Francesca Haig - The Forever Ship

Night after night, I had groped after that blast machine. I’d forced myself to reach for it, against every instinct that recoiled at the thought of such a weapon. I’d reached for it, clenching my eyes so tightly that I saw white shapes moving in front of the blackness. It made no difference – however hard I strained to see the place, I felt nothing, or worse, a wavering impression: north one day, and two days later gone altogether, or to the west. My seer’s knack for finding things was failing me. Or the blast machine had broken it, as it would break everything in the end.

‘I’ve got nothing to tell you,’ Zach said. ‘The General ordered the relocation. I never saw the new site. I already told that to your friend Piper, when he came to badger me.’ Zach’s lips tightened at the memory. ‘Him and The Ringmaster together, asking me the same questions, for hours. Trying to scare me, intimidate me. I told them what I’ve told you: I never went there. I don’t know.’

‘You’re lying to me,’ I said.

‘What are you going to do about it?’ he said. ‘Torture me?’ There was a smirk at the edges of his lips.

I banged on the door. While the guards were unbolting it, I kept my hand to the door, pressing my palm hard against the rough wood and trying to stay calm. Zach eyed me appraisingly. He knew that I would share any pain inflicted on him. Last night, when I’d guessed that Piper and The Ringmaster were in here with him, I’d slept with my body half-braced, awaiting the pain. It hadn’t come – but I didn’t know how long I could expect Piper and The Ringmaster to spare me. It didn’t matter that Zach and not I was responsible for his crimes. It made no difference: my body had become an obstacle between the resistance and what we needed to know.

Before I rejoined the others in the main hall, I stood for a moment with my back against the wall of the corridor. The guards were locking the door of Zach’s room again, and I felt my breath slowing with the scrape of each bolt sliding home, but flames still hissed at the edge of my vision. The blast was stalking me. How much longer, I wondered, before I joined Xander in the Kissing Tree, and in his silence? How much longer before I surrendered to the blast?

Piper watched me carefully as I entered the main hall; conversation stopped when I entered.

‘Did you get anything out of him?’ The Ringmaster said.

I shook my head. ‘He says he doesn’t know anything.’

‘Do you believe him?’ asked Zoe.

‘I don’t know,’ I snapped. ‘I can’t read his mind.’

Zoe raised her hands in mock surrender, rolling her eyes. ‘Take it easy. Nobody’s suggesting that the two of you are best friends.’

I busied myself with pouring a cup of water at the side table, so that I could turn away from their stares. The water splashed from my unsteady hands.

Piper picked up his cup and joined me. ‘Zach’s trying to mess with you,’ he said, without looking at me, as he took the jug and filled his cup. He kept his voice low, so the others couldn’t hear. ‘Don’t let him in your head.’

I nodded. But he didn’t know that Zach had never been out of it.

Sally, Elsa, Xander and I sat in the front room of the holding house as the town’s evening noises rattled past the window. Soldiers off duty; the more orderly footsteps of those still on patrol; the voices of passing townsfolk. When I was last in New Hobart, it had taken me a few days to realise why the town sounded strange. It wasn’t only the aftermath of the battle that had left the town damaged and the residents nervy and furtive. Even after the repairs had begun, and people had returned to the streets, the sound of the city remained different. Eventually I’d realised that it was the nearly total absence of children. At Elsa’s house, around the market, and in the streets, only adult voices were to be heard. There was a whole layer of noise missing: the high voices of children’s chatter; the crying of babies; the sudden shout of a child ambushed in a game. The town was far from silent now – thousands of people lived here, and went about the business of their days – but like a dented bell, New Hobart didn’t ring true.

My gaze kept straying to where Xander sat, leaning against Sally’s chair with his eyes closed. I thought of Zach, locked in his cell at the Tithe Collector’s office. Zach was my past, Xander was my future. And ahead of us all: the blast, which would be the end of Elsewhere, and the resistance, and any futures that I could envisage.

Below the large window, another patrol passed – twelve mounted soldiers on their way back from the wall.

Sally saw me watching them.

‘We’ve increased the size of the patrols, since the Council seized Wreckers’ Pass and started picking off the convoys. We’ve set up some permanent outposts on the supply routes, too.’

It wasn’t the size of the patrol that had caught my attention, though. It was the two men in the centre of it, who didn’t wear the same uniform as the rest of The Ringmaster’s soldiers. They wore the blue of the island’s guards, and they were Omegas. The first man’s left arm was a stub, a clawed hand protruding directly from his shoulder. The taller man, behind him, had a hunchback that forced him to lean forward over the pommel of his saddle.

‘They’re patrolling together now?’ I said to Sally.

She nodded. ‘Neither side was that keen on it – The Ringmaster’s men in particular. It was never a decision we made. It just happened. There was the fire in the northern quarter while you were away, and everyone had to pitch in together, to stop the whole town going up in smoke. And at times, they were a few hands short for some of the Alpha patrols. Drafted in a couple of our troops – not without some muttering, on both sides.’

‘But they’ve kept doing it?’ I said, my gaze following the last of the riders as they turned the corner at the top of the hill.

‘Don’t get dreamy-eyed about it,’ Sally said. She took a deep pull of Elsa’s pipe, held the smoke in her mouth for a few seconds. ‘Nobody did it because they wanted to. Like I said: it just happened. Still only happens when a patrol’s shorthanded, or there’s some kind of emergency.’

I nodded, and leaned my face against the window frame to hide my smile. This was how it happened: daily familiarity, not grand gestures. You could only pass a fellow soldier so many times, at shift handover, and see him unbuckle his sword, and grunt about the weather, before you learned that he was a man just like you, no more mysterious or terrifying than that. The Council’s policy of segregation had been a key part of its attempt to stoke tensions between Alphas and Omegas. Sharing a latrine might do more to bring the two together than any inspiring speeches could have done.

‘It’s not all been smooth sailing,’ Elsa said. ‘There’s been bickering, and some big flare-ups, especially since rations got so tight. While you were away at the coast, some of The Ringmaster’s men tried to claim the biggest well, in the market, saying it was for Alpha use only. They were trying to get everyone worked up about it. Muttering about contamination.’

Sally rolled her eyes. ‘We share a womb, but they reckon they’ll catch something if we share a well?’

I knew what she meant, but I also knew that it was because we shared a womb that they flinched from us, not in spite of it – I’d learned that from Zach. Nothing frightened them more than the realisation that we were not so different after all.

‘There were arguments,’ Elsa went on, ‘and more than a couple of fistfights.’

Sally nodded. ‘The Ringmaster came down hard on both sides – he was fair about it, I’ll say that. Didn’t take any nonsense, not from his own soldiers any more than ours.’ She gave a slow chuckle. ‘It was laziness that put an end to the idea though – not discipline, let alone principles. Most of the Alphas quartered on the eastern side of town were too lazy to go across town to the market for water. The whole thing petered out after a few days.’