Gullstruck Island (35 page)

‘Stop!’ It was almost too much, watching a volcano changing shape before her eyes. ‘Therrot, what does it mean?’

‘I don’t know.’

The other bundles also held sequences of maps, depicting the other volcanoes. As before, the same view had been painted over and over, the sequence of maps revealing almost imperceptible changes in the volcanoes’ outlines. Sorrow seemed unchanging for dozens of maps, and then her crater suddenly altered its shape and became larger. New speckles kept appearing on the flanks of the King of Fans. More disturbing still, Mother Tooth developed strange blots and blemishes, like bruises on a fruit, several of which looked oddly rectangular.

The pictures of Spearhead were generally very indistinct, doubtless because of the cloud that nearly always wreathed his head. Peering at the smudges of charcoal, however, Hathin was sure the vague pattern of light and shadow within his crater was changing slightly. In some, she thought she glimpsed a dim bulge like a puffball inside the crater.

‘Perhaps it means nothing,’ suggested Therrot. ‘After all, is it so strange if the volcanoes stir in their sleep?’

But his words convinced neither of them, and they were glad to leave the house, despite being not much the wiser for their visit.

They had just locked the door behind them when it happened. Two men who had been dawdling by a resin-worker’s stall abruptly plunged into the crowd. There was a scream, and they emerged dragging a twisting, kicking, scratching, reed-like woman. Her beaded bowler fell off her head to show the shaven place above her forehead, and the crowd pulled back murmuring dangerously as they realized that she was Lace.

For a moment Hathin’s eye clouded with the memory of a darkened beach, the murderous pinpricks of torches . . . but the crowd held back out of respect for the two men pinning the woman to the ground. Hathin recognized them as two of the bounty hunters from Mistleman’s Blunder. Of course, now that the Superior had his pet Lace, he had probably paid off and discharged his own bounty hunters, allowing the visitors to hunt Lace freely in his city.

One of the men placed a knee on the woman’s back and tied her hands behind her with a piece of cord. Then, to his own very great surprise, he flew backwards and lay on the dust clutching his nose. The other man’s hasty leap to his feet proved to be a wasted effort. A well-swung mutton joint caught him on the side of the head and dropped him to the dust again. One could almost feel the air of the marketplace thickening and crackling with stares, and every stare was fixed on Therrot, who now stood over the bound woman, the mutton joint still in his hand.

There was a strange expression on Therrot’s face, almost a look of relief.
I’m falling
, said the expression.
No more decisions. All I can do now is fall.

‘Stop!’

As Hathin ran forward she could feel the stares crystallize on her skin like salt. Flushed and desperate, she held the Superior’s ring at arm’s length towards the bounty hunters. Their hands paused on the hilts of their knives. Hathin revolved slowly, holding out the ring so that everyone around her had a chance to see the seal.

‘We’re claiming this woman.’ Hathin cleared her throat to rid it of its nervous croak. ‘She . . . She’s a necessary supply. We’re – we’re stockpiling all the Lace we can find.’

The woman, who was doing her best to spit out a mouthful of dust and her own hair, twisted her head to look up. Her eyes lost a little of their wildness as her gaze locked with that of Hathin. Behind both pairs of brown eyes a thousand Lace ancestors raised shields in salute and shouted a silent greeting across the void between.

And if any of the crowd had stopped to look closely at the girl who stood before them in the plainest of sight, they too might have detected in her every feature the whiff of the sea, the glitter of centuries of smiles. But they were hypnotized by the ring, and Hathin was invisible again.

A second barrow was fetched, and as the crowd receded Hathin and Therrot retraced their steps towards the Superior’s palace. Behind them walked a middle-aged man and his adult daughter, who had without comment taken on the task of pushing the barrowful of Lace captive along. Therrot cast a glance back at the pair of them, then gave Hathin a meaningful look. Hathin nodded slightly. She too had noticed the coral cut on the father’s chin, the pebbley snubness of their features.

At the governor’s gate the little convoy paused, and mumbled thanks were exchanged in Lace.

‘You’d probably better go back before anyone wonders why you’re helping us,’ whispered Hathin.

