Gullstruck Island (24 page)

‘Inspector Skein
did
have a journal,’ she said in a small voice.

‘Where is it?’ demanded Dance.

‘We had to give it back . . . but we kept this bit.’ Hathin rummaged in her belt-bag and pulled out the crumpled pages Eiven had removed.

‘This is Doorsy writing,’ Therrot commented in frustration and disgust. ‘Jaze! You were a clerk’s apprentice in your last life, weren’t you?’

Jaze was passed the pages and squinted at them for a minute through a pair of resin lenses that rested in his eye sockets like monocles.

‘You say your Inspector friend was careful about what he wrote down,’ he commented at last with a sigh. ‘I wish he had been less careful. I can wring
some
sense from these scrawls, but it still reads like a sort of code. The first page seems to be a list of Lace villages, with a few mysterious words after each village name. For example, “Wake’s Tail – three eagles, one King, five storms.” Or here’s another: “Pearlpit – seven cliffs, one eagle, one join R.” After each of them there’s a string of words . . . that aren’t words. No words I’ve seen before, anyway. Then at the bottom there’s a single line by itself. “News from Jealousy – Bridle believes that Lord S will return when the rains end or soon after.”

‘The second page makes a bit more sense. Listen to this. “Fain’s note: C has agreed to cooperate with us, has asked to meet with all the Sightlords, says there is scheme against us, promises to reveal all. Fain says if he does not return I must assume treachery and reveal everything I know in Sweet-weather tidings hut.’

There was a pause, filled with nothing but the drone of the wasps.

‘All right.’ Jaze removed his monocles. ‘We have a hook in this thing now – let’s see if we can pull it up and have a look at it. Somebody, this “C” person, arranged a secret meeting with the Lost Council so that all the Sightlords would be in the same place at the same time. So, either C truly wanted to warn them but did so too late . . . or he led them into a trap.’

‘So . . . do we think the Lost Council were ambushed, to stop them revealing this dangerous thing they had discovered?’ The speaker was Louloss, a tired-looking, wisp-haired woman in her forties. ‘And then somehow Skein was killed, followed by the other Lost, just in case they’d been told something, or discovered the same secret in their wanderings?’

‘It’s possible,’ answered Jaze, ‘the Lost always looked after their own. If only some had been killed, the others would have investigated long distance. The only way to kill Lost safely would be to kill all of them.’

‘But the murderers did
not
kill all of them,’ rumbled Dance softly. ‘One of them still lives. Hathin’s sister. Arilou.’

Hathin’s sister. Arilou.
Not the Lady Arilou, no, here she was first and foremost Hathin’s sister. This might have meant more to Hathin if ice-spiders had not been tickling her spine. The larger the conspiracy loomed in her mind, the stranger Arilou’s survival seemed.

‘So why?’ asked Marmar. ‘Why kill the other Lost and leave Arilou alive?’

‘I don’t doubt Arilou was meant to die with the rest,’ answered Dance, ‘but she didn’t. Do you have any idea why, Hathin?’

Therrot, who was sitting beside Hathin, visibly tensed, and Hathin could feel him struggling against the engrained habit of talking carefully about Arilou’s powers.

‘Arilou . . .’ Therrot gave Hathin a brief veiled look of apology. ‘It was never public, but there’s always been doubt . . .’

‘I think she’s a Lost,’ said Hathin suddenly. Therrot closed his eyes and gave a small but impatient sigh. ‘No . . . really. I . . . I know what you’re going to say, Therrot. It’s true, everyone in . . . in our village secretly believed she was just backward. And I’d started to believe that too. We
needed
her to be a Lost, we had to tell ourselves that we
did
believe it, to help us keep up the “lie”, and so underneath we were all sure it
was
a lie. But now . . . I don’t know, but I’m starting to think she might really be a Lost. She just . . . doesn’t bother with people much.’

