The Ask and the Answer

“Are you ready to lead, Todd?” the Mayor asks lightly.

“I’m ready, Pa,” Davy says.

The Mayor still looks only at me. He knows I’m thinking about her but he’s ignoring all my askings.

“The Answer,” he says, turning back to the A. “If that’s who they want to be, then let them.” He looks back at us. “But if there’s an Answer, then someone must first . . .”

He lets his voice fade and he gets a faraway smile on his face, like he’s laughing at his own private joke.

Davy unfolds the big white scroll onto the grass, not caring that it’s getting wet in the cold morning dew. There’s words written across the top and diagrams and squares and things drawn in below it.

“Measurements mostly,” Davy reads. “Too effing many. I mean, look at that.”

He holds the scroll up to me, trying to get me to agree.

And, well–

Yeah, okay, I–

Whatever.

“Too effing many,” I say, feeling sweat come up under my arms.

It’s the day after the tower fell and we’re back at the monastery, back to putting teams of Spackle to work. My escape seems to be forgotten, like it was part of another life and now we’ve all got new things to think about. The Mayor won’t talk to me about Viola and I’m back working for Davy, who ain’t too happy.

So it’s like old times.

“There’s fighting to be done and he’s got us building an effing palace,” Davy frowns, looking over the plans.

It ain’t a palace but he’s got a point. Before it was just gonna be rough shacks to shelter the Spackle for the winter but this looks like a whole new building for men, taking up most of the inside of the monastery.

It’s even got a name written across the top.

A name my eye stumbles over, trying to–

Davy turns to me, his eyes widening. I make my Noise as Noisy as possible.

“We should get started,” I say, standing up.

But Davy’s still looking at me. “What do you think about what it says right here?” he asks, putting his finger on a block of words. “Ain’t that something amazing what it says?”

“Yeah,” I shrug. “I guess.”

His eyes get even wider with delight. “It’s a list of materials, pigpiss!” His voice is practically celebrating. “You can’t read, can you?”

“Shut up,” I say, looking away.

“You can’t even read!” Davy’s smiling up into the cold sun and around at all the Spackle watching us. “What kinda idiot gets thru life–”

“I said, shut up!”

Davy’s mouth drops open as he realizes.

And I know what he’s gonna say before he says it.

“Yer ma’s book,” he says. “She wrote it for you and you can’t even–”

And what can I do but hit him across his stupid lughole of a mouth?

I’m getting taller and bigger and he comes off worst in the fight but he don’t seem to mind all that much. Even when we get back to work, he’s still giggling and making a big show outta reading the plans.

“Mighty complicated, these instruckshuns,” he says, a big smile across his bloody lips.

“Just effing get on with it!”

“Fine, fine,” he says. “First step is what we were already doing. Tearing down all the internal walls.” He looks up. “I could write it down for you.”

My Noise rages red at him but Noise is useless as a weapon.

Unless yer the Mayor.

I didn’t think life could turn more to crap but it always does, don’t it? Bombs and towers falling and having to work with Davy and the Mayor paying me special attenshun and–

(and I don’t know where she is)

(and I don’t know what the Mayor’s gonna do to her)

(and did she plant the bombs?)

(did she?)

I turn back round to the work site.

1150 pairs of Spackle eyes are watching us, watching me, like they’re just effing farm animals looking up from their grazing cuz they heard a loud noise.

Stupid effing sheep.

“GET TO WORK!” I shout.

“You look like hell,” Mayor Ledger says, as I fall onto my bed.

“Stuff it,” I say.

“Working you hard, is he?” He brings me over the dinner that’s already waiting for us. It don’t even look like he ate too much of mine before I got here.

“Ain’t he working you hard?” I say, digging in to the food.

“I think he’s forgotten about me, truth to tell.” He sits back on his own bed. “I haven’t spoken to him in I don’t know how long.”

I look up at him. His Noise is grey, like he’s hiding something, tho that ain’t unusual.

“I’ve just been doing my rubbish duties,” he says, watching me eat. “Listening to people talk.”

“And what’re they saying?” I ask, cuz it seems like he wants to talk.

“Well,” he says. His Noise shifts uncomfortably.

“Well what?”

And then I see the reason his Noise is so flat is cuz there’s something he don’t wanna tell me but feels like he has to, so here it comes.

“That house of healing,” he says. “That one in particular.”

“What about it?” I say, trying not to make it sound important, failing.

“It’s closed down,” he says. “Empty.”

I stop eating. “What do you mean, empty?”

“I mean empty,” he says gently, cuz he knows it’s bad news. “There’s no one there, not even the patients. Everyone’s gone.”

“Gone?” I whisper.

Gone.

I stand up tho there ain’t nowhere to go, my stupid plate of dinner still in my hand.

“Gone where? What’s he done with her?”

“He hasn’t done anything,” Mayor Ledger says. “Your friend ran. That’s what I heard. Ran off with the women just before the tower fell.” He rubs his chin. “Everyone else was arrested and taken to the prisons. But your friend . . . got away.”

He says got away like that’s not what he means, like what he means is she was planning to get away all along.

“You can’t know that,” I say. “You can’t know that’s true about her.”

He shrugs. “Maybe not,” he says. “But I heard it from one of the soldiers who was guarding the house of healing.”

“No,” I say, but I don’t know what I mean. “No.”