Monkey Wars (23 page)

“Papina, don't do this—”

“TELL ME!”

“Hister. Her name's Hister.”

It was as if Papina could read everything just from the name; she seemed to know how young and desirable Hister was. Mico could see the hurt break across her face.

“Then go to her,” Papina said and leaped from the statue into the overhanging tree, desperate to get away.

“I don't want her!” said Mico, chasing up into the tree canopy behind her.

“Leave me alone! I'm sick of your lies!”

She leaped down onto the next branch, then launched into midair to switch trees; but Mico wouldn't give up. Swinging the opposite way round the tree, he leaped once, twice, through the air, then scrambled round to head her off.

“Listen to me,” he began, but she turned away, angrily flicking her tail into his face.

Mico grabbed her shoulders and spun her round. “I've only ever wanted to be with you, Papina. You have to believe me, or it'll have all been for nothing.”

Unable to find the words, she raised her fists and started to pummel him, but he caught her hands and held them tightly, absorbing her punches until the rage was spent and she slumped down.

Mico drew her close, reassuring her, until eventually Papina put her arms around him.

Slowly, silently, high up in the tree canopy, in the heady dusk air, it became a lovers' embrace. There was now no space between them.

It brought such a feeling of completeness to Mico, and at the same time it made everything impossibly complicated.

Now he was caught between two mates: Hister, who adored him and who was such an important part of his facade of respectable langur life; and Papina, the monkey who had been a guiding beacon to him since he was young. Mico didn't know how it would ever be possible to reconcile these two worlds.

He tried to marshal his thoughts.

The resistance. That was the most pressing issue. They were the force driving a wedge between the two troops, ramping up the violence. He had to identify the resistance and stop them.

Taking Papina by the hand, Mico led her out of the square and up onto the rooftops where he had hidden three small metal blades that he'd recovered from the undercroft.

“Have you seen these before?” he asked.

Papina turned the shiny blades over in her hands.

“Are they human?”

Mico shook his head. “Resistance. We cornered them but they slipped away. But those”—he pointed to the small, vicious weapons—“those are our biggest clue. Have you seen monkeys making things like that?”

Papina shook her head and ran a finger gently along one of the blades. “Must be difficult to make.”

“Have you seen monkeys with cuts on their hands?”

Papina thought for a moment, then shook her head again.

“What about Twitcher?” Mico finally asked, giving voice to his deepest suspicions.

“I'm not sure.”

“Twitcher knows more than he's telling. I want you to keep a close eye on him. The resistance must be scouring the dumps for metal. See where he goes, who he meets. But be careful.”

“Are you going back to
her
?” Papina said quietly.

“I have to. But it won't always be this way, I promise.”

He tried to make it sound as if he knew how everything could be resolved, but he fooled neither Papina nor himself.

M
ico didn't go straight home; he had a hunch he wanted to follow up. He suspected the enemy would be keen to recover their weapons from the hideout at the railway station, and as it had now been searched it was doubtful the langur would return in a hurry. To Mico's mind this made the undercroft the
most
likely place to find the resistance.

Now was his chance to find out who they really were.

He made quick progress through the evening streets bustling with humans buying food for their supper. Arriving back at the station, he decided against using the doors to the undercroft—if the resistance were holed up in there he didn't want to confront them head-on. Not yet.

Instead he clambered onto the station roof and found the chimney that led all the way down. Craning his head into the darkness of the shaft, Mico listened. As his ears filtered out the background noise of the city, he could just make out the low, gruff murmur of monkeys talking.

They were down there, all right.

Stealthily, Mico clambered into the shaft and started to edge down, but the going was tricky. Soot had caked the chimney walls and he knew that if he dislodged any it would fall into the opening below, alerting the resistance. It made progress painfully slow, but little by little he slid deeper and deeper, and the voices became steadily louder.

Pausing a short distance from the bottom, Mico jammed his arms and legs into the wall to anchor himself. He could hear the chink and rattle of metal being worked—they must be making more weapons, beating the tin with stones, perhaps.

Every now and then he heard a swell of malevolent laughter, but the fragments of muffled conversation drifting up the shaft were even more chilling. Mico heard talk of “rewards,” of plans to “increase the body count” and spread “a reign of terror.”

This was not the language of resistance that Mico had expected. Where was the camaraderie of heroes fighting against the odds? Where was the talk of freedom? All Mico heard was the language of professional violence, as hard and cold as granite.

“We're three short,” accused a gruff voice.

“Check again,” replied another, testily.

The weapons—they were talking about the missing weapons.

There was a shuffling sound and Mico realized to his horror that one of them was coming back to check the hiding place in the base of the shaft.

Suddenly a monkey's arm appeared in the opening, just below Mico's feet. Mico held his breath, his muscles froze. The slightest noise would give him away.

