Читать книгу The Forever Ship - Francesca Haig - Страница 12

Piper charged at him – for a moment I thought he would punch him. But he just grabbed hold of Zach and, under the gaze of the soldiers, dragged him off the street and into the shadow of a narrow alley nearby. I followed with The Ringmaster and Crispin.

‘And put that hood back up, for crying out loud,’ Piper said, pushing Zach back against the wall. ‘You think there’s a soldier in this town who wouldn’t knife you if they knew who you are?’

Zach pulled his hood forward, but kept his eyes on me.

‘You need to take me in,’ he said. His words were slightly blurred by his swollen lip. I ran my tongue across my own lip, expecting to taste blood.

‘Did your men do this to him?’ I asked Crispin.

‘We weren’t overly gentle when we searched him,’ said Crispin. ‘But someone else had got to him first.’

Mixed with my shock at seeing Zach was an element of relief: the pains I’d felt a few nights earlier, in the thick of my visions, had been Zach’s pains, and not another step in my mind’s disintegration.

The Ringmaster dismissed Crispin with a jerk of his head, but before Crispin had reached the end of the alley, Piper called him back.

‘Not a word, do you understand? Not a word to anybody, if you value your life. You’ve seen nothing, heard nothing, and you don’t know who this man is. Clear?’

Crispin nodded.

‘And wake the second watch early,’ The Ringmaster added. ‘I want an extra squadron on the perimeter, and three more mounted patrols out, now.’

Crispin left at a trot.

Piper let go of Zach’s arm. There was nowhere for Zach to run, backed against the wall in the cramped alley, with me, Piper and The Ringmaster facing him.

‘Do you have any idea what you’ve done?’ Zach said to me, his voice a hiss.

‘What I’ve done?’ I said. ‘What are you talking about? Why are you here?’

‘The General’s trying to kill me, to get rid of you.’

‘And you’ve come to me for help?’ I said, incredulous.

‘Where else am I supposed to go?’

He looked from me to Piper and The Ringmaster and back again. I thought of the half-strangled rabbit I’d found once, thrashing around in one of Piper’s snares – the wire noose had snagged and failed to kill it. Zoe had leaned past me and swiftly broken its neck, but I’d seen the trapped animal’s eyes. Zach’s eyes were like that now.

‘Say it,’ I said.

‘What?’ Zach said. His eyes were still flicking from me to the others. ‘Say what?’

‘Admit it,’ I said. ‘Say that you need our help.’

‘You want to play games?’ Zach said. ‘There’s no time. They’re coming for me, and if you let them catch me, you’ll die.’

‘But so will you,’ I said, keeping my voice even. ‘And there are times I think that might be worth it.’

He stared at me for a long time. I felt the warmth of Piper, who stood close beside me; I heard the impatient breathing of The Ringmaster on my other side.

‘Fine,’ Zach said, his voice cracking. ‘Help me.’

*

On the way to the Tithe Collector’s office Piper gripped Zach’s arm and The Ringmaster flanked him. The hood was pulled so low over his face he could barely see, and once or twice he stumbled, but Piper hauled him onwards. The streets were getting busier: a woman was beating a mat out of an upstairs window; three soldiers were chatting in a doorway, scrambling to attention as they saw Piper and The Ringmaster approach. Outside the bakery a man was unloading flour from a barrel, and flour dust settled on the shoulders of Zach’s dark cloak as we passed. I couldn’t reconcile it: such an ordinary, everyday thing, when I felt as though Zach’s arrival had brought the whole world to a stop.

When we reached the partly-burnt building where the children had been tanked and then drowned, I looked back at Zach, and saw Piper’s knuckles standing out white, his fingers crushing Zach’s arm. If it hurt, Zach made no noise.

At the Tithe Collector’s office, The Ringmaster dismissed the guards with a sweep of his hand, and pulled the door of the main chamber shut behind us.

