Gullstruck Island (29 page)

‘What rabbit you hunt?’ asked Jaze.

‘Lace,’ answered the man, ending the word with a grinning hiss. Hathin’s heart lurched. ‘Take Lace Mistleman’s Blunder way, dead or live, no matter.
Jealousy
gang over-there –’ he nodded towards the lights of a larger camp a little way distant – ‘look Lace for takem Superior. But no find Lace, we find all Lace first.’ He laughed again, but there was a touch of uneasiness in his eye as he looked out towards the other camp.

‘Why Superior want Lace?’ asked Therrot, his hand tense in Hathin’s. The ‘Superior’ was the title of Jealousy’s governor.

‘Nocansay. Superior want Lace alive. Nocansay.’

For all their apparent mirth, the men in this group were undeniably jumpy. The general feeling seemed to be that the local bounty hunters had lost their sense of humour about the scarcity of Lace. A tiny sound from the direction of the other camp set half their camp clutching at their knife hilts as they leaned forward to listen.

Into this stillness Arilou dropped a small wandering wail.

‘Bad dream,’ Jaze said quickly, cradling her shoulders. Arilou’s mouth and eyes were both wide open, as if with fear or effort.

‘Ath . . .’ she said.

Therrot placed a restraining hand on Hathin’s arm, and she realized she’d started to rise from her seat.
But she wants something, she’s upset, she needs something
. . .

‘Athm,’ said Arilou. ‘Ath . . . Athern . . .’

And it was not a bubble in a stream of sound, it was a word that Arilou was trying to force her wayward tongue to shape. It was a word so familiar to Hathin that she did not recognize it at first, any more than she would have recognized the taste of air. And then she understood, and for a moment forgot how to breathe.

Hathin.

‘
Haathh
. . .’ Shrill. Urgent. Hathin leaped to her feet. She couldn’t help it. And in that moment, the wind changed.

Suddenly the smoke from the campfire was no longer in Hathin’s nose. Instead there was a strange damp smell of long-dead fires, and an acrid stench mixed with a reek like rotting meat.

Time came off its axle for a moment, giving the revengers time to see each others’ eyes become great moons of realization. Then just as quickly the world recovered from its shock and everything happened at once.

A crossbow bolt hit the log where Hathin had been sitting.

Jaze sprang up, hefting Arilou on to his shoulder.

Tomki flung a cloak over the fire, plunging the area into darkness.

Therrot grabbed Hathin’s arm and sprinted away from the campfire, dragging her with him. She threw a hasty glance backwards, and was in time to see a dark, slender figure burst into the middle of the camp. The darkness was too complete to make out the blue of his skin and clothes, but Hathin knew it was the Ashwalker. Sorrow had swallowed him and that had not stopped him. Nothing would stop him.

Behind them there were shouts, gunshots. Hathin and Therrot ran and ran, and then the ground gave out under them and they tumbled into a ditch. Jaze, Tomki and Arilou were already crouched in it, Tomki dragging on the elephant bird’s leash with all his strength to stop it raising its head above the brink. Jaze had his crossbow in his hand and was peering over the top of the ditch.

‘It’s chaos back there,’ he whispered. ‘Half of them didn’t realize he was an Ashwalker, and let fly . . . shh!’ He listened. ‘Sounds like a stand-off now. They’re trying to bargain with him, trying to find out if there’s a reward for us and if they can get a cut for helping flush us out . . .’

A calm voice answered the bounty hunters. A light-toned, rain-on-the-skin voice. It was difficult for Hathin to imagine the Ashwalker speaking.

‘He’s saying he only wants the ash,’ whispered Jaze. ‘They’re welcome to take our clothes and teeth jewels back to Mistleman’s Blunder for the reward.’ He glanced around the group, then looked at Therrot. ‘Think you can get them to the city?’

‘I can buy you time.’ Tomki’s voice was rapid, a touch of fear amid the eagerness.

‘No, Tomki. It’s an Ashwalker. Even Therrot here wouldn’t slow him enough to do any good. But he’ll break stride for me.’ There was no bluster or boast in Jaze’s voice. Quietly he was handing Therrot his amber monocles, his spare knife, all his most valued possessions. He had taken the situation apart like a clock, and knew that he would not be needing them again.

