“You are enslaved by your idleness,” says the Mayor. “You are defeated by your complacency. You are doomed”– and here his voice rises suddenly, hitting doomed so hard half the crowd jumps– “by your good intentions!”
He’s working himself up now, heavy breaths into the microphone.
“You have allowed yourselves to become so weak, so feeble in the face of the challenges of this world that in a single generation you have become a people who would surrender to RUMOUR!”
He starts to pace the stage, microphone in hand. Every frightened face in the crowd, every face in the army, turns to watch him move back and forth, back and forth.
I’m watching, too.
“You let an army walk into your town and instead of making them take it, you offer it willingly!”
He’s still pacing, his voice still rising.
“And so you know what I did. I took. I took you. I took your freedom. I took your town. I took your future.”
He laughs, like he can’t believe his luck.
“I expected a war,” he says.
Some of the crowd look at their feet, away from each other’s eyes.
I wonder if they’re ashamed.
I hope so.
“But instead of a war,” the Mayor says, “I got a conversation. A conversation that began, Please don’t hurt us and ended with Please take anything you want.”
He stops in the middle of the platform.
“I expected a WAR!” he shouts again, thrusting his fist at them.
And they flinch.
If a crowd can flinch, they flinch.
More than a thousand men flinch under the fist of just one.
I don’t see what the women do.
“And because you did not give me a war,” the Mayor says, his voice light, “you will face the consequences.”
I hear the doors to the cathedral open again and Mr. Collins comes out pushing Mayor Ledger forward thru the ranks of the army, hands tied behind his back.
Mayor Prentiss watches him come, arms crossed. Murmurs finally start in the crowd of men, louder in the crowds of women, and the men on horseback do some waving of their rifles to stop it. The Mayor don’t even look back at the sound, like it’s beneath his notice. He just watches Mr. Collins push Mayor Ledger up the stairs at the back of the platform.
Mayor Ledger stops at the top of the steps, looking out over the crowd. They stare back at him, some of them squinting at the shrillness of his Noise buzz, a buzz I realize is now starting to shout some real words, words of fear, pictures of fear, pictures of Mr. Collins giving him the bruised eye and the split lip, pictures of him agreeing to surrender and being locked in the tower.
“Kneel,” Mayor Prentiss says and tho he says it quietly, tho he says it away from the microphone, somehow I hear it clear as a bell chime in the middle of my head, and from the intake of breath in the crowd, I wonder if that’s how they heard it, too.
And before it looks like he even knows what he’s doing, Mayor Ledger is kneeling on the platform, looking surprised that he’s down there.
The whole town watches him do it.
Mayor Prentiss waits a moment.
And then he steps over to him.
And takes out a knife.
It’s a big, no-kidding, death of a thing, shining in the sun.
The Mayor holds it up high over his head.
He turns slowly, so everyone can see what’s about to happen.
So that everyone can see the knife.
My gut falls and for a second I think–
But it ain’t mine–
It ain’t–
And then someone calls, “Murderer!” from across the square.
A single voice, carrying above the silence.
It came from the women.
My heart jumps for a second–
But of course it can’t be her–
But at least there’s someone. At least there’s someone.
Mayor Prentiss walks calmly to the microphone. “Your victorious enemy addresses you,” he says, almost politely, as if the person who shouted was simply not understanding. “Your leaders are to be executed as the inevitable result of your defeat.”
He turns to look at Mayor Ledger, kneeling there on the platform. His face is trying to look calm but everyone can hear how badly he don’t wanna die, how childlike his wishes are sounding, how loud his newly uncured Noise is spilling out all over the place.
“And now you will learn,” Mayor Prentiss says, turning back to the crowd, “what kind of man your new President is. And what he will demand from you.”
Silence, still silence, save for Mayor Ledger’s mewling.
Mayor Prentiss walks over to him, knife glinting. Another murmur starts spreading thru the crowd as they finally get what they’re about to see. Mayor Prentiss steps behind Mayor Ledger and holds up the knife again. He stands there, watching the crowd watch him, watching their faces as they look and listen to their former Mayor try and fail to contain his Noise.
“BEHOLD!” Mayor Prentiss shouts. “YOUR FUTURE!”
He turns the knife to a stabbing angle, as if to say again, behold–
The murmuring of the crowd rises–
Mayor Prentiss raises his arm–
A voice, a female one, maybe the same one, cries out, “No!”
And then suddenly I realize I know exactly what’s gonna happen.
In the chair, in the room with the circle of coloured glass, he brought me to defeat, he brought me to the edge of death, he made me know that it would come–
And then he put a bandage on me.
And that’s when I did what he wanted.
The knife swishes thru the air and slices thru the binds on Mayor Ledger’s hands.
There’s a town-sized gasp, a planet-sized one.
Mayor Prentiss waits for a moment, then says once more, “Behold your future,” quietly, not even into the microphone.
But there it is again, right inside yer mind.
He puts the knife away in a belt behind his back and returns to the microphone.
And starts to put bandages on the crowd.
“I am not the man you think I am,” he says. “I am not a tyrant come to slaughter his enemies. I am not a madman come to destroy even that which would save himself. I am not–” he looks over at Mayor Ledger “– your executioner.”
The crowds, men and women, are so quiet now the square might as well be empty.
“The war is over,” the Mayor continues. “And a new peace will take its place.”
He points to the sky. People look up, like he might be conjuring something up there to fall on them.
“You may have heard a rumour,” he says. “That there are new settlers coming.”