Francesca Haig - The Forever Ship

‘Didn’t you have anyone else you could turn to?’ I said. ‘You must have your own soldiers. Won’t they protect you?’

‘Against The General?’ he said.

I remembered her: the way she kept her head still while her eyes roamed indifferently over us. How even Zach had obeyed her every command.

Zach continued. ‘Ever since you took New Hobart, The General’s been trying to push me out. She tried to hide it at first, but I knew. She was manoeuvring in the Council, making sure she had the support she needed. Talking more and more about the threat posed by the resistance. By you, especially. Then you drowned the Ark, and I knew it wouldn’t be long. Six nights ago she came for me – sent her soldiers to my chambers before dawn. I wasn’t there – I had a source who tipped me off. I got out through the kitchens, a few hours before the raid, but even then I had to fight my way past a sentry. One of my own soldiers – he said he had orders not to let me leave the fort. Me .’ He closed his eyes and took two breaths. I didn’t know who the anger on his face was aimed at: his soldiers; The General; me.

‘You should have known this was coming,’ The Ringmaster said. ‘You should have known better than to trust her.’

‘And I should have trusted you instead?’ Zach shot back. ‘You, who proved yourself so loyal, so trustworthy?’

‘I’ve been loyal to the principles the Council was supposed to uphold. The taboo. Protecting our people from the machines.’

Zach shrugged impatiently. ‘Everything I’ve done has been for the protection of our people. You’re clinging to superstition, harping on about the taboo. Machines aren’t the real threat – the Omegas are.’

‘The taboo exists for a reason,’ The Ringmaster said. ‘The machines ended the world. They caused the Omegas.’

‘We can harness the machines to help us,’ Zach said. ‘Everything I’ve done – the machines, the tanks – it’s all to protect us from the burden of the Omegas.’

‘And the blast?’ I asked. ‘Are you really stupid enough to think that can be harnessed? That the blast will protect you as well?’

‘If need be,’ Zach said. ‘If that’s what it takes, against the threat of Elsewhere.’

‘You disgust me,’ I said, each word a hiss.

I could not look at him without thinking of the tanks. The blast. The stink of death that came off him, like a rabbit carcass claimed by flies.

‘Then at last you might begin to understand how I’ve always felt about you,’ he said.

I pulled back my fist and swung at him. It wasn’t an impulsive jab; I thought carefully about everything Zoe had taught me. I focused on his right cheekbone, and when I punched I made sure I punched through rather than at it, and I threw my whole weight behind the blow.

He saw me draw my fist back, but he didn’t believe I would really do it. When my knuckles connected with his face, his whole head snapped backwards. Mine did too, the jerk of pain sharp enough that my teeth clashed together as my head recoiled.

I was still staggering slightly as I tried to punch him again, but Piper held me back, his arm tight around my waist, lifting me off my feet. My knuckles were red, but the ache in them was nothing compared to the pain beneath my eye.

Zach had one hand pressed to his face, his other hand raised at me, palm first.

‘You’re insane,’ he said. ‘If you attack me, you’re attacking yourself.’

Piper released me, and I stood close to Zach.

‘You’re the mad one,’ I said. ‘You’re disgusting. You look down on us, think that we’re less than you. But the things that you’ve done—’ I spat at the ground beside him. ‘You’re a monster. A freak.’

He lowered his hand. The skin was already purpling, his eye clenched shut against the hurt.

‘It doesn’t matter what you think of me,’ he said. ‘I’m not here to win you over. It doesn’t make any difference that you hate me.’ He had regained control of his breath now. His voice was measured, his gaze cool. ‘If you don’t take me in, I’m dead. You too. Do you want that?’ He paused. ‘You want it all to be over?’

If he’d asked me that question a few months ago, my answer might have been different. They had been the bleak days, when I’d wandered through the world like a half-dead thing, lost without Kip. But I had found my way back. I had found Kip’s body and set it free, and I had chosen to live. I knew that I would choose it again, now, even if it meant protecting Zach.

I kept my gaze on Zach as I spoke to Piper. ‘I want him shackled, and locked up,’ I said.

The Ringmaster called for the shackles. When his soldiers brought them, I helped Piper with the chain myself, looping it tight around both Zach’s wrists. When my skin touched his, I forced myself not to flinch.

*

Piper sent for Sally. I heard him explaining Zach’s arrival in the corridor. I couldn’t make out her words, but her tone was clear enough. When she came in she looked at Zach, and it was as though winter had come again, settling over her features.

‘I should see to his face,’ she said, her voice cold. ‘If he gets an infection, it’s bad news for Cass.’

His injuries didn’t look dangerous – I’d seen far worse – but he’d taken a beating. Sally pushed him into a chair and stood over him. The tenderness with which I’d seen her care for Xander was completely absent in the way she examined Zach’s face. She touched him only with the tip of her thumb and forefinger, pinching under his chin, pulling his head first one way and then the other to inspect the cuts on his temple and lip. She called for water and cloths, swiping firmly at the swollen flesh until the cloth was a rusted red. ‘Hold this on,’ she said to him, pressing another cloth onto the graze above his eye. Fishing a miniature bone-handled dagger from her boot, she leaned over Zach – he flinched – to flick out gravel embedded in the wound, using the very tip of the knife.

Zach gave a small grunt of pain.

‘You want something to complain about?’ Sally said, keeping her voice low and pressing the knife against the open wound. It was a tiny blade – the same one she used for chopping tobacco, and getting splinters from Xander’s knees. But in Zach’s grated flesh, it was big enough. He winced his eyes shut, and I jerked my head away from my own jab of raw-flesh pain.

‘Get this mad old bitch off me,’ grunted Zach, raising his bound arms to swipe at her.

‘Sally,’ Piper said, his hand on her arm. But she’d already stopped, turning away from Zach.

‘I’m done,’ she said, wiping the tip of the blade and slipping the dagger back into her boot. I watched her, and envied her those words: I’m done. When would I be done with Zach?

The Ringmaster stepped closer to Zach, peering at his face. Sally had cleaned the skin around his wounds, but the rest of his face was still smeared with grime.

‘How far you’ve come,’ The Ringmaster said quietly.

‘Not only me,’ said Zach. ‘You too. It’s a long way from the Council rooms at Wyndham. All those pretty serving girls. Yet here we both are.’

‘There’s a difference between us,’ The Ringmaster said. ‘I had a choice. I came here because I chose to – because I wanted to stand against you and The General, and your obsession with the machines. But you have no choice. You’re here because you need help.’ He gestured around at the rest of us, and the guards at the door. ‘Without their protection – my protection – you’re dead.’

Zach leaned forward, holding out his shackled arms towards The Ringmaster. ‘I might be in chains,’ he said, ‘but we’re both here because we have no choice. The only difference is that I’ve been honest about it. You wouldn’t be here, helping them, if you didn’t need them just as much as I do. You’ve never given something for nothing. Not ever. You’ve been trying to make out that you’re here as the saviour of the Omegas? Here to help the oppressed?’ Zach laughed, a hollow sound, like the clanking of his chains. ‘You’re only here because you were getting sidelined at the Council. You saw that The General and I were gaining power, and that you were being left behind because you refused to be reasonable about the potential of the machines.’ Zach sat back, his chained arms crossed over his chest. ‘You didn’t leave the Council to help the Omegas,’ he said to The Ringmaster. ‘You left because you figured you could capitalise on their uprising as your best chance at overthrowing us, taking back the power for yourself.’