Cuckoo Song (31 page)

‘
London?
’ Pen’s jaw dropped. ‘Do you mean . . . we’re
really
running away?’ Her face was aghast, and Not-Triss was not sure whether to laugh
or cry. Clearly ‘running away’ in Pen’s mind had never previously involved ‘not coming back’.

‘I can’t leave.’ Not-Triss bit her lip hard. ‘I
need
to stay. I don’t know if there is any way to stop me falling apart, but I can only find that out here.
All the secrets are in Ellchester. If I leave, then I
know
I’ll die. And . . . And either way, I want to do anything I can to help
other
me. And . . . Sebastian.’

Violet sighed again, and rubbed at her temples.

‘Yes,’ she muttered, ‘I was thinking much the same. We stay then. It won’t be easy – we’ll have your parents, Mr Grace and maybe the police looking out for
us. And time is against us.’ She gave Not-Triss a brief cloudy frown of concern. ‘Whatever we do, we have to act
fast
.

‘This mysterious Architect – he seems to be the key to everything. The other Triss’s kidnap, Sebastian’s letters and whatever is happening to
you
, Triss. We need
to discover as much as we can about him – who he knows, where he’s based. Perhaps we can even get some advantage over him.’

Not-Triss glanced at Pen, whose mouth had drooped into a little pout of fear. When she thought of hunting down the Architect, Not-Triss remembered the towering blurry silhouette that had loomed
over her strange birth, and her insides felt watery with unease. But what other choice was there?

‘Triss – you understand birds when they talk, don’t you?’ exclaimed Pen. ‘You should ask them where the Architect is. They fly everywhere.’

‘I don’t think I understand
real
birds,’ admitted Not-Triss. ‘Just the scary ones with people-faces . . . and they’re working for the Architect.’

‘Let’s try another approach then,’ suggested Violet. ‘What do we know about him?’

‘He’s
evil
,’ Pen declared helpfully. ‘He tricks and lies and—’

‘He has a black Daimler,’ Not-Triss cut in.

‘Distinctive.’ Violet nodded slowly. ‘I can ask around after that. Anything else? Pen, you’re our best bet.’

Pen did have the good grace to look uncomfortable at the circumstances that had made her ‘the best bet’.

‘I always met him at the park or the cinema,’ she mumbled, ‘and I talked to him on the telephone.’

‘But it’s not through the ordinary operator, is that right?’ Violet grimaced. ‘A pity, or we could ask them to track the call. I can look into that cinema though. Did he
ever mention having another base? He must have somewhere. A car means a garage means a house.’

‘No! You don’t understand! He can—’ Pen was brought up short and sat gasping, pink-faced. She met Not-Triss’s eye, and they exchanged a look of helpless
frustration.

The Architect was a bricks-and-mortar magician. He could build palaces in broom cupboards, and had already hidden a small town on the underside of a bridge. He could have dozens of bases that
were marked on no map and known by no postman. Violet knew none of this, and they could not tell her.

Worse still, they could not tell her about the Underbelly, the pact between Piers Crescent and the Architect, anything the Shrike had said about Sebastian . . .

‘I hate magic promises!’ exploded Pen.

‘There are things we know about the Architect that we can’t explain to you,’ Not-Triss said miserably. ‘We
want
to, but we can’t.’

Violet closed her eyes, and muttered something under her breath.

‘Never mind,’ she said at last. ‘Just tell me what you can. I know some people in . . . interesting places. If the Architect has crooked connections, some of my friends might
have heard of him. Any detail might help. Tell me what he looks like – anything that might make him stand out.’

‘I’m not sure he really looks the way he looks.’ Not-Triss remembered the ominous glints of hidden features through the Architect’s glossily handsome facade. ‘But
we can try.’

Piecemeal, Pen and Not-Triss described the Architect’s treacherous appearance. Pen had seen him in other fashionable outfits, but always with the same strange grey ruffled coat over the
top.

‘Oh! I remember something else!’ Pen bounced. ‘He wore a watch on his wrist – I saw it peeking out from under his sleeve. I noticed it because it didn’t look right
with his clothes. It was a funny-looking thing. Old and scratched, with a bulging face.’ Not-Triss remembered that she too had noticed a gleam beneath the Architect’s sleeve. She had
entirely forgotten that brief hint of metal.

