I pointed to the bench. “Go open that up,” I said to Morrez. “That bench there, in the window. It’s a chest as well as a seat. See what’s inside.”
Morrez hesitated, giving me a wary look. “You said no tricks.”
“It’s not a trick. Just look.”
He did as he was bid. When he opened up the bench seat, his eyes went big and round. He let out a huff of breath.
“Take it out,” I said.
“It’s – That’s –”
“I know. Take it out, Morrez. We started down this road now, and I think we got to see where it takes us.”
Morrez reached into the chest and brought out the Half-Ax rifle.
“This isn’t the real one,” he said. “You got your ironsmith to make a copy.”
“I guess you got ways of knowing if I did.”
He settled the gun in his two hands, one of them going to the stock while the other was cupped underneath the barrel. He pressed the palm of his hand to a place on the stock and held it there a moment. There was a ratchet sound as the tech went from sleep to waking.
Morrez turned and pointed the gun at me. At the middle of my body, not where my baby was nestled but just above.
“And there it is,” I said. “The choice. Dead god bless you, Morrez, for you got to make it now and there’s no hiding behind old promises or swearings.”
“I don’t hide from nothing,” Morrez said. “I never hid from nothing in my life.”
“Good then,” I said. I cupped my hands across my stomach, but they wouldn’t stop a bolt from the Half-Ax gun. At this distance, it would pick me up whole and throw me down in pieces. There was a great screaming going on inside me. Why? Why had I taken this chance?
“What hurts was they?” Morrez asked.
“What?”
“When you put Hawk to the torment, what did you do to her?”
“I told you that was a lie. I bit my finger and showed you the blood.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I can’t help with that.”
“Do you think I’m a traitor?” Morrez lowered his head and tilted it at the same time, so he was looking at me along the barrel of the gun. “Do you think I got no honour in me at all?”
“No,” I said. “Just the opposite. I think you’re such a one as doesn’t make promises lightly – including the one you made just now not to hurt me. And I think you’ve had a chance to see what we are. We need that gun, and the other one, if we’re to have any chance against Half-Ax. And we need to know more about their strength and their thinking. Otherwise we’re like the smoke from off the wick of a blowed-out candle.”
“You’re like that anyway,” Morrez said. But he didn’t move. And the rifle, in his hands, didn’t move.
“I think we’re more,” I said.
We stayed like that a little while longer. “Morrez,” I said, “I got to sit down again or I’ll get a cramp in my leg and fall over.”
It was the right thing to say, it turned out. He put up the gun and dragged the chair over to me. I sank down into it with a grunt. I only just made it too. My legs were weak as string and I was close to throwing up everything that was in my stomach. I never thought Morrez would fire the gun at me, but my mind showed me pictures of it anyway. And I knew well it wasn’t just my own life I was offering up.
Morrez sank down too, onto his knees. He used the gun like a walking cane, to lower himself. Otherwise I think he would have pitched over in a faint.
“I am,” he said, and a sob tore its way out of him. “I’m a traitor! I sweared an oath, and now I’m a traitor to it!”
I took his head and laid it in my lap as he cried. “You can only be a traitor to what you love,” I whispered to him, stroking his hair as if he were a child. And that being solemn truth, it calmed him by and by.
Koli
17
I waked up, and didn’t have no idea how much time might of passed. I was not tired any more, so it must of been more than an hour or two. The lights in the room had gone off again. I lay there in the dark and waited.
“Hey, Koli-bou,” Monono said. “Cone of silence is still on, and I’ve got a few little fun facts to share with you.”
I slid down under the blanket to hide my face when I answered, the same way I did before. “Did you finish your deep dive?”
“Uh-uh. Not by a long way. But I took a little stroll through what’s left of the internet, and I found a few historical databases that are still up and running. Or limping anyway. It’s quite easy to find reference on the Sword of Albion. It turns out it’s super-famous. Used to be, I mean, way back in the day.”
“The ship?” I said. “The ship we’re on? So it’s really old like you said?”
“I’m not just talking about the ship, little dumpling. There’s a lot more to it. Are you ready to go to school?”
I told her I was. The sound of her voice was a great comfort right then, so soon after I thought I’d lost her for aye and ever. She could not talk too much for me.
“Okay then,” Monono said. “Listen and learn. Sword of Albion was a political movement a very long time ago. It’s hard to say how long, because this was around the time of the Unfinished War – which back then they called the Unfolding Crisis, or sometimes just the Crisis – and after a while the records stop very abruptly. Which I guess means nobody was counting any more. But a little bit before that, when the world had only just started to unravel like an old pullover, Sword of Albion was quite the fashion on your little island. They promised to bring back everything people used to have in the good old days – clean streets, smiling children, jobs for life, meals that contained actual food, public hangings – and to protect what was left of Great Britain against what was left of the rest of the world. It’s an ancient play from an ancient playbook. Are you with me so far?”
“I guess I am,” I said. “These people wanted to be the Ramparts for the whole of Ingland. And they was happy to do it by telling lies.”
“That’s it exactly. Ramparts for all, and no take-backs. Koli-bou, you’re not going to like this next part. It’s going to make you think of all those spooky old stories again. Promise me you won’t freak out.”
“I promise,” I said.
“Sword of Albion swept the country in the last election that ever was. Or at least the last one that made it to the history books. That was mostly down to their leader, who was handsome and strong and square-jawed. The manliest man who ever kissed a baby or broke a manifesto promise. Guess what his name was.”
“I can’t, Monono. I don’t know nothing about them times.”
“His name was Stanley Banner. And he looked like this.”
A picture come into the DreamSleeve’s window. It was a man with yellow hair. He had a thin face, and the kind of smile you wear when you just seen someone you would rather of not seen at all but have got to put a coat of paint on your misliking.
“So I guess the Stanley Banner they got here was named after him,” I said. “They look a lot like each other.”