Free The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness Page B

too loud and messy to be able to pick out any individual person.
    Too loud to pick out one boy.
    "Maybe it's not as bad as we all think." Maddy's voice is slow, weighing every word as if she's testing them out for herself. "I mean, the town looks peaceful. Loud, but the men who deliver the food say the stores are about to reopen. I'll bet
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    your Todd is out there working away at a job, safe and alive and waiting to see you."
    I can't tell if she's saying this because she believes it or because she's trying to get me to believe it. I wipe my nose with my sleeve. "That could be true."
    She looks at me for a long time, obviously thinking something but not saying it. Then she turns back to the glass.
    "Just listen to them roar," she says.
    There are three other healers here besides Mistress Coyle. Mistress Waggoner, a short round puff of a woman with wrinkles and a mustache, Mistress Nadari, who treats cancers and who I've only seen once closing a door behind her, and Mistress Lawson, who treats children in another house of healing but who was trapped here while having a consultation with Mistress Coyle when the surrender happened and who's been fretting ever since about the ill children she left behind.
    There are more apprentices, too, a dozen besides Maddy and Corinne, who-because they work with Mistress Coyle-seem to be the top two apprentices out of the whole house, maybe even all of Haven. I rarely see the others except when they're trailing behind one of the healers, stethoscopes bouncing, white coats flapping behind them, off to find something to do.
    Because the truth of it is, as the days go by and the town gets on with whatever it's doing beyond our doors, most of us patients are getting better and new ones aren't arriving. All the male patients were taken out of here the first night, Maddy
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    told me, whether they could travel or not, and no new women have been brought here even though invasion and surrender aren't bars to getting sick.
    Mistress Coyle worries about this.
    "Well, if she can't heal, then who is she?" Corinne says, snapping the elastic band around my arm a little too tight. "She used to run all of the houses of healing, not just this one. Everyone knew her, everyone respected her. For a while, she was even Chair of the Town Council."
    I blink. "She used to be in charge?"
    "Years ago. Quit moving around." She jabs the needle into my arm harder than she needs to. "She's always saying that being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day." She catches my eye. "Which is something I believe, too."
    "So what happened?" I ask. "Why isn't she still in charge?"
    "She made a mistake," Corinne says primly. "People who didn't like her took advantage of it."
    "What kind of mistake?"
    Her permanent frown gets bigger. "She saved a life," she says and snaps loose the elastic band so hard it leaves a mark.
    Another day passes, and another, and nothing changes. We're still not allowed out, our food still comes, and the Mayor still hasn't asked for me. His men check on my condition but the promised talk never happens. He's just leaving me here, so far.
    Who knows why?
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    He's all anyone ever talks about, though.
    "And do you know what he's done?" Mistress Coyle says over dinner, my first one where I'm allowed out of bed and in the canteen. "The cathedral isn't just his base of operations. He's made it into his home."
    There's a general clucking of disgust from the women around her. Mistress Waggoner even pushes her plate away. "He fancies himself God now," she says.
    "He hasn't burned the town down, though," I say, wondering aloud from the other end of the table. Maddy and Corinne both look up from their plates with wide eyes. I carry on anyway. "We all thought he would, but he hasn't."
    Mistresses Waggoner and Lawson give Mistress Coyle a meaningful look.
    "You show your youth, Viola," Mistress Coyle says. "And you shouldn't challenge your superiors."
    I blink, surprised. "That's not