Something that might actually make us work together.

I wish I felt better, though. Peace is here, real peace, all that I wanted, but my head throbs so much and my cough is so bad–

“Viola?” Bradley asks, concern in his voice.

And then, down the road, I see Todd running to meet us and my fever is so bad it feels like he’s surfing here on a wave of cheering and the world goes really bright for a second and I have to close my eyes and Todd is next to me, his hands reaching up–

“I can’t hear you,” I say.

And I fall right out of Acorn’s saddle and into his arms–

[TODD]

“This glorious new day,” the Mayor’s voice booms. “This day where we have beaten our enemy and begun a new era!”

And the crowd below us cheers.

“I’ve had just about enough of this,” I mutter to Bradley, holding Viola next to me on the bench where we’re sitting. We’re up on a cart, in front of a square filled with people, the Mayor’s face not just in the hovering projeckshun behind us but on the sides of two buildings as well. Another thing he figured out how to do on his own. Bradley’s frowning as the Mayor rabbits on. Mistress Coyle and Simone are on the other side of us, frowning even harder.

I feel Viola turn her head. “Yer awake,” I say.

“Was I sleeping?” she says. “Why didn’t anybody put me to bed?”

“Exactly,” I say. “The Mayor said you had to be here first, but he’s got about two more seconds before I–”

“Our peacemaker has recovered!” the Mayor says, looking back at us. He’s got a microphone in front of him, but I’m pretty sure he don’t even need it. “Let’s give her the thanks she’s owed for saving our lives and ending this war!”

And it suddenly feels like we’re drowning in the rising ROAR of the crowd.

“What’s going on?” Viola says. “Why’s he talking about me like that?”

“Because he needs a hero that isn’t me,” Mistress Coyle hisses.

“Not forgetting of course the very formidable Mistress Coyle,” the Mayor says. “Who was so helpful in my campaign against the Spackle insurgency.”

Mistress Coyle’s face goes so red it looks like you could fry eggs on it. “Helpful?” she practically spits.

But you can hardly hear her over the Mayor.

“Before I hand you over to the mistress for her own address to you,” the Mayor says, “I have an announcement to make. One that I especially wanted Viola to hear.”

“What announcement?” Viola says to me.

“No idea,” I say.

And I really don’t know.

“We’ve made a breakthrough,” the Mayor says. “This very day we have made a breakthrough on the terrible, unanticipated problem of the identification bands.”

I grip Viola harder without meaning to. The crowd’s fallen silent, as silent as it can get. The probes are sending this back to the hilltop, too. The Mayor has every human on this planet listening to him.

And he says, “We’ve found a cure.”

“WHAT?” I shout, but I’m already being drowned out by the uproar.

“How appropriate that this should come on our day of peace,” the Mayor’s saying. “How wonderful and blessed that on the threshold of a new era, I can also announce to you that the sickness of the bands is over!”

He’s talking up into the probes now, straight back to where most of the women are sick, to where the mistresses haven’t been able to heal ’em.

“There’s no time to waste,” he says. “We’ll begin distributing the cure without delay.”

Then he turns back to me and Viola again. “And we’ll start with our very own peacemaker.”

{VIOLA}

“He’s taken all the credit!” Mistress Coyle shouts, stomping around the healing room of the scout ship as we fly back. “He had them eating out of his hands!”

“You’re not even going to try the cure?” Bradley says.

Mistress Coyle looks at him like he’s just asked her to take off all her clothes. “You honestly think he just discovered it? He’s had it all along! If it’s even a cure at all and not another little time bomb.”

“But why would he do that,” Bradley says, “if curing all the women makes him even more popular?”

“He’s a genius,” Mistress Coyle says, still ranting. “Even I have to admit that. He’s a bloody, terrible, savage, brutal genius.”

“What do you think, Viola?” Lee asks from the next bed.

I can only cough by way of answer. Mistress Coyle stepped in front of me when the Mayor tried to give me the new bandages and refused to let him touch me with them until she and the other mistresses tested them thoroughly first.

And the crowds booed her, actually booed.

Especially when the Mayor brought up three women with bands. Three women with no signs of infection at all. “We haven’t figured out a way to remove the bands safely yet,” the Mayor said, “but the early results are obvious.”

Things kind of disintegrated from there and Mistress Coyle didn’t even get to give her speech, though they probably would have kept booing her anyway. After we got off the cart, Todd said he didn’t know any more than we did. “Mistress Coyle can do her tests,” he said to me, “and I’ll see what I can find out.”

But he was gripping my arms tight, whether in hope or fear, I don’t know.

Because I couldn’t hear him.

The rest of us finally went back to the scout ship, Mistress Lawson coming with us to help test the Mayor’s cure.

“I don’t know what to believe,” I say now, “only that it would be in his interests to save us.”

“So we have to base our decision on what suits him best?” Mistress Coyle says. “Brilliant, just brilliant.”

“We’re coming in for a landing,” Simone says over the comm system.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Mistress Coyle says. “When we’re on that council together, he’ll learn that his days of out-manoeuvring me are over.” There’s a judder as we touch down. “And now,” she says, her voice burning with heat, “I’ve got my own speech to give.”

Before the engines are even properly off, she’s marched out of the room, down the bay door and into the crowds that wait for us, crowds I can see on the monitors.

She’s greeted by a few cheers.

But only a few.

And nothing at all like what the Mayor got back in town.

And then this crowd, led by Ivan and other voices, begins to boo her, too.

[TODD]

“Why would I harm the women?” the Mayor says to me across the campfire, as night begins to fall on his day of glory. “Even if you still somehow believe I’m bent on killing every one of them, why would I do it now at my moment of biggest triumph?”

“Why didn’t you tell me, tho?” I say. “That you were so close to a cure?”

“Because I didn’t want to risk your disappointment if I failed.”

He looks at me for a long time, trying to read me, but I’m so good at it now I don’t think even he can hear me.

“Can I make a guess at what you believe?” he finally says. “I think you want to get that cure to Viola as soon as possible. I think you’re worried Mistress Coyle won’t move fast enough on her tests because she won’t want me to be right.”

And I do think this. I do.

I want the cure to be true so bad I could almost choke.

But it’s the Mayor.

But it could save Viola.

But it’s the Mayor–

“I also think you want to believe me,” he says. “That I’d really do this for real. If not for her, then for you.”

“Me?” I say.

“I think I’ve figured out your special talent, Todd Hewitt. Something that should have been obvious from the behaviour of my son.”

My stomach tenses, with anger, with grief, like it always does when Davy’s mentioned.

“You made him better,” the Mayor continues, his voice soft. “You made him smarter and kinder and more aware of the world and his place in it.” He sets down his coffee cup. “And whether I like it or not, you’ve done the same for me.”