‘No,’ said Hathin. ‘Jaze . . .’

Figures were now leaving the darkened camp in twos and threes, walking at a crouch and sometimes pausing to run swords into sinister-looking bushes.

‘Therrot, you keep Hathin safe,’ Jaze muttered, placing a foot halfway up the wall of the ditch. ‘Put Arilou on the back of the bird, Tomki, and run with it as best you can.’

‘Jaze!’ hissed Hathin, a bit louder, and he turned to look at her in surprise. ‘We . . . We
need
you. To carry Arilou at least – she’ll never stay on the bird, you
know
that.’

‘I could carry—’ said Therrot.

‘No!’ snapped Jaze. ‘You keep Hathin safe.’ He turned back to Hathin. ‘There’s no time to say this gently. You were brought up to believe that the most important person in the world was Arilou. Well, your village is dead, and what they told you isn’t true any more. I’m not even sure Arilou’s personality exists outside your imagination. Now it’s
you
that matters. This is
your
quest.’

‘It is, it
is
my quest . . .’ Hathin gripped her fists and drew a deep breath, ‘and you’re not going to do this, Jaze, because
I’m not going to let you.
’ She was shaking, but almost without noticing she had changed to the cold, confident voice she had used for Arilou for so many years. ‘You’re supposed to help me, but
I
decide how, not you.’

She turned away before she could wilt under Jaze’s astonished gaze.

‘Tomki,’ she said, ‘you can move fast on your bird, can’t you? I’ve got something I want you to do. It’s . . . very dangerous though.’

A look of barely suppressed delight crossed Tomki’s features.

‘I want you to ride over to that big camp, the one with the
local
bounty hunters, and tell them that there’s a family of Lace here, about to be taken prisoner by the men from Mistleman’s Blunder. Don’t tell them about the Ashwalker, and be . . .’

The bird lurched upright, and Tomki flew on to its back. A second later they were gone, leaving gouge marks in the earth and a pair of floating feathers.

‘. . . careful,’ finished Hathin.

Jaze stared at her for a few moments, then carefully removed the bolt from his bow and crouched with a sigh beside Arilou.

‘And when they come . . .’ he murmured.

‘There’ll be chaos,’ said Hathin. ‘And we’ll run for the city. All of us.’

There were cries, and the sound of brush hissing in disapproval as it was ravaged by sprinting feet. Evidently Tomki had been spotted. The whistle of slings. A long pause, and then, far distant, a high, piping, excitable voice.

‘It’s Tomki,’ whispered Therrot. ‘I think he’s reached the Jealousy men.’

The other camp’s distant bonfire suddenly gave birth to a litter of smaller lights – torches, with two dozen shadowy figures behind them. An exchange of shouts in different accents. Then the line of torches leaped forward and there was a chaos of cries and rock-ricochets and shots in the blackness.

‘Now,’ whispered Jaze. It sounded like an instruction, but there was a hint of a question in his face.

Hathin nodded.

Nobody appeared to notice as they scrambled from the ditch and ran, Therrot to Hathin’s right, Jaze to her left with Arilou in his arms. As they sprinted across the scrubland, Hathin heard Therrot give a sharp gasp, and suddenly there was nobody running on her right.

She staggered to a halt, and turned. Therrot was face down on the ground. She ran back to him, shook him, found a wet patch on the back of his head. She was trying in vain to drag him into the nearest bushes when the torches rollicked panting out of the darkness and surrounded her.

Torches. The locals had been the ones carrying torches. What if they thought she was with the men from Mistleman’s Blunder?

‘I Lace!’ she called out in Nundestruth. ‘Look!’ She snatched off her cap, and ruffled the short, soft fur above her forehead where her scalp had been shaved. ‘Look!’ She drew back her upper lip and rubbed her forefinger across her teeth. ‘Blundermen try kill, make we no good for you! Pleaseyou, take we to city belong-you or Blundermen find and kill!’ She placed both hands protectively on Therrot’s back. ‘We Lace . . .’

19

The Superior’s Soap

As Hathin and the unconscious Therrot were dragged through the night streets of Jealousy, Hathin could not help remembering Jaze’s words.