‘Well, it looks like
they
think she’s a Lost,’ said Dance. ‘Whoever is behind this. They must have found out that one Lost had survived. That is why they sent in this Jimboly with orders to stir the town into destroying your village. It had to go, because whatever they did to kill the Lost hadn’t worked on Arilou.’ Hathin thought of Jimboly throwing a rock at the back of Arilou’s head to see if she’d duck. Testing her to see whether she was a Lost and needed to be killed. And Arilou had ducked.

‘But why . . . ?’ Therrot sounded as if his throat was filling with tears. ‘If this conspiracy just wanted Arilou dead, why send a mob after the whole village
?
They didn’t need to kill
everyone
.’

‘Think, Therrot,’ Jaze said gently. ‘A Lost survived.
They
didn’t know what she’d seen on the night of the murders or who she’d told. The only safe course was to kill everybody she might have talked to . . .’ Jaze trailed off as Therrot scrambled to his feet, shoved his way to the vine door and jumped out into the wasp-filled darkness.

‘Let him be.’ Dance sighed, and then continued for all the world as if nobody had just thrown themselves out of the hut. ‘Hathin, do you truly believe your sister is a Lost? That will affect all our plans.’

Hathin thought of Arilou’s horrified frenzy on the plains of Sorrow. She nodded.

‘Then we gamble,’ said Dance. ‘If we
do
have the only Lost left on the island, then we have to try to get some sense out of her. She might be our best weapon and our only hope of finding out who killed the Lost and the Hollow Beasts – and why. Hathin and Arilou must reach the Beacon School. The teachers there might know something, or be able to help Arilou. And perhaps while they are passing through the city of Jealousy, they can find this Bridle mentioned in Skein’s notes, and find out about this “Lord S”.’

Dance’s rocking chair creaked as she rose and stared around the room.

‘We’re moving out of the Wasp’s Nest. All of us. From this point everyone with an unfinished quest will put it aside while we help Hathin with hers.’

One or two revengers flinched and reached towards their covered forearms, as though their unsatisfied tattoos had stung them, scorpion-like.

‘Yes.’ Dance answered the unasked questions. ‘We must all act in this. Whatever it was the Lost discovered, it involves the Lace – and so it concerns us. Raglan virtually admitted as much when he refused to tell me what he knew.

‘Besides, the slaughter of the Hollow Beasts was not a freak mob riot – it was planned. Yes, we could go to Sweet-weather, rip the hearts out of a few frightened shopkeepers and hope we got the right ones, but justice would still be unsatisfied. We strike at the heart and mind that planned this, or the butterfly will never be complete.

‘Jaze, you and Therrot will stay here with Hathin and Arilou until they’ve recovered enough to travel, then you’ll see them safe to the Beacon School. You’ll all need disguises – right now anyone who looks Lace will be in for a rough ride. Also, our conspiracy of killers will be looking for Hathin and Arilou everywhere. So will that Ashwalker if he lives, and the law too if anyone guesses that they’re still alive.

‘Meanwhile, I will take a group and travel ahead making safe houses ready, then push on to Smattermast in case we can find out there what happened to the Lost Council. Marmar, muskets don’t grow on bushes. Find out where Jimboly got hers. Louloss, you’ll head to the coast and see if any of the other Hollow Beasts survived, then you’ll visit all the villages listed in Skein’s journal to find out if you can discover what his notes mean.’

And there was no more argument. Dance seemed to hold all the sway of Mother Govrie, Whish and the rest rolled into one, and yet nobody called her Mother Dance or Doctor Dance. Only Dance, a curious name – not a Lace name.

Louloss came and placed a poultice on Hathin’s arm. Hathin looked around the room and thought of hands deft with daggers, fingertips dented by tense bowstrings, hands slipping deadly cordials into tankards.

I’m not afraid of them. Why?

Because I am one of them now.

Suddenly a whistle sounded from the jungle outside. The conversation hushed instantly, knives leaped into hands, and Jaze sprang out through the vine curtain. For a long minute there was absolute hush in the tree hut, every ear straining to listen.

At last Jaze re-entered, his face set and tense.

