A World of Ash: The Territory 3 (23 page)

Squid stood and watched as the battle with the ghouls pushed its way out beyond the fallen fence. The humans had taken the fight to the ghouls and were on their way to destroying the horde. This would be over soon.

Ash still floated in the air like light, dry rain twisted into churning shapes by the wind. A figure moved through the clearing flakes of the ash toward Squid, a tall man dressed in a tattered red coat and wearing a black hat that curved up at the front. He moved with a sideways lean, favoring one leg and resting his weight on a cane that sunk in the sand each time he placed it in front of him.

“Are you Squid?” the man said.

“That depends,” Nim said, stepping forward. “Who’s asking?”

“Ah, and you must be Nim.”

“Who are you?” Nim barked again. “How do you know our names?”

“Because Lynn told him,” Squid said. He knew who this was. He’d never seen him when he’d snuck aboard the
Blessed Mary
but he had no doubt this was Captain Pratt, the pirate who had kept Lynn hostage. What was he doing here? He’d been aboard the
Blessed Mary
when Melbourne had caused it to drop from the sky, when it had broken apart as it plowed into the ground. He’d obviously survived that crash, but why had he come to Alice? The only reason Squid could think was Lynn.

The man pointed at Squid. “You’re a sharp one, aren’t you, Squid? Tell me, then, do you know who I am?”

Squid didn’t say anything.

“Come now. You
should
know who I am. You were aboard my ship, after all.”

“The pirate!” Nim gasped. “You were the one who took Lynn!” He lunged forward, his arms outstretched ready to wrap his hands around the pirate’s throat and choke him to death right there in the middle of the dwindling action of the battlefield. Squid grabbed at him, trying to stop him, but Nim was faster and stronger and he easily pulled free of the slight grip Squid managed to get on his arm.

It was Captain Pratt who stopped Nim in his tracks. Despite his body seeming battered and his movement labored, he flicked his cane up in an arc with impressive speed. It blurred up and smacked Nim in the face with an echoing
thwack
. Nim’s attack was immediately halted as he stumbled to the side in shock, holding his hand to his top lip. When he pulled his hands away his fingertips were coated in blood.

“Stop that!” Constance said, barking her objection at Captain Pratt.

“Now, now,” Captain Pratt said. “It was clearly self-defense. He attacked me. You are correct about who I am, Nim, who I
was
,
but circumstances can change. Maybe you should ask yourself why I’m here. You young people act so rashly.”

“What have you done to her?” Squid asked.

“I’ll kill you myself this time!” Nim roared.

Captain Pratt flicked his cane up and held it out straight so that the end pressed against Nim’s chest, stopping the Nomad boy from launching another attack.

“You’ve got a spark for this girl, haven’t you, Nim? A little puppy love. Why is it she asked for Squid then?”

Nim’s face twisted with rage. Captain Pratt laughed. Squid reached out and placed his hand on Nim’s arm in an attempt to calm him. “He’s just trying to make you angry.”

Nim pulled his arm away from Squid and swatted at Captain Pratt’s cane. He knocked it down but Captain Pratt flicked it back up just as quickly, a predatory smile turning up the corners of his mouth.

“If you’ve hurt her …” Nim said, letting his insinuated threat hang between them. It didn’t seem to concern Captain Pratt at all.

“Perhaps you and Lynnette would make a good couple after all,” Captain Pratt said, still laughing, “Both of you are so hot-headed.”

“She sent you to find us, didn’t she?” Squid asked.

Captain Pratt dropped his cane from Nim’s chest and pointed it enthusiastically at Squid. “There, you see, I knew you were the sharp one.”

“Where is she? What happened?”

“Come,” the pirate said, “I’ll take you to her.”

