Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy (62 page)

“Well, let’s forgive her for that, shall we?” His voice is low, soft, almost kind. “Nobody’s perfect.”

He sets down his cup. “I’m sorry about your friend,” he says again. “And I’m sorry it has taken this long for us to speak again. There has been much work to do. I look to
stop
the suffering on this planet, which is why your friend’s death grieves me so. That’s been my whole mission. The war is over, Viola, it truly is. Now is the time for healing.”

I don’t say anything to that.

“But your mistress doesn’t see it that way, does she?” he asks. “She sees me as the enemy.”

In the early hours of this morning, as we dressed Maddy in her white burial cloths, she said,
If he wants a war, he’s got a war.
We haven’t even
started
fighting.

But then when I was summoned here, she said to tell him no such thing, to ask only about the funeral.

And to find out what I could.

“You see me as the enemy, too,” he says, “and I truly wish that weren’t the case. I am so disappointed that this terrible incident has made you even more suspicious of me.”

I feel Maddy rising again in my chest. I feel Todd rising, too. I have to breathe through my mouth for a minute.

“I know how appealing it seems that there should be sides, that you should be on
her
side,” he says. “I don’t blame you. I haven’t even asked you about your ships because I know you would lie to me. I know she would have asked you to. If I were in Mistress Coyle’s position, I would do exactly the same thing. Push you to help me. Use an asset that’s fallen into my lap.”

“She’s not using me,” I say quietly.

You can be so valuable to us,
I remember,
if you choose
.

He leans forward. “Can I tell you something, Viola?”

“What?” I ask.

He cocks his head. “I really do wish you would call me David.”

I look back down to the carpet. “What is it, David?”

“Thank you, Viola,” he says. “It really does mean something to me.” He waits until I look up again. “I’ve met the Council that ran Haven as was. I’ve met the former Mayor of Haven. I’ve met the former police chief and the chief medical officer and the head of education. I’ve met everyone of any importance in this town. Some of them now work for me. Some of them don’t fit into the new administration and that’s fine, there’s plenty of work to be done rebuilding this city, making it ready for
your
people, Viola, making it the proper paradise that they need and want and expect.”

He’s still looking right into my eyes. I notice how dark blue his own are, like water running over a slate.

“And of all the people I’ve met in New Prentisstown, your Mistress Coyle is the only one who truly knows what leading is like. Leadership isn’t grown, Viola. It’s
taken,
and she may be the only person on this entire planet besides myself who has enough strength, enough
will
to take it.”

I keep looking at his eyes and a thought comes.

His Noise is still silent as the black beyond and his face and eyes give away nothing either.

But I do begin to wonder–

Right there, just at the back of my thinking–

Is he
afraid
of her?

“Why do you think I had you taken to her for your gunshot wound?” he asks.

“She’s the best healer. You said it yourself.”

“Yes, but she’s far from the only one. Bandages and medicine do most of the work. Mistress Coyle just applies them especially skilfully.”

My hand goes unconsciously to my front scar. “It’s not just that.”

“It is not, you’re correct.” He leans even farther forward. “I want her on my side, Viola. I
need
her on my side if I’m going to make this new society any kind of success. If we worked together, Mistress Coyle and I,” he leans back, “well, what a world we could make.”

“You locked her up.”

“But I wasn’t going to
keep
her locked up. The borders between men and women had become blurred, and the reintroduction of those borders is a slow and painful process. The formation of mutual trust takes time, but the important thing to remember is, as I’ve said, the war is
over,
Viola. It truly is. I want no more fighting, no more bloodshed.”

For something to do, I pick up the cooling cup of coffee. I put it to my lips but I don’t drink it.

“Is Todd okay?” I ask, not looking at him.

“Happy and healthy and working in the sun,” the Mayor says.

“Can I see him?”

He’s silent, as if he’s considering it. “Will you do something for me?” he asks.

“What?” Another idea begins to form in my head. “You want me to spy on her for you.”

“No,” he says. “Not
spying,
not at all. I just want your help in convincing her that I’m not the tyrant she thinks, that history isn’t as she knows it, that if we work together, we can make this place into the home we
both
wanted when our people left Old World all those many years ago. I am not her enemy. And I am not yours.”

He seems so sincere. He really does.

“I’m asking for your help,” he says.

“You’re in complete control,” I say. “You don’t need my help.”

“I do,” he says insistently. “You’ve grown closer to her than I ever possibly could.”

Have I?
I think.

This is the girl,
I remember.

“I also know that she drugged you that first night so you would fall asleep before you told me anything.”

I sip my cold coffee. “Wouldn’t you have done the same?”

He smiles. “So you agree we’re not that different, her and I?”

“How can I trust you?”

“How can you trust her if she drugged you?”

“She saved my life.”

“After I delivered you to her.”

“She’s not keeping me locked up in the house of healing.”

“You came here unchaperoned, didn’t you? The restrictions are being lessened this very day.”

“She’s training me as a healer.”

“And who are all those other healers she’s been meeting with?” He folds his fingers back into a tent. “What are they up to, do you suppose?”

I look down into the coffee cup and swallow, wondering how he knows.

“And what do they have planned for
you
?” he asks.

I still don’t look at him.

He stands. “Come with me, please.”

He leads me out of the huge room and across the short lobby at the front of the cathedral. The doors are wide open onto the town square. The army is doing marching exercises out there and the
pound pound pound
of their feet pours in and the
ROAR
of the men who no longer have the cure floods in right behind it.

I wince a little.

“Look there,” says the Mayor.

