The Madman's Bridge: FireWall Book 1

by Mark Johnson

  Sarra rolled her eyes as she tied her hair back. There was never any point arguing with Miss Harient, though it was fun.

  They left their shoes in a visitors’ box inside the gate. The carpets in the corridors were worn thin, allowing her to sense every bump.

  “But we’re lying about why we’re here!”

  “No, and keep your voice down. I told the Elders I would tour Humility Territory, which I am. But it is convenient we happened upon MarverWall.”

  “If an Elder did this for you, you wouldn’t have to pretend.”

  Miss snorted. “An Elder would get lost, then chased by lions, then lie about what they didn’t find.”

  “But you’ll be recognized,” Sarra said, choosing to disregard how unrecognizable they were. Gone were HopeWall’s traditional skirts and blouses, replaced by dusty old trousers, shirts, and head scarves. Though the TowerMiss was well known outside HopeWall, few saw her up close.

  “I don’t see how,” Miss replied, plucking at her trousers, and stopping in a dim stone hallway to face Sarra. “But I’m sorry taking you out of HopeWall for a few days is so traumatic. I think I owe you some sulking time. Would you like to roll about and scream? Or perhaps I deserve some silent treatment?”

  Nonsense. It had been years since Sarra tried either of those with Miss. “I’m just pointing out the obvious to stubborn old women who won’t listen,” she shrugged. “And I’m going to have sunburn tomorrow.”

  “I am sorry for the misery I inflict upon you daily, Sarra. How the rest of us ever get by, I don’t know,” Miss muttered, turning to lead them toward the middle of the Wall, rather than the guest rooms at the back.

  “Where are we going?”

  “MarverWall is a farm wall,” Miss said. “Let’s have a look at its farm.”

  The farm’s walls made a perfect hexagon shape, two-hundred and fifty feet across. Outside those walls, plants grew normally but, inside, a harvest could grow up to three times as fast.

  The farm appeared decent, though not as good as either of the two at HopeWall. The ground floor’s apple trees almost brushed the ceiling, and fresh fertilizer had been spread over their roots. Between the thick stone columns supporting the ceiling, planters of carrot, tomato and marrow lay stacked in towers, three levels high.

  Miss stopped to speak to the farm’s foreman, who had soil stains on his shirt. Sarra took the opportunity to look for the farm’s silver weaves.

  Ah, there. Rising cloud-like from the ground and passing through the ceiling, the pulsating weaves, sent by Polis Sumad Himself, attached themselves to the farm’s fruits, flowers, vegetables, weeds and trees. Some weaves were the size of her head, others the size of her fingernail. The merging of the silver and plants was a slow, perfect process. The weaves would attach to the plant, the weave’s knots, loops and breadth folding perfectly into the plant’s silhouette. Each was so complex she couldn’t hope to replicate any she’d ever seen. The silver weaves were so intricately structured, that there was no simpler explanation for their construction than that Polis Sumad Himself had designed each one for each plant. And He likely did so for every plant in each of the thousands of growth hexagons across His own vast expanse. She could never hope to equal their magnificence in her own weaves.

  But only she saw those silver weaves. Everyone else, in every farm she’d ever stood within, carried on as though they saw nothing. Sarra had learned not to let on that she saw differently.

  “Sarra, stop dreaming,” snapped Miss. “We’re headed up to the second level to spread fertilizer on plot eight with the lemon saplings, then turn the compost.”

  The windowless staircase had one stone landing and was lit by a flickering glowbulb. The second level was as large as the first, though the ceiling was lower.

  “You’ll do the compost, Sarra,” Miss said.

  Sarra stopped near a rough support column and glared, hands on hips. “I’m waiting,” she said loudly. “We just paid with vibrations outside.”

  Miss handed her a spade. “That was so the guards won’t bother us. I need a feel for these people before I ask the questions that I perhaps shouldn’t.”

  An hour passed, with Miss peppering the citizens of MarverWall with farming queries ranging from the inane to the insane. Silver weaves continued drifting out of the floor and upward through the roof.