They walked through the hanging ash and past the remnants of battle. The bodies of headless ghouls and piles of dusty gray ash spread out over the ground. The burned taste of the ash was strong in Squid’s mouth. It was impossible to breathe without ingesting the floating remnants of ghouls. He found it best not to think about it. Many had died here; many of those Outsiders who had stood against the horde were lost forever. Still, the feeling was different from that which had hung over the Battle of Dust. Squid, Lynn, and Darius had ridden out of that madness and watched, with the engineers and Workmen who were left behind, as the Diggers who had protected the Central Territory for hundreds of years were annihilated. They had watched the end of that battle in a long, somber silence. Here, despite the price many had paid for the victory, the feeling was excited, joyful, full of hope for a future free from the fear of the ghouls. Those who had died here had given their lives in a worthy sacrifice, not a foolish one.

Captain Pratt led them back in the direction of the city. A small dirigible, one of those used by the boundary riders and like the many Squid had seen in the air over the battle, was resting on the ground. Beside it Squid saw Lynn’s body laid out in the dust. A young boy was kneeling beside her, watching intently, alert and fearful.

“She was in one of the watchtowers when it fell,” Captain Pratt said. Squid had seen those towers as they’d approached the city. Most of them had fallen shortly after the ghouls breached the slum-dwellers’ fence. “She’d been calling instructions down to those about to fight the ghouls, then after she fell she joined the fight. We managed to come in from above and pull her out, but she’d already been bitten. She’s been in and out of consciousness since then but she kept asking for you two. She was convinced it was you who released those birds.”

“She won’t change,” Nim said, his voice forceful, as if he could make that true simply by saying it. “She won’t change because of the vaccine.”

Squid dropped to his knees in the soft sand beside Lynn. Her eyes were closed, her breathing slow but steady. He couldn’t believe he’d gone all the way to Big Smoke, recovered the vaccine and returned to Alice only to be reunited with her as she lay here, maybe dying. Squid felt a hand on his back and turned to see his mother looking down at Lynn, her face mirroring his concern.

“The problem is,” Captain Pratt said, standing behind Squid and looking down at Lynn, “we think she may have been bitten before you dropped the vaccine.”

Squid reached out and touched Lynn’s face. She felt hot and very dry, and he felt her skin absorbing the moisture in his fingers as he made contact. He remembered Darius’s skin doing the same thing before he’d changed. Lynn’s eyelids moved as her eyeballs shifted beneath. They flickered a few times before opening. Her eyes were dull but they were still Lynn’s eyes. There was still something burning behind them. They hadn’t faded to nothing and glazed over with the white of a ghouls’ eyes.

“You didn’t come here to help her, did you?” Squid asked without looking up at Captain Pratt.

When Captain Pratt didn’t answer, the boy beside Lynn spoke for the first time. “No. He didn’t, but he is now.”

“What he means is she knocked me out and tied me up,” Captain Pratt said.

Nim snorted a breathy laugh. “Of course she did,” he said. He looked at the pirate. “So, why isn’t he still tied up?”

“I untied him,” the boy said. “I needed his help to save her.”

“And who are you?” Nim asked.

“My name is Brick,” he said. He hesitated, looking at Captain Pratt before he said any more, but then he added, “I’m a boundary rider.”

“Why did you save her?” Squid asked Captain Pratt.

The pirate looked from Squid to Brick and back again. “Let’s just say Brick convinced me it wasn’t too late.”

“Too late for what?”

But Captain Pratt didn’t answer. He looked at Brick, and Squid knew something he didn’t understand was passing between them.

“She hasn’t changed yet,” Squid said, returning his attention to Lynn. “There’s still time for the vaccine to work.”

“Squid …” Lynn’s voice was soft.

“Shhh,” he said. “Don’t talk.”

Lynn turned to Nim, who had crouched down beside Squid. “Nim.” Her lips curled into a faint smile as she closed her eyes again. “I knew you two would come. I knew. I told them.” Then she was quiet again, her breathing slow.

“She’s been like this since we pulled her out,” Brick said.

They stayed by Lynn’s side, Squid holding one of Lynn’s hands, Nim holding the other and Sister Constance feeling her forehead, as the Outsiders began eliminating the final ghouls of the horde, the ash rising into the sky on the back of a fresh hot wind from the desert.

