Sarah looked
up the moment she realised that the noise had died down outside. At first she wasn't sure what had happened,
thought that maybe her prayers had been answered very directly indeed, but then
she made out Siren's voice, reprimanding the crowd for their actions.
Is she defending me? she thought.
She closed
her eyes again, uttered another prayer for guidance and understanding and then,
suddenly, she realised what she had to do.
"I have
to confront them," she said aloud, then, as the thought came to her,
added, "but not on my own. I still have
work to do."
She
staggered to her feet and hurried back to the stairs, taking them two at a time
and almost falling over herself as she rushed to where she had left
Frostfire. True to his word, the
Spiketail was still leaning against a wall.
His eyes flickered towards her as she half stepped, half-stumbled into
the crypt. If he had has such a thing he
might have raised an eyebrow.
"So,
are you out of the moment yet?" he asked.
"You
could say that. I need you to come with
me."
"And
where are we going?"
"To
confront the angry mob trying to break the door down."
"And
why should I do that?"
"Because
it's the only way you're likely to get out of here alive, I suspect."
"Is
that a threat?" His cool eyes
flashed like a storm.
"No,
Frostfire. Whatever may have happened
between us, whatever water has rushed mercilessly beneath that bridge, you're
still a friend. I have no interest in
hurting you or anyone else today."
"Then
what do you propose to do?"
"We're
going to talk to them, we're going to see if we can make them see sense."
"And,
if we don't succeed?"
"Then
we're no worse off than we will be in a few minutes anyway."
The
Spiketail let out a low rumbling growl, then kicked away from the wall.
"Fine,"
he said, "lead on."
By the time
Sarah and Frostfire had made it back to the sanctuary, the mob had begun
battering the door down once again.
"Oh
yes," Frostfire said with another sardonic grin, "they sound very reasonable."
"Then
we keep going up." Sarah pointed to
the stairs leading up to the bell tower and wasted no time in dashing towards
them. Frostfire, for all his dry irony,
was right behind her. The beat of their
footfalls were only slightly louder in Sarah's ears than the sound of the
battering ram hitting the door. It was
incredibly unlikely that she would be able to hear the wood splintering as well
in the midst of such a cacophony, but that didn't stop her from imagining it
with each blow. We're running short of time, she thought and added, as a prayer, God, help us!
At the top
she rushed straight to the railing which ran around the outside. Looking down she could see the crowd swelling
towards the church, as if the sheer force of their numbers could succeed more
quickly than the battering ram. She
spotted Ellis, Siren, Gulliver, Annabella and the Former Baron standing at the
edge of the square watching the crowd with what seemed a full range of
expressions. Gulliver looked glum as
always, whilst Siren, Ellis and Annabella seemed horrified. The Former Baron, she noted, was perfectly
calm and watched everything as if he were making calculations in his head the
whole time.
She focussed
her attention on those who were holding the makeshift battering ram and
shouted, "Stop!" as loud as she could, but no one paid her any attention,
not ever the bystanders. She tried
again, but her voice was once more swallowed up in the roar of the angry
Colonists.
"Perhaps
this would help?" Frostfire asked
and Sarah wheeled around to see him pointing at the bell.
"Of
course," she said, feeling stupid, "ring away!"
Frostfire
pulled his arm back until she could see the wiry, muscular tension building
beneath his scales, then let out a punch so hard that the bell only managed one
enormous, resounding clang before shattering into half a dozen pieces that flew
out of the bell tower like a shotgun blast.
Sarah winced, but turned back to the crowd to see that, yes, she really
did have their attention now. First
there was stunned silence, then the occasional finger pointed, then, at last,
the calls of, "there she is!" and "the traitor!" followed
by, "where's the Spiketail?" and a rousing chorus of insults and
obscenities. Sarah let it wash over her
before she spoke, trusting that the silence would fall that would allow her to
do so.
She opened her
mouth, and, just like that, the clamour died down.
"You're
all here today because you want justice," she said and let the bitter
murmurs of assent fire off like sparks amidst gunpowder before she
continued. "You heard about what I
did and you wanted to stop me and to punish me, because what I was doing was
wrong." Again, the crowd responded
with shouts and calls and someone rammed the church door with their
shoulder. "You were right,"
she said and then, over the roar that followed shouted, "it was wrong."
The crowd
only grew louder after this and it was a few minutes before Sarah was able to
speak again and then only because Siren and Ellis began shouting for quiet from
the side-lines. When the silence
returned Sarah spoiled it, perfectly, with four short words: "but so is
this."
When those
hurling themselves at the door were dragged back, when those shouting their
terrible insults were gagged, when the silence fell around them all like a
sentence of doom, Sarah continued, but quicker this time.
"We
have all done wrong here today. You were
wrong to come here seeking violence when there are other paths of justice
available to us all, though you do so because you feel betrayed and your hearts
are wounded. Frostfire was wrong to lead
his people against us, though he did it out of love for that same people and in
response to the terrible things our own race have done to them. I was wrong to break him out and hide him,
though I did it for the love and friendship I have had for him in the past and
for the hurt I felt at being left out of the schemes of my friends here in the
Colony. They were wrong to keep me out
like that, and to use and manoeuvre me to this point, though it has me standing
before you, making this confession for us all and seeking to find the way to an
absolution. If good comes of this, you
can be sure that it will not be any of our doing.
"The
truth is we have all done wrong, and unless we genuinely recognise that then
there is no carrying on towards a better way.
Only by acknowledging our evils, well-intentioned or not, can we hope to
come out of this with our humanity – or lithodermity - intact. We have to confess that we are in the wrong -
and I am doing that now for myself first - before we can seek forgiveness and
move on."
"But
why should we forgive anything?" a voice shouted from near the back and
Sarah saw, with a shock, that it was Markus.
"Because
I'm genuinely sorry, Markus,"
she replied softly, "and because we're all in this together and we have
all given in to a kind of darkness within us as if it were as easy and natural
as breathing air! But if that won't
convince you, then ponder this: if you don't forgive me, and you have your
justice, who is going to forgive you on the day when you come to your senses,
as I know you will? There are greater
powers at work in this world that those that govern this Colony - powers that
will demand a response from us - and there are bigger things at stake than my
life or Frostfire's, than your hurts or mine, and we need to band together to
face them."
"What
are you talking about?" demanded another voice.
Sarah took a
deep breath, this would be what it all hinged on - her own perception of what
was going on, and the Colonist's ability to believe it. She was sure, now that this was what the
Former Baron had been planning on, that she should be the one to break the news
and rally the Colonists and, though there was a part of her that was - still - furious about that, she also
realised that all of these natural acts of selfish evil were, perhaps, being
allowed so as to shape the Colony for the better in the long run - so long as
what she said next was taken for truth.
"We are
all being used," she said
calmly, "and not just by the Former Baron, nor any power we are at all
familiar with. There is something out
there, something ancient and...", she sought for the word she needed, then
knew it for truth, "sinister. Something which has waited for the
opportunity presented by Lakhma's defeat to start manipulating the world the
way it sees fit to enable... to enable..." Sarah felt her wind give
out. She had guessed as much as she
could and was no longer sure enough of what to say next and yet, if she didn't
finish the thought, how would they ever believe the truth of it? Oh,
Father God, she prayed, please don't
let me fail now!
"To
enable their return," the Former Baron finished, and all eyes turned to
him.
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