the sky and then went off one after another like green twigs cracking in a fire. I never seen the like of it. The drone was stuck in the middle of all that and the next thing we seen it was on the ground in a hundred pieces.”
That must of been the other sound I heard, that was like a hammer knocking a nail in.
Haijon leaned in close. “Here’s the strangeness of it though, Koli. We looked for bullets or bolts afterwards, and there wasn’t none. There was just little white chips on the ground, like broke-off bits of bone. Whatever the drudge was shooting, I don’t think I want to know about it.”
“So Ursala brung down two out of the three drones, one way and another,” I said, ignoring the fireside tale though another time I would of relished it.
“I guess she did,” Haijon says back to me. “She still went meddling in Rampart business though, and my ma only took it halfway well. The drones was took down, but not in the right way.”
“The right way?” I says. “What’s the right way, Haijon?”
“The right way is the way that don’t shake people’s faith in us. In Ramparts, I mean. Loss of faith might bring more harm than the drones in the long run. That’s what my ma says anyway.”
“More harm how?”
“Like, in how we live, and how we make our minds up about things.” Haijon shrugged, like he didn’t get it either. “She says mostly people kind of dawdle themselves to death. Something bad happens and they’re not nearly quick enough in dealing with it. Sometimes Ramparts just got to be on it fast, but sometimes what they got to do is make everyone else be faster. Tell them what to do and whip them up into doing it.
“So anything that makes people slower in doing what Ramparts tell them to do is bad, she says. Ursala done a good thing, no doubt about it. But she don’t have to live with the effect of it, and we do. She should of thought more about how it looked. Especially when she talked back to Mardew like that in front of everyone. Mardew didn’t like that at all, and neither did my ma.”
“But still,” I said, kind of looking for the common ground I thought had got to be there between us, “people is alive who would of died. Me, for instance. That drone was standing as close to me as you are now.”
“You got to think of the long run,” Haijon says again.
I kept my silence after that. It seemed to me that us all still drawing breath was a bigger and more important thing than Catrin being the one to thank. But I didn’t want to have a fight with Haijon about it. I still counted him a friend, and I took it kindly that he come to see me even though Ramparts in general was hard down on me right then.
“Listen,” he said. “Spinner and me, we’re to be wed on the Salt Feast. I was thinking you’d be with me on my fasting, Koli, and carry the cutter for me at the wedding, but that’s not possible now. I hope you won’t take it bad if I choose Veso Shepherd instead.”
“I won’t take it bad,” I told him. I meant it too. Veso would be joyed by it, and it would do a lot to quiet them in the village that was down on him just for being who he was. Anyway, I wasn’t going to be at the wedding at all if there was any way out of it. That Haijon and Spinner was going to be together was something I couldn’t halt or hinder. I had got to make my peace with it. But standing right by while the two of them kissed and swapped promises felt like more than I could bear.
Haijon read my face, but he read it wrong. He thought the sadness he seen there was for me being passed over in favour of Veso, when it wasn’t Veso’s place but his own I was wishing to fill in that ceremony. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “It’s been a while since I raced you round the walls. A married man can’t do that, but I didn’t get married yet.”
A race sounded good. I was full sick of the mill yard by this time. I hesitated a moment, thinking of what Jemiu