“So, do we just wait for her to change?” Nim said. “Then what?”

“Then,” Squid said, sliding Lynn’s sword from its scabbard, “we do what needs to be done. Just as she would want.”

And so Squid and Nim waited beside Lynn, just as he and Lynn had waited beside Darius. They hadn’t been there long when Squid said, “My hand is sweaty.”

“Mine too,” Nim said. “But I’m not going to let go of her until the end.”

“No,” Squid said. “You don’t understand, my palm is sweaty.”

“Yeah, I heard you, Squid.”

“I’m sweating and Lynn’s skin isn’t absorbing it.”

Nim shot a glance at Squid and dropped Lynn’s hand. He began gently shaking her by the shoulders. “Lynn,” he said, “can you hear me?”

She groaned.

“Lynn, wake up.”

“What is it …? What’s happening?” Lynn said, her voice thin.

Nim helped her into a sitting position. “You’re okay,” he said, almost laughing. “You’re going to be okay.”

“God, I’m so thirsty.”

“Brick,” Sister Constance said, “do you have any water?”

Brick ran to the dirigible, returning with a waterskin which Lynn drank from greedily, gulping down the last of the water. When she finished she looked at Squid.

“Well,” she said, croaking, “you bloody well did it, didn’t you, you maniac?” After a moment a broad smile covered her face and she threw her arms around Squid. Squid heard her sniffles and felt his own eyes brim wetly with tears.

“You did it too,” Squid said. “You kept all these people safe. I thought you were inside the city but I should have known you’d be out here, saving everything.”

“We still aren’t finished, though,” Lynn said. She looked to the Wall and Squid knew exactly who she was watching.

Figures in red cloaks still stood along the length of the battlements, observing what was happening in the slums below, but Squid’s gaze, just as Lynn’s had been, was drawn to the tall figure in the white dress. Lit by the afternoon sun, the outline of her dress seemed to radiate white light as if she emanated a halo. The High Priestess might have looked angelic, like a savior on high, if they hadn’t known that she was responsible for all the deaths that had occurred today.

“She’s all that’s left,” Lynn said. “Everything that’s happened, to you and me, to my father, to the Diggers, to the people out here, it’s because of her. The Administrator, the Diggers, the Holy Order, the people of the Central Territory, they’re all just pawns for her to move in her insane plan. We need to stop her once and for all.”

Squid looked at Lynn. He didn’t like what she was insinuating. He knew she still wanted revenge for her father, and he wanted her to feel closure for that, but he didn’t want to see her kill for revenge, not even the High Priestess. She could never come back from that. “We’ve done our part, Lynn,” he said. “We’ve fulfilled the prophecy.”

“I still don’t believe in that. There is no prophecy, Squid.”

“But everything that’s happened. It’s just as the Prophet Steven predicted.”

Lynn shook her head. “No. You did it, Squid. I won’t let you say that someone from hundreds of years ago said this would happen and so it just did. You did this. You believed in yourself and you made everyone else believe in you too. You led people out beyond the fence to Big Smoke and all the way back in time to save me and everyone else here. This didn’t happen because it was foreseen and inevitable. It happened because of you.”

Squid saw that Nim, his mother, Captain Pratt and Brick were all looking on.

Nim nodded. “You’re the Storm Man, remember? This rain didn’t happen on its own.”

Lynn pushed herself up to standing. She was unbalanced on her feet, and reached out to grab Squid as she almost fell.

“Lynn,” Nim said. “You need to sit down. You’re not going anywhere.”

“No,” she said with a finality that clearly wasn’t going to be argued with. “Brick, can you fly us to the top of the Wall?”

Brick nodded. “But I can only take two of you. The dirigible’s only small and it’s lost some gas.”

Lynn looked at Squid. “What do you say? You and me. We finish what we started.”

“All right, my dear,” Sister Constance said. “This will hurt but I need to do it.”

Lynn nodded, gritting her teeth as Squid’s mother took hold of her arm.

“Ready?”