‘Wonder is already abroad. We moved here fifteen years ago in search of work and have lived here ever since, but I don’t think anyone quite believed us when we said we were from an east-coast cockling village. And since the Lost died, our neighbours’ friendship has been curdling. We’re living on borrowed time.

‘If you’ll have us – we’d like to join your Stockpile.’

23

A Little Light

The next morning Hathin had to break it to the Superior that he was stockpiling Lace. At first anxiety rippled his forehead.

‘But, sir – there’s always a chance that we’ll die from the blissing beetles, and I wouldn’t want you to be left without some . . .
spares
. And more people heading to the Ashlands means we can take more barrows.’

These words had the desired effect. Five minutes later the Superior was very pleased that he had come up with the idea of the Stockpile and was willing to put aside a small building to house it. Two hours after that Hathin had to return and ask for a larger one since his Stockpile had increased by three: two children who had been living in the irrigation ditches and eating wild birds’ eggs crept into the city and turned themselves in; a ragged young man singed by geysers staggered through the gates with a wounded bounty hunter hanging off his back, and claimed his right to join the Stockpile. Word had apparently spread fast.

Hathin could only pray that the Stockpile would actually be the refuge its members seemed to imagine.

‘Therrot,’ she asked as she walked through the palace with her ‘big brother’, ‘have I done something terrible? What if I’ve drawn people into a trap, making them think they’re safe there?’

‘Nobody’s safe,’ said Therrot, ‘and everyone knows it. If the Superior changes his mind, we’re all dead. These people know they’re taking a risk, but it’s a risk that means they get to eat.’

Later, however, when they secretly met with Jaze by the city gates and told him about the Stockpile, he did not seem completely convinced.

‘Well,
I
won’t be joining it. I think I would be better placed at the Sour village, keeping an eye on our Lady Lost.’ He peered at Hathin speculatively for a few moments. ‘I just want to be sure you know why you’re doing this, Doctor Hathin,’ he said quietly. ‘What is it that you want? Are you making yourself a new village and hoping that you can protect it this time? Or that maybe if you wait long enough some of your own village will turn up here to be “Stockpiled”?’

‘What harm if they did?’ Therrot’s stare was defiant.

Jaze sighed. ‘Blissing beetles were used to kill the Lost,’ he said softly. ‘You do know what that means?’

‘Yes.’ Therrot stamped an angry little hollow in the dust with his heel. ‘It means we’re going to have to kill some very clever people.’

‘Worse,’ said Jaze in the same cool tone. ‘At least one of the people we’ll have to kill is probably a Lace. I suspected it when Hathin told us that Jimboly knew about the Path of the Gongs. Doctor Hathin’s right – the Lost were killed just like farsight fish, and farsight fishing has always been a Lace secret.

‘Don’t start fingering your knife hilt, Therrot. I’m not insulting the memory of your nearest and dearest. But if someone from your village suddenly turns up alive and well . . . don’t go happily throwing your arms around them.’

A shocked silence followed. Perhaps one of the Hollow Beasts
had
played a part in the Lost killings after all. Hathin remembered her dream of the string of Hollow Beasts walking into the cave that was their death. This time she imagined one figure turning a furtive, venomous look upon her and scurrying from the line, but its face was featureless, an expression and nothing more.

The next two days were tense and frustrating for Hathin and Therrot, despite the luxury of regular meals and a roof above their heads. Their mornings were spent in the palace, their afternoons in the marketplace, all too aware of the curious eyes of the townspeople. In vain they waited for word from Dance, some hint that she had received Tomki’s warning in time. Besides this, Hathin was desperate to visit the Sour village and check on Arilou. However, the Superior wanted to see all preparations made for the ‘dead trading expedition’ first and his will was law.

On the third day, Hathin and Therrot finally had leave to take their barrows of offerings up the path to Crackgem. At the point where the path petered out they found Jeljech sitting on a boulder, waiting to escort them to the Sour village.

On the way, Hathin could not help deluging Jeljech with questions. How was Arilou? Was she eating?
What
was she eating? Was somebody keeping her clean? Had she said anything?

