Текст книги "The Ask and the Answer"

Автор книги: Patrick Ness

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The day after women were allowed to move again, there were eighteen new patients, all female, who'd been suffering all kinds of things – appendicitis, heart problems, lapsed cancer treatments, broken bones – all trapped in houses where they'd been stuck after being separated from husbands and sons. The next day, there were eleven more. Mistress Lawson went back to the children's house of healing the second she was able, but Mistresses Coyle, Waggoner, and Nadari were suddenly rushing from room to room, shouting orders and saving lives. I don't think anyone's been to sleep since.

There's certainly no time for me and Maddy to look for our moment, no time to even notice that the Mayor still hasn't come to see me. Instead, I run around a lot, getting in the way, helping out where I can, and squeezing apprentice lessons in.

I turn out not to be a natural healer.

"I don't think I'm ever going to get this," I say, failing yet again to tell the blood pressure of a sweet old patient called Mrs. Fox.

"It sure feels that way," Corinne says, glancing up at the clock.

"Patience, pretty girl," Mrs. Fox says, her face wrinkling up in a smile. "A thing worth learning is worth learning well."

"You're right there, Mrs. Fox," Corinne says, looking back at me. "Try it again."

I pump up the armband to inflate it, listen through the stethoscope for the right kind of whoosh, whoosh in Mrs. Fox's blood and match that up to the little dial. "Sixty over twenty?" I guess weakly.

"Well, let's find out," Corinne says. "Have you died this morning, Mrs. Fox?"

"Oh, dearie me, no," Mrs. Fox says.

"Probably not sixty over twenty then," Corinne says.

"I've only been doing this for three days," I say.

"I've been doing it for six years," Corinne says, "since I was way younger than you, my girl. And here you are, can't even work a blood pressure sleeve, yet suddenly an apprentice just like me. Funny how life works, huh?"

"You're doing fine, sweetheart," Mrs. Fox says to me.

"No, she isn't, Mrs. Fox," Corinne says. "I'm sorry to contradict you, but some of us regard healing as a sacred duty."

"I regard it as a sacred duty," I say, almost as a reflex. This is a mistake.

"Healing is more than a job, my girl," Corinne says, making my girl sound like the worst insult. "There is nothing more important in this life than the preservation of it. We're God's hands on this world. We are the opposite of your friend the tyrant."

"He's not my-"

"To allow someone, anyone, to suffer is the greatest sin there is."

"Corinne-"

"You don't understand anything," she says, her voice low and fierce. "Quit pretending that you do."

Mrs. Fox has shrunk down nearly as far as I have.

Corinne glances at her and back at me, then she straightens her cap and tugs the lapels on her cloak, stretching out her neck from right to left. She closes her eyes and lets out a long, long breath.

Without looking at me, she says, "Try it again."

"The difference between a clinic and a house of healing?" Mistress Coyle asks, ticking off boxes on a sheet.

"The main difference is that clinics are run by male doctors, houses of healing by female healers," I recite, as I count out the day's pills into separate little cups for each patient.

"And why is that?"

"So that a patient, male or female, can have a choice between knowing the thoughts of their doctor or not."

She raises an eyebrow. "And the real reason?"

"Politics," I say, returning her word.

"Correct." She finishes the paperwork and hands it to me. "Take these and the medicines to Madeleine, please."

She leaves and I finish filling up the tray of medicines. When I come out with it in my hands, I see Mistress Coyle down at the end of the hallway, passing by Mistress Nadari.

And I swear I see her slip Mistress Nadari a note, without either of them pausing.

*** We can still only go out for an hour at a time, still only in groups of four, but that's enough to see how New Prentisstown is putting itself together. As my first week as an apprentice comes to an end, we hear tell that some women are even being sent out into fields to work in women – only groups.

We hear tell that the Spackle are being kept somewhere on the edge of town, all together as one group, awaiting "processing," whatever that might mean.

We hear tell the old Mayor is working as a dustman.

We hear nothing about a boy.

"I missed his birthday," I tell Maddy, as I practice tying bandages around a rubber leg so ridiculously realistic everyone calls it Ruby. "It was four days ago. I lost track of how long I was asleep and-"

I can't say any more, just pull the bandage tight-

And think of when he put a bandage on me-

And when I put bandages on him.

"I'm sure he's fine, Vi," Maddy says.

"No, you're not."

