Chapter 16 #3
“I didn’t come here to fight,” Donall said, a sad smile lifting his mouth.
“I came to make a life for myself, for my family.” He hesitated, what looked like grief crossing his face.
“Our home city was crowded and filthy. My wife and daughter got sicker by the year. We needed a fresh start. All of us did,” he added, gesturing around the room.
“We don’t care about titles or fancy houses or any of that kind of thing.
We just wanted space. Clean air. A quiet life where we could make our own decisions. ”
Fascinated, Hallie had a dozen questions crowding her mind.
“We came from all over,” Rhodda said, sounding almost as weary as Donall. “Almost all of us were strangers when we came here. We wanted the promise. Paradise.” There was so much bitterness laced into that last word that Hallie could almost see it in the air.
“It’s there,” Donall said, another sad smile pulling his mouth. “I still believe it’s there. We just haven’t found our way to it yet.”
“There’s so much potential,” Rhodda agreed, even though Hallie could tell she wasn’t sure she entirely believed it. There were unshed tears in the other woman’s eyes. “But only if someone other than Nicholas is in charge.”
“What did you hope to gain with a Conclave seat?” Hallie asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
Rhodda sighed and looked at Donall, who echoed her sigh.
“Peace,” Donall answered. The simple word weighed on Hallie’s shoulders, carrying far too much meaning and burden for one syllable.
He looked at Girard. “We know that the hochlen don’t think we’ve got a right to be here.
They’ve left us alone so far, but we know even twenty years isn’t all that long for one of your kind.
” The words were spoken with no heat or bitterness, just simple acceptance.
“We know that the Conclave could just decide to reclaim the land. But if we get a Conclave seat, we get the land rights. We get to stay here, to govern ourselves.”
Hallie remembered the background information provided by the Conclave Investigators that she’d read just before leaving Daydawn to come here.
She’d wondered then if the humans had realised just how precarious their hold over the island was and now had her answer.
They were keenly aware that the Conclave and hochlen may just decide to take the island back.
But the settlers thought they had a way of ensuring their future, using a hochlen mechanism.
It was a bold move. Hallie could also imagine how uneasy the islanders had been.
Making the approach to the Conclave drew attention to the existence of the island and its human population.
“Is that right?” Hallie asked Girard, fascinated.
“Essentially, yes,” Girard answered. He tilted his head to Donall. “It wouldn’t be quite as simple as having a Conclave seat would entitle anyone to hold a particular spot of land, but in setting up a seat on the Conclave for Paradise, it recognises an independent territory.”
“I can see why you would want that,” Hallie said, turning back to Rhodda and Donall.
“It’s why you all came here, after all, isn’t it?
To make your own rules.” She frowned slightly.
“But Nicholas wasn’t talking to the Conclave directly.
” Hallie saw the look Rhodda and Donall exchanged.
Something they had noticed and discussed before, she thought.
“No,” Donall said, voice clipped. “Said he didn’t want any dealings with hochlen. Begging your pardon,” he added, a trace of worry in his face and voice as he looked at Girard.
“He made his feelings clear,” Girard said, a touch of wry humour in his voice and face. Donall’s mouth twitched in response.
“He does like to make his feelings clear, yes,” Donall agreed.
“But you needed to contact the Conclave. Was that why the radio was set up?” Hallie asked.
“That had been planned before. Lots of people here have families, friends, in other places. Radio was a cheap way of staying in touch. Something we could afford. Unlike a phone tower or net connection,” Rhodda said, a shadow crossing her face.
With her expertise, she would have a good idea of what was involved in that process, Hallie thought.
“Although the radio was supposed to be in New Hope, where most of the people are.”
“But, right now, Rhodda is the only one on the island who can set up and repair the radio, so it came to Reunion with us,” Donall put in with a faint smile. Under the exhaustion they were friends, Hallie realised.
“And I’m assuming Nicholas wouldn’t have wanted to travel to Reunion to use the radio?
” Hallie asked. It was making a bit more sense now, although it still seemed strange to her that a man as controlling as Nicholas Rigg would have allowed a powerful tool like the radio to be mounted outside his influence.
“Him? No. He doesn’t like anything that involves an effort.