  Dirt and grime worked into the creases of Sarra’s palms, under her fingernails and between her toes. The longer she worked, the more Miss’s face resembled the compost’s smell.

  “What’s the problem now?”

  “Stop smiling like an oaf. These people clearly know nothing about the problems out there.” Miss pointed south, out the window.

  “Only you would be disappointed by that.”

  “Quiet, I’m contacting MarverWall’s lead weaver.” Miss closed her eyes, then opened them. “Right, her name is Renev, and she left the Tower nineteen years ago. She is capable, has three children, and will be here shortly. And keep turning the compost, Sarra. People might notice.”

  Minutes later, a woman of around forty puffed through a doorway on the farm’s far side, dragging a little girl by the hand. She approached Miss Harient and Sarra, nervously brushing fingers through her hair. MarverWall’s weaver had faint lines beside her eyes and a gray stripe above her ear.

  “TowerMiss Harient?”

  “Renev, you look superb! Family life agrees with you, and this Wall is lovely. I’m certain that’s in no small part thanks to you. I always knew you’d do well. I’m sorry I’ve never visited until now, but it’s such a long trip. And Renev, this is my apprentice, Sarra, who you would think had never seen a spade before.”

  Sarra nodded politely and looked back to the compost beneath her feet. Renev’s little girl drew in the dirt with her toe.

  Miss continued. “This wall cluster. It seems good.”

  “It’s very good Miss, this one. The MarverWall farm feeds a lot of the cluster. We can produce a crop of carrots in just under three weeks, and the composting needs only a week if we’re turning it.”

  Indeed, this compost felt decidedly warm under Sarra’s bare feet. Polis Sumad also sent silver weaves that sped the composting, if the compost heap remained in one place for a few days.

  “Because we’re a long way from the main Humility roads, we don’t get bothered much, and the Walls are too well built for anyone to try raiding us.” Renev bit her lip. “TowerMiss, you’re here about my message?”

  Renev flinched after speaking Miss Harient’s title. Several MarverWall women passed by, smiling and laughing, seemingly unaware of who stood with their Wall’s lead weaver. They weren’t weavers, Sarra noticed, for they wore no vibration weave-storing jewelry like she, Miss and Renev did.

  It was always so strange to see a weaver treated like an ordinary person outside HopeWall. It wasn’t a lack of respect, so much as an absence of the conditions in which respect was expected.

  The old women back home would have thought the casual treatment scandalous, but Sarra quite liked it. Everyone was treated equally out here, and who cared who could weave and who couldn’t?

  Miss shook her head slightly, unconcerned at Renev’s minor slip.

  “You’ve made lead weaver already. That’s something to be proud of.”

  “Thanks, ah, Harient. The lead weaver retired last year, and I was elected. Not many of the women went to the Tower. I think that’s why I won. But we’ve good weavers here. I’d say we’re strongest in communication and surveillance weaves.

  “Our healers are better at weaving emergency and trauma healings, more than physiotherapy and, with our growth hexagon working this well, we don’t need to do much crop therapy. I’d like our defensive weaves to be better, though. But we have to work with what we’ve got.”

  “Good, dear,” Miss said with a smile and quick nod. “Hopefully your men can scare off whatev
er makes it past your defenses, if the worst comes to pass.”

  “We’ve got some decent shockpoles though,” Renev said quickly, almost on top of Miss Harient. “Not as good as the Seekers, but they work. And our men are fine fighters. Though cadvers don’t often come near.”

  Sarra exhaled quietly. The insistence that the men fight, and not weave vibrations, irritated her. If the men were taught weaving instead of combat, the Walls would have enough weaves to defend the Territories, as well as make up for any shortfall in the many other weaving disciplines.

  But she’d given up pointing that out. Every time she had, the Tower Elders had glared at her like she’d proposed they all walk around naked. Instead they babbled something about the Territories having more cadvers than the rest of Polis Sumad, and the Cenephan refugees requiring more direct defense forces.

  More likely, though, they were just opposed to change — any change at all to their precious bloody rules and routines.

  “Well,” Miss was saying, “I wanted to see your results for myself. No significant news ever out here, and then this happens!”