"No," she says, looking back out the window to the road, "but against all odds the city's not at war. Against all odds, we're still alive and still working. So, against all odds, Todd could be alive and well."

I pull tighter on the bandage. "Do you know anything about a blue A?"

She turns to me. "A what?"

I shrug. "Something I saw in Mistress Coyle's notebook."

"No idea." She looks back out the window. "What are you looking for?"

"I'm counting soldiers," she says. She looks back again at me and Ruby. "It's a good bandage." Her smile makes it almost seem true.

I head down the main hallway, Ruby kicking from one hand. I have to practice injecting shots into her thigh. I already feel sorry for the poor woman whose thigh gets my first real jab.

I come round a corner as the hallway reaches the center of the building, where it turns ninety degrees down the other wing, and I nearly collide with a group of mistresses, who stop when they see me.

Mistress Coyle and four, five, six other healers behind her. I recognize Mistress Nadari and Mistress Waggoner, and there's Mistress Lawson, too, but I've never seen the other three before and didn't even see them come into the house of healing.

"Have you no work, my girl?" Mistress Coyle says, some edge in her voice.

"Ruby," I stammer, holding out the leg.

"Is this her?" asks one of the healers I don't recognize.

Mistress Coyle doesn't introduce me.

She just says, "Yes, this is the girl."

I have to wait all day to see Maddy again, but before I can ask her about it, she says, "I've figured it out."

"Did one of them have a scar on her upper lip?" Maddy whispers in the dark. It's well past midnight, well past lights – out, well past when she should be in her own room.

"I think so," I whisper back. "They left really quickly."

We watch another pair of soldiers march down the road. By Maddy's reckoning, we've got three minutes.

"That would have been Mistress Barker," she says. "Which means the others were probably Mistress Braithwaite and Mistress Forth." She looks back out the window. "This is crazy, you know. If she catches us, we'll get it good."

"I hardly think she's going to fire you under the circumstances."

Her face goes thoughtful. "Did you hear what the mistresses were saying?"

"No, they shut up the second they saw me."

"But you were the girl?"

"Yeah," I say. "And Mistress Coyle avoided me the rest of today."

"Mistress Barker..." Maddy says, still thinking. "But how could that accomplish anything?"

"How could what accomplish what?"

"Those three were on the Council with Mistress Coyle. Mistress Barker still is. Or was, before all this. But why would they be-" She stops and leans closer to the window. "That's the last foursome."

I look out and see four soldiers marching up the road.

If the pattern Maddy's spotted is right, the time is now.

If the pattern's right. "You ready?" I whisper.

"Of course I'm not ready," Maddy says, with a terrified smile. "But I'm going."

I see how she's flexing her hands to keep them from shaking. "We're just going to look," I say. "That's all. Out and back again before you know it."

Maddy still looks terrified but nods her head. "I've never done anything like this before in my whole life."

"Don't worry," I say, lifting the sash on my window all the way up. "I'm an expert."

The ROAR of the town, even when it's sleeping, covers our footsteps pretty well as we sneak across the dark lawn. The only light is from the two moons, shining down on us, half circles in the sky.

We make it to the ditch at the side of the road, crouching in the bushes.

"What now?" Maddy whispers.

"You said two minutes, then another pair."

Maddy nods in the shadows. "Then another break of seven minutes."

In that break, Maddy and I will start moving down the road, sticking to the trees, staying undercover, and see if we can get to the communications tower, if that's even what it is.

See what's there when we do.

"You all right?" I whisper.

"Yeah," she whispers back. "Scared but excited, too."

I know what she means. Out here, crouching in a ditch under the cover of night, it's crazy, it's dangerous, but I finally feel like I'm doing something, finally feel like I'm taking charge of my own life for the first time since being stuck in that bed.

Finally feel like I'm doing something for Todd. We hear the crunch of gravel on the road and crouch a little lower as the expected pair of soldiers march past us and away.

"Here we go," I say.

We stand up as much as we dare and move quickly down the ditch, away from the town.

"Do you still have family on the ships?" Maddy whispers. "Someone besides your mother and father?"

I wince a little at the sound she's making but I know she's only talking to cover her nerves. "No, but I know everyone else. Bradley Tench, he's lead caretaker on the Beta, and Simone Watkin on the Gamma is really smart."

The ditch bends with the road and there's a crossroads coming up that we'll have to negotiate.

