The Ask and the Answer (13 page)

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you, not knowing what to believe about Viola, not knowing exactly how you should behave to keep her safe." I can feel his voice buzzing in my head, searching around. "But you have worked hard nonetheless. You have even been a good influence on David."

I can't help but think of the ways I'd like to beat Davy Prentiss into a bloody pulp but Mayor Prentiss just says, "As a reward, I bring you two belated birthday presents."

My Noise rises. "Can I see her?"

He smiles like he expected it. "You may not," he says, "but I will promise you this. On the day that you can bring yourself to trust me, Todd, truly bring yourself to understand that I mean good for this town and good for you, then on that day, you will see that I am indeed trustworthy."

I can hear myself breathing. It's the closest he's come to saying she's all right.

"No, your first birthday present is one you've earned," he says. "You'll have a new job starting tomorrow. Still with our Spackle friends, but added responsibility and an important part of our new process." He looks me hard in the eye again. "It's a job that could take you far, Todd Hewitt."

"All the way up to be a leader of men?" I say, my voice a bit more sarcastic than he'd probably like.

"Indeed," he says.

"And the second present?" I say, still hoping it might be her.

"My second present to you, Todd, surrounded by all this cure"-he gestures at the crates again-"is not to give you any at all."

I screw up my mouth. "Huh?"

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But he's already walking toward me as if we're thru talking.

And as he passes me--

I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

Rings thru my head, just the once, coming right from the center of me, of who I am.

I jump from the surprise of it.

"Why can I hear it if yer taking the cure?" I say.

But he just gives me a sly smile and disappears up the staircase, leaving me there.

Happy late birthday to me.

I am Todd Hewitt,
I think, as I lie in bed, staring up into the dark.
I am Todd Hewitt and four days ago I was a man.
Sure don't feel no different, tho.

All that reaching for it, all that importance on the date, and I'm still the same of stupid effing Todd Hewitt, powerless to do anything, powerless to save myself, much less her.

Todd effing Hewitt.

And lying here in the dark, Mayor Ledger snoring away over on his mattress, I hear a faint
pop
outside, somewhere in the distance, some stupid soldier firing off his gun at who knows what (or who knows who) and that's when I think it.

That's when I think getting thru it ain't enough.

Staying alive ain't enough if yer barely living.

They'll play me as long as I let 'em.

And she coulda been out there.

She coulda been out there
today.

I'm gonna find her-

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First chance I get, I'm gonna take it and I'm gonna find her-

And when I do-

And then I notice Mayor Ledger ain't snoring no more. I raise my voice into the dark. "You got something to say?"

But then he's snoring again and his Noise is gray and muzzy and I wonder if I imagined it.

131

10 IN GOD ' S HOUSE

***

(V iola)

"I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW SORRY I AM." I don't take the cup of root coffee he offers. "Please, Viola," he says, holding it out toward me. I take it. My hands are still shaking. They haven't stopped since last night. Since I watched her fall.

First to her knees, then onto her side down to the gravel, her eyes still open.

Open, but already unseeing. I watched her fall.

"Sergeant Hammar will be punished." The Mayor takes a seat across from me. "He was by no means and under no circumstances following my orders."

"He killed her," I say, hardly any sound to my voice. Sergeant Hammar dragged me back to the house of healing, pounding on the door with the butt of his rifle, waking everyone up, sending them out after Maddy's body.

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I couldn't speak, I could barely even cry.

They wouldn't look at me, the mistresses, the other apprentices. Even Mistress Coyle refused to meet my eye.

What did you think you were doing? Where did you think you were taking her?

And then Mayor Prentiss summoned me here this morning to his cathedral, to his home, to God's house.

And then they
really
wouldn't look at me.

"I'm sorry, Viola," he says. "Some of the men of Prentisstown,
old
Prentisstown, still bear grudges against women over what happened all those years ago."

He sees my look of horror. "The story you think you know," he says, "is not the story that's true."

I'm still gaping at him. He sighs. "The Spackle War was in Prentisstown, too, Viola, and it was a terrible thing, but women and men fought side by side to save themselves." He puts his fingertips together in a triangle, his voice still calm, still gentle. "But there was division in our little outpost even as we were victorious. Division between men and women."

"I'll say there was."

"They made their own army, Viola. They splintered off, not trusting men whose thoughts they could read. We tried to reason with them, but eventually, they wanted war. And I'm afraid they got it."

He sits up, looking at me sadly. "An army of women is still an army with guns, still an army that can defeat you."

I can hear myself breathing. "You killed every single one."

"I did not," he says. "Many of them died in battle, but when they saw the war was lost, they spread the word that we were their murderers and then they killed themselves

133

so that the remaining men would be doomed either way."

"I don't believe you," I say, remembering that Ben told us a different version. "That's not how it happened."

"I was there, Viola. I remember it all far more clearly than I want to." He catches my eye. "I am also the one most keen that history doesn't repeat itself. Do you understand me?"

I think I do understand him and my stomach sinks and I can't help it-I start to cry, thinking of how they brought Maddy's body back, how Mistress Coyle insisted I be the one to help her prepare the body for burial, how she wanted me to see up close the cost of trying to find the tower.

"Mistress Coyle," I say, fighting to control myself. "Mistress Coyle wanted me to ask if we can bury her this afternoon."

"I've already sent word that she can," the Mayor says. "Everything Mistress Coyle requires is being delivered to her as we speak."