‘Hathin, one of the men I sent to collect your sister from the priest’s house has just returned. No – it’s fine.’ He held up one hand to halt Hathin’s worried enquiry. ‘Arilou’s fine, and two of our boys are carrying her through the jungle even now. But apparently they had a hell of a time getting her out of town unseen. Some power-and-the-glory Doorsy pen-pusher newly arrived in Mistleman’s Blunder is tearing the town apart – looking for you and your sister.’

‘What?’ Marmar jumped to his feet. ‘That’s impossible! Hathin and Arilou left the coast barely a day ago – and
they
only got here so quickly because they took a shortcut across Lady Sorrow’s lap! There’s no way anyone here could know about the massacre yet, let alone the fact that the girls are here!’

‘I know.’ Jaze gave a curt nod. ‘This pen-pusher can’t possibly know they’re here, but somehow he does. He even has warrants.’

‘But . . . getting a warrant takes a
day
at the very least . . .’

‘There’s something sour in this,’ muttered Dance. ‘Hathin, have you noticed that your enemies appear to know things sooner than they should? Arilou alone survives the deaths of the Lost, and within mere days this dentist Jimboly walks into your village. The aide Minchard Prox survives the storm, and a letter about it arrives just in time to put spark to powder. And turns up in Jimboly’s hands, no less.’

There was a superstitious murmur, but Dance gave it no time to build momentum.

‘You heard the news, boys. The hunt’s reached Mistleman’s Blunder already. So pack light, and pack tonight. We all move out tomorrow before dawn.’

‘But Arilou can’t!’ Hathin could almost see Arilou’s bloody feet, her wan face. ‘She’s exhausted. If we just had a day so that she could rest, and maybe find her way back to her own body . . .’

Dance shook her head, solemnly unmovable.

‘It is too great a risk. I will find a way for her to be carried, but we must move out tomorrow.’

‘I . . .’ Hathin stared at her feet, crestfallen. ‘I’m so sorry . . . We brought trouble here with us . . .’

‘Did you? Did you kill the Lost and frame our people? Did you stir up the towners of Sweetweather and murder your own village? No. You have brought us nothing but news and information that we needed. Besides, Hathin, we revengers live in “trouble” the way sharks live in water.

‘For years we have been careful sharks, harming none but our quarries, out of respect for our pact with the Lost Council. But now the Lost are dead . . . and so is that pact. Do anything you must, Hathin. Kill anyone you must. Revenge is your only fetter.

‘Our enemies think that Lace make good victims and scapegoats. They are wrong. They think that they can strike at us, and we will do nothing but scatter and hide. They are wrong.

‘You have been wronged beyond endurance by powerful foes, Hathin. Pity them for not knowing what that means . . .’

That thought lingered in Hathin’s mind even after the lanterns were doused and she had lain down next to the other revengers on the plank-and-vine floor. And when at last she slept, her dreams took her to a white, windswept plain. There she ran and ran, and so did the Ashwalker. He left blue prints on the white earth, and her footmarks were red. It seemed sometimes that he chased her and sometimes that she was pursuing him, a dagger in her hand.

16

A Glimpse of a Ghost

In spite of her tiredness, Hathin woke some time before dawn and followed Dance around with timid stubbornness until the tall woman listened to Hathin’s plan to help Arilou find her own body.

‘Try it then, but quickly,’ Dance agreed at last. ‘You must be ready to leave in an hour.’

With Therrot’s help, Hathin found a space of soft soil near one of the jungle streams. The pair of them heaped earth into little volcanoes, using stones to stand for towns and villages. It was a clumsy model, of course. Neither of them had ever been to the eastern coast, or cruised cloud-level with the eagles, so a lot of it was guesswork.

Hathin spent the next half an hour crawling around the miniature Gullstruck with Arilou, trying to run her sister’s hand over its contours.

‘Therrot, if we can’t help her find herself before we move on, then it’ll be too late – she’ll never catch up.’ For the fifth time Hathin curled Arilou’s stubborn fingers around two tiny stick-dolls and walked them up one side of a double mound and down the other.
This is the route we took, Arilou
. . .
and this is where we are now. At least this’ll help you know where to
start
looking
. . .