Maddy starts up again. "So Simone's the one you'd-"

"Shh," I say because I think I heard something.

Maddy comes close enough to press against me. Her whole body is shaking and her breath is coming in short little puffs. She has to come this time because she knows where the tower is, but I can't ask her to do it again. When I come back, I'll come on my own.

Because if anything goes wrong-

"I think we're okay," I say.

We step slowly out from the ditch to cross the crossroads, looking all around us, stepping lightly in the gravel. "Going somewhere?" says a voice.

***

Maddy takes in a sharp breath behind me. There's a soldier leaning against a tree, his legs crossed like he couldn't be more relaxed.

Even in the moonlight I can see the rifle hanging lazily from his hand.

"Little late to be out, innit?"

"We got lost," I sputter. "We were separated from-"

"Yeah," he interrupts. "I'll bet."

He strikes a match against the zip of his uniform jacket. In the flare of light, I see sergeant hammar written across his pocket. He uses the match to light a cigarette in his mouth.

Cigarettes were banned by the Mayor.

But I guess if you're an officer.

An officer without Noise who can hide in the dark.

He takes a step forward and we see his face. He's got a smile on over the cigarette, an ugly one, the ugliest I've ever seen.

"You?" he says, recognition in his voice as he gets nearer.

As he raises his rifle.

"Yer the girl," he says, looking at me.

"Viola?" Maddy whispers, a step behind me and to my right.

"Mayor Prentiss knows me," I say. "You won't harm me." He inhales on the cigarette, flashing the ember, making a streak against my vision. "President Prentiss knows you." Then he looks at Maddy, pointing at her with the rifle. "I don't reckon he knows you, tho." And before I can say anything-Without giving any kind of warning-As if it was as natural to him as taking his next breath-Sergeant Hammar pulls the trigger.

9 WAR IS OVER

***

[TODD]

YOUR TURN TO DO THE BOG," Davy says, throwing me the canister of lime.

We never see the Spackle use the corner where they've dug a bog to do their business but every morning it's a little bit bigger and stinks a little bit more and it needs lime powdered over it to cut down on the smell and the danger of infeckshun.

I hope it works better on infeckshun than it does on smell. "Why ain't it never yer turn?" I say.

"Cuz Pa may think yer the better man, pigpiss," Davy says, "but he still put me in charge." And he grins at me. I start walking to the bog.

The days passed and they kept passing, till there was two full weeks of 'em gone and more. I stayed alive and got thru, (did she?) (did she?)

Davy and I ride to the monastery every morning and he "oversees" the Spackle tearing down fences and pulling up brambles and I spend the day shoveling out not enough fodder and trying and failing to fix the last two water pumps and taking every turn to do the bog.

The Spackle've stayed silent, still not doing nothing that could save themselves, fifteen hundred of 'em when we finally got 'em counted, crammed into an area where I wouldn't herd two hundred sheep. More guards came, standing along the top of the stone wall, rifles pointed twixt rows of barbed wire, but the Spackle don't do nothing that even comes close to threatening.

They've stayed alive. They've got thru it.

And so has New Prentisstown.

Every day, Mayor Ledger tells me what he sees out on his rubbish rounds. Men and women are still separated and there are more taxes, more rules about dress, a list of books to be surrendered and burned, and compulsory church attendance, tho not in the cathedral, of course.

But it's also started to act like a real town again. The stores are back open, carts and fissionbikes and even a fissioncar or two are back on the roads. Men've gone back to work. Repairmen returned to repairing, bakers returned to baking, farmers returned to farming, loggers returned to logging, some of 'em even signing up to join the army itself, tho you can tell who the new soldiers are cuz they ain't been given the cure yet.

"You know," Mayor Ledger said one night and I could see it in his Noise before he said it, see the thought forming, the thought I hadn't thought myself, the thought I hadn't let myself think. "It's not nearly as bad as I thought," he said. "I expected slaughter. I expected my own death, certainly, and perhaps the burning of the entire town. The surrender was a fool's chance at best, but maybe he's not lying."

He got up and looked out over New Prentisstown. "Maybe," he said, "the war really is over."

"Oi!" I hear Davy call as I'm halfway to the bog. I turn round. A Spackle has come up to him.

It's holding its long white arms up and out in what may be a peaceful way and then it starts clicking, pointing to where a group of Spackle have finished tearing down a fence. It's clicking and clicking, pointing to one of the empty water troughs, but there ain't no way of understanding it, not if you can't hear its Noise.

