Salt (14 page)
They spent the night and the next day in the room where Tarl had kept his weapons and food, knowing he would be too busy at People’s Square to come this far.
At nightfall they made their way along the foot of the city wall. A stormwater drain ran out and dropped into a ditch winding to the sea. In the days of Company there had been guards to stop burrows men from creeping in. Now it stood unguarded, a black hole in the fitted blocks of stone.
I could never get in here, but I came down once from Compound, to learn the way in case I had to run, Hari said.
Where will we come out?
Beside the house with the flag that has the yellow flame.
House Sinclair.
The rats are small. They won’t get in our way.
I’m not frightened of rats, Hari. I’m not frightened of anything now.
Let’s get into the dark before the moon comes up.
The drain was tall enough for them to walk upright. It ran with no more than an inch of water. Smaller inlets came from the sides and several from the roof, dripping moisture. They followed the main drain until they were under the city. Hari stopped at a side drain.
Now we crawl – and hope it doesn’t rain or we’ll get washed out. He dowsed the torch he had lit at the entrance. We climb by touch.
The sides were slippery. They had to brace themselves with knees and forearms to move up. In the steep places they used iron handholds fixed in the wall. Both climbed easily, hardened by their long walk through the mountains and jungle and their sailing of the boat. But Hari felt a growing unease in Pearl’s mind as they climbed towards the place where she had lived. Her resolve, though, was equal to his. He had seen the green light, the misshapen rats, and he meant to take the poison salt that created them back into the dark where it belonged. She meant to take it from the man who had killed her family and stop him from killing anyone else.
Light leaked into the drain from higher up.
We’re nearly at the street. The moon’s out. There’s no sump, just an opening at the kerb. We’ll have to take our packs off to get through.
He peered out and sent his mind questing.
No one’s guarding here. The houses look empty.
They’ll be up at the other end, Pearl said. At House Ottmar and Kruger and Bowles.
There’s only one sentry on the walls. He must have taken every spare man for his army.
Hari took off his pack and pushed it onto the road. He slid through the opening at the kerb. Pearl followed.
Dogs are howling down there, she said. Is that the burrows?
Tarl’s pack. He must be meeting Keech.
The sentry was listening to the noise, with his back to the street. Pearl and Hari ran across; and now, in the place where she had lived all her life, Pearl led – although, Hari thought, I know it as well as her. I’ve spied out every hiding place along the cliffs.
They climbed the fence to House Sinclair, where the lawn grass, uncut, tangled their feet and the clipped shrubs had sprouted at their tops. Litter strewed the paths and flowerbeds. The house must have been used for barracks before Ottmar sent his troops into the city to fight.
Pearl and Hari crept around to the back. They sent their minds probing for hidden watchers. None. House Parlane and House Bassett lay ahead, with their wide parks running to the cliff edge. Both were deserted. Next came House Bowles.
Pearl lifted herself and looked over the wall.
There are soldiers there.
It’s another barracks.
Exhausted men lay sleeping on the lawns or resting against the walls with their heads drooping.
They’ve been in a battle, Pearl said. The house must be full. I’m glad I don’t have to go inside.
There’s a path along the cliff. We’ll use that.
They ran through the gardens of House Bassett, crouching at low places in the wall separating it from House Bowles. They climbed the far end and were hidden from the mansion by hedges, growing ragged, and ornamental trees losing shape. A wrought-iron fence cut the path off from the edge of the cliff. Pearl stopped at a bench placed to give a view out to sea and along the coast.
I want to sit down a moment, Hari.
She had come here with Tealeaf on fine evenings and also in the night when House Bowles was sleeping, and Tealeaf had taught her the names of the stars and told her how the moon controlled the tides and why the winds blew and many more things. They had watched the busy port, with its streets marked out by gas lamps, and the ships tied up at the wharves, loading grain and coal and tea and timber – and salt, she remembered with a shudder. Now the port was dark, not a light to be seen, except for the dying glow of a warehouse burned by looters.
