Monsters of Men (32 page)

Mistress Coyle, meanwhile, looks happier than I’ve ever seen her. She’s even started talking about how to make the truce. Apparently, this involves a lot of blowing things up. Mistress Braithwaite, who did my soldiering training what seems like a lifetime ago, plants bombs in the trees, hoping to show the Spackle we can outwit them and also hoping to capture one who isn’t killed in the blast. Then we’ll send it back saying we’ll keep blowing things up if they don’t talk to us about peace.

Mistress Coyle swears this is how it worked last time.

My comm beeps, Todd calling with final word after the attack.

“None survived, did they?” I ask, coughing some more.

“No,”
he says, looking concerned.
“Viola, are you–?”

“I’m fine. It’s just coughing.” I try to swallow it away.

I’ve only seen him over the comm the past week since our big meeting by the old house of healing. I haven’t gone down there and he hasn’t come up here. Too much to do, I tell myself.

I also tell myself it’s not because a Todd without Noise makes me feel really–

Makes it seem like–

“We’ll try again tomorrow,” I say. “And again and again until it works.”

“Yeah,”
Todd says.
“The sooner we can get those truce talks started, the sooner this is all over. The sooner we can start making you
well.
”

“The sooner you can be away from
him,
” I say, realizing too late that I’ve said it out loud. Stupid fever.

Todd frowns.
“I’m fine, Viola, I swear. He’s being nicer than ever.”

“Nice?” I say. “When was he ever
nice
?”

“Viola–”

“Thirty-three days,” I say. “That’s all we have to get through. Just thirty-three more days.”

But I have to say, it feels like for ever.

[T
ODD
]

The Spackle attacks keep coming. And we keep stopping ’em.

Submit!
We hear Juliet’s Joy shouting down the road.
SUBMIT!

And we hear the Mayor laughing.

Heavy hoofbeats come pounding outta the darkness, the Mayor’s teeth shining in the moons-light. You can even see the gleam of the gold threads on the sleeve of his uniform.

“Now, NOW!” he’s calling.

With a disgusted cluck of her tongue, Mistress Braithwaite presses a button on a remote device and the road behind the Mayor erupts in gales of flame, instantly burning the Spackle who were in pursuit, Spackle who thought they’d found a random soldier away from what seemed to be the obvious trap we’d laid down another path.

But that trap wasn’t a trap. The random soldier was.

This is the fifth attack we’ve stopped in five days, each one getting cleverer with us getting cleverer in return, with fake traps and fake
fake
traps and different paths of attack and so on.

It feels pretty good actually, like we’re finally really
doing
something, like we’re finally–

(winning–)

(winning the war–)

(it’s ruddy thrilling–)

(shut up)

(but it is–)

Juliet’s Joy comes heaving to a stop next to Angharrad, and we all watch as the flames gather up into a cloud rising thru the trees and dissipating against the cold night sky.

“Forward!” the Mayor shouts, the
buzz
of it rocketing thru the Noise of the soldiers gathered behind us and they surge past in formayshun, racing down the road after any Spackle who might still be alive.

But from the size of the flames, it don’t look like there’ll be any left this time neither. The Mayor’s smile disappears as he sees just how much destruckshun there is down the road.

“And yet again,” he says, turning to Mistress Braithwaite, “your detonation is mysteriously too big to leave any survivors.”

“Would you rather they killed you?” she asks in a way that says that’d be fine by her.

“You just don’t want us to get the Spackle first,” I say. “You want to get one for Mistress Coyle.”

You could pretty much eat dinner off the glare she gives me. “I’ll thank you not to talk to your elders that way, boy.”

Which makes the Mayor laugh out loud.

“I’ll talk to you any way I damn well please,
Mistress,
” I say. “I know yer leader and there ain’t no pretending she’s not up to something.”

Mistress Braithwaite looks back at the Mayor, not changing her expresshun. “Charming,” she says.

“Yet accurate,” says the Mayor, “as usual.”

I feel my Noise go a little pink at the unexpected praise.

“Please report to your Mistress the usual success,” the Mayor says down to Mistress Braithwaite, “and the usual failure.”

Mistress Braithwaite heads off back to town with Mistress Nadari, scowling at us as they go.

“I’d do the same if I were her, Todd,” the Mayor says, as the soldiers start to return from the fire, no living Spackle found, again. “Keep my opponent from getting an advantage.”

“We’re sposed to be working
together,
” I say. “We’re sposed to be working towards peace.”

He don’t seem too worried about it, tho. Just look at the soldiers marching past us now, laughing and joking amongst themselves at what they see as another victory after so many defeats. And there’ll be still more to congratulate him when we get back to the square.

Viola tells me Mistress Coyle’s getting the same hero treatment up by the scout ship.

They’re fighting a war over who can be more peaceful.

“I think maybe you’re right, Todd,” the Mayor says.

“Right how?” I ask.

“That we should be working together.” He turns to me, that smile on his face. “I think maybe it’s time we tried a different approach.”

{VIOLA}

“What’s happening now?” Lee says, scratching underneath his bandage.

“Stop that,” I say, slapping his hand playfully, though the movement causes a terrible pain in my arm.

We’re in the healing room of the scout ship, the viewscreens on the walls showing the probes dotted around the valley. After yesterday’s too fiery attack by Mistress Braithwaite, the Mayor surprised us all by suggesting Simone lead the next mission. Mistress Coyle agreed, and Simone set to work, planning the whole thing with the absolute focus on capturing a Spackle and sending it back with a message of peace.

Which seems strange after we’ve killed so many of them to do it, but it’s been obvious since the beginning that wars make no sense. You kill people to tell them you want to stop killing them.