Davy steps closer to it, his eyes wide, his head nodding in sympathy, his smile dangerous. "Yeah, yeah, yer thirsty from the hard work," he says. "Course you are, course you are, thank you for bringing that to my attenshun, thank you very much. And in reply, let me just say this."

He smashes the butt of his pistol into the Spackle's face. You can hear the crack of bone and the Spackle falls to the ground clutching at its jaw, long legs twisting in the air.

There's a wave of clicking around us and Davy lifts his pistol again, bullet end facing the crowd. Rifles cock on the fence top, too, soldiers pointing their weapons. The Spackle slink back, the broken – jawed one still writhing and writhing in the grass.

"Know what, pigpiss?" Davy says.

"What?" I say, my eyes still on the Spackle on the ground, my Noise shaky as a leaf about to fall.

He turns to me, pistol still out. "It's good to be in charge."

Every minute I've expected life to blow apart. But every minute, it don't. And every day I've looked for her.

I've looked for her from the openings outta the top of the bell tower but all I ever see is the army marching and men working. Never a face I reckernize, never a silence I can feel as hers.

I've looked for her when Davy and I ride back and forth to the monastery, seeking her out in the windows of the Women's Quarter, but I never see her looking back.

I've even half looked for her in the crowds of Spackle, wondering if she's hiding behind one, ready to pop out and yell at Davy for beating on 'em and then saying to me, like everything's okay, "Hey, I'm here, it's me."

But she ain't there.

She ain't there.

I've asked Mayor Prentiss bout her every time I've seen him and he's said I need to trust him, said he's not my enemy, said if I put my faith in him that everything will be all right.

But I've looked.

And she ain't there.

"Hey, girl," I whisper to Angharrad as I saddle her up at the end of our day. I've gotten way better at riding her, better at talking to her, better at reading her moods. I'm less nervous about being on her back and she's less nervous about being underneath me. This morning after I gave her an apple to eat, she clipped her teeth thru my hair once, like I was just another horse.

Boy colt, she says, as I climb on her back and me and Davy set off back into town.

"Angharrad," I say, leaning forward twixt her ears, cuz this is what horses like, it seems, constant reminders that everyone's there, constant reminders that they're still in the herd.

Above anything else, a horse hates to be alone.

Boy colt, Angharrad says again.

"Angharrad," I say.

"Jesus, pigpiss," Davy moans, "why don't you marry the effing-" He stops. "Well, goddam," he says, his voice suddenly a whisper, "would you look at this?"

I look up.

There are women coming out of a store.

Four of 'em, together in a group. We knew they were being let out but it's always daylight hours, always while me and Davy are at the monastery, so we always return to a city of men, like the women are just phantoms and rumor.

It's been ages since I even seen one more than just thru a window or from up top of the tower. They're wearing longer sleeves and longer skirts than I saw before and they each got their hair tied behind their heads the same way. They look nervously at the soldiers that line the streets, at me and Davy, too, all of us watching 'em come down the store's front steps.

And there's still the silence, still the pull at my chest and I have to wipe my eyes when I'm sure Davy ain't looking.

Cuz none of 'em is her.

"They're late," Davy says, his voice so quiet I guess he ain't seen a woman for weeks neither. "They're all sposed to be in way before sundown."

Our heads turn as we watch 'em pass by, parcels held close, and they carry on down the road back to the Women's Quarter and my chest tightens and my throat clenches.

Cuz none of 'em is her.

And I realize–

I realize all over again how much–

And my Noise goes all muddy.

Mayor Prentiss has used her to control me.

Duh.

Any effing idiot would know it. If I don't do what they say, they kill her. If I try to escape, they kill her. If I do anything to Davy, they kill her.

If she ain't dead already.

My Noise gets blacker.

No.

No, I think.

Cuz she might not be.

She mighta been out here, on this very street, in another group of four.

Stay alive, I think. Please please please stay alive, (please be alive)

I stand at an opening as me and Mayor Ledger eat our dinners, looking for her again, trying to close my ears against the ROAR.

Cuz Mayor Ledger was right. There's so many men that once the cure left their systems, you stopped being able to hear individual Noise. It'd be like trying to hear one drop of water in the middle of a river. Their Noise became a single loud wall, all mushed together so much it don't say nothing but

ROAR

But it's actually something you can sorta get used to. In a way, Mayor Ledger's words and thoughts and feelings bubbling round his own personal gray Noise are more distracting.

