Promised

At ten-thirty, an explosion in the mycoprotein plant was audible all the way outside the wall. Gaia looked at Leon.

“There are four more,” he said.

“What’s the last one? The worst one? When is it set to go off?”

But Leon wouldn’t tell her.

“I’m committed to your approach. I get it,” she said. “You have to let me know.”

“Do this one thing for me. Trust me,” he said.

Gaia was on edge every second, perpetually listening for another explosion, and she could imagine that for people in the Enclave, the agony of anticipation was even worse. In a countdown with no known time limit, every second could be the last.

At eleven, Gaia received a note from the Enclave:

Masister Stone:

Surrender your terrorists and anyone involved with the bombs.

The explosions must stop immediately. We’re prepared to retaliate.

Yours,

Miles Quarry

Protectorat

She replied:

Mabrother Protectorat:

Until you give us the water you promised, the bombs will continue.

Gaia Stone

Matrarc of New Sylum

She ordered her archers to the roofs of Wharfton, on alert for an attack, and scores of Wharfton people armed themselves with knifes and axes, ready to defend their families.

At noon, the Protectorat sent another message via the Tvaltar inviting anyone loyal to the Enclave to enter promptly through the south gate, ensuring that they would find shelter and hospitality within the walls. No one accepted the offer.

At twelve-thirty, electricity to the Tvaltar was cut off, suspending further communiqués. The south gate was closed and barricaded. The guards were tripled along the top of the wall, and their rifles gleamed in the sun.

The siege was on.

Chapter 19

siege

NERVES FRAYED TO THE snapping point as people below the wall waited for the first attack. A sense of barely contained chaos and slow-burning fury ran through the pockets of defenders, with messengers darting behind the line of barricades. Farmers, craftsmen, and merchants were now all turned into warriors. As an hour passed, and then another, Gaia refined her rebels’ organization. Decisively, she appointed leaders from each of the six sectors outside the wall, and told them to appoint neighborhood leaders from within their sectors, so that systems of communication and command were established. No one was too young or weak to help in some way. Chaos gave way to dogged determination as thousands of people united around one common goal: end the oppression of the Enclave, once and for all.

“Why doesn’t he attack?” she asked Leon that evening. They had turned the Tvaltar into command central, and from the steps, she examined the Enclave guards, face by face, through binoculars.

“I don’t know. I’m sure he wants to,” Leon said. “He must be talking to Genevieve or Rhodeski.”

“He knows he just has to wait until we’re out of water,” Derek said. “It was like this before, too. He can wait forever.”

She lowered the binoculars. “Not this time,” she said.

Gaia had a wall to blow up.

She was guided by Pyrho’s advice that they focus on three points in the wall that were naturally primed for the most damage: the irrigation pipe; the now plugged smuggler’s hole that Gaia had crawled through long before, when she’d first snuck into the Enclave; and the south gate itself. Pyrho used ammonium nitrate from the agricultural fertilizer to concoct the explosives, working with precise, unhurried care into the evening.

Wharfton gradually lay in darkness. The few streetlights that normally burned in Wharfton failed to come on, and archers shot out the floodlights that illuminated the wall. Inside the cavernous Tvaltar, torches had been lit along the walls, and down the length of the sloping floor, swarms of Wharfton and New Sylum people were working together to bolster their arms and refine their defense strategies. The rows of benches had been cleared to the sides, and the screen loomed as a lifeless square of shiny gray on the back wall.

“The explosives are ready whenever you want them to blow,” Pyrho said at last.

Gaia was poring over a map of the Enclave with Leon and a dozen other leaders. She straightened at Pyrho’s announcement, and found Myrna standing beside him.

“People are going to get hurt,” Myrna said. “It’s not too late to think this through.”

“I have thought it through,” Gaia said.

“Think again,” Myrna said.

Gaia looked around the packed room at the eager, focused faces in the flickering torchlight. They wanted this. They were willing to take the risks, and Gaia was their leader. She owed them.

“You were a midwife once. Remember?” Myrna said.

“I still am,” Gaia said.

“Are you? Think what you’re doing.”

For too many years, the people of Wharfton had suffered the domination of the Enclave, and New Sylum had faced a bitter welcome. Yet even so, Gaia could still stop the machine if she chose.

Gaia slowly backed away from the table.

“No,” Leon said quietly. His splinted arm was in a sling now, useless across his chest. He still wore his white clothes from the Bastion, and she realized he’d never had time to change. “Don’t make this more complicated than it is,” he said. “We take the wall down, we march on the Bastion, we force the Protectorat to give us what we need.”

“And the Protectorat orders his guards to murder us all,” Gaia said. With sudden clarity she could see it already: a bloodbath in the Square of the Bastion.

“That’s what will happen,” Myrna said. “Make no mistake.”

Leon reached for Gaia’s arm.

“Myrna’s wrong. Remember,” he said. “We have allies inside. The Jacksons’ friends will side with us, and so will the parents of the advanced children, and the advanced children themselves. They won’t let the Protectorat mow us down.”

