Gullstruck Island (25 page)

‘It’s already too late.’ With a satin swish the monsoon rain swept in, and soon the mud of the miniature Gullstruck was loosening and melting. As Hathin watched, the crater she had fashioned for Spearhead filled with cloudy brown water, which spilled out through the nick in the rim to surge into the model of the Wailing Way.

‘All right, all right,’ Hathin said gently. ‘No more.’ She spoke to Arilou out of habit, even though she was increasingly convinced that her sister had sent off her hearing with her sight. Hathin wrapped the older girl’s grubby, stream-chilled hand in a fold of her skirt to warm it. Arilou’s sense of physical touch was still with her body, of that much Hathin was certain, hence her desperate, blind finger-search.

Where were Arilou’s absent senses now? Was her vision wheeling wildly with the gulls above the coast? Was she hearing the crash of waves, smelling the breath of the volcanoes? Hathin put an arm around her, as if she could bind Arilou back into herself, and guided Arilou’s head to rest on her shoulder.

‘Hathin –’ Therrot met her gaze – ‘has it occurred to you that somebody might be a Lost and be an imbecile as well?’

Hathin had no answer, nor did she have time to give one. As she stared at Therrot, one of the younger revengers burst from the trees and slithered down to join them.

‘Dance says to come back to the Wasps’ Nest. A dozen townsfolk with axes have just been seen heading towards our jungle. There’s no more time. We’re all leaving. Now.’

A very short while later the Wasps’ Nest was empty, its erstwhile residents scattered concealed throughout the jungle.

Hathin’s group must make it to the road
, Dance had said,
and if a distraction is needed to help them get there, we’ll give them a distraction.

Hathin hurried along at a crouch, her new backpack catching on vines. Close behind her came Therrot. Both were disguised as members of the Dancing Steam, complete with indigo-dyed leggings and coats with long cross-laced sleeves that would hide their tattoos. Hathin’s hair had been cropped and she was dressed as a boy, for she was to pose as Therrot’s younger brother on the trip. However, it had been drummed into her that her disguise would be for naught if she let her distinctive Lace smile creep on to her face and expose her tooth plaques.

If anyone sees through your disguise, strike before they can act
, Jaze had instructed her, as he strapped a little dagger in a red sheath to her arm.
You have a duty to avoid being captured or killed. While you’re alive and at liberty we can help you, but once you’re gone no one can pursue your quest on your behalf
.

Jaze was bringing up the rear of their little group, supporting a half-asleep Arilou. Despite the urgency of the situation, he remained calm, almost too calm. Hathin found his presence soothing, but at the same time wondered whether he had worn the same cool soapstone smile when he had killed the five smugglers who had murdered his mother.

Arilou was dressed as a member of the Bitter Fruit, and the belly of her dress was padded out with rags. The hope was that if she seemed heavily pregnant it would give Jaze an excuse to half carry her.

They reached the edge of the forest just in time to see the last of the townspeople disappear into the jungle, a hundred yards away. There was a distant
chock!
sound, and birds peppered the sky.

‘They’re chopping down trees,’ whispered Therrot. He sounded surprised. Clearly, despite its proximity, Mistleman’s Chandlery was not the townspeople’s first-choice source of timber. ‘They never cut down trees
here
. These jungles – they’re part of the Sovereignty Swathe.’ The Swathe was one of many areas that had remained jungle purely because some of the first Cavalcaste generals had claimed it for their families, to be used as Ashlands for their dead in the future. It was lifeless space on the map, and the only way to claim a piece of it was to die.

‘Not good,’ murmured Jaze. ‘We’ll have trouble getting to the road without them seeing us.’

Hathin peered apprehensively through the undergrowth at the root-tangled slope and expanse of flat ground they would need to cross to reach the main road. Mistleman’s Blunder was a major stopping point along the so-called Obsidian Trail, a foot-route down which dozens of men, women and children daily trudged, carrying packs of obsidian, mountain jade and other goods from the mountain mining villages to the richer cities and ports of the northeast.

The plan was for Hathin’s party to creep down to the road and quietly join the stream of pack-carriers so as to escape attention. Hearts in mouths, they skulked their way down the treeless slope, hunching in abandoned irrigation trenches, until they reached a bush-shielded ditch a stone’s throw from the road.

