Jane Higgins - The Bridge

He seemed to make an effort to look sad but, really, he looked gleeful. He walked around the table and paused behind Lanya. She hugged her arms tight and stared at the ground; she looked like she was trying to make herself as small as possible. He walked on. ‘Do we stand by? No! We excise the rot. We cast it from us. We cauterize the wound.’

A depressing amount of nodding rippled round the table. I knew they flogged criminals on Southside – sometimes to death. Or they cast them out, exiled, without food or water, into the borderlands in the far south. I had no allies here, and no leverage at all. A lone scavenger from Gilgate would be insignificant collateral damage in the power game they were playing.

‘Councillor!’ Levkova broke into the monologue. ‘Please sit down. You judge too quickly. We have no clear evidence.’

Terten arrived back at his chair. He leaned on it and his beady eyes scanned the rest of the Council. He ignored Levkova. She sighed and shot a look at Vega.

‘Compromise!’ bellowed Terten. ‘Is that our banner now? Mealy mouthed compromise? The sub-commander would have it so. And if we compromise here, in safeguarding our own purity, what then in our dealings with the city? My friends, we have been led down the path of compromise for too long. Do you have courage, do you have faith enough, to strike out on a better path?’ His stare shifted to pick out each person round the table. ‘I say we vote. Now. For a strong path, a pure path, a righteous path, a path that will lead us to victory.’

Levkova tried again. ‘Councillor, your sloganeering will cost lives. I make no apology for seeking to exercise judgment and pragmatism in this uprising. You glorify righteous confrontation, but you do it on the bodies of our children.’ She looked at Vega again.

Vega spoke up. ‘Returning to the matter at hand, Terten. Of course, the safety and honor of our Makers is vital. But we have no real evidence here. And we have other urgent matters before us. City forces are regrouping at Sentinel, Clare, and Torrens Hill—’

But Terten interrupted, ‘For continued poor judgment, now evident in bringing dangerous elements to our district and failing to safeguard our Makers, I ask Council for a vote of no confidence in Commander Vega as its head.’

There it was. An ambush.

They went around the table. I didn’t know who was who, but I could count. Seven ‘ayes’ and five ‘nays’. The independents had caved to the threat of appearing weak and gone with Remnant.

Terten smiled, smug as all hell. ‘As deputy, I will take the chair until we make a full appointment. Next: I seek sanction on those involved in this scandal – this boy, and this girl.’

‘Aye, aye, aye…’ Twelve ‘ayes’ and no ‘nays’. Even Vega and Levkova voted in favor of punishing us. I sucked in a breath and willed Lanya to look at me, but she wasn’t risking that.

‘I seek this sanction,’ said Terten. ‘The boy to be flogged and cast out.’

My mouth went dry. The ‘ayes’ began again, one by one, round the table. Lanya looked at me.

Vega stood up. ‘No. No one will be flogged over this.’ He leaned over the table into Terten’s face. ‘The Council may be yours now, Terten, but the army is not. This was a Crossing – an army matter. My troops, not your fanatics. While I head the army, I control its discipline. Sanction, yes. But there will be no flogging.’ He pointed at me. ‘The boy goes back to Gilgate. The girl to her family.’ He stood back and looked around the table. Not too many of them met his eye. ‘This is not the end of this discussion. But I have better things to do than battle over polemics and preaching at this table.’ He left. Stormed past us without even a glare. Jeitan watched him, mournful as a lost dog.

Levkova said, ‘If the Council permits, I will ensure the boy returns to Gilgate.’

‘By sunset,’ said Terten and no one objected.

Victory to Remnant.

Exiled. Banished. Cast out. Call it what you like. It amounted to abandoning Fy and Sol. I stood outside the Council room with Levkova and Jeitan. They held a murmured conversation and I concentrated on staying upright. A fog had come down between me and the world and the corridor ahead looked hazy and gray. Two things were depressingly clear, however. I was no closer to knowing whether the rumored Remnant windfall existed, let alone whether it pointed to Sol. And I was being sent away.

I was trying to put together a coherent sentence to ask Levkova if I could please take Fyffe with me, remembering that I had to call her Sina and wishing that my brain would unscramble, when Levkova turned to me. ‘Nik. I’m sorry. This is not your fault. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time and they’ve seized their chance. Jeitan, we’ll go to my quarters. We must feed him at least.’

‘Feed him to what?’ muttered Jeitan.

Levkova smiled. ‘Come with me.’

We walked out of the building and across the grounds without speaking – slowly, at her pace, which I was grateful for because I was finding it harder and harder to walk at all. On the way, Levkova crooked a finger and collected a kid maybe ten years old. She berated him mildly for not being in the schoolhouse. He grinned and jigged along beside us, chattering at Jeitan. But Jeitan was stony faced and silent.

We went through an archway in the brick wall that ran along the river side of the compound. Down the slope in front of us, stone markers grew out of rough cut grass with a few spindly trees scattered among them. Levkova lived in an old brick house on the edge of that graveyard. The house must’ve been impressive once: the entrance opened into a high atrium with hallways leading into shadows but they were roped off and barricaded with wrecked furniture. The air smelled of damp and rot.

She took us through a small door off the atrium and into a room that was old like its owner but, unlike her, shabby and comfortable: there were armchairs, a couch, a table, shelves and shelves of books, and tall windows with the sun streaming in. She called, ‘I’m back!’ and someone answered from another room. She disappeared into it.

I sat on the floor in a patch of sunlight and closed my eyes. Breathing was hard work, sharply painful every time. Before long, Levkova came back. ‘I did tell you to watch your back,’ she said.

‘Yeah. I remember.’

She turned to the kid she’d collected. ‘Go and get Dr Mayur for me. Quick now.’ So he scuttled off and I sat in the sun and concentrated on breathing. The next thing I knew the room was full of people. Commander Vega had arrived. He was being called Sim, and Levkova was Tasia, so I figured we were among friends. Jeitan was still there, and two others I didn’t know. One was a young woman called Yuna. She was dressed in squad clothes and she paced up and down in that small space like a fuse burning down to its fuel, her arms crossed, her head bent as she listened to Levkova report on the Council meeting. And there was a man about Vega’s age. He crouched in front of me. ‘Nik, is it? Can you get up?’

‘Why?’

‘Because I need to take a look at you.’

‘Why?’

He gave a half smile. ‘Orders.’

Levkova looked up from her reporting and pointed to a door. ‘Go in there.’

‘See?’ he said.

I didn’t move. I’d done enough stupid stuff. I didn’t feel like adding to the list.

He fished in a jacket pocket and held up a little container. Rattled it. ‘Painkillers. Scarce and pricey. Why Tasia’s wasting them on you I do not know. But I suggest you count yourself lucky and let me take a look at why you need them.’

Okay. That was convincing enough for me.

When we emerged a while later Levkova and the others were sitting round the table – except for Jeitan, who’d taken up a position at the door as though he’d decided that these people needed a permanent guard. Levkova said, ‘Well?’