Chapter Five:

Pay the Piper

"So what you gonna get me for my birthday, Pigpiss?" Davy Prentiss asked as he rode with Todd the on their way to the Office of the Ask to prepare for another torturous day of banding. Their horses kept step with one another as the sunrise began to shimmer over a sultry-red sky. "It's this Saturday, you know."

Davy threw a sunflower seed at Todd's head when he didn't respond. Todd didn't talk much at all anymore. Didn't think much, neither.

"Some friend you are," Davy said, throwing a handful of seeds this time. "Doesn't even know when his best mate's birthday is."

"I don't even know what month we're in," Todd said absently. Every day felt as hellish as the last. "And since when are we best mates?"

Davy soured. He was on speaking terms with plenty of the other soldiers, but they were mostly older and he didn't really think of them as friends.

"We ain't got no other friends, Pigpiss. Makes us best mates by default."

Davy watched as Todd's Noise turned to thoughts of his precious Viola. He squashed it down with another round of I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME, washing away the thoughts he might otherwise be having.

Davy frowned. That I AM THE CIRCLE stuff just didn't work for him. His Pa had tried to teach it to him, but he had soon given up, saying that Davy lacked the necessary concentration. When Davy had asked his Pa if he could take the Cure like the rest of New Prentisstown's soldiers, his father had told him that he was welcome to the Cure if he wanted it, but that a real man proved himself by controlling his Noise. Of course that had been meant as a challenge, and so Davy had stayed clear of the Cure. Not that it mattered now; his Pa had restricted most of his soldiers Cure as punishment for their constant failings. Davy joked with Todd that he'd be surprised if there were a handful of men still taking the Cure by the end of the week.

"Ain't much I could give you, anyway," Todd said eventually, drifting out of his self-induced trance. "You're the Mayor's son, you can already have whatever you want."

Davy scoffed. "I wish someone would tell Pa that. Does it look like I'm living the high life? He treats me worse than a woman half of the time."

Todd didn't disagree. "You gonna tell me what all that was about yesterday? You storming out of the House of Healing and leaving me with all the work?"

Davy spat a sunflower shell out onto the ground. "I don't know, man. I'd just had enough. Aren't you sick of listening to girls crying and screaming and telling you what a bad person you are?"

Davy saw Todd's mind turn back to the bands. Davy's did, too, to one band in particular; 1595, the number burned into his mind as though by a hot poker.

"Who is that?" Todd asked. "She's been showing up in your Noise ever since we left the Cathedral. Why is she so important?"

"She ain't," Davy barked. "I thought she was a nice bit of skirt, is all. Not that you'd have noticed; you've only got eyes for that filly of yours."

"She's a good horse," Todd said, stroking Angharrad's mane.

"I weren't talking about your horse."

Pictures of Viola flared again in Todd's Noise, along with her laugh and the funny noise she had made as she'd been shot.

"She ain't my nothing," Todd said over the racket. "You shut up about her."

"You shut up, Pigpiss, or I'll crack your neck off your shoulders," Davy said, though his heart wasn't in it. "You don't mither me about what goes on in my head, and I won't mither you about your precious space girl. Deal?"

"You don't say her name. You ain't got the right."

Davy grimaced. He saw in Todd's Noise what a small, insignificant figure he had made at the foot of the hill when he had shot Viola. It had been quite a shot. Davy's impulse was to brag about the achievement, but he stopped himself. It had not really been an achievement at all.

~oOo~

As Lana was eating dinner that afternoon Helena came to fetch her, saying there was a soldier at the door waiting to see her. Thinking it might be Avery, she hurried to the door in her nightdress to find that it was Captain Collins. Lana immediately imagined the worst.

"Your sister's okay," Collins said, reading her face. "You might want to go and change into something a little more appropriate. The President wants to see you."

Lana's hands shook as she changed into a long skirt and top, fearing that she like so many others would never return.

"Keep your head up, my girl," Helena said as she walked her to the door, "and your ears open while you're with that man. Anything you learn might be useful when you come back."

"If I come back," Lana said. She wanted to say more; here she was, frightened for her life, and yet all this woman could think of was getting information for her own ends. Helena sensed her upset, and spoke.

"Think of every woman who's suffered, every family which has been separated, every Spackle enslaved, every man imprisoned for refusing to comply with the President's new regime. Doesn't it make you want to do something?"

"Of course it does," Lana said. "But what can I do? I'm just a bloody seamstress."

"A seamstress with access to the President," Helena said. "There are no other women in town who can boast as much. Keep your eyes and ears open, my love. You'll be back home before you know it."

