Jane Higgins - The Bridge

‘What if they’ve sent him south already? Nik, what if they’ve…’

‘Stop. Listen – best case is they find out who he is. He’ll be worth a fortune to them to ransom. Once they know he’s a Hendry they’ll look after him better than their own kids. There’s no way they’ll send him south.’

‘You think?’

‘Sure. Of course.’ Maybe. Ransoms were bound to be risky. If traffickers could get the same money by selling him south, that’s probably what they’d do.

‘I know!’ She grasped my arm. ‘What if I tell them who I am? That I’m a Hendry and he is too and then they can ransom us both?’

‘Whoa! Fy! Are you crazy?’

‘No, it makes sense.’

‘No it doesn’t! They’re traffickers. You can’t know what they’ll do to you. Don’t even think that.’

‘We’d better find him quick then.’

‘Promise me, promise me , you won’t do anything crazy?’

She hesitated for too long, but she said, ‘I promise.’

I didn’t believe her. If I’d been scared before, I was plain terrified now. She said, ‘All right, then. What now?’

I stood up. ‘Now, I think, I look for a knife.’ I raked around in the rubbish where Coly had been searching and, being neither concussed nor in a fury, I found it straight away. It was a flick knife like the girl’s – small, for hiding, and sharp, for hurting. I’d never had a knife before and, to be honest, pocketing one now didn’t make me feel as safe as I’d hoped it would.

Fyffe stood up. ‘That boy might come back. Where shall we go?’

‘Their HQ. Let’s see what they know about traffickers there.’

So we headed back downriver, through the darkened streets, towards the bridge. Before long we heard the crowd, and then we found it, still carrying the chant but no more than a low rumble now. The people swayed as though they’d sung themselves into a trance. We made our way towards the space that seemed to be the focus of the Crossing. It might have been a park once but now it was bare ground edged with the skeletons of trees. Even the kids crowding the branches of those trees were quiet.

In the middle was a mound, with a raised platform where they’d laid the bodies. Seven people stood around it, facing out to the crowd. They held orb-lights high in cupped hands. The sun was long gone and the orbs glowed.

As we watched, an old man leaning on a walking stick lurched through the crowd and climbed the rise to the platform. He was flanked by two younger men – one was Commander Vega from Moldam Road. The old man turned to the crowd and held up a hand. The chant rolled down to a murmur.

‘My friends!’ Silence all round. ‘This is the first Crossing of the Great Uprising – the last Uprising!’ Ten thousand voices roared – the sound of it thundered off the clouds and leaped over the river and I wondered if Dash could hear it in the city.

The man went on. ‘There will be more Crossings. Perhaps there will be many more, before we taste freedom. But hear this! Reports are in from every district. We have taken every bridge!’ The roar crashed around us again and I felt cold to my bones. ‘Blackbyre has Watch Hill.’ Wild cheering. ‘Curswall has Central Communications.’ More cheering. ‘Gulls Fort has the flood gates.’ And more cheering. ‘Moldam has the Marsh!’ An almighty roar. Pitkerrin Marsh, they meant. The Mad Marsh we’d called it, back in school. It was a psychiatric hospital. I couldn’t think why the hostiles would want it.

‘We have been patient. We are patient no longer . We have been caged. We are caged no longer! ‘ I felt sick and looked away, straight into the faces of two kids, little brown versions of Sol, with red bandanas round their heads and huge black eyes staring at us. I realized that Fyffe and I hadn’t yelled or punched the air with the rest of them. I started to move us sideways, but Fyffe saw the kids and stuck her tongue out. They did the same, then grinned and looked back to the old man.

He was going on about the glorious dead and freedom waiting on the other side of the river. Glory and freedom and death. Glory and freedom and death… It pounded in my head and if he said more, I didn’t hear it because all I could hear was glory and freedom and death beating like a drum, over and over. Then I realized there was, in fact, a drumbeat; the bearers of the orb-lights had marched back to the crowd, and out from the crowd came fire, leaping and spinning, flaming across the shadows, tossed high in the air, caught and tossed again. The crowd was silent and seven dancers, all arms and legs and sticks of flame, crept towards the platform like giant spiders weaving a fiery web across the dark. And yes, Lanya of the million braids was there. And no, you’d never guess the bandana on her arm hid the results of an illegal knife fight. She crept, spun and leaped, tossed flame and caught it with the rest of them.

They reached the platform and the drumbeat stopped. We held a collective breath. The dancers lifted their firesticks high and plunged them into the platform, then whirled cartwheeling away.

The pyre lit the night.

I woke up on cold, clammy earthwith a tree root sticking in my ribs and two boots in my face. One of them took a swing at me; I grabbed at it, missed, and it connected with my shoulder. But it only gave me a nudge. I pushed it away and scrambled up, trying to get my eyes open and my tongue round the right language. ‘I’m awake! I’m awake! What d’you want?’ The boots belonged to Jeitan, who looked like he’d slept all night in a warm bed, showered in hot water, and breakfasted on coffee and hot buttered toast and… that was a dangerous line of thought so I stopped it.

He almost screwed up his nose at me, but that would have wrecked the effect he was trying for. ‘Thought you’d scarpered back to Gilgate.’

I rubbed the tree root bruise on my ribs, shivered, then remembered Fyffe and looked round in a panic. She was still there, uncurling and stretching. She started to say something, thought better of it and gave Jeitan a winning smile instead.

Over Jeitan’s shoulder, the pyre smoldered. Beside it, Commander Vega was talking to one of the dancers. As I watched, they bowed to each other, a short curt bow like the one Lanya, the Pathmaker, had given me the night before. The dancer turned away and Vega summoned us. He looked us over. ‘You watched the Crossing, then.’

‘Yeah.’ I said. ‘And learned, like you ordered.’

‘ Sir ,’ said Jeitan, glaring at me.

‘We watched and learned, sir,’ I said.

The commander’s eyes narrowed. ‘They teach you to read in Gilgate?’

‘Me, yes. Her, no.’

‘I see. And write?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Sort of will do. If you’re staying here, you’re going in a squad. Is that clear?’

I nodded.

‘Full of conversation, aren’t we? IS THAT CLEAR?’

‘Yes… sir.’

‘Better.’ He turned to Jeitan. ‘I’m assigning him to CommSec. Her to the infirmary.’

‘But, sir!’ said Jeitan. ‘Should you do that? I mean – is that…’

‘Is that wise? Are you asking?’

‘No, sir.’

‘We need someone non-aligned who can read. Someone from outside Moldam, even better.’

‘We don’t know he’s non-aligned, sir,’ said Jeitan.

‘Does he look like a Remnant devotee to you?’

‘No, sir,’ said Jeitan.

‘And he’s certainly not one of ours.’ Vega turned a cold stare on me. ‘You. Who do you pray to?’

Now that was a dangerous question. I tried, ‘Why?’

‘Never mind why.’

So I told the truth, as of last Wednesday. ‘No one.’

‘No one, sir ,’ muttered Jeitan.