Jane Higgins - The Bridge

Not quite nothing.

I got up and peered out the window. It was late afternoon. I wondered if Lanya had given Fyffe my message yet. I did know one thing. I’d come to find Sol and that’s what I’d do. Everything else would have to wait.

Meanwhile, there was a night’s work ahead.

Levkova had anticipated the Remnant takeover of CommSec; piles of paper from her backroom project crammed the wardrobes and kitchen cupboards in her home. Now that I knew how to read them, I went back over all the comms she’d kept since Saturday, looking for something about a windfall, a boy, and a plan to traffic or ransom him. But their secrets were tame: some declarations by the Remnant-controlled Councils about purging the army of CFM sympathizers, some crowing that victory over the city was imminent. Only one of them made me wonder.

When Levkova came home about midnight, I handed it to her. ‘Take a look. This is about a meeting Cityside. On Pagnal Heath on Crossover Day.’ Which I figured must be a commemoration of the Crossover that Max had talked about – the mass expulsion of Breken workers from the city years before.

‘That’s next Thursday,’ said Levkova. ‘It doesn’t give us much time. Who does it say is meeting? If Remnant are making secret deals with the city and we can prove it, we’ve got them.’

‘According to this, Commander Vega and the guy they smuggled over the bridge, the one they called DFO.’

‘What?’ She snatched the page from me.

‘Look.’ I showed her how it worked. ‘Do you know Pagnal Heath?’

‘This can’t be right!’

‘But look where they’re meeting. Do you know Pagnal Heath?’

‘I haven’t been there in twenty years, but yes, I do. Why?’

‘You could read this as meaning the Commander is dealing with the enemy. Both enemies even – the city and Remnant – if this DFO guy is working for them.’

‘But – are you sure that’s what it says?’

‘That’s what it says. That might not be what it means.’

‘Explain.’

Easy to say. Risky to do. But I owed her so I dived on in. ‘Pagnal Heath is also called Pagan Heath.’

‘Go on.’

‘The reason it’s called Pagan Heath – so they say – is they used to execute pagans there. Centuries ago. They burned witches and—’

She was looking at me oddly. ‘How do you know this?’

‘I – I scavenge. I pick up stuff.’

‘I see. Is that what passes for scavenging these days? It’s not exactly scrabbling in the gutters for old gear and leftover food, then?’

‘Yeah, well, maybe I’ve done that too. Do you want to hear this or not?’

‘Yes. Go on.’

‘This guy DFO, who is he?’

‘DeFaux. He’s a Citysider. Used to be a top ISIS agent. He and Sim worked together once on a peace process that went nowhere.’ She shook her head. ‘Now he’s just a mercenary. Very good at what he does. Very expensive.’

‘Okay. A hired gun. So, what if this is not a meeting at all? What if it’s an assassination?’

How do you count down to a killing?Levkova and her crew did it the same way they did everything – with a ground-down determination that looked the world in the eye and refused to be surprised by what it saw.

By about 3am we’d gone through most of the memos, looking for evidence of an assassination plot and come up with a few that looked interesting. Levkova said, ‘Good. That’s enough for now. Sim needs to see these.’

Five hours later Max shook me awake. ‘Up, youngster! Commander’s here.’

He’d come straight from a night on patrol, Cityside. The cold came off him like the wind off the river, but he didn’t stop beside the fire or wait for the mug of tea Levkova was brewing. ‘Sit,’ he said to me, and ‘Show me.’ So I showed him the one about him meeting with DeFaux. When I was done, he sat staring at what I’d written, then looked up at Levkova.

‘They want you out of the way, Sim,’ she said. ‘They’ve brought in DeFaux to do it.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t have time for this. How can they afford DeFaux?’

‘According to Jeitan they’ve had a windfall: spoils of war. This is real. We must take it seriously. You must take it seriously.’

While they argued, I took off for the old chapel to meet Fy. We had two leads to follow. One was the man she’d seen down in the township. The other was the chance that Jeitan would help look for a connection between Remnant and the traffickers. If that connection might be financing an attempt on Vega’s life, I figured even Jeitan would break some rules to help.

I heard feet on the floor before I reached the chapel, so I stopped short of the doorway and peered in. No sign of Fyffe, but Lanya was there. She was dancing. And had been for some time, I think – she’d discarded her boots, jacket and overshirt. Her feet were bare and her face and shoulders shone with sweat. Without music, the beat of her dance was her breath: sharp and rhythmic, punching the air, propelling her around the room. The sunlight glanced through the cracked stained glass, patterning the floorboards gold and blue and red. Lanya spun and leaped through the light; her braids whipped her face and the beads in her hair sparked in the sun. She reached the far side of the room, then turned back in a series of cartwheels that skipped over the puddles in the middle of the floor and stopped about a body length from me. She stayed there curled in a crouch, head bent, breathing deep for a minute or so. Then she said, ‘How long have you been there?’

‘Not – not long.’ I wondered if I should say sorry, but I wasn’t, so I didn’t.

She stood up and gestured across the room. ‘I don’t get the chance anymore, except here, in secret. Don’t tell.’

‘Who am I going to tell?’

She pulled on her overshirt and stuck her feet in socks and boots. Sunlight filled the whole room now. I said, ‘Where’s Sina? Did you find her?’

‘Is she your girl?’

‘No. She’s a friend.’

‘Well, I asked at the infirmary.’

‘And?’

‘They said she went down to the township yesterday afternoon on a supplies trip.’

‘And?’ My heart hammered.

‘And she met someone she knew and went off with him.’

‘She what? She what? ‘

‘That’s what they told me. Yesterday afternoon. What’s the matter? If she isn’t your girl, you mustn’t mind too much.’

Jesus. ‘Where? Where did she go? Who did she meet?’

‘I don’t know. They didn’t tell me. Why?’

‘I have to find her. I have to find her right now . Who did you talk to? Who told you she’d gone?’

‘Just someone at the infirmary.’

‘Let’s go there now. We have to ask.’ I started out the door but she darted in front of me.

‘You can’t go. You’ll get Levkova arrested for trying to hide you. I’ll go.’

‘Now?’

‘Later. I’m supposed to be at drill. As soon as I can I’ll go and ask.’

‘When?’

‘After drill. But you can’t go out in the daylight. Everyone knows what’s happened with you and me. Meet me in the graveyard tonight after roll call. I’ll find out who she went away with, and we can go into town and look for her.’

Commander Vega was sitting at the table looking at coded memos. He glanced up when I came in. ‘What’s the matter with you? Sit down. I need to look at all the memos that allude to DeFaux.’

The only thing that kept me sitting at that table was the chance of uncovering something about the windfall that was paying for DeFaux, and even then I was only concentrating with half a brain; the other half was careering through the township, searching for Fyffe.