In the other direction, the cliff advanced jaggedly into the sea. She had not looked that way, and Tealeaf had not told her the stories, but she had heard them anyway, in children’s talk, and knew that where the park between House Bowles and House Ottmar ran down to the cliff, and was clenched like a fist over the black reef far below, the Families had been murdered in the old days, before Company made its great conquest in the War. Tealeaf had, in the end, told her that. It explained the monument raised there – a white marble hand, the Company hand, set on a plinth, with its fingers hooked in agony or revenge.
Pearl sat on the bench. Hari sat beside her and waited. She looked across the park at the hand (while Hari remembered that he had always spat on it in passing) and the jutting rock beyond. Ottmar was using the rock to murder people again. She remembered her family, found good things to remember, and tears began to trickle on her face.
Blossom, she thought. Blossom used to dress me in her old dresses when I was small. She brushed my hair and tied ribbons in it. Blossom really should have been a maid. That would have made her happy. And Hubert loved horses better than people. Hubert should have been a groom. She could not think of anything her father should have been, or her mother, or William and George, but she cried for them all the same. After a while she dried her eyes and stood up.
I’m finished now.
It’s a quick way to die, Hari said.
Be quiet, Hari.
They crossed the park, leaving the cliff behind. The wall cutting off House Ottmar was higher than the one between House Bowles and the park. Pearl climbed on Hari’s shoulders and hauled herself up.
There’s no one here, but the house is lit up.
She reached down and Hari jumped for her hand and climbed to the top.
There’s no sound of fighting in the city. Ottmar must have come back. There’ll be guards on the house.
But none in the gardens. They think there’s no danger from out here.
The mansion was lit only on the ground floor. Pearl and Hari jumped down and ran, then paused and crept, feeling for anyone who might be hidden behind the hedges or in the flowering trees. They waited while a new sentry took the place of the one at the back door. The off-duty soldier walked to a fountain on the lawn, where he splashed water on his face and drank from his cupped hands.
They’re soldiers, not Whips, Pearl said.
Bolt guns, not gloves, Hari said.
I’ll take the one at the door. You get the one on the corner.
He shrugged, then smiled. He had grown up with women who kept quiet until they were asked. Everything was changing. He found he did not mind.
Pearl crawled as far as the fountain, where light from the windows began to reach. She glimpsed Hari behind the hedge at the corner of the house; felt his mind go out and immobilise the sentry. She stood up and walked towards the man at the door. He straightened, half cried out – she had appeared like a ghost – then swung his bolt rifle down from his shoulder. But she was close enough: Be still, she said, just as she had heard Tealeaf say it on the night they had escaped.
Mouth open, rifle pointed above her head, he obeyed, although she felt his mutinous lurch before she had him in control. She was going to have to get better at this. She walked up to him, soft on the grass.
Put up your rifle. Stand in your place.
He obeyed.
Hari? she called.
Yes, I’ve got him. Easy.
She doubted that.
Come on then, before there’s anyone else.
He ran back into the dark, avoiding the lighted windows, then came across the lawn from behind the fountain.
Pearl said to the sentry: No one has been here. You’ve seen no one. She pushed the whole of her mind into the command and saw his eyes deaden.
Ask him, Hari began.
Quiet, Hari. She knew what to say.
Where is Ottmar?
‘In the war room with his commanders,’ the man said woodenly.
Where’s Kyle-Ott?
‘With them.’
Are there guards in the house?
‘Outside the war room. And at the front door and the gate.’
And where does Ottmar keep the salt?
She nearly lost him then. He gave a start, his eyes showed a gleam of consciousness, and Hari, behind her, said: Be still.
It’s a narrow path, he whispered to Pearl. We’ve got to hold them on it and not let them step off.
Yes. She reinforced Hari’s command: Be still. Then said: Ottmar has a new weapon. Where does he keep it?
The sentry seemed to think, and she felt memories circling like slow fish in his mind. He said: ‘Men came with a box.’
How long ago?
‘Six days.’
Where did they take it?
‘Into the basement where the servants sleep.’
Which end? The women’s or the men’s?
