Gullstruck Island (43 page)

‘Is everything all right?’ Therrot jogged into view, perhaps drawn by Hathin’s shrillness. Hathin nodded mutely.

‘Ath’n,’ said Arilou. To judge from her face, she was still gazing at the horizon, but now she was smiling. Not a Lace or a Sour smile, a broad, loose monkey grin with a lovable shamelessness to it, a hint of childlike guile. Another instant and it pulled apart like a bow and was gone. But it was enough. Suddenly Hathin was warm from toe to tip and she forgave Arilou everything, everything.

The smaller children made room for Hathin to sit beside Arilou. As she began to go through all the little grooming gestures that had become as much a part of her own life as blinking or breathing, she felt her restive mind fill with calm and a sense of completeness. Arilou’s hair was free of burrs, but Hathin combed it with her fingers anyway.

Arilou. It was as if Hathin had always known she had a sister and was meeting her for the first time in this strange landscape. The combing motion was achingly familiar, but the sense of Arilou’s awareness, the spider-thread of connection, was new. Had it been quietly weaving into place as they travelled? Or had the tiniest strand of it always been there?

It was five minutes before Hathin could bear to break the silence.

‘Arilou . . .’ She hesitated. For those few minutes the sense of link to Arilou had been so strong that she had quite forgotten the language gulph between them. She glanced across at her erstwhile guide, who was fidgeting at a respectful distance. ‘Um . . . Pleaseyou tell Laderilou I want her look town. Lookout Jimboly. Bird lady.’ Hathin scrabbled in her pouch and brought out the little carving that Louloss had made of Jimboly’s head.

Arilou listened to the Sour girl’s translation, but when she was handed the wooden head the corners of her mouth drooped in a child-like expression of distress. Hathin remembered Jimboly slyly throwing a rock at the back of Arilou’s head and did not wonder at her sister’s reaction.

‘Tell Laderilou I no like Jimboly too,’ Hathin added, giving Arilou’s long hand a squeeze. Something in Arilou’s expression changed very slightly, and Hathin sensed that her sister’s mind had flitted away.

While Therrot and a couple of the other Sours sat with Arilou, Jeljech insisted on showing Hathin around a hut, patting the blankets on the bedding mat and showing her a bone comb, a wooden water jug shaped like a bird. It took a while for Hathin to realize that these were Arilou’s living quarters, and that her guide was watching nervously to see if Hathin approved of them. She beamed as best she could, and nodded, fighting the temptation to be jealous of Jeljech in her role as one of Arilou’s new Sour ‘sisters’. Perhaps sensing her conflict, Jeljech seemed determined to defer to her, despite the difference in age.

‘Laderilou practise say . . .’ The Sour girl faltered, then gave the sentence another run up. ‘Practise say . . . Hhatph-hin.’

Non-Lace often had trouble with Lace names. They were not simply based on natural sounds, they were supposed to imitate them, even in ordinary speech. Strangers were often baffled at hearing a stream of Lace interrupted by impressions of birdcalls, fire-like crackles and rushing sounds of wind and water. Jeljech’s attempt at speaking Hathin’s name made her sound as though she was choking on feathers.

Hathin laughed to cover the mistake as she would have done when talking to another Lace, then winced as Jeljech looked offended. The Sour village was so much like her own in some ways that it was easy to stub one’s toe against the hidden differences.

‘No matter.’ The girl shrugged, a little hostile. ‘You got new name. We give name.’

Hathin bit her lip as the Sour girl carefully spoke a phrase in her own language, trying to gauge whether her ‘new name’ would be a veiled insult. The names non-Lace threw at Lace were seldom kind.

‘Name mean . . .’ The translator bent her arms, so that her spread hands were level with her shoulders and seemed to strain against an imaginary boulder. ‘Mean push . . . push . . .’ She straightened, raised her arms and brought them down and outward, her fingers describing two symmetrical slopes. ‘Mountain. Push mountain.’

It was her turn to laugh at Hathin’s expression.

