Jane Higgins - The Bridge

‘He’ll live,’ said the doctor. ‘Couple of cracked ribs. Bruising. Mild concussion. I think that’s all. If there’s anything internal it’s not obvious right now.’ He held up the painkillers. ‘Are you sure you want to give him these?’

‘Yes,’ said Levkova. ‘I am.’

‘Why?’ said Yuna.

‘He stumbled into one of our fights. I feel responsible. You don’t really think this was a drunken brawl?’

‘Looks like it to me,’ said the doctor.

Vega broke the pencil he was fiddling with, said ‘Sorry’ to Levkova and looked at me. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to.’

‘Who, then?’ said the doctor. ‘And why?’

‘Makers,’ said Levkova.

‘ What?’

‘I know. It won’t go down well with anyone to say that. But they needed to absolve Lanya, and for that they needed a scapegoat. The girl wasn’t making accusations, so they improvised.’

‘You don’t believe that?’ he said.

She looked at me. I don’t know what she could make of me from knowing me all of five days, but she said, ‘Yes, I do.’

The doctor shook his head but he tossed me the painkillers. I closed my hand on them and felt an odd, and no doubt misplaced, sense of relief.

‘Let’s eat,’ said Levkova. ‘Here. I don’t think any of us wants to face the hall.’

Lunch was served by an old man called Max. He was badly bent and lame and he was treated with such respect by everyone that I guessed he must be a relative or a friend of Levkova. He served up a stack of warm flatbreads, a spiced bean mash, and some fresh green leaves. Someone exclaimed over the leaves and Levkova was off then talking about her vegetable garden like nothing else mattered. Like the shifting of a deadly political balance between enemy factions was something that happened every morning of the week and didn’t deserve lunchtime comment. I picked at a piece of flatbread, thinking I should be famished. I wasn’t, so I retreated to an armchair and left them to eat and talk.

When I woke up my ribs had stopped hurting, which made me feel stupidly optimistic for the nanosecond it took before I remembered Fy and Sol. Round the table they were onto politics and strategy: how to tip the balance back their way, how to restore CFM influence on Council. I didn’t listen too hard. I was doing my own strategizing – I had to stop them sending me upriver to Gilgate.

At the table, the doctor was saying, ‘They’re not so clean. We just need to catch them at something they shouldn’t be doing. How hard can that be? They’ve got enough rules. Surely they’ve got people breaking some of them?’

‘Of course they have,’ said Vega. ‘How else are they funded?’ He lapsed into an angry silence. I thought he’d probably been doing that a lot during the conversation.

‘The problem,’ said Levkova, ‘is making criminal connections at Council level.’

‘You’re the code-breaker, Tasia,’ said Yuna. ‘Surely you’ve found something useful?’

Levkova shook her head. ‘Not yet. And if I lose CommSec, the backroom project goes as well.’

‘Has nothing come through all those memos?’ said Yuna.

I sent up a silent prayer to Lou that this wasn’t a huge mistake and dived in. ‘Smuggling,’ I said.

They looked at me like, who the hell are you to be entering this discussion?

The doctor said, ‘And you know this how?’

I looked at Levkova. She frowned. ‘Well?’

‘Your messages,’ I said. ‘The ones I’ve been sorting.’

‘ Coded messages,’ said Yuna.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Those ones.’

‘They’re in code ,’ she said, like I was very slow. ‘How many of those painkillers did you take?’

The doctor turned back to Levkova and Vega. ‘So. What’s the plan?’

‘Wait,’ said Vega. And to me, ‘Explain.’

I said, ‘Whoever’s been sending the memos – Remnant? – they’ve organized to get their people guarding the bridge gates tomorrow because they want to bring something over without being noticed.’

‘Oh, yes?’ said the doctor. ‘And what’s that?’

‘I don’t know exactly. They’ve reduced their alphabet – doubling up on letters – some words are hard to pick if you don’t know them already. They called it DFO.’

‘DFO,’ said Vega quietly, staring at me in a way that made me deeply nervous. ‘Not it. Him.’ He held out the stub of the pencil he’d snapped. ‘Show me.’

So I did. Scrawling on the back of an old requisition form. They sat round the table, watching. Even Jeitan came and looked over my shoulder. When I was done, the doctor gave a low whistle. ‘That’s some party trick.’

‘Where did you learn to do that?’ asked Vega.

I shrugged. ‘It’s just patterns, and a good memory.’ My heart was thudding. Vega got up and walked away. He stood staring out the window. Everybody watched him. At last he said, ‘Where did you say you came from?’

‘Gilgate.’

‘Where in Gilgate? And you’re Nik who? What’s the rest of your name?’

I held up the page. ‘Do you want this, or not?’ I put it back on the table because my hand was shaking.

‘I want to know who you are.’

‘I’m no one. Do you want this or don’t you? Because if you don’t, I’m going. I’m supposed to be gone by sunset.’

‘What’s in it for you?’ said Yuna. ‘Why would you help?’

Levkova stirred. ‘How suspicious we’ve become. Does it matter?’

‘But don’t you think it’s strange?’ said Yuna. ‘Is this even accurate?’

Levkova took the paper and studied it. ‘Yes, it is. It’s exactly right. I’ve done the same work myself, only much more slowly. But I haven’t seen this yet.’ She waved the paper at me. ‘This is one you looked at yesterday? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I only worked it out last night in that shed.’

‘In the dark?’ said the doctor. ‘Wearing the after-effects of a beating?’

‘Dark is best.’

Levkova looked at Vega. ‘It’s your call, Sim.’

Vega shook his head. ‘I don’t like it. He arrives here out of nowhere, with no papers, and no name that he wants to tell us. Three days later we’re outgunned on Council because of him, and now he’s decoding Remnant messages as though he’s written them himself.’

They all looked at me and I felt like I had Remnant Spy inscribed on my forehead.

But Levkova said, ‘It’s all we have. I think we take what we’ve been given, however unlikely. I’ll watch him.’

Vega frowned, narrow-eyed, at me. ‘All right, Nik whatever-your-name-is, you stay. Here, with the sub-commander. But remember your cracked ribs, because if we discover you’re a spy, believe me, cracked ribs will be the least of your worries.’

So, a reprieve. Of sorts.

But the moment I showed my face outside I’d be gone, sent upriver to Gilgate, or worse. Contacting Fyffe was now a big problem. And urgent, because if she had seen one of Sol’s kidnappers down in the township we needed to get on that trail before it went cold. And if she heard I’d been sent up to Gilgate, she was likely to go it alone, or to act on that crazy plan of hers to hand herself in.

That evening the light turned pale and gray and snow began to fall. Watching it gust in flurries at the window, I hoped that it would keep Fyffe indoors for the time it would take me to reach her. Levkova pointed me to Max’s room. ‘You can sleep here. There’s a mattress but not many blankets, I’m afraid.’ She rummaged in a cupboard and handed me an old army coat. ‘This will help. Don’t worry about Max, he doesn’t sleep much these days, so you won’t bother him.’