In that large room, I was no closer to Zach than I had been outside, but it somehow felt worse, and more intimate, to be sharing a room with him, away from the noise of the soldiers and the streets. I already shared too much with Zach. I didn’t want to share the same air, the same enclosed space.

‘Who knows you’re here?’ demanded Piper.

‘Nobody,’ Zach said. He pushed the hood back.

The last time I’d seen him had been in the Ark, but the space had been barely lit, and I’d never got close to him. Now I stared at his changed face. It wasn’t only the bruises and scabs that made it different. There were new lines under his eyes, and between his eyebrows, and a long-healed scar on his jaw. So much of his life was unknown to me, now. How far our stories had diverged since the days of our childhood, when I could have drawn a map of every freckle on his cheekbones.

The Ringmaster moved closer to Zach. They were the same height, but The Ringmaster was broader, stronger. Once, these two had sat together on the Council, living and working in luxury that I could barely imagine. Now they faced off across the bare room. It had once been the Council’s Tithe Collector’s office, so it was plusher than anything else in the Omega town, but it wore the marks of the last few months. One wall was patched where it had burned during the battle. A broken window had not been mended – just nailed shut with slats. The planks of the balcony outside, where the townspeople used to line up to pay their tithes, had been ripped up for firewood during the coldest weeks of winter. In the next room, where the Tithe Collector used to dine, the floor was covered with sleeping rolls for The Ringmaster’s personal guards.

‘You should never have come here,’ The Ringmaster said to Zach.

‘I don’t want this any more than you do,’ Zach replied. ‘You think I’d be here—’ he waved a hand at the shabby room ‘—if I had a choice?’

His shoulders slumped. ‘The General’s turned on me. She’s trying to kill me.’ He turned back to me. ‘You’ve gone too far now, done too much. Destroying the database. Warning the island that we were coming. Freeing New Hobart. Then trashing the Ark. You did too much,’ he said again, his voice rising, ‘and you found out too much. Until getting rid of you was worth the cost of getting rid of me.’

This was the kind of calculation that should have been familiar to him: he’d spent years weighing up the value of lives, and making choices he had no right to make. But he looked frantic, his voice swerving between rage and disbelief.

‘Didn’t you have anyone else you could turn to?’ I said. ‘You must have your own soldiers. Won’t they protect you?’

‘Against The General?’ he said.

I remembered her: the way she kept her head still while her eyes roamed indifferently over us. How even Zach had obeyed her every command.

Zach continued. ‘Ever since you took New Hobart, The General’s been trying to push me out. She tried to hide it at first, but I knew. She was manoeuvring in the Council, making sure she had the support she needed. Talking more and more about the threat posed by the resistance. By you, especially. Then you drowned the Ark, and I knew it wouldn’t be long. Six nights ago she came for me – sent her soldiers to my chambers before dawn. I wasn’t there – I had a source who tipped me off. I got out through the kitchens, a few hours before the raid, but even then I had to fight my way past a sentry. One of my own soldiers – he said he had orders not to let me leave the fort. Me.’ He closed his eyes and took two breaths. I didn’t know who the anger on his face was aimed at: his soldiers; The General; me.

‘You should have known this was coming,’ The Ringmaster said. ‘You should have known better than to trust her.’

‘And I should have trusted you instead?’ Zach shot back. ‘You, who proved yourself so loyal, so trustworthy?’

‘I’ve been loyal to the principles the Council was supposed to uphold. The taboo. Protecting our people from the machines.’

Zach shrugged impatiently. ‘Everything I’ve done has been for the protection of our people. You’re clinging to superstition, harping on about the taboo. Machines aren’t the real threat – the Omegas are.’

‘The taboo exists for a reason,’ The Ringmaster said. ‘The machines ended the world. They caused the Omegas.’

‘We can harness the machines to help us,’ Zach said. ‘Everything I’ve done – the machines, the tanks – it’s all to protect us from the burden of the Omegas.’

‘And the blast?’ I asked. ‘Are you really stupid enough to think that can be harnessed? That the blast will protect you as well?’