It soon became clear that finding a quiet moment to slip out of the bushes was going to be no easy matter, as the route suddenly became a thoroughfare for lines of men carrying long, slender tree trunks over their shoulders. The timber was laid down by the roadside and, as the hidden revengers watched, workmen began lashing the newly felled trunks together into tall angular structures.

‘What are they doing?’ hissed Therrot.

Jaze raised his head to scan the scene. ‘Looks like they’re making a set of raised platforms . . . Who’s that? The man in the blue waistcoat? And what’s wrong with his face?’

There was indeed a slightly shorter figure among the workmen, giving orders, stopping from time to time to check a parchment in his hand. Even at this distance it was clear that behind the turned-up wings of his collar, his face was blotched with yellow and plum discolouration.

‘Oh, I think I know who he is,’ murmured Jaze. ‘That’s him. The Doorsy who’s been turning everything upside down looking for you. Whatever it is he’s doing, it’s for
your
benefit, Hathin. Take a look – have you ever met him?’

‘No.’ Hathin raised her head as high as she dared and peered through the foliage. ‘I’d remember someone with a face like that.’

‘Good,’ said Jaze. ‘If you don’t recognize him, he won’t recognize you if you have to walk past him.’

Deep in the forest came the sound of a bang, followed by a chalky trail of echo and a great eruption of birds.

‘Damn!’ said Therrot, and at the same time Jaze said ‘Now!’ and scooped up Arilou. His momentum carried the other revengers along, and they lurched after him out of the ditch.

‘That came from the direction of the Reckoning! That was a gunshot!’ hissed Therrot as he fell into stride with Jaze along the rubbled path.

‘I know one when I hear one,’ Jaze said through his teeth, shifting the weight of Arilou in his arms, ‘and so does everyone else. A gun fires, and everybody looks towards it – nobody looks for people climbing out of bushes. Now fall back – we’re not supposed to know each other.’

Therrot slowed his pace, and Hathin slid her hand into his. The nearest wooden platform seemed to be completed and was as high as a house. On its summit stood a man using a telescope to pan across the road, the treeline, the surrounding countryside. Spy-towers then.
Is all of this really to look for us? Surely there is some mistake?

‘Hathin,’ muttered Therrot without moving his lips, ‘you’re smiling again.’ She compressed her lips and tried to force down the corners of her mouth.

Her heart beat as ahead of them Jaze and Arilou approached a couple of men who stood on the path, both holding rough cudgels. They exchanged a few words with Jaze, who gave them yawning answers, joked, nodded towards the sleeping Arilou. His mild look remained unruffled as the roadblock guards searched through his luggage with an idle air.

Hathin herself was anything but calm. To keep her gaze from Arilou, Hathin observed the man in the blue waistcoat, who was shouting instructions to the men at the top of the spy-towers. As she watched he raised his head irritably, batting away a persistent fly, and her throat tightened as she saw his face properly.

‘Therrot,’ she whispered, a squeak of panic in her voice. ‘Therrot – I
do
know him.’

‘What?’ Therrot looked down at her, his face drawn, but there was no time for conference. Their steps had brought them up to the road guards.

‘What’s your reason for passing through our city?’ asked the first using Doorsy with an air of bored self-importance.

‘We’re a troupe of travelling parrot jugglers,’ Therrot declared wearily. His Doorsy was a little clumsy and had a strong Mistleman’s accent. ‘Come on – what do you think we are? In case you didn’t notice, the bean harvest’s over so we’re walking the trail and taking packs of black glass to Port Suddenwind to sell. Trope, show the nice men what you’ve got in your bucket.’ Hathin managed to remember that she was going by the name of Trope. She stood by while the guards stirred her tiny scraps of obsidian around with the tip of a knife, and tried not to look towards Prox.

Therrot clicked his tongue in his cheek as if all these formalities were too boring for words, but as the guards started searching their other buckets Hathin could see his eyes glittering with nervous impatience.

Hathin’s eyes crept to the face of Minchard Prox, who was studying a map. Horribly blistered, but alive.
Can he really be hunting us? Maybe we should speak to him? He was working with Raglan Skein – doesn’t that mean he should be on our side?

‘What’s all this about, anyway?’ Therrot nodded towards the new scaffolding.

