Jane Higgins - The Bridge

‘I’m looking for Goran,’ I said. ‘Got a message for him from up the hill.’

‘He’s out the back.’

We followed the direction of his thumb into a yard. A fire burned in a brazier and three men and a woman stood around it. The woman checked out our squad clothes and made room for us. She was the first richly dressed person I’d seen in Southside. She had thick, black hair falling to folds of fabric around her shoulders. Gold in her scarf and on her fingers shone in the firelight. She swayed in my direction. ‘You’re a ways from barracks, soldier boy. Night on the town is it, before you march off all brave over the bridge?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Something like that.’

Lanya said, ‘We wanted to see the light come on, over the river. Have you seen it?’

One of the men, fortyish with a patchy gray beard, said, ‘Who’s lightin’ it, that’s what I’d like to know.’ He raised a flask in the direction of the Hill. ‘To the uprising! Long may it last. And let there be gold,’ he took the woman’s hand and kissed her rings, ‘for the victors.’

The door opened behind us and two men stumbled out, laughing and shouting. ‘Goran! Got any more? We need more, right now, this minute, this very, very minute.’ Graybeard let go of the woman’s hand, said, ‘One minute,’ to her, and moved quickly to the men.

So, this was Goran. I watched him shut the newcomers up. He was weedy, with a pale, lined face, thin, graying hair and beard, and long fingers. He made my skin crawl. He wrapped his arms around the men’s shoulders. ‘Boys, boys, boys. Warmer inside, yeah?’ He steered them back inside.

One of the others by the fire, a square, solid younger man, watched them go and grunted. The third one, older, with a pinched look and an ingrained scowl, said to us, ‘You been over there yet?’

‘Soon,’ I said. ‘Next week, maybe.’

He looked me up and down like I was a disappointment but what could you expect, youth these days and all that. ‘You’re not from here.’

‘Gilgate,’ I said.

He held up a hand, the stump of a hand with just a thumb and an index finger, gnarled and twisted like a tree root. ‘See this? City blew it off. I sat in one of their stinking prisons for two years. Lost my fingers. Damn near lost my fuckin’ mind. You get the chance when you go over – you do the same to one of them, yeah? Anyone’ll do.’ He grabbed my wrist and stuck my hand out above the fire. ‘You hold them down. You take your gun.’ He pointed his stump, like he was taking aim. ‘You blast it off. Fingers, everything. Tell ’em you’re doing it for Sett Rorkin. Got that?’ I pulled away from him. He stuck his stump back in his pocket and grinned at the fire.

The woman said, ‘You pay no attention to old Sett here.’ She put a hand on my shoulder and breathed ‘shine in my face. ‘I’m sure you got plans, don’t you, love? Off to seek your fortune? Nice lad like you deserves a bit of fortune. What about your girl? Taking her with you?’ She patted my shoulder and peered back towards the coffeehouse where Goran had gone. ‘Time for you kids to be on your way back up the hill. Off you go. Fight a good fight, now, won’t you.’

The old guy, Sett, grabbed my arm as I turned to go and waved his stump in my face. ‘Remember! A hand for a hand.’

We pushed our way back through the crowd inside and came out onto the road. A breeze came fresh off the river and we breathed deep. ‘Horrible man,’ said Lanya. ‘Horrible people. Why would your friend know these people?’

‘Let’s get out of sight,’ I said.

We crossed the road to where a mangled dredge had been abandoned and settled in to wait for Goran to head for home. Lanya leaned on the riverwall and looked across at the city, dreaming, I guess, of future glory. I sat on the ground and watched the coffeehouse.

‘You might wait a long time,’ said Lanya. She sat down beside me. I thought about suggesting she go back up the hill, but I was fairly sure what she’d say to that. She hugged her knees and laid her head on her arms. Her braids fell across her long dancer’s neck. For all that she buzzed with energy, when she sat still, she sat still. She looked up at me with a smile, then fixed her eyes on the coffeehouse, watchful and intent, as if it might vanish at any moment.

I said, ‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘No. You didn’t answer mine.’

‘Sina fell in with some bad company, that’s all.’

She smiled sideways at me. ‘I’m sure that’s not all. But ask away.’

‘Who’s Kasimir?’

Her smile vanished. ‘Who’s been talking about Kasimir?’

‘Vega. Tonight at Levkova’s. Everyone went quiet.’

She nodded. ‘That’s his son. Married to Yuna – did you meet her?’

‘Yeah. What happened to him?’

‘Kas was arrested in a raid two years ago. Their little girl wasn’t long born and Yuna was sick. Kas was pulled off the street. They took him over the bridge and put him in the Marsh. Our people offered a suicide switch to get him back.’

‘A suicide what?’

‘Switch. Kasimir, in exchange for a city spy held over here.’

‘Why’s it called that?’

‘They don’t tell you anything in Gilgate, do they. We’re not supposed to call it that, but everyone does. A suicide switch is when they wire up the ones being exchanged with belts of explosives and each side carries the other’s trigger. So, with Kas, one of our men went over to verify that it really was Kas they were sending back, and he got to hold the trigger for the city spy being exchanged. The same for the city – they sent a triggerman here and he took the trigger for the explosives on Kas. So the triggermen go to the middle of the bridge and supervise the exchange.’

‘That is barbaric.’

‘It keeps everyone honest. You don’t end up with squads from both sides on the bridge and there’s no danger of snipers taking out one of the hostages because the other one would be blown sky high if that happened.’

‘What happened with Kas?’

‘They’re supposed to deactivate the triggers once the prisoners have been exchanged in the middle of the bridge, but the city spy got to the exchange point, grabbed his own trigger and blew himself up. I don’t know why. Shame, perhaps. Or perhaps he knew what they’d do to him once he got back. Kas was caught in the blast. He didn’t die straight away. Yuna and the Commander got to say good-bye, at least.’

Insane. Brutal. War. What did I expect?

We watched some people leave the coffeehouse, calling to friends inside, cursing at how cold it was outside.

‘What about you?’ said Lanya. ‘Who’ve you lost?’

‘Parents.’ I said it without a second thought, without all the hesitations and reservations that came with that admission at school. Where’s your mother? Who’s your father? Why don’t they come, call, visit, take you away for the summer? But here, the assumptions all ran the other way.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You?’

‘No. No one. Still have parents. Still have brothers. Also grandparents, aunts, and cousins. The aunts are not pleased with me. A disgraced Pathmaker brings dishonor on a family, as they keep reminding me. But my parents believe me, that Coly was playing Remnant’s game.’ She glanced at me. ‘They don’t know about the fight. Do you have aunts or cousins?’

I shook my head. ‘Sina is as close to family as I get.’

We watched the coffee house for a while, and at last crowds of people started to spill out of it.

‘There!’ said Lanya. Goran and co. were leaving in a flurry of farewells. We fell in with the scattering of late-night folk and followed them east along the river road. They stopped at a crossroads where some cookshops were hoarded together and a crowd was waiting outside for kebabs and stuffed pocket-bread. The air was smoky from the frypans; the spice of it caught in my throat and made me hungry and sick together. But our quarry didn’t stop for food. They worked their way through the crowd, greeting people as they went, and Sett – Stumphand – lifted a bag from some poor dupe waiting for his fry-up. They headed into an alley running down beside the cookshops. Once they’d turned a corner, we went after them.