“The truth, Viola,” the Mayor answers. “The best weapon of all. You tell a man the truth about himself and, well,” he nudges Ivan with his boot, “they find they have trouble accepting it.” He frowns. “You can’t kill him with it, though.” He looks back up at us. “Not yet, anyway.”
“But . . .” She’s not believing this. “How? How can you–?”
“I have two maxims that I believe, dear girl,” the Mayor says, coming slowly towards us. “One, if you can control yourself, you can control others. Two, if you can control information, you can control others.” He grins, his eyes flashing. “It’s been a philosophy that’s worked out rather well for me.”
I think about Mr. Hammar. About Mr. Collins. About the chanting I used to hear coming from the Mayor’s house back in my old town.
“You taught the others,” I say. “The men from Prentisstown, you taught them how to control their Noise.”
“With varying degrees of success,” he says, “but yes, none of my officers has ever taken the cure. Why should they? It’s a weakness to have to rely on a drug.”
He’s nearly on us now. “I am the Circle and the Circle is me,” I say.
“Yes, you were certainly making an impressive beginning, weren’t you, Todd? Controlling yourself while you did the most unspeakable things to those women.”
My Noise turns red. “You shut up about that,” I say. “I was only doing what you told me–”
“I was only following orders,” the Mayor mocks. “The refuge of scoundrels since the dawn of time.” He stops two metres away from us, rifle pointed firmly at my chest. “Help her off the horse, please, Todd.”
“What?” I say.
“Her ankles, I believe the problem was. She’ll need your help walking.”
I still have the reins in my hand. I have a thought I try to bury.
Boy colt? Angharrad asks.
“I assure you, Viola,” the Mayor says to her. “If you think about running on that beautiful animal, I will put more than one bullet through Todd.” He looks back at me. “However much pain it might cause me.”
“You let her go,” I say. “I’ll do anything you want.”
“Now where have I heard that before?” he says. “Help her down.”
I hesitate, wondering if I should slap Angharrad’s flanks anyway, wondering if I should send Viola riding off into the distance, wondering if I could get her safe–
“No,” Viola says and she’s already working her leg round the saddle. “Not a chance. I’m not leaving you.”
I take her arms and help her down. She has to lean on me to stand but I keep her up.
“Splendid,” says the Mayor. “Now let’s go inside and have that chat.”
“Let us start with what I know.”
He’s brought us into what used to be the room with the round coloured glass window in it but it’s now open to the air on two sides and above, the window still there, looking down, but looking down on rubble.
Looking down on a little cleared area with a broken table and two chairs.
Where me and Viola sit.
“I know, for example,” the Mayor says, “that you did not kill Aaron, Todd, that you never took your final step towards becoming a man, that it was Viola here who put the blade in all along.”
Viola takes my arm and squeezes it tight, letting me know it’s okay that he knows.
“I know that Viola told you the Answer were hiding at the ocean when I let you escape to go speak with her.”
My Noise rises in anger and embarrassment. Viola squeezes my arm harder.
“I know that you’ve sent the boy called Lee to warn the Answer.” He leans against the broken table. “And of course I also know the exact time and place of their attack.”
“Yer a monster,” I say.
“No,” the Mayor says. “Just a leader. Just a leader who can read every thought you have, about yourself, about Viola, about me, about this town, about the secrets you think you’re keeping, I can read everything, Todd. You’re not listening to what I’m saying.” He’s still holding the rifle, watching us sit before him. “I knew everything about the Answer’s attack this morning before you even opened your mouth.”
I sit up in my chair. “You what?”
“I had the army gathering before we even started Asking Viola.”
I start to rise. “You tortured her for nothing?”
“Sit down,” the Mayor says and a little flash from him weakens my knees enough that I sit right back down. “Not for nothing, Todd. You should know me well enough by now to know that I do not do anything for nothing.”
He sits up from the broken table, showing again that he likes to walk and talk.
“You are completely transparent to me, Todd. From our first proper meeting here in this very room until how you sit before me today. I’ve known everything. Always.”
He looks at Viola. “Unlike your good friend here, who’s a little tougher than I imagined.”
Viola frowns. If she had Noise I’m sure she’d be slapping him around a bit.
I get a thought–
“Don’t try it,” the Mayor says. “You’re not nearly that advanced yet. Even Captain Hammar has yet to master it. You’d merely end up hurting yourself very badly.” He looks at me again. “But you could learn, Todd. You could advance far, farther than any of those poor imbeciles who followed me from Prentisstown. Poor Mr. Collins barely worth more than a butler and Captain Hammar just another garden-variety sadist, but you, Todd, you.” His eyes flash. “You could lead armies.”
“I don’t wanna lead armies,” I say.
He smiles. “You may have no choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” Viola says by my side.
“Oh, people like to say that,” the Mayor says. “It makes them feel better.” He approaches me, looking into my eyes. “But I’ve been watching you, Todd. The boy who can’t kill another man. The boy who’d risk his own life to save his beloved Viola. The boy who felt so guilty at the horrible things he was doing that he tried to shut off all feeling. The boy who still felt every pain, every twitch of hurt he saw on the face of the women he banded.”
He leans down closer to my face. “The boy who refused to lose his soul.”
I feel him. He’s in my Noise now, rummaging around, turning things over, upending the room inside my head. “I’ve done bad things,” I say and I don’t even mean to say it.