Monsters of men,
I think.
And women
.

So today, Simone’s set up an even bigger diversionary tactic, positioning the probes in broad daylight to make it look like we expect the Spackle to come down one particular path from the south, where Mistress Braithwaite has planted decoy bombs, set to go off early like we made a mistake, all the while leaving another path open from the north, a path where armed women from the Answer, led by Simone, wait in hiding to capture a Spackle, hoping their lack of Noise will surprise them.

“You’re not telling me anything,” Lee says, scratching the bandage again.

“Wouldn’t it be easier for Bradley to sit here with you?” I say. “You could see what happens through him.”

“I’d rather have you,” he says.

And I see myself in his Noise, nothing too private or anything, just a better-looking version of me, cleaned and washed and fit, instead of feverish and too thin and grimy in a way that doesn’t ever seem to wash off.

He hasn’t talked about his blindness except to make jokes about it, and when there’s someone else with Noise around, he can still see through that, saying it’s almost as good as having eyes. But I’m with him a lot when he’s alone, as we both seem to live in this stupid healing room these days, and I can see it in him, see how most of his life disappeared all at once, that suddenly all he sees are memories and other people’s versions of the world.

And how he can’t even cry about it because the burns are so bad.

“When you sit there quietly,” he says. “I know you’re reading me.”

“Sorry,” I say, looking away and coughing some more. “I’m just worried. This
has
to work.”

“You gotta stop thinking you’re responsible,” he says. “You were protecting Todd, that’s all. If it had taken starting a war to save my mum and sister, I wouldn’t have hesitated.”

“But you can’t make war personal,” I say, “or you’ll never make the right decisions.”

“And if you didn’t make personal decisions, you wouldn’t be a
person
. All war is personal somehow, isn’t it? For somebody? Except it’s usually hate.”

“Lee–”

“I’m just saying how lucky he is to have someone love him so much they’d take on the whole world.” His Noise is uncomfortable, wondering what I’m looking like, how I’m responding. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“He’d do it for me,” I say quietly.

I’d do it for you, too
, Lee’s Noise says.

And I know he would.

But those people who die because we do it, don’t they have people who’d kill for them?

So who’s right?

I put my head in my hands. It feels really heavy. Every day, Mistress Coyle tries new approaches to the infection, and every day I feel better for a while but then it comes back a little bit worse.

Fatal,
I think.

And still
weeks
until the convoy gets here, if they can help at all–

There’s a sudden crackle over the comm system of the ship that makes us jump. “
They’ve
done
it,
” Bradley’s voice says, sounding surprised.

I look up. “Done what?”

“They’ve got one,”
Bradley says.
“To the north.”

“But,” I say, looking from screen to screen, “it’s too early. There wasn’t–”

“It wasn’t Simone.”
Bradley’s voice is as confused as I am.
“It was Prentiss. He captured a Spackle before we even set the plan in motion.”

[T
ODD
]

“Mistress Coyle’s gonna be
fuming,
” I say, as the Mayor keeps shaking hands with soldiers who come up to congratulate him.

“I find myself strangely calm about that prospect, Todd,” he says, taking in his victory.

Cuz it turns out there was still that squadron of soldiers to the north, wasn’t there? Twiddling their thumbs, being laughed at by Spackle who snuck by ’em on a regular basis to attack the town.

Mistress Coyle forgot about ’em. So did Bradley and Simone. So did
I
.

The Mayor didn’t.

He watched tonight’s big plan being made over the comm by Simone and agreed on the time and place where Mistress Braithwaite could plant her decoy bombs. And then when the Spackle figured out that one part of the valley on the northern road was vulnerable to attack cuz we were busy pretending we weren’t watching the south, just like we wanted ’em to think, they sent forward a small group sneaking past our soldiers like usual, like they’ve done a dozen times before–

Except this time, they didn’t find us so agreeable.

The Mayor moved his men to exactly the right place and they surged round in a flanking movement, cutting off the Spackle’s route and mowing most of ’em down with gunfire before anyone knew what was going on.

All but two of the Spackle were killed and those two got marched thru town not twenty minutes later to a
ROAR
from the watching army. Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare took ’em to the horse stables behind the cathedral to wait while the Mayor finishes getting the congratulayshuns of all of New Prentisstown. I take the long, slow walk thru the crowds with him, handshakes and cheering and backslapping everywhere.

“You coulda
told
me,” I say, raising my voice above the clamour.

“You’re right, Todd,” he says, stopping to look at me for a minute as the people keep swarming round us. “I should have, I apologize. Next time, I will.”

And to my surprise, it sounds like he means it.

We keep on thru the crowds and eventually we make it round to the stables.

Where a couple of really angry mistresses wait.

“I demand you let us in there!” Mistress Nadari says and Mistress Lawson beside her harrumphs in agreement.

“Safety first, ladies,” the Mayor smiles at them. “We have no idea how dangerous a captured Spackle might be.”

“Now,”
Mistress Nadari says.

But the Mayor’s still smiling.

And he’s followed by a whole city of smiling soldiers.

“I’ll just make sure the situation is safe before I do that, shall I?” he says, stepping to one side of the mistresses, who are then held back by a line of soldiers as the Mayor goes inside. I follow him in.

And my stomach grabs itself into a tight fist.

Cuz inside are the two Spackle, tied to chairs, their arms bound behind ’em in a way I know only too well.

(but neither are 1017 and I don’t know if I’m relieved or upset–)

One of ’em’s got red blood all over his naked white skin, the lichen he was wearing torn off and thrown to the ground. His head’s up, tho, his eyes wide open, and I’m damned if his Noise don’t show all kinds of pictures of us paying for what we’ve done–