This isn't home, Lana thought as she followed Captain Collins through town, past the site of the first bomb. There was nothing much left now; most of the structure had been removed as an eyesore, and only a few pillars were left standing in amongst the ashes, jutting out of the ground like blackened bones.

She felt as though her heart might explode as she was lead into the President's office. Prentiss made for quite the figure, sat beneath a stained glass window in the Cathedral. The reflections from the painted glass on his white suit turned him into a living kaleidoscope as he stood up to greet her.

"Ah, Lana," he said, as though they had known each other all their lives. "Please, take a seat."

Lana did so, visibly shaking. He was completely Noiseless. Lana imagined that if anyone's thoughts were to be on display, it would be better for everyone if they were his.

"Captain Collins tells me that you are skilled with a needle," the President said. His accent was clean and serrated, a diamond-hard version of her own. Whatever hints of the old Prentisstown slurry he had once had had been bleached out of his voice. "I'd heard good things about Haven's Tailor. It's unfortunate that she was conspiring with the Answer. I trust you'll make a fine replacement. You did such fantastic work for my Officers of the Ask that I thought I'd procure your services once again. I'll be needing a General's uniform in white."

Lana looked up at him with real terror.

"Why would you need a General's uniform?"

Prentiss let out a crisp, inauthentic laugh. "Well, one can never be too prepared."

Prentiss handed her paper and a pencil. Lana's hands shook as she began to sketch. After a few crumpled pages of work she had something which she thought decent enough to show to the President.

"This would do nicely," Prentiss said, studying her illustrations. "The white with the gold stripe down the sleeve is particularly striking."

"Yes, but it's impractical," Lana interrupted, getting carried away as it she so often did when it came to her work. She began to shade in the sketch. "You can't— at least, you shouldn't— wear white in a war zone. You'll stick out like a sore thumb, and the battlefield is hardly the cleanest place. The uniform should be dark, like this."

"You seem quite the war-monger. What colour would you suggest?"

"Khaki. Or even better, camouflage print; that's what soldiers fighting out in the fields wore back on Old World. I have books back home filled with illustrations…"

She stopped herself at the mention of her home. Her mind raced with the memory of him riding his white stallion through the wreckage of Farbranch. Some part of her worried that Prentiss had recognized her from the massacre and was just feigning ignorance. He had a way of looking at her which made her feel as though he knew everything about her. The President only smiled.

"I'm thinking navy over camouflage," he said. "One must keep up appearances even in the trenches. I'll be needing two; one to wash, and one to wear, if it's not too much trouble. And you'll be needing measurements, of course."

He withdrew a tape measure from his desk. Lana took his measurements, a thing she had done a thousand times before, but there was an intimacy to the practice which she did not want to experience with Prentiss. He had insisted that all mirrors be removed from the Houses of Healing lest the women inside give way to vanity, but had no problem with admiring his reflection in the full-length mirror propped up against the bookcase. Lana steadied her shaking hands. He was a towering figure, and her breath hitched in her throat just to be close to him. He smelled like cedarwood and rose water.

"Can I ask you something, sir?" Lana said, continuing to pin the side of his jacket. "Have you heard what's been happening at the House of Healing? Between the soldiers and the women?"

"I've heard allegations, yes."

Lana spiked at his choice of words. What were mere 'allegations' to him was daily life for the women of New Prentisstown.

"The allegations are true," she said. "I've witnessed what's been going on first-hand, and it's been awful; girls being dragged from their beds, or coming home with frostbite after being stripped to nearly nothing and made to stand out in the cold for not following the rules on dress. It's been awful, sir, ever since Captain Hammar took over from Captain Tate. We'd really appreciate it if you could intervene on our behalf."

Prentiss went on smiling at himself in the mirror. "I leave it to the discretion of my Captains to decide what punishments are appropriate for what offences."

"But not rape, sir. Not torture. You promised at the rally that you would make New Prentisstown a safe place for everyone."

"You'll have to take it up with Captain Hammar, I'm afraid. I cannot be in a thousand places at once."

He seemed to neither understand nor care what horrors were being committed within his town. Lana remembered what he had done to the women of his own town, and wondered why she had been surprised at all.

When the measurements were done, the President held out a white-gloved hand to Lana. Knowing it would be safest to appease him, she shook his hand and was surprised by the gentleness of his grip.

"Mr. Collins will take you to the Tailor's where you can collect whatever supplies you might need. I look forward to seeing the fruits of your labour."

Lana followed Collins out into the street. When they were a reasonable distance from the Cathedral she asked,

"Do you think he knows?"

Collins blew air through his cheeks. "Maybe. Maybe not. You and Avery do look similar. He didn't say nothing about it, though, so maybe he just doesn't care."