He rolled his eyeballs down and saw the monkey's arm at full stretch, hand groping in the gloom, trying to find the weapons.

“Nothing,” the fighter grumbled, but as he turned, a shaft of light fell on his face…and with a shock Mico realized this wasn't a rhesus monkey at all.

The bony brow that gave the impression of a permanent scowl, the dark brown fur and, most unnerving of all, the complete lack of a tail…this was a Barbary ape.

A wave of nausea swept over Mico. Barbaries were the stuff of dark legends. Fearless, violent monkeys, whose love of anarchy had earned them the nickname “The Wild Ones,” they would roam in packs, stealing, biting, intimidating, sometimes for food, sometimes just for their own amusement.

When faced with stubborn opposition, the Barbaries' favorite tactic was to herd together and charge at full speed, trampling underfoot anything or anyone in their path. According to the stories Mico had heard, they came from far-off lands, where they had terrorized humans.

They were fanatical.

They were beyond reason.

And now they were here.

Worry was turning into panic.

Papina had been searching for her mother all evening, but no one had seen Willow since the langur patrols' rampage, and deep down she knew something was very wrong; her mother would never just go off without saying anything.

There was one place she hadn't searched yet, but it was a few streets from Temple Gardens, so Papina asked Twitcher to come with her.

“How often does your mother come here?” said Twitcher as Papina led him up a rusting fire escape.

“Every day. It's her special place.”

“She's kept this one quiet.”

“She doesn't want everyone joining in,” Papina said, flashing Twitcher a look warning him not to go spreading the word.

Twitcher shook his head. “I just hope her secret's not got her into trouble.”

“It's the one thing she misses most of all from the cemetery,” Papina said, feeling she had to defend her mother's judgment. “No matter what the day brings, if she can relax in a bath and watch the clouds go by, she can cope.”

At the top of the ladder they scrambled over the parapet and across the roof, picking their way through a jumble of pipes and fans, until they came to a large zinc water tank.

And then the sickly fear gripped Papina.

Ominous signs were everywhere
—huge puddles of water were splashed across the roof as if there'd been a ferocious struggle; a clump of fur was caught on the corner of an air-conditioning unit; most sinister of all, smears of blood ran down the side of the metal tank.

Papina felt herself buckle. She reached a hand out to steady herself and Twitcher grabbed her.

“She's a strong monkey,” he said, trying to sound hopeful. “We have to keep looking.”

Papina nodded. She didn't want to accept what the evidence was screaming at her; she wanted everything to be just as it was yesterday. But deep down, she feared the worst news of all.

Hister had been waiting up half the night, worried. She knew Mico's work was secret and she was never sure when he would be home, but this time no one seemed to have any idea where he'd gone. He'd told Breri that he was heading back to the cemetery, but that was in the afternoon, and now the moon was high.

So Hister waited, quietly fretting in the entrance to their home, until finally she saw Mico's familiar outline moving through the shadows toward her. She hurried over and clasped him tightly.

“I thought something had happened!”

“I'm fine. It's just work.” He always tried to keep Hister's feelings at arm's length, reminding himself that theirs was a partnership of convenience, but her concern was so genuine he felt he owed her a better explanation.

“The resistance are a tougher enemy than we'd imagined.”

“I was so frightened,” she said as she ushered him into their home. “I thought something terrible had happened, Mico.” And she rested her head lovingly on his.

Her warmth triggered a heavy pang of guilt in him, and tonight it was quickly followed by another emotion: the desire to protect her.

Hister's trusting innocence wouldn't stand a chance against the Barbary darkness that was now invading the city. With chilling clarity, Mico imagined how pitiless a full-scale Barbary onslaught would be. Everyone was now in grave danger. Somehow, he had to stop them. But who could he turn to for help?

Mico's first instinct had been to go to Lord Tyrell and tell him everything; if the Barbaries were here to conquer the city, langur and rhesus should bury their differences and join forces to defend themselves.

But there was a terrible complication: Tyrell hated the rhesus and had made sure the grisly details of resistance atrocities were known to all langurs; fighting the resistance was a key reason for Tyrell's popularity—it was what made him the Protector of the Troop. But if it was now revealed that the rhesus were
not
behind the attacks, that all along it was Barbary apes, then Tyrell would be humiliated. The langur would see that his judgment was fatally flawed, that the bile and hatred he had vented on the rhesus was totally misplaced.

A humiliated leader would not last long and, faced with downfall, who knew how ruthless Tyrell could become?

The only logical step for Tyrell would be to suppress the truth about the Barbaries, and to silence anyone who contradicted him.

Which meant that if Mico spoke out, he would put himself in mortal danger.

Mico sat quietly, Hister's arms wrapped around him, while his mind wrestled with the impossible choice.

And then came the knock on the door.