Francesca Haig - The Map of Bones

‘Why?’ Piper interrupted him.

‘Because we have things in common.’

Piper laughed, the sound somehow louder in the darkness. ‘Us? Look at yourself.’

The Ringmaster might have travelled away from Wyndham, but he still had the plush appearance of a Councillor. Somewhere, not far from here, would be a tent, carried and erected by his soldiers, and outfitted with clean bedding. While we’d travelled on foot, thigh-deep in drifts of ash, or footsore over rocky hills, he would have ridden. His men probably fetched him water to wash in – his face and hands showed none of the grime that marked the three of us. And by the look of his rounded cheeks, he’d never had to pick the grubs off a mushroom that was his only meal at the end of a long night of walking, or spend ten minutes scraping the last scraps of flesh from a lizard’s thorny carcass. Our hunger was a garment that we could not remove, and as I looked at his well-fed face, I joined in with Piper’s laughter. Zoe, behind me, spat on the ground.

‘I know why you’re laughing,’ The Ringmaster said. ‘But we have more in common than you know. We want the same thing.’

It was Zoe’s turn to laugh. ‘If you knew what I’d like to see done to you and the other bastards on the Council, you wouldn’t be saying that.’

‘I’ve told you already – you’re making a mistake if you assume we’re all the same.’

Piper spoke. ‘You’re all happy to sleep in feather beds while Omegas suffer. What difference does it make to us if you bicker amongst yourselves about the best ways to screw us over? You kill one another, periodically, but things don’t get any better for us.’

‘Things have changed.’

‘Let me guess,’ Piper said. ‘You care about Omegas, all of a sudden?’

‘No. Not at all.’ His honesty stopped even Zoe, who’d been on the point of interrupting him.

The Ringmaster continued, making no pretence of shame. ‘I care about Alphas. I want to do what’s best for them. That’s my job, just as yours is to act in the best interests of your own people.’

‘I’m not in charge of the Assembly anymore,’ Piper said. He gestured at himself – his ragged clothes, his dirty face. ‘Do I look like the leader of the resistance to you?’

The Ringmaster ignored him. ‘What The Reformer and The General are doing now, or trying to do, is a risk to all of us – Alphas and Omegas alike.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I said.

‘Don’t play coy with me,’ he said. ‘You escaped from Wyndham fort through the tank rooms. You know they’re resurrecting the machines, the Electric. And I suspect you know more than you’d admit about The Confessor’s database, too – I’ve never swallowed The Reformer’s story that it was The Confessor’s twin, alone, who killed her.’

I said nothing.

‘For years I worked closely with The General, and The Reformer too,’ he said. ‘I was even willing to tolerate his closeness with The Confessor.’ There was a curl of distaste in his upper lip. ‘She was useful, at least. But there came a stage when our agendas diverged. It’s become clear to me that your twin and The General no longer give any credence to the taboo. They pay lip service to it – they know that’s what the public demands. But they’re pushing at it. Always pushing.

‘They’ve been working as secretively as they can, but they can’t do it all alone. Over the past year or more, some of the soldiers from their personal squadrons have come to me. They’ve seen the things they’re guarding: the tanks. The database. I rose up through the army, unlike The Reformer or The General, for all that she’s taken a soldier’s name for herself. I understand the soldiers, the ordinary people. I know how deep the taboo runs. Your twin and The General are so enthralled by their ideas, they’ve underestimated how much most people hate and fear the machines.’

‘More than they fear the Omegas?’ I asked.

‘It’s all the same thing,’ he said. ‘People know that. The machines caused the blast, caused the twinning, and the Omegas.’

That was how he saw us: as an aberration – a horror to be listed along with the blast. A problem to be solved.

He went on. ‘When The Confessor was killed, and her database trashed, I hoped that might be the end of it. But your brother’s and The General’s enthusiasm for the machines is unabated. It’s already gone too far. The Judge was the last one on the Council with the power to openly oppose them. Even when they had his twin, towards the end, he still stood firm on the taboo, because he knew the public wouldn’t stand for it if he didn’t. So they killed his twin, and him, as soon as they figured they didn’t need him anymore.’

‘What about the others on the Council?’ Piper said. ‘Do they know what The Reformer and The General are doing? What they’re planning?’

‘Not many. Most have given their tacit approval: they’re not looking too closely. They’re happy to benefit if it works, and they don’t want to be implicated if it all goes wrong.’

What a luxury it would be, I thought, to choose ignorance. To shrug off the burden of knowledge.

‘Then there are those with no choice,’ he said. ‘Those who didn’t get to their own twins before The Reformer and The General did.’

‘What about your twin?’ I asked.

‘I have her,’ he said. ‘Not in the Keeping Rooms, but under guard, with soldiers I can trust.’

I tensed my neck muscles against the shudder that rose in me. There were still nights when I dreamed I was back in the cell at the Keeping Rooms, the formless days passing, and me trapped forever, a prisoner of time.

‘You think that’s better than the Keeping Rooms?’

‘It’s safer,’ he said. ‘For her and me. The way things are at the moment, I don’t think I could protect her in Wyndham. Not even in the Keeping Rooms.’

‘Why have you sought us out?’ I said.

‘For the last few years, since I realised the extent of their obsession with the machines, I’ve been trying to gather information, learn as much as I can about their plans. I’ve tried using other seers. There’s only a handful of them. Their powers vary so much – some are of no practical use, and most of them are broken.’ He said it so offhandedly, as though when the madness claimed us, a seer was no more than a cartwheel with a broken spar, or a rusted bucket.

‘You, though.’ He turned back to me. ‘From what I hear, you could be of some use. And if you’re working with the resistance,’ he nodded at Piper and Zoe, ‘then there’s even more to be gained from some kind of cooperation.’

‘I’ve told you,’ Piper said, enunciating each syllable slowly. ‘I’m not in charge anymore.’

‘You don’t want to work to stop the tanks, then?’

‘What is it that you think you want from us?’ I interrupted.

The four of us were circling one another, a wary dance amongst the poles, while his soldiers watched from a distance.

‘I need your help,’ he said, ‘to stop your twin and The General, and their pursuit of the machines.’

It seemed absurd. He was a Councillor, soldiers and money at his command, and powerful beyond what any of us, ragged, thin and exhausted, could imagine.

‘You want help?’ Piper said. ‘Then ask your Council cronies.’

The Ringmaster laughed. ‘You really think we’re one big happy family, sitting around the Council chamber backslapping one another?’ He turned from Piper to me. ‘When you were in the Keeping Rooms, who did you think The Reformer was protecting you from? A Councillor’s greatest enemies are those closest to him – those with the most to gain if he slips from power. Look at what happened to The Judge.’