“Very funny.” I sat down beside him. “I want to see if your wound’s infected. We can clean it with this.” I held up the bottle.
“You’re insane,” said Ingo flatly. “We’re not wasting good alcohol on that.” He took the bottle from me and pulled out the cork. He took a swig.
“How is it a waste?”
His dark eyes glinted dangerously; I wondered if he could possibly be drunk already. “Because if I’m on the road to gangrene, sloshing whiskey on it at this stage won’t help. What the hell are you going to do, start hacking at me to dig out the infection and then watch me bleed to death?”
I started to answer; he broke in: “Leave it, Amity. If it’s infected I don’t want to know. Have a drink and shut up.” He pushed the bottle into my hand.
I was silent for a long moment. I took a drink; the fiery warmth was more welcome than I would have believed. “If you die from some horrible blood infection, don’t blame me,” I said finally.
“You’d feel exactly the same, so don’t bother with the plaintive noises. Here.” Ingo brought our food out of his inner pocket and laid it carefully on the floor. There was pitifully little, but at the sight of the few scraps of bread my stomach woke up. Suddenly I felt faint with hunger.
“Put it away,” I said roughly. “There’s not enough to help.”
“Some is better than none. Eat.” Ingo handed me a crust, his fingers as grimy as mine. “Think of it as a picnic.”
I wanted to protest but didn’t. I ate the crust. Ingo put the rest of the food away again.
Neither of us spoke for a while; occasionally we took sips from the bottle. The wind rushed past outside. Through the tiny window we could see the snow still falling. Yet inside it was warm. It seemed a miracle. Despite everything, I felt myself relax a little for the first time in days – months.
“Is it crazy to feel slightly hopeful, even with no food and hundreds of miles of snow around us?” I said.
“No. That’s what the whiskey’s for. We can be despairing again tomorrow.” Ingo used his gloves to open the hot stove door; he angled another stick of firewood through.
“So you have a brother?” he asked.
“We don’t want to do small talk, do we?” I said, deadpan. It was what he’d said to me the night we’d first met.
Ingo snorted and closed the stove door. “Memory like a steel trap, I see. Is it really small talk now? I think we’ve moved beyond being casual acquaintances.”
I gave a tired smile, watching the flames dance. There was nothing better than being warm, nothing in the world. The sensation was as luxurious as satin sheets.
“Yes, I have a brother,” I said. “Younger than me. Fourteen.”
Ingo stretched his long legs out. “Name?”
“Hal. Halcyon.”
I wondered if I wanted to talk about this. I decided I did. “He’s in hiding,” I said. My voice came out more brusquely than I’d intended.
Ingo’s black eyebrows drew together. After a pause, he said, “I’d ask for a translation, but I have a feeling I know.”
“Your English is perfect. It means exactly what you think. He’s in hiding – the last time I saw him was in a tiny room under a closet in a neighbour’s house. He was found Discordant.”
There was a twist of metal on the floor – a half-melted lump. I picked it up and shifted it from hand to hand, looking down. All I could see was Hal’s face when we’d closed the trapdoor over him, slowly slicing him from view.
“I’m sorry,” said Ingo quietly.
I wished I hadn’t mentioned this. I rested the metal to one side. “Well, we both know that being in hiding is nothing compared to what could happen to him. I just hope he’s all right – he was the last time I heard from Ma. That was months ago though.”
I was aware of Ingo’s dark, steady gaze, and remembered then the letter I’d given to him. I wondered if he’d read it. I watched the fire, thinking of Madeline, of what she knew. I wasn’t sorry that I’d chosen the shard of glass instead – I could still feel it in my pocket, undamaged by my fall – yet felt somewhat lost and lonely anyway.
I cleared my throat. “Anyway. His name’s Hal, he likes Peacefighting comics and stickball, and he could give even you a run for your money in arguing. Tell me about your sister.”
Ingo kept looking at me for a moment, then he took a drink and shrugged. “Angelina,” he said. “We call her Lena. She and I are almost the same age. When we were little, everyone thought we were twins.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty. A year younger than me. I have a brother too. Erich. He’s older.”
