“None of your business,” Frisk said.
“Hold her ear until I get this sorted out.”
“With pleasure.” Frisk gave the ear a meaningful twist.
“Mom, it’s me, Bandit. Are you in there?”
Anxious faces pressed against the shed window. Young faces. But no answer.
“See, they ain’t here. They never came here. Ouch!”
A voice spoke hesitantly from behind an opening blocked by an automobile wheel. “I know them. Let me out and I’ll tell you where they went.”
“I’ll let all of you out if you tell me where they went.”
“Oh, ’eaven preserve me! Oi’m doomed.”
“No. Just let me out. They were taken away by that sicko’s companion, Lockjaw. I don’t know where.”
“Droops will tell us where, won’t she?”
“Ouch!”
Bandit put his shoulder to the wheel and rolled it away.
“Oi’m actually on the side of the Resistance. Workin’ undercover loik. That’s official.”
“The only side you’re on is the one you think is going to come out on top,” Bandit said. “Anybody else in there know Slypaws and her friend?”
“Nice ladies.”
“They were staying in our tree.”
“They sounded like they were from across the pond.”
“That’s them!” Bandit said. “So now they’re Lockjaw’s bargaining chips – is that it?”
Drooplip looked up at the sky. “Maybe.”
The raccoons, the City’s young, started to teem out of the hole.
“Wot about me?”
“You’re coming with us. You’re our bargaining chip. That’s official.”
50
Clutch lay on a cold damp slab, hearing voices he couldn’t respond to. Any effort to talk, to even open his eyes, was resisted by a torpor that guarded him like a nurse. “Not yet,” it said. His hearing was diminished so that the only sounds he took in were close by, sounds that associated readily with scents, for his power to smell was unimpaired. He understood that the fog hadn’t lifted, that most of the High Guard had departed, that his militia had been badly mauled, and that his ladyfriend was gone.
With this information scraped together provisionally in his consciousness, his inner nurse decided that he’d been allowed to know enough for the moment. He slept.
“This is our commander.”
A paw on his brow. A head pressed against his. Smelled female. Smelled of spice. Foreign. A mind probing into his depths. Because it was a caring mind, his nurse released him into this other’s care.
“His eyes are fluttering. Everyone please, I ask of you, stand back.”
Clutch half opened his eyes and saw a woman leaning over him in the mist. Long slender forelegs and the most elegant claws. A mask of the darkest sable covered most of her face, giving an impression of modesty, except that by concealing her physical features – her mouth, her jaws, her nose and ears – the mask made her spirit the more visible. And her spirit was all in her large eyes that danced with every feeling and mood that passed behind them.
“I am Hala. I am commander of the forces of the South. And a King is my father.”
“I regret … Princess … that I am not able at present to return your greeting with a matching dignity. You see, I …”
“It is okay. Everything has been explained to me. We shall talk later – yes? Your mind wants to be alone with you some more. So I will let you sleep. Much good thinking is done in sleep.”
“I …”
“Sssh! God has time. Give yourself time. Take this into your comfort: your forces are hurt but they are intact; they are under no threat at present; and I have with me sufficient forces to protect them should the odious High Guard return.”
With that news, Clutch went inward to be healed. It seemed the Pro had pulled his High Guard units out of the Dead Zone and gone back to the City. But he must have called up the main army of the High Guard on the Southern Frontier, because the Migrant forces there in the south, no longer held in check, had followed the retreating High Guard. But this was ominous, the High Guard on the frontier had joined the High Guard in the City. His father now had a complete united army under his command and he could control the West Bank.
Clutch began to count the mistakes he had made and the things he could have done better. “Ambushed,” he heard his mind say. “I walked right into his outstretched paws.”
51
The clamour and pounding of the Primates reached a frenzy then abruptly ceased. Now their young gathered up the waste, bellowing the last song that had been played by the band. As they left, their supervisor activated security cameras attached to lamp posts. The park fell into an eerie quiet, except for the hum of the refrigeration units of the meat trucks. Scents of ribs, chicken, fries, corn on the cob, and the dregs of beer glasses rose from the organic waste and recycling bins, with promise of more food in the trucks once their doors were popped. The air was clear and cool, with no breeze. All this was taken in by wet noses and beady eyes waiting in trees and bushes.
From the roof of a public washrooms hut in the park, the rebel leaders surveyed the scene with apprehension. Mindwalker summed up their mood best: “I’ll be happy if we can just maul the Protector’s speech and get away cleanly.”
