“I would have asked you,” said Tad, “but you obviously weren’t there when they first met. Is it hurting your arm to push that cart?”
His concern placated me. “No. Your cart has all the heavier items like water bottles. Mine is mostly loaded with empty stasis boxes, and they’re very light.”
“Please tell me if you need help.”
“I will, but the path to the boathouse is in better condition than most, so I should be able to manage. We’ll need to stop in a minute to collect something from the small concraz building ahead of us.”
“What is that place?” asked Tad.
“It used to be a security checkpoint, but we keep power storage units in it. They have to be kept somewhere well away from the main buildings in case one of them fails from old age and explodes.”
“That’s nice,” said Tad, in a strained voice. “Why do we want an exploding power storage unit?”
“So we can recharge our boat’s power when the built in battery goes flat.”
We reached the building, and I left my cart and went inside. There were a dozen or so power storage units on the bare concraz floor. I used a flashlight to examine my chosen power unit closely before lugging it outside.
“If there are dark spots on the grey flexiplas casing, then the power unit is going bad,” I said. “This one looks safe.”
“I’d better put it on my cart.” Tad shoved the sleeping bags and mattresses aside to make space.
“Wedge it between the mattresses to stop it from being jolted around.”
Tad frowned. “I thought you said it was safe.”
“I said it looked safe, but it’s still a good idea to be careful.”
Tad packed the power unit in his cart, and we started moving again. “Machico said your mother’s name was Keira.”
“Yes.”
“So your mother used her real name. I’ve noticed the Resistance use real names, but a lot of the other division members use nicknames.”
“When my mother first joined the London division, people called her Blaze because she’d been convicted of arson, but Ice kept using her real name. Eventually, everyone was calling her Keira again.”
“So you were named Blaze after your mother.” Tad laughed. “I wasn’t sure if it was your real name or a nickname, but actually it’s both.”
I nodded.
“How did your mother end up in London division?”
I wasn’t sure that I wanted to share my mother’s story with Tad. It would involve explaining a lot of things that I found upsetting.
“I remember you said something about her being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Tad added.
The sympathetic tone of his voice made me start talking. “My mother was born in 2360. Her parents were a perfectly respectable couple living in Dublin. They’d already been on the waiting list to go to new colony worlds for several years before my mother was born, but they didn’t have any off-world relatives so they were low priority. By the time my mother was five years old, the Alpha sector planets had all closed their doors to new colonists, and the Loyalist party had blocked the opening of new worlds in Beta sector.”
Tad pulled a pained face. “So the family lost their chance to go off world.”
“The United Earth Government kept promising to restore order in the cities, but they still grew more dangerous every year. Large areas of Dublin had been abandoned to the looters. The remaining residents put up barricades to defend their neighbourhoods, but they faced a host of other difficulties too. The weather was causing major problems, and buildings damaged in storms were never repaired. Deliveries of food and other supplies were erratic.”
I sighed. “The richer people left for smaller, safer communities, but my grandparents couldn’t afford to move to the countryside. They were too deeply in debt on a Dublin house that was impossible to sell.”
“Was there no way to escape the house and debt?” asked Tad.
“So many people were trying to walk away from debts back then, that the United Earth Government brought in a new law. You could evade your debt if you wanted, but doing it gave you a criminal record for fraud, so you’d never be allowed entry by any colony world.”
Tad frowned but didn’t say anything.
“My grandparents chose to stay in Dublin, and had two more children there. When my mother was ten, the Expansionists won the key vote to continue opening up Beta sector. My grandfather joined the queue to register for the Beta sector waiting list at dawn the next day, but half of the population of Dublin did the same thing. He spent three nights camped out in the queue before he even got into the building.”
I shrugged. “There must have been queues like that in every city, and the new worlds didn’t open up overnight. It was five years before my grandparents were offered a chance to go off-world. My mother was fifteen years old when the family went to Europe Off-world to start their journey to their new home.”