  Renev looked around. Her daughter was making swirling designs in the loose soil. She lowered her voice and pointed out the cross-barred window towards the south-eastern RimWall. The direction she indicated was near the border of Humility and Chastity Territories.

  “I’ve foraged out that way. There’s not much living, but I wove some vibrations into a repeater stone network grid stretching twenty miles with over a thousand stones. There’s never been anything more interesting than the occasional cadver coven. But last month, I was woken by an alert I’d set. Overnight, the chaos out there had grown enormous. The most sophisticated chaos weaves I’ve ever seen, and every single stone I’d laid — even the sleepers — were decommissioned in a single night. Over one thousand stones, all my programming, one by one, like that.” She clicked her fingers rapidly, deliberately.

  “Any mysterious Sumadan visitors from over the borderlands?”

  “No. But there’s something else. Mechanism smugglers.”

  Miss frowned.

  “I’ve set monitor stones around the Walls in this cluster, and I’ve counted fifteen different smugglers coming through, again and again. And that’s just MarverWall,” Renev continued. “I watch them leave, and they’re headed right into Chastity Territory, where the chaos weaves looked the most crafted. They only ever use more expensive metallic mechanisms, not the stones that we can weave and program ourselves.”

  Miss tapped her chin with a single finger and her brow furrowed.

  “What does it mean, Harient?” said Renev.

  “Someone didn’t want you seeing what’s going on nearby, dear. It won’t be something within your repeater stone network. Whatever’s happening over in Chastity Territory, they’re disabling all the nearby surveillance networks so none can determine the disturbance’s epicenter.” Miss stared long and pensively out the windows. “What about nightmares and poltergeists, Renev? They don’t come on quickly, but slowly, so few notice at first.”

  Sarra’s gaze settled on Renev’s daughter, who at some point had tuned into the conversation. Her eyes were wide as her fists.

  Sarra dropped the spade and held out her hand to the girl. The girl scuttled over to her.

  “My name’s Sarra,” she said.

  “Emmie.” Her two thick braids bobbed as she shook Sarra’s hand.

  “Does your Mamma teach you vibrations, Emmie?”

  “Yup!” the girl smiled.

  “Wow, lucky!”

  “And when I’m big, I’m going to HopeWall. To the Tower!”

  To the only home Sarra had ever known. Where women from the five Cenephan refugee territories came to learn the art of turning raw vibrations into the weaves that improved and eased life itself, in all arts from communication to defense. The versatile energy of the earth and life itself, molded into humanity’s tools.

  That wasn’t the silver energy that only Sarra could see. Whatever that silver energy was, she was the only person she’d ever met capable of weaving it.

  She smiled. “Well, when you get to HopeWall, you’ll already know someone. I’m from the Tower.”

  Emmie gasped. “Really? Do you know the TowerMiss?”

  Sarra looked up. The two women hadn’t noticed them. “Yes, she’s really nice.” She checked again. “And do you know what?”

  “What?”

  “She snores,” Sarra whispered. “It sounds like an old log slowly being snapped in two, every time she breathes in.”

  Emmie giggled.

  “Make sure you tell all your friends!”

  Sarra had been Miss Harient’s adopted daughter for about a decade. She’d learned she could get away with things in private, that she couldn’t get away with in public.

  At a moment of silence, Sarra looked up. Miss and Renev watched them.

  Miss frowned. “How old is your eldest?” she asked.

  “Fifteen, and she’s got the talent,” Renev smiled. “I’ve trained her on the basics, and I’ll send her to you as a novice in a year. And I’ve a friend in the cluster who’ll take her as apprentice once she makes initiate.”

  Sarra looked away.

  There was a silence, and Sarra felt Miss’s eyes on her, weighed with that sadness Miss never spoke of. Sarra was used to telling her it was fine, that she couldn’t miss a family she didn’t remember. But that was worse, for Miss never argued. Instead, the old woman’s shoulders would droop, she would clear her throat, and change the subject.

  Miss cleared her throat. “The boarding rooms, dear. When were they last treated for fleas?”

  Renev went quiet. “Miss, the boarding rooms. A smuggler’s using one tonight.”

