Havoc by Jane Higgins Page A

tried to think, but my brain
had shut down.
    â€˜Later,’ said Levkova, taking pity for once.
    Lanya disappeared without a word into the little sunroom off the kitchen where she
slept when she stayed over, and I hauled myself up the stairs to my own bed and crashed,
fully clothed, face down on top of it.

CHAPTER 09
    Options, options. Like Lou used to say, when considering an escape from school,
try something so obvious they won’t expect it. Try walking out the gate.
    â€˜Okay,’ I said to Levkova at the kitchen table next morning. ‘Let’s forget about
trying to go through the wire and across Curswall Bridge.’
    I glanced at Lanya. She was concentrating far more than was necessary on spreading
jam on a piece of bread. She’d been extra polite to me all morning.
    Levkova said, ‘As long as it’s soon. Kelleran won’t be wasting time and we can’t
either. What are you thinking?’
    â€˜The Mol.’
    Lanya looked up. ‘What?’
    I said, ‘What’s the only bridge gate on Cityside that won’t be guarded anymore? And
what’s the only strip of river where there are no mines because they’ve all been detonated and not replaced yet?’
    â€˜Oh,’ said Lanya. ‘Are you going to swim?’
    â€˜The girl under the bridge,’ I said. ‘How did she get there? What if she had a boat?’
    â€˜Are you serious?’
    â€˜What girl?’ asked Levkova, and listened while we explained.
    Lanya said, ‘Suppose this girl did have a boat, and suppose you found it, and it
was undamaged, you’re talking about sneaking out right under the eye of their army.’
    Levkova was watching me with a calculating frown.
    â€˜I think it’s worth pursuing,’ she said.
    The makeshift infirmary was a cluster of dust-coloured tents pitched on land that
used to be a park west of the shantytown, in the older part of Moldam. I told a medic
that I wanted to see the girl who’d been found under the bridge, and she laughed
and said, ‘Who doesn’t!’
    She pointed me towards a queue outside one of the tents. About two dozen people were
sitting, standing, shifting from foot to foot, patient the way people are patient
in queues on Southside. ‘There’s not much point, though,’ she said. ‘Girl swallowed
the river—she’s got God-knows-what running through her at the moment and she’s sick
as a dog. You won’t get any sense out of her for a couple of days at least. And even
then…’ She paused and studied me. ‘You’re that Cityside boy, aren’t you? She’s got
no Breken, but she does speak some Anglo, so you probably could talk to her. But
not for two days. At least.’
    I couldn’t wait two days.
    I went over to the queue and asked what they were waiting for and they said, ‘A blessing.’
    â€˜A what?’ I said, but all I got in answer were stares and thumbs pointing me to the
back of the line. Then this guy came out of the tent. I knew him, vaguely. Sandor
something. He was a couple of years older than me, and he was making a name for
himself as a doer of deals. A smooth talking southerner, his dark hair cut carefully,
always dressed to impress—doing well for himself, but then you looked closely and
saw the mending on his clothes and how threadbare it all was. It wasn’t your pockets
and your wallet that you watched when you saw Sandor sliding through a crowd, more
like your life savings and your hopes for the future—for a little cash, or not so
little, he’d turn your dreams into schemes that couldn’t go wrong. So he said.
    Now he stood at the front of the queue and told the people that he’d seen the girl,
that she was called Nomu, and that she’d blessed him and spoken to him from a trance-like
state about the angel Raphael. They watched him, almost with reverence, and when
he’d finished, people reached out to