‘Laderilou well,’ Jeljech told her, over and over. ‘Laderilou’, a distortion of ‘Lady Arilou’, was apparently the name that the Sours now used. ‘Laderilou want bee-wine.’ ‘Bee-wine’ was the Nundestruth term for honey. That request, at least, did sound a good deal like Arilou.

This time the welcome at the village was more affable.

Arilou was found in one of the huts on the edge of sleep, her eyelids drooping, a sheepskin swaddling her. Hathin sat beside her and made a quiet inventory of her sister’s limbs, then curled one of her hands inside Arilou’s larger one. It felt at home there, like a mouse in a burrow.

‘Jeljech . . .’ Hathin spoke at last. ‘Men come here gun-slung, want go school. Friends belong-you remember men, remember colour hair? Eye?’ She tugged at her own collar. ‘Wear-withel?’

Jeljech puffed out her cheeks doubtfully, turned to one of the other Sour girls and loosed an interrogative stream of words in her own language. Halfway through it, Hathin’s attention was abruptly snagged by a familiar phrase.

‘Stop! Er – wait!’ Hathin blushed as Jeljech turned back to her. ‘Jeljech, say that word! Say . . . kaiethemin?’ Hathin could almost swear that she had overheard the peculiar phrase Arilou had been repeating on the beach just before the death of Skein. ‘Mean . . . many bird fly, yes?’

Jeljech seemed perplexed. She engaged in a muffled conference with the other Sour girl, and then the brows of both cleared.

‘Kaithem ano.’ Jeljech pronounced the words carefully and slowly for Hathin’s benefit. ‘Mean bird . . . no.’ She closed her eyes tight in a wince of concentration, then opened them again. ‘Mean pigeon . . . pigeon man. Many pigeon man.’

They stared at one another as once again the conversation fell screaming into the language chasm.

‘Pigeon?’

‘Pigeon.’ The Sour girl mimed herself a rounded front, waggled elbow wings and managed a serviceable coo. ‘Pigeon man destroy school, yes?’ There was no doubt about it. Jeljech was talking about the mysterious beetle-carriers. But pigeon? Was this some weird slang?

The Sour girl smothered a giggle at Hathin’s expression, and shrugged. ‘Nocansay. Laderilou name gang pigeon man. Now allwe name gang pigeon man.’

So it was
Arilou
who had given the beetle-carriers that strange name, and the Sours had simply followed her lead.

Arilou, watching the men. Arilou, watching the birds. There was a connection after all. What was it? A glimmer of a possibility formed in Hathin’s mind, and overwhelmed her for a second so that she could barely force her thoughts into Nundestruth.

‘Jeljech, please you ask Laderilou
why
name pigeon man.’ She fidgeted in impatience as Jeljech stroked Arilou’s forehead and translated the question. Arilou gave a sleepy moan, then offered a string of molten sentences. Jeljech listened with a scowl of increasing bewilderment, and at last turned back to Hathin to translate.

‘Laderilou tell us she here. Up . . .’ She pointed at the sky and fluttered her hands to mime a hummingbird hover. ‘She look, see all strange man come down mountain. Man got pigeon in coat. Look.’ She slapped her own chest. ‘Man.’ She mimed writing on something invisible, which she then carefully folded. With her spare hand she reached around behind herself and brought it back clutching a second invisible something the size of a cup. She held it up for the inspection of Hathin’s mind’s eye. ‘Pigeon.’ The folded writing was apparently placed into or on to the pigeon, and then she flung her imaginary bird into the air.

‘Laderilou follow pigeon!’ Hathin could barely contain her excitement. ‘Laderilou follow pigeon where?’

More Sour questions from Jeljech. More sleepy answers from Arilou.

‘Pigeon go, Laderilou follow, follow over mountain . . .’ Jeljech fluttered her hands in an upwards, outwards arc, like a bird leaving the ground and flying away. ‘Pigeon find other man. Man put writing in desk, lots other writing. Other man make writing, throw other pigeon. Laderilou follow pigeon, find man three.’