The Ask and the Answer

  "There are a lot of people who'd support us in prison, though," Lee says. "And so that might turn out-"

  He stops.

  "What?" I ask, looking up. "Turn out what?" He doesn't answer me, just looks over to another table where Mistress Coyle is sitting with Mistresses Braithwaite,

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  Forth, Waggoner, Barker, and Thea, too, like they always do, discussing things, whispering in low voices, devising secret orders for other people to carry out.

  "Nothing," Lee says, seeing Mistress Coyle stand and come toward us.

  "I'm going to need the cart hitched up for tonight, Wilf, please," she says, approaching our table.

  "Yes, Mistress," he says, getting to his feet.

  "Eat a little longer," she says, stopping him. "This isn't forced labor."

  "Ah'm happy to do it," Wilf says, brushing off his trousers and leaving us.

  "Who are you blowing up tonight?" I ask.

  Mistress Coyle pulls her lips tight. "I think that's enough for now, Viola."

  "I want to come," I say. "If you're going back into the city tonight, I want to come with you."

  "Patience, my girl," she says. "You'll have your day."

  "Which day?" I ask as she walks off. "When?"

  "Patience," she says again.

  But she says it impatiently.

  It gets dark earlier and earlier every day. I sit outside on a pile of rocks as night falls, watching tonight's mission-takers head on out to the carts, their bags packed with secret things. Some of the men have Noise now, taking reduced amounts of cure from our own dwindling supply stashed in the cave. They take enough to blend in with the city but not enough to give anything away. It's a tricky balance, and it's getting more

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  and more dangerous for our men to be on city streets, but still they go.

  And as the people of New Prentisstown sleep tonight, they'll be stolen from and bombed, all in the name of what's right.

  "Hey," Lee says, hardly more than a shadow in the twilight as he sits down next to me. "Hey," I say back. "You okay?"

  "Why wouldn't I be?"

  "Yeah." He picks up a stone and tosses it into the night. "Why wouldn't you be?"

  Stars start to appear in the sky. My ships are up there somewhere. People who might've been able to help us, no, who would have helped us if I could've contacted them. Simone Watkin and Bradley Tench, good people, smart people who would have stopped all this stupidity and the explosions and-

  I feel my throat clench again.

  "You really killed someone," Lee says, tossing another stone.

  "Yeah," I say, pulling my knees up to my chest.

  Lee waits a moment. "With Todd?"

  "For Todd," I say. "To save him. To save us."

  Now that the sun's gone, the real cold moves in swiftly. I hold my knees tighter.

  "She's afraid of you, you know," he says. "Mistress Coyle. She thinks you're powerful."

  I look over at him, trying to see him in the dark. "That's stupid."

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  "I heard her say it to Mistress Braithwaite. Said you could lead whole armies if you put your mind to it."

  I shake my head but of course he can't see. "She doesn't even know me."

  "Yeah, but she's smart."

  "And everyone here follows her like little lambs."

  "Everyone but you." He bumps me with his shoulder in a friendly way. "Maybe that's what she's talking about."

  We start to hear the low rumble from the caves that means the bats are readying themselves.

  "Why are you here?" I ask. "Why do you follow her?"

  I've asked before but he's always changed the subject.

  But maybe tonight's different. It sure feels different.

  "My father died in the Spackle War," he says.

  "Lots of fathers did," I say and I think of Corinne, wondering where she is, wondering if-

  "I don't really remember him," Lee's saying. "It was just me and my mother and my older sister growing up, really. And my sister"-he laughs-"you'd like her. All mouth and fire and we had some fights you wouldn't believe."

  He laughs again but more quietly. "When the army came, Siobhan wanted to fight but Mum didn't. I wanted to fight, too, but Siobhan and Mum really went at it, Siobhan ready to take up arms and Mum practically having to bar the door to keep her from running out into the streets when the army came marching in."

  The rumbling is getting louder and the bats' Noise starts to echo through the cave opening. Fly, fly, they say. Away, away.