‘If need be,’ Zach said. ‘If that’s what it takes, against the threat of Elsewhere.’

‘You disgust me,’ I said, each word a hiss.

I could not look at him without thinking of the tanks. The blast. The stink of death that came off him, like a rabbit carcass claimed by flies.

‘Then at last you might begin to understand how I’ve always felt about you,’ he said.

I pulled back my fist and swung at him. It wasn’t an impulsive jab; I thought carefully about everything Zoe had taught me. I focused on his right cheekbone, and when I punched I made sure I punched through rather than at it, and I threw my whole weight behind the blow.

He saw me draw my fist back, but he didn’t believe I would really do it. When my knuckles connected with his face, his whole head snapped backwards. Mine did too, the jerk of pain sharp enough that my teeth clashed together as my head recoiled.

I was still staggering slightly as I tried to punch him again, but Piper held me back, his arm tight around my waist, lifting me off my feet. My knuckles were red, but the ache in them was nothing compared to the pain beneath my eye.

Zach had one hand pressed to his face, his other hand raised at me, palm first.

‘You’re insane,’ he said. ‘If you attack me, you’re attacking yourself.’

Piper released me, and I stood close to Zach.

‘You’re the mad one,’ I said. ‘You’re disgusting. You look down on us, think that we’re less than you. But the things that you’ve done—’ I spat at the ground beside him. ‘You’re a monster. A freak.’

He lowered his hand. The skin was already purpling, his eye clenched shut against the hurt.

‘It doesn’t matter what you think of me,’ he said. ‘I’m not here to win you over. It doesn’t make any difference that you hate me.’ He had regained control of his breath now. His voice was measured, his gaze cool. ‘If you don’t take me in, I’m dead. You too. Do you want that?’ He paused. ‘You want it all to be over?’

If he’d asked me that question a few months ago, my answer might have been different. They had been the bleak days, when I’d wandered through the world like a half-dead thing, lost without Kip. But I had found my way back. I had found Kip’s body and set it free, and I had chosen to live. I knew that I would choose it again, now, even if it meant protecting Zach.

I kept my gaze on Zach as I spoke to Piper. ‘I want him shackled, and locked up,’ I said.

The Ringmaster called for the shackles. When his soldiers brought them, I helped Piper with the chain myself, looping it tight around both Zach’s wrists. When my skin touched his, I forced myself not to flinch.

*

Piper sent for Sally. I heard him explaining Zach’s arrival in the corridor. I couldn’t make out her words, but her tone was clear enough. When she came in she looked at Zach, and it was as though winter had come again, settling over her features.

‘I should see to his face,’ she said, her voice cold. ‘If he gets an infection, it’s bad news for Cass.’

His injuries didn’t look dangerous – I’d seen far worse – but he’d taken a beating. Sally pushed him into a chair and stood over him. The tenderness with which I’d seen her care for Xander was completely absent in the way she examined Zach’s face. She touched him only with the tip of her thumb and forefinger, pinching under his chin, pulling his head first one way and then the other to inspect the cuts on his temple and lip. She called for water and cloths, swiping firmly at the swollen flesh until the cloth was a rusted red. ‘Hold this on,’ she said to him, pressing another cloth onto the graze above his eye. Fishing a miniature bone-handled dagger from her boot, she leaned over Zach – he flinched – to flick out gravel embedded in the wound, using the very tip of the knife.

Zach gave a small grunt of pain.

‘You want something to complain about?’ Sally said, keeping her voice low and pressing the knife against the open wound. It was a tiny blade – the same one she used for chopping tobacco, and getting splinters from Xander’s knees. But in Zach’s grated flesh, it was big enough. He winced his eyes shut, and I jerked my head away from my own jab of raw-flesh pain.

‘Get this mad old bitch off me,’ grunted Zach, raising his bound arms to swipe at her.

‘Sally,’ Piper said, his hand on her arm. But she’d already stopped, turning away from Zach.

‘I’m done,’ she said, wiping the tip of the blade and slipping the dagger back into her boot. I watched her, and envied her those words: I’m done. When would I be done with Zach?

