Authors: Jane Higgins
That afternoon I sat at my desk wishing Levkova would find sudden, urgent business elsewhere. Jeitan was arguing with her about Remnant. He was impatient to go looking for some dirt on them to pre-empt their takeover of the Council after the hearing. He paced in front of her desk until she told him he made her dizzy and would he please sit down. I listened with half an ear to his complaints about how corrupt Remnant was, and then he said, ‘Look, if the rumors are true and they’ve got a big windfall coming, then chances are they’re planning something major against us.’
I stopped work and paid attention.
‘Rumors,’ said Levkova. ‘We need evidence. How big a windfall?’
‘Big. That’s all I heard.’
‘From what?’
‘No idea. Spoils of war. Their hangers-on have been over in the city. Who knows what they’ve grabbed.’
‘And for what? What are they planning?’
Silence. I could just about hear Jeitan shrug. ‘But it’s not looking good, is it?’ he said. ‘They take Council and they’re flush with funds: that gives them plenty of scope to undermine us. Can’t you raise something about this windfall at the hearing? You’ll have the Council together and –’
‘Not without evidence, no.’
‘With respect, ma’am, you and the Commander play this far too straight. We need a strategy against them.’
‘What we need,’ said Levkova, ‘is to stabilize the situation over the river. That has to be our top priority. And I think the independents will see that and stay with us.’
I stopped listening. Remnant had Sol. I was sure of it. What else could a big windfall be but a small city boy worth millions? I wasn’t entirely sure who Remnant were, though. All I knew about them were headlines from textbooks that I’d paid too little attention to, and one or two Stapleton sermons about them. According to Stapleton, they were dedicated to building a Holy City on both sides of the river, and they were even stricter in their Rule than we were, Cityside, when it came to sex and food and ritual. That being so, I wasn’t surprised to hear
that they liked to play dirty in secret.
That evening I waited for Fyffe in the dining hall, but she didn’t show. The rain was bucketing down so I asked Jeitan if we could pack up some dinner and take it over to people in the infirmary to save them getting soaked coming over. He said that was a pretty transparent ploy on my part to see my girlfriend, but not a bad idea. So that’s what we did.
The infirmary was an ugly gray modular building sprawling behind the main building. It looked like a kids’ block game gone wrong: a wonky E shape with rooms from different model sets stuck on over the years so that one good temper tantrum might break the whole thing apart and scatter it across the hillside.
Inside, people sat crammed shoulder to shoulder in the waiting room, and staff in white coats zoomed about. Notices cluttered the walls with warnings in no-nonsense black-and-white, reminding everyone of ‘The Three Minute Rule’ (how long to boil water for), ‘The 30-Second Rule’ (how long to wash hands for), to NEVER buy meat or fish from unlicensed sellers, and to PLEASE be patient, staff were BUSY, your number would be called in due course.
The staff were pleased with the food we’d brought over, and it got me a white coat’s attention, which I would have struggled for otherwise. ‘Sina,’ he said. ‘Yes, she’s here. She’s with someone.’
The someone she was with was dead. One of the Moldam squad, they said. He’d been caught in sniper fire over the river a few days before and had died two hours ago. I knocked on the door and Fy let me in. There was enough space for a bed and two chairs. The room had green walls, a skylight that the rain thudded on, a small leafy tree in a pot in one corner and a lamp stuck on the wall above it. The place felt like a prayer room and the steady glow of the light on Fy’s face and hair and white coat made her look like a thin, thoughtful angel. There was a body on the bed – a young guy, maybe twenty years old. He was dark and his eyes were closed. He was covered up to his chin by a white sheet. Fy was supposed to be praying for him, and I bet she was.
‘He was sitting up and talking this morning,’ she said. ‘And his family were here and everyone thought he would get better. But he got an infection that ran hot through him. Now they’ve sent for the family again, and someone must sit with him and wait for them.’
I sat down beside her. ‘You all right?’
She nodded.
‘Do you want some food? There’s some in the staff room.’
‘No, thank you.’ She looked at me, frowning. ‘Nik? You know that thing you wear round your neck, from your mother – oh, you’re not wearing it.’
‘I lost it – that night at school.’
‘Oh, no. I’m so sorry.’
