The Ask and the Answer (37 page)

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"Effing pigpiss," he says to himself. He pulls angrily at a strap on his shoulder and I see he's carrying a bag. "Effing ..." he says again but don't finish the thought. He unsnaps the flap on it and takes something out.

"Here,"
he practically shouts, thrusting it at me.

My ma's book.

He's giving me back my ma's book. "Just take it!"

I reach out slowly, taking it twixt my fingers and pulling it away from him like it was a fragile thing. The leather of the cover is still soft, the gash still cut thru the front where Aaron stabbed me and it was stopped by the book. I run my hand over it.

I look up at Davy but he won't meet my eye.

"Whatever," he says and turns again, stomping back down the stairs and out into the night.

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32 FINAL PREPARATIONS

***

(Viola)

I HIDE BEHIND THE TREE, my heart pounding. I have a gun in my hand.

I listen hard for the snap of twigs, the sound of any footsteps, any sign that'll tell me where the soldier is. I know he's there because I can hear his Noise but it's so flat and wide I only get a general idea of the direction he's going to come after me.

Because he
is
coming for me. There's no doubt about that.

His Noise grows louder. My back is to the tree and I hear him off to my left.

I'm going to have to leap at just the right second. I ready my gun.

I see the trees around me in his Noise, along with asking marks wondering which one I'm hiding behind, narrowing it down to two, the one that I'm actually using and one a few feet away to my left.

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If he chooses that one, I've got him.

I hear his steps now, quiet against the damp forest floor. I close my eyes and try to concentrate solely on his Noise, on exactly where he's standing, where he's placing his feet.

Which tree he's approaching.

He steps. He hesitates. He steps again.

He makes his choice-

And I make mine-

I jump and I'm ducking and twisting and sweeping my leg at his feet and I'm catching him by surprise and he's falling to the ground, trying to aim his rifle at me, but I'm leaping on him and pinning his rifle arm down with my leg and throwing my weight on his chest and holding the barrel of my gun under his chin.

I've got him.

"Well done," Lee says, smiling up at me.

"Indeed, well done," Mistress Braithwaite says, stepping out of the darkness. "And now comes the moment, Viola. What do you do with the enemy under your mercy?"

I look down into Lee's face, breathing hard, feeling his warmth underneath me.

"What do you do?" Mistress Braithwaite asks again.

I look down at my gun.

"I do what I have to do," I say.

I do what I have to do to save him.

I do what I have to do to save Todd.

"You're
sure
you want to do this?" Mistress Coyle asks for the hundredth time as we leave the breakfast area the next

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morning, shaking off Jane's last insistences that we have more tea.

"I'm sure," I say.

"You've got one chance before we make our move.
One."

"He came for me once," I say. "When I was captive, he came for me and made the biggest sacrifice he could make to do it."

She frowns. "People change, Viola."

"He deserves the same chance he gave me."

"Hmm," Mistress Coyle hmms. She's still not convinced. But I haven't given her any choice. "And when he joins us," I say, "think of the information he can provide."

"Yes." She looks away, looks out at the camp of the Answer preparing itself. Preparing itself for war. "Yes, so you keep saying."

Even with how well I know Todd, I can also see how anyone else would see him on horseback, would see him in that uniform, would see him riding with Davy, and they would think he's a traitor.

And in the dead of night, when I'm under my blankets, unable to sleep.

I think it, too.

(what's he doing?)

(what's he doing with
Davy?
)

And I try to put it out of my mind as best I can.

Because I'm going to save him.

She's agreed that I can. She's agreed I can risk myself and go to the cathedral the night before the Answer makes its final attack and try one last time to save him.

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She agreed because I said if she didn't, I wouldn't help her with anything more, not with the bombs, not with the final attack, not with the ships when they land, now eight weeks away and counting. Nothing, if I couldn't try for Todd.

Even with all that, I think the only reason she agreed is for what he could tell us when he got here.

Mistress Coyle
likes
to know things.

"You're brave to try," Mistress Coyle says. "Foolish, but brave." She looks me up and down once more, her face unknowable.

"What?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "Just how much of myself I see in you, you exasperating girl."

"Think I'm ready to lead my own army?" I say, almost smiling.

She just gives me a last look and starts walking off into the camp, ready to give more orders, make more preparations, put the final touches to the plans for our attack.

Which happens tomorrow.

"Mistress Coyle," I call after her.

She turns.

"Thank you," I say.

She looks surprised, her forehead furrowed. But she nods, accepting it.

"Got it?" Lee calls over the top of the cart.

"Got it," I say, twisting the final knot and locking the clamp into place.

'"At's all of 'em," Wilf says, smacking some dust off his

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hands. We look at the carts, eleven of them now, packed to bursting with supplies, with weapons, with explosives. Almost the entire stash of the Answer.

Eleven carts doesn't seem like much against an army of a thousand or more, but that's what we have.

"Bin done before," Wilf says, quoting Mistress Coyle, but he's always so dry you never know if he's making fun. "Only a matter a tactics."

And then he smiles the same mysterious smile Mistress Coyle always gives. It's so funny and unexpected, I laugh out loud.

Lee doesn't, though. "Yes, her top secret plan." He pulls a rope on the cart to test that it holds.

"I expect it has to do with him," I say.
"Getting
him, somehow, and then once he's gone-"

"His army will fall apart and the town will rise up against his tyranny and we'll save the day," Lee says, sounding unconvinced. He looks at Wilf. "What do you think?"

