The Ask and the Answer (33 page)

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I stand. The moons are our only light. We cross the road, keeping low.

After we moved to the lake, after the rescue of all those people, after the death of Corinne-

After I joined the Answer-

I began to learn things.

"Basic training," Mistress Coyle called it. Led by Mistress Braithwaite and done not only for me but for every patient who improved enough to join in, which was most of them, more than you'd think, we were taught how to load a rifle and fire it, basics of infiltration, nighttime maneuvers, tracking, hand communications, code words.

How to wire and set a bomb.

"How do you know how to do this?" I asked one night at dinner, my body weary and aching from the running and diving and carrying we'd done all throughout the day. "You're healers. How do you know how-"

"To run an army?" Mistress Coyle said. "You forget about the Spackle War."

"We were our own division," Mistress Forth said, down the table, snuffling up some broth.

The mistresses talked to me, now that they could see how hard I was training.

"We weren't very popular," giggled Mistress Lawson, across from her.

"We didn't like how some of the generals were waging the war," Mistress Coyle said to me. "We thought an underground approach would be more effective."

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"And since we didn't have Noise," said Mistress Nadari, down the table, "we could sneak into places, couldn't we?"

"The men in charge didn't think we were the answer to their problem, though," Mistress Lawson said, still giggling.

"Hence the name," Mistress Coyle said.

"And when the new government was formed and the city rebuilt, well," Mistress Forth said, "it wouldn't have been sensible not to keep important materials available should the need ever arise."

"The explosives in the mine," I said, realizing. "You hid them there years ago."

"And what a good decision it turned out to be," Mistress Lawson said. "Nicola Coyle always was a woman of foresight."

I blinked at the name Nicola, as if it was hardly possible that Mistress Coyle had a first name.

"Yes, well," said Mistress Coyle. "Men are creatures of war. It's only prudent to remember that."

Our target is deserted, as we expect it to be. It's small, but symbolic, a well above a tract of farmland east of the city. The well and the apparatus above it only bring water for the field below, not any huge system or set of buildings. But if the city goes on allowing the Mayor to imprison, torture, and kill, then the city won't eat.

It's also a good way away from the city center, so no chance of me seeing Todd.

Which I won't argue about. For now.

We've come up the cut-off road, keeping to the ditch

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beside it, holding our breaths as we move past the sleeping farmhouse, a light still on in the upper floor but it's so late it can only be for security.

Mistress Coyle makes another hand signal and I move past her, ducking under a wire carriage of laundry, hung outside to dry. I trip on a child's toy scooter but manage to keep my balance.

The bomb's supposed to be safe, supposed to be impervious to any kind of jostling or shaking. But.

I let out a breath and keep on toward the well.

Even in the weeks when we hid, when we didn't approach the city at all, the weeks when we laid low and kept quiet, training and preparing, even then a few escapees from the city found us.

"They're saying
what?"
Mistress Coyle said.

"That you killed all the Spackle," the woman said, pressing the poultice against her bleeding nose.

"Wait," I said.
"All
the Spackle are dead?"

The woman nodded.

"And they're saying we did it," Mistress Coyle repeated.

"Why would they say that?" I asked.

Mistress Coyle stood and looked out across the lake. "Turn the city against us. Make us look like the bad guys."

"That's exactly what he's saying," the woman said. I found her on a training run through the woods. She'd tripped down a rocky embankment, managing to break only her nose. "There's rallies every other day," she said. "People are listening."

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"I'm not surprised," Mistress Coyle said. I looked up at her. "You didn't do it, did you? You didn't kill them?"

Her face could've lit a match. "Exactly what sort of people do you think we are, my girl?"

I kept her gaze. "Well, I don't know, do I? You blew up a bunker. You killed soldiers."

But she just shook her head, though I didn't know if that was an answer.

"You're sure you weren't followed?" she asked the woman.

"I was wandering in the woods for three days," she said. "I didn't even find you." She pointed at me.
"She
found
me."

"Yes," Mistress Coyle said, eyeing me. "Viola's useful that way."

There's a problem at the well.

"It's too close to the house," I whisper.

"It's not," Mistress Coyle whispers back, going behind me and unzipping my pack.

"Are you sure?" I say. "The bombs you blew up the tower with were-"

"There are bombs and there are bombs." She makes a few adjustments to the contents of my pack, then turns me around to face her. "Are you ready?"

I look over to the house, where anyone could be sleeping inside, women, innocent men, children. I won't kill anyone, not unless I have to. If I'm doing this for Todd and Corinne, well, then. "Are you sure?" I ask.

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"Either you trust me, Viola, or you do not." She tilts her head. "Which will it be?"

The breeze has picked up again and it blows a bit of the sleeping Noise of New Prentisstown down the road. One indefinable, snuffling, snoring almost quiet, if such a thing could be.

Todd somewhere in it all.

(not dead, no matter what she says)

"Let's get this done," I say, taking off the pack.

The rescue wasn't a rescue for Lee. His sister and his mother weren't among the prisoners saved or the prisoners who died. It's possible they were in the one prison the Answer didn't manage to break. But.

"Even if they're dead," he said, one night as we sat on the shore of the lake, throwing in stones, aching again after yet another long day's training. "I just want to know."