Lynn nodded, mumbling her agreement through gritted teeth. Even the slight movement of Sister Constance taking the weight of her arm was enough to cause pain. But it was nothing compared with when she pulled down and then abruptly popped Lynn’s shoulder back into joint. Despite trying to hold it back, Lynn screamed with the excruciating pain.

They fashioned a sling from an old shirt to hold Lynn’s arm in place across her body, but she was still a long way from recovered from the numerous bites she had sustained. She knew she was far from operating at her peak, but she had to do this.

As Lynn and Squid climbed into Brick’s compact dirigible Lynn turned to find Nim watching her intently. She knew he didn’t think this was a good idea. She expected him to start demanding that he be the one to go with her, that he was stronger than Squid or better at fighting, that he would look after her, protect her, be the better choice, but he did none of those things. When she was safely aboard he simply took her hand and kissed the back of it. As he lowered it from his face he held it tightly in both of his own. “You be careful,” he said, “and come back safe. I’ve missed you.”

Almost automatically, Lynn leaned forward and kissed Nim full on the lips. His lips felt soft against the dry, flaking skin of her own. Their kiss was long and full and as charged with passion as that first kiss had been. In the time they had been separated Lynn had thought a lot about what Nim meant to her, about what their future might hold, even when she had tried not to. It had been painful to consider that perhaps she would never see him again. But here he was, and here they were.

As their faces separated in a natural, mutual end to the kiss, she saw Nim look toward Squid. She felt a momentary pang of guilt when she looked and saw Squid watching them over the side of the dirigible, but then he nodded. A single, reassuring nod and, she realized, it was not for her, it was for Nim. She knew then that something had changed between Nim and Squid during the time she had been separated from them. Some agreement had been reached between them, if not verbally then at least instinctively. They had found a friendship independent of her and had come to terms with whatever jealously they had wrestled with.

Lynn looked to Nim again. She squeezed his hand in return. “I’ll be careful,” she said.

“And,” Nim said, nodding toward Squid, “look after him when you’re up there.”

“I will,” she answered. “I always do.”

She suddenly felt like she wanted to know what Nim and Squid had been through. She had missed out on what they had experienced together. In a strange way she felt like she was the jealous one now. But she pushed that aside. It was stupid. When this was all over, when it was
really
all over, they would share the story of their journey with her, just as she would share hers with them, and whatever had happened would belong to all of them again. Just like Nim had told her once: stories told are stories shared.

Lynn pulled her hand away from Nim, feeling his hesitation to give it up. She turned away without lingering too long, knowing that the longer she waited the harder it would be to leave again. But she would be back. This would be over soon.

As Lynn climbed aboard she sat beside Squid in one of the two chairs opposite Brick. She nodded to the young pilot and he closed the dirigible’s air bladders and winched up the small anchor. The airship rose into the air and Brick began working the controls, guiding the dirigible up and toward the Wall.

Lynn looked at Squid. She rested her head against him, feeling his bony shoulder pressing into her temple as she looked up at him.

“I love you, Squid,” she said. “In a different way from Nim, I mean. More, in many ways. I just don’t—”

“I know,” Squid said, looking down at her, dropping his head so that it rested on hers. “I love you, too.”

The two of them stayed like that for the short time it took for the dirigible to rise to the top of the Wall, sharing this moment they had together. A moment of friends reunited.

The dirigible rose until they were level with High Priestess Patricia standing on top of the Wall. Brick turned the dirigible so they hung in the air parallel to her. Standing side by side Lynn and Squid eyed the woman. She stared back at them, her face as immovable as stone. The Administrator stood beside her, his eyes widening as he saw Lynn and Squid rising into view. Why was he standing here beside that old witch? He must have betrayed them after all. Lynn hoped he was terrified to see them both together again. If he was guilty, they would take him down just as they took the High Priestess down. All along the Wall the Holy Order clergymen lifted their rifles and pointed them at the dirigible. They held there, waiting for an order from the High Priestess.

