Havoc (12 page)

When I started to explain she shook her head. ‘Shh. My dad is here, and Alan, our
guard. Go back in there.' She gave me a push backwards. ‘I'll let you know when it's
safe. Dad's going to a meeting. I'll get him to take Alan.' She stared at me for
a second as if she was making sure I was real. ‘Nik, I'm so glad to see you.'

She closed the door and I could picture her on the other side of it, squaring her
shoulders as though she was a lot more solid than she actually was, getting that
determined look in her eye, and then marching up the stairs. She would smile at
her father and kiss him on the cheek and try to convince him that she would be perfectly
fine left alone for a few hours. He wouldn't be happy; he would be horribly anxious.
But in the end he would give way because Thomas Hendry would do absolutely anything
for his daughter. He would, I'm certain, give away his entire fortune to make her
happy. A thought crossed my mind then—about whether my father would give away his
revolution for me. He wouldn't. Hadn't. I told myself to quit being pathetic. Then
I turned back with thumbs up to Lanya.

We waited, jumping at every voice and every whirr of the lift. Sandor surfaced, groaning.
His wound had bled in the night but not a lot, and he looked a better colour than
he had the day before, but his painkillers had worn off and he wanted food. We explained
to him how unhelpful it would be to encounter another bullet at close range, so could
he please shut up. Finally we heard farewells, the front door slamming and the beep
of the downstairs alarm being switched on.

Fyffe opened the door. ‘That's that! They've gone for the day. Lanya!' She hugged
Lanya and slipped easily into Breken. ‘And who's this?' She looked down at our patient
and turned the sheet back to get a better look at his bandaged side. ‘What happened?'

‘It's a long story,' I said.

‘Okay,' she said slowly. ‘Tell me over breakfast.'

Sandor complained about being moved but the promise of food was a powerful painkiller.
He lay on a couch in the main room, and Fyffe and I made breakfast.

Lanya leaned on the breakfast bar and gave him a running commentary: ‘Pancakes, syrup,
fresh eggs—none of your powdered stuff here—bacon, white bread, honey, berry jam
made from, it looks like, actual berries. And real coffee.'

We ate until we weren't hungry anymore, and admitted under interrogation from Fyffe
that we couldn't remember the last time we'd done that. Then we had more toast and
answered her questions about the attack on Moldam. She listened like she was the
hungry one and this was food at last. ‘A lockdown! Why?'

‘We don't know,' I said. ‘It could be an operation with the codename Havoc. Does
that mean anything to you?'

She shook her head and sighed. ‘I've been up at Ettyn Hills, and all I heard was
that there'd been a move against hostiles who were planning a strike on the city.
It was a great success, apparently. God.' She put her head in her
hands. ‘I have
to get back to this, to you, to something real, instead of sitting here stressing
about what to wear to the Dry.'

‘So you are leaving,' I said, looking round at the packing cases.

She nodded. ‘Not for good, but for a good while.' She paused then went on, ‘The place
up at Ettyn Hills is… well, we buried Lou and Sol there, and it's so quiet and empty.
Dad tried his best to cope with it but Mum couldn't cope at all. So then came this
plan that we go away, to the Dry. There's a oasis hub there that's amazing, apparently.
It's built over this huge acquifer and there are orchards and meadows and everything's
built to handle the sun and the heat, and they say that the night sky there is—'

She stopped.

‘Sorry. That's my dad talking—it's his spiel to get me excited about going. But it's
all beside the point, isn't it. Here's me packing to go on a break and here you are
in the middle of rocket attacks and some kind of stupid punishment. I want to help.
That's why you're here, right? To look for help?'

I said, ‘Kind of. It wasn't exactly our plan to come to you. But then Sandor got
hurt—'

Sandor, who was dozing under the influence of painkillers, lifted a hand and gave
a pathetic wave.

‘Shot,' he said. ‘Let's be clear about that.'

‘Shot!' Fyffe sat up straight.

‘That's right,' he declared. ‘Took a bullet for these two.'