“Three of you?”
“Yes. I’m the difficult middle child.”
“I can believe it.”
Ingo was gazing at the fire. The corner of his mouth lifted. “Actually, though you won’t believe it, I’m the super-responsible one…Lena’s always telling me not to be so boring. She’s a little wildcat.” Then he realized what he’d said and gave me a tired grin. “Sorry. Not trying to annoy you that time.”
Sitting talking before a fire, sharing a drink, felt surreal after Harmony Five. I smiled. “All right, so she’s a wildcat, only not the kind who gets called that in the national press. What else about her?”
“She’s tall, almost as tall as me. She likes to dance. She has a lovely singing voice.” Ingo looked down, rolling the bottle of whiskey between his palms.
“Do you want the truth?” he said finally.
“If you want to tell it to me,” I said.
“What the hell. Total trust, right? The truth, Amity, is that Lena is one of my best friends. I miss her very much. She and Erich both.”
I hesitated. “Have you…heard from them, since any of this?”
“No. I haven’t heard from anyone back home since my arrest.”
“Which was?”
“Three days after our jolly little World for Peace escapade. I haven’t been able to get in touch with my family.” He snorted. “I have no idea what they were told – maybe that I was killed in a crash, for all I know. My trial only lasted two days, and then I was found guilty and thrown on a train. I didn’t even have a representative from my country there.”
It sounded all too familiar. There was a long pause.
“So your family don’t know about…” I bit the words back, but not fast enough. Ingo gave me a dark look.
“About this?” he said pointedly. He ran a finger down the burned half of his face, pulling at the ruined skin. “No, of course not. But it’s all right. When I see them again, I’ll just keep my good side to them at all times.”
It would have been funny, if he hadn’t said it with such bitterness. “It won’t matter to them,” I said.
“Don’t worry, I know that. They’ll just be thankful I’m alive.” He let out a breath. “Just like us, right? Filled with the joy of life for evermore.”
I didn’t answer, but knew what he meant. What we’d been through had changed us. Just at this moment, it felt as if pure joy might never be possible again.
For several long moments the only sound was the fire crackling. “You know, growing up, Lena and I almost had our own language,” Ingo said finally. “Nobody else could understand us. We drove everyone crazy, especially Erich.” He smiled slightly. “Our poor brother. He felt so left out. He’s a good guy, Erich. Very solid. Dependable.”
I stretched my legs out. “What about your parents?”
“My father got married late; he just turned seventy last year. He’s very…proper, in a way, but funny too. Dry sense of humour.”
“Is that where you get it from?”
Ingo’s mouth quirked; he shot me a look of real amusement. “Is that what I have? I thought I was just an ass. Anyway, Dad’s very sharp. You can’t put anything past him. We own a vineyard. Just a small one, we’ll never get rich from it, but it’s his life. He loves it. Loves the land. So do I, actually. The sun on the fields…” Ingo shrugged and looked down.
r /> “And my mother is a music teacher,” he said after a pause. “She’s from New Manhattan, a lot younger than him, but they’re crazy about each other. She made us all take piano lessons when we were children. She sings when she cooks.”
“They sound like a nice family,” I said.
“They are. I love them all very much.” He said it simply, with no edge.
I contemplated the fire. “My family’s very different,” I said. “We’re all sort of…closed off from each other. Even when my father was alive.” I glanced at him, suddenly wary. “How much do you know about my father?”
Ingo shrugged. “Nothing at all about Truce Vancour, the man. I just know what everyone knows: he allegedly threw the Peacefight that put Gunnison in power.”
“Thanks for saying ‘allegedly’, but it’s true. He did it,” I said curtly.
There was a silence. “How long have you known?” Ingo asked.
“Only since March. Before that I…always thought of him as a hero.”
A piece of wood settled in the stove with a shower of sparks. “He died when I was thirteen,” I said, fiddling with the twist of metal. “He wasn’t a Peacefighter any more by then, but he still flew. He had two planes, a Dove and a Gauntlet, and…and he crashed the Gaunt in our field. I was there. I couldn’t save him.”
