29
Signy
The fighting started at mid-day.
It was only a mile or so away. There was fire and bangs and clouds of black smoke and the stink of petrol and hot metal and… and burned flesh. But I couldn't see whose.
I kept thinking, how stupid! Why did the rebels wait until my father and his army was here? Now my people will join with Conor and they'll have two to fight instead of one. How stupid! I kept looking and listening, as if it was possible to tell from the sound who was firing the shells and who was being hit.
It didn't last long, that was one thing. Less than an hour. I climbed up and called out to the guards. What was going on? Who was winning? Who was
I waited and waited. No one came. Why wasn't someone coming? The fighting had stopped hours ago. Surely the rebels hadn't won, not fighting against both Conor and my father? Val wouldn't come unarmed! I waited a long, long time, but no one came.
In the evening the guard changed and I called to these new ones, but they said nothing. The day dulled, then got dark. And… I knew what had happened. It felt like I'd almost done it myself. I knew, I just didn't let myself tell myself. I couldn't because it was something I'd had a hand in myself.
I didn't do anything yet. I wanted proof.
It was very late, very dark in the night I heard cheers and the sound of the big engines. Then I saw the lights, the spots and floodlights, the burning torches flashing in and out of the trees. A procession was winding its way towards the compound. I was jumping up and peering and trying to use my binoculars, but it was all too far away. It took them ages to get to the gates of the compound where I could get a half decent view of them as they came in.
First it was the big stuff: the lorries, the tanks, the armoured vehicles. Then came the carts pulled by horses – many more of these; horses were easier to get hold of than petrol. All around the men milled, shouting and carrying torches, so fire and light accompanied them every step of the way.
Then it was the booty. The captured machinery: our cars, our tanks, the lorries loaded with gifts for Conor. The grey-faced prisoners marching along with their hands on their heads. Slaves. I couldn't make out their faces. Even through the binoculars and with torchlight it was too dark to tell who they were, but I knew the uniforms. But I still didn't believe. With something like that you need every doubt to be dragged from you before you'll allow it really has happened.
In the middle of it all there was a cart with a small tower of scaffolding built on top of it. A team of men dragged the tower along. When they stumbled or fell they were whipped and that told me. When did my father ever have slaves, or whip them? On the top of the tower, picked out in spotlights, was a figure, tied spread-eagled in a square of scaffolding. The head bounced and flopped as the cart bumped over the road. They were throwing stones and sticks at him. They were taking pot shots with their guns, even though he was already dead so he was just a bloody mop of rags tied up there by this time. I had to stare hard to make out anything. Of course they aimed at the face all the time and I could have fooled myself longer if I'd wanted to, but I knew my father, even after all they'd done. I knew him by his shape. I knew him by the way I began to cry as soon as I got his figure in focus.
I took the binoculars off. I think Cherry was mewing at my feet. I didn't care who'd done it, I just hoped and hoped it wasn't Conor, but it didn't matter anyway. I went to the trap door. I'd have to smash a window so I could jump out of it. But down below, the gangmen were waiting for me.
30
She ran straight back up to the roof as soon as she heard the door below her burst open, but there was no lock on the trap door. Everything had been thought of long ago. They pulled her down off the fence she was clinging to. In distraction she started to call for Cherry but her pet was nowhere to be seen. Her hands were cuffed behind her back and she was dragged roughly down again through the trap door. Signy screamed once in pain as they bent her arms too far back, but after that she uttered no sound, as if even her voice was worth more than these people deserved.
The guard pushed her through the trap door like a sack of bones, and dropped her down from the top of the ladder, so she twisted as she fell and landed on her side with a sickening thud. She was pulled at once to her feet, gasping and winded, and dragged into another room. All the time she kept her silence. She was pushed to the floor. The guard cried, 'Ma'am!' and stood to attention.
Signy twisted her face sideways from the carpet to see who she had been taken to. It was a woman, tall, redheaded, dressed in a business-like grey trouser suit. She was talking evenly into the phone, which had been reconnected. As she talked she stared down at her victim with eyes that looked right through her. Signy knew her from before. Conor had pointed her out often enough. This was Anne Sanderson, one of the heads of the Interior Security Forces, a high-up official in the secret police.
The woman put down the phone still watching Signy.
'Where's Conor?' begged Signy. But she didn't dare ask what they had done with him.
'Celebrating,' said the woman. She smiled thinly and picked up the phone again. Signy spat.
The woman began dialling. 'Both legs,' she said to the guard without looking up. They picked Signy up and carried her away into an adjoining room. She was put down on the floor, more gently this time. Three guards held her down, one pressing her shoulders onto the carpet, the other two holding tightly to her ankles. She twisted her head round and asked, 'What about my brothers? Tell me, tell me – I want to know what has happened to my brothers.'
One of the guards said quietly, 'Your brothers are dead.'
Someone else came up behind her. She caught a glimpse of a pair of wire-cutters with red plastic on the handle. One of her legs was bent halfway up at the knee and there was a searing pain at the back of her leg. At the same time there was a horrible slack sensation right up her thigh. Signy sobbed. The leg was released and fell like a joint of meat to the floor. No one bothered to hold on to it. She tried to kick but her muscles only twitched. Then, the same on the other side.
She was panting in shock. The men were no longer bothering to hold her down. She sat up, trying to kneel to examine the wounds, but her legs wouldn't hold and she fell back. She tried to straighten her legs but couldn't. She pulled them out from under her and twisted round to see.
It was the tendons behind her knees. Signy had been hamstrung. She was to be a prisoner in her own body. She would never walk straight or run again, but only hobble painfully like an old woman.
One of the guards, the one who had spoken softly to her, picked her up in his arms. She clung to his neck like a baby, weeping. The blood poured from her leg over his arm.
'Bed for you,' he said, and he carried her up.
31
Siggy, Hadrian and Ben weren't dead – not yet. Nothing so quick was planned for them.
They made their journey to the compound tied hand and foot in the back of a horse-drawn cart. The soldiers walking alongside spat at them and threw bricks and hit them with sticks. One of the gangmen got scared they'd be killed by the time they got back, so he had them transferred to an enclosed van where they couldn't be got at.
Once inside the compound they were locked in a cold, oily building, obviously a garage workshop. There was a ramp with a pit under it, with a car jacked up overhead. Other cars, some half in pieces, some clean and shiny, were parked nearby. The floor was concrete, oil-stained and damp; all around the sides were work surfaces, vices and tools. On the floor where they lay was a steel girder, some bottles of gas and a pile of chains.
The three brothers were bound in the chains. Siggy and Ben put up with the rough treatment as well as they
