Salt (4 page)

‘There are watchmen at the doors. We’ll use the back streets and try not to be seen.’

They passed through Ceebeedee in that way – alleyways, delivery lanes – and came to a district of warehouses and small factories that Pearl had not known existed. Men still worked in some of them, although dawn had begun to colour the sky. Carts rumbled by, heading for the first pickups of the day, and steam engines heaved and clanked in railyards.

Tealeaf and Pearl slipped by and came to a district of poor housing beside the city walls. There were bars and taverns here too, but they were closed. Tealeaf turned down an alleyway, looking left and right into cottages where women were lighting stoves to start the day. She led Pearl into an archway by the wall and told her to wait. Pearl was exhausted from walking and her arm was aching from the weight of her bag. She slumped down and fell asleep, and dreamed that she was in her own soft bed but someone had put stones in it that hurt her back. She woke with a start as Tealeaf touched her face.

‘I’ve found a room for us. The woman is young and pregnant. Her husband has gone to his job. Say nothing. Keep your face hidden. There should be no need for me to make her forget.’

They went to a tiny cottage at the end of the alley, hidden from the others by an abutment of the wall, and found the woman waiting at the door. She was young, Pearl saw, not much older than her, and thin and poorly clothed, and her pregnancy seemed to cause her pain, for she kept one hand on her belly, but the kitchen she led them into was tidy and clean, and she moved more easily there, putting bread and meat on the table and pouring brown tea into cups. She apologised for the frugal meal.

‘It’s more than enough,’ Tealeaf said. ‘We’re poor women ourselves.’

The woman looked at Pearl’s white hands and silvery nails. ‘I don’t know who you are. But I’ll say nothing. The bed is . . .’

‘The bed will be all we need. We’ll eat now, and sleep until dark, and be gone before your husband comes home.’

Although Pearl was hungry she had trouble forcing down the dry bread and unseasoned meat. The tea was bitter and made her gag.

‘My daughter is tired and unwell,’ Tealeaf said. ‘She’ll use your lavatory, then rest.’

‘It’s in the yard.’

‘Min,’ Tealeaf said, inventing the name, ‘you go first.’

Pearl obeyed, and could not believe the primitive arrangement – a lean-to, a seat, a can, no more than that. She shuddered with distaste and forced herself to sit. Then she returned to the house and the woman showed her into a room at the back of the kitchen. A basin of water stood on a table beside a bed. Pearl washed.

Tealeaf came in. ‘Sleep now, Min.’ She turned to the woman. ‘We’re grateful. Don’t wonder who we are. Women run from many things. We’re not unusual.’

‘When you’re gone I’ll forget,’ the woman said, and Tealeaf smiled.

She laid her hand on the woman’s abdomen. ‘Your child will be healthy and strong. Now leave us until the sun goes down.’

‘Tealeaf,’ Pearl said, when the door was closed, ‘I can’t sleep here. It’s their bed and the sheets aren’t clean. And look at the pillows . . .’

‘It’s all they have. Don’t make me angry.’

‘But look . . .’

‘It’s how they live. And must live. They work for Company. Now sleep. The bed is narrow, I’ll use the floor.’

At once Pearl became contrite: ‘No . . .’

‘Yes.’ Then she smiled. ‘I’ll sleep as your servant one more time. We’re equals after that. And don’t worry, Pearl. Dwellers can sleep anywhere.’

‘All right. But take a pillow and a blanket. And Tealeaf?’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t call me Min.’ She took off her cape and lay on the bed and was soon asleep.

Tealeaf watched her for a while, a tired look, a sad look on her face. Then she arranged the pillow and blanket on the floor and fell asleep too.

Pearl woke late in the afternoon and did not know where she was. The low ceiling and close walls made it seem she was inside a box. She sat up and opened her mouth to cry out, then saw Tealeaf sleeping on the floor and remembered the room, and that she was Pearl, a daughter who had shamed her family by running away. The punishment if she was caught would be the most severe the law allowed. There would be no marriage, willing or not. Ottmar of Salt would not want her now, but she would be handed over to him, to work as a slavey, or worse, in his household. Similar things had happened to other girls. Pearl had seen them – poor, beaten creatures who cowered even from a kind word.