I shook my head. "If you don't know, then there's still a chance."

"Knowing or not knowing doesn't keep them alive." He sat down, close to me again. "I think they're dead. I
feel
like they're dead."

"Lee-"

"I'm going to kill him." His voice was that of a man making a promise, not a threat. "If I get close enough, I swear to you."

The moons rose over us, making two more of themselves in the surface of the lake. I threw in another stone, watching it skip across the moons' reflections. The camp gave a low

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bustle in the trees behind us and up the bank. You could hear Noise here and there, including a growing buzz from Lee, not lucky enough to qualify for Mistress Coyle's ration.

"It's not what you think it's going to be like," I said quietly.

"Killing someone?"

I nodded. "Even if it's someone who deserves it, someone who will kill you if you don't kill them, even then it's not what you think."

There was more silence, until he finally said. "I know."

I looked over at him. "You killed a soldier."

He didn't answer, which was its own answer.

"Lee?" I said. "Why didn't you tell-?"

"Because it's not what you think it's going to be like, is it?" he said. "Even if it's someone who deserves it."

He threw another stone into the lake. We weren't resting our shoulders on each other. We were a space apart.

"I'm still going to kill him," he said.

I peel off the backing paper and press the bomb into the side of the well, sticking it there with a glue made from tree sap. I take two wires out of my pack and twist the ends on two more wires already sticking out of the bomb, hooking two together and leaving one end dangling. The bomb is now armed.

I take a small green number pad from the front pocket of my pack and twist the end of the dangling wire around a point at the end of the pad. I press a red button on the pad and then a gray one. The green numbers light up.

The bomb is now ready for timing.

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I click a silver button until the digits count up to 30:00. I press the red button again, flip over the green pad, slide one metal flap into another, then press the gray button one more time. The green numbers immediately change to 29:59, 29:58, 29:57.

The bomb is now live.

"Nicely done," Mistress Coyle whispers. "Time to go."

And then after almost a month of hiding in the forest, waiting for the prisoners to recuperate, waiting for the rest of us to train, waiting for a real army to have life breathed into it, there came a night when that waiting was over.

"Get up, my girl," Mistress Coyle said, kneeling at the foot of my cot.

I blinked myself awake. It was still pitch-black. Mistress Coyle's voice was low so as not to wake the others in the long tent.

"Why?" I whispered back. "You said you'd do anything."

I got up and went out into the cold, hopping to get my boots on while Mistress Coyle readied a pack for me to wear.

"We're going into town, aren't we?" I said, tying my laces.

"She's a genius, this one," Mistress Coyle muttered into the pack.

"Why tonight? Why now?"

She looked up at me. "Because we need to remind them that we're still here."

***

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The pack rests empty against my back. We cross the yard and sidle up to the house, stopping to listen for anyone stirring. No one does.

I'm ready to go but Mistress Coyle is leaning back from the outer wall of the house, looking at the white expanse of it. "This should do fine," she says.

"For what?" I look around us, spooked now that there's a timer running.

"Have you forgotten who we are?" She reaches into a pocket of her long healer's skirt, still worn even though trousers are so much more practical. She pulls out something and tosses it to me. I catch it without even thinking.

"Why don't you do the honors?" she says.

I look in my hand. It's a crumbling piece of blue charcoal, pulled from our wood fires, the remains of the reacher trees we burn to keep warm. It smears dusty blue across my hand, across my skin.

I look at it for a moment longer.

"Tick tock," says Mistress Coyle.

I swallow. Then I raise the charcoal and make three quick slashes against the white wall of the house.
A,
looking back at me, by my hand. I find myself breathing heavily.

When I look round, Mistress Coyle's already off down the ditches of the drive. I hurry after her, keeping my head low.

Twenty-eight minutes later, just as we reach our cart, deep in the woods, we hear the
Boom.

"Congratulations, soldier," Mistress Coyle says, as we set off back to camp. "You have just fired the first shot of the final battle."

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29 THE BUSINESS OF ASKING

***

[TODD]

THE WOMAN IS STRAPPED against a metal frame, her arms out behind her and up, each tied at the wrist to a bar of the frame.

It looks like she's diving into a lake.

Except for the watery blood on her face.

"She's gonna get it now," Davy says.

But his voice is oddly quiet.

"One more time, my female friend," Mr. Hammar says, walking behind her. "Who set the bomb?"

The first bomb since the prison break went off last night, taking out a well and pump on a farm.

It's begun.

"I don't know," says the woman, her voice strangled and coughing. "I haven't even left Haven since-"

"Haven't left
where?"
Mr. Hammar says. He grabs a handle on the frame and tips the whole thing forward,

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plunging the woman face-first into a tub of water, holding her there as she thrashes against her bindings. I look down at my feet.

"Raise your head, please, Todd," the Mayor says, standing behind us. "How else will you learn?" I raise my head.

We're on the other side of a two-way mirror, in a small room looking in on the Arena of the Ask, which is just a room with high concrete walls and similar mirrored rooms off of each side. Davy and I sit next to each other on a short bench.

Watching.

Mr. Hammar pulls up the frame. The woman rises outta the water, gasping for air, straining against where her arms are tied.