Once they had collected the supplies for the uniforms, Collins did not lead her back to the dormitories; instead he led her to the soldier's bunkhouses. He banged on the nearest door, Avery answered. She flung herself into her sister's arms.

Lana held her close. It was the first time they had seen each other since before Lana had been banded.

"Your sister has something to tell you," Collins said. Avery's eyes filled with tears.

"Alex," Avery said, choking on the word. "It's Alex."

The two sisters sat taking outside the bunkhouse for a long time. Avery eventually did speak, explained to her sister how she had appealed to the President for information on Alex, and how the special relationship she'd thought that they shared had fallen apart.

"You stay away from that man," Lana said. "I warned you before, Prentiss is a monster."

Avery nodded, looking down at the ground, stroking gently at the brand which had been placed upon her sister's arm, the wound an irritated pink colour. How could she live with herself, knowing what she had been a part of? Lana brushed her fingers away.

"I know who saved me and took me to the Houses of Healing," she said. "It was the President's son."

"Who, Davy?" Avery gasped, remembering the way he would rage against the Spackle and anyone else who got in his way before the Spackle had all been killed. Davy Prentiss did not seem like the saving kind. Lana wanted to tell her sister more, but fate intervened in the form of Ivan Farrow.

"Now there's a sight for sore eyes," Ivan called as he swaggered towards them. His Noise was jumpy and erratic, the kind Lana had come to recognize in men who were being weaned off of the Cure. "Shouldn't you be rotting in Farbranch?"

"Screw you, Ivan," Lana said, her panic overtaken by her anger. Ivan pointed a finger in her face.

"Don't make me break that nose again, little girl. I'm not sure if you could take another hit."

"Leave it, Farrow," Collins interrupted.

"It's alright, Captain," Lana smiled. "I'd be tetchy too, if the President had taken all my Cure."

Ivan flashed a threat at her with his Noise. "Does the President know you're here?"

"The President knows exactly what he needs to," Collins intervened. "Now stop arguing with little girls and get back to work."

Ivan was not listening. His eyes were locked onto Lana, and there was a look of gleeful triumph there.

"You know Davy Prentiss, don't you?" Ivan asked. "He sure knows you. The boys at the Office of the Ask say Davy's smitten with some blonde with a busted up nose. Now that I know you've been sneaking around New Prentisstown…"

Farrow grabbed Lana's arm and pulled up her sleeve to reveal the number etched there.

"1595," Ivan read. "It's a match. You've been running through his Noise all day, the soldiers said. Seems like he's taken a real shine to you. Captain Collins, I think I might just have found the solution to your little problem."

Collins looked between the two sisters, and then at Ivan.

"Go inside," he told Avery, who looked ready to argue. "That's an order."

Avery did as she was bidden, eyeballing Farrow even as she retreated into the bunkhouse. Alone with the two men, Lana folded her arms across her chest.

"Is this about that favour?" she asked. There was an evil smile upon Farrow's face.

"Oh, you are gonna love his."

Captain Collins looked nowhere near as mirthful as Ivan. He let out a huge sigh as he said,

"It's the lad's birthday tomorrow."

Ivan let out a cruel laugh, brushing a finger against Lana's cheek.

"Now that those bruises have healed, it's time to cash in."

~oOo~

"Of course I said no!" Lana said as she sat on the edge of her bed with Helena in the House of Healing. "No way, not in a million years."

"Why not? He's handsome, isn't he?"

"That's not the point!" Lana barked. "Are you insane? He's the one who did this to me."

She thrust her arm towards Helena, where the band glittered. Helena tilted her head.

"How does that thing make you feel, 1595?"

Something spiked in Lana at being referred to by the number. Helena held out her own arm so that their bands were level with one another, the little silver cuffs marking them 1595 and 1484 forever and ever.

"Angry," Lana said. "They think they own us, that they can do whatever they want and it doesn't matter."

"So why not take advantage of that? Why not use it to fight back? Make a man happy and he'll tell you anything you want to know. That boy must know of his father's plans, where all of this is heading."

Lana felt sick. "You want me to agree in order to get information?"

"You could use your charms on him, find out what he knows... think it over. Either way, it's your decision."

Helena left Lana, urging her to make what she called 'the right choice.' Was it right? Lana couldn't decide. What Farrow and Collins had asked of her certainly didn't feel like the right thing to do… it certainly wasn't something that she wanted to do, to hand herself over like some prize at a fair to the man who had branded her for life.

Her mind returned to the banding, a moment she had been fixated on for the past fortnight. She could not rationalise her feelings towards Davy Prentiss. He was the President's son. He had hurt her, and countless others… but without his kindness she might well have died in the stables. She could not get him out of her mind, and was becoming possessed of a desire to speak with him in private. If nothing else, this could be the perfect opportunity.