I set the coffee down on a little table next to my chair. We're in a huge room, bigger than any place indoors I've ever seen except for the launch hangars of my ship. Too large for just a pair of comfortable chairs and a wooden table. The only light shines down through a round window of colored glass showing this world and its two moons.

Everything else is in shadow.

"How are you finding her?" the Mayor asks. "Mistress Coyle."

The weight on my shoulders, the weight of Maddy being gone, the weight of Todd still out there, sits so heavily I'd forgotten for a minute he was even there. "What do you mean?"

He shrugs a little. "How is she to work with? How is she as a teacher?"

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I swallow. "She's the best healer in Haven."

"And now the best healer in New Prentisstown," he corrects. "People tell me she used to be quite powerful around here. A force to be reckoned with."

I bite my lip and look back at the carpet. "She couldn't save Maddy."

"Well, let's forgive her for that, shall we?" His voice is low, soft, almost kind. "Nobody's perfect."

He sets down his cup. "I'm sorry about your friend," he says again. "And I'm sorry it has taken this long for us to speak again. There has been much work to do. I look to
stop
the suffering on this planet, which is why your friend's death grieves me so. That's been my whole mission. The war is over, Viola, it truly is. Now is the time for healing."

I don't say anything to that.

"But your mistress doesn't see it that way, does she?" he asks. "She sees me as the enemy."

In the early hours of this morning, as we dressed Maddy in her white burial cloths, she said,
If he wants a war, he's got a war. We haven't even
started
fighting.

But then when I was summoned here, she said to tell him no such thing, to ask only about the funeral.

And to find out what I could.

"You see me as the enemy, too," he says, "and I truly wish that weren't the case. I am so disappointed that this terrible incident has made you even more suspicious of me."

I feel Maddy rising again in my chest. I feel Todd rising, too. I have to breathe through my mouth for a minute.

"I know how appealing it seems that there should be sides, that you should be on
her
side," he says. "I don't blame

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you. I haven't even asked you about your ships because I know you would lie to me. I know she would have asked you to. If I were in Mistress Coyle's position, I would do exactly the same thing. Push you to help me. Use an asset that's fallen into my lap."

"She's not using me," I say quietly.

You can be so valuable to us, I
remember,
if you choose.

He leans forward. "Can I tell you something, Viola?"

"What?" I ask.

He cocks his head. "I really do wish you would call me David."

I look back down to the carpet. "What is it, David?"

"Thank you, Viola," he says. "It really does mean something to me." He waits until I look up again. "I've met the Council that ran Haven as was. I've met the former Mayor of Haven. I've met the former police chief and the chief medical officer and the head of education. I've met everyone of any importance in this town. Some of them now work for me. Some of them don't fit into the new administration and that's fine, there's plenty of work to be done rebuilding this city, making it ready for
your
people, Viola, making it the proper paradise that they need and want and expect."

He's still looking right into my eyes. I notice how dark blue his own are, like water running over a slate.

"And of all the people I've met in New Prentisstown, your Mistress Coyle is the only one who truly knows what leading is like. Leadership isn't grown, Viola. It's
taken,
and she may be the only person on this entire planet besides myself who has enough strength, enough
will
to take it."

I keep looking at his eyes and a thought comes.

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His Noise is still silent as the black beyond and his face and eyes give away nothing either. But I do begin to wonder-Right there, just at the back of my thinking-Is he
afraid
of her?

"Why do you think I had you taken to her for your gunshot wound?" he asks.

"She's the best healer. You said it yourself."

"Yes, but she's far from the only one. Bandages and medicine do most of the work. Mistress Coyle just applies them especially skillfully."

My hand goes unconsciously to my front scar. "It's not just that."

"It is not, you're correct." He leans even farther forward. "I want her on my side, Viola. I
need
her on my side if I'm going to make this new society any kind of success. If we worked together, Mistress Coyle and I"-he leans back-"well, what a world we could make."

"You locked her up."

"But I wasn't going to
keep
her locked up. The borders between men and women had become blurred, and the reintroduction of those borders is a slow and painful process. The formation of mutual trust takes time, but the important thing to remember is, as I've said, the war is
over,
Viola. It truly is. I want no more fighting, no more bloodshed."

For something to do, I pick up the cooling cup of coffee. I put it to my lips but I don't drink it.

"Is Todd okay?" I ask, not looking at him.

"Happy and healthy and working in the sun," the Mayor says.

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"Can I see him?"

He's silent, as if he's considering it. "Will you do something for me?" he asks.

"What?" Another idea begins to form in my head. "You want me to spy on her for you."

"No," he says. "Not
spying,
not at all. I just want your help in convincing her that I'm not the tyrant she thinks, that history isn't as she knows it, that if we work together, we can make this place into the home we
both
wanted when our people left Old World all those many years ago. I am not her enemy. And I am not yours."

He seems so sincere. He really does.

"I'm asking for your help," he says.

"You're in complete control," I say. "You don't need my help."

"I do," he says insistently. "You've grown closer to her than I ever possibly could."
Have I?
I think.
This is the girl,
I remember.

"I also know that she drugged you that first night so you would fall asleep before you told me anything."

I sip my cold coffee. "Wouldn't you have done the same?"

He smiles. "So you agree we're not that different, she and I?"

"How can I trust you?"

"How can you trust her if she drugged you?"

"She saved my life."

"After I delivered you to her."

"She's not keeping me locked up in the house of healing."

"You came here unchaperoned, didn't you? The restrictions are being lessened this very day."