The Ringmaster stepped closer to Zach, peering at his face. Sally had cleaned the skin around his wounds, but the rest of his face was still smeared with grime.

‘How far you’ve come,’ The Ringmaster said quietly.

‘Not only me,’ said Zach. ‘You too. It’s a long way from the Council rooms at Wyndham. All those pretty serving girls. Yet here we both are.’

‘There’s a difference between us,’ The Ringmaster said. ‘I had a choice. I came here because I chose to – because I wanted to stand against you and The General, and your obsession with the machines. But you have no choice. You’re here because you need help.’ He gestured around at the rest of us, and the guards at the door. ‘Without their protection – my protection – you’re dead.’

Zach leaned forward, holding out his shackled arms towards The Ringmaster. ‘I might be in chains,’ he said, ‘but we’re both here because we have no choice. The only difference is that I’ve been honest about it. You wouldn’t be here, helping them, if you didn’t need them just as much as I do. You’ve never given something for nothing. Not ever. You’ve been trying to make out that you’re here as the saviour of the Omegas? Here to help the oppressed?’ Zach laughed, a hollow sound, like the clanking of his chains. ‘You’re only here because you were getting sidelined at the Council. You saw that The General and I were gaining power, and that you were being left behind because you refused to be reasonable about the potential of the machines.’ Zach sat back, his chained arms crossed over his chest. ‘You didn’t leave the Council to help the Omegas,’ he said to The Ringmaster. ‘You left because you figured you could capitalise on their uprising as your best chance at overthrowing us, taking back the power for yourself.’

None of us came to The Ringmaster’s defence. Zach was only saying what we’d all thought, at times. What we’d all feared.

For a few seconds nobody spoke. Piper’s eyes narrowed as he surveyed Zach; beside me, The Ringmaster was standing stiffly, and I could hear the careful evenness of his breath. Honest, Zach had said. How many of us, in this room, were really being honest with one another?

‘Take him to the storage room out the back,’ The Ringmaster said. ‘I want Simon at the door. Two of my men too.’

It didn’t escape me that he chose Simon first. When I’d first met The Ringmaster, a few months earlier, he never would have trusted an Omega, let alone valued his skills. But whatever else The Ringmaster might have been, he wasn’t stupid. He’d seen Simon fighting in the battle for New Hobart, and in the sparring ring where the soldiers trained. It wasn’t only his three arms that made him a valuable fighter: Simon was fast, experienced, and strong. In the battle, I’d seen him stand, legs planted wide, hefting his swords as though he were the only solid thing in a flimsy world.

Piper nodded, grabbing Zach roughly by the elbow.

‘And when he’s locked up, send for Zoe from Elsa’s,’ I said. Piper hesitated for a moment before he nodded. We both knew that when I said Zoe, I meant Zoe and Paloma. I hated the thought of bringing Paloma into the same building as Zach – but Paloma needed to be part of this discussion.

In the doorway, Zach turned back.

‘I will remember every detail of how you treat me,’ he said.

‘You’re not the only one with a memory,’ I said. I stared at him, and I wondered if I would ever be able to remember swimming with him in the river as children, without remembering the sodden bodies of the drowned children from the tanks. I remembered how the two of us used to clamber up the trees above the riverbank, and all I could think of was Leonard’s distended neck as he hung from the tree.

‘Take him away,’ I said.

*

Zoe threw the door open so hard that it bounced back off the wall, almost hitting Paloma as she followed Zoe through.

‘He has the hide to come to us?’ she spat. ‘After what he’s done? And we’re supposed to protect him now?’

‘No,’ Piper said. ‘We’re not protecting him. We’re protecting Cass.’

‘He’s using us,’ Zoe said.

The Ringmaster exhaled. ‘Probably. He’s always operated that way. But I don’t see that we have any choice.’

Zoe turned to me. ‘How do you even know he’s telling the truth about The General turning on him?’