I shrugged. It seemed wrong to feel gutted at losing a talisman when she had lost her brother, maybe both her brothers.
‘This man,’ she nodded towards the body, ‘I think you should look; he’s wearing one the same.’ She gave me a little push. ‘Have a look.’
I got up and peered at the body. He looked peaceful and young. I tweaked the sheet under his chin and there, round his neck, was my talisman. Not mine exactly – this one was copper or bronze rather than silver, and it was smaller. But it was the same shape as the one I’d worn my whole life until a few days ago – an elongated S with a long narrow hole in the middle of it.
‘So?’ I turned back to Fy. ‘It’ll be a trinket they make here and ship over to the city. My mother must have bought one at a market. There’s probably thousands of them around.’
Fy said, ‘Maybe. But when we washed the body I tried to take it off him and they wouldn’t let me. They were shocked that I would do that. They said only his mother or his father or his wife can do that.’
I looked down at him. My mind was blank.
‘I don’t know why they said that,’ Fy was saying. ‘I was afraid to ask, in case,’ she hesitated, ‘in case it’s something I should know. In case it’s something everyone here knows.’ She chewed her lip and watched me.
I looked away, back at the body, and tidied up the sheet corner that I’d moved. My heart beat hard. ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ I said. ‘We’re here to look for Sol, aren’t we? This is a distraction. It’s not important. Sol is important. We’ve got a list of traffickers. Plus I have some news about Remnant. We need a plan, a strategy, we need to –’
‘Slow down, slow down. I can’t follow.’ Fyffe stood up and turned me round to face her. She spoke softly in Anglo. ‘I might be wrong, but if your talisman is the same as his, then it means something here. I don’t care what – as far as I’m concerned, you’re Nik and I trust you with my life, but if you want, I’ll help you find out what it means. If you want. And that might help us, you never know.’ Her eyes were blue and earnest and I couldn’t look at them. I couldn’t go where that thought was taking her.
‘I gotta get back,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about this, okay? Don’t put yourself in danger over a trinket.’
‘But –’
‘I’ll see you at breakfast. Keep safe.’ I headed out the door.
I worked late that night, hoping that Levkova would be called away and I’d be able to get onto the computers. Also, let’s face it, cowardice. I didn’t want to be locked up in my cell in Shed 3 thinking about that talisman. I didn’t want Fy’s questions in my head, and I certainly didn’t want to see her, every time I closed my eyes, reading me in
that watchful, worried way of hers.
I was sure the wires would be buzzing with Sol’s disappearance. The top brass at ISIS had to know about it by now and they’d be working on a strategy to get him back. I could help them, if I could just crack the code and work out what they were planning. So I buried myself in Levkova’s piles of paper.
As the night ticked by, letters blurred in front of me. I put my head on the desk and closed my eyes. When the ground began to shake I sat up thinking I’d dreamed it – most nights I saw the school go up in flames. But no, this was real: thumping concussions deep in the earth. I went out to the main room. Levkova was still there, but Jeitan had gone. I stood at the window looking out towards the Mol. I couldn’t see anything over that way but far to the west, towards St Clare, the sky glowed; the city was burning. St Clare was burning. I saw it in my mind’s eye: flames and choking smoke; people staring at the blood on their hands and clothes, wondering if it’s theirs or someone else’s; people stumbling through the rubble, calling out, falling over the dead, wailing. That sound. It’s strange what you remember: that noise people make when the sky falls in and they can’t work it out, what they’ve lost.
I could see it: the bread burned cinder black on the bakery shelves in Kendon Street; the ashes of books swirling through the blown-out roofs of Brown’s and The Bard, the little bookshops along Sentian; the glass cracked
behind the bars in the banks’ windows on St Clare Road; trees turned to torchwood across Pagnal Heath; and then the whole city falling in a cascade of glass and brick and concrete from the river to the hills.
‘… nothing to worry about.’
I turned round to see Levkova talking to me. She sighed. ‘I said, it’s upriver, Cityside. Them, not us. I think it’s the armory at Sentinel. We were aiming to take it to stop their rocket attacks. I’d say that’s the sound of it being destroyed.’ She studied me. ‘It’s not Gilgate, is what I’m trying to tell you.’ I turned back to the window and hoped she wouldn’t come near, because right then I couldn’t pretend.
