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You ain't, I think. Not by a long shot.
Even before the crowds have started to properly leave after the Mayor's finished, there's a ker - thunk at my door.
"Good evening, Todd," the Mayor says, stepping into theb ell - ringing jail and looking around him, wrinkling his nose a little at the smell. "Did you like my speech?"
"How do you know there are settlers coming?" I say. "Have you been talking to her? Is she all right?"
He don't answer this but he don't hit me for it neither. He just smiles and says, "All in good time, Todd."
We hear Noise coming up the stairs outside the door. Alive I'm alive it says alive, alive alive alive and into the room comes Mayor Ledger, pushed by Mr. Collins.
He pulls up his step when he sees Mayor Prentiss standing there.
"New bedding will arrive tomorrow," Mayor Prentiss says, still looking at me. "As will toilet privileges."
Mayor Ledger's moving his jaw but it takes a few tries before any words come out. "Mr. President--"
Mayor Prentiss ignores him. "Your first job will also begin tomorrow, Todd."
"Job?" I say.
"Everyone has to work, Todd," he says. "Work is the path to freedom. I will be working. So will Mr. Ledger."
"I will?" Mayor Ledger says. "But we're in jail," I say.
He smiles again and there's more amusement in it and I wonder how I'm about to be stung.
"Get some sleep," he says, stepping to the door and looking me in the eye. "My son will pick you up first thing in the morning."
3 THE NEW LIFE [TODD]
BUT IT TURNS OUT IT ain't Davy that worries me when I get dragged into the cold of the next morning in front of the cathedral. It ain't even Davy I look at.
It's the horse.
Boy colt, it says, shifting from hoof to hoof, looking down at me, eyes wide in that horse craziness, like I need a good stomping.
"I don't know nothing bout horses," I say.
"She's from my private herd," Mayor Prentiss says atop his own horse, Morpeth. "Her name is Angharrad and she will treat you well, Todd."
Morpeth is looking at my horse and all he's thinking is submit, submit, submit , making my horse even more nervous and that's a ton of nervous animal I'm sposed to ride.
"Whatsa matter?" Davy Prentiss sneers from the saddle of a third horse. "You scared?"
"Whatsa matter?" I say. "Daddy not give you the cure yet?"
His Noise immediately rises. "You little piece of-"
"My, my," says the Mayor. "Not ten words in and the fight's already begun."
"He started it," Davy says.
"And he would finish it, too, I wager," says the Mayor, looking at me, reading the red, jittery state of my Noise, filled with urgent red askings about Viola, with more askings I wa
"It's a simple division," he says as we trot thru the early morning, way faster than I'd like. "The men will move to the west end of the valley in front of the cathedral and the women to the east behind it."
We're riding east down the main street of New Prentisstown, the one that starts at the zigzag road by the falls, carries thru to the town square and around the cathedral and now out the back into the farther valley. Small squads of soldiers march up and down side roads and the men of New Prentisstown come past us the other way on foot, carrying rucksacks and other luggage.
"I don't see no women," Davy says.
"Any women," corrects the Mayor. "And no, Captain Morgan and Captain Tate supervised the transfer of the rest of the women last night."
"What are you go
"You put the bitches in their place," Davy sneers.
"You will not speak that way in front of me, David," the Mayor says, calmly but in a voice that ain't joking. "Women will be respected at all times and given every comfort. Though in a nonvulgar sense you are correct. We all have places. New World made men forget theirs, and that means men must be away from women until we all remember who we are, who we were meant to be."
His voice brightens a little. "The people will welcome this. I offer clarity where before there was only chaos."
"Is Viola with the women?" I ask. "Is she okay?"
He looks back at me again. "You made a promise, Todd Hewitt," he says. "Need I remind you once more? Just save her and I'll do anything you want, I believe were your exact words."
I lick my lips nervously. "How do I know yer keeping yer end of the bargain?"
"You don't," he says, his eyes on mine, like he's peering right past every lie I could tell him. "I want your faith in me, Todd, and faith with proof is no faith at all."
He turns back down the road and I'm left with Davy snickering to my side so I just whisper "Whoa, girl," to my horse. Her coat is dark brown with a white stripe down her nose and a mane brushed so nice I'm trying not to grab onto it less it make her mad. Boy colt, she thinks.
She, I think. She. Then I think an asking I ain't neverh ad a chance to ask before. Cuz the ewes I had back on the farm had Noise, too, and if women ain't got Noise--
"Because women are not animals," the Mayor says, reading me. "No matter what anyone claims I believe. They are merely naturally Noiseless."
He lowers his voice. "Which makes them different."
It's mostly shops that line this part of the road, dotted twixt all the trees, closed, reopening who knows when, with houses stretching back from side streets both toward the river on the left and the hill of the valley on the right. Most of the buildings, if not all, are built a fair distance from one another, which I spose is how you'd plan a big town before you found a cure for the Noise.
We pass more soldiers marching in groups of five or ten, more men heading west with their belongings, still no women. I look at the faces of the men going by, most of them pointed to the road at their feet, none of them looking ready to fight.
"Whoa, girl," I whisper again cuz riding a horse is turning out to be powerfully uncomfortable on yer private parts.
"And there's Todd," Davy says, pulling up next to me. "Moaning already."
"Shut it, Davy," I say.
"You will address each other as Mr. Prentiss Jr. and Mr. Hewitt," the Mayor calls back to us.
"What?" Davy says, his Noise rising. "He ain't a man yet! He's just-"
The Mayor silences him with a look. "A body was discovered in the river in the early hours of this morning," hes ays. "A body with many terrible wounds to its flesh and a large knife sticking out of its neck, a body dead not more than two days."
He stares at me, looking into my Noise again. I put up the pictures he wants to see, making my imaginings seem like the real thing, cuz that's what Noise is, it's everything you think, not just the truth, and if you think hard enough that you did something, well, then, maybe you actually did.
Davy scoffs. "You killed Preacher Aaron? I don't believe
it."