  The smuggler’s name was Beveng. He made a good show of innocence in the face of abject guilt, whilst stretched upon his thin mattress, with Sarra pressing Miss Harient’s gauntlet mechanism against his forehead. The struggling had stopped, though the swearing had not. He was difficult to describe, with a face so unremarkable, and hair so precisely between blonde and brown, that his own mother would probably forget what he looked like when he was out.

  “And…” He gathered himself grandly for a final point as Miss inspected the bowl-shaped mechanism in his bag. “… I need the money! Wot’s the difference ‘tween foraging lime and using what I found all meself!” As well as a smuggler, Beveng was a liar. Earlier, he’d claimed a Sumadan from further in supplied him; now he claimed to be a prospector who dug around old ruins in the Territories. Miss had stopped reasoning with him.

  “I’ll find you, I will,” he growled. “My boys are gonna have yer heads!”

  “You’re right,” Miss said, reaching into her own pack. “Here. I’m not a thief.” She held out a bauble on a metal chain. “Just hear me out, young man. Sarra, let him up.” Sarra let her hand off his forehead, the gauntlet mechanism turning off automatically. The leather gauntlet, with copper wires sewn into it, had made her arm sweat from fingers to elbow. It slipped off her forearm with a wet slop.

  Beveng stood unsteadily, taking the bauble. It was gold-colored and shaped roughly like an hourglass.

  “You must come this way often, Beveng,” said Miss. “Turn around Sarra.”

  Whoops. She’d been staring at the bauble when Miss activated it with a vibration weave, making it difficult to avert her eyes.

  “Yeah, every other week,” Beveng said. “Used to be every other month.”

  “What changed?”

  “Someone wanted mechanisms instead of the ‘happy berry’ powder. We stopped with the powder, coz we’re making three times as much with the mechanisms. Uncle’s pretty happy.”

  “Where do you take them? Who do you take them to?”

  “Nah. Drop-points. No one’s ever talked to ‘em.”

  “There are more of you?”


  “All me uncle’s lads. We reckon we’re not the only ones, but we don’t go askin’. I get a currency holder and sometimes a note under a rock. Never met ‘em, don’ wanna.”

  Miss exhaled. “Beveng, why is your nose bleeding?”

  Sarra swiveled about.

  “I, what?” He put his hand to his nose. Blood streamed over his lips, his chin, dripping to the ground. He dropped Miss’s artefact, blinked at her and looked around jerkily. “What’d you do?” He inhaled raggedly. “What did you do?” he asked again, his voice rising an octave.

  “Nothing.” Miss stared, mouth agape. “Nothing! This isn’t supposed to happen.” She reached toward Beveng, but Sarra shoulder barged her out of the way, forcing him to the ground.

  “Beveng,” Sarra whispered sharply, inches from his face, “help us save you. What did you do with that mechanism? Did you weave at it or press some buttons?” The man started to whine and moan frantically as he clasped both hands to his nose. Blood pooled on the floor behind his head.

  “Nothing,” he said weakly, bubbles forming at his nostrils. “I can’t weave.”

  Before she could say anything else his eyes rolled up in his head, and he shuddered violently. Sarra ripped her headscarf from around her neck and pushed it against his nose, the yellowed cloth turning dark and sticky. There came the warmth of weaving from behind her. Miss Harient would be attempting a healing. Miss was an expert at brain problems, but even Sarra could tell Beveng’s hemorrhaging was hopeless.

  “Impossible. There’s nothing working on him,” Miss whispered. “No chaos energy or any of the others!”

  This, this was cruel. Sarra looked from Miss to Beveng, finding no answers with either. Her hands shook, as she sat up and backed away from the dying man. Minutes passed as he faded. Miss slumped against the cold wall and held his hands, muttering prayers to Polis Sumad over him, asking for His comfort, and that of his family and friends. For strength in their grief.

  After some minutes, Sarra thought the room had cooled. Miss stood. “The boy did not deserve this. This was murder performed by the Enemy.” She swallowed and closed her eyes. Sarra’s heart thumped fast, and distantly, for some reason, she wondered if this were her fault.