“Clearly something went wrong and stopped them from leaving. An administrative error?”
I was silent for a moment, remembering the distress in my mother’s face whenever she talked about this. One in a thousand people had an immune system problem that meant they’d die on any world other than Earth. My mother had been one of them. She’d stepped out of the portal on Danae, the Alpha sector world that was the first step on their journey, collapsed, and the people there dialled a portal to send her back to Earth.
My mother had been vaguely aware of voices. A man asking her parents if they wanted to portal back to Earth with their daughter. Her father saying they’d never get another chance to go off world. Her mother agreeing they should take their two younger children on to Beta sector.
I daren’t tell that part of the story to Tad in case I burst into tears. “Yes, something went wrong. My mother’s parents and her brothers went off to their new world – I think it was one of the worlds in Beta sector – but my mother was left behind. She was only fifteen years old and totally alone. She went back to Dublin, but it was too dangerous for her to stay there. She packed a couple of bags with her things, and set fire to the house before leaving.”
Tad blinked. “She set fire to the house? Why?”
My mother had told me she wanted to destroy the last link with the parents who had abandoned her, but I didn’t want to explain that to Tad. “She knew she’d never be coming back, but burning the house was a bad mistake. The police caught her leaving, arrested her, and she had her five minutes in court the next day. Literally five minutes. You didn’t get much of a trial under the riot control emergency powers.”
“But if the house belonged to her family, your mother hadn’t committed any crime.”
“The court said she had. She’d set fire to a house, so she was guilty of arson. She’d taken goods from the house before burning it, so she was guilty of looting.”
“But that’s completely unfair,” said Tad. “Why didn’t her defence lawyer do something about it?”
“Under the riot control emergency powers she didn’t have a defence lawyer,” I said. “It was her first offence, no one had been hurt, and the prisons were all overflowing, so they just registered her genetic code as a criminal, stamped her, and released her.”
“Stamped her?” asked Tad.
“Tattooed the back of her right hand with her conviction number, so anyone looking at it could see she was a criminal. If you look at the right hands of most of the older division members, you’ll see conviction numbers on them. Anyway, after that no law-abiding citizen would give my mother food, shelter, or work. Her only option was to go to London and try to find a cousin who’d been running with the London gangs. Chaos knows how she tracked down Ice, but she did.”
There was silence for the next couple of minutes. We were approaching the boathouse now. Tad gave it an appraising look.
“You use this as a boathouse? What was it used for originally?”
“It’s always been a boathouse,” I said. “We’re still using the same boats
the security staff used to patrol the river.”
The boathouse door had fallen to pieces years ago, so Tad and I could push our carts in through the open doorway. I was positioning mine next to the steps that led down to the boats, when a figure appeared from the shadows.
“Hello, Blaze,” said Cage.
Chapter Twenty-three
I stared at Cage in sheer disbelief. How could he be here lying in wait for me? How had he found out Tad and I were leaving on a trip? I instinctively glanced back at the doorway.
Cage laughed. “Thinking of running, Blaze? You wouldn’t make it.”
I knew I wouldn’t. Cage was much closer to the doorway than I was, but Tad might stand a chance of reaching it. I wondered whether to scream at him to run, but if he tried to get away and failed, then Cage would probably kill him. I just had to hope that Tad had learned enough sense by now to stay perfectly quiet.
“I was promised that you’d marry me,” said Cage. “I was promised I’d have the vacant officer position and become Donnell’s deputy, but then you stole the officer position yourself, Blaze. You stole my officer position.”
“That was a mistake,” I said hastily.
“It was a huge mistake,” said Cage. “One that you’re going to correct. When you come back from this trip, you’ll tell Donnell that you’ve decided you want to marry me right away, that you want me to have your officer position, that you want me to become his deputy as well. You’re going to make sure that I get everything I was promised, because if you don’t then I’ll rip the alliance apart.”
