“You shouldn’t go alone at least,” she says. “I’ll come with you–”

“Bradley needs you more than I do,” I say. “Whatever you might not want to find out, he needs you.”

“Viola–”

“It’s not as if I want to go riding into a war zone,” I say, a little softer, trying to apologize now that I realize how scared I am. I look up at the scout ship. “Maybe you could send another probe to follow me?”

Simone looks thoughtful for a moment, then she says, “I’ve got a better idea.”

[TODD]

“We’ve rounded up blankets from the houses nearby,” Mr O’Hare says to the Mayor. “Food, too. We’ll be getting some to you as soon as possible.”

“Thank you, Captain,” says the Mayor. “Make sure you bring enough for Todd as well.”

Mr O’Hare looks up sharply. “Everything’s pretty scarce, sir–”

“Food for Todd,” the Mayor says, more firmly. “And a blanket. It’s getting colder.”

Mr O’Hare takes in a breath that don’t sound too happy. “Yes, sir.”

“For my horse, too,” I say.

Mr O’Hare scowls at me.

“For his horse, too, Captain,” the Mayor says.

Mr O’Hare nods and storms off.

The Mayor’s men have cleared a little area for us at the edge of the camp the army’s made. There’s a fire and space to sit around it and a coupla tents being put up for him and his officers to sleep in. I sit a bit away from him, but close enough to keep watch. I have Angharrad here with me, her head still down, her Noise still silent. I keep petting her and stroking her, but she’s not saying nothing, nothing at all.

So far there ain’t been much to say to the Mayor neither. It’s been one report after another, Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare updating him on this and that. And plain soldiers, too, who keep coming up all shy-like to congratulate him on his victory, seeming to forget he’s the one who caused all this trouble in the first place.

I lean my face into Angharrad. “What do I do now, girl?” I whisper.

Cuz what do I do now? I set the Mayor free and he won the first battle, keeping the world safe for Viola, just like I made him promise.

But he’s got an army that’ll do anything he says, that’ll die for him. What does it matter if I can beat him if there’s all these men who wouldn’t even let me try?

“Mr President?” Mr Tate comes up now, carrying one of the Spackle’s white sticks. “First report on the new weapons.”

“Do tell, Captain,” the Mayor says, looking very interested.

“They seem to be a sort of acid rifle,” Mr Tate says. “There’s a chamber with what looks to be a mixture of two substances, probably botanic.” He moves his hand up the white stick to a hole that’s been cut into it. “Then a kind of ratchet aerates a dose and mixes it with a third substance that’s instantly permeated through a gel via a small incendiary–” Mr Tate points to the end of the stick “–and fired out here, vaporizing yet somehow holding cohesion until it hits its target, at which point–”

“At which point it’s a burning acid corrosive enough to take your arm off,” the Mayor finishes. “Impressive work in a short space of time, Captain.”

“I encouraged our chemists to work quickly, sir,” Mr Tate says with a grin I don’t like.

“What the hell did all that mean?” I ask the Mayor as Mr Tate leaves.

“Didn’t you finish your chemistry in school?”

“You closed the school and burnt all the books.”

“Ah, so I did.” He looks to the hilltop, to the glow we can see up above it in the spray from the waterfall, the glow from the campfires of the Spackle army. “They used to be just hunters and collectors, Todd, with some limited wild farming. Not exactly scientists.”

“Which means what?”

“Which means,” he says, “that our enemy has spent the thirteen years since the last war listening to us, learning from us, no doubt, on this planet of information.” He taps his chin. “I wonder how they learn. If they’re all part of some larger single voice.”

“If you hadn’t killed all the ones in town,” I say, “you coulda asked.”

He ignores me. “All of which adds up to the fact that our enemy gets more formidable by the moment.”

I frown. “You sound almost happy.”

Captain O’Hare comes back over to us, his hands full and his face sour. “Blankets and food, sir,” he says. The Mayor nods towards me, forcing Mr O’Hare to hand them over to me himself. He does and then storms away again, tho like Mr Tate, you can’t hear his Noise to see what’s making him so mad.

I spread the blanket over Angharrad, but she still ain’t saying nothing. Her wound is healing already so it ain’t that. She just stands there, head down, staring at the ground, not eating, not drinking, not responding to nothing I do.

“You could tie her up with the other horses, Todd,” the Mayor says. “She’d at least be warmer that way.”

“She needs me,” I say. “I gotta stick by her.”

He nods. “Your loyalty is admirable. A fine quality I’ve always noticed in you.”

“Seeing as you don’t got none at all?”

In reply, all he does is smile that smile again, that one that makes you want to knock his head right off. “You should eat and sleep while you can, Todd. You never know when the battle will need you.”

“A battle you started,” I say. “We wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t–”

“Here we go again,” he says, his voice sharper. “It’s time you stopped whining about what might have been and start thinking about what is.”

And this makes me a little mad–

And so I look at him–

And I think about what is–

I think about him falling in the ruins of the cathedral after I blasted him with Viola’s name. I think about him shooting his own son without even pausing for thought–

“Todd–”

I think about him watching Viola struggle under the water in the Office of the Ask as he tortured her. I think about my ma talking about him in her journal when Viola read it to me and what he did to the women of old Prentisstown–

“That isn’t true, Todd,” he says. “That’s not what happened–”

I think about the two men who raised me, who loved me, and how Cillian died on our farm to buy me time to escape and how Davy shot Ben on the roadside for doing exactly the same thing. I think about Manchee, my brilliant bloody dog, dying after saving me, too–

“Those were nothing to do with me–”

I think about the fall of Farbranch. I think about the people there being shot while the Mayor watched. I think about–

I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME.

He sends it, hard, straight into the middle of my head.

“Stop that!” I yell, flinching back.

“You give too much away, Todd Hewitt,” he snaps, finally almost angry. “How do you ever expect to lead men if you broadcast every last sentiment?”

“I don’t expect to lead men,” I spit back.

“You were going to lead this army when you had me tied up, and if that day comes again, you’ll need to keep your own counsel, now won’t you? Have you kept up your practice with what I taught you?”

“I don’t want nothing you could teach me.”

“Oh, but you do.” He steps closer. “I’ll say it to you as often as it takes you to believe it: there’s power in you, Todd Hewitt, power that could rule this planet.”

“Power that could rule you.”

He smiles again, but it’s white hot. “Do you know how I keep my Noise from being heard, Todd?” he says, his voice all twisty and low. “Do you know how I keep everyone from hearing every last secret I’ve got?”

“No–”

He leans forward. “With as little effort as possible.”

And I’m saying, “Get back!” but–

There it is again, right in my head, I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME–

But this time it’s different–

There’s a lightness–

A breath-stealing feeling–

A weightlessness to it that makes my stomach rise–

“I give you a gift,” he says, his voice floating thru my head like a cloud on fire. “The same gift I’ve given to my captains. Use it. Use it to defeat me. I dare you.”