"She says it'll be the end." Wilf shrugs. "Ah want it to be done."

Mistress Coyle does keep saying that, that this could end the whole conflict, that the right blow in the right place right
now
could be all we need, that if even just the women of the town join us we could topple him before winter comes, topple him before the ships land, topple him before he finds us.

And then Lee says, "I know something I shouldn't."

Wilf and I both look at him.

"She passed by the kitchen window with Mistress Braithwaite," he says. "They were talking about where the attack will come from tomorrow."

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"Lee-" I say.

"Don't say it," Wilf says.

"It's from the hill to the south of town," he presses on, opening his Noise so we can't
not
hear it. "The one with the notch in it, the one with the smaller road that leads right into the town square."

Wilf's eyes bulge. "Yoo shouldn'ta
said.
If Hildy gets caught-"

But Lee's only looking at me. "If you get into trouble," he says. "You come running toward that hill. You come running and that's where you'll find help."

And his Noise says, That's where you'll find me.

"And with burdened hearts, we commit you to the earth."

One by one, we throw a handful of dirt on the empty coffin that doesn't contain anything of the body of Mistress Forth, blown to pieces when a bomb went off too early as she was planting it on a grain house.

The sun is setting when we finish, dusk shining cold across the lake, a lake that had a layer of ice around the edges this morning that didn't melt all day. People start to spread out for the night's work, last-minute packing and orders to be received, all the women and men who will soon be soldiers, marching with weapons, ready to strike the final blow.

All they look like now are ordinary people.

I'll leave tonight as soon as it's fully dark.

They'll leave tomorrow at sunset, no matter what happens to me.

"It's time," Mistress Coyle says, coming to my side.

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She doesn't mean it's time to leave. There's something else that has to happen first. "Are you ready?" she asks. "As I'll ever be," I say, walking along with her. "This is a huge risk we're taking, my girl.
Huge.
If you're caught-"

"I won't be."

"But if you are." She stops us. "If you are, you know where the camp is, you know when we're attacking, and I'm going to tell you now that we're attacking from the east road, the one by the Office of the Ask. We're going to march into town and ram it down his throat." She takes both my hands and stares hard into my eyes. "Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

I do understand. I do. She's telling me wrong on purpose, she's telling me so I can truthfully give the wrong information if I'm caught, like she did before about the ocean.

It's what I'd do if I were her.

"I understand," I say.

She pulls her cloak farther shut against a freezing breeze that's come up. We walk in silence for a few steps, heading toward the healing tent.

"Who did you save?" I ask.

"What?" She looks at me, genuinely confused.

We stop again. Which is fine with me. "All those years ago," I say. "Corinne said you were kicked off the Council for saving a life. Who did you save?"

She looks at me thoughtfully and rubs her fingers across her forehead.

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"I may not return," I say. "You may never see me again. It'd be nice to know something good about you so I don't die thinking you're just a huge pain in my ass."

She almost grins but it disappears quickly, her eyes looking troubled again. "Who did I save?" she says to herself. She takes a deep breath. "I saved an enemy of the state."

"You
what?"

"The Answer was never exactly authorized, you see." She walks us off in a different direction, toward the shore of the freezing lake. "The men fighting the Spackle War didn't really approve of our methods, effective as they might have been." She looks back at me. "And they were
very
effective. Effective enough to get the heads of the Answer onto the ruling Council when Haven was being put back together."

"That's why you think it'll work now. Why you think it'll work against a bigger force."

She nods and rubs her forehead again. I'm surprised she hasn't built up a callus there. "Haven restarted itself," she continues, "using the captured Spackle to rebuild and so on. But some people weren't happy with the new government. Some people didn't have as much power as they thought they should." She shivers under her cloak. "Some people in the Answer."

She lets me realize what this might mean. "Bombs," I say.

"Quite so. Some people get so caught up in warfare, they start doing it for its own sake."

She turns away, so that maybe I can't see her face or that maybe she can't see mine, see the judgment on it.

"Her name was Mistress Thrace." She's talking to the lake now, to the cold night sky. "Smart, strong, respected, but with

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a liking for being in charge. Which was exactly the reason no one wanted her on the Council, including the Answer, and why she reacted so strongly to being left off."

She turns back to me. "She had her supporters. And she had her bombing campaign. Not unlike the one we're giving the Mayor now, except of course, that was meant to be peacetime." She glances up at the moons. "She specialized in what we took to calling a Thrace bomb. She'd leave it somewhere soldiers were gathered and it would look like an innocent package. Wouldn't arm itself until it felt the heartbeat in the skin of the hand picking it up. Your own pulse would make it dangerous, and at that point, you knew it was a bomb and that it would only go off when you let it go. So if you dropped it or couldn't disarm it..." She shrugs. "Boom."

We watch a cloud pass between the two rising moons. "Meant to be bad luck, that is," Mistress Coyle murmurs.

She loops her arm in mine again and we start walking back toward the healing tent. "And so there wasn't another war exactly," she says. "More of a skirmish. And to the delight of everyone, Mistress Thrace was mortally wounded."

There's a silence where you can only hear our footsteps and the Noise of the men, crisp in the air.

"But not mortally wounded after all," I say.

She shakes her head. "I'm a very good healer." We reach the opening of the healing tent. "I'd known her since we were girls together on Old World. As far as I saw it, I had no choice." She rubs her hands together. "They kicked me off the Council for it. And then they executed her anyway."

I look at her now, trying to understand her, trying to understand all that's good in her and all that's difficult and