‘We’ve had word that there might be a Lace force massing over on the coast, and looking to sneak through their secret mountain passes. And if they do – well, they’re going to attack here, aren’t they? We’re the people who stood up to them in the first place, and they’ve never forgiven us. So we’re setting up these towers so we can spot ’em if they come skulking through the undergrowth. And we’ve piled the brush up in those heaps so we can light them as braziers come nightfall, throwing light over the plain.’

The two listening Lace nodded thoughtfully and tried not to meet one another’s eye. A Lace force? The only ‘Lace force’ to have ‘sneaked through the secret mountain passes’ had been Arilou and Hathin themselves, and they knew of no other waiting to follow the same route.

‘What makes you think the Lace would go tramping over the volcanoes in monsoon weather?’ Therrot’s tone of voice walked the tightrope between idle curiosity and disinterest.

‘Because their leader’s already here – we’re on the look out for her.’ The guard pulled out a rough pencil-drawn picture. Its lines were crude, but there was something in it of Arilou, her high cheekbones and serene pirate eyes. ‘Look at this – you seen her while you’ve been walking?’

Therrot examined the picture, gave a snort and pushed it back into the guardsman’s hands.

‘How the hell am I supposed to know from a picture like that?’ He laughed. ‘Looks a bit like me.’

‘It’s no joking matter,’ snapped the guard. ‘She’s the one who ordered the murders of the Lost – so they wouldn’t be able to warn us when her armies approached.’

Hathin could not suppress a flinch at these words. She twisted her hands together to stop them shaking. Fortunately the guards’ eyes were on Therrot, and they did not notice the flush creeping across her face.

It was happening, just as Dance had predicted. The tales of a murderous Lace conspiracy which had infected Sweet-weather like a madness were spreading and had reached Mistleman’s Blunder. Seeing towers built to scan the horizons for her sister and herself had been bad enough. But it was only now that the enormity and absurdity of the situation overwhelmed her.

Then, to her horror, ahead she saw Arilou starting to stir in Jaze’s arms as if rousing herself from sleep. Would she stay calm when she found herself carried by a stranger? And if she drew attention to herself, how long would it take for Prox to recognize the Lady Lost Arilou?

Prox was folding his map, staring down the road as he did so. He was glancing for the first time at the little huddle of figures on the road . . . he was turning with a start as a young man came running from the direction of the jungle, a swoop of lichen and blood smearing his cheek, and headed straight to Prox.

‘. . . were searching the jungle, and . . . gunshot . . . men and a few women . . . Lace, I’m sure of it . . . some kind of treehouse.’ Hathin heard only fragments of his panted report.

Suddenly Prox was bristling and terrier-like. In spite of her fear, Hathin stealthily moved a bit closer in order to hear more.

‘Lace?’ Prox pushed his fingers through his hair, his eyes alive with excitement. ‘A Lace hideout in the jungle. I think we’ve
found
her. Tell me –’ he grabbed the sleeve of the lichen-stained man – ‘did you see a girl? About thirteen years old? So high, with mix-blood skin and high cheekbones?’

‘No . . . I don’t think so. Just men and women full grown.’

‘Did you catch any of them?’

‘We didn’t get the chance – there were a good dozen of them, sir. At least. I mean . . . they were
everywhere
, sir. There was this whistling, and then the trees came alive with them . . . and then there was this creaking crash, and the tree-house came down on us, along with about two dozen wasps’ nests. Ten of us went into that forest. I’m the only one who’s come out again.’

‘What?’

Prox’s exclamation coincided with another gunshot from the jungle. Out across the plain workmen could be seen running towards the jungle, axes and hammers in hand.

‘Stop!’ Prox’s voice had no chance of reaching the disappearing figures. ‘Will you all stop running into the jungle! Stop it! What is wrong with you all? Here –’ he turned to the young man beside him – ‘will you please run and tell those idiots to come back, before this town’s population is reduced to three!’

Seeing the distressed and perplexed look in Prox’s bright brown eyes, Hathin suddenly felt sorry for him despite herself. Then, as Prox listened to a murmur in his ear, his brow creased and became pensive.

‘You’re right,’ he said after a moment or two. ‘We can’t go in after them, we’ll have to cut off their supplies. Someone’s been supplying them – someone local. Where are the nearest Lace villages?’ Pausing, listening. ‘Only ten miles down the coastal road?’ He unfolded his map once more and he studied the portion pointed out to him.