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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.’
‘Why would we help you manoeuvre against them?’ Piper said. ‘You’ve only come to us because you’re being edged out of power, and you’re desperate.’
‘Edged out of power?’ The Ringmaster met Piper’s gaze. ‘You’d know how that feels.’
I interrupted him. ‘You chose to work with them, before the machines drove you apart. Why would we work with somebody who hates Omegas?’
‘Because I can offer your people a better life than the tanks. The refuge system has worked well for decades, as a humane way of dealing with the Omega problem. Maintained by tithes, it’s a workable solution. Without your brother and The General, things could continue the way they used to.’
‘That’s why I could never work with you,’ I said. ‘There isn’t an Omega problem. Only those problems that the Council’s created for us: the tithes. Pushing us further and further out, to land where nothing will grow. The branding, and all the other restrictions that make it nearly impossible to live.’
‘That’s all immaterial now. We both know the only thing that matters is stopping the tanks.’
‘Then why didn’t you just come with more soldiers,’ I said, ‘and take me back to Wyndham? With me as your prisoner, you know you could force Zach to do whatever you like.’
‘I would have, if I’d thought it would do me any good. Thought about killing you, too, to take him out altogether.’ He was as unapologetic as his blade itself, whose indentation I could still feel on my throat. ‘A few months ago, it might have worked. But it’s bigger than your brother, now. He allied himself too closely to The Confessor. Now she’s gone, it’s weakened his standing. The General’s been around for longer than him; she’s better established on the Council. When the two of them killed The Judge, she grabbed power, and she’s not going to let it go. If I threaten The Reformer, or even kill him, it’s not going to put a stop to this. And if The General even suspected that we were using you as a hostage to control your twin, she’d kill him herself.’
Before I escaped from Wyndham, Zach had said to me: I’ve started something, and I need to finish it. But he was caught up now, as if trapped in the workings of one of his own machines.
‘Anyway,’ The Ringmaster went on, ‘you’re more use to me out here, as a contact with the resistance.’
‘I won’t be used.’
I was thinking of Piper, and what he’d said to me, just a few days ago: It’s your job to endure the visions. And it’s mine to decide how we can use them. I was tired of men who saw me as a tool to be wielded.
‘We could benefit each other,’ said The Ringmaster. ‘We want the same thing.’
‘No we don’t.’ This accusation cut me more than his blade had done. ‘You want to be rid of us, just like Zach does – you just disapprove of his methods.’
‘Perhaps our goals diverge eventually, but right now, we both want to stop what’s happening with the tanks. So the question is, how important is that to you?’
‘I won’t help you.’
Piper talked over me. ‘If we were to help you, what could you offer us in exchange?’
‘Information. The kind of insider details that could help the resistance to stop the tankings. The General and The Reformer might be freezing me out, but I still have access that you could only dream of.’
‘Information alone’s no good to us, if we can’t even act on it,’ I said. ‘There might have been a time when secret information-gathering and hiding away was enough. But our people have bled and died on the island. If you want to stop the tankings, you need to rally those soldiers loyal to you, and help us.’
‘You ask too much,’ he said. ‘If I take arms against your brother and The General, it’s open war. People will die – yours as well as mine.’
‘People have already died,’ I said. ‘And more are going to be tanked – all Omegas, eventually. It’s worse than death.’
‘I’m willing to help you stop it. Why won’t you do the same?’ His voice was persuasive – I could imagine him holding forth in the Council Hall. ‘These machines are powerful in ways we can’t even understand. Who knows what the tanking could do to us?’
He was looking me in the eyes and I knew his concern was real. But I also knew that he only feared for the Alphas. His ‘us’ didn’t include the Omegas in the tanks. We were nothing more than the background noise. And I reminded myself, too, that he controlled much of the army. I thought of the soldiers I’d seen in New Hobart, whipping an Omega prisoner until the flesh of his back split like overripe fruit. I thought of the soldiers who had attacked the island. Had they reported to him, followed his orders?
‘You should be against the tanks because it’s wrong to torture people by keeping them underwater and half-dead,’ I said. ‘Because it’s an unspeakable crime. Not because of your fear of what the machines could do. Not because of the taboo.’
‘I’m not without compassion,’ he said. ‘Stopping the machines benefits Omegas too. Your people, more than anyone else, are victims of what the machines wrought.’ He looked pointedly at Piper’s left shoulder. ‘I’m not one of the idiots who swallows the Council line about Omegas as evil deviants. I understand that you’re more to be pitied than hated.’
‘We don’t want your pity, or need it,’ said Piper. ‘We need your help. Your swords, and your soldiers.’
‘We both know that can’t happen.’
‘Then we have nothing further to talk about,’ I said.
He scanned my face. I didn’t look away.
‘You’ll change your mind,’ he said. ‘When you do, come to me.’
He made to turn away, but I called after him.
