Monsters of Men

I wonder what’s going to happen to me and Bradley. I wonder if it’ll be quick.

Bradley’s still arguing, though. “You attacked us,” he says. “We came here in good faith and you–”

The comm beeps, much louder than usual.

“I think it’s time my voice was heard, Bradley.”

It’s the Mayor again, and somehow his face, too, big and gloating and smiling in the hovering picture projected from it. He’s even turned as if he’s facing the Sky.

As if he’s looking him right in the eye.

“You thought you’d learned something, didn’t you?” he asks. “You thought your captured soldier had looked into me and saw that I could read Noise as deeply as you, isn’t that right? So you thought to yourself, here’s something I can use.”

“How’s he doing this?” we hear Mistress Coyle on a voice-only line. “He’s broadcasting out to the hilltop–”

“So you sent him back to us as a peace envoy,” the Mayor goes on, like he didn’t hear her, “and had him show me just enough to make me think I discovered your plan to attack us from the south. But there was another plan below, wasn’t there? Buried far too deep for any . . .” he pauses for effect “. . . Clearing to read.

The Sky’s Noise flares.

“Get that comm away from him!” Mistress Coyle’s voice shouts. “Cut him off!”

“But you didn’t count on my abilities,” the Mayor says. “You didn’t count that I can read deeper perhaps than even any Spackle, deep enough to see the real plan.”

The Sky’s face is expressionless but his Noise is loud and open and stirring with anger.

Stirring with the knowledge that the Mayor’s words are all true.

“I looked into the eyes of your peace envoy,” the Mayor says, “into your eyes and I read everything. I heard the voice speak and I saw you coming.” He brings the comm forward so his face looms larger in the projection. “So know this, and know it well,” he says. “If it comes to battle between us, the victory will be mine.”

Then he’s gone. His face and the image blink out so that the Sky is only staring back at us. We hear the scout ship’s engines, but they’re still half the valley away. The Spackle here are heavily armed, but that hardly matters because the Sky himself could take out me and Bradley on his own if he needed to.

But the Sky remains still, his Noise spinning and swirling darkly, again as if every eye of the Spackle is in him, watching us and considering what’s happened–

And deciding his next move.

And then he takes a step forward.

I step back without meaning to, bumping into Bradley, who puts a hand on my shoulder.

So be it,the Sky says.

And then he says, Peace.

[TODD]

Peace, we hear, from the leader of the Spackle’s own Noise, boomed across the square, just like the Mayor’s voice did, his face filling the projeckshun–

And the cheering around us is as loud as the world.

“How did you do that?” I say, looking down at my comm.

“You do have to sleep sometimes, Todd,” he says. “Can you blame me if I’m curious about new technologies?”

“Congratulations, sir,” Mr Tate says, shaking the Mayor’s hand. “That showed ’em.”

“Thank you, Captain,” the Mayor says. He turns to Mr O’Hare, who’s looking way more grudging about being sent running for nothing.

“You did fine work,” the Mayor says. “We had to look convincing. That’s why I couldn’t tell you.”

“Of course, sir,” says Mr O’Hare, not sounding like it’s very fine at all.

And then the soldiers crowd in, each wanting to shake the Mayor’s hand, too, each one telling him how he outsmarted the Spackle, each one saying that the Mayor’s the one who won the peace, that he did it without the help of the scout ship, that he really showed ’em, didn’t he?

And the Mayor just takes it all in, accepting every word of it.

Every word of praise for his victory.

And for a second, just for a second–

I feel a little bit proud.

I Raise My Knife

(THE RETURN)

I raise my knife, the one I stole from the cooking huts on my way here, a knife used for the butchery of game, long and heavy, sharp and brutal.

I raise it over the Source.

I could have made peace impossible, I could have made this war unending, I could have torn the life and heart out of the Knife–

But I did not.

I saw her band.

Saw the pain obvious even in one of the voiceless Clearing.

She had been marked, too, just as they marked the Burden, with what seemed to be the same effect.

And I remembered the pain of the banding, the pain not only in my arm but in the way the band encircled my self as well, took what was me and made it smaller, so that all the Clearing ever saw was the band on my arm, not me, not my face, not my voice which was also taken–

Taken to make us like the Clearing’s own voiceless ones.

And I could not kill her.

She was like me. She was banded like me.

And then the beast reared up its hind legs and kicked me across the ground, probably breaking more than one bone in my chest, bones that ache even now, which did not stop the Sky from grabbing me up and flinging me into the arms of the Land, showing, If you do not speak with the Land, then it is because you have chosen it.

And I understood. I was being properly exiled. The Return would not return.

The Land took me from the peace grounds and deep into the camp, where they roughly sent me on my way.

But I was not going to leave without the Sky’s final promise.

I stole a knife and came here–

Where I stand ready to kill the Source.

I look up as the news of the Sky’s attempts to secretly attack the Clearing flashes through the Pathways’ End. So that was his plan, one that would show the Clearing just how effective an enemy we are, how we could walk into their stronghold during peace talks, take the specific enemies we wanted and give them the justice they deserve. The peace that would flow from that, if peace it was, would be one that we dictated.

That was why he asked me to trust him.

But he has failed. He has admitted defeat. He has called for peace. And the Land will cower under the Clearing and the peace will not be a peace of strength for the Land, it will be a peace of weakness–

And I stand over the Source with my knife. I stand ready to take the revenge long since denied me.