She looked at her sleeping servant. Only Tealeaf could save her now. But what did saving mean? Where were they going? She was not certain that Tealeaf hadn’t worked towards this flight, hadn’t chosen her for it all those years ago, rather than Pearl choosing her. She remembered the occasion: her mother leading her into a room where five women stood meekly in a row and telling her she could choose one for herself, and four of them being no different from anyone else’s personal maid, while the fifth was a Dweller. She had looked at the woman’s hands, three fingered, with a triple-jointed thumb, and shivered at the unnaturalness of it. She had not seen a Dweller before. Then she had looked in her eyes, blue-green eyes with the pupil slitted like a cat’s, and felt her gaze entwine with the woman’s, and heard a voice whisper in her head: Take me, child, and Pearl had simply raised her hand and pointed.

That had been eight years ago – eight years in which her life had been quietly turned on its head. At first she had been frightened of her servant’s eyes and shivered at the touch of her three-fingered hands, but naming her had made things better. ‘I’ll call you Tealeaf,’ she said, and laughed at her own cleverness, and the newly named Tealeaf had smiled: ‘Whatever you like.’ (It was better than other names girls gave their maids. Pearl knew of one called Slop-bucket.)

Eight years. The main thing Pearl had learned in that time was to keep everything secret. It was secret that Tealeaf taught her about flowers and trees and birds and animals, about all the things that lived in the sea, and how many seas there were and how many lands and how far they stretched, and about Company, how far it stretched, and how it had conquered this land, and how the burrows had been made in the war, and how City had grown and Ceebeedee. None of this knowledge was fit for women and the lives they would lead. Pearl absorbed it and kept quiet. She learned about the stars and the moon and sun, and the clouds and how to read them, and how to read the seasons and the weather. She learned about medicine and her own body, and of cures for sicknesses known to Dwellers but not to humans. She learned to ask questions, endlessly. The only ones Tealeaf would not answer were about herself and the land where her people lived.

‘We’re ordinary. We aren’t known for anything special,’ she said.

‘But you can speak,’ Pearl said.

That was the main secret: Tealeaf could speak silently and be heard in someone’s head. Slowly, with great care, over several years, she taught Pearl how to do it – to speak and hear.

‘But I could do it right from the start,’ Pearl said. ‘I heard you say: “Take me”.’

‘Yes, you could,’ Tealeaf said. It was all she would say. And it was only after several more years that she let Pearl see how she could make people move or hold them still, and then make them forget what they had heard and seen.

‘Teach me,’ Pearl demanded.

‘When you’re ready,’ Tealeaf said.

I need to know now, Pearl whispered to herself, looking down at her servant’s sleeping face, so I can help us escape.

She rose quietly from the bed, stepped over Tealeaf and crossed the room to the door. The pregnant woman was sitting in a chair by the kitchen window, using the light to sew a collar on a shirt. She put down her work, rose to her feet and made as if to curtsey.

‘No, please don’t. Don’t do that,’ Pearl said. ‘I’m like you.’

The woman smiled. ‘Then do my sewing for me. Chop me an onion for the stew.’

‘I can’t – I . . .’

‘You’re not like me. Please, can I see your hand?’

Pearl held one out and the woman took it. ‘So soft. Look at mine.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Pearl.’

The woman smiled. ‘Not Min?’

‘No. That was a lie. I’m running away from a marriage I don’t want. To a man who is cruel and old and ugly.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Ottmar of Salt.’

The woman shivered. ‘My husband works in one of his warehouses. He stacks sacks of salt fourteen hours a day. And Ottmar sends orders that they must work harder. Where will you run to?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You can stay here. We’ll hide you.’

‘No, my mother . . .’

‘She’s not your mother. I’ve seen her eyes.’

‘And I’ve seen yours,’ Tealeaf said from the bedroom door, ‘and I know you’re honest and kind. We’re grateful for your offer, but it would put you in danger – you and your husband. And your child. We have a destination. Tilly – is that your name?’

‘How did you know?’

Tealeaf did not answer. ‘You know who Pearl is and what they’ll do to her if she’s caught. So we’re going – somewhere else. They’ll be hunting us now, but we’ve come this far without being seen and we’ll be gone before it’s dark. When Whips come searching . . .’

‘Whips will come?’ Tilly said in fright.

‘My father will pay for a search, for his honour. Ottmar too. They’ll go everywhere in the city,’ Pearl said.

‘But no one has seen us in this street,’ Tealeaf said. ‘They’ll ask. You’ll say no. Can you do that?’

