Monsters of Men

And I hear the Sky send forth the immediate command to pull back.

No! I shout.

The Sky looks at me sharply. You would have them slaughtered?

They are willing to die. And now is our chance–

The Sky strikes me across the face with the back of his hand.

I stagger back, astonished, feeling the pain ring through my entire head.

You said you trusted the Sky, did you not? he shows, the anger in his voice gripping me so hard it hurts.

You hit me.

DID YOU NOT? His voice knocks all thought out of my head.

I stare back at him, my own anger rising. But, Yes, I show.

Then you will trust me now. He turns to the Pathways, waiting in an arc behind him. Bring the Land back from the far hilltop. The Land to the north and the south will await my instructions.

The Pathways immediately set out to deliver the Sky’s orders directly to the Land that waits for them.

Orders given in the language of the Burden so I am sure to understand them.

Orders for retreat.

Not attack.

The Sky will not look at me, keeping his back turned, but once again, I am a better reader of him than any of the Land here, maybe better than the Land is supposed to read its Sky.

You expected this, I show. You expected more weapons.

He still does not look at me, but a change in his voice shows me I am right. The Sky did not lie to the Return, he shows. If there had been no further weapons, we would be overrunning them this very moment.

But you knew there would be weapons. You let me believe–

You believed what you hoped to be true, the Sky shows. Nothing I could have said would have taken that from you.

My voice still rings with the pain from his slap.

I am sorry I struck you, he says.

And in his apology, I see it. For the briefest of seconds, I see it.

Like the sun through the clouds, a flash of unmistakable light.

I see his essentially peaceful nature.

You wish to make peace with them, I show. You wish to make a truce.

His voice hardens. Have I not shown the opposite to be true?

You are keeping the possibility open.

No wise leader would do anything else. And you will learn that. You must.

I blink, baffled. Why?

But he just looks back across the valley, back to the far hilltop where the vessel still flies.

We have awakened the beast, he shows. We shall see how angry it gets.

{VIOLA}

My comm beeps and I know it’s Todd calling, but I’m in the healing room on the scout ship, holding Lee’s head in my lap and that’s taken over all my thinking right now.

“Hold him steady, Viola,” Mistress Coyle says, bracing herself as the scout ship lists again.

“One more pass and then we’ll land,” Simone says over the ship’s comm system.

We can hear the low booms through the floor where Simone is dropping the hoopers, small packets of bombs linked together magnetically that spread out as they fall, blanketing the forest below in fire and explosions.

One more time, we’re bombing the Spackle.

After Lee told us they were coming, I helped carry him inside the scout ship where Mistress Coyle and Mistress Lawson immediately started working on him. Outside, even through the doors of the ship, we could hear the shouting of the people on the hilltop. Hear their terror, but also their anger. I could just imagine that half-circle of watchers, led by Ivan, demanding to know what Simone and Bradley were going to do about it, now that we’d been attacked directly.

“They could be ANYWHERE!” I heard Ivan shout.

And so as Mistress Coyle sedated Lee and Mistress Lawson washed the seemingly endless blood from his destroyed eyesockets, we heard Simone and Bradley stomp aboard, arguing between themselves. Simone went to the cockpit, and Bradley came into the healing room and said, “We’re taking off.”

“I’m operating here,” Mistress Coyle said, not looking up.

Bradley opened a panel and took out a small device. “Gyroscopic scalpel,” he said. “It’ll keep steady in your hand even if this ship flips over.”

“So that’s what that was,” Mistress Lawson said.

“Is there trouble outside?” I asked.

Bradley just frowned, his Noise full of images of people getting into his face, calling him the Humanitarian.

Some of them spitting on him.

“Bradley,” I said.

“Just hold on,” he said, and he stayed with us rather than join Simone in the cockpit.

Mistresses Coyle and Lawson kept on working furiously. I’d forgotten what an incredible thing it was to see Mistress Coyle heal. Ferocious and concentrated, all her attention bent on saving Lee, even as we felt the engines burn into life, felt the ship rise slowly in the air, tilting as it circled the hilltop, felt the first of the bombs explode far beneath us.

And still Mistress Coyle worked.

Now Simone is completing her last pass, and I can feel the heat in Bradley’s Noise about what we’ll find on the hilltop when we open the doors.

“That bad?” Mistress Coyle says, carefully tying the last stitch.

“They weren’t even interested in recovering the bodies of the people who were killed,” Bradley says. “They just wanted force and they wanted it right now.”

Mistress Coyle moves to a basin in the wall and starts washing her hands. “They’ll be satisfied. You’ve done your duty.”

“This is our duty now, is it?” Bradley says. “Bombing an enemy we’ve never met?”

“You took a step into this war,” Mistress Coyle says, “and now you can’t just step out of it. Not if lives are at stake.”

“Which, of course, is exactly what you wanted.”

“Bradley,” I say, my comm beeping again but I’m not ready to let go of Lee just yet. “They attacked us.”

“After we attacked them,” Bradley says. “After they attacked us, after we attacked them, and so on and so on until we’re all dead.”

I look back down at Lee’s face, what I can see of it under the bandages, the bottom of his nose just poking out, his mouth open and breathing heavy, his blond hair in my hands, sticky with blood. I can feel him underneath my fingertips, the injured warmth of his skin, the weight of his unconscious body.

He’s never going to be the same again, never ever, which makes my throat choke and my chest hurt.

This is what war does. Right here, in my hands. This is war.

In my pocket, my comm beeps one more time.

[TODD]

“Neutral ground?” says the Mayor, his eyebrows raising. “Now where might that be, I wonder?”