Gullstruck Island (13 page)

The only thing that saved Hathin from all-consuming terror was the scale of the situation. When she had been faced with the task of fooling a single Inspector she had felt panic, but now that she had to speak in Arilou’s voice in front of the governor and his entire town, all she felt was a blank sense of falling.
Take as many deep breaths as you can
, she told herself.
It’s like diving. It’ll be fine once you’re in.

It was as they were entering Sweetweather that Hathin decided the Pearlpit porters were right; there was a taste of volcano in the air.

She noticed it when they encountered the sentries at the town’s edge. These were young men who always made a point of singling out Eiven when she came to sell pearls or shells, asking her about her business in town in a way that was half challenge and half overbearing flirtation. Eiven, never easily overborne, gave as good as she got, and Hathin had always suspected that she rather enjoyed the sparring.

But today they showed no sign of recognizing her. Instead they were formally polite in a way that ran cold water down Hathin’s spine.

The streets of Sweetweather seemed uncommonly quiet. None of the town’s children were playing on the street.

‘I haven’t seen those for a while,’ Mother Govrie said under her breath.

Following her mother’s gaze Hathin realized that over many of the doorways were hanging squares of cloth, each daubed or dyed yellow. ‘They look a bit like the green cloths people hang to ward against demons,’ she murmured in her mother’s ear.

‘They’re wards against demons of a sort,’ Mother Govrie muttered, jutting her swollen lower lip and narrowing her eyes, and Hathin knew from her tone that these cloths were meant as protection against the Lace. ‘It happens from time to time. It does little harm and it always passes. Remember why our village has the name “Hollow Beasts”.’

According to local Lace folklore, the village had once found itself in danger of attack while all its menfolk were absent. The Gripping Bird himself had decided to defend the village, but since he had no gift in arms, instead he had woven dozens of jaguars and other fearsome beasts from grass and placed them on the headlands. Daunted by the alarming silhouettes, the soldiers had hung back for a week, giving the women, children and old people left in the village long enough to dig their way into the caves using eggshell spades that the Gripping Bird had given them. One of these tunnels was said to have become the Path of the Gongs. The enemy had eventually discovered the empty cove, and left in perplexity.

‘The towners have always kept their friendship on a string,’ Mother Govrie continued quietly, ‘dropping it into the hands of the Lace just so that they can tug it out again. So let them have their silly fears – it’s the better for us. It’s all grass jaguars, Hathin – that’s the only thing that keeps us safe from them.’

In the heart of the town the governor’s contingent was waiting, a delegation of twenty or so with many of the town’s stronger young men at the back. Their faces were smileless, and to Hathin they looked like battle masks. Then, giddy under the heat, there was a swimming moment when she felt she knew how she and her fellow Lace must look.
The towners wear their thunderfaces like their black scarves as a sign of mourning
, she thought,
and then we walk in smiling
. . .

And yet even as she thought it she could feel her own smile spreading and tightening with the tension.

The Lace came to a halt, barely five yards from their hosts. A white-haired man with a wobble to his chin walked forward and Hathin realized that it was the governor.

‘Lady Lost,’ he said.

And the panic that had shackled Hathin suddenly broke away. She reached out and slid her hand under one of Arilou’s long hands, palm to palm, and gently raised it. Another supporting hand under Arilou’s elbow . . . and Arilou was flowing upwards to stand in the litter. As if compelled by a single thought, the two young men who flanked the litter stooped and placed hands ready for Arilou’s hesitant steps. And the Lace’s Lady Lost stepped forward on to air that became hands, and like a thing of foam drifted down to earth, the train of her robe slithering and tumbling from the lip of the litter to pool behind her.

Arilou’s free arm floated up, and she extended it towards the governor and produced a rough, undulating squawk from the depths of her throat.

Hathin heard her own voice speaking even before she had quite decided what to say.

‘We greet you, governor of Sweetweather,’ she declared in her clear, cold Arilou voice. Part of her mind was almost calm. Another part was terrified that Arilou would do something else peculiar that she would have to work into the conversation.

‘Lady Lost.’ The governor spoke again. ‘I am obliged to you for accepting our invitation.’ So that was how Doorsy should sound, polished like a conch’s innards. ‘Our town has been robbed of its Lost, and this is an intolerable situation. After conferring with my advisors I decided that the best – the only – solution was to invite you here.’

The governor reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded square of paper. For a moment it looked so like the pages Eiven had torn out of the notebook that Hathin almost reached guiltily for her own belt pocket where they were hidden. The governor’s paper, however, unfolded into a single sheet.

‘This was found in Inspector Skein’s locked room at the inn. It was pinned to the headboard of his bed.’

The governor perched an amber-lens monocle in one eye socket and started to read:

Sightlord Fain
,

I will be in the village of the Hollow Beasts for another day, testing the child Arilou, and if the storm breaks and the paths become impassable I may be forced to sojourn there longer.

I have seen enough while travelling down the Coast of the Lace to convince me that our worst fears are justified – indeed, the problem is far more severe than we guessed. Sooner or later I shall have to reveal my findings to D. If we do not act quickly, yet more deaths and disappearances will occur. I must continue my investigations, for the sake of Gullstruck.

If you are right, then we are both in considerable peril – after your meeting we will better understand the hazards we face. As soon as it is over, leave a message for me in the Smattermast tidings hut. I shall look for word from you every two hours.

Raglan Skein

The name of Fain meant nothing to Hathin, but she had heard the title ‘Sightlord’ before. The Sightlords were the leaders of the Council of the Lost, and all of them were themselves powerful Lost.

