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My stomach flutters, remembering what the Mayor said to me about Aaron.
"But we have to go," Todd's saying. "Do you have any food we can take?"
"I can get some," I say. "Hurry."
As I turn to leave, I hear my name in his Noise. Viola, it says, and it's covered in worry, worry that we've been set up, worry that I think he was sent here on purpose, worry that I think he's lying, and all I can do is just look at him and think his name.
Todd.
And hope he knows what I mean.
I burst into the canteen and run to the cabinets. I leave most of the lights off, trying to keep quiet as I grab meal - packs and loaves of bread.
"That fast, huh?" Cori
She's sitting at a table far back in the darkness, cup of coffee in front of her. "Your friend shows up and you just leave." She stands and walks over to me.
"I have to," I say. "I'm sorry."
"You're sorry?" she says, eyebrows raised. "And what happens here, then? What happens to all the patients who need you?"
"I'm a terrible healer, Cori
"So that I can have time to do the very little healing that I'm capable of."
"Cori
Her eyes flash. "Mistress Wyatt."I sigh. "Mistress Wyatt," I say and then I think and say it at the same time. "Come with us!"
She looks startled, threatened almost. "What?"
"Can't you see where this is all headed? Women in prison, women with injuries. Can't you see this isn't going to get any better?"
"Not with bombs going off every day, it isn't."
"It's the President who's the enemy," I say. She crosses her arms. "You think you can have just one enemy?"
"Cori
"A healer doesn't take life," she says. "A healer never takes life. Our first oath is to do no harm."
"The bombs are set for empty targets."
"Which aren't always empty, are they?" She shakes her head, her face looking suddenly sad, sadder than I've ever seen it. "I know who I am, Viola. In my soul, I know it. I heal the sick, I heal the wounded, that's who I am."
"If we stay here, they'll eventually come for us."
"If we leave, patients will die." She doesn't even sound angry anymore, which is scarier than before.
"And if you're taken in?" I say, my voice getting challenging. "Who'll heal them then?"
"I was hoping you would."
I just breathe for a second. "It's not that simple."
"It is to me."
"Cori
"Then what? They're still five months away, you said. Five months is a long time."
I turn back to the cabinets, continue filling the sack with food. "I have to try," I say. "I have to do something." I turn back to her, bag full. "That's who I am." I think of Todd, waiting for me, and my heart races faster. "That's who I've become, anyway."
She regards me quietly and then she quotes something Mistress Coyle once said to me. "We are the choices we make."
It takes me a second to realize she's just said good - bye.
"What took so long?" Todd says, anxiously looking out of the window.
"Nothing," I say. "I'll tell you later."
"You got the food?" I hold up the bag.
"And I'm guessing we just follow the river again?" he says. "I guess so."
He takes a second to look at me awkwardly, trying not to smile. "Here we go again."
And I feel this fu
I pass the bag of food to him and climb out, my shoes thudding on the hard mud. "Todd," I whisper.
"Yeah?"
"Someone told me there's a communications tower somewhere outside of town," I say. "It's probably surrounded by soldiers but I was thinking if we could find it-"
"Big metal tower?" he interrupts. "Higher than the trees?" I blink. "Probably," I say and my eyes open wide. "You know where it is?"
He nods. "I pass it every day."
"Really?"
"Yes, really," he says and I see it in his Noise, I see the road-
"And I think finally that's enough," says a voice from the darkness.
A voice we both recognize.
The Mayor steps out of the blackness, a row of soldiers behind him.
"Good evening to you both," he says. And I hear a flash of Noise from the Mayor. And Todd collapses.
17 HARD LABOR
***
[TODD]
It's a sound but it's not a sound and it's louder than anything possible and it would burst yer eardrums if you were hearing it with yer ears rather than the inside of yer head and everything goes white and it's not just like I'm blind but deaf and dumb and frozen, too, and the pain of it comes from right deep down within so there's no part of yerself you can grab to protect it, just a stinging, burning slap right into the middle of who you are.
This is what Davy felt, every time he got hit with the Mayor's Noise. And it's words-All it is is words-
But it's every word, crammed into yer head all at once, and the whole world is shouting at you that YER NOTHING YER NOTHING YER NOTHING and it rips away every word of yer own, like pulling yer hair out at the roots and taking skin with it--
A flash of words and I'm nothing-I 'm nothing-YER NOTHING--
And I fall to the ground and the Mayor can do whatever he wants with me.
I don't wa
The Mayor leaves some soldiers behind to guard the house of healing and the others drag me back to the cathedral and he don't say nothing as we go, not a word as I beg him not to hurt her, as I promise and scream and cry (shut up) that I'll do anything he wants as long as he don't hurt her.
(shut up, shut up)
When we get back, he ties me to the chair again.
And lets Mr. Collins go to town.
And-
And I don't wa
Cuz I cry and I throw up and I beg and I call out her name and I beg some more and it all shames me so much I can't even say it.
And all thru it, the Mayor says nothing. He just walks round me, over and over again, listening to me yell, listening to me plead.
Listening to my Noise beneath it all.
And I tell myself that I'm doing all this yelling, all this begging, to hide in my Noise what she told me, to keep her safe, to keep him from knowing. I tell myself I have to cry and beg as loud as I can so he won't hear.
(shut up)
That's what I tell myself. And I don't wa
By the time I get back in the tower, it's nearly morning and Mayor Ledger's waiting up for me and even tho I'm in no fitness to do anything, I'm wondering if maybe he played a part in all this somehow but his instant concern for me, his horror at the shape I'm in, it all sounds true in his Noise, so true that I just lie slowly down on the mattress and don't know what to think.
"They barely even came in," he says, standing behind me. "Collins just opened the door, took a look, then locked me in again. It's like they knew."
"Yeah," I say into my pillow. "It sure is like they knew."
"I had nothing to do with it, Todd," he says, reading me. "I swear to you. I'd never help that man."