Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness Page A

point it’s a burning acid corrosive enough to take your arm off,” the Mayor finishes. “Impressive work in a short space of time, Captain.”
    “I encouraged our chemists to work quickly, sir,” Mr Tate says with a grin I don’t like.
    “What the hell did all that mean?” I ask the Mayor as Mr Tate leaves.
    “Didn’t you finish your chemistry in school?”
    “You closed the school and burnt all the books.”
    “Ah, so I did.” He looks to the hilltop, to the glow we can see up above it in the spray from the waterfall, the glow from the campfires of the Spackle army. “They used to be just hunters and collectors, Todd, with some limited wild farming. Not exactly scientists.”
    “Which means what?”
    “Which means,” he says, “that our enemy has spent the thirteen years since the last war listening to us, learning from us, no doubt, on this planet of information.” He taps his chin. “I wonder how they learn. If they’re all part of some larger single voice.”
    “If you hadn’t killed all the ones in town,” I say, “you coulda asked .”
    He ignores me. “All of which adds up to the fact that our enemy gets more formidable by the moment.”
    I frown. “You sound almost happy.”
    Captain O’Hare comes back over to us, his hands full and his face sour. “Blankets and food, sir,” he says. The Mayor nods towards me, forcing Mr O’Hare to hand them over to me himself. He does and then storms away again, tho like Mr Tate, you can’t hear his Noise to see what’s making him so mad.
    I spread the blanket over Angharrad, but she still ain’t saying nothing. Her wound is healing already so it ain’t that. She just stands there, head down, staring at the ground, not eating, not drinking, not responding to nothing I do.
    “You could tie her up with the other horses, Todd,” the Mayor says. “She’d at least be warmer that way.”
    “She needs me,” I say. “I gotta stick by her.”
    He nods. “Your loyalty is admirable. A fine quality I’ve always noticed in you.”
    “Seeing as you don’t got none at all?”
    In reply, all he does is smile that smile again, that one that makes you want to knock his head right off. “You should eat and sleep while you can, Todd. You never know when the battle will need you.”
    “A battle you started,” I say. “We wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t–”
    “Here we go again,” he says, his voice sharper. “It’s time you stopped whining about what might have been and start thinking about what is .”
    And this makes me a little mad–
    And so I look at him–
    And I think about what is–
    I think about him falling in the ruins of the cathedral after I blasted him with Viola’s name. I think about him shooting his own son without even pausing for thought–
    “Todd–”
    I think about him watching Viola struggle under the water in the Office of the Ask as he tortured her. I think about my ma talking about him in her journal when Viola read it to me and what he did to the women of old Prentisstown–
    “That isn’t true, Todd,” he says. “That’s not what happened–”
    I think about the two men who raised me, who loved me, and how Cillian died on our farm to buy me time to escape and how Davy shot Ben on the roadside for doing exactly the same thing. I think about Manchee, my brilliant bloody dog, dying after saving me, too–
    “Those were nothing to do with me–”
    I think about the fall of Farbranch. I think about the people there being shot while the Mayor watched. I think about–
    I AM THE C IRCLE AND THE C IRCLE IS ME.
    He sends it, hard, straight into the middle of my head.
    “Stop that!” I yell, flinching back.
    “You give too much away, Todd Hewitt,” he snaps, finally almost angry. “How do you ever expect to lead men if you broadcast every last sentiment?”
    “I don’t expect to lead men,” I spit back.
    “You were going to lead this army when you had me tied up, and if that day comes again, you’ll