‘A wristwatch,’ echoed Violet flatly. ‘Old and scratched. With a bulging face.’ The colour had drained from her face, and an angry tension was returning to her jaw.
‘Are you sure about that, Pen?’

‘Yes!’ Pen stared at Violet. ‘Why? What does it mean?’

‘Perhaps nothing,’ Violet said grimly, ‘but I have a hunch about that watch, and more questions I need to ask somebody.’ She cast an eye over the both girls, then stooped
to scoop up her driving goggles. ‘You both look half dead,’ she said curtly. ‘Get some sleep.’

Not-Triss realized that she was indeed exhausted. Two nights of broken sleep and a day of running on nervous energy had left her shaky and drained.

‘Are your friends racketeers?’ demanded Pen. ‘I’m coming to meet them!’

‘No, you’re not!’ retorted Violet. ‘I don’t like leaving you two alone here, but if there’s a hue and cry out for you, then you’re better off hidden.
I’ll be back before dark.’

When Violet had driven away, Not-Triss and Pen gathered mouldy patchwork blankets from the crates and made a nest in which they snuggled down as best they could. In spite of
the daylight spilling into the boathouse and wooden doors banging in the wind, Not-Triss soon slipped into sleep.

When she woke, the light seeping in through the door had honeyed into a deeper gold, and she knew that it must be late afternoon, just ebbing into evening. Not-Triss was alone in the nest. She
could see Pen sitting cross-legged over by the doorway, with her back to her.

As Not-Triss sat up, her hunger woke and roared, like a dragon in her belly.

She doubled over, wrapping her arms tight around her stomach. Inside her was a hole that felt big enough to swallow the whole warehouse.

She needed to eat. She
needed
it. Nothing else mattered.

Her desperate fingers clawed her hair and found no ribbons, then raked her pockets and found them empty. With claw-tipped hands she tore off her dress buttons and crammed them into her mouth,
but that only sharpened her need. She scrabbled and yanked at the dress, hearing seams pop and threads rip, but haste made her too clumsy to pull it up over her head.

Socks. She pulled them off, repelled only briefly by the mud-spatters and the foot-smell. The first sock went down so easily it barely touched her tongue. It tasted like the smell of wet earth
and wild strawberries with the rain on them. The second followed the first.

For a little while afterwards, she hugged herself and shuddered. Her claws had left hasty red scratches on her shins.

As Not-Triss tottered over, Pen looked up and peered at the blanket Not-Triss had draped around herself. ‘Why are you shivering?’

‘I’m cold.’ said Not-Triss, sitting down. She
was
cold, inside and out. ‘Is Violet back yet?’

Pen shook her head and carried on scribbling in the exercise book in her lap. It had blots of yellow on its pages, and a green cover curling with the damp. Not-Triss assumed that it must have
come from inside one of the crates.

‘Maybe she’s found the Architect already,’ Pen suggested with grim relish. ‘Maybe her racketeer friends are shooting him with their guns.’

‘She never said her friends were racketeers, Pen.’

‘She never said they weren’t,’ Pen pronounced with complete confidence, ‘so that must mean they are.’

Not-Triss wished she could share in Pen’s optimism. Her own head was full of fearful images of Violet being apprehended by the police. Now, with the clarity born of a few hours’
sleep, she started to understand how completely Violet had made herself a fugitive. For the first time, she wondered what would happen to Violet if Not-Triss fell into a heap of leaves and sticks
and the real Triss was
not
rescued. ‘Triss’ would last have been seen leaving with Violet – seen by Mr Grace, Violet’s landlady and her ‘ladies’. What
if everybody decided she had done something terrible to Triss, and sent her to prison?

‘Violet . . . doesn’t know what we know.’ Not-Triss felt guilty uttering the words, but they needed to be said. ‘She thinks she has to have a plan because she’s the
adult, and she wants to look after us. But we know more than she does, so we have to have our own plans too.’

‘What sort of plan?’ asked Pen suspiciously.

‘You still remember how to call the Architect on the telephone, don’t you?’

Pen’s face became stony. She scowled at the book in her lap.

‘Listen,’ said Not-Triss. ‘The Architect wants to help his people by finding them secret havens. All your father wants is to get Triss back safely. Maybe . . . Maybe if we can
talk to the Architect, we can set up another bargain. He hands back Triss, and your father carries on building places for the Besiders to live.’