‘Evidently,’ the governor went on, ‘Inspector Skein and this Sightlord Fain had arranged to leave each other notes at particular locations so that they could communicate long distance. Inspector Skein was expecting urgent news from the Sightlord, news of an island-wide threat. Lady Lost, you must see how important it is that we try to learn at the first opportunity what Fain discovered at this meeting.’

He paused, and Hathin sensed that an answer was expected. But Arilou had fallen into a serene silence, giving Hathin nothing to ‘translate’.

‘Our Lady Lost must return to the village,’ Mother Govrie said after an awkward pause, ‘to think on what you have said.’ She then had understood at least some of the conversation. Hathin was painfully aware that the other Lace were having trouble following the smooth, swift syllables of the governor’s Doorsy.

‘I have expressed myself with imperfect clarity,’ the governor cut in quietly but firmly. ‘We hope and intend that your Lady Lost should take over the duties of Milady Page immediately and read the tidings huts tonight. She will want to refresh herself, of course, and so the residence of Milady Page has been made ready for her to take possession of it. Our gathering here is the Lady’s official inauguration.’

A bead of sweat trailed down the back of Hathin’s neck, burning like quicksilver. Her eyes darted from face to face. One young couple were dressed in deep mourning, the woman’s hair, temple and chin bound in the bandage-like Cavalcaste mourning headdress. The Pearlpit porters had said that a little girl in the town had died. Could these be her parents, staring at Arilou with acrid, black hostility? And there were the shopkeepers, arms locked across their chests like dropped door-bars. And Jimboly was here too, her face set and smileless, eyes fiercely inquisitive, Ritterbit flitting from one person’s shoulder to another.

Something is in danger of happening. And, if I say no, it will happen here, now. If I say yes, then there’s a few hours for us to think of something
. . .

Arilou stepped forward unsteadily and put out a hand to close on the governor’s middle knuckle. Perhaps she had been attracted by his ring.

‘I thank you for the honour you do me,’ Hathin whispered, but it was hardly necessary. On some incalculable whim Arilou already seemed to have accepted.

Only Hathin was permitted to stay in town with Arilou, perhaps because her presence was so negligible. Milady Page’s house smelt of the spices that had been used to sweeten the air and the resin burned to clear the premises of the taint of death.

Lemon and cane-sugar juice in a slim glass decanter. Peaches. Stone flags with pictures on them. A clock with a hollow, pacing tick.

Outside, the hanging heat, the black stares of the waiting townspeople. Hathin sensed their hostility and suspicion, but she did not fully understand it. Arilou’s mysterious survival must have set them all muttering. And yet they had invited her to Sweetweather.

For that matter, what did Hathin herself suspect? She no longer knew. Skein’s letter had thrown her mind into confusion again.

It was obvious the governor was convinced that the Lost had been murdered, and she could see why.
I must continue my investigations, for the sake of Gullstruck
, Skein had written.
Deaths
. . .
disappearances
. . .
we are both in considerable peril.
Skein had been investigating something on the Coast of the Lace and had stumbled upon a dangerous secret, one that he had not dared commit to paper even in a locked room. Could it be that he had discovered the threat that was about to wipe out the Lost?

And if he had been killed by this great menace he described as threatening the whole island – then surely it had nothing to do with Arilou or the Hollow Beasts? But that made no sense. If none of the Hollow Beasts had killed him, then who had? Not to mention that the mooring rope of Prox’s boat was unlikely to have cut itself. But if one of the Hollow Beasts
had
killed Skein and loosed Prox’s moorings, then surely it could only have been to protect Arilou’s secret, with no connection to this greater mystery.

If a Hollow Beast was responsible, who had it been? Hathin had a horrible feeling that Whish was right. The other villagers might have hesitated, but Hathin really
could
picture Eiven jabbing the Inspector with an urchin spine and then cutting the rope as deftly and dauntlessly as she had plucked the frayed paper pieces from Skein’s journal.

Nobody can prove anything
, she told herself.
Whatever people here might suspect, there’s nobody to give evidence against any of us
. . . Hathin halted mid-thought, sick at the realization that like the rest of the village she had been drawing comfort from the belief that Minchard Prox would never talk to anyone.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Prox,’ whispered Hathin into her hands as she imagined Prox’s boat overturned by the storm and his drowned body rolling along the sea floor, without the cremation that would give his soul peace. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .’

Even while Hathin entertained these unquiet thoughts, in a little room leagues away words were spilling from the sunburnt mouth of a half-delirious man. Not far from his bedside, a quill scratched swiftly and neatly across the page, catching each and every word.

9

No More Names

While the little clock gnawed away the hours, Hathin knotted kindling from the fire into a crude doll and with trembling fingers played the doll game over and over, just to give herself something to do.

At least the Doorsy house did seem to have cured Arilou’s bad mood. From time to time her hand swung across to bat at the decanter, her way of asking for more lemon juice. After she had drunk, she would slump back droop-lidded and contented, with her tongue-tip peeping out between her lips.

When at last there was a rap at the door, Hathin’s heart seemed to leap up and punch her in the throat. She fumbled the door open and found Lohan standing there.

‘I told them that the Lady Lost needed a spare attendant so that she could send for things,’ he explained as he sidled into the room. Hathin felt almost sick with gratitude. ‘So . . . ?’ He spread his hands in a tiny shrug.
Is there a plan?

‘Perhaps . . .’ Hathin said in a small voice, ‘perhaps I will have to explain that Lady Arilou, being so new to this . . . isn’t able to find her way to the other tidings huts to read any of the news. But if I have to tell the towners that, they . . . they won’t be happy.’