Taking nothing in.
“Yer a cool customer these days,” Davy says, voice scornful, ignoring Deadfall, who’s wanting an apple, too. “You didn’t even flinch when he–”
“Gentlemen,” the Mayor says, coming outta the gate, a long, heavy sack in one hand.
Ivan stands up straight as a board, back at attenshun.
“Pa,” Davy says in greeting.
“Is she dead?” I say, looking into Angharrad’s eyes.
“She’s no use to us dead, Todd,” the Mayor says.
“She sure looked dead,” Davy says.
“Only when she lost consciousness,” the Mayor says. “Now, I’ve got a new job for the two of you.”
There’s a beat as we take in the words, a new job.
I close my eyes. I am the Circle and the Circle is me.
“Would you quit effing saying that?” Davy shouts at me.
But we can all hear the horror in his own Noise, the anxiety that’s rising, the fear of his pa, of the new job, fear he won’t be able to–
“You won’t be leading the Askings, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” says the Mayor.
“I ain’t afraid,” Davy says, too loud. “Who’s saying I’m afraid?”
The Mayor drops the bag at our feet.
I reckernize its shape.
Feeling nothing, taking nothing in.
Davy’s looking down at the bag, too. Even he’s shocked.
“Just the prisoners,” says the Mayor. “So we can fight against enemy infiltration on the inside.”
“You want us to–?” Davy looks up at his pa. “On people?”
“Not people,” says the Mayor. “Enemies of the state.”
I’m still looking at the bag.
The bag that we all know carries a bolting tool and a supply of numbered bands.
{VIOLA}
I’ve just set the timer running and turned to Mistress Braithwaite to tell her we can leave when a woman comes tumbling out of the bushes behind us.
“Help me,” she says, so gently it’s almost as if she doesn’t know we’re there and is just asking the universe to help her somehow.
Then she collapses.
“What is this thing?” I say, taking another bandage from the too-small first aid kit we keep hidden in the cart, trying to tend her wound as we rock back and forth. There’s a metal band encircling the middle of her forearm, so tight it seems like the skin around it is trying to grow into it. It’s also so red with infection I can almost feel the heat coming off it.
“It’s for branding livestock,” Mistress Braithwaite says, angrily snapping the reins on the oxes, bumping us along paths that we aren’t meant to take this fast. “That vicious bastard.”
“Help me,” the woman whispers.
“I’m helping you,” I say. Her head is in my lap to cushion it from the bumps in the road. I wrap a bandage around the metal band but not before I see a number etched into the side.
1391.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
But her eyes are half-closed and all she says is, “Help me.”
“And we’re sure she’s not a spy?” Mistress Coyle says, arms crossed.
“Good God,” I snap. “Is there a stone where your heart should be?”
Her brow darkens. “We have to consider all manner of tricks–”
“The infection is so bad we’re not going to be able to save her arm,” Mistress Braithwaite says. “If she’s a spy, she’s in no position to return with information.”
Mistress Coyle sighs. “Where was she?”
“Near that new Office of the Ask we’ve been hearing about,” Mistress Braithwaite says, frowning even harder.
“We planted a device on a small storehouse nearby,” I say. “It was as close as we could get.”
“Branding strips, Nicola,” Mistress Braithwaite says, anger puffing out of her like the steam of her breath.
Mistress Coyle rubs her fingers along her forehead. “I know.”
“Can’t we just cut it off?” I ask. “Heal the wound?”
Mistress Braithwaite shakes her head. “Chemicals make it so the banded skin never heals, that’s the point. You can never remove it unless you want to bleed to death. They’re permanent. Forever.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I need to talk to her,” Mistress Coyle says.
“Nadari’s treating her,” Mistress Braithwaite says. “She might be lucid before the surgery.”
“Let’s go then,” Mistress Coyle says and they head off towards the healing tent. I move to follow, but Mistress Coyle stops me with a look. “Not you, my girl.”
“Why not?”
But off they keep walking, leaving me standing in the cold.
“Y’all right, Hildy?” Wilf asks as I wander among the oxes. He’s brushing them down where they strained against the harnesses. Wilf, they say.
That’s pretty much all they ever say.
“Rough night,” I say. “We rescued a woman who’d been branded with some kind of metal band.”
Wilf looks thoughtful for a minute. He points to a metal band around the right front leg of each ox. “Like these ’ere?”
I nod.
“On a person?” He whistles in amazement.
“Things are turning, Wilf,” I say. “Turning for the worse.”
“Ah know,” he says. “We’ll make a move soon and that’ll be it, one way or t’other.”
I look up at him. “Do you know exactly what she’s planning?”
He shakes his head and runs his hand around the metal band on one of the oxes. Wilf, says the ox.
“Viola!” I hear, called across the camp.
Wilf and I both see Mistress Coyle treading through the darkened camp towards us. “She’s gone wake everyone up,” Wilf says.
“She’s a little delirious,” Mistress Nadari says as I kneel down by the cot of the rescued woman. “You’ve got a minute, tops.”
“Tell her what you told us, my girl,” Mistress Coyle says to the woman. “Just once more and we’ll let you sleep.”
“My arm?” says the woman, her eyes cloudy. “It don’t hurt no more.”
“Just tell her what you said, my love,” Mistress Coyle says, her voice as warm as it ever gets. “And everything’ll be all right.”
The woman’s eyes focus briefly on mine and widen slightly. “You,” she says. “The girl who was there.”