Isles of the Forsaken (25 page)

His movement attracted the woman’s attention and she came over to his side. He realized it was Strobe’s daughter.

“I ought to know your name,” he said.

“It’s Tway,” she answered. She had a competent, take-charge air, like a nurse or a teacher.

“You’re from Yora,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“But we’re on Thimish now.”

“Right again. Your brains seem to have survived. I guess you Innings must be as thick-headed as we always thought.”

She sat beside him on the bed, took a cloth from his forehead, rinsed it in a bowl of water on the nightstand, and put it back. It smelled of herbs. Her hands were gentle. It reminded him—

“That Grey Man,” he said. Then, uncertainly, “Was there a Grey Man here?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Did he . . . do anything?”

“No,” she said. “You made it pretty clear you didn’t want him to, before you passed out. He said he could still help you, even unconscious, but Harg wouldn’t let him. He said it would be like rape. Harg’s strange on the subject. But then, so are you.”

Once again Nathaway found himself grateful for Harg’s exposure to civilization.

“Where are my glasses?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Tway said. “Lost.”

“I couldn’t see what you’re doing.”

She glanced back at the table, stacked with finished cloth bags. “Oh. I’m sewing up cannon cartridges.”

“You mean that’s gunpowder?”

“Yes.”

There was enough of it in this small room to level a building. “Don’t you know how dangerous that is?” Nathaway said.

She shrugged. “I needed something useful to do, and you weren’t throwing off many sparks.”

He wanted to sit up, but was afraid to move and make the pain in his head come back.

“Hungry? Thirsty?” Tway said.

“Yes,” he admitted.

She went to the door and knocked on it. There was a rattle of a key in the lock, and someone opened it from outside. They exchanged some words, then the door closed again. The bolt shot home.

Frowning, Nathaway said, “Why is the door locked?”

Tway regarded him with crossed arms. “You’re a prisoner.”

This time he did sit up, despite the wave of aching dizziness, feeling like the situation demanded some action. From earliest childhood he had known that he could be a target of kidnappers. His mother had always said, “Don’t be afraid, just prudent.” He had spent his life alert, and nothing had ever happened. But since coming out here, where no one had the slightest idea who he was, he had let his guard down.

He said, “That’s a really bad idea. You don’t know what you’re messing with. As soon as Proctor Fullabeau finds out, you’re going to wish you never saw me. I’m serious, it could get bad for you.”

She just said, “Well, you’ll have to take it up with Harg.”

“Fine. Let me talk to him.”

“He’s busy.”

Through the day that followed, he was unable to get any more satisfactory response. After he had eaten, Tway picked up her gunpowder and left, and he was alone with the furniture and walls. The combination of anxiety and idleness was corrosive. He stared out the garret window at the wall of the building next door, he paced the floor, he examined every inch of the room. Toward noon, he heard the sound of distant gunfire and pounded on the door to find out what was going on, but no one answered.

He slept part of the afternoon, and fretted the rest. Late in the day he started to hear gunfire again, this time seemingly in the streets outside, and he imagined a phalanx of policemen come to rescue him. He pounded on the door and shouted to attract attention till a rough Adaina man unlocked the door and leaned in to say, “If you don’t shut up I’m going to chain you to the bed.”

“I want to talk to Harg,” Nathaway said, unable to keep an imperious tone from his voice.

“So do a lot of people,” the man said, and started to close the door.

“Stop!” Nathaway said. “What’s the firing about?”

“Oh, they’re just celebrating.”

“Celebrating what?”

A slow, gloating grin grew on the man’s face as he regarded his prisoner. “Independence,” he said. “Harbourdown’s no longer under Inning rule.”

Nathaway stared at him, unable to imagine what he could mean.

The jailor appeared to be enjoying his reaction. “You’ll probably be joining the rest of the Inning captives up in the fort before long. It won’t be as comfortable up there, I promise you.”

“Inning captives?” Nathaway repeated incredulously. “Is Proctor Fullabeau . . .?”

“Fullabeau’s dead,” the man said.

“Dead!”

“Yes. We captured the fort and four warships. You Innings are done here.”

It was not until then that the true horror of his position struck Nathaway.
This wasn’t about ransom, as he had thought. He was being held by rebels with blood on their hands, uncontrolled by law or mercy. They not only didn’t know who he was, they didn’t care. He was just another prisoner of war.

