Jane Higgins - The Bridge

‘And for what? What are they planning?’

Silence. I could just about hear Jeitan shrug. ‘But it’s not looking good, is it?’ he said. ‘They take Council and they’re flush with funds: that gives them plenty of scope to undermine us. Can’t you raise something about this windfall at the hearing? You’ll have the Council together and—’

‘Not without evidence, no.’

‘With respect, ma’am, you and the Commander play this far too straight. We need a strategy against them.’

‘What we need,’ said Levkova, ‘is to stabilize the situation over the river. That has to be our top priority. And I think the independents will see that and stay with us.’

I stopped listening. Remnant had Sol. I was sure of it. What else could a big windfall be but a small city boy worth millions? I wasn’t entirely sure who Remnant were, though. All I knew about them were headlines from textbooks that I’d paid too little attention to, and one or two Stapleton sermons about them. According to Stapleton, they were dedicated to building a Holy City on both sides of the river, and they were even stricter in their Rule than we were, Cityside, when it came to sex and food and ritual. That being so, I wasn’t surprised to hear that they liked to play dirty in secret.

That evening I waited for Fyffe in the dining hall, but she didn’t show. The rain was bucketing down so I asked Jeitan if we could pack up some dinner and take it over to people in the infirmary to save them getting soaked coming over. He said that was a pretty transparent ploy on my part to see my girlfriend, but not a bad idea. So that’s what we did.

The infirmary was an ugly gray modular building sprawling behind the main building. It looked like a kids’ block game gone wrong: a wonky E shape with rooms from different model sets stuck on over the years so that one good temper tantrum might break the whole thing apart and scatter it across the hillside.

Inside, people sat crammed shoulder to shoulder in the waiting room, and staff in white coats zoomed about. Notices cluttered the walls with warnings in no-nonsense black-and-white, reminding everyone of ‘The Three Minute Rule’ (how long to boil water for), ‘The 30-Second Rule’ (how long to wash hands for), to NEVER buy meat or fish from unlicensed sellers, and to PLEASE be patient, staff were BUSY, your number would be called in due course.

The staff were pleased with the food we’d brought over, and it got me a white coat’s attention, which I would have struggled for otherwise. ‘Sina,’ he said. ‘Yes, she’s here. She’s with someone.’

The someone she was with was dead. One of the Moldam squad, they said. He’d been caught in sniper fire over the river a few days before and had died two hours ago. I knocked on the door and Fy let me in. There was enough space for a bed and two chairs. The room had green walls, a skylight that the rain thudded on, a small leafy tree in a pot in one corner and a lamp stuck on the wall above it. The place felt like a prayer room and the steady glow of the light on Fy’s face and hair and white coat made her look like a thin, thoughtful angel. There was a body on the bed – a young guy, maybe twenty years old. He was dark and his eyes were closed. He was covered up to his chin by a white sheet. Fy was supposed to be praying for him, and I bet she was.

‘He was sitting up and talking this morning,’ she said. ‘And his family were here and everyone thought he would get better. But he got an infection that ran hot through him. Now they’ve sent for the family again, and someone must sit with him and wait for them.’

I sat down beside her. ‘You all right?’

She nodded.

‘Do you want some food? There’s some in the staff room.’

‘No, thank you.’ She looked at me, frowning. ‘Nik? You know that thing you wear round your neck, from your mother – oh, you’re not wearing it.’

‘I lost it – that night at school.’

‘Oh, no. I’m so sorry.’

I shrugged. It seemed wrong to feel gutted at losing a talisman when she had lost her brother, maybe both her brothers.

‘This man,’ she nodded towards the body, ‘I think you should look; he’s wearing one the same.’ She gave me a little push. ‘Have a look.’

I got up and peered at the body. He looked peaceful and young. I tweaked the sheet under his chin and there, round his neck, was my talisman. Not mine exactly – this one was copper or bronze rather than silver, and it was smaller. But it was the same shape as the one I’d worn my whole life until a few days ago – an elongated S with a long narrow hole in the middle of it.

‘So?’ I turned back to Fy. ‘It’ll be a trinket they make here and ship over to the city. My mother must have bought one at a market. There’s probably thousands of them around.’

Fy said, ‘Maybe. But when we washed the body I tried to take it off him and they wouldn’t let me. They were shocked that I would do that. They said only his mother or his father or his wife can do that.’

I looked down at him. My mind was blank.

‘I don’t know why they said that,’ Fy was saying. ‘I was afraid to ask, in case,’ she hesitated, ‘in case it’s something I should know. In case it’s something everyone here knows.’ She chewed her lip and watched me.

I looked away, back at the body, and tidied up the sheet corner that I’d moved. My heart beat hard. ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ I said. ‘We’re here to look for Sol, aren’t we? This is a distraction. It’s not important. Sol is important. We’ve got a list of traffickers. Plus I have some news about Remnant. We need a plan, a strategy, we need to—’

‘Slow down, slow down. I can’t follow.’ Fyffe stood up and turned me round to face her. She spoke softly in Anglo. ‘I might be wrong, but if your talisman is the same as his, then it means something here. I don’t care what – as far as I’m concerned, you’re Nik and I trust you with my life, but if you want, I’ll help you find out what it means. If you want. And that might help us, you never know.’ Her eyes were blue and earnest and I couldn’t look at them. I couldn’t go where that thought was taking her.

‘I gotta get back,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about this, okay? Don’t put yourself in danger over a trinket.’

‘But—’

‘I’ll see you at breakfast. Keep safe.’ I headed out the door.

I worked late that night, hoping that Levkova would be called away and I’d be able to get onto the computers. Also, let’s face it, cowardice. I didn’t want to be locked up in my cell in Shed 3 thinking about that talisman. I didn’t want Fy’s questions in my head, and I certainly didn’t want to see her, every time I closed my eyes, reading me in that watchful, worried way of hers.

I was sure the wires would be buzzing with Sol’s disappearance. The top brass at ISIS had to know about it by now and they’d be working on a strategy to get him back. I could help them, if I could just crack the code and work out what they were planning. So I buried myself in Levkova’s piles of paper.

As the night ticked by, letters blurred in front of me. I put my head on the desk and closed my eyes. When the ground began to shake I sat up thinking I’d dreamed it – most nights I saw the school go up in flames. But no, this was real: thumping concussions deep in the earth. I went out to the main room. Levkova was still there, but Jeitan had gone. I stood at the window looking out towards the Mol. I couldn’t see anything over that way but far to the west, towards St Clare, the sky glowed; the city was burning. St Clare was burning. I saw it in my mind’s eye: flames and choking smoke; people staring at the blood on their hands and clothes, wondering if it’s theirs or someone else’s; people stumbling through the rubble, calling out, falling over the dead, wailing. That sound. It’s strange what you remember: that noise people make when the sky falls in and they can’t work it out, what they’ve lost.