Ambergate (16 page)

“Easy. You can rest safe on
Redwing.
”

“On the barge?”

He nodded, and I caught the flash of his teeth. “You stay ‘ere a mo.”

“Don’t leave me!” I said, frightened.

“I’m only gonna nip down the end of the street, see it’s all clear.”

I waited, shivering, in the rank hole of the doorway, my shoes grating on fish bones, my arms wrapped around me for warmth.
Shadow’s small, soft boots made no sound on the cobbles beyond, so I could not guess where he was. It
seemed very quiet, and the tall bulk of the warehouses on the other side was gloomy and oppressive, throwing the street between
into darkness. I was beginning to worry about what could have happened to him when a dark arm reached in at last and grasped
me.

“Got you!” hissed the voice of Corporal Chance. “I knew it was you.”

I couldn’t say a word. I was too busy kicking, squirming. I knew everything was over, but some instinct for survival drove
me to struggle as he wrenched me out of the doorway. I could hear him grunt as he tried to keep hold of me. He was behind
me now, gasping with the effort of holding me; he had pinioned me to him, his arms around my chest so that I could scarce
move.

“I heard you sing,” he whispered hoarsely into my ear. “A girl from a Home shouldn’t sing like that. Not as if she still had
a heart.”

I looked down and saw the muscles bulging beneath the worsted of his jacket sleeves as he held me. The backs of his hands
were bare and smooth. I lowered my head, and sank my teeth into the hand closest to my mouth.

Then out of the darkness came Shadow, flying like a little raggedy crow. As Chance straightened with a yell, Shadow came running
straight at him from nowhere and butted him plumb in the middle. It was a hearty thwack and maybe got him where it was most
painful, for next minute he was lying groaning on the cobbles.

“Scarper!” shouted Shadow, and hand in hand we belted down the street like mad things, me with my skirts held up round my
waist.

There were braziers burning along the causeway, and wharf-keepers and watchmen about, but Shadow avoided them, dodging into
the dark nooks and crannies between warehouses.

We arrived out of breath at the quay where the
Redwing
was moored. I was trembling and Shadow had to help me along now, for I could scarce move my limbs anymore.

“On with you, then,” said Shadow, and he helped me across onto the deck. A tiny light gleamed at the top of the tallest mast.

“This way,” said Shadow, and he led the way down a ladder into darkness. I hung back, but he tugged me down after him so that
I almost fell, and pushed me into a narrow passage lit by a hanging lantern, and on through a door.

Once he had lit a stump of candle, I saw I was in a tiny cabin. “This is mine,” he said with pitiful pride, looking around
at its only furnishings: a bunk, a sea chest. There was scarce room in there to twirl a turn.

“You can ‘ave it,” he said. “I’ll sleep in the galley.” He looked at me, his head cocked. “Are you in trouble, Miss Scuff?”

“Why should you think so?” I said, trying to unscramble my wits.

“I’ve a nose for it.”

“I am, indeed,” I burst out, too weary to dissemble. “Those were soldiers after me!”

“And one of ’em a very important personage. My, what ‘ave you bin and done, Miss Scuff?”

I shook my head weakly.

“Never mind,” he said, with a wink. “Yer safe wiv me. Now, rest a sec, and I’ll bring you a toddy.”

I didn’t know what that was, but I sank against the edge of the bunk in the dim light and waited. I could hear voices somewhere—outside,
or in the boat? Had Shadow told the bargemaster, Mr. Butley? Could I trust either of them?

Shadow returned, after an eternity it seemed, but he was alone and holding a pewter mug in triumph. “Swill it down,” he ordered,
pressing the mug into my cold hands, where it burned them.

I put it to my lips tentatively: hot, sugary water—sweet, very sweet—with a powerful kick to it. I could feel the heat of
it trickle through me as I sipped.

He grinned at me. “Just what the quack ordered, eh? Guarantees a good night’s kip.” He nodded grandly at the chest. “And you
can ‘elp yerself to what’s in there.” He seemed about to leave me again.

