“I’m sure Mistress Lawson will do that when she’s ready,” I interrupt. “Did you want something?”

She lets out a long sigh, as if I’ve disappointed her.

This is how the past eight days have all gone, too. Mistress Coyle refusing to do anything other than what Mistress Coyle wants to do. She keeps herself so busy with the running of the camp – sorting out food, treating the women, spending an awful lot of time with Simone – that there never seems to be a chance to talk about peace. When I do pin her down on the rare occasions I’m not stuck in this stupid bed, she says she’s waiting, that peace can only come at the right moment, that the Spackle will make their move and the Mayor will make his and then and only then can we move in and make peace.

But somehow, it always sounds like peace for some of us and not necessarily everybody else.

“I wanted to talk to you, my girl,” she says, looking me in the eye, maybe seeing if I’ll look away.

I don’t. “I want to talk to you, too.”

“Then let me go first, my girl,” she says.

And then she says something I never expected in a million years.

[TODD]

“Fires, sir,” Mr O’Hare says, not a minute after I hang up with Viola.

“I am not in fact blind, Captain,” the Mayor says, “but thank you once again for pointing out the obvious.”

We’ve stopped on the road back into town from the bloody house cuz there are fires on the horizon. Some of the abandoned farmhouses on the north hill of the valley are burning.

At least I hope they’re abandoned.

Mr O’Hare’s caught up to us with a group of about twenty soldiers, who look as tired as I feel. I watch ’em, reading their Noise. They’re all ages, old and young, but all old in the eyes now. Hardly any of this group wanted to be soldiers but were forced into it by the Mayor, forced from families, from farms and shops and schools.

And then they started seeing death every day.

I am the Circle and the Circle is me, I think again.

I do it all the time now, reaching for the silence, making the thoughts and memories go away, and most of the time it works on the outside, too. People can’t hear my Noise, I can hear ’em not hearing me, just like Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare, and I gotta think that’s part of the reason the Mayor showed me, thinking to make me one of his men.

Like that’s ever gonna happen.

I ain’t told Viola bout it, tho. I don’t know why.

Maybe cuz I ain’t seen her, which is something I’ve hated about the past eight days. She’s stayed up on the hilltop to keep tabs on Mistress Coyle but every time I call she’s in that bed and looking paler and weaker and I know she’s sick and getting sicker and she ain’t telling me about it, probably so I don’t worry, which only makes me worry more cuz if something’s wrong with her, if something happens to her–

I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

And everything calms down a bit.

I ain’t told her. I don’t want her to worry. I got it under control.

Boy colt? Angharrad asks nervously under me.

“It’s okay, girl,” I say. “We’ll be home soon.” I wouldn’t have taken her out if I’d known how bad the scene at the house was gonna be. She only let me back up on her two days ago and she still starts at the slightest snap of a twig.

“I can send men up to fight the fires,” Mr O’Hare says.

“There’d be no point,” the Mayor says. “Let them burn.”

Submit! Juliet’s Joy screeches underneath him at no one in particular.

“I’ve got to get a new horse,” the Mayor mutters.

And then he lifts his head in a way that makes me notice.

“What?” I say.

But he’s looking round, first to the path back to the bloody house, then to the road into town. Nothing’s changed.

Except the look on the Mayor’s face.

“What?” I say again.

“Can you not hear–?”

He stops again.

And then I do hear it–

Noise–

Noise that ain’t human–

Coming from all sides–

Everywhere, like the soldier said–

“They wouldn’t,” the Mayor says, his face pinching with anger. “They wouldn’t dare.”

But I can hear it clearly now–

We’re surrounded, as quickly as that.

Spackle are coming straight for us.

{VIOLA}

What Mistress Coyle says to me is, “I never apologized to you for the bomb at the cathedral.”

I don’t say anything back.

I’m too astonished.

“It wasn’t an attempt to murder you,” she says. “Nor did I think your life was worth less than anyone else’s.”

I swallow hard. “Get out,” I say and I’m surprised at myself. It must be the fever talking. “Right now.”

“I was hoping the President would look through your bag,” she says. “He’d take out the bomb and that would be the end of our problems. But I also thought it would only come into play if you were captured. And if you were captured, you were already likely dead.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make.”

“It was, my girl.”

“If you’d asked me, I might have even said–”

“You’d do nothing that might harm your boy.” She waits for me to contradict her. I don’t. “Leaders must sometimes make monstrous decisions,” she says, “and my monstrous decision was that if your life was likely to be lost on an errand you insisted on taking, then I would at least take the chance, however slim, to make your death worth it.”

I can feel how red my face is getting and I begin to shake from both fever and pure hot anger. “That’s only one way it could have worked out. There are a whole bunch of other things that could have happened, all of which end up with me and Lee blown to bits.”

“Then you would have been a martyr for the cause,” Mistress Coyle says, “and we would have fought in your name.” She looks at me hard. “You’d be surprised at how powerful a martyr can be.”

“Those are words a terrorist would use–”

“Nevertheless, Viola, I wanted to say to you that you were right.”

“I’ve had just about enough–”

“Let me finish,” she says. “It was a mistake, the bomb. Though I may have had good reasons in my desperation to get to him, that’s still not enough to take such a heavy risk with a life that isn’t my own.”

“Damn right–”

“And for that, I’m sorry.”

There’s a silence now as she says the actual words, a heavy silence which lasts, and then lasts some more, and then she makes to leave.

“What do you want here?” I say, stopping her. “Do you really want peace or do you just want to beat the Mayor?”

She arches an eyebrow at me. “Surely one is required for the other.”

“But what if trying for both means you don’t get either?”

“It has to be a peace worth living for, Viola,” she says. “If it just goes back to the way it was before, then what’s the point? Why have any of us died?”

“There’s a convoy of almost 5000 people on the way. It won’t be at all like it was before.”

“I know that, my girl–”

“And think what a powerful position you could be in if you’re the one who helps us make a new truce? Who helps make the world peaceful for them?

She looks thoughtful for a moment, then she runs her hand up the side of the door frame as a way of not looking at me. “I told you once how impressed I was with you. Do you remember that?”

I swallow, because that memory involves Maddy, who was shot while helping me to be impressive. “I do.”

“I still am. Even more than before.” She’s still not looking at me. “I was never a girl here, you know. I was already grown when we landed, and I tried to help found the fishing village with some others.” She purses her lips. “And we failed. The fish ate more of us than we ate of them.”

“You could try again,” I say. “With the new settlers. You said the ocean wasn’t all that far, two days’ ride–”

“One day, really,” she says. “A couple hours on a fast horse. I told you two days because I didn’t want you following me there.”