  "And then it was out of our hands, wasn't it?" he says.

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  "The army was here and that night they took all the women away to the houses east of town. Mum said to cooperate, you know, 'just for now, just to see where it goes, maybe he's not all that bad.' That sort of thing."

  I don't respond and I'm glad it's dark so he can't see my face.

  "But Siobhan wasn't going to go without a fight, was she? She shouted and screamed at the soldiers and refused to go along and Mum's just begging for her to stop, to not make them angry, but Siobhan-" He stops and makes a clicking sound with his tongue. "Siobhan punched the first soldier who tried to move her by force."

  He takes a deep breath. "And then it was uproar. I tried to fight and the next thing I know I'm on the ground with my ears ringing and a soldier's knee in my back and Mum is screaming but there's nothing from Siobhan and i black out and when I wake up, I'm alone in my house."

  Fly, fly, we hear just inside the cave mouth. Away, away, away.

  "I looked for them when the restrictions eased," he says, "but I never found them. I looked in every cabin and dormitory and at every house of healing. And finally, at the last one, Mistress Coyle answered."

  He pauses and looks up. "Here they come."

  The bats swarm out of the caves, like the world's been tipped on its side and they're being poured out over the top of us, a flood of greater darkness against the night sky. The sheer whoosh of them makes it impossible to talk for a minute so we just sit and watch them.

  Each is at least six feet across, with furred wings and

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  short stubby ears and a green glowing dot of phosphorus on each outstretched wingtip which they use somehow to confuse and stun the moths and bugs they eat. The dots glow in the night, making a blanket of temporary fluttering stars above us. We sit, surrounded by the slapping of wings, the cheeping of their Noise, the fly fly away away away.

  And in five minutes they're gone, out into the surrounding forest, not to return until just before dawn.

  "Something's coming," Lee says in the quiet that follows. "You know that. I can't say what but I'm going along because there's one more place to look for them."

  "Then I'll go, too," I say.

  "She won't let you." He turns to me. "But I promise you, I'll look for Todd. With the same eyes I look for Siobhan and my mother, I'll look for him."

  A bell chimes out over the camp, signaling all raiding teams are off into town and all remaining people in camp are to go to bed. Lee and I sit in the dark for a while longer, his shoulder brushed up against mine, and mine brushed up against his.

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  24 PRISON WALLS

  ***

  [TODD]

  "Not bad ," says the Mayor from atop Morpeth, "for an unskilled workforce."

  "There'd be more," Davy says, "but it rained and then everything was just mud."

  "No, no," the Mayor says, casting his eyes around the field. "You've done admirably, both of you, managing so much in just a month."

  We all take a minute to look at what we've managed admirably. We've got all the concrete foundayshuns poured for a single long building. Every guide wall is up, some have even started to be filled in by the stones we took from the monastery's internal walls, and the tarpaulin makes a kind of roof. It already looks like a building.

  He's right, we have done admirably.

  Us and 1,150 Spackle.

  "Yes," says t
he Mayor. "Very pleasing."

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  Davy's Noise is taking on a pinkish glow that's uncomfortable to look at.

  "So what is it?" I ask.

  The Mayor looks my way. "What's what?

  "This." I gesture at the building. "What's it sposed to be?"

  "You finish building it, Todd, and I promise to invite you to the grand opening."

  "It's not for the Spackle, tho, is it?"

  The Mayor frowns slightly. "No, Todd, it's not."

  I rub the back of my neck with my hand and I can hear some clanking in Davy's Noise, clanks that are gonna get louder if he thinks I'm messing up his moment of praise. "It's just," I say, "there's been frost the past three nights and it's only getting colder."

  The Mayor turns Morpeth to face me. Boy colt, he thinks. Boy colt steps back.

  I step back without even thinking.

  The Mayor's eyebrows raise. "Are you wanting heaters for your workforce?"