‘What?' said Fyffe. ‘How? No, tell me later, we have to get him to a doctor.'

‘At last,' he said. ‘Somebody cares.'

‘You're doing okay,' I said to him. ‘Shut up for a second. He's okay, Fy, really.
It's a graze.'

‘Hey!' he protested.

‘Quite a bad one,' I admitted. ‘And seeing a medic would be a good idea, sometime
soon, but not this instant.'

Sandor muttered, ‘That's gratitude for you.' Soon after that he was snoring peacefully.

‘Your trip to the desert?' I said to Fyffe.

‘Oh, it's so pointless!' she said. ‘We're going with some others: the Coultens, the
Venables, the Mar—'

‘The Marstersons, the Hallidays and the Tallins?'

She looked at me, startled. ‘Yes, how do you know? It's supposed to be a secret.'

‘When do you go?' I asked.

‘Soon. We were meant to leave this weekend. I've had my vaccinations and everything,
but there's a hold-up. Which is probably good, because as you can see, I'll never
be done packing in time.'

She cast an eye over the boxes stacked against the walls: some were sealed, but most
were half full and surrounded by odds and ends that hadn't found a home in one yet.
They were very different odds and ends from the
ones we'd seen at the market the
day before: these were tall porcelain vases, antique wind-up clocks, a large polished
chunk of obsidian and ornaments like the linked silver fish that used to sit on the
table at the top of the stairs.

She saw me glance at it all and gave an apologetic smile. ‘Sometimes I want to sell
the lot of it. It's shiny and beautiful and useless and it will all be mine one day
and I won't have a clue what to do with it.' She picked up the coffee pot and went
to refill it. When she came back she said, ‘How did you find out who's going to the
Dry?'

I didn't answer. I was putting puzzle pieces together in my head.

‘Don't go all classified on me.' She turned to Lanya. ‘What's your plan? How did
you get here? What do you need to do? How did your friend get shot? I want to know
everything!'

‘Hold on,' I said. ‘This trip to the desert. Why are so many people going?'

She shook her head. ‘I don't even want to talk about it, I'm so embarrassed.'

‘Don't be. Just tell me.'

She shrugged. ‘Business opportunities—that's the main thing, you know, “investing
in the Dry”. That's what they say at the dinners and receptions they're holding for
the delegation of Dry-dwellers that's come here. Also, no one says it, but Southside
supporters are kicking up
around the city. There's this group called One City: they're
running a campaign of street protests and messing with the traffic and the phone
system and hacking into media channels with messages about the crackdown on Southside.
Some of the families want to leave because they're fed up with all the disruption.
My dad won't let me near any of it, of course. In fact, you're the closest I've got
to anything Southside in six whole months.'

‘And what's the hold-up?' I asked. ‘You said there was a hold-up.'

‘It's the delegation we're supposed to be going with. One of their people has gone
missing.'

‘Nomu,' said Lanya quietly. She was curled in one of the big leather chairs, watching
us thoughtfully, like she was putting together her own puzzle pieces.

Fyffe turned to her. ‘Yes, that's right. One minute she and her brother are all over
the news and chat channels being famous for coming from the desert, and then she
disappears. We don't know if she's run away or if something terrible has happened.
Her people say they won't leave without her, so we might not be going so soon after
all.'

Lanya and I looked at each other, and Fyffe said, ‘What? What did I say?'

‘We found her,' said Lanya. ‘She washed up on the riverbank the night the bridge
was bombed.'

‘Oh, no!' said Fyffe. ‘Drowned?'

‘No,' said Lanya. ‘She's alive.'

‘Alive!' She gripped Lanya's arm. ‘No way! That's fantastic! You must tell them!'

She jumped up and began pacing and planning, delighted at the fact that the world
can sometimes deliver random good stuff. Then a thought occurred to her, and she
stopped and looked at me. ‘There won't be a ransom will there? Or an exchange? Nik?
Say there won't be.'