You have a duty to avoid being captured or killed
. . .

What would happen when the Ashwalker worked out who had captured them, and strode up to the Superior’s house, licence in hand? Had she led Therrot into an inescapable trap? She looked on nervously as her captors paused to examine him.

Then a couple of men draped Therrot’s arms over their shoulders and took him away, and Hathin found herself being escorted by the rest of the torch parade, a heavy hand gripping each of her shoulders. When by chance she met the eye of one of her guards she felt the corners of her mouth curving up into a smile. She was too exhausted to help it, and they shuddered and looked away as if something slimy had brushed their skin.

She was dragged through a heavy gate and across a square courtyard, where white peahens slept here and there on the dark lawn.

It was only as Hathin was dragged into a candlelit hallway that she realized this did not look a great deal like a prison.

She was manhandled over a mosaic floor, between two suits of gilded armour and into a high-ceilinged room with maps painted on every wall. There was the Gripping Bird-shaped outline of Gullstruck, its volcanoes painted in a cheery cherry-red, and the vivid blue sea around it now apparently populated by several decades worth of insects and bugs that had been swatted against it.

Underneath it sat a balding little man with beautiful long, auburn moustache hairs wound around a curling metal wire. He wore a waistcoat that seemed to have been designed for a much bigger man. As Hathin and the guards entered he looked up with an expression of weary misery.

But when one of the guards moved forward and whispered in his ear, Hathin saw a look of almost pained hope venture cautiously across his features. ‘Oh! I see. Ah, yes! Yes, well done. Could you wait outside?’ He spoke a crisply accented Doorsy, scrubbing-brush brisk.

As the guards left the room Hathin felt nervously at the bruised places on her upper arm. She could think of several reasons why the little man might be pleased to see her, and none of them were good.

‘Let’s see your teeth then, young man.’

It took Hathin a moment to remember her boyish disguise and realize that he was talking to her. She obediently bared her teeth, and the man stared at them over his wire-rimmed spectacles before sitting back with a ‘huff’ of relief.

‘You really
are
Lace, aren’t you?’

She nodded.

‘Now.’ The little man moved a jade paperweight, in a decisive fashion that caused the scroll it was holding down to coil and flip him on the nose. Both of them pretended it hadn’t happened. ‘You know who I am, I assume?’

‘You’re the Superior?’ She was rewarded by a small, fragile smile.

‘Quite right, young man. Superior Pedron Sun-Sedrollo. You have probably heard of the Dukes of Sedrollo.’ He waved a hand at the wall, and Hathin noticed for the first time that there were hundreds of tiny framed cameos of men in frilled ruffs and forked beards, and occasional women whose hair swelled up above their foreheads like marrows, reined in by spangled nets. ‘You may also have heard of the Counts of Sun.’ The opposite wall held a host of similar images.

Hathin started to understand why the little man was so small. Sitting under a hundred needley gazes like those would shrivel anyone.

‘You’re probably wondering why you’ve been shown into my presence.’ He glanced at Hathin and seemed to be reassured by something he saw in her face. ‘You might be too young to understand this, but I have to look after two great towns. There is the living township of Jealousy, which you might already have seen – containing about four hundred souls. But out on the foothills of Crackgem, beyond the orchid lakes, is an entire
city
, with full four thousand souls – an invisible city that is ever increasing its population.’

Hathin remembered the Ashlands near her village, with its forest of spirit houses.

‘Sir Superior . . . would those souls be all the Dukes of Sedrollo and the Counts of Sun?’

‘Yes,’ intoned the Superior, with a note of hollow desolation in his voice. ‘All of them. And their cousins, and their wives, and their wives’ cousins, and their wives’ cousins’ wives’ cousins, and many, many more besides. Their ashes were all brought here during the very first landings.’ He gave a cramped smile. ‘Of course the Ashlands weren’t the wrong side of the orchid lakes back
then
. My predecessors picked out what looked like the best and greenest land, in easy reach of the town . . . but you know what Crackgem is like. Every fifty years or so, bang! Pop! Shudder! And next thing we know there are roasted farmers all over the foothills, and old lakes have suddenly become vales of pitted mud, and new scalding lakes are bubbling up somewhere
totally different
.’ He sighed.