One more time, we’re bombing the Spackle.

After Lee told us they were coming, I helped carry him inside the scout ship where Mistress Coyle and Mistress Lawson immediately started working on him. Outside, even through the doors of the ship, we could hear the shouting of the people on the hilltop. Hear their terror, but also their anger. I could just imagine that half-circle of watchers, led by Ivan, demanding to know what Simone and Bradley were going to do about it, now that we’d been attacked directly.

“They could be ANYWHERE!” I heard Ivan shout.

And so as Mistress Coyle sedated Lee and Mistress Lawson washed the seemingly endless blood from his destroyed eyesockets, we heard Simone and Bradley stomp aboard, arguing between themselves. Simone went to the cockpit, and Bradley came into the healing room and said, “We’re taking off.”

“I’m operating here,” Mistress Coyle said, not looking up.

Bradley opened a panel and took out a small device. “Gyroscopic scalpel,” he said. “It’ll keep steady in your hand even if this ship flips over.”

“So that’s what that was,” Mistress Lawson said.

“Is there trouble outside?” I asked.

Bradley just frowned, his Noise full of images of people getting into his face, calling him the Humanitarian.

Some of them spitting on him.

“Bradley,” I said.

“Just hold on,” he said, and he stayed with us rather than join Simone in the cockpit.

Mistresses Coyle and Lawson kept on working furiously. I’d forgotten what an incredible thing it was to see Mistress Coyle heal. Ferocious and concentrated, all her attention bent on saving Lee, even as we felt the engines burn into life, felt the ship rise slowly in the air, tilting as it circled the hilltop, felt the first of the bombs explode far beneath us.

And still Mistress Coyle worked.

Now Simone is completing her last pass, and I can feel the heat in Bradley’s Noise about what we’ll find on the hilltop when we open the doors.

“That bad?” Mistress Coyle says, carefully tying the last stitch.

“They weren’t even interested in recovering the bodies of the people who were killed,” Bradley says. “They just wanted force and they wanted it right now.”

Mistress Coyle moves to a basin in the wall and starts washing her hands. “They’ll be satisfied. You’ve done your duty.”

“This is our duty now, is it?” Bradley says. “Bombing an enemy we’ve never met?”

“You took a step into this war,” Mistress Coyle says, “and now you can’t just step out of it. Not if lives are at stake.”

“Which, of course, is exactly what you wanted.”

“Bradley,” I say, my comm beeping again but I’m not ready to let go of Lee just yet. “They attacked us.”

“After we attacked them,” Bradley says. “After they attacked us, after we attacked them, and so on and so on until we’re all dead.”

I look back down at Lee’s face, what I can see of it under the bandages, the bottom of his nose just poking out, his mouth open and breathing heavy, his blond hair in my hands, sticky with blood. I can feel him underneath my fingertips, the injured warmth of his skin, the weight of his unconscious body.

He’s never going to be the same again, never ever, which makes my throat choke and my chest hurt.

This is what war does. Right here, in my hands. This is war.

In my pocket, my comm beeps one more time.

[TODD]

“Neutral ground?” says the Mayor, his eyebrows raising. “Now where might that be, I wonder?”

“Mistress Coyle’s old house of healing,” I say. “That’s what Viola said. Mistress Coyle and the people from the scout ship will meet you there at dawn.”

“Not exactly neutral, is it?” the Mayor says. “Clever, though.”

He looks thoughtful for a second, glancing back down to the reports on his lap from Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare about how bad things are.

They’re pretty bad.

The square is a wreck. Half the tents were washed away by the water from the tank. Fortunately, mine was far enough back and Angharrad was safe, too, but the rest is a soggy mess. One wall of the foodstore collapsed cuz of the water, and the Mayor’s got men over there now, picking thru the leavings, seeing just how soon the end’s gonna come.

“They’ve really done a number on us, Todd,” the Mayor says, frowning at the papers. “With one action, they’ve cut our water stores by ninety-five percent. At the most reduced rations, that’s just four days, with almost six weeks to go until the ships arrive.”

“What about food?”

“We’ve had a bit of luck there,” he says, holding out a report to me. “See for yourself.”

I stare at the papers in his hand. I can see the squiggles of Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare’s handwriting skittering in blips and blobs across the page like the black micro-rats we used to get in the barn back at the farm, twisting and turning so fast when you lifted up a board it was hard to see a single one of ’em. I look at the pages and I wonder how the hell anyone can read anything when letters look like such different things in different places and are somehow still the same thing–

“I’m sorry, Todd,” the Mayor says, lowering the papers. “I forgot.”

I turn back to Angharrad, not believing the Mayor forgets nothing.

“You know,” he says, and his voice ain’t unkind. “I could teach you how to read.”

And there are the words, the words that make me burn even hotter, with embarrassment and shame and an anger that makes me wanna tear someone’s head right off–

“It may be easier than you think,” he says. “I’ve been working on ways to use Noise to learn and–

“What, in return for saving yer life?” I say, loud. “Don’t like being in my debt, is that it?”

“I think we may be even on that score, Todd. Besides, it’s nothing to be ashamed of–”

“Just shut up, okay?”

He looks at me for a long moment. “Okay,” he finally says, gently. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Tell Viola I’ll meet them as they wish.” He stands. “And furthermore, that I’ll come accompanied only by yourself.”

{VIOLA}

“That sounds suspicious,” I say into the comm.

“I know,” Todd says. “I thought he’d try to argue, but he agreed to everything.”

“Mistress Coyle said all along he’d come to her. I guess she was right.”

“Why don’t I feel too great that she is?”

I laugh a little, which sets me coughing.

“You okay?” Todd asks.

“Yeah, yeah,” I say quickly. “It’s Lee I’m worried about.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Stable but still bad. Mistress Lawson only brings him out of sedation to feed him.”

“Jeez,” Todd says. “Tell him I said hey.” I see him look over to his right. “Yeah, just a damn minute!” He looks back at me. “I gotta go. The Mayor wants to talk about tomorrow.”

“I’m sure Mistress Coyle will, too,” I say. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He smiles shyly. “It’ll be good to see you. In person, I mean. It’s been too long. Way too long.”

I say goodbye and we click off.

Lee’s in the bed next to me, sound asleep. Mistress Lawson sits in the corner, checking his condition on the ship’s monitors every five minutes. She’s also checking on me, trying out Mistress Coyle’s timed treatments for the infection in my arm, which now seems to be moving into my lungs.

Fatal, Mistress Coyle said the infection was.

Fatal.

If she was telling the truth, if she wasn’t exaggerating to force me to help her.

And that’s why I think I haven’t told Todd how sick I am. Because if he got upset about it, which he would, I’d have to start thinking it might all be true–

Mistress Coyle comes in. “How are you feeling, my girl?”

“Better,” I lie.

She nods and moves over to check on Lee. “Have you heard back from them?”

“The Mayor’s agreed to everything,” I say, coughing again. “And he’s going to come on his own. Just him and Todd.”