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"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 fu
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 tyra
"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."
"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 ru
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. 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. "Cori
She looks at me thoughtfully and rubs her fingers across her forehead.
"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 witha 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 i
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 conflicted and all the things that went into making her the person that she is.