‘Laderilou tell us you two rabbitrun away coast. She have none eye, none ear. You carry Laderilou. You push . . .’ The girl furrowed her brow and made broad elbowing motions, as if shoving her way through a crowd of giants. ‘Push many mountain to side. Laderilou feel mountain tremble, rock give way.’

Hathin ducked her head to hide the fact that her eyes had filled with tears.

That terrible chase across the King of Fans and Sorrow had taken every ounce of her will and courage. Thinking back, it had felt a lot like she was struggling against the very mountains themselves. And Arilou, the dead weight in her arms, had not been oblivious to it after all. She had known; she had cared.

Their feet had taken them in a circle. The rocky shelf came into view. The children were squatting on its edge, leaning over to spit. There was no sign of Arilou.

‘Where Laderilou?’

Jeljech repeated the question in Sour. An answer was given by a young man whom Hathin had seen sitting next to Therrot when she left.

‘She go with friend belong-you.’

‘What?’ Why would Therrot and Arilou leave the village without her?

Jeljech continued questioning the young man. It emerged that some time after Arilou had sent her mind down to the town, she had suddenly given a joyful noise of recognition. All she had said was ‘friend from beach home’ over and over in Sour. Then she had made a strange noise which seemed to mean a great deal to Therrot, for he had leaped to his feet, his eyes bright. His tone was fiercely questioning and he pointed down towards the city repeatedly, but of course the bystanders had not understood a word.

Then he had taken Arilou’s arm, heaved her to her feet and led her quickly away down the path towards Jealousy.

Hathin listened in horror. Had Therrot gone mad? Why would he drag Arilou down into the tinder-tense streets of Jealousy in broad daylight? Dazed, she listened as the young man tried to imitate the sound which had had such an intense effect on Therrot.

It was a soft rasp of sound, half sigh, half surge. This time Hathin knew immediately what it was meant to be. The next moment she was sprinting through the village to find Jaze.

‘Jaze! Therrot’s gone! He’s taken Arilou to Jealousy! She was searching the town with her mind, and she didn’t see Jimboly, but she found somebody else – somebody from the Hollow Beasts. Alive and in the city, just the way you said. Arilou tried to tell everyone who it was. The Sours heard her making a strange sound, like a wave stroking sand. Only Therrot realized it was a name.

‘I know who it is now. I should have known before, but I was
so
sure she was dead. And now Therrot knows she’s alive he’s running down to find her before we do, probably because he’s afraid we’ll kill her as a traitor. And she
must
be the traitor, and he’s taking Arilou
right to her
.

‘It’s his mother, Jaze. It’s Whish.’

30

The Sound of Waves

The young man who had witnessed Arilou’s conversation with Therrot had not heard much, but what he did remember was useful. When trying to describe the place where she had seen the ‘friend from beach home’, Arilou had been talking of ‘red houses’ and ‘black goat go round-round on top’.

‘I know what that is!’ Hathin exclaimed. ‘It’s in the craftsmen’s district. One of the Dukes of Sedrollo built it as a stables, but then all his horses died of fly-plague so now it’s just shops. It has a black weathervane shaped like a horse on top.’

Jaze flicked impatiently at his knife sheath as they began the scramble down the mountainside, looking all the while for their missing companions.

‘So . . .’ Something had set in Jaze’s face, like a new blade fixing in a haft. ‘Tell me about this Whish.’

Scrabbling breathlessly over the treacherous rocks, Hathin told Jaze all about the old feud between Whish and Mother Govrie, and then, reluctantly, about finding Whish ready to dash Arilou on the rocks of the Lacery.

‘On the day all the Lost died,’ Jaze said with icy gentleness, ‘somebody tried to kill the one Lost who ended up surviving, and you didn’t think it was worth mentioning?’

‘I thought Whish was dead! There was this drowned hand in the Path of the Gongs, and it was wearing her shells . . . it was like I’d seen her body. Only of course I never did. And there was Therrot . . . I couldn’t rip through his memories of his mother. I couldn’t bear to.’