In a vivid flash I recalled kneeling beside my father, frantically pressing my hands against the wound at his throat – feeling the warm slickness of his blood, the feeble pulsing of the torn artery.
Ingo didn’t move. “Of course you couldn’t,” he said quietly. “You were thirteen. But I’d bet money that you did more than most kids your age would have managed.”
I stared at him. “Why do you say that?”
“I used to be your opponent, remember? You’re resourceful, cool under pressure. You don’t lose your head. You act.”
“Are you actually giving me compliments?”
“No. I’m just telling you facts.”
I gazed into the flames and wondered at the fact that my eyes were dry. Though it felt as if a lump of steel was wedged inside me, my eyes were as dry as if I’d never cry again.
“I doubt I was very cool that day,” I said.
“Who would be?”
Somehow it helped that he sounded matter-of-fact. I sighed and hugged my knees. “Thanks. But the thing is, even before Dad died, I always felt like…I never really knew him. I wanted to. A lot.”
I hesitated, my chest suddenly tight. No – this was all far too close to Dad’s thrown fight, with its consequences that I still couldn’t bear to think about. I shoved it away and straightened. “Anyway…my family’s very different from yours.”
“What about your mother?”
“More small talk?”
“Why not?” Ingo took a pull from the bottle and handed it to me. “Have you got a more pressing engagement?”
I shrugged out of the stolen greatcoat, wincing at my bruises but marvelling that I felt too warm with it on now. Then I took a drink and smiled slightly, thinking of my mother’s perfect hairdos and small, veiled hats.
“I love my mother. I really do. But we’re from different planets. After I became a Peacefighter, I always used to dread going home, and then I’d feel so guilty. I know she loves me, but…well, I guess I’ve never been sure whether she actually likes me.”
I realized then that I was a little drunk…and that I’d never voiced this thought out loud before. Certainly not to Collie, who had adored my mother. Who had also adored him.
Ingo gave a bitter smile. “Yes, loving and liking are different things, aren’t they?” He rose to his knees and shoved another piece of wood on the fire: a quick, angry motion. “I’ve certainly found out that you can love someone and not like them.”
I wondered whether he was thinking of Miriam – the “blonde witch” who, nine months ago, he’d claimed had his heart. I covertly studied the puckered scar that defined his face now. I wondered exactly how it had happened…and whether Miriam knew about it.
“Anyone else would have told me not to worry, that of course my mother likes me,” I said after a pause.
Pain winced across Ingo’s features as he settled on the floor again; he touched his side. “Do you want pretty words?” he said testily. “Sorry, I’m not very good at them. How the hell should I know whether your mother likes you? I’ve never met the woman.”
“No, I don’t want pretty words. I’m glad you didn’t say it. I hate it when people offer phoney reassurance.”
“Well, spouting platitudes is one thing I’ve never been accused of, at least. Rude bastard, yes. Platitudes, no.” After a pause, Ingo looked at me. “Anyone else would have told me I’m not a rude bastard.”
I shrugged. “I’m not much on platitudes, either. You’re not a bastard,” I added. “Just rude enough to pass for one sometimes.”
Ingo laughed. “Touché.”
The wind whistled; I listened to it rattle the windowpane. It felt as if we were in the Arctic, in the only warm spot for a thousand miles.
Ingo stretched for the bottle and took a long swig. The corner of his mouth tugged upwards. “Lena used to give me hell for it,” he said finally. “Being rude, I mean. So did Erich. Growing up, he had the tiresome chore of beating up the other kids to keep them from flattening me. I was always the short, annoying one who couldn’t help piping up with an unwanted comment to save his life.”
“Short?” I glanced at Ingo’s long, lanky form.
“I shot up when I was fifteen. Erich was relieved; he was tired of getting into fights on his stupid brother’s behalf. Of course, by then I’d learned to keep my mouth shut occasionally.” Ingo smiled slightly and glanced at me. “How did Hal hurt his head?”
“What?”
