The Ask and the Answer (32 page)

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really did affect the people, even more than the deaths of the soldiers or the townspeople caught up in the attack. Men even started joining the army again. Then the Mayor let some of the women who remained in prison out, some of 'em even back with their families and not even in dormitories. He upped everyone's food rashuns, too.

And he started holding these rallies. Explaining things.

"The Answer says it fights for freedom. But are these the people in whom you put your faith for salvation? The ones who would kill an entire
unarmed
population?"

I feel a choke rising and I make my Noise empty space, make it a wasteland, thinking nothing,
feeling
nothing, except--

I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

"I know these past weeks have been difficult. The food and water shortages, the necessary curfews, the power cuts, especially during the cold nights. I applaud your fortitude. The only way we're going to get thru this is by pulling together against those who would destroy us."

And people have pulled together, ain't they? They obey the curfew and take their assigned amounts of water and food without fuss and stay inside when they're sposed to and turn off their lights after a certain hour and generally keep getting on with things even as it gets colder. You ride thru the town, you even see stores open, big lines of people outside em, waiting to get what they need.

Their eyes looking at the ground, waiting it out.

At night, Mayor Ledger tells me the townsfolk still grumble against Mayor Prentiss, but now there's even louder

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grumbles against the Answer, for blowing up the water plant, for blowing up the power stayshun, and specially for killing all the Spackle.

Better the devil you know, Mayor Ledger says.

We're still up in that tower, me and Mayor Ledger, for some reason best known to Mayor Prentiss, but I got a key now and I lock him in when I ain't there. He don't like it but what's he gonna do?

Better the devil you know.

I wonder why the only choice is twixt two devils, tho.

"I also want to express my thanks," says the Mayor to the people, "for your continued help in coming forward with information. It is only eternal vigilance that will lead us into the light. Let your neighbor know he is watched. Only then are we truly safe."

"How long is this gonna go on?" Davy says, accidentally spurring Deadfall/Acorn, who has to be reined back when he steps forward. "I'm effing freezing over here."

Angharrad moves from foot to foot below me.
Go?
her Noise asks, her breath heavy and white in the cold. "Almost," I say, rubbing my hand against her flank.

"Effective tonight," says the Mayor, "curfew is pushed back by two hours and visiting times for wives and mothers is extended by thirty minutes."

There's some nodding in the crowd of men, some relieved crying from the crowd of women.

They're grateful, I think.
Grateful
to the Mayor.

Ain't that something.

"Finally," says the Mayor. "It is my pleasure to announce that building work has been completed on a new Ministry,

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one that will keep us safe from the threat of the Answer, a building where no secret may be kept, where anyone who tries to undermine our way of life will be reeducated into understanding our ideals, where our future will be secured against those who would steal it from us."

The Mayor pauses, to give his words maximum impact.

"Today we launch the Office of the Ask."

Davy catches my eye and taps the sharp, silver a sewn on the shoulders of our new uniforms, the a that the Mayor picked special cuz it's got all kinda associashuns, don't it?

Me and Davy are now Officers of the Ask.

I don't share his excitement.

But that's cuz I don't feel nothing much at all no more.
I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

"Good speech, Pa," Davy says. "Long."

"It wasn't for you, David," the Mayor says, not looking at him.

The three of us are riding down the road to the monastery.

Tho it ain't the monastery no more.

"Everything
is
ready, I trust?" the Mayor says, barely turning his head. "I'd hate to be made a liar of."

"It ain't gonna get less ready if you keep asking," Davy mumbles.

The Mayor turns to him, a deep frown on his face, but I speak before anyone gets slapped with Noise.

"It's as ready as it can be," I say, my voice flat. "The walls and roof are up but the inside-"

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"No need to sound so morose, Todd," the Mayor says. "The inside can follow in due course. The building is up, that's all that's important. They can look at the outside and they can tremble."

He's got his back to us now, riding on ahead, but I can
feel
him smile at
they can tremble.

"Are we gonna have a part in it?" Davy asks, Noise still stormy. "Or are you just gonna find a way for us to be babysitters again?"

The Mayor turns Morpeth in the road, blocking our way. "Do you ever hear Todd complain this much?" he asks.

"No," Davy says, sullen. "But he's just, you know,
Todd."

The Mayor raises his eyebrows. "And?"

"And I'm yer son."

The Mayor walks Morpeth toward us, making Angharrad step back.
Submit,
Morpeth says.
Lead,
Angharrad says in answer, lowering her head. I stroke her mane, untangling a bit with my fingers, trying to calm her down.

"Let me tell you something interesting, David," the Mayor says, looking hard at him. "The officers, the army, the townspeople, they see the two of you riding together, in your new uniforms, with all your new authority, and they know that
one
of you is my son." He's almost side by side with Davy now, pushing him back down the road. "And as they watch you ride by, as they watch you go about your business, do you know? They often guess wrong. They often guess wrong as to which one of you is my own flesh and blood."

The Mayor looks over to me. "They see Todd with his devotion to duty, with his modest brow and his serious face,

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with his calm exterior and mature handling of his Noise, and they never even consider that his loud, sloppy,
insolent
friend is the one who's actually my son."

Davy's looking at the ground, his teeth clenched, his Noise boiling. "He don't even
look
like you."

"I know," says the Mayor, turning Morpeth back down the road. "I just thought it was interesting. How often it happens."