‘He’s telling the truth,’ I said. It wasn’t that I trusted him. It wasn’t even the cuts and bruises on his face that convinced me. It was my certainty that he would never come to me unless he had no choice.

The Ringmaster spoke up. ‘It was always a matter of when The General would turn on him, not if. You don’t know The General like I do.’ He paused, then continued slowly, each word slithering through gritted teeth. ‘She’s not somebody who likes to share.’ I remembered how casually The General had told us about her capture and torture of the crew of one of our ships.

The Ringmaster went on. ‘But it doesn’t follow that Zach will be safe here, with us. If we keep him here, our own soldiers might kill him. Every soldier in this town, Alpha or Omega, would kill him with pleasure.’

‘If that was true,’ I said, ‘they’d have killed me, months ago.’

‘Do you think we haven’t been protecting you?’ Piper said. He threw the words out as though it were just an ordinary observation, but it knocked the air from my lungs.He went on. ‘I always have guards that I trusted watching the holding house. Zoe and I have been with you ourselves whenever we could.’

Months ago, on the island, one of Piper’s own advisers had tried to kill me, to take out Zach. I’d thought, since then, that I’d proved my worth to the resistance. And I’d believed that Piper’s watchfulness was because of The Ringmaster. I hadn’t realised that he still believed I was at risk from our own soldiers, our own people.

Piper spoke gently. ‘It was only a precaution,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think they’d kill you directly – they’ve seen you fight for us, and they know what you’ve done for the resistance. You helped us evacuate the island, and free this town. I think our people understand that we need you, even if that means that Zach lives.’ He cast a glance at the door through which Zach had been taken. ‘But if Zach’s here with us, it’s a provocation. If they caught him on his own, with that sneer on his face, it would be easier for them to see you as collateral damage. At best, they’ll rough him up, hurt him badly enough that it’ll hurt you too. At worst, they’ll finish him off, and you with him.’

‘We can’t keep him with us, though,’ shouted Zoe. ‘I won’t do it.’

‘This isn’t about you,’ snapped Piper. ‘You think I wouldn’t like to give him a beating myself?’ Piper’s voice was rigid, but then it softened. ‘Hell on earth, Zoe. I was next to you when we pulled those kids out of the tanks. And you weren’t even on the island – you didn’t have to see what I saw there. The Confessor executing my soldiers, one after another – all on Zach’s orders. Stop acting like you’re the only one who hates him.’

‘If we don’t take him in, they’ll kill him?’ Paloma said. She’d been standing silently to the side while we argued. Now she spoke up. ‘Kill him, and Cass too?’ she went on.

The Ringmaster gave a quick nod.

‘Then we keep him,’ Paloma said. She made it sound as if it were simple: the only choice.

Zoe’s face twisted in disgust. ‘He’ll be spying on us. Manipulating us. And he’ll find out about Paloma—’

‘We need Cass,’ Paloma interrupted her. I was surprised to hear her put it like that. I’d seen how she watched me when I had a vision. How she’d avoided being close to me, since she’d first understood that I had seen Elsewhere burn.

‘It’s not that simple,’ I said, but I was grateful nonetheless for the certainty in her voice.

‘Don’t patronise me,’ she said. ‘I hate your visions, hate that you’ve seen my home burn, my people massacred.’ She choked a little on those words, and pressed her lips tightly together before she could continue. ‘But I believe you. It’s coming. And you’re the one who’s warned us. You know more than anyone about the blast. We can’t save the Scattered Islands without you.’

We were all watching her. She stood very straight, arms wrapped around herself, waiting there in the middle of us all for a response.

‘We keep him here,’ Piper said.

‘Under guard,’ The Ringmaster added. ‘And away from Paloma.’

Zoe was about to speak again, but she looked at Paloma, and then said nothing.

So he stayed. I thought I might feel relieved – it was true, after all, that we would both be killed if the others hadn’t agreed to take him in. But an unease had settled in my guts. Zach had come to us, bruised, desperate and alone, and still we had no option but to do what he demanded.