He sent work crews out to make the road,” Rhodda said, a sharp edge to her voice.
“Didn’t want to fight through the forest like the rest of us.
Wanted a nice, smooth road he could drive on.
He’s got a personal ATV with cushions on the seats,” Rhodda added, the sourness in her voice making Hallie smile.
“Once the road was done, this past summer, he came to Reunion. Just once, after we’d got the radio all set up.
He was sniffing around, trying to work out how it was all put together.
I think he wanted to see if it could be moved back to New Hope. ”
And that last made more sense to Hallie. Nicholas hadn’t kept Rhodda in New Hope when she’d wanted to leave, with the others. Perhaps he saw them as trouble makers that he was glad to be rid of. But he’d wanted to see if he could get the radio back under his control.
“You never told me that,” Donall said.
“There was enough going on,” Rhodda answered, and for a moment she looked as weary as Donall.
“With Nicholas in New Hope, and the radio in Reunion, the liaison for the Conclave was Waller Howther,” Hallie said, trying to match the calm tone that Girard often used when interviewing witnesses. “Is Waller Howther here?”
“No,” Donall said, word clipped. That made him nervous, too, Hallie saw. “He hadn’t been seen for a few days before the gunners came.”
“So, he went missing from Reunion?” Hallie asked.
“Must have done,” Donall answered. But he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
He shrugged slightly. “He wasn’t one of us, not really.
Nicholas sent him. Gave him instructions on what to say, what not to say, and insisted on regular reports.
” That was the truth, as Donall understood it.
And it made sense, from what Hallie had seen of Nicholas.
“A spy in our midst,” Rhodda put in, bitterness in her voice.
“We knew what he was,” Donall said in a soothing voice, as if that was an argument they’d had plenty of times before.
“Any idea what happened to him?” Hallie asked.
“Well, he didn’t just vanish.” One of the other people at the tables spoke up. A thin woman, brown hair pulled back into a knot at the back of her head, face lined with weariness.
“Jonah took him,” another one of the Reunion settlers put in. The youngest one, who didn’t look quite as beaten down as the others.
There was a ripple of agreement around the room.
“Jonah? That’s the governor, isn’t it?” Hallie prompted, looking from Donall to Rhodda. “Is he here?”
“This is not his territory,” Donall told her. “He and his men are on the hill.”
“The hill?” Hallie asked.
“There’s an old building up on the cliffs not far from here,” Rhodda told her. “That’s where the governor lives.”
Hallie remembered the ancient building she’d seen from the helicopter, and was very glad that she and Girard had not tried to make their way there to wait for back-up, as they’d briefly discussed.
It seemed as if they would have run into this Jonah and his men, which seemed at least as unpleasant a prospect as meeting Nicholas again.
And there was that term again. Governor.
From the way Rhodda spoke, it seemed she had far more fear of Jonah, this governor, than she did of Nicholas Rigg.
Having now met the self-styled principal, and found him full of violence and the sense of his own importance, Hallie found herself both curious and apprehensive about meeting Jonah.
But also determined to actually meet him.
It seemed that he and Nicholas were two of the most important figures on the island, and whatever was going on would probably involve either or both of them.
Nicholas’ house was a sharp contrast to the way most people in New Hope lived and Hallie wondered if Jonah had surrounded himself with similar comfort and evidence of status.
Assuming that the house on the hill was the great, grey building almost smothered by trees, it hadn’t seemed that far away.
Although it had been difficult to judge distances from the air, she thought that the apparently ruined building was close enough to reach on foot and also far enough away from New Hope that Jonah and Nicholas had their own separate territories.
Perhaps when she and Girard were done with exploring the settlement, they could make their way up the hill to visit Jonah.
Thinking about the distance and height, Hallie also added borrowing an ATV to her wish-list. She was almost fully recovered from using her magic to hold off the warrimel, but she had a feeling she’d need all the energy she could gather to deal with Jonah.
That was always assuming that she and Girard could get out of this building and New Hope without Nicholas being able to enact his plan to kill them both.
Despite the very real threats hanging over them, she almost laughed at herself.
She was getting ahead of herself. One problem at a time.
Before then, she had more questions for the Reunion residents.