“Wait,” I begged; I had all sorts of questions.

“I must go,” he said. “Mr. Butley will be wonderin’ where I am. Sleep tight.”

And then I was alone.

I perched on the end of the bunk and tried to calm myself. After a while I stirred and opened the chest to see if I could
find something warm to put around my shoulders. There was a pair of boy’s dirty breeches that looked as if they could stand
on their own legs, and a tatty cloth jacket lying on top of a couple of folded blankets. I poked around the cabin in
the candlelight to see if I could find the mahogany box, but it wasn’t there; there was nothing else in there at all.

I didn’t blow out the candle before I climbed into the bunk; I left it burning, careless of safety, and lay down in my underskirt
and the jacket, pulling the blankets over me. They scratched and smelled damp and sour. The bunk was a wooden board with a
thin straw mattress that prickled through my skirt. But I was exhausted, and glad of the warmth glowing in my limbs from the
drink. I must have fallen fast asleep, in spite of the strangeness of lying above an unknown deepness of water.

An unfamiliar motion finally woke me. I was aware of having to brace myself very slightly where I lay. I heard a sucking,
slapping sound beneath me, the creak and complaint of wooden timbers.

I opened my eyes and saw daylight filter through a tiny porthole, moving and flickering over the wooden walls of the cabin.
Even then I think I was too bemused, too dazed with sleep, to understand. Then at last I roused myself and knelt up to look
out.

Land moved past outside. There were no houses or cottages, only shingle banks tufted with coarse grass. We were approaching
the rivermouth, would soon be over the bar. The noise of rushing water increased, though the flatbottomed barge remained steady.
I heard feet on the deck over my head, and realized I had heard them through my dreams.

Some time while I was asleep—perhaps only recently—the
Redwing
had set sail.

I threw myself off the bunk and at the door, twisting the handle, frantic to get out, to alert someone so they could let me
off. What had happened? Why hadn’t Shadow woken me?

The door was locked.

I flung myself back at the porthole. I could see a gray expanse of choppy water, little waves, white-topped, pointed like
arrowheads. They looked sharp enough to pierce the timbers of the boat. I could even see—close enough to swim to if I’d been
able—a muddy shore where waders pecked. A fan of swans bobbed serenely with the waves, as if the violence of the current was
nothing to them.

I began to batter at the door with my hands again, shouting out, “Shadow! Shadow!”

I heard his light, quick steps outside; a key turned in the lock and he was there, looking as innocent as you please.

“’Ow did you sleep, Miss Scuff?”

I dodged past him, but he caught me at once; his small, wiry arms were surprisingly strong. “ ’Ang on.”

“I want to get off!” I cried, struggling.

He pushed me down on the bunk none too gently. I glared up at him.

“Too late, can’t turn about now,” he said earnestly. “Listen. I locked you in for safety last night. They was prowlin’ all
around, two of’em, after you. They raised up the Lawman to help search. Lucky you was sleepin’ fast, for they made some racket.”

“Why didn’t you wake me this morning before you set
sail?” I demanded suspiciously. I glared at his cheeky little face, his beguiling grin. Was he telling the truth?

He looked injured at my ingratitude. “Wot, and leave you all alone in Poorgrass with them fellers around? This is ‘uman kindness,
this is, to take you on wiv us. Mr. Butley says it’s all right wiv ‘im. You can ‘ave free passage in return for a bit of cookin’
and bottle washin’.”

I put my head in my hands. There was a bitter taste in my mouth—from the toddy last night or my own feelings of dread, I wasn’t
sure. “I needed to stay in Poorgrass!” I said at last. “That was where I was to find employment.”

He beamed at me encouragingly. “Plenty employment where we’re goin’. If you’d stayed in Poorgrass, you’d ‘ave bin caught.”

Perhaps he was right.

I looked at the porthole, at the cloud-filled sky moving up and down: it was all I could see without kneeling on the bunk.
I thought of Erland left behind. How would we ever meet again?

