The Ask and the Answer (Page 57)

She’s out there somewhere.

A month and she ain’t come.

A month and–

(shut up)

(just effing shut up your effing whiny mouth)

I start pacing again.

We’ve got glass in the openings now and a heater to protect us from the autumn nights. More blankets, too, and a light and approved books for Mayor Ledger to read.

“Still a prison, though, isn’t it?” he says behind me, mouth full. “You’d think he’d have at least found a better place for you by now.”

“I sure wish everyone would stop thinking it’s okay to read me all the damn time,” I say, without turning around.

“He probably wants you out of the town,” he says, finishing up his meal, which is just over half what we used to get. “Wants you away from all the rumours.”

“What rumours?” I say, tho I’m barely interested.

“Oh, rumours of the great mind-control powers of our Mayor. Rumours of weapons made from Noise. Rumours he can fly, I don’t doubt.”

I don’t look back at him and I keep my Noise quiet.

I am the Circle, I think.

And then I stop.

It’s after midnight when the first one goes off.

Boom!

I jump a little on my mattress but that’s all.

“Where do you think that was?” Mayor Ledger asks, also not rising from his bed.

“Sounded near east,” I say, looking up into the dark of the tower bells. “Maybe a food store?”

We wait for the second. There’s always a second now. As the soldiers rush to the first, the Answer take the chance for a second–

Boom!

“There it is,” Mayor Ledger says, sitting up in bed and looking out of an opening. I get up, too.

“Damn,” he says.

“What?” I say, moving next to him.

“I think that was the water plant down by the river.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we’ll have to boil every stupid cup of–”

BOOM!

There’s a huge flash that causes me and Mayor Ledger to flinch back from the window. The glass shakes in its frames.

And every light in New Prentisstown goes off.

“The power station,” Mayor Ledger says, unbelieving. “But that’s guarded every hour of the day. How could they possibly get to that?”

“I don’t know,” I say, my stomach sinking. “But there’s gonna be hell to pay.”

Mayor Ledger runs a tired hand over his face as we hear sirens and soldiers shouting down in the city below. He’s shaking his head. “I don’t know what they think they’re accomp–”

Five huge explosions, one right after the other, shaking the tower so much that me and Mayor Ledger are thrown to the floor and a bunch of our windows shatter, busting inwards, covering us in shards and powdery glass.

We see the sky light up.

The sky to the west.

A cloud of fire and smoke shooting so high above the prisons it’s like a giant’s flinging it there.

Mayor Ledger is breathing heavy beside me.

“They’ve done it,” he says, gasping. “They’ve really done it.”

They’ve really done it, I think.

They’ve started their war.

And I can’t help it–

I can’t help but think it–

Is she coming for me?

{VIOLA}

“I need your help,” Mistress Lawson says, standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

I hold up my hands, covered in flour. “I’m kind of in the middle of–”

“Mistress Coyle specifically asked me to fetch you.”

I frown. I don’t like the word fetch. “Then who’s going to finish these loaves for tomorrow? Lee’s out getting firewood–”

“Mistress Coyle said you had experience in medical supplies,” Mistress Lawson interrupts. “We’ve brought a lot more in and the girl I have now is hopeless at sorting them out.”

I sigh. It’s better than cooking, at least.

I follow her out into the dusk, into the mouth of a cave and through a series of passages until we get to the large cavern where we keep our most valuable supplies.

“This might take a while,” Mistress Lawson says.

We spend most of the evening and into the night counting just how many medicines, bandages, compresses, bed linens, ethers, tourniquets, diagnostic bands, blood pressure straps, stethoscopes, gowns, water purification tablets, splints, cotton swabs, clamps, Jeffers root pills, adhesives, and everything else we have, sorting them out into smaller piles and spreading them across the supply cavern, right up the lip of the main tunnel.

I wipe cold sweat from my forehead. “Shouldn’t we be stacking these up already?”

“Not just yet,” Mistress Lawson says. She looks around at the neat piles of everything we’ve done. She rubs her hands together, a worried frown creasing her face. “I hope it’s enough.”

“Enough for what?” I follow her with my eyes as she goes from pile to pile. “Enough for what, Mistress Lawson?”

She looks up at me, biting her lip. “How much of your healing do you remember?”

I stare at her for a second, suspicions rising and rising, then I take off running out of the cavern. “Wait!” she calls after me, but I’m already out into the central tunnel, running out of the main mouth of the cave and shooting into the camp.

Which is deserted.

“Don’t be angry,” Mistress Lawson says after I’ve searched every cabin.

I stand there, stupidly, hands on my hips, staring around at the empty camp. Having found a distraction for me, Mistress Coyle left, along with all the other mistresses except for Mistress Lawson. Thea and the apprentices are gone, too.

And everyone else. Every cart, horse and ox.

And Lee.

Wilf’s gone, too, though Jane is here, the only other one who stayed behind.

Tonight’s the night.

Tonight’s the night it happens.

“You know why she couldn’t take you,” Mistress Lawson says.

“She doesn’t trust me,” I say. “None of you do.”

“That’s neither here nor there right now,” she says, her voice taking on that stern mistress tone I’ve grown to hate. “What matters is that when they come back, we’re going to need all the healing hands we can get.”

I’m about to argue but I see how much she’s still wringing her hands, how worried her face looks, how much is going on beneath the surface.