Past the army, in the centre of the square, some men are assembling a small platform of plain wood, a bent pole up on the top.

“What’s that?”

“It’s where Sergeant Hammar is going to be hanged tomorrow afternoon for his terrible, terrible crime.”

The memory of Maddy, of her lifeless eyes, rises in my chest again. I have to press my hand to my mouth to hold it back.

“I spared the old Mayor of this town,” he says, “but I will not spare one of my most loyal and long-standing sergeants.” He looks at me. “Do you honestly think I would go to such lengths just to please one girl who has information I could use? Do you honestly think I would go to that much trouble when, as you say, I’m in complete control?”

“Why are you doing it then?” I ask.

“Because he broke the law. Because this is a civilized world and acts of barbarity will not be tolerated. Because the
war
is
over
.” He turns to me. “I would very much like you to convince Mistress Coyle of that.” He steps closer. “Will you do that? Will you at least tell her the things I’m doing to remedy this tragic situation?”

I look down at my feet. My mind is whirling, spinning like a meteor.

The things he says could be true.

But Maddy is dead.

And it’s my fault.

And Todd’s still gone.

What do I do?

(what do I do?)

“Will you, Viola?”

At least,
I think,
it’s information to give to Mistress Coyle
.

I swallow. “I’ll try?”

He smiles again. “Wonderful.” He touches me gently on the arm. “Run along back now. They’ll be needing you for the funeral service.”

I nod and step out onto the front steps and away from him, moving into the square a little bit, the
ROAR
of it all beating down on me as hard as the sun. I stop and try to catch the breath that seems to have run away from me.

“Viola.” He’s still watching me, watching me from the steps of his house, the cathedral. “Why don’t you have dinner with me here tomorrow night?”

He grins, seeing how I try to hide how much I don’t want to come.

“Todd will be there, of course,” he says.

I open my eyes wide. Another wave rises from my chest, bringing the tears again and surprising me so much I hiccup. “Really?”

“Really,” he says.

“You mean it?”

“I mean it,” he says.

And then he opens his arms to me for an embrace.

[T
ODD
]

“We gotta number ’em,” Davy says, getting out a heavy canvas bag that’s been left in the monastery storeroom and dropping it loudly to the grass. “That’s our new job.”

It’s the morning after the Mayor wished me a late happy birthday, the morning after I vowed I’d find her.

But ain’t nothing’s changed.

“Number ’em?” I ask, looking out at the Spackle, still staring back at us in the silence that don’t make no sense. Surely the cure shoulda worn off by now? “Why?”

“Don’t you
never
listen to Pa?” Davy says, getting out some of the tools. “Everyone’s gotta know their place. Besides, we gotta keep track of the animals somehow.”

“They ain’t animals, Davy,” I say, not too heated cuz we’ve had this fight before a coupla times. “They’re just aliens.”

“Whatever, pigpiss,” he says and pulls out a pair of bolt cutters from the bag, setting them on the grass. He reaches in the bag again. “Take these,” he says, holding out a handful of metal bands, strapped together with a longer one. I take them from him.

Then I reckernize what I’m holding.

“We’re not,” I say.

“Oh, yes, we are.” He holds up another tool, which I also reckernize.

It’s how we marked sheep back in Prentisstown. You take the tool Davy’s holding and you wrap a metal band around a sheep’s leg. The tool bolts the ends together tight, too tight, so tight it cuts into the skin, so tight it starts an infeckshun. But the metal’s coated with a medicine to fight it so what happens is that the infeckted skin starts to heal around the band, grow
into
it, replacing that bit of skin with the metal band itself.

I look up again at the Spackle, looking back at us.

Cuz the catch is, it don’t heal if you take it off. The sheep’ll bleed to death if you do. You put on a band and it’s yers till it dies. There ain’t no going back from it.

“Then all you gotta do is think of ’em as sheep,” Davy says, standing up with the bolting tool and looking out over the Spackle. “Line up!”

“We’ll do one field at a time,” he shouts, gesturing at the Spackle with the bolting tool in one hand and the pistol in the other. The soldiers on the stone walls keep their rifles pointed into the herd. “Once you get yer number, you stay in that field and you don’t leave it, unnerstand?”

And they seem to unnerstand.

That’s the thing.

They unnerstand way more than a sheep would.

I look at the packet of metal bands I’m holding. “Davy, this is–”

“Just get a move on, pigpiss,” he says impayshuntly. “We’re meant to get thru two hundred today.”

I swallow. The first Spackle in line is watching the metal bands as well. I think it’s female cuz sometimes you can tell by the colour of the lichen they’ve got growing for their clothes. She’s shorter than usual, too, for a Spackle. My height or less.

And I’m thinking, if I don’t do it, if I’m not the one who does this, then they’ll just get someone else who won’t care if it hurts. Better they have me who’ll treat ’em right. Better than just Davy on his own.

Right?

(right?)

“Just wrap the effing band round its arm or we’ll be here all effing morning,” Davy says.

I gesture for her to hold out her arm. She does, staring at my eyes, not blinking. I swallow again. I unwrap the packet of bands and peel off the one marked 0001. She’s still staring, still not blinking.

I take hold of her outstretched hand.

The flesh is warm, warmer than I expected, they look so white and cold.

I wrap the band round her wrist.

I can feel her pulse beating under my fingertips.

She still looks into my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

Davy steps up, takes the loose ends of the bands in the bolting tool, gives it a twist so sharp and hard the Spackle lets out a pained hiss, and then he slams the bolting tool together, locking the metal strip into her wrist, making her 0001 for ever and ever.