“Sounds dangerous,” Lily remarked.
“It is,” Tear replied, and a shadow seemed to cross his face. “But you know Jen. She never met a challenge she could ignore. It’s not the worst thing in the world, I suppose. The Town needs people like that, people who aren’t daunted by the unknown.”
Katie frowned, trying to decide whether she was such a person. Disgruntled, she was forced to admit that she wasn’t. She liked things to be certain, decisive.
“I’ve made my decision,” said Jonathan, and Katie looked up, surprised. He had an annoying habit of guessing her thoughts, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was speaking to his father.
“Have you?” Tear asked.
Jonathan pointed to Katie, who jumped as though she’d been pinched. All three of them were looking at her now, and that was too many.
“What decision?” she asked her plate.
“Katie, didn’t you ever wonder what I was training you for?” Tear asked.
Katie nodded mutely. She never had reached a satisfactory answer about that, but over the years the question itself had begun to seem unimportant. They were learning to fight, because someone had to know how, and that knowledge had gradually become its own reward. But Tear was waiting for an answer, so she said, “I thought we were meant to be some kind of police force.”
“If only that would solve our problems,” Tear replied.
“Why won’t it?”
“Police forces are designed to protect the many, not the one.”
Katie digested this for a moment, but reached no understanding. She didn’t think the Tears meant to speak in riddles; it was merely their way. She considered pretending to understand, then shrugged and asked, “Who’s the one?”
“Jonathan.”
Katie looked up, her eyes widening. She glanced to her right and found Jonathan watching her, his gaze coolly amused.
“Protect him from what?” she asked.
“That’s the bitch of it. No one knows.” Jonathan threw a wry glance at his father, who smiled back. “Magic is wonderful, but it never works when you need it.”
Katie frowned, feeling slightly disillusioned. What good was magic that didn’t work on command?
“There’s a knife out there, hanging over Jonathan’s head,” Tear replied, “but I can’t see it, and neither can he. Jonathan needs protection. He needs guards.”
Katie sat back in her chair. She wondered if Tear was having her on, but there was no joke in his eyes, and beneath Jonathan’s smile, she sensed a dark pocket of worry. Jonathan was a great one for gallows humor, but even in their brief conversations, Katie had observed that he used such humor defensively.
“All of us?” she asked.
“As many as you choose.”
“Me?”
“A guard needs a leader, Katie.”
“I thought you were our leader.”
Tear paused, looking to Lily, who shrugged and poured herself another glass of water. Tear turned back to Katie, and she saw something grim and hopeless in his eyes, the look of a doomed man with his fingers full of straw.
“I’m leaving.”
“Leaving where?”
“Leaving the Town.”
Katie gaped at him, once again sure that he must be joking. But Lily and Jonathan were both staring at the table, and in their downcast gazes, Katie sensed the ghost of many arguments, already lost.
“This community is a good one,” Tear continued. “I believe in it. But the White Ship was a terrible loss. We have medics and midwives, and they’re doing hero’s work, but we need doctors. We need medicine.”
“Why?”
“We’re running out of diaphragms, for a start.”
Katie blushed, dropping her gaze so that she wouldn’t have to look at Jonathan. Mum had taken her to Mrs. Johnson, the midwife, when she was fourteen, just like every other girl in town, and Katie had come out with a diaphragm and instructions on how to use it. It had never occurred to her that there wasn’t an inexhaustible supply of such things.
“I had hoped that the doctors would be able to find a substitute for birth control here, something in the local plant life, before we ran out. But now we have no doctors, no chemists. We have no one who knows how to perform an abortion. Think on that for a moment.”
“Where can you find doctors?”
“Across the ocean.”
Katie was already shaking her head, because this was a mistake. Tear shouldn’t leave the Town now, not when there was so much whispering and muttering, so much discontent.
“Can’t someone else go across the ocean? Why does it have to be you?”
Tear and Lily looked at each other, almost furtively, and then Tear replied, “No. It has to be me.”
“Why?”
Tear took a deep breath, then turned to Jonathan and Lily. “Leave us alone for a moment.”
The two of them got up from the table and disappeared into the living room, Lily closing the door behind them.