Bradley looks over to Simone, his Noise full of askings and disagreements, full of things he needs to know from her, pictures of her popping out all over, pictures of how much he wishes he could touch her–
“Would you stop that, please?” Simone says, looking away.
“Sorry,” he says, backing up a step, then another, then leaving the room without saying anything more.
“Simone–” I say.
“I just can’t get used to it,” she says. “I know I should, I know I’m going to have to, but it’s just . . .”
“It can be a good thing,” I say, thinking about Todd. “That kind of closeness.”
(but I can’t hear him any more–)
(and he doesn’t feel close at all–)
I cough again, bringing up ugly green stuff from my lungs.
“You look exhausted, Viola,” Simone says. “Any objections to a mild sedative to help you rest?”
I shake my head. She goes to a drawer and takes out a small patch, sticking it gently under my jaw. “Give him a chance,” I say, as the medicine starts to take hold. “He’s a good man.”
“I know,” she says, as my eyelids start to droop. “I know.”
I slip into blackness, the blackness of sedation, feeling nothing at all for a long while, relishing the emptiness of it, just blackness like the black beyond–
But that ends–
And I still sleep–
And I dream–
I dream of Todd–
Just there, out of reach–
And I can’t hear him–
I can’t hear his Noise–
I can’t hear what he’s thinking.
He stares at me like an empty vessel–
Like a statue with no one inside–
Like he’s dead–
Like oh god no–
He’s dead–
He’s dead–
“Viola,” I hear. I open my eyes. Lee’s reaching over to wake me, his Noise full of concern, but something else, too–
“What’s happened?” I say, feeling the fever sweat pouring off me, how soaked through my clothes and sheets are–
(Todd, slipping away from me–)
I see Bradley standing at the foot of my bed. “She’s done something,” he says. “Mistress Coyle’s gone and done something.”
[TODD]
It’s a small sound and I shouldn’t be able to hear it, not thru the sleeping Noise of most of the camp.
But it’s a sound I reckernize.
A whine.
In the air.
Boy colt? Angharrad says nervously as I leave my tent and head into the dusk that gets colder with every passing day.
“It’s a tracer,” I say to her, to anyone, shivering a little, looking round for the sound, seeing the men from the army who are still awake start to look for it, too, till there’s a surge in their Noise as they see it arcing up in the air in a wobbly kinda way from the dry river bed near the bottom of the falls. It’s heading north, north to where some of the Spackle army are most likely hiding in the hills–
“What the hell do they think they’re doing?” The Mayor’s suddenly by my side, eyes fixed on the tracer. He turns to Mr O’Hare, who’s come bleary-eyed outta his own tent. “Find Mistress Braithwaite. Now.”
Mr O’Hare goes running off half-dressed.
“A tracer is too slow to do any real damage,” the Mayor says. “This must be a diversion.” His eyes drift to the damaged zigzag hill. “Would you please call Viola, Todd?”
I go to my tent to get the comm and as I’m coming out we hear the distant Boom of the tracer hitting some trees to the north somewhere. But the Mayor’s right, oxes could outrun a tracer so it’s only serving one purpose.
Diverting the attenshun of the Spackle.
But from where?
The Mayor’s still looking at the rough edges of the hill where the Spackle came from, a hill an army can’t march down no more–
Or up–
But one person could–
One person could climb up over the rubble–
One person without Noise–
The Mayor’s eyes go wider and I know he’s thinking it, too.
And that’s when it happens–
From the very tiptop of the zigzag hill.
{VIOLA}
“How did she do this?” Bradley says, as we watch the tracer arc through the sky on the viewscreens in the healing room, Lee watching it through Bradley’s Noise. “How did she arrange this without us knowing?”
My comm beeps. I answer immediately. “Todd?”
But it’s not Todd.
“I’d point a probe at the hilltop right now if I were you,” Mistress Coyle says, smiling back at me from the screen.
“Where’s Todd?” I cough. “How did you get a comm?”
A sound in Bradley’s Noise makes me look. I see him remembering Simone in the spares cabinet, fiddling with two more comms, but telling him she was just doing an inventory. “She wouldn’t,” he says. “Not without telling me?”
“We should look at the hilltop,” I say.
He presses a screen for control access, then steers a probe over to the hilltop, flipping it to nightvision so everything turns green and black. “What are we meant to see?”
I’m getting an idea. “Check for body heat.”
He presses the screen again and–
“There,” I say.
We see a lone figure, human, slinking down the hill, sticking to the underbrush, but moving quickly enough that it’s clear it may not matter much if they’re seen.
“That can only be a mistress,” I say. “They’d have heard a man doing that.”
Bradley dials the probe up a bit so we can see the lip of the hill, too. Spackle are standing along the ragged ridge, looking north to the forest where the tracer hit.
Not looking down to the mistress fleeing beneath them.
And then the screen is filled with a single flash, the heat sensors overloading, and a second later we hear the boom come roaring through the speakers on the probe.
Which is when we also hear the huge cheer from outside the ship.
“They’re watching?” Lee says.
I see Simone in Bradley’s Noise again, along with a number of rude words. I pick my comm back up. “What did you do?”
But Mistress Coyle is no longer there.
Bradley dials the screen for a comm to broadcast outside the ship. His Noise is really rumbling, getting louder and more decisive by the second.
“Bradley,” I say. “What are you–?”