‘The women’s end.’
Are they still there?
‘They haven’t come out.’
Then stand at your post. Forget you’ve seen us. When we’re gone we were never here.
They slipped through the open door into the back entrance hall. Pearl had been to banquets and balls in the Ottmar mansion where, only recently, she had caught Ottmar’s eye, and Kyle-Ott’s as well, but she had never been in this part of the house. The great rooms lay ahead – the reception room, the dining room, the ballroom, the galleries, while the living rooms and bedrooms were upstairs – but off this back entrance were only kitchens and sculleries. The war room, Pearl guessed, was the former ballroom. Ottmar would choose the grandest space for making his plans.
Stairs to the basement led down on either side. Pearl did not know which ones went to the women’s dormitory, but caught a female smell, female sweat, from the left and turned that way. They went cautiously down unlit steps, feeling their way. At the bottom was the room where the women servants ate their food. Tables and chairs were pushed against the walls to make room for wooden beds thrown in as though for a bonfire. The dormitory must have been cleared to make way for the men working on the salt.
They went through the room, opened a door quietly on the far side and peered along a corridor lit by a lamp at the end. A guard stood halfway along, with his head in shadow and his feet in a sheet of light coming under a door.
There’s another corridor going off, Hari said, so there must be a back way in.
He slipped out of the room and was swallowed in a black cave. Pearl followed.
They found themselves in a narrower corridor. Dimly, at the end, light spread from under another door. Walking softly, nervous of creaking boards, they went to it and felt for people on the other side.
Two men. Along at the far end, Pearl said.
They’re afraid. Feel their fear. The salt is there.
How do you know?
I’ve been close to it. But there’s no light. They must be keeping the box closed.
He turned the handle of the door, holding it firmly so it wouldn’t squeak.
Stop a minute, Hari, Pearl said. I’ll make them look the other way.
How?
Tealeaf taught me while you were with Danatok finding Tarl.
She sent out soft commands, making them like puffs of breeze through a field of grass, bending the stalks and making the seed heads sway: See where the wind travels. See where it goes.
Now they’re looking away.
Watching the grass. You’ll have to teach me that one day, Hari said.
Open the door. Do it quietly.
They slipped through, and Hari closed it behind him.
This room was bigger than the eating room. Along one wall at the near end was a long table with water buckets on it for washing. Latrine cubicles with open doors lined the opposite wall. Further off, more wooden beds lay in a heap, hiding the far end of the room where two gas lamps glowed in the ceiling.
They heard the sound of heavy boots on a wooden floor. Then voices came, booming as though in a hollow place.
‘How many?’
‘One hundred.’
‘We’ll have to fill them slowly. Only three or four a night. It’s too dangerous otherwise.’
‘He wants them now.’
‘We’ll tell him . . .’
The other voice interrupted: ‘Tell him what? Do you tell Ottmar? Do I?’
‘But Slade, the radiation’s coming through. It’s coming through the lead, through the suits. We’re both sick. It’s killing us.’
‘Ottmar is killing us.’
‘We’ve got to get out of here.’ The man began to cry, weak voiced, like a sick child.
‘Shut up, Coney,’ said the other.
Crouching, moving carefully, Pearl and Hari hid behind the pile of beds and looked through a lattice-work of snapped and twisted legs. Two men in suits of grey metal – the lead they spoke of, Hari supposed – stood under the lamps. In front of them on a table lay a small flat box made of the same grey metal.
Is that it? Pearl said.
Must be.
It’s not even as big as my jewel box. What if they open the lid?
They won’t, it’s sealed. Anyway, they’re frightened. Pearl, we need to get it out of here quick, and back in Deep Salt. You heard them, they’re sick with it even inside those suits they’re wearing.
I’ll take the far one, you take the near. Hold them hard. But what do we do then?
We grab the box and run.
Is that all?
Can you think of anything better? If we can get into the drain, we’re safe. Are you ready?
Wait. Wait.
She put her hand on his arm, keeping him still, and heard again the sound that had alerted her.