‘No,’ said Jaze simply. ‘You’re a child.’ There was no venom or anger in his tone, but Hathin knew that in his mind she was no longer Doctor Hathin. ‘You haven’t spared Therrot anything by your silence. He has worse coming to him now.’

‘What . . . ?’ Hathin’s throat tightened as she was overcome by a new fear. ‘You’re not going to hurt him, are you?’

‘That depends what he’s done,’ Jaze said grimly, ‘and what he does when we find him.’

The coloured mud pools of the volcano’s lower slopes had been drying out and cracking, and now they seemed to stare at her with the frightened faces of old men. Jaze’s countenance in contrast was smooth and untroubled. Fractured youth has its own special kind of cruelty, and looking into his face Hathin understood it better than she ever had before.

Therrot had that cruelty too. He had tried to teach the art of it to her, so that she could kill anyone who stood in her way. But now the one standing in her way was Therrot.

He can’t hurt me
, Hathin thought desperately.
I’m his little sister.
The wind roared down in ragged gasps about her, as if Crackgem was laughing.

The Superior’s supposed death had galvanized the thoroughfares of the craftsmen’s district. Outside every workshop a blanket was strewn with offerings suitable for his tomb. Miniature soldiers, less-than-grand pianos, diminutive musicians, their reddish varnish sticky as blood. Hathin and Jaze had to push through the crowds of people haggling over the models with sombre eagerness.

There were the ‘stables’, a long building cobbled from rounded red bricks so that its walls looked like slabs of bubbling meat. During a long-forgotten earthquake the stable had shrugged its front facade into rubble. Now you could see inside, where every stall of the stable had been converted into a tiny shop. At this moment the weathered wooden door of each stall was pulled to, for the sky had deadened to a deep violet-grey, and the daily onslaught of rain was expected at any moment.

Jaze strode to the first door and stooped to peer in between the cracked slats. Hathin tensed for the door to be flung open, but Jaze passed to the next door and peered again, then the next, and the next.

The rising wind blew grit into Hathin’s eyes. As she turned her head to shield them she suddenly caught sight of two figures hugging the wall of an adjoining building, perhaps once the treasured home of some Master of the Stables. She knew in an instant Therrot’s jacket with its coarse twine braid, Arilou’s Sour garments, her loose green belt given life by the wind. Therrot was trying to guide Arilou around the corner when he looked up and saw Hathin.

The expression on his face told her instantly that she was no longer his ‘little sister’. She had been a small floating spar for him to cling to after the shipwreck of his life. Now she was simply a threat.

There was a bigger threat for him to face, however. Therrot’s eyes widened as Jaze sprang past Hathin, and he sprinted off around the side of the building, pulling Arilou after him. Hathin raced to keep up with Jaze, and turned the corner in time to see Therrot drag Arilou in through a door and try to close it behind them. Jaze had his foot in the gap before it could shut. Both men were shouting, but Therrot was a helpless storm of noise, while Jaze’s words organized themselves into tight, angry rows like teeth.

‘Let me in, Therrot! You know it has to be done—’

‘Leave us alone, Jaze! I mean it! You touch her – you touch a hair of her head and you’re dead!’

‘Dead! Yes, I’m dead! You’re dead! Listen to me – a dead man has no family, no mother! We all gave up being alive for something greater that had to be done.’

‘What do you want from me? I can give up my family, but I can’t give up loving them. I can’t give up killing or dying for them! What if it was your mother?’

When Jaze spoke again, something sharp had curled out of his seeming calm like a cat’s claw from the dead grey skin of its sheath.

‘I would drive a knife through her throat if my mother mysteriously survived a trap laid by a traitor. If her shell bracelets were found planted upon the corpse of another woman. If I knew she had always hated Arilou and her family.
If I knew that on the very day of the Lost deaths she had lured Arilou to the water’s edge and tried to dash her brains out on the rocks
. . .’

The door opened abruptly, catching Jaze’s face. It was closely followed by a tidal wave of Therrot. The suddenness of his attack bore Jaze backwards. A blot of blood on his shoulder reminded Hathin that Jaze was already injured.