Monsters of Men

“What are you saying?” I say, stepping forward. “What are you telling him?”

The Mayor looks back up at me. “I’m telling him how desperately we want peace, Todd.” He cocks his head. “Don’t you trust me?”

I swallow.

I swallow again.

I know the Mayor wants peace to get the credit for it.

I know he’s been better since I saved him after the water tank.

I also know he ain’t redeemed.

I know he ain’t redeemable.

(ain’t he?)

But he’s been acting like it.

“You’re more than welcome to tell him, too,” he says.

He keeps his eyes on me and makes a flick of his knife. The Spackle lurches forward in surprise, his arms suddenly free. He looks round for a minute, wondering what’s coming, till his eyes fall on mine–

And in an instant, I try to make my Noise heavy, try to make it loud, and it hurts, like a muscle I ain’t used in too long, but I try to hit him hard with everything that’s true about what we really want, whatever the Mayor mighta said, that me and Viola, we do want peace, that we want this all to be over and–

The Spackle stops me with a hiss–

I see myself in his Noise–

And I hear–

Recognishun?

And words–

Words in my language–

I hear–

The Knife.

“The Knife?” I say.

But the Spackle just hisses again and breaks for the door, ru

Taking who knows what message back to his people.

{VIOLA}

“The nerve of it,” Mistress Coyle says through clenched teeth. “And how the army was frothing around him. Just like the worst days of when he ran the town.”

“I wish I could have at least had the chance to speak to the Spackle,” Simone says, back after an angry cart-ride through town with the other mistresses. “Tell them all humans aren’t alike.”

“Todd said he was able to get across what we really wanted,” I say, coughing badly. “So we have to hope that’s the message that gets through.”

“It if does get through,” Mistress Coyle says, “Prentiss will claim all the credit for it.”

“This isn’t about who scores the most points,” Bradley says.

“Is it not?” Mistress Coyle says. “Do you really want that man in a position of strength when the convoy arrives? Is that the settlement you’re after?”

“You say that as if we have the authority to relieve someone of duty,” Bradley says, “as if we can just waltz in here and impose our will.”

“Well, why can’t you?” Lee says. “He’s a murderer. He murdered my sister and my mother.”

Bradley makes to respond but Simone says, “I tend to agree,” weathering the shocked thunder of Bradley’s Noise. “If his actions are endangering the lives of everyone–”

“We’re here,” Bradley interrupts, “to establish a settlement for almost five thousand people who deserve to not wake up in the middle of a war.”

Mistress Coyle just heaves a heavy sigh like she wasn’t listening. “Better go out and start explaining to the people why it wasn’t us,” she says, heading out of the little healing room, “and if that Ivan says anything, I’ll smack his hick face.”

Bradley looks over to Simone, his Noise full of askings and disagreements, full of things he needs to know from her, pictures of her popping out all over, pictures of how much he wishes he could touch her–

“Would you stop that, please?” Simone says, looking away.

“Sorry,” he says, backing up a step, then another, then leaving the room without saying anything more.

“Simone–” I say.

“I just can’t get used to it,” she says. “I know I should, I know I’m going to have to, but it’s just . . .”

“It can be a good thing,” I say, thinking about Todd. “That kind of closeness.”

(but I can’t hear him any more–)

(and he doesn’t feel close at all–)

I cough again, bringing up ugly green stuff from my lungs.

“You look exhausted, Viola,” Simone says. “Any objections to a mild sedative to help you rest?”

I shake my head. She goes to a drawer and takes out a small patch, sticking it gently under my jaw. “Give him a chance,” I say, as the medicine starts to take hold. “He’s a good man.”

“I know,” she says, as my eyelids start to droop. “I know.”

I slip into blackness, the blackness of sedation, feeling nothing at all for a long while, relishing the emptiness of it, just blackness like the black beyond–

But that ends–

And I still sleep–

And I dream–

I dream of Todd–

Just there, out of reach–

And I can’t hear him–

I can’t hear his Noise–

I can’t hear what he’s thinking.

He stares at me like an empty vessel–

Like a statue with no one inside–

Like he’s dead–

Like oh god no–

He’s dead–

He’s dead–

“Viola,” I hear. I open my eyes. Lee’s reaching over to wake me, his Noise full of concern, but something else, too–

“What’s happened?” I say, feeling the fever sweat pouring off me, how soaked through my clothes and sheets are–

(Todd, slipping away from me–)

I see Bradley standing at the foot of my bed. “She’s done something,” he says. “Mistress Coyle’s gone and done something.”

[TODD]

It’s a small sound and I shouldn’t be able to hear it, not thru the sleeping Noise of most of the camp.

But it’s a sound I reckernize.

A whine.

In the air.

Boy colt? Angharrad says nervously as I leave my tent and head into the dusk that gets colder with every passing day.

“It’s a tracer,” I say to her, to anyone, shivering a little, looking round for the sound, seeing the men from the army who are still awake start to look for it, too, till there’s a surge in their Noise as they see it arcing up in the air in a wobbly kinda way from the dry river bed near the bottom of the falls. It’s heading north, north to where some of the Spackle army are most likely hiding in the hills–

“What the hell do they think they’re doing?” The Mayor’s suddenly by my side, eyes fixed on the tracer. He turns to Mr O’Hare, who’s come bleary-eyed outta his own tent. “Find Mistress Braithwaite. Now.”

Mr O’Hare goes ru

“A tracer is too slow to do any real damage,” the Mayor says. “This must be a diversion.” His eyes drift to the damaged zigzag hill. “Would you please call Viola, Todd?”

I go to my tent to get the comm and as I’m coming out we hear the distant Boom of the tracer hitting some trees to the north somewhere. But the Mayor’s right, oxes could outrun a tracer so it’s only serving one purpose.

Diverting the attenshun of the Spackle.

But from where?

The Mayor’s still looking at the rough edges of the hill where the Spackle came from, a hill an army can’t march down no more–

Or up–

But one person could–

One person could climb up over the rubble–

One person without Noise–

The Mayor’s eyes go wider and I know he’s thinking it, too.

And that’s when it happens–

From the very tiptop of the zigzag hill.

{VIOLA}

“How did she do this?” Bradley says, as we watch the tracer arc through the sky on the viewscreens in the healing room, Lee watching it through Bradley’s Noise. “How did she arrange this without us knowing?”

My comm beeps. I answer immediately. “Todd?”

But it’s not Todd.

“I’d point a probe at the hilltop right now if I were you,” Mistress Coyle says, smiling back at me from the screen.

“Where’s Todd?” I cough. “How did you get a comm?”

A sound in Bradley’s Noise makes me look. I see him remembering Simone in the spares cabinet, fiddling with two more comms, but telling him she was just doing an inventory. “She wouldn’t,” he says. “Not without telling me?”