‘Yes,’ Tilly whispered.

‘Then you’re safe. Soon it will be dark. If you’ll let us eat some of your stew . . .?’

‘I’ve made enough,’ Tilly said. She put two plates on the table.

‘No, my dear, three plates. Eat with us, but not so much you can’t eat again with your husband.’

Tilly served the stew. It was rag-end meat, full of gristle and fat, but Pearl ate because she was hungry. She was thankful there had been no time to put onions in.

Darkness fell and Tilly lit a candle. Pearl and Tealeaf fetched their bags from the bedroom.

‘I have nothing I can give you as a parting gift,’ Tilly said.

‘You’re giving us your silence. That’s a gift. And Pearl has a guest gift for you.’

‘Yes,’ Pearl said. She felt in her bag and drew out a handful of coins that lay on the bottom. She put them in Tilly’s hand. ‘A gift, not a payment,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry it’s so small.’

‘But it’s more,’ Tilly stammered, ‘more than my husband earns in half a year.’

‘I keep it for trinkets and sweetmeats,’ Pearl said, feeling ashamed.

‘Now, Tilly,’ Tealeaf said, ‘we’ll go out through the back yard and along by the wall. And you will try to forget you saw us.’

Tilly tried to curtsey again, but Pearl stopped her and kissed her cheek. Then she and Tealeaf slipped away.

They went out by a little gate beside the lavatory and moved along silently at the back of a warehouse. The wall cutting City off from the wasteland rose on their left, a dozen body lengths high and a body length wide. A narrow half-forgotten gate was set in an alcove, where a gateman sat dozing at the end of his shift with his back against the wall. A newly lit gas lamp burned above him.

Tealeaf leaned close.

‘Sir.’

The man’s eyes flew open. ‘Hey,’ he began.

Tealeaf fixed him with her eyes: Say nothing, she said. Stand up.

The man obeyed, with the same glassy look Pearl had seen in the mansion gateman.

Take your key and open the gate.

He obeyed again, moving clumsily. The gate creaked open. Pearl and Tealeaf slipped through.

Now lock the gate. Put the key back in your belt. No one has passed this way. You have seen no women. Go back to your dreaming.

He followed each command. Pearl felt she could see memory slide from his mind and flit away into the dark like a bat.

‘Tealeaf, when can I learn to do that?’

‘Perhaps never. Now be quiet while I think which way to go.’

‘You didn’t make Tilly forget.’

‘She was a friend. We’ve got two hours before the moon comes up. We’ll have to be out in the scrub by then or the wall patrol will see us. Come, quickly. None are close now.’

‘Tealeaf.’

‘What?’

‘The search hasn’t come here yet or the gateman would have been awake.’

‘Ah, you noticed. You’re learning to be a fugitive.’

They travelled away from City across stony ground. Out beyond the first jumble of rocks they took off their capes and skirts and replaced them with jerkins and trousers. They changed the shoes they had worn through the streets for soft leather boots. Their bags were no lighter because they must leave nothing behind for horsemen and their sniffer dogs to find, but Tealeaf refolded them, changing them into packs that would sit comfortably on their backs.

‘Now, Pearl, we go hard. We need to be in the hills by dawn.’

Pearl had never walked so far or fast. Her feet grew sore, her legs ached, her breathing grew ragged, but when she begged to rest Tealeaf answered abruptly: ‘You can sleep in the daytime. Night is all we have.’

‘Tealeaf . . .’

‘Do you want to spend your life as a slave in Ottmar’s house?’

That kept her moving. Once they stopped and crouched unmoving while Tealeaf sent out sharp spears of thought at a hunting fangcat, half as tall as a horse, and drove him back and sent him spitting on his way.

‘If you’d teach me I could help,’ Pearl said.

‘Soon, Pearl. Soon.’

‘Does it hurt?’ Pearl said, hearing the tiredness in her voice.

‘An animal so savage – it’s like pushing on a door that won’t close.’

The moon slid across the sky, shining so brightly it threw black shadows like hour-hands out to the travellers’ sides. City shrank to a pencil line on the horizon and jumbled hills grew large across a shallow river that shone as yellow as butter. They crossed, wading up to their knees. Far away, they heard the fangcat take his morning prey.

‘That sounded like a person,’ Pearl said, shivering.

‘No, a goat, coming down to drink at the river. Others are coming now, do you see? They know the cat has taken what it needs.’