I was gazing at her, not really seeing her at all. Seeing instead an unlooked-for
chance to fold back the barbed wire and send the squads of soldiers packing. The
girl under the bridge. Could we do that? Could we ransom her for an end to the lockdown?
How would that work? Would there be a handover on a bridge? Of course there would
be. And as I thought that, I swear I felt Sol's breath on the back of my neck.

Fyffe was watching me, waiting for me to say ‘No, of course we wouldn't do that.'

I looked at her. ‘What would you do? You've got a whole township that needs Cityside
to come to the table, and the one card you have to play is a girl so important that
they'll do almost anything—even talk to us—in order to get her back.'

‘It won't work,' said Fyffe. ‘They'll punish you for it.'

‘They're punishing us now! We've run out of medical supplies and pretty soon we'll
run out of food. People are gonna start dying. You want them to starve us into submission?'

‘They'll march in and take her.'

‘They might try.'

I thought of the mayhem and tear gas on Battleby Road.

‘Moldam is angry, Fy. They might not succeed.'

CHAPTER 16

Fyffe stared at me for a second then turned away and began to collect the breakfast
things with an angry clatter. We'd done half of the dishes in silence before she
said, ‘You really would ransom her, even after Sol?'

I couldn't look at her. ‘For this,' I said, ‘I would.'

More silence. When we'd finished, she walked away and stared out the window. Beyond
her, the black arch of Sentinel Bridge took your eye across the river to the concrete
and bare dirt spread of Southside.

Fyffe said, ‘You'd have to threaten to kill her for it to work.'

‘I know,' I said quietly.

She turned back to me. ‘It's not her fault she's landed in the middle of something
that has nothing to do with her.'

‘That's Sol you're talking about.'

She blinked and looked away. ‘It's Nomu too.'

I nodded over her shoulder out the window. ‘And the people over there? They landed
in the middle of it too, just by being born in Moldam. Bad luck for them, but not
a whole lot they can do about it.'

‘Have you even met her?'

‘Yes, I've met her.'

She was watching me with guilt-inducing intensity.

‘It may never happen,' I said. ‘I have to find my father. It's not up to me to put
anyone in the firing line.'

‘In the firing line!' she said. ‘See! You know what a ransom could mean.'

‘I know what the lockdown means too. Operation Havoc, Fy. Does that sound like peacekeeping
to you?'

‘I don't understand,' she came up to me and put her hands lightly on my arms. ‘Six
months ago, threatening someone's life like this would have been the last, the absolutely
last, option for you and even then you would have argued against it. Now you're seizing
on it like it's the answer to everything.'

‘Fy—'

She turned away saying, ‘I'm going to invite the Dry-dweller group for dinner tomorrow
night. You should meet them before you make those sorts of decisions. And we should
try some other options. Every other option. What about Dash? Do you think Dash knows
what the lockdown's about?'

I thought about what Dash knew. About my mother working as a Cityside spook, for
example. Hard to imagine that knowledge ever seeming irrelevant, but right then,
it did.

‘Nik?' said Fyffe.

‘I don't know!' I said.

‘What if I ask her?'

‘She wouldn't tell you.'

‘So that's it?' she demanded. ‘You threaten Nomu's
life
when you haven't even tried
anything else? Why would it be different from when they tried to exchange Sol? Why
would it be any less risky?'

‘Sol's not the only one who's dead.'

She turned and walked away. I watched her and thought, so this is it. This is how
my last link with the Hendrys breaks. Not a clean break, either.

‘We'll go,' I said.

‘No,' she said, still with her back to me. ‘Your friend has to see a doctor. I know
one who won't ask questions. Can you wake him up and find some clothes of Lou's for
you both? You can't go out in those things, they've got blood all over them.' She
turned to Lanya. ‘Come with me.'

I didn't want to do that, go picking through Lou's stuff. I wanted to get out, but
it did make sense and it went okay until Sandor picked up the leather jacket that
had been Lou's favourite piece of clothing.

‘You're not taking that,' I said.

He ignored me and held it against his chest, admiring himself in the mirror.

‘Are you deaf?' I said. ‘No freakin' way are you taking that.'