A long drawn-out silence stretched between them, the small distance from the dirigible to the Wall suddenly seeming like an impossibly wide gulf. Lynn hadn’t considered that the Holy Order would remain so rigid in their defense of the city. The threat of the ghouls was gone, though Lynn supposed that as far as the High Priestess was concerned the threat was still out there – the impure who had survived the horde, the people who opposed her power as the almighty mouthpiece of God, the two teenagers floating in the airship across from her. These were the threats in her twisted vision of the world. Lynn knew it would take only a nod from the High Priestess to have them shot. She considered their position carefully, tried to think through their next move. She held back the rage she felt for this woman, this woman who had killed her father. She wanted to strangle the life out of her right now. She wanted to take her revenge. But she would not make an anger-fuelled mistake this time. As she thought through their options she was surprised to hear Squid speak.

“Lower your weapons.”

He spoke with an authority she had never heard before. His voice was stern, so different from his normal voice that for a moment even Lynn almost lowered the mechanical hand gun she held loaded at her side, Captain Pratt’s weapon. She watched the red-cloaks hesitate. Some of them even dropped the barrels of their rifles slightly.

After a moment Squid spoke again. “I said, lower your weapons.” The clergymen looked at each other as if to check what the others were going to do. “You’re on the wrong side of this. You’ve seen the ghouls destroyed. This is over now. Stand down.”

“You will do no such thing,” the High Priestess said. “You are under my control!” She moved her head swiftly from one side to the other, barking at the red-cloaks. “You will follow my orders! You will do as I say!”

The High Priestess’s hair had come free from her ordinarily tightly held bun and it flicked wildly as she moved. Once Lynn could never have imagined this ivory-carved statue of a woman, so composed and infallible, shattering into the maniacal, graceless villain before her. Even the faces of the soldiers around her, her soldiers, showed they too knew she had slipped into the clutches of madness.

“Squid’s right,” Lynn said. “The ghouls are gone. They are the threat you thought you were facing, the threat you thought you were protecting the Territory from. But the ghouls were never her concern.” Lynn pointed at High Priestess Patricia. “She had no intention of protecting the people down there from the ghouls, and she wasn’t going to protect you either.” Lynn pointed to Squid standing beside her. “He saved the people down there. He saved you.”

“Silence, blasphemer! Silence, you impure dirt of the earth.”

Lynn didn’t even blink. “You said it yourself, High Priestess. Squid is the boy of the prophecy. Prophet Steven said this boy would end the Reckoning. Here he is, and look down there, the Reckoning is over.”

“We will not return to the ways of the old world!” the High Priestess roared. “I will not allow people to live however they choose, sinning and sinning and tainting God’s pure creation with their … their filthy existences.”

“You swore allegiance to the Church,” Lynn said to the clergymen, knowing that the more she ignored High Priestess Patricia the wilder the old woman would get and the more she simply went about proving Lynn’s point. “You did not swear allegiance to any one person. You did not swear allegiance to this woman. And that is all she is, a woman, a person like any other. Look at her – she lost her way long ago. If you want to listen to someone it should be Squid. He is the one Steven foretold.”

She still didn’t believe in the prophecy, but those in the Holy Order would. Like the Sisters, they believed down to their bones, and Lynn thought she might as well use that to get through to them.

Then one of the clergymen, a young man, maybe not much older than Squid and Lynn, moved first. He dropped his weapon and turned his back on the High Priestess.

“What are you doing?” the High Priestess screamed, her voice cawing like an ancient bird, her arm movements raising the loose sleeves of her dress like the flapping of decayed wings. “Arrest him. Arrest him!”

Lynn watched the clergyman who had moved. This man, a boy really, standing in defiance of his High Priestess, was perhaps braver than she or Squid had ever been. Lynn held her breath as she waited for the other clergymen to obey their priestess. But others began to follow their colleague’s lead. They lowered their weapons and turned away from the High Priestess.

“Please go down to the slums and help them. They have wounded and a lot of cleaning up to do,” Squid said. Without further question the Holy Order, even those who hadn’t turned their backs, marched off the top of the Wall, leaving the Administrator and the High Priestess alone.