My throat seemed to close up, so that I could only whisper the question.

“Where are we going?”

But I knew.

PART TWO

The Capital

Gravengate

I
’m back in the place where stone arches cast shadows on the ground and lead away to darkness. I’m still small enough to wriggle
through between the stones, the old secret way. I remember the bitter smell of dead stone, the ripple of secret water. I’ve
been here before, long ago.

I go to the gate, but slowly, because I’m so weak, and run my fingers over it. I feel again the curls and whorls of gold,
the smooth pieces of amber they hold, like chips from the sun. If I held a candle to it, it would glow: my amber gate. I see
the faintest sheen of light on the surface of the water beyond. When I was here before, warm fingers held mine.

I go back to the steps and climb them. I crawl through the hole again. The Eagle has His back to me. His wings are spread,
but He can’t fly. The ravens can fly, but they are silent.

Hunger gnaws at my belly. They give us so little food in the
Home. I think of food all the time. There are baskets of meat for Him, laid out on the purple cloth. How can He eat meat when
He is made of stone?

It’s silent in the Cathedral, but He hasn’t heard me. He doesn’t turn. So I help myself to the smallest basket. And still
He doesn’t turn. He’ll never see me, with His stone eyes.

My mouth’s wet. Raw flesh. I spit it out, but still something oozes down my chin. Dark gobs spatter my white pinafore. When
I look down, my hands are crimson with the blood of the sacrifice. I shall never wash them clean. And then the ravens start
shrieking so I know I am found out. I have committed the greatest crime of all: I have stolen from Him.

And as I run, I drop my Number
.

I opened my eyes. Erland was sitting on the sea chest close to me, with the moon in his hair.

“Hush,” he said. “You were moaning in your sleep.”

“I must have had a nightmare,” I murmured. I could not remember it. Then I roused myself, startled. “Erland! You’ve found
me!”

“I’ve been with you all the while,” he said with his old smile, half-rueful.

“How is your leg?” I whispered.

He stretched it out; there was no bandage around it. “I told you Gadd was a healer.”

I was bewildered. “Have you stowed away?” We’d had several stops since Poorgrass to take on more cargo, but I’d hidden in
the cabin. “You must be careful.”

“You didn’t see me. Nor shall anyone.” He leaned toward me and dropped his voice low. “Listen. I shall try to stay with you,
if I can.”

“The
Redwing
is headed for the Capital,” I said in distress. “It’s so far from the Wasteland!”

His soft voice soothed me. “Hush now, and go back to sleep.” I could feel his hand, rough-palmed but gentle, stroking the
hair back from my forehead. “Silky,” he whispered.

“Dirty,” I muttered, and heard him laugh before I slept.

Some weeks earlier, on a damp spring night in the Capital, while Mather was still away on his abortive mission to the Eastern
Edge, agents working secretly for the Lord Protector made an extraordinary and fateful discovery. The Protector’s personal
finances were low, so on his orders they were methodically looting every church in the city. That night they stole into the
ancient Cathedral through the ruined entrance. A verger was asleep in a pew, his candle guttering. They looked around. Little
of value here: the Cathedral’s gold had been ransacked long ago.

In the end it was a tiny, wizened beggar, sleeping in the apse, who unwittingly led them to a treasure beyond imagination.
He had fled from them in fright—to vanish, seemingly, into a pile of fallen masonry.

On their return to the Capital, Mather and his bodyguard, Chance, were summoned to see the Lord Protector.

They had the honor of being taken to the Palace of the Protectorate in the Protector’s own coach. Chance was suitably awed:
he had never sat before on a padded velvet seat, in a vehicle decorated with gold leaf. He stared out through the window as
four black horses pulled them at a smart trot over the smooth paving of the Central Parade. It was difficult not to feel unnerved
by the fierce gaze of the black Eagles on plinths either side, all the way up to the Palace at the end. Their eyes, made of
marble that gleamed in the sun, could almost be alive.