He paused for a second as if savouring the moment. “I’ll begin by calling general justice on you for hiding the fact you still can’t use your left arm properly.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my arm,” I said. “It aches a little sometimes, that’s all.”
“Really? Only a few days ago, Hannah was having to help you carry things.”
I shook my head. “Hannah was just being overprotective. Fussing over nothing.”
“There was rather more to it than Hannah being overprotective. You were a troublesome child six years ago, humiliating me when you bit my arm. I thought you might be troublesome again, and refuse to marry me, so I made some preparations.” Cage made a beckoning gesture with his right hand. “Come and join us, Hannah!”
I gave a frantic look round, and saw a movement in the darkest corner of the boathouse. Hannah walked slowly out of her hiding place and turned to face me. Now I knew how Cage had magically appeared here. Hannah was working for him. She must have seen Machico collecting the equipment we needed for our trip, and told Cage about it.
“Don’t give me that wounded look, Blaze,” said Hannah. “The Resistance were making it clear that they didn’t want me any longer. You wouldn’t get Donnell to help me, so I had to help myself. This is your fault, not mine.”
My brain seemed too numb to think properly. “I don’t understand. How does working for Cage help you get more popular with the Resistance?”
“Hannah doesn’t have to worry about her popularity with the Resistance any longer,” said Cage. “She belongs to Manhattan division now.”
My best friend had betrayed me. Hannah had been working for Cage, spying on me and the Resistance, to buy herself a new future with Manhattan division.
I was still absorbing that, still deep in shock, when Cage took a sudden step forward. He grabbed hold of my left arm with both hands, yanked it up into the air, and gave it a brutal twist. There was a snapping sound, and agonizing pain shot through my arm and shoulder. I gave a piercing scream, and Tad’s voice shouted from behind me.
“Let her go!”
He was trying to help me, I thought through the haze of pain, but he’d just get himself killed. “No, Tad,” I yelled. “Stay out of this!”
“Let her go,” he shouted again.
Cage dropped me. I landed on my feet, but toppled backwards, and ended up sitting on the ground holding my left arm with my right hand. Oh chaos, oh chaos, oh chaos it hurt!
Cage swung round to face Tad. “Don’t interfere in my business, leech.”
I managed to scuffle round on the floor so I could see them. The bulky figure of Cage facing the slimmer one of Tad. Beyond them, Hannah was standing with her hands over her mouth. She wasn’t looking at Cage or Tad, but at me.
“This is my business too,” said Tad.
Cage stepped forward and swung his right fist towards Tad. My mind was already picturing it smashing into Tad’s jaw, the way Tad would fall to the ground, and what Cage would do to him then. Kicking Tad’s stomach, ribs and face until he was just a bloodied, lifeless heap on the floor.
Somehow that didn’t happen. Tad moved sideways and forwards. His hands were a blur of motion, so I couldn’t work out exactly what he did with them, but one foot definitely kicked Cage on the leg. The next second, Cage was lying on the ground and clutching his right knee.
I stared at them, thinking for a moment that I’d broken under stress, and abandoned an unbearable reality for some comforting fantasy. I tried blinking, but the scene didn’t change. Cage was still lying on the ground, staring up at Tad in stunned disbelief. Tad looked oddly startled too, as if he couldn’t believe what had happened either.
Cage rolled over onto his stomach, and got up on his hands and left knee, before finally making it to his feet and glaring at Tad. “I’ll tell people how you attacked me, leech, call for general justice against you, and you’ll be executed!”
“Are you really planning to tell everyone that you couldn’t last three seconds in a fight with the weedy leech boy?” asked Tad, in a mocking voice. “Just think how they’ll laugh at you. It will be even more humiliating than when Blaze bit you.”
Cage’s face flushed and he took a step towards Tad.
“If you try to hit me again,” said Tad, “I’ll break one of your bones. Your left arm would seem an appropriate choice.”