Lana felt very alone. She thought of Alex, and was plagued by horrible imaginings of his explosive death. That sweet, quiet boy, who had saved her and looked out for her sister when she could not. His death was the Answer's doing. How could they be in the right, if they would kill so mercilessly to achieve their ends? Lana remembered how blasé the President had been when she had appealed to him about the horrors taking place in the Houses of Healing. No one would help her or the other women of New Prentisstown, that much was clear. So she decided, then and there, that she would help them to help themselves.

Lana looked again at the band which she shared with the rest of Haven's women.

She was not alone.

~oOo~

"This," Davy said, raising his glass above his head as he stood atop a table in the largest of the bunkhouses, "is the greatest party ever!"

The crowd of soldiers raised their glasses, cheering enthusiastically. Davy drained his glass in one go and demanded another, even though the cider brewed from the orchard's swamp apples was black in colour and tasted abysmal. His Noise had been glowing pink all night long. He had never been to a real party before, let alone had one thrown in his honour. It was being held in secret, of course; his Pa would never have allowed for such gaiety, and certainly not past midnight. There was drinking and music and best of all, women, who were dressed far more exotically than his father's laws on modesty allowed. Most were wearing make-up, too, a thing which his Pa had confiscated before had even arrived in New Prentisstown. Yes, Davy thought as a smiling woman with painted red lips handed him another pitcher of black apple cider, this was without a doubt the greatest party anyone had ever had.

"Come and sit down, handsome," the woman beckoned. Davy followed her like an excited puppy. He sat beside her on a plush red sofa, his Noise fuzzy and fuchsia as she placed a hand upon his knee. She was very pretty. The magic of the moment was ruined when he saw the band on her arm. He tried to remember her face, uncertain whether or not he had been the one to put it there.

Anderson Tate raised a glass to him, though he did not smile; he had lost his mirth since his division had been blown to bits, and had only come for Davy's sake. Davy raised his own glass, and the woman took a sip from it as he lowered it again, leaving a red lipstick kiss on its rim. Anderson was surrounded by women, as usual; most of the girl at the party seemed to be having fun, or were at least pretending to, but there were a handful of girls who looked horribly uncomfortable. Davy wondered how the female guests had been recruited for the party, and whether all of them had been given a choice in the matter.

Davy turned back to his cider, determined not to allow the thought to spoil his night. It was his birthday, after all. His day had been miserable until he had been surprised here in the bunker; his Pa had insisted he work even though it was his birthday, so he had been forced to spend hours banding New Prentisstown's women with a miserable Todd at his side, and Pa hadn't even got him a present, saying he'd receive no rewards until all of the important work was done. Todd at least had brought him a cake, but he had refused to come to the party even after hearing that there would be girls. That was just like Todd, Davy thought. He would never have admitted to a soul how much he would have liked to have his friend there by his side.

"Alright, birthday boy!" Ivan Farrow called as the night drew to a close, "It's time for your present!"

"I thought the party was my present," Davy beamed, reluctant to leave his seat. The red-lipped woman was sitting in his lap now, leaving lipstick kisses all over his neck; his legs were numb, but he didn't care. Whatever the present was, it could hardly compare with this.

"This is child's play, lad. We've got you a real present."

There were cheers and glasses raised as Farrow dragged the half-drunken boy out into the empty streets. New Prentisstown was like a different place at night. The roads were quiet and empty but for the Noise of sleeping men, and that of the soldiers who patrolled the outskirts of the town. It felt almost like Old Prentisstown again. Ivan led the way to the door of an unknown house, one of the large out-of-the-way ones which his father reserved for his closest men, that they might sleep interrupted without the Noise of the town to keep them awake. Captain Collins was waiting outside, smoking a cigarette. He fished in his pockets and handed Davy a set of keys. The boy stared at them in wonder as though they were made of diamonds.

"Don't trash the place," Collins said. Ivan clapped him on the shoulder and the two men started back towards the town, Ivan wishing him good luck. Davy thought it an odd thing to say, but as he stepped through the door of the big house, it hardly mattered; his father had been bluffing about not getting him a present! Here it was, the best present of all! There was no way the soldiers could have sorted something as huge as this out without his Pa's approval. Confused and laughing a little, Davy leaned against the door for support. No more stables, no more smell of horse dung, no more straw-stuffed mattress; finally he had a home of his own.

Davy looked at the door of what could only be the bedroom, grinning at the prospect of a good night's sleep in his very own bed. He opened the door to a large room lit by a crackling fireplace. The bed was huge and luxurious, just as he had imagined, but it was not empty; lying in it, bleary-eyed and golden-haired, was a girl.

The girl. 1595.

And he realised then that the house was not his present after all.