“Oh my god,” he said.

The man started to close the door. “Stop!” Nathaway cried out again. “Harg’s not involved, is he? I have to talk to him.”

The jailor only laughed and locked the door.

Sick with apprehension, Nathaway paced the narrow room. Nothing in his life had prepared him for this unthinkable situation. Chilling scenarios chased through his mind: abuse, beatings, lynchings, they had all happened in times of insurrection. As the minutes crawled past, he could hear through the door a celebrating crowd gathered somewhere below. Under normal circumstances it would have been a convivial sound; now it was nerve-racking evidence of an unpredictable mob who wished him ill simply because of his race. Never had he felt so anonymous, or so vulnerable.

The sound of footsteps and men’s voices approaching up the steps sent alarm chasing through his nerves, and he braced himself to appear courageous.

When the door opened he exclaimed in relief, “Harg! Thank god it’s you.”

“They say you’ve been
demanding
to see me,” Harg said. He came into the room and sank into the chair, looking bone-weary. There was a powder burn on his forehead, a purple bruise on one eye, and a two-day stubble on his chin. He would have looked desperately sinister if Nathaway hadn’t known him.

“Is it true, what they told me?” Nathaway asked anxiously. “That the fort has fallen, and Proctor Fullabeau is dead?”

“Oh, was that his name?” Harg said vaguely. “Yes, it’s true.”

“This is a disaster. You weren’t involved, were you?”

Harg looked at him with such a bemused expression that Nathaway realized it had been a rather stupid question, given the evidence.

“What were you thinking, Harg?” Nathaway said. “Don’t you realize this is treason? The courts can’t ignore this. I could have helped you if you hadn’t taken up arms. Now, there’s nothing I can do.”

Harg was watching him as if he had stepped off a boat from another reality. “I’m touched that you’re so worried for me,” he said.

“I didn’t even know you had grievances. There are ways to address grievances without blowing up warships. Why didn’t you ask?”

“Calm down,” Harg said.

Nathaway realized that there had been a hysterical edge in his voice. He forced himself to sit down on the bed and seem collected. “I’m just worried you don’t realize how serious rebellion is, or how futile.”

With a faint, ironic smile, Harg said, “Thanks for the lecture, but I do realize.”

“Then what did you do it for?” Nathaway pleaded.

Harg didn’t answer at once. He stared at the floor through a haze of weariness. When he spoke, it was as if to himself. “Honestly? I never thought it would get this far. I thought someone, or something, would stop us halfway. The soldiers would be more competent, or the timing would go wrong, or the weather would turn bad, or people wouldn’t do what they were supposed to. I’ve never been in a battle where everything went right, or nearly right, like it did today.”

He looked around the little room like a man struck on the head, half stunned. “This morning we were shit disturbers trying to get attention. Tonight, four warships and all of Harbourdown have fallen in my lap. I haven’t thought it through yet. I don’t know where we’re going, or where we’ll end up. It’s like I set down a beer mug and it caused an earthquake.”

It struck Nathaway that he had been right about Harg the first time. He wasn’t vicious, or a fanatic. He
did
realize his position—both how serious and how futile it was. And in that fact, there was hope—not just for Nathaway, but for the whole situation.

“My father calls it the piled-up wardrobe phenomenon,” Nathaway said.

“What?”

“You know how you keep stuffing things into a wardrobe till they’re all piled up, then you go to take one thing out and it all comes crashing down. What he means is, in public affairs things can get away from you. Political situations are so complex and unpredictable you can set off cascades of consequences you can’t foresee. We’re always just one wrong move away from chaos.”

“I’m glad to know he feels that way.” Harg seemed to find some sort of wry humour in the thought.

“But this is the point, Harg: that’s why we have laws. The law prevents us from accidentally setting off disorder. It gives us guidance to regulate our actions. It will always tell you what to do.”

Harg shook his head slowly. “Your Inning laws have nothing to say to me.”

“Oh, you’re wrong there,” Nathaway protested earnestly. “They have something to say to everyone. The law is universal. It doesn’t ask whether you’re Adaina or Torna or Inning. It doesn’t ask if you’re a Yoran or a Thimishman. It only asks if you’re a human being.”