There was a faint squeaking sound from Hannah. Cage gave her a sharp glance, as if he’d forgotten she was here. “The fight didn’t happen,” he said. “You didn’t see anything.”
“It didn’t happen,” repeated Hannah, in a shaky voice. “I didn’t see anything.”
Cage swung round to glare down at me. “If you don’t give me what I want, Blaze, then I’ll bring down Donnell and take it for myself. Donnell has held his position as alliance leader for eighteen years because of three things. His popularity, the gun on his arm, and the fact everyone trusts him to follow the alliance rules with scrupulous fairness. The winter fever has damaged his popularity.”
“The fever wasn’t Donnell’s fault,” I said. “It was just random bad luck.”
“Leaders always get blamed for random bad luck. It’s been easy to spread whispers that Donnell should have managed the medicine supplies better, kept a stock in reserve for a disaster like that, and then point out that we wouldn’t have needed food rationing if the winter fever hadn’t hit us so hard.”
Cage made a sound like a warped, angry laugh. “People don’t adore Donnell quite as much as usual, and his gun is far less of a factor now he doesn’t have Kasim watching his back. Donnell’s biggest strength now is the trust people have in him, and I can use you to attack that. As I said, I’ll begin by calling general justice on you.”
He was smiling now. “I’ve had Hannah preparing the ground to make you as vulnerable as possible. Encouraging you to doubt your relationship with Donnell, and hinting to the other women that you had problems with your arm. Yesterday, I got her to step up the campaign. She’s been telling the division women that your broken arm is still terribly painful, and she’s worried sick how you’re coping fishing without her. By now, half the women in the alliance must believe you can barely use your left arm.”
He paused. “And that’s perfectly true now, isn’t it? I’ll call general justice against you for lying about your arm for months, and accuse Hannah of helping you deceive everyone. She’ll make a show of reluctance before admitting
it’s true, and the whole alliance will believe her.”
Cage was right, I thought, feeling a wave of nausea as pain mixed with despair. Everyone knew Hannah was my best friend. Everyone would believe her when she said my arm had been useless for months.
“You’re the weak point in Donnell’s armour,” Cage continued. “Years ago at the cooking fire, he rushed to defend you with his fists. Now he’ll rush to defend you with his position as alliance leader. Once Donnell’s protecting you from punishment, I’ll accuse him of knowing about your arm problems all along, and ordering Hannah to help you hide them.”
Only days ago, I hadn’t been sure Donnell would help me at all if I was in trouble. Now I thought about that confrontation with him yesterday, and the desperation in his face as he tried to convince me he believed I was his daughter. I couldn’t doubt his feelings for me any longer. Cage was right. Donnell would rush to defend me. Even if I warned him it was a trap, even if he knew it would end in catastrophe, he’d still do it.
Cage’s smile widened. “Hannah will back up my story again, and that’s the key point where my allies will join me in calling general justice. Not just against you, but against Donnell himself, for abusing his position by making a girl with a useless arm into an officer. Wall and Major are already annoyed about having a female officer foisted on them. They’ll be utterly furious when they hear about you and Donnell lying to them, and how do you think Ice will react to the news that Donnell tricked him into voting for you?”
I knew exactly how Ice would react to that. He’d be coldly, implacably angry about being made to look a fool.
“Even Ghost’s faith in Donnell will be shaken, so only the Resistance will be left defending their precious leader. They’ll never hand Donnell over for punishment without a fight, but what chance will they have when the other divisions outnumber them by four to one? My side will win the battle, and I’ll take Donnell’s place as alliance leader.”
I was dizzy from pain, and beset by nightmare images, but I forced myself to speak. “If it came to open fighting, then it wouldn’t be four to one against the Resistance. Even if you got all four division leaders to fight for you, there are plenty of people in the alliance who hate you enough to defy orders and either stay out of the fight or take Donnell’s side.”