"Quite correct," he says, patting his stomach. "A man is capable of thought. A crowd is not."

"An army is," I say.

"Only if it has a general for a brain."

He looks out the opening next to mine as he says it. Mayor Prentiss is riding across the square, Mr. Hammar, Mr. Tate, Mr. Morgan, and Mr. O'Hare riding behind him, listening to the orders he's giving.

"The inner circle," Mayor Ledger says.

And for a second, I wonder if his Noise sounds jealous.

We watch the Mayor dismount, hand his reins to Mr. Tate, and disappear into the cathedral.

Not two minutes later, ker – thunk, Mr. Collins opens our door.

"The President wants you," he says to me.

"One moment, Todd," the Mayor says, opening up one of the crates and looking inside.

We're in the cellar of the cathedral, Mr. Collins having pushed me down the stairs at the back of the main lobby. I stand there waiting, wondering how much of my dinner Mayor Ledger will eat before I can get back.

I watch Mayor Prentiss look thru another crate.

"President Prentiss," he says, without looking up. "Do try to remember that." He stands up straight. "Used to be wine stored down here. Far more than was ever needed for communion."

I don't say nothing. He looks at me, curious. "You aren't going to ask, are you?"

"Bout what?" I say.

"The cure, Todd," he says, thumping one of the crates with his fist. "My men have retrieved every last trace of it from every home in New Prentisstown and here it all is."

He reaches in and takes out a phial of the cure pills. He pops the lid off and takes out a small white pill twixt his finger and thumb. "Do you never wonder why I haven't given the cure to you or David?"

I shift from foot to foot. "Punishment?"

He shakes his head. "Does Mr. Ledger still fidget?"

I shrug. "Sometimes. A little."

"They made the cure," the Mayor says. "And then they made themselves need it." He indicates row after row of crates and boxes. "And if I have all of what they need ..."

He puts the pill back in the phial and turns more fully to me, smiling wider.

"You wanted something?" I mumble.

"You really don't know, do you?" he asks.

"Know what?"

He pauses again, and then he says, "Happy birthday, Todd."

I open my mouth. Then I open it wider.

"It was four days ago," he says. "I'm surprised you didn't mention it."

I don't believe it. I completely forgot.

"No celebrations," the Mayor says, "because of course we both know you are already a man, now, aren't you?"

And again I raise the pictures of Aaron.

"You have been very impressive these past two weeks," he says, ignoring them. "I know it's been a great struggle for you, not knowing what to believe about Viola, not knowing exactly how you should behave to keep her safe." I can feel his voice buzzing in my head, searching around. "But you have worked hard nonetheless. You have even been a good influence on David."

I can't help but think of the ways I'd like to beat Davy Prentiss into a bloody pulp but Mayor Prentiss just says, "As a reward, I bring you two belated birthday presents."

My Noise rises. "Can I see her?"

He smiles like he expected it. "You may not," he says, "but I will promise you this. On the day that you can bring yourself to trust me, Todd, truly bring yourself to understand that I mean good for this town and good for you, then on that day, you will see that I am indeed trustworthy."

I can hear myself breathing. It's the closest he's come to saying she's all right.

"No, your first birthday present is one you've earned," he says. "You'll have a new job starting tomorrow. Still with our Spackle friends, but added responsibility and an important part of our new process." He looks me hard in the eye again. "It's a job that could take you far, Todd Hewitt."

"All the way up to be a leader of men?" I say, my voice a bit more sarcastic than he'd probably like.

"Indeed," he says.

"And the second present?" I say, still hoping it might be her.

"My second present to you, Todd, surrounded by all this cure"-he gestures at the crates again-"is not to give you any at all."

I screw up my mouth. "Huh?" But he's already walking toward me as if we're thru talking.

And as he passes me–

I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

Rings thru my head, just the once, coming right from the center of me, of who I am.

I jump from the surprise of it.

"Why can I hear it if yer taking the cure?" I say.

But he just gives me a sly smile and disappears up the staircase, leaving me there.

Happy late birthday to me.

I am Todd Hewitt, I think, as I lie in bed, staring up into the dark. I am Todd Hewitt and four days ago I was a man. Sure don't feel no different, tho.