‘But that won’t stop
you
dying!’ exclaimed Pen. ‘Anyway, we can’t trust the Architect! He’s tricky, and sly, and . . .’ She trailed off,
looking very young.

‘Maybe we won’t need to,’ Not-Triss said quickly. ‘It’s just something to try if we run out of other plans. And . . . I could always call him instead of
you.’

‘Don’t be silly!’ Pen rounded on her. ‘I’m not a baby, Trista!’

A few seconds passed before Not-Triss realized what Pen had called her.

‘What?’

Pen scowled at her, clearly readying herself for an argument.

‘You’re Trista now,’ she declared. ‘I decided while you were asleep. I saved your life, so I decide who you are, and you’re Trista.’

It hardly seemed worth retorting that the life Pen had saved was unlikely to last the week. Instead Not-Triss sat in silence, hugging her knees.

Trista.

She was not sure what she thought about a name that meant ‘sad’ in French, but it was a name, a name of her own. It did not give her a little sting of guilt and pain, the way it did
each time Pen called her ‘Triss’. And it was a good deal better than ‘Fake Triss’.

‘All right,’ she said quietly. ‘I like Trista. I can be Trista.’

‘Well . . . good.’ Pen looked grudgingly satisfied. ‘If . . . If you behave, maybe I’ll let you keep that name.’

‘What are you doing?’ asked the newly named Trista, trying to peer at the exercise book.

‘I’m making us disguises.’ Pen showed her the front cover. Across it was written ‘Ruby Wiles’ and below that ‘St Rainbow School for Girls’. ‘That
man who wants to burn you will try to catch us again. But he’s not Father, so he has to
prove
we’re us, so we need to prove we’re not. We need things marked with our
names, to show we’re somebody else.

‘I’m Ruby now. And look at this!’ Proudly she opened the book to show scrawled squiggles and additions. ‘I even put some sums in this one, with red-pen crosses for the
teacher. Now if I say I’m Ruby and show people this, they’ll believe me. We need to get something for you too though.’

She hesitated, then from her lap she pulled a fragile-looking necklace of little wooden beads strung on to a length of cotton. She spent a few minutes scribbling on the beads with her pen.

‘There! Put this on.’ The necklace was placed in Trista’s hand. In careful, clumsy letters the name T-R-I-S-T-A was spelt out across the middle six beads, one letter per
bead.

‘Thank you,’ said Trista, and felt herself warm very slightly to her sad, awkward, made-up name.

To Trista’s great relief, Violet returned just as the sun was descending towards the foothills on the other side of the Ell. She took Trista’s renaming in her
stride and launched into her own report.

‘The bad news is that nobody I’ve spoken to seems to know of the Architect, or anybody matching his description. The cinema that nearly ate Pen is closed and boarded up now, so that
looks like a cold trail. Some friends of mine are looking out for his Daimler, but that’s a long shot.

‘There’s good news as well though. I had a look at all the evening newspapers – the
Crier
, the
Ell
, the
Custodian
, even the
Wetherhill
Herald
– and there’s nothing in them about the two of you. I dropped into the library to check the morning papers too. Nothing. I don’t know whether your father’s gone
to the police, but he hasn’t gone to the press. At least we won’t have half the city looking for you. I can probably risk driving you through town, if we’re careful.

‘The even better news is that I’ve tracked down a friend who owes me a favour. We should be able to hide out at his tonight. And . . . there’s more that I want to talk to him
about. Get ready – we’re going out.’

Violet glanced at Trista, then performed a double take. ‘Trista, what happened to your socks – and your legs?’

Trista was searingly aware of her dress’s ravaged seams and missing buttons, and the fresh scratches on her bare shins. She dropped her gaze and hugged herself in haunted, guilty
silence.

‘Oh.’ For all the softness of that syllable, there was a world of realization in it.

‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Trista.

‘No,’ said Violet quietly. ‘It’s . . . It’s not your fault. I should have . . . never mind.’ Trista dared to look up and found Violet regarding her with a
small, grim, weary smile. ‘I suppose this is likely to keep happening?’

Trista shook her head miserably. ‘I don’t have anything else that belongs to the real Triss, except my dress. The underwear’s too new—’

‘You can’t eat underwear!’ exclaimed Pen in horror.

‘After the dress is gone,’ Trista finished quietly, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

Violet chewed her lip and frowned, as if thinking hard.