“Can you move us over the Wall, Brick?” Squid asked.

The young pilot nodded and proceeded to delicately work the controls, maneuvering the small airship until it hovered just above the battlements. Squid helped Lynn climb over the side and drop down onto the top of the Wall before following after her.

“Squid,” the Administrator said. “My son.”

Squid held up his hand to stop the man from continuing. For as long as Lynn had known him Squid had spoken about his parents, musing that maybe they were still alive somewhere and that one day they would come and find him. Now, he had found both of them. His mother, a Black Sister, was waiting down below and his father, the Administrator who had sent them on this apparent suicide mission in the first place, was standing right before him. He had always spoken about how happy he would be to know his parents, and because of this, even in the circumstances, it still shocked her to hear him.

“Shut up. You’re not my father.”

“But I am,” he said. “I saw your mother on board that dirigible. I never knew what happened to her. I’m so glad you found her. I loved her, you know. You were not a mistake.”

Lynn saw the moment the man’s words broke through and silent tears began rolling down Squid’s cheeks.

“Shut up!” Squid’s voice snapped, cracking under the burden of his emotion.

“Listen to me, son,” the Administrator said. “I am not here of my own free will. I am a prisoner of the High Priestess. She brought me up here to watch this madness. You are heir to the position of Administrator now. Let me help you learn what is necessary.” The Administrator spoke with a jittery pace. He jumped from topic to topic. His eyes moved swiftly from Squid to Lynn and back again, searching for a reaction. “Please. You must believe me. I had nothing to do with this.”

“Knox is dead,” Lynn said, and saw the Administrator close his eyes. “Maybe he wouldn’t be if you hadn’t abandoned us.”

“I didn’t betray you and Knox, Lynnette,” the Administrator said. “The Diggers wanted revenge. They sealed you outside the Wall and then turned me over to the Church. I would never … I would never have wanted any harm to come to Knox. He was like a father to me. You’ve got to believe me. Please.”

“Oh, do stop your desperate begging, Harold,” High Priestess Patricia said. “Yes, yes,” she waved her hand at him dismissively, “what he says is true. He never had the fortitude to do what needed to be done. I just wanted him to see what the pure could achieve.”

“It doesn’t seem like you achieved anything to me,” Lynn said. “Looks more like you failed.”

The High Priestess smiled her sinister, child-frightening smile, a hint of a cornered predator trying to buy time. Lynn raised the hand gun and pointed it at the High Priestess.

“Get out of the way then, Harold,” Lynn said.

The Administrator couldn’t distance himself from the High Priestess fast enough. He moved backward toward the inner edge of the Wall, as far as he could go without toppling over the edge.

“You killed my father,” Lynn said, fighting down the rage boiling inside. Her hand shook. She could feel the smooth surface of the trigger curving beneath her finger. One pull. That’s all it would take to have her revenge. One squeeze of her finger and she could kill the High Priestess right now. It was what she deserved, after all, not only for Lynn’s father, but for everybody, for all the insanity she had brought to the world.

“Your father’s death was necessary,” the High Priestess said. “You should be proud of the important role he played. If not for him passing away none of this would have been possible.”

“No!” Lynn yelled. “He didn’t pass away. He was murdered. Murdered by men sent by you. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for you!”

“I know.”

“That is not a good thing!” Lynn’s hand began to shake all the more violently. She tried to steady it, tried to hold her aim on the High Priestess.

“Kill me then,” High Priestess Patricia said, lifting her hands out to the side and raising her face to the sky, inviting the bullet from Lynn’s gun. “Make me a martyr to the pure.”

The High Priestess’s plans had exploded into dust. There was no way out for her but to die. Lynn lowered the gun.

“Kill me!” Patricia roared.

Lynn didn’t move. “No.”

“Do it,” the Administrator said. “She deserves it. For everything she’s put us through. She had me tortured. For Knox. For your father. Kill the witch.”