“They’re cowards,” Myrna said. “They’ll be afraid for their own families. They’ll want nothing to do with your violence. It’s too easy for the Enclave to hunt them down and take them out, one by one, after you fail. They know that.”

“Could you two quit arguing?” Gaia said. “Just wait.”

A silence grew around them, and Gaia realized that people had turned to listen. She had to think, to weigh the possibilities. Her gaze fell on Leon’s broken arm, and she had a sharp premonition that he would be the first one killed. How was he supposed to fight with one arm? She could be leading him, leading all of them, to their deaths.

She looked around the table to the people she most depended on for counsel: Leon, Will, Peter, Dinah, Derek, Norris, Bill, Myrna, Jack, and now Pyrho. The other clan leaders were present, too, and Malachai with the excrims, and more friends from Wharfton and New Sylum. Each face caught at her heart as she imagined endangering them.

“We can’t go in fighting,” Gaia said. She spoke up with new confidence. “We have to change our plans. If we go in attacking, everyone will turn against us. They’ll side with the Protectorat. They’ll try to protect themselves and their homes and kill us in the process. We would do the same thing if they came down here on the attack.”

The others shifted, talking in low voices, but she could see it clearly. The Protectorat was just aching for an excuse to kill them all. Since he controlled the guard, he would order them to start shooting before any unarmed citizens could speak up on behalf of the rebels.

“I knew this before,” she said. “How could I forget? Our bows and arrows are nothing against their rifles. I can’t lead us on a suicide mission.”

“Then what do you want to do?” Peter asked. “We have to decide. Everyone’s ready to go.”

“We’ve been cut off from water before,” Derek said, stepping forward. “It’s only going to get worse from this point, not better. We have to act now, not tomorrow or the next day.”

She scanned her gaze over the crowd. The Tvaltar held four hundred people, but there were thousands more outside.

“Come outside with me,” she said. “I need to talk to everyone. As many as I can.”

“What are you doing?” Leon asked, his voice low.

“The best I can,” she said. “Just come.”

Turning, she wound her way up the slanted floor and through the foyer to the outer steps of the Tvaltar. Leon and her other friends ranged behind her as she stopped before the central door and looked out over the quad. It was eerily familiar, the scene of upturned faces in the torchlight. More and more people were shifting into the confines of the quad, where an ancient mesquite tree thrust up its dark limbs toward the night sky. In the green commons of Sylum, when she’d faced a similar crowd before, she’d been fighting for justice within her society. Now she was seeking justice against a force far greater than all of New Sylum and Wharfton combined.

“All day, we’ve been talking about attacking the Enclave,” she said.

“We can’t hear you!” called a voice from across the quad.

Will overturned a wooden box at the top of the steps, and Leon handed her up. Gaia raised her voice, calling out in a clear voice. “This rebellion has been coming for generations, since the first refugees came here seeking sanctuary from the wasteland and were told to stay outside the wall and survive on cast-offs.” She pointed uphill and filled her lungs. “That wall has to come down. I can’t wait to see the thing blasted apart.”

A cheer rose around her, and in response, more people streamed to the quad. They packed into the doorways to listen and surfaced on the roofs to look down. The windows of the buildings surrounding the quad opened and filled with people, all expectant, all attuned to what Gaia would say next.

Up the hill, the wall hovered as a dark and ominous weight, as if prepared to crush them with its monstrous stones. Just beyond firing range of their rifles, guards were silhouetted along the top, with the pristine, glowing lights of the Enclave behind them.

“I never thought I’d see the people of Wharfton unite this way,” Gaia went on. “And the people of New Sylum are proud to join you, uniting our destinies together. But tonight, even as we have our bombs set and ready to explode, I am afraid. I’m afraid that people we love will die. I’m afraid we’ll breach the wall only to be killed mercilessly by forces that can overpower us without ever feeling a scratch.”

There were protests from the crowd, but Gaia raised a hand.

“I am not questioning our bravery. Or our determination,” she said. “But being brave alone does not make us smart. Do you want to see your brothers die? Do you want to see your daughters bleeding and slaughtered?”

“They’ll kill us anyway!” called an angry voice from the back.

“They cut off our water!” called another. “Let’s take out as many as we can!”

Shouts of agreement echoed the rancor around the quad.

She did not try to yell over them but stood proudly, patiently. She lifted her hand and waited through the chaotic shouts until the buzz quieted once more.

“We will fight,” she said calmly. She let her voice lift with urgency. “We will fight, but only as a last resort. Only after they’ve destroyed everything left in us except for our fight. For now, we still have hope. We still want to work out a peace with them.”

“They’ll never give us peace!” another angry voice said.

Derek pushed forward. “Listen to her. Gaia’s taken us further in just a few days than we’ve come in my entire life. Or haven’t you noticed? She deserves some respect.”

Laughter and more shouting erupted, and then over that came a woman’s voice. “Go on!” she called. “We’re listening.”

Gaia waited for the last talking to taper off. “Here’s what we do,” she said. “We blow up the wall. We have explosives in three key places, so we set those off. That’s the easy part. And then, when the debris settles, we put down our weapons and walk inside. We round up the friends I know we have inside the wall, and we march with them peacefully to the Square of the Bastion.”