Page 58 of Green City Wars

“Benson had a change of heart?”

“Benson is doing what Benson does best. Waiting for the outcome,” Maria says grimly. “That old turtle’s got a hundred contingencies. Live mouse, dead mouse, golden future, or complete collapse of society. He’ll float to the top whatever happens.” Sounding simultaneously disgusted by the old reptile’s flexibility and grudgingly impressed.

“And you? Here as his personal exterminator?”

“I went freelance,” she says. “On account of how there’s a stoat out there needs to get a cap in her ass, and Benson won’t give the order since they paid mausgelt on Fitch.”

“Oh she’s all yours,” Skotch says. “Though you may have to race the cat for her.”

Maria looks like she’s up for a spot of cat-racing, but before she can say as much there’s a stir out across the Chapel. Both camps of soldiers suddenly sitting up and paying attention. A new figure’s turned up, cutting a line directly between them. Even at this distance there’s no missing the sinuous figure of Szerky.

22GREEN CITY WARS

The stoatweasel, the hunter, stands for a moment, looking out across the half-drowned battlefield-to-be. Skotch doesn’t watch her so much as the soldiers. They’re not all suddenly sitting up and taking notice. Their leaders—Brass-Shirt and the unknown leaf-cloaked Gray—sure are, but the rank and file are still more concerned about their opposite numbers. The squirrels of another colour that they’ve been jockeying against all their lives, and will be trading shots with tomorrow. And that gives him some hope, because the Country Clubs have a lot of money, but what they don’t have is a good grasp of how the city works. That’s Skotch’s skill set.

Still, there’s a definite exchange of looks, Szerky with Brass-Shirt, Szerky with Leaf-cloak, and then she strides forwards until she’s at the furthest promontory of the Chapel’s perimeter, looking out over the shallow sea like she’s seeking more lands to conquer.

When she speaks, her high, clear voice echoes out to them across the waters.

“You’re probably wondering,” she calls, “where your human went.”

There is a distinct worried shuffle amongst those on the central island, that this is the stoatweasel’s conversational gambit. A bigger stick than the brute demands they were expecting her to wield.

“The human received a call from the sect she belongs to,” Szerky announces proudly. “They are most displeased with her and have called her to an accounting. The humans, too, respect the rules. It is not fit that one of them comes down here, to soil herself amongst you city animals.”

“Well, crap,” says Skotch. Lulu makes a nervous little sound in her throat. It’s not just the absence of Saint Frances, because it wasn’t exactly as if anybody could have overlooked it. It’s the suggestion of the Country Clubs’ reach. The fact that they can, in fact, breach Rule One when they need. That their funds, their influence on the financial ecosystem that sees the city fed and its humans provided for, allows them such liberties. They got to Saint Frances through her order. And probably they had already been prepping for just this necessity, given that Skotch had been in and out of the Chapel more than once since Meece hit town. But the efficiency of their operation at those higher levels is genuinely intimidating. Tybelle tells her cult to get to the Chapel, in Szerky’s earshot. And before Skotch can get the clown car of robed rodents there, the call has already come in to summon the Saint from her ministry. That’s the flex Szerky is making. The other thing—that she’s thrown around enough buttons to buy the services of troops from both sides in the current military festivities—is almost an afterthought.

Skotch has done the math, of course. How is it, precisely, that those who control the Farm Projects have quite so much largesse to throw around? Possibly some of it’s simply overbudgeting. After all, keeping the humans of Neuwien in affordable, eco-friendly, and nourishing victuals was always going to be high priority to the civic planners. But he reckons it’s more than that, especially given what Meece said about the place. There are thousands of mice in the Projects. That’s a big old budget of food and Plangent and just resources in general, all of which can be bartered for cash or capital. Skotch reckons precious little of that budget gets to the actual workforce out there, in fact, while the elite set in place to keep them in line have sufficient spare time and cash to strut about playing warrior. It’s not that the farms are rich so much as they keep their labour poor.

All a great revelation, and maybe under other circumstances he’d be getting together with Wizzo to start a new revolutionary collective aimed at liberating the countryside. Right now it just means that Szerky isn’t hurting for either troops or influence.

“I’m giving you this one chance, Meinen Herren and Damen,” she shouts. “Give up Meece or float his body over, either one will do, and all this unpleasantness can be put behind us. Life can go on how it’s meant to be.” Life, with the ever-present threat of falling into dumb oblivion. And maybe the parrots have worked out how to live with that, but all Skotch knows is that it’s a fear he’s been aware of all his life.

No guarantee that Meece has even got it right. Maybe he forgot to carry the one and what he’s writing out the formula for is pure snake oil. Still, it’s clear the farms believe it. And Skotch reckons strangling the Plangent supply is their premier means of controlling the mouse masses out there. Give Meece his way, there’ll be an underground railroad smuggling the stuff into the Projects within the year.

He finds it’s a gamble he’s willing to roll the dice on, that Meece has done his sums properly.

“Can you pop a shot into her?” he asks Fischer.

The frog has been sighting down his gun, but cocks an eye up at Skotch. “Herr Fischer does not wish to try it,” he says. And frogs are good with ballistics, something to do with the brain-wiring required for launching your tongue at flies. He’s probably the best aim they’ve got. If he shot and missed, that would de facto be the commencement of hostilities, and right now they’re benefitting from any delay they can get.

“Let me go talk to them,” Lulu suggests. “I’ll keep them busy.”

“They’ll shoot you dead,” Skotch tells her, more fiercely than he intended. When she waves her ankle-ring at him, he brushes it away. “You heard her. You think that they wouldn’t risk one dead pigeon, pet or no pet?”

“I’m not a pet, I’m an employee!” Lulu insists, like that either makes a difference or makes any sense.

Wizzo has been keeping an eye on the opposition as he hunches over his crossbow. Now he calls out, “Keaton, get over here.”

Keaton turns out to be the Maulers’ bat, a diminutive critter wearing a red necker. His enormous ribbed ears swivel and flick, dwarfing the rest of him. He knuckles over on his wings, a spiker clutched in his feet.

Out there across the water Szerky has called Brass-Shirt and Leaf-cloak to her. The two enemy officers regard each other suspiciously, but the payout the stoat represents is obviously keeping them from doing anything rash.

“What’re they saying, Keaton?” Wizzo asks.

Keaton’s ears pivot and turn like radar dishes and he says—his voice so reedy Skotch can only just catch it—“Telling them to behave themselves. Marching orders. Two pronged-attack. It’s time, comrade.”

The word goes out that they’re coming. Everyone who can, finds cover. Skotch has to chase Lulu down to where Meece is still frantically working away at the little touch screen, covering it with a dense forest of steps and procedures. Then he goes back, flattens himself down as only a raccoon can. He doesn’t have a gun and nobody brought a spare, but he wants to see them coming.