‘Who’s in Gilgate that you’re afraid to lose?’ she asked.
‘No one. Everyone. Doesn’t matter.’ But it did, of course. It’s my city, I thought. I’m afraid to lose it.
And I’m afraid for it to lose me.
Fy backed off and didn’t say a word
about the talisman at breakfast the next morning. She was all business – hair tied back, brows straight, eyes focused. All her movements burned with contained energy. She was going down to the main hospital in the township with the supplies officer. ‘A shipment of medicine has come in from somewhere,’ she said. ‘So I’m hoping it will draw some of their dealers and traffickers out into the daylight.’
I told her about the Jeitan–Levkova conversation the day before, and the rumor that Remnant had snatched something valuable Cityside.
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘You have to ask Jeitan. Would he help? It sounds like he would.’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. I want to connect the names on our list with Remnant and follow that trail. Plus, I’ll see their big names tomorrow at the hearing. Could be useful.
Especially if someone challenges them about what they’re doing.’
We stopped to listen to the breakfast briefing, given by Jeitan this time: ‘… continue to hold the strategic posts we’ve taken, but we’re coming under heavy pressure, especially at Torrens Hill, Sentinel, and Clare where forces loyal to the city are regrouping under ISIS … major disruption continues across the city … food distribution a shambles, fuel scarce, power out … the roads north clogged with refugees.’ He finished with, ‘The place has been looted from Westwall to Port – but not by us. Commander Vega reminds all squad members that There Will Be No Looting. Looters will be punished. Clear? Thank you, that’s all.’
Fyffe watched him sit down and I could see she was desperate to go up to him and ask him point-blank about Sol. But she said, ‘No looting. I can’t get it straight in my head how they can be bombers and kidnappers and at the same time be saying that looting and trafficking are illegal.’ She stood up to go.
I said, ‘Be careful, okay?’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be all right.’
‘Just don’t imagine anything short of a small army will keep you safe from these people if they find out who you are.’
That afternoon, Levkova went off to talk to the two
independents on Council and left Jeitan to hold the fort at CommSec. I plonked a pile of documents on her desk in front of him and tried my luck. ‘You know your suspicions about Remnant?’
He looked at me as though I was being nosy about his love life. ‘What do you care?’
‘Are you going to do anything about them? Run a check on their finances? For example? No?’
‘I don’t have clearance.’
‘Why would that stop you?’
‘I don’t know how they keep order in Gilgate, but we have lines of command here. They stop us descending into anarchy.’
‘I don’t have clearance either. I’ll do it if you like.’
He chewed a thumbnail and frowned at me. ‘Why would you want to? Why would I let you?’
‘You’re looking for dirt on them, right? And you want to find it before the hearing, but you’re running out of time.’
He sat back and folded his arms, but his frown was more calculating now. ‘And, of course, breaking news about Remnant crimes would distract the Council from the actual purpose of the hearing. Is that what you’re hoping?’
I shrugged. ‘Okay, so I have an interest. Do you want to try or not?’
‘You won’t be able to get in.’
‘Want a bet?’
He looked around the room, which was empty, and back at me. ‘You know how much we trust you?’
‘Yeah, I do. You can watch me every step of the way.’
He stood up. ‘Go on, then. You’ve got,’ he glanced at his watch, ‘an hour, I’d say, before Levkova comes back.’
‘Want to help?’
He watched over my shoulder as I got into the system, which I did in as clumsy a way as I could, hoping he wouldn’t click that I’d been there before. ‘Hmm,’ he said when I got in. ‘Okay. Help how?’
‘Remnant finances – how do we find them?’
He had a few suggestions and we dived in.
‘Suppose we find something,’ I said. ‘You think Vega or Levkova would use it?’
‘I wish. Depends how solid it is. They’re so focused on what’s happening over the river, they’re not guarding their backs. They think the independents are as focused as they are, but they’re wrong. And they think that if they’re found to be investigating Remnant it will undermine solidarity in the uprising. It’d have to be very, very solid before they’d use it. Which is why Levkova will not be impressed if she finds us doing this. Hour’s nearly up.’ We’d found nothing that looked like a windfall. Which we wouldn’t if that windfall was sitting in a cellar or an attic somewhere, cold and hungry and terrified, and hadn’t been translated into cash yet.