The Ask and the Answer

I ignore him. So does the Mayor.

“Now we find out when the real war begins,” the Mayor says.

The gate opens and out walks the man in charge of all the Asking, the man charged with finding out where the Answer are hiding and how best to track them down.

Our newly promoted boss.

“Mr. President,” he says.

“Captain Hammar,” says the Mayor.

{VIOLA}

“Quiet,” Mistress Coyle says, a finger to her lips.

The wind has died and you can hear our footsteps snapping the twigs on the ground at the foot of the trees. We stop, ears open for the sounds of soldiers marching.

Nothing.

More nothing.

Mistress Coyle nods and continues moving down the hill and through the trees. I follow her. It’s just the two of us.

Me and her and the bomb strapped to my back.

The rescue saved 132 prisoners. 29 of them died either on the way to or back in the camp. Corinne was number 30. There are others unrescued, like poor old Mrs Fox, whose fates I’m probably never going to know. But Mistress Coyle estimates we killed at least twenty of their soldiers. Miraculously, only six members of the Answer on the original raid were killed, including Thea and Mistress Waggoner, but another five were captured and there was no possibility they wouldn’t be tortured for information about where the Answer was hiding.

So we moved. In a hurry.

Even before many of the injured could walk for themselves, we loaded up supplies and weapons, anything and everything we could carry on carts, horses, the backs of the able-bodied, and we fled into the woods, keeping moving all through the night, the next day, and the night after that until we came to a lake at the base of a rock cliff, where at least we might have water and some shelter.

“It’ll do,” Mistress Coyle said.

We pitched camp along the shore.

And then we began our preparations for war.

She makes a movement with the palm of her hand and I instantly duck below some shrubs. We’ve reached a narrow drive up from the main road and I can hear a troop of soldiers Noisily moving away from us in the distance.

Our own supply of cure is getting lower by the day, and Mistress Coyle has set up a rationing system, but since the raid, it’s too dangerous for any man, with or without Noise, to go into town anyway, which means they can no longer ferry us in hidden compartments to easy targets. We have to take a cart to a certain point outside of town and walk the rest of the way.

Escaping will be more difficult, so we’ll just have to be more careful.

“Okay,” Mistress Coyle whispers.

I stand. The moons are our only light.

We cross the road, keeping low.

After we moved to the lake, after the rescue of all those people, after the death of Corinne–

After I joined the Answer–

I began to learn things.

“Basic training,” Mistress Coyle called it. Led by Mistress Braithwaite and done not only for me but for every patient who improved enough to join in, which was most of them, more than you’d think, we were taught how to load a rifle and fire it, basics of infiltration, night-time manoeuvres, tracking, hand communications, code words.

How to wire and set a bomb.

“How do you know how to do this?” I asked one night at dinner, my body weary and aching from the running and diving and carrying we’d done all throughout the day. “You’re healers. How do you know how–”

“To run an army?” Mistress Coyle said. “You forget about the Spackle War.”

“We were our own division,” Mistress Forth said, down the table, snuffling up some broth.

The mistresses talked to me, now that they could see how hard I was training.

“We weren’t very popular,” giggled Mistress Lawson, across from her.

“We didn’t like how some of the generals were waging the war,” Mistress Coyle said to me. “We thought an underground approach would be more effective.”

“And since we didn’t have Noise,” said Mistress Nadari, down the table, “we could sneak into places, couldn’t we?”

“The men in charge didn’t think we were the answer to their problem, though,” Mistress Lawson said, still giggling.

“Hence the name,” Mistress Coyle said.

“And when the new government was formed and the city rebuilt, well,” Mistress Forth said, “it wouldn’t have been sensible not to keep important materials available should the need ever arise.”

“The explosives in the mine,” I said, realizing. “You hid them there years ago.”

“And what a good decision it turned out to be,” Mistress Lawson said. “Nicola Coyle always was a woman of foresight.”

I blinked at the name Nicola, as if it was hardly possible that Mistress Coyle had a first name.

“Yes, well,” said Mistress Coyle. “Men are creatures of war. It’s only prudent to remember that.”

Our target is deserted, as we expect it to be. It’s small, but symbolic, a well above a tract of farmland east of the city. The well and the apparatus above it only bring water for the field below, not any huge system or set of buildings. But if the city goes on allowing the Mayor to imprison, torture and kill, then the city won’t eat.

It’s also a good way away from the city centre, so no chance of me seeing Todd.

Which I won’t argue about. For now.

We’ve come up the cut-off road, keeping to the ditch beside it, holding our breaths as we move past the sleeping farmhouse, a light still on in the upper floor but it’s so late it can only be for security.

Mistress Coyle makes another hand signal and I move past her, ducking under a wire carriage of laundry, hung outside to dry. I trip on a child’s toy scooter but manage to keep my balance.

The bomb’s supposed to be safe, supposed to be impervious to any kind of jostling or shaking.

But.

I let out a breath and keep on towards the well.

Even in the weeks when we hid, when we didn’t approach the city at all, the weeks where we laid low and kept quiet, training and preparing, even then a few escapees from the city found us.

“They’re saying what?” Mistress Coyle said.

“That you killed all the Spackle,” the woman said, pressing the poultice against her bleeding nose.

“Wait,” I said. “All the Spackle are dead?”

The woman nodded.

“And they’re saying we did it,” Mistress Coyle repeated.

“Why would they say that?” I asked.

Mistress Coyle stood and looked out across the lake. “Turn the city against us. Make us look like the bad guys.”