“Odd then, how Adainas always end up getting pissed on by the law.”

“That’s just because you don’t understand it,” Nathaway said. He searched in his inner coat pocket, and brought out a slim, leather-bound volume. “Have you ever seen the law? This is it.”

“You carry it around with you?” Harg said, mildly incredulous.

“Sure.” Nathaway held out the volume. “Here, take it. It’s very simple, a set of codes handed down to us from ancient times. There are less than a hundred laws. They give us a framework and guidance. Then the courts make them relevant to the present by reinterpreting them. So it’s an organic, living system that can be adapted to any people, any place. Today we read it differently than we did a hundred years ago. Your own courts, when you have them, will probably read it differently than ours. That’s what makes it work.”

Harg was paging through the little volume, glancing at the closely printed pages. He closed it and held it out.

“No, keep it,” Nathaway said. “You might need it. I can get another copy.”

“Read me a few of them,” Harg suggested.

After a moment of hesitation, Nathaway took the book back and opened it to the beginning. As he started to read aloud the words he had known by heart since childhood, he felt himself relaxing into their familiar spell. The rhythmic poetry of the ancient phrases, their simplicity, their truth, touched him with the certainty of another realm where order and justice prevailed. All his life he had wanted to enter that realm. It hovered somewhere, unreachable, above the disappointing world he lived in, and these words were the closest link he had ever found. He loved them, and revered them, and believed in them.

When he finally looked up, Harg’s head was laid back against the chair and his eyes were closed. He looked asleep. But when Nathaway’s voice fell silent he opened his eyes and said, “I’m listening.”

“Do you want me to go on?”

Harg sighed and said, “No. I’ve got to go. I’ll come back to hear the rest some other time.”

As Harg stood to leave, Nathaway realized he hadn’t said any of the thousand things he had intended, or needed, to say. “I didn’t ask—I should have been pleading for my life or something,” he said.

Smiling quizzically, Harg said, “I’d begun to think you didn’t realize you were in danger.”

Nathaway hadn’t wanted his fears confirmed quite so openly. He looked down at the book in his hands and found his throat constricting so that he couldn’t talk. Then Harg put a hand on his shoulder—a simple gesture that anchored Nathaway to hope in human goodness.

Looking up, Nathaway said, “Could I have paper and pen to write my family? I want to let them know I’m . . .” He had been about to say “I’m all right,” but in fact he didn’t know if it was true.

“Sure,” said Harg. “I’ll leave word.” He paused. “Don’t worry,” he said, and left.

Nathaway felt much more balanced, more in touch with what was true and permanent. Looking around his prison room, he thought to himself that this was all temporary. It didn’t touch what was really important. With that thought, he was able to lie back on his bed, the book pressed to his heart, and accept his situation.

*

Harg hadn’t really wanted to talk to Nathaway Talley. He had come upstairs solely to get away from the crowd and their incessant demands on his attention. But the conversation had been enlightening, if decidedly odd. He hadn’t expected to find his prisoner quite so . . . evangelical. Stress and head injuries brought out strange things in people.

He paused at the head of the stairs, where there was a guard posted, as much to keep people out as the prisoner in. “Find him a pen and paper, will you?” he said. “But bring me anything he writes.”

“Aye, Captain,” the man said.

Harg paused, thinking. “Let’s not move him up to the fort tomorrow. I don’t want him talking to the other Innings.” It was just a hunch, or perhaps curiosity to see what effect isolation and indoctrination might have on such an impressionable mind. At any rate, he wanted to continue the experiment.

As he descended the stairs, the hubbub in the tavern below rose up to engulf him. The instant he stepped into the taproom, he was surrounded by people who had been waiting impatiently for his return, needing answers, decisions, and orders.

There was a host of problems relating to the prisoners. The acquisition of over three hundred captives who needed to be incarcerated and fed had put a severe strain on resources. Then there was the security of the sacks of gold they had found in the aft cabin of the
Industry
, a discovery Harg wanted wrapped in the strictest secrecy. But worst was the combustible state of the town itself. Holby Dorn’s pirate fleet had looted the two warships they had captured—Harg had given up thought of ever getting all the guns back—and returned to town, brazen with their victory and all too aware that civil authority had collapsed.