  "Well," I look at the ground and at the building and at the Spackle who are doing their best to stay at the far end, as much away from the three of us as is possible to do when there are so many crowded into such a limited space. "Snow might come," I say. "I don't know that they'll survive."

  "Oh, they're tougher than you think, Todd." The Mayor's voice is low and full of something I can't put my finger on. "A lot tougher."

  I look down again. "Yeah," I say. "Okay."

  "I'll have Private Farrow bring in some small fission heaters if that will make you feel better."

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  I blink. "Really?"

  "Really?" Davy says.

  "They've done good work," the Mayor says, "under your direction, and you've shown real dedication these past weeks, Todd. Real leadership."

  He smiles, almost warmly.

  "I know you're the kind of soul who hates to see others suffer." He keeps hold of my eye, almost daring me to break it. "Your tenderness does you credit.''

  "Tenderness," Davy snickers.

  "I'm proud of you." The Mayor gathers up his reins. "Both of you. And you will be rewarded for your efforts."

  Davy's Noise beams again as the Mayor rides outta the monastery gates. "Didja hear that?" he says, waggling his eyebrows. "Rewards, my tender pigpiss."

  "Shut up, Davy." I'm already walking down the guide wall and toward the back of the building where there's the last of the clear ground and so that's where all the Spackle are having to crowd themselves. They get outta my way as I move thru them. "Heaters're coming," I say, putting it in my Noise, too. "Things'll be better."

  But they just keep doing all they can not to touch me.

  "I said things'll be better!"

  Stupid ungrateful--

  I stop. I take in a breath. I keep walking.

  I get to the back of the building where we've leaned a few unused guide walls against the building frame, forming a nook. "You can come out now," I say.

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  There's no sound for a minute, then a bit of rustling and 1017 emerges, his arm in a sling made up from one of my few shirts. He's skinnier than ever, some redness still creeping up his arm from the break but it seems to be finally fading. "I managed to scrounge some painkillers," I say, taking 'em outta my pocket.

  He snatches 'em from my hand with a slap, scratching my palm.

  "Watch it," I say thru clenched teeth. "You wanna be taken away to whatever they do with lame Spackle?"

  There's a burst of Noise from him, one I've grown to expect, and it's the usual thing, him standing over me with a rifle, him hitting me and hitting me, me pleading for him to stop, him breaking my arm.

  "Yeah," I say. "Whatever."

  "Playing with yer pet?" Davy's come round, too, leaning against the building with his arms crossed. "You know, when horses break their legs, they shoot 'em."

  "He ain't a horse."

  "Nah," Davy says. "He's a sheep."

  I puff out my lips. "Thanks for not telling yer pa."

  Davy shrugs. "Whatever, pigpiss, as long as it don't screw up our reward."

  1017 makes his rude clicking at both of us, but mostly at me.

  "He don't seem too grateful, tho," Davy says.

  "Yeah, well, I saved him twice now." I look at 1017, look right into eyes that never leave mine. "I ain't doing it again."

  "You say that," Davy says, "but everyone knows you will." He nods at 1017. "Even him." Davy's eyes widen in a mock.

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  "It's cuz yer tender."

  "Shut up."

  But he's already laughing and leaving and 1017 just stares at me and stares at me. And I stare back. I saved him. (I saved him for her)

  (if she was here, she could see, see how I saved him) (if she was here) (but she ain't)

  I clench my fists and then force myself to unclench them.

  New Prentisstown has changed in the past month. I see it every day as we ride home.

  Part of it's winter coming. The leaves on the trees have turned purple and red and dropped to the ground, leaving the tall winter skeletons behind them. The evergreens have kept their needles but dropped their cones and the reachers have pulled their branches tight into their trunks, leaving naked poles to sit out the cold. All of it plus the constant darker skies makes it look like the town's going hungry.

  Which it is. The army invaded at the end of harvest, so there were food stocks, but there's no one left in the outer settlements to bring in food to trade and the Answer are keeping up their bombs and food raids. One night a whole storehouse of wheat was taken, so completely and successfully it's obvious now there's people in the town and the army who've been helping 'em.