‘You want us to trust you,’ I said, ‘but you haven’t even told us your real name.’
‘You know my name,’ he said.
‘Not your Council name. Your real name.’
‘I already told you.’ His voice was granite – it yielded nothing. ‘What would it change, if I told you the name my parents gave to me? Why would that be any truer than the name I chose for myself?’
I refused to be dismissed by him. ‘Why choose The Ringmaster then?’ I said.
He raised his chin slightly, appraising me.
‘When I was a child,’ he said, ‘a minstrel show came through our town. They put on a hell of a show: not just bards, but jugglers and acrobats too. A horse that danced on its hind legs to the music, and a man who’d trained snakes to crawl all over his body. It felt like half the town turned out to watch. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. But when everyone else was oohing and aahing at the dancing horse, and the man who walked on stilts, I was watching the man who introduced them. I saw how he got us hyped up for each act, and how he jumped in to cut an act short if it wasn’t grabbing us. He orchestrated the whole thing. The performers were impressive enough, in their own way, but the Ringmaster was the one running the show. He had the audience performing like that dancing horse, by the end, and they filled his hat with coins without thinking twice.
He bent closer, as if he were telling me a secret. ‘I never wanted to be the man on stilts, or the snake-charmer. I wanted to be the Ringmaster: the one who makes things happen. That’s what I am now. You’d do well to remember it.’
He stepped back, and began to walk away to where his soldiers waited, barely visible in the darkness.
‘Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now,’ Zoe shouted at his back.
‘That’s what your twin would do,’ he said, turning to me. ‘The Reformer would have a knife in my back before I got three paces away.’ He gave a grin – the quick twist of the mouth, a flash of teeth like the glint of a blade. ‘I suppose it’s a question of how alike you are.’
And it was a kind of courage, to turn his back on us and take those steps. His soldiers were too far away to help him. His death would be a matter of moments. I knew exactly how Piper would draw back his arm. The precise movement with which he would throw the knife: his arm straightening; the knife not tossed but released, unwavering, to bury itself in the back of The Ringmaster’s neck.
‘Don’t do it.’ I grabbed Piper’s raised arm, his muscles taut beneath my fingertips. He didn’t shift when I wrapped my hands around his forearm. His knife was poised, his eyes following The Ringmaster’s path amongst the broken ghosts of poles. Next to him, Zoe had a knife raised too, assessing the soldiers waiting beyond The Ringmaster.
‘Give me one good reason why he should live,’ said Piper.
‘No.’
He looked down at me, as if hearing me for the first time.
‘I’m not going to play that game,’ I went on. ‘It’s the same thing you asked me on the island, when the others wanted me dead. I won’t do it – trading lives, weighing lives against others.’
‘He’s a risk to us, now,’ Piper said. ‘It’s not safe to let him live. And he’s a Councillor, for crying out loud. A terrible man.’
All of that was true, but I still didn’t release Piper’s arm.
‘The world’s full of terrible people. But he came to talk, not to harm us. What gives us the right to kill him, and his twin?’
In the silence that followed, The Ringmaster’s words rang in my head: I suppose it’s a question of how alike you are.
The Ringmaster had almost reached his soldiers when Piper shook free of my arm and strode after him.
‘Wait,’ Piper commanded.
The soldiers rushed to surround The Ringmaster, who had turned back to face Piper. The swordsmen had their weapons raised. Even the archer, his right hand still clutching the knife hilt buried in his shoulder, had drawn a dagger from his belt and raised it towards Piper with his shaking left hand.
‘You have something of ours,’ Piper said, leaning forward and calmly pulling Zoe’s blade from the archer’s flesh. The man inhaled sharply and gave a strangled curse, but under The Ringmaster’s impassive gaze he didn’t retaliate, just pressed his hand tighter against the wound. Fresh blood surged between his fingers and spilled down his knuckles.
The Ringmaster nodded once at Piper, then looked beyond him to me.
‘When you change your mind, come to me,’ he said. Then he turned and walked away, calling his soldiers to follow him.
CHAPTER 6 (#ulink_0ad13f78-c742-5888-a12f-e43ef5d5dec0)
‘You need to learn to fight,’ Zoe said the next morning. Piper was on lookout, and Zoe and I were supposed to be resting, but our encounter with The Ringmaster had left us both edgy.
‘I can’t,’ I said.
‘Nobody’s suggesting that you’re going to become some kind of super-assassin,’ she said. ‘But Piper and I haven’t got time to save you every five minutes.’
‘I don’t want to kill.’ I remembered the blood smell from the battle of the island, and how each death had been doubled for me, my visions showing me not just those slain in the battle, but also their twins, ambushed by their own deaths.
‘You don’t have a choice,’ she said. ‘People like The Ringmaster – they’re going to keep coming for you. You need to be able to defend yourself. And I can’t always be here. Piper either.’
‘I hate the idea of it,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to kill. Not even Council soldiers. What about their twins?’