All that reaching for it, all that importance on the date, and I'm still the same of stupid effing Todd Hewitt, powerless to do anything, powerless to save myself, much less her.

Todd effing Hewitt.

And lying here in the dark, Mayor Ledger snoring away over on his mattress, I hear a faint pop outside, somewhere in the distance, some stupid soldier firing off his gun at who knows what (or who knows who) and that's when I think it.

That's when I think getting thru it ain't enough.

Staying alive ain't enough if yer barely living.

They'll play me as long as I let 'em.

And she coulda been out there.

She coulda been out there today.

I'm gonna find her– First chance I get, I'm gonna take it and I'm gonna find her-

And when I do-

And then I notice Mayor Ledger ain't snoring no more. I raise my voice into the dark. "You got something to say?"

But then he's snoring again and his Noise is gray and muzzy and I wonder if I imagined it.

10 IN GOD ' S HOUSE

***

(Viola)

"I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW SORRY I AM." I don't take the cup of root coffee he offers. "Please, Viola," he says, holding it out toward me. I take it. My hands are still shaking. They haven't stopped since last night. Since I watched her fall.

First to her knees, then onto her side down to the gravel, her eyes still open.

Open, but already unseeing. I watched her fall.

"Sergeant Hammar will be punished." The Mayor takes a seat across from me. "He was by no means and under no circumstances following my orders."

"He killed her," I say, hardly any sound to my voice. Sergeant Hammar dragged me back to the house of healing, pounding on the door with the butt of his rifle, waking everyone up, sending them out after Maddy's body. I couldn't speak, I could barely even cry.

They wouldn't look at me, the mistresses, the other apprentices. Even Mistress Coyle refused to meet my eye.

What did you think you were doing? Where did you think you were taking her?

And then Mayor Prentiss summoned me here this morning to his cathedral, to his home, to God's house.

And then they really wouldn't look at me.

"I'm sorry, Viola," he says. "Some of the men of Prentisstown, old Prentisstown, still bear grudges against women over what happened all those years ago."

He sees my look of horror. "The story you think you know," he says, "is not the story that's true."

I'm still gaping at him. He sighs. "The Spackle War was in Prentisstown, too, Viola, and it was a terrible thing, but women and men fought side by side to save themselves." He puts his fingertips together in a triangle, his voice still calm, still gentle. "But there was division in our little outpost even as we were victorious. Division between men and women."

"I'll say there was."

"They made their own army, Viola. They splintered off, not trusting men whose thoughts they could read. We tried to reason with them, but eventually, they wanted war. And I'm afraid they got it."

He sits up, looking at me sadly. "An army of women is still an army with guns, still an army that can defeat you."

I can hear myself breathing. "You killed every single one."

"I did not," he says. "Many of them died in battle, but when they saw the war was lost, they spread the word that we were their murderers and then they killed themselves so that the remaining men would be doomed either way."

"I don't believe you," I say, remembering that Ben told us a different version. "That's not how it happened."

"I was there, Viola. I remember it all far more clearly than I want to." He catches my eye. "I am also the one most keen that history doesn't repeat itself. Do you understand me?"

I think I do understand him and my stomach sinks and I can't help it-I start to cry, thinking of how they brought Maddy's body back, how Mistress Coyle insisted I be the one to help her prepare the body for burial, how she wanted me to see up close the cost of trying to find the tower.

"Mistress Coyle," I say, fighting to control myself. "Mistress Coyle wanted me to ask if we can bury her this afternoon."

"I've already sent word that she can," the Mayor says. "Everything Mistress Coyle requires is being delivered to her as we speak."

I set the coffee down on a little table next to my chair. We're in a huge room, bigger than any place indoors I've ever seen except for the launch hangars of my ship. Too large for just a pair of comfortable chairs and a wooden table. The only light shines down through a round window of colored glass showing this world and its two moons.

Everything else is in shadow.

"How are you finding her?" the Mayor asks. "Mistress Coyle."

The weight on my shoulders, the weight of Maddy being gone, the weight of Todd still out there, sits so heavily I'd forgotten for a minute he was even there. "What do you mean?"

He shrugs a little. "How is she to work with? How is she as a teacher?" I swallow. "She's the best healer in Haven."

"And now the best healer in New Prentisstown," he corrects. "People tell me she used to be quite powerful around here. A force to be reckoned with."

I bite my lip and look back at the carpet. "She couldn't save Maddy."

"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.