He touched his forehead. “You said…”
“Oh, right.” I laughed as the memory came back. “He fell off his bike. He was trying to ride it with no hands, and—” I stopped suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck prickling. “Do you hear something?”
Ingo frowned, listening. “Aside from the wind? No.”
“No, there is something,” I insisted. “I heard a noise in that corner, I’m sure of it.” I sat up, craning to listen. It came again: a scratching, rustling sound from the pile of junk. I sucked in a breath. My gaze went instinctively to the floor.
“Maybe you’re right,” said Ingo in an undertone. “Do we have a guest, do you think?”
“Not a very welcome one,” I managed to get out.
I felt almost nauseous. Staring at the cluttered corner, I groped one-handed for the twist of metal. Despite growing up on a farm, despite my months in Harmony Five, I had never, ever, lost my fear of rats.
Ingo raised his good eyebrow. “You’ve gone quite pale,” he informed me wryly. “Could this really be my stalwart former opponent?”
“Shut up! I can still hear it.”
“Amity, relax. It’s only—”
I stifled a shriek as a large brown blur shot from the corner; at the same moment I scrambled backwards, flinging the twist of metal as hard as I could. More by luck than skill, I got it. There was a squeal; the rat went head over heels. The metal knot clattered to a stop.
Ingo straightened abruptly.
“I don’t believe it,” he muttered. “Remind me never to startle you.” He went over and inspected the rat, his lean face screwed up with distaste. “Good shot, but not good enough. The thing’s still twitching. Do you want to come over here and finish it off?”
I was shaking. “No!” I couldn’t take my eyes off the rat. It lay with its legs moving feebly. Part of me was terrified that it might get up and run at me again.
I hugged myself. “Can’t we just…throw it outside or something?”
Ingo shot me a dark look; he muttered something in Germanic. “By we, you mean me… I really would not have taken you for the helpless maiden type.”
“Fuck off! You know I’m not.”
Ingo blew out an irritated
breath. He picked up a piece of our firewood – a chair leg. “Fine. Avert your eyes, fair maiden, while I bludgeon the vicious, terrified rat for you.”
I did avert my eyes. I covered my ears too, but still heard a dull, welcome thump. When I looked again, Ingo was standing over the rat with the firewood still in his hand. There was a strange look on his face.
I swallowed hard. “Please tell me it’s dead.”
“Yes, it’s dead…Amity, the thing’s almost as big as a cat.”
“I don’t need the details! Throw it outside.”
“Do we really want to?”
“What do you…” I started, and then realized. “You can’t be serious. They’re vermin!”
“So are rabbits, and they’re edible.” Ingo looked over at me then. The hunger that neither of us had allowed ourselves to unleash was alive on his face now. He looked taut, slightly glassy-eyed.
I hesitated. Slowly, I got to my feet and went over.
We stood side by side, staring down at the rat. It was lying on its side. Its head was caved in. I felt a shudder of loathing even though it was, most certainly, dead.
But I also felt my stomach growl.
“We don’t have anything to cook it in,” I said finally.
“We could make a skewer from a piece of metal and hold it over the fire,” Ingo said. “Just like toasting marshmallows.”
The image was so horrible, so unlikely, that I snickered. Ingo’s mouth twitched too; he shot me a glittering, almost feverish look. Suddenly this seemed hilarious, in a wild, upside down way.
“We can pretend we’re sitting around a campfire,” I said.
“Exactly. We’ll sing songs and tell ghost stories…” Ingo swallowed and sank to his knees. So did I. Neither of us had stopped gazing at the rat.
“We just need to skin it,” said Ingo. “And gut it. Is there anything we can use?”
I nodded. I was still wearing my leather flight jacket; almost in a dream, I reached into the pocket and drew out the shard of glass.
“This,” I said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The thick shard of glass worked as well as a knife. Handling raw rat with my fingers, peeling the meat off its small ribcage, should have disgusted me – but by then my stomach was alive and roaring and I would have roasted my own boot if we hadn’t had the rat. In fact, I was starting to wonder if we really had to cook it, if we couldn’t just gobble the rat down right now.