We keep on riding, Davy in a silent, red storm of Noise, lagging behind. I keep Angharrad in the middle with the Mayor clopping on ahead.

"Good girl," I murmur to her.

"
Boy colt,
she says back, and then she thinks
Todd
.

"Yeah, girl," I whisper twixt her ears. "I'm here."

I've taken to hanging round her stable at the end of the day, taken to unsaddling her myself and brushing her mane and bringing her apples to eat. The only thing she needs from me is assurance that I'm there, proof I haven't left the herd, and as long as that's true, she's happy and she calls me
Todd
and I don't have to explain myself to her and I don't have to ask her nothing and she don't need nothing from me.

Except that I don't leave her.

Except that I don't never
leave.

My
Noise starts getting cloudy and I think it again,
I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

The Mayor looks back at me. And he smiles.

***

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Even tho we got uniforms, we ain't in the army, the Mayor was particular about that. We don't got ranks except Officer but the uniform and the a on its sleeve is enough to keep people outta our way as we ride toward the monastery.

Our job till now has been guarding the men and women who're still in prison, tho it's mostly women. After the prisons were busted into and burned down, the prisoners left over were moved to a former house of healing down by the river.

Guess which one?

For the past month, Davy and I've been escorting work crews of prisoners back and forth from the house of healing to the monastery to finish the work the Spackle started, women and men working faster than Spackle, I guess. The Mayor didn't ask us to supervise the building this time, something I'm grateful for.

When everyone's in for the night back at the house of healing, Davy and I ain't got much to do except ride our horses round the building, doing what we can so as not to hear the screams coming from inside.

Some of the ones still in prison, see, are from the Answer, the ones the Mayor caught the night of the prison break. We don't never see them, they don't get sent out with the work parties, they just get Asked all day long till they answer with something. So far, all the Mayor's got from 'em is the locayshun of a camp around a mine, which was deserted by the time the soldiers got there. Anything else useful is slow in coming.

There are others in there, too, found guilty of helping the Answer or whatever, but the ones who said they saw the Answer kill the Spackle and saw women writing the a on

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the wall, those prisoners are the ones who've been set free and sent back to their families. Even tho there ain't really no way they coulda been there to see it.

The others, well, the others keep being Asked till they answer.

Davy talks loud to cover the sounds we hear while the Asking's going on inside, trying to pretend it don't bother him when any fool could see it does.

I just keep myself in myself, closing my eyes, waiting for the screaming to stop.

I have an easier time than Davy.

Cuz like I say, I don't feel nothing much, not no more.

I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

But today, everything's sposed to change. Today, the new building is ready, or ready enough, and Davy and I are gonna guard it instead of the house of healing, while sposedly learning the business of Asking.

Fine. It don't matter.

Nothing matters.

"The Office of the Ask," the Mayor says as we round the final corner.

The front wall of the monastery has been rebuilt and you can see the new building sticking over the top, a big stone block that looks like it'd happily knock yer brains out if you stood too close. And on the newly built gate, there's a great, shiny silver a to match the ones on our uniforms.

There are guards in army uniforms on either side of the door. One of them is Ivan, still a Private, still sour faced as

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anything. He tries to catch my eye as i ride up, his Noise clanging loud with things he don't want the Mayor to hear, i reckon.

I ignore him. So does the Mayor.

"Now we find out when the real war begins," the Mayor says.

The gate opens and out walks the man in charge of all the Asking, the man charged with finding out where the Answer are hiding and how best to track them down.

Our newly promoted boss.

"Mr. President," he says.

"Captain Hammar," says the Mayor.

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28 SOLDIER

***

(Viola)

"QUIET," Mistress Coyle says, a finger to her lips.

The wind has died and you can hear our footsteps snapping the twigs on the ground at the foot of the trees. We stop, ears open for the sounds of soldiers marching.

Nothing.

More nothing.

Mistress Coyle nods and continues moving down the hill and through the trees. I follow her. It's just the two of us. Me and her and the bomb strapped to my back.

The rescue saved one hundred thirty-two prisoners. Of these, twenty-nine died either on the way to or back in the camp. Corinne was number thirty. There are others unrescued, like poor old Mrs. Fox, whose fates I'm probably never going to know. But Mistress Coyle estimates we killed at least twenty of their soldiers. Miraculously, only six members of the Answer

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on the original raid were killed, including Thea and Mistress Waggoner, but another five were captured and there was no possibility they wouldn't be tortured for information about where the Answer was hiding. So we moved. In a hurry.

Even before many of the injured could walk for themselves, we loaded up supplies and weapons, anything and everything we could carry on carts, horses, the backs of the able-bodied, and we fled into the woods, keeping moving all through the night, the next day, and the night after that until we came to a lake at the base of a rock cliff, where at least we might have water and some shelter.

"It'll do," Mistress Coyle said.

We pitched camp along the shore.

And then we began our preparations for war.

She makes a movement with the palm of her hand and I instantly duck below some shrubs. We've reached a narrow drive up from the main road and I can hear a troop of soldiers Noisily moving away from us in the distance.

Our own supply of cure is getting lower by the day, and Mistress Coyle has set up a rationing system, but since the raid, it's too dangerous for any man, with or without Noise, to go into town anyway, which means they can no longer ferry us in hidden compartments to easy targets. We have to take a cart to a certain point outside of town and walk the rest of the way.

Escaping will be more difficult, so we'll just have to be more careful.

"Okay," Mistress Coyle whispers.