‘You think I enjoy it?’ said Zoe quietly.
I was silent for a few moments. Finally, I said, ‘I won’t fight unless I’m being attacked.’
‘Only a few times a week, then, the way you’re going lately.’
When she raised one eyebrow like that, she reminded me of Kip.
‘Get out your knife,’ she said.
From its sheath at my belt, I pulled the dagger that Piper had given to me on the island. It was about as long as my forearm, the blade sharp on both sides, and narrowing to a vicious point. The hilt was wrapped in leather, wound tightly and sweat-darkened to almost black.
‘Could I learn to throw it, like you and Piper?’
She laughed, taking the dagger from me. ‘You’d be more likely to take your own ear off. This isn’t a throwing knife, anyway – not balanced right.’ She spun it casually between her forefinger and thumb. ‘And I’m not giving you any of my knives. But you can learn some basics, so you won’t be completely useless if we’re not around to save you.’
I looked up at her. Despite our arguments, it was hard to imagine her not being around. Her sarcastic asides were as familiar to me now as her wide shoulders, her restless hands. When we sat around the fire at night, the flick of her blade on her fingernails was as normal as the cicadas’ rasping.
‘Are you thinking of leaving?’
She shook her head but dodged my eyes.
‘Tell me the truth,’ I said.
‘Just concentrate,’ she said. ‘You need to learn this stuff.’ She tossed my dagger on the ground. ‘You won’t need that for now. And forget about high-kicks or backflips or any of that dramatic-looking stuff. Most of the time it’s grappling, close and ugly. There’s nothing pretty about fighting.’
‘I know that,’ I said. I’d seen it on the island: the clumsiness of desperation. Swords slipping in bloodied hands. Bodies that became slashed sacks, emptied of blood.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Then we can get started.’
For the first few hours, she wouldn’t let me use my blade at all. Instead, she showed me how to use my elbows and knees to strike in close quarters. She showed me how to drive my elbow backwards into the guts of an attacker holding me from behind, and how to throw my head back and upwards to connect with his nose. She taught me how to bring my knee up to bury it sharply in an assailant’s groin, and how to throw my whole body weight behind the sideways jab of an elbow to the jaw.
‘Don’t hit at somebody,’ she said, ‘or you’ll make no impact. Hit through them. You have to follow through. Aim for a spot six inches under the skin.’
I was sweaty and tired by the time she let me try with the knife. Even then, at first she didn’t teach me anything but defence: how to block a strike with my blade, shielding my hand with the hilt. How to stand side-on so that I presented a smaller target, and to keep my knees bent, legs wide, so that I couldn’t easily be knocked over.
Then she got to the blade itself. How to strike without signalling it beforehand. How to go for the arteries between groin and thigh. How to make a low slash at the stomach, and how to twist the blade on the way out.
‘I don’t want to know this,’ I said, grimacing.
‘You’re enjoying it,’ she said. ‘For once you’re not slouching around. You haven’t looked this animated in weeks.’
I wondered if it were true. There was a satisfaction in the mastery of each move, in feeling the actions become familiar. But at the same time I was repulsed by the idea of gutting anyone. Could actions and their consequences be so neatly separated? The movements permitted no uncertainty, and no ambiguity: you did them. That was it. All morning we’d repeated them, again and again. It was comforting, in the same way that biting my nails was comforting: a mindless action that gave some respite from thought. But when I bit my nails, all I ended up with was my own fingers raw-tipped and sore. The routines Zoe was teaching me would leave a body sundered, robbed of blood. Somewhere a twin, too, would bleed out, and it would be my hand dealing that double death.
Zoe resumed the fighting stance, waiting for me to mirror her.
‘There’s no point if you don’t practise,’ she said. ‘It needs to be so that your knife’s in your hand before you realise you need it. It needs to feel seamless – so it comes to you without thinking.’
I’d seen how she and Piper moved, and fought – their bodies fluid, not responding to their thoughts but becoming their thoughts. It was true what she’d said – There’s nothing pretty aboutfighting – and I knew that however striking Zoe’s and Piper’s movements, the results were the same: blood, death. Flies swarming on sticky bodies. But I still found myself admiring the certainty of their bodies as they inscribed their answers on the world with a blade.
It was past noon when we stopped.
‘Enough,’ she said, when I clumsily blocked her final parry. ‘You’re tired. That’s how stupid mistakes happen.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, as I slipped my knife back into my belt. I smiled at her.
She shrugged. ‘It’s in my interests to give you a better chance of getting yourself out of trouble, for a change.’ She was already walking away. She was a door, forever slamming shut in my face.
‘Why are you like this?’ I called after her. ‘Why do you always have to cut me down and stalk off?’
She looked back at me.
‘What do you want from me?’ she said. ‘You want me to hold your hand, and braid your hair? Have we not given you enough, me and Piper?’
