“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 1150 Spackle.
“Yes,” says the Mayor. “Very pleasing.”
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.”
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 towards 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.
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. “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.
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.”
“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 those 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?”
The Mayor’s waiting for me.
“Yes, sir?” I say.
“Always so polite,” he smiles, walking towards me, boots clicking on the marble. “You seem better lately, calmer.” He stops a metre 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 centring 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.
I pace the walls of the bell tower, looking out towards the falls in the west, the hill with the notch on it in the south, and to the east, the hills that lead towards 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.
She’s out there somewhere.
A month and she ain’t come.
A month and–
(shut up)
(just effing shut up your effing whiny mouth)
I start pacing again.
We’ve got glass in the openings now and a heater to protect us from the autumn nights. More blankets, too, and a light and approved books for Mayor Ledger to read.
“Still a prison, though, isn’t it?” he says behind me, mouth full. “You’d think he’d have at least found a better place for you by now.”
“I sure wish everyone would stop thinking it’s okay to read me all the damn time,” I say, without turning around.
“He probably wants you out of the town,” he says, finishing up his meal, which is just over half what we used to get. “Wants you away from all the rumours.”
“What rumours?” I say, tho I’m barely interested.
“Oh, rumours of the great mind-control powers of our Mayor. Rumours of weapons made from Noise. Rumours he can fly, I don’t doubt.”
I don’t look back at him and I keep my Noise quiet.
I am the Circle, I think.
And then I stop.
It’s after midnight when the first one goes off.
Boom!
I jump a little on my mattress but that’s all.
“Where do you think that was?” Mayor Ledger asks, also not rising from his bed.
“Sounded near east,” I say, looking up into the dark of the tower bells. “Maybe a food store?”
We wait for the second. There’s always a second now. As the soldiers rush to the first, the Answer take the chance for a second–
Boom!
“There it is,” Mayor Ledger says, sitting up in bed and looking out of an opening. I get up, too.
“Damn,” he says.
“What?” I say, moving next to him.
“I think that was the water plant down by the river.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’ll have to boil every stupid cup of–”
BOOM!
There’s a huge flash that causes me and Mayor Ledger to flinch back from the window. The glass shakes in its frames.
And every light in New Prentisstown goes off.
“The power station,” Mayor Ledger says, unbelieving. “But that’s guarded every hour of the day. How could they possibly get to that?”
“I don’t know,” I say, my stomach sinking. “But there’s gonna be hell to pay.”
Mayor Ledger runs a tired hand over his face as we hear sirens and soldiers shouting down in the city below. He’s shaking his head. “I don’t know what they think they’re accomp–”
Five huge explosions, one right after the other, shaking the tower so much that me and Mayor Ledger are thrown to the floor and a bunch of our windows shatter, busting inwards, covering us in shards and powdery glass.
We see the sky light up.
The sky to the west.
A cloud of fire and smoke shooting so high above the prisons it’s like a giant’s flinging it there.
Mayor Ledger is breathing heavy beside me.
“They’ve done it,” he says, gasping. “They’ve really done it.”
They’ve really done it, I think.
They’ve started their war.
And I can’t help it–
I can’t help but think it–
Is she coming for me?