The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,84

here.”

She smiled, just for a second – a smile that was there and then gone again, right after. “No,” she says. “I imagine not. If it’s any comfort to you, we’re not happy either.”

“No?” I says. “I hope that’s not on account of me.”

“Oh, it’s very much on account of you.” She didn’t smile this time, though I meant what I said as a kind of a joke. She sighed instead, and rubbed her shoulder as though she had been carrying a big weight and had only set it down for a moment, knowing she had got to pick it up again soon. “The thing is,” she said, “we’ve got a choice to make, and it’s a hard one. Very hard. On top of that, we don’t know how far to believe you. If you’re telling the truth, in some ways that makes the choice easier. But it seems like we can’t know for sure until after. Until we see what comes, or doesn’t come.”

“What is it you’re choosing between?” I asked her.

She shaked her head. “How’d you know, Koli?” she says, instead of answering. “Tell me true now. How’d you know what to do to make that tech wake up? It’s not an easy thing to do, even knowing what we know. If you’re ignorant, it’s not possible. So someone helped you, or someone told you, or someone give you a clue, at least. We won’t be mad if you tell us. It will help us to keep this thing where it belongs.”

“The DreamSleeve belongs to me now. It waked for me.”

“Is that what it’s called?” I bit my tongue, now it was too late and I already give that away for nothing. But Catrin didn’t seem that interested. “I wasn’t talking about the tech,” she says, “but about the rest of it. You know what I mean.”

I made pretend I was really stupid. “No, I don’t know nothing, Rampart Fire. I promise you.”

“You know a lot more than you should. The question I’d like an answer to is, what does Jemiu know? And them sisters of yours? How far does this go, in other words? You know when we clear the ground inside the fence, we got to make sure not a single seed stays rooted, but burn every last one of them out even if the ground is scorched bare.”

I got scared then, more than I ever been before. So scared I was hard put not to cry. “They don’t know nothing about it,” I said. “It was me on my own, Catrin. I swear it. I never told them any of what I know.”

“Ah,” she says, kind of leaning in on me a little. “So then you do know something.”

“I know that what Ramparts do, anyone can do,” I said. “I know it’s in the tech, not in you, and you just cheat each time to make it look the way it does. That’s what I know.” I wasn’t meaning to say any of this until she said that thing about my mother and my sisters. I give her the one truth to make her believe the rest of it, that I hadn’t told nobody in the village what I found out. Only I left Ursala out of it, for Catrin wasn’t asking after her any more and I was happy to leave it that way if I could.

Catrin nodded, like I was repeating back a hard lesson and I had got it right at last.

“I didn’t tell it to nobody,” I said again. “I swear. If I did, they would of spoke up by now, wouldn’t they? With me being lost to all sight for three days.”

“You’re not lost,” Catrin said. “And nobody is looking for you. Set your mind right on that, Koli. I could kill you here and now, and it wouldn’t make no difference to nobody.”

I seen in her face she was telling the truth, for it didn’t make her happy to say it. I had an idea then that I’ll tell to you in a short while. It was an idea about what might of been happening upstairs with the Ramparts while I et my porridge and walked back and forth down in the Underhold.

“Tell me about the music player,” Catrin said. “What did you call it again?”

“It’s a DreamSleeve,” I said. “Made by Sony Copration.”

“You know who made it?”

That was me giving stuff away for nothing again, and tripping up my own heels into the bargain. I couldn’t say Monono