.'

Lanya folded her arms. ‘You think you're coming?'

He stared right back. ‘I have oars. Which you'll find you need. And anyway, a deal
is a deal.'

‘So it is,' I said. ‘Now we pray for fog.'

That night Lanya and I walked to the end of Levkova's street and sat on the riverwall
looking across at the moonlit spread of the city. We talked through the plan that
Levkova and a walking-wounded Commander Vega had come up with. We'd find my father
who was with our
Cityside allies; we'd warn him that they had an informer in their
midst; and we'd tell him what was going on here so that they could work out a way
to (a) discover what Frieda's Operation Havoc was and if it had anything to do with
us, and (b) scuttle it. Neither Levkova nor Vega could tell me where my father was
because he hadn't told them and anyway knowledge of where he was would be dangerous
if we got picked up. Instead, Levkova sent an encrypted message setting up a meeting.
She'd sent it electronically, which was risky on an eye-watering scale, but what
else could we do—we were short of homing pigeons.

As for a meeting place: I'd put up a bunch of possibilities and they'd shot down
every one. Nowhere was safe. The city was riddled with cc-eyes peering along alleyways
and under bridges, monitoring plazas and parks and shops. In the end they decided
that meeting in a crowd was best, so Lanya and I were going to make our way to the
Friday morning market in St John's Square beside the old church where, lifetimes
ago, some friends and I had hidden in the crypt after running from our bombed-out
school.