“It’s calmed down. We saw it.”
“We saw two huge armies camped at the front line and then our probe was shot out of the sky! There’s no way you’re going down there.”
“It’s where Todd is,” I say. “It’s where I have to go.”
“You aren’t. As Mission Commander, I forbid it and that’s the end of it.”
I blink. “You forbid it?”
And I feel a really surprising anger start to rise from my belly.
Simone sees the look on my face and softens her own expression. “Viola, what you’ve obviously survived for the past five months is beyond amazing, but we’re here now. I love you far too much to allow you to put yourself in that kind of danger. You can’t go. No way.”
“If we want peace, we can’t let the war get any bigger.”
“And how are you and one boy going to stop that?”
And then the anger really starts to rise, and I try to remember that she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what I’ve been through, what me and Todd have done. She doesn’t know I’m about a million miles past people forbidding me to do stuff.
I reach over for Acorn’s reins and he kneels down.
“Viola, no,” Simone says, stomping over–
Submit! Acorn yells, startled.
Simone takes a frightened step back. I swing my sore but mending leg over Acorn’s saddle.
“No one is the boss of me any more, Simone,” I say quietly, trying to stay calm but surprised at how strong I feel. “If my parents had lived, it might be different. But they didn’t.”
She looks like she wants to come over, but she’s seriously wary of Acorn now. “Just because your parents aren’t here doesn’t mean there aren’t still people who care for you, who can care for you.”
“Please,” I say. “You have to trust me.”
She looks at me in a kind of sad frustration. “It’s too early for you to have grown up this much.”
“Yeah, well,” I say, “sometimes you don’t have a choice.” Acorn stands up, ready to go. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Viola–”
“I have to get to Todd. That’s all there is to it. And now that the fighting’s stopped, I’ll have to find Mistress Coyle, too, before she can start blowing things up again.”
“You shouldn’t go alone at least,” she says. “I’ll come with you–”
“Bradley needs you more than I do,” I say. “Whatever you might not want to find out, he needs you.”
“Viola–”
“It’s not as if I want to go riding into a war zone,” I say, a little softer, trying to apologize now that I realize how scared I am. I look up at the scout ship. “Maybe you could send another probe to follow me?”
Simone looks thoughtful for a moment, then she says, “I’ve got a better idea.”
[TODD]
“We’ve rounded up blankets from the houses nearby,” Mr O’Hare says to the Mayor. “Food, too. We’ll be getting some to you as soon as possible.”
“Thank you, Captain,” says the Mayor. “Make sure you bring enough for Todd as well.”
Mr O’Hare looks up sharply. “Everything’s pretty scarce, sir–”
“Food for Todd,” the Mayor says, more firmly. “And a blanket. It’s getting colder.”
Mr O’Hare takes in a breath that don’t sound too happy. “Yes, sir.”
“For my horse, too,” I say.
Mr O’Hare scowls at me.
“For his horse, too, Captain,” the Mayor says.
Mr O’Hare nods and storms off.
The Mayor’s men have cleared a little area for us at the edge of the camp the army’s made. There’s a fire and space to sit around it and a coupla tents being put up for him and his officers to sleep in. I sit a bit away from him, but close enough to keep watch. I have Angharrad here with me, her head still down, her Noise still silent. I keep petting her and stroking her, but she’s not saying nothing, nothing at all.
So far there ain’t been much to say to the Mayor neither. It’s been one report after another, Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare updating him on this and that. And plain soldiers, too, who keep coming up all shy-like to congratulate him on his victory, seeming to forget he’s the one who caused all this trouble in the first place.
I lean my face into Angharrad. “What do I do now, girl?” I whisper.
Cuz what do I do now? I set the Mayor free and he won the first battle, keeping the world safe for Viola, just like I made him promise.
But he’s got an army that’ll do anything he says, that’ll die for him. What does it matter if I can beat him if there’s all these men who wouldn’t even let me try?
“Mr President?” Mr Tate comes up now, carrying one of the Spackle’s white sticks. “First report on the new weapons.”
“Do tell, Captain,” the Mayor says, looking very interested.
“They seem to be a sort of acid rifle,” Mr Tate says. “There’s a chamber with what looks to be a mixture of two substances, probably botanic.” He moves his hand up the white stick to a hole that’s been cut into it. “Then a kind of ratchet aerates a dose and mixes it with a third substance that’s instantly permeated through a gel via a small incendiary–” Mr Tate points to the end of the stick “–and fired out here, vaporizing yet somehow holding cohesion until it hits its target, at which point–”
“At which point it’s a burning acid corrosive enough to take your arm off,” the Mayor finishes. “Impressive work in a short space of time, Captain.”
“I encouraged our chemists to work quickly, sir,” Mr Tate says with a grin I don’t like.
“What the hell did all that mean?” I ask the Mayor as Mr Tate leaves.
“Didn’t you finish your chemistry in school?”
“You closed the school and burnt all the books.”
“Ah, so I did.” He looks to the hilltop, to the glow we can see up above it in the spray from the waterfall, the glow from the campfires of the Spackle army. “They used to be just hunters and collectors, Todd, with some limited wild farming. Not exactly scientists.”
“Which means what?”
“Which means,” he says, “that our enemy has spent the thirteen years since the last war listening to us, learning from us, no doubt, on this planet of information.” He taps his chin. “I wonder how they learn. If they’re all part of some larger single voice.”