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We spend the rest of the morning shoveling out the fodder, refilling the troughs, and putting lime on the bogs, me one - handed, Davy one - legged, but taking more time than even that would allow for cuz brag tho he may I don't think Davy wants to get back to the numbering just yet either. We may both have guns now but touching an enemy that almost killed you, well, that takes a bit of leading up to.
Morning turns to early afternoon. For the first time, instead of taking both our lunches for himself, Davy throws a sandwich at me, hitting me in the chest with it.
So we eat and watch the Spackle watching us, watch the pile of bodies burn, watch the eleven hundred fifty Spackle left over from the attack that went wrong, wrong, wrong. They're gathered round the edges of the fields we opened up and along the wall of the monastery, as far from us and from the burning pile as they can be.
"The bodies should go in a swamp," I say, eating my sandwich with one tired arm. "That's what Spackle bodies are for. You put 'em in water and then--"
"Fire's good enough for em," Davy says, leaning against the bag of numbering tools.
"Yeah, but-"
"There's no buts here, pigpiss." He frowns. "And what're you moaning for their sakes anyway? All yer blessed kindness didn't stop 'em from trying to rip yer arm off, now did it?"
He's right but I don't say nothing to that, just keep on watching them, feeling the rifle at my back.
I could take it. I could shoot Davy. I could run from here.
"You'd be dead before you got to the gate," Davy mumbles, looking at his sandwich. "And so would yer precious girl."
I don't say nothing to that neither, just finish my lunch. Every pile of food is out, every trough has been refilled, every bog has been limed up. There ain't nothing left to do except the thing we gotta do.
Davy sits up from where he was leaning against the bag. "Where were we?" he says, opening it up.
"0038," I say, keeping my gaze on the Spackle.
He sees from the metal bands that I'm right. "How'd you remember that?" he says, amazed.
"I just do."
They're looking back at us now, all of 'em. Their faces are hollowed out, bruised, blank. They know what we're doing. They know what's coming. They know what's in the bag. They know there ain't nothing they can do about it except die if they resist us.
Cuz I got a rifle on my back to make that happen.
(what's the right thing?)
"Davy," I start to say but it's all that comes out cuz--
BOOM!
- in the distance, almost not a sound at all, more like the faraway thunder of a storm you know is go
We turn, as if we could see over the walls, as if the smoke's already rising over the treetops outside the gates.
We can't and it ain't yet.
"Those bitches," Davy whispers.
But I'm thinking--
(is it her?)
(what is she doing?)
14 THE SECOND BOMB
***
( Viola )
THE SOLDIERS WAIT until midday to take me and Cori
Then I hear Cori
And that's when it happens.
BOOM!
A sound so big it makes the air as solid as a fist, as a wave of bricks, as if the world's dropped out beneath you and you're falling sideways and up and down all at once, like the weightlessness of the black beyond.
There's a blankness where I can't remember anything and then I open my eyes to find myself lying on the ground with smoke twirling around me in spi
He's not moving.
And sound begins to return and I start to hear the screaming.
"This is exactly the kind of history I did not want to repeat," the Mayor says, staring up thoughtfully into the shaft of light coming down from the colored - glass window.
"I didn't know anything about a bomb," I say for a second time, my hands still shaking and my ears ringing so loud it's hard to hear what he's saying. "Neither one."
"I believe you," he says. "You were very nearly killed yourself."
"A soldier blocked most of it for me," I stutter out, remembering his body, remembering the blood from it, the splinters that were stuck in nearly every part of him-
"She drugged you again, didn't she?" he asks, staring back up into the colored window, as if the answers might be there. "She drugged you and abandoned you."
This hits me like a punch.
She did abandon me.
And set off a bomb that killed a young soldier.
"Yes," I finally say. "She left. They all did."
"Not all." He walks behind me, becoming just a voice in the room, talking loud and clear enough so I can hear. "There are five houses of healing in this city. One remains fully staffed, three others are partially depleted of their healers and apprentices. It's only yours where there's been complete desertion."
"Cori
"Duly noted," he interrupts, even though it's true, even though she called me over to help her and we did the best we could until other stupid soldiers who couldn't or wouldn't see what we were doing grabbed us and dragged us away. Cori
"Please don't hurt her," I say again. "She has nothing to do with this. She stayed behind out of choice. She tried to help those-"
"I'm not going to hurt her!" he shouts suddenly. "Enough of this cowering. There will be no harm to women as long as I am President! Why is that so difficult for you to understand?"
I think of the soldiers hitting Cori
"Please don't hurt her," I whisper again.
He sighs and lowers his voice. "We just need answers from her, that's all. The same answers I'll be needing from you."
"I don't know where they went," I say. "She didn't tell me. She didn't mention anything."
And I stop myself and he notices. Because she did mention something, didn't she?
She told me a story about-
"Something you'd like to share, Viola?" the Mayor asks, coming around to face me, looking suddenly interested.
"Nothing," I say quickly. "Nothing, just..."
"Just what?" His eyes are keen on me, flitting over my face, trying to read me, even though I have no Noise, and I realize briefly how much he must hate that.