The night was indeed long and even though
reinforcements came from the Colony to take over from those who had so
diligently held the wall for so long and Ellis and Siren were given a break to
rest and recover, Ellis found that sleep was not easy to come by and each dark
hour seemed to stretch on longer than the one before it.
Ellis lay awake in his room in the Grand
Chateau, staring at a ceiling that never changed, listening to a silence that
did not end, drowning in a sea of half-thoughts and fragments, pulled under by
the currents of adrenaline that even then still flooded his veins.
Dawn came slowly, stretching fingers of cold
light around the edges of the curtains, under his eyelids, into the aching
numbness of his head. Reluctantly he
pulled himself out of bed, dragged on some clothes and ventured out to see what
had happened during the night. And as he
approached the wall, as he saw the figures slumped over, exhausted in their
sentinel state, between the, dry, crumbling remains of the ashmen, he realised
that nothing had.
Except that wasn't entirely true. Something definitive had happened over night,
something had changed in the very nature of what they were experiencing. The very fact that nothing had happened meant
that the whole situation had been transformed.
This was no longer a stalemate.
This was a siege.
Siren was already there, of course, the rings
around her eyes telling the story of a similarly restless night.
"Has nothing happened at all?"
Ellis asked her.
"The Stoneskins have made a camp around
the Colony and have spent most of the night resting, whilst keeping watch on
any movement on our end. They look like
they are preparing for the long haul."
"And what about our defences? Is there nothing we can do to get them to go
away?"
"I'm not sure. We'd need to speak to the Former Baron, see
if he had any plans for this eventuality, but I haven't seen him anywhere.
They stared at each other for just a moment,
then both chimed in together: “The laboratory!”
As it turned out some of the others were
already there, having either slept a little better, or not at all. Gulliver was waiting in the hallway, eyes half-shut and definitely looking like he
belonged to the latter category. He
gestured to the door to the laboratory and shook his head.
“’E’s locked the door,” he muttered, “says we
can’t go down there just yet.”
They stepped into the living room and found
Annabella spread across a chair, book in hand.
Ellis was about to reprimand her for lack of focus when he realised it
was a book on siege tactics.
“He’s been holed up down there for most of
the night,” she said, barely glancing over the top of her book, “but before you
ask, I have no idea what he’s doing.”
“Brilliant!” Siren vented, staring at the
ceiling for a moment as if it, or some deity hidden in the plasterwork, might
offer up some assistance. “So,
what? Do we just sit here and wait?”
“Seems to be good enough for the Stoneskins,”
Ellis added.
“Ugh, that man is so frustrating…”
“There’s tea in the kitchen, not long
brewed,” said Annabella, setting her book aside for a moment, “would you like a
cup? Perhaps we can put our heads
together without the old man?”
“The tea I’ll take, and the chance to discuss
our problems, but I fear that it’s Franck’s ‘wisdom’ we need.”
Annabella flipped herself off the chair and
disappeared into the kitchen for a few minutes, during which time Siren and
Ellis slumped into a sofa beside each other and found themselves leaning in
together without a thought. Ellis felt
his eyes grow heavy, heavier, blink and then suddenly he was staring at the
Former Baron stretched out in his armchair, tea in hand with an expression of
considerable amusement on his face.
“Aha! Awake at last!”
Ellis shook himself upright, glanced blearily
around at his companions, all of whom were staring right back at him with
half-smiles on their faces, and then down to the cool cup of tea resting on the
table beside him.
"Oh," he said.
"Yes, quite, indeed," the Former
Baron continued, "and now were are all here, mentally as well as
physically, there are some things we must discuss."
"After leaving us waiting all this time,
I should hope so!" said Siren.
"Oh, don't worry, I have everything
quite in hand."
"But why aren't we allowed into your
laboratory?" asked Gulliver.
"Because," the old Philosopher
replied carefully, "I was tidying..."
Annabella sat bolt upright and stared at Von
SPektr with a look of horror.
"You," she asked, incredulous,
"were tidying?"
"It helped me to organise my
thoughts."
"But you never tidy," Ellis chipped
in," I mean the only reason your house is hospitable to life other than
your own is because Siren and Annabella and I and even Gulliver on occasion
have kept it that way!"
"This is all true but-"
"Surely there must be another
reason," Siren demanded, "surely you were building a new super
weapon, or taming some wild beast, or..."
"Nope.
Just tidying. But my mind was
working away on other things."
"Such as?"
"Well, how to get us through this siege,
of course."
"And?"
"And, so far, everything has been going
according to plan. We've manipulated the
Stoneskins into thinking it's not worth attacking us full on, but that they
need to bide their time and be patient.
They assume we'll starve and eventually be flushed out into their ranks
where... well, that doesn't really bear thinking about."
"And this won't happen?"
"Of course not!"
"Because, the Mosskind and I have been
storing supplies beneath the Colony for months.
We have enough food and water within the walls to last for years. We'll have to be careful with it, of course.
We can't reveal our hand to the populous too quickly or they'll squander it,
and the Stoneskins will catch wise that we're not as helpless as we seem, inciting
another assault, one we might not be able to hold off."
"So we just sit here and wait?"
"We'll man the defenses, of course, and
we'll have to tighten our belts for appearances sake, but, yes, basically
that's what we'll do."
"UNtil when? DO you think they'll just go away?"
"No, no I do not. But they wil change tactics and then they
will hand us the advantage that we need."
"And what will that be?" Gulliver
asked.
"Ah, Gulliver my boy, that really would
be telling," the Former Baron replied, tapping his nose, "and you
know I don't like doing too much of that."
"So what's next?" Siren asked. "How do we actually do this? Who do we tell?"
"Well, I propose telling no one outside
of this room," the Former Baron replied.
"What?" Ellis demanded, "Not even Sarah?"
"Especially not Sarah."
"But... but why?"
"Sarah is going to become a figure of
hope during a difficult time. She cannot
be compromised by knowing things are genuinely not as bad as they seem. Sarah is key to this all going to plan and
part of that is her utter ignorance that there even is a plan."
"When everyone finds out the truth,
they're gonna 'ate us."
"Most likely, Gulliver, but by then
we'll have moved on to the next stage and things will be much, much
better," the Former Baron said with a smile, before ruining the effect by
adding, "probably."
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