The Ask and the Answer

I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

“Good speech, Pa,” Davy says. “Long.”

“It wasn’t for you, David,” the Mayor says, not looking at him.

The three of us are riding down the road to the monastery.

Tho it ain’t the monastery no more.

“Everything is ready, I trust?” the Mayor says, barely turning his head. “I’d hate to be made a liar of.”

“It ain’t gonna get less ready if you keep asking,” Davy mumbles.

The Mayor turns to him, a deep frown on his face, but I speak before anyone gets slapped with Noise.

“It’s as ready as it can be,” I say, my voice flat. “The walls and roof are up but the inside–”

“No need to sound so morose, Todd,” the Mayor says. “The inside can follow in due course. The building is up, that’s all that’s important. They can look at the outside and they can tremble.”

He’s got his back to us now, riding on ahead, but I can feel him smile at they can tremble.

“Are we gonna have a part in it?” Davy asks, Noise still stormy. “Or are you just gonna find a way for us to be babysitters again?”

The Mayor turns Morpeth in the road, blocking our way. “Do you ever hear Todd complain this much?” he asks.

“No,” Davy says, sullen. “But he’s just, you know, Todd.”

The Mayor raises his eyebrows. “And?”

“And I’m yer son.”

The Mayor walks Morpeth towards us, making Angharrad step back. Submit, Morpeth says. Lead, Angharrad says in answer, lowering her head. I stroke her mane, untangling a bit with my fingers, trying to calm her down.

“Let me tell you something interesting, David,” the Mayor says, looking hard at him. “The officers, the army, the townspeople, they see the two of you riding together, in your new uniforms, with all your new authority, and they know that one of you is my son.” He’s almost side on to Davy now, pushing him back down the road. “And as they watch you ride by, as they watch you go about your business, do you know? They often guess wrong. They often guess wrong as to which one of you is my own flesh and blood.”

The Mayor looks over to me. “They see Todd with his devotion to duty, with his modest brow and his serious face, with his calm exterior and mature handling of his Noise, and they never even consider that his loud, sloppy, insolent friend is the one who’s actually my son.”

Davy’s looking at the ground, his teeth clenched, his Noise boiling. “He don’t even look like you.”

“I know,” says the Mayor, turning Morpeth back down the road. “I just thought it was interesting. How often it happens.”

We keep on riding, Davy in a silent, red storm of Noise, lagging behind. I keep Angharrad in the middle with the Mayor clopping on ahead.

“Good girl,” I murmur to her.

Boy colt, she says back, and then she thinks Todd.

“Yeah, girl,” I whisper twixt her ears. “I’m here.”

I’ve taken to hanging round her stables at the end of the day, taken to unsaddling her myself and brushing her mane and bringing her apples to eat. The only thing she needs from me is assurance that I’m there, proof I haven’t left the herd, and as long as that’s true, she’s happy and she calls me Todd and I don’t have to explain myself to her and I don’t have to ask her nothing and she don’t need nothing from me.

Except that I don’t leave her.

Except that I don’t never leave.

My Noise starts getting cloudy and I think it again, I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

The Mayor looks back at me. And he smiles.

Even tho we got uniforms, we ain’t in the army, the Mayor was particular about that. We don’t got ranks except Officer but the uniform and the A on its sleeve is enough to keep people outta our way as we ride towards the monastery.

Our job till now has been guarding the men and women who’re still in prison, tho it’s mostly women. After the prisons were busted into and burnt down, the prisoners left over were moved to a former house of healing down by the river.

Guess which one?

For the past month, Davy and I’ve been escorting work crews of prisoners back and forth from the house of healing to the monastery to finish the work the Spackle started, women and men working faster than Spackle, I guess. The Mayor didn’t ask us to supervise the building this time, something I’m grateful for.

When everyone’s in for the night back at the house of healing, Davy and I ain’t got much to do except ride our horses round the building, doing what we can so as not to hear the screams coming from inside.

Some of the ones still in prison, see, are from the Answer, the ones the Mayor caught the night of the prison break. We don’t never see them, they don’t get sent out with the work parties, they just get Asked all day long till they answer with something. So far, all the Mayor’s got from ’em is the locayshun of a camp around a mine, which was deserted by the time the soldiers got there. Anything else useful is slow in coming.

There are others in there, too, found guilty of helping the Answer or whatever, but the ones who said they saw the Answer kill the Spackle and saw women writing the A on the wall, those prisoners are the ones who’ve been set free and sent back to their families. Even tho there ain’t really no way they coulda been there to see it.

The others, well, the others keep being Asked till they answer.

Davy talks loud to cover the sounds we hear while the Asking’s going on inside, trying to pretend it don’t bother him when any fool could see it does.

I just keep myself in myself, closing my eyes, waiting for the screaming to stop.

I have an easier time than Davy.

Cuz like I say, I don’t feel nothing much, not no more.

I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

But today, everything’s sposed to change. Today, the new building is ready, or ready enough, and Davy and I are gonna guard it instead of the house of healing, while sposedly learning the business of Asking.

Fine. It don’t matter.

Nothing matters.

“The Office of the Ask,” the Mayor says as we round the final corner.

The front wall of the monastery has been rebuilt and you can see the new building sticking over the top, a big stone block that looks like it’d happily knock yer brains out if you stood too close. And on the newly built gate, there’s a great, shiny silver A to match the ones on our uniforms.

There are guards in army uniforms on either side of the door. One of them is Ivan, still a Private, still sour-faced as anything. He tries to catch my eye as I ride up, his Noise clanging loud with things he don’t want the Mayor to hear, I reckon.