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  Which is bad news for the town and the army.

  The curfew got lowered two weeks ago and again last week till no one's allowed out after dark at all except for a few patrols. The square in front of the cathedral has become a place for bonfires, of books, of the wordly belongings of people found to have helped the Answer, of a bunch of healer uniforms from when the Mayor closed the last house of healing. And practically no one takes the cure no more, except some of the Mayor's closest men, Mr. Morgan, Mr. O'Hare, Mr. Tate, Mr. Hammar, men from old Prentisstown who've been with him for years. Loyalty, I guess.

  Me and Davy ain't never been given it in the first place so there weren't never a chance for him to take it away.

  "Maybe that's our reward," Davy says as we ride. "Maybe he'll get some outta the cellar and we'll finally see what it's like."

  Our reward, I think. We.

  I run my hand along Angharrad's flank, feeling the chill in her skin. "Almost home, girl," I whisper twixt her ears. "Nice warm barn."

  Warm , she thinks. Boy colt .

  "Angharrad," I say back.

  Horses ain't pets and they're half crazy all the time but I've been learning if you treat 'em right, they get to know you.

  Boy colt , she thinks again and it's like I'm part of her herd.

  "Maybe the reward is women!" Davy says suddenly. "Yeah! Maybe he's gonna give us some women and finally make a real man outta you."

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  "Shut up," I say, but it don't turn into a fight. Come to think of it, we ain't had a fight in a good long while.

  We're just used to each other, I guess.

  We don't hardly see women no more neither. When the communicayshuns tower fell, they were all confined to their houses again, except when teams of 'em are working the fields, readying for next year's planting, under guard from armed soldiers. The visits from husbands and sons and fathers are now once a week at most.

  We hear stories about soldiers and women, stories about soldiers getting into dormitories at night, stories about awful things going on that no one gets punished for.

  And that don't even count the women in the prisons, prisons I've only seen from the cathedral tower, a group of converted buildings in the far west of town down near the foot of the waterfalls. Who knows what goes on inside? They're way far away, outta sight of everyone 'cept for tho
se that guard 'em.

  Kinda like the Spackle.

  "Jesus, Todd," Davy says, "the racket you make by thinking all the time."

  Which is exactly the kinda thing I've learned to ignore from Davy. Except this time, he called me Todd.

  We leave our horses in the barn near the cathedral. Davy walks me back to the cathedral, tho I don't really need a guard no more.

  Cuz where would I go?

  I go in the front door and I hear, "Todd?"

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  The Mayor's waiting for me. "Yes, sir?" I say.

  "Always so polite," he smiles, walking toward me, boots clicking on the marble. "You seem better lately, calmer." He stops a yard away. "Have you been using the tool?"

  Huh?

  "What tool?" I ask.

  He sighs a little. And then-

  I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

  I put a hand up to the side of my head. "How do you do that?"

  "Noise can be used, Todd," he says. "If you're disciplined enough. And the first step is using the tool."

  "I am the Circle and the Circle is me?"

  "It's a way of centering yourself." He nods. "A way of aligning your Noise, of reining it in, controlling it, and a man who can control his Noise is a man with an advantage."

  I remember him chanting away back in his house in old Prentisstown, how sharp and scary his Noise sounded compared to other men's, how much it felt like-Like a weapon. "What's the Circle?" I ask.

  "Your destiny, Todd Hewitt. A circle is a closed system. There's no way of getting out, so it's easier if you don't fight it."

  I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

  But this time, my voice is in there, too. "There's so much I look forward to teaching you," he says and leaves without saying good night.

  ***

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  I pace the walls of the bell tower, looking out toward the falls in the west, the hill with the notch on it in the south, and to the east, the hills that lead toward the monastery, tho you can't see it from here. All you can see is New Prentisstown, indoors and huddled together as a cold night settles in.