Tales of Noreela 04: The Island (11 page)

Even Kel. Fear, yes, he felt that, cold and tense down his spine. But even if this was the invasion the Core had dreaded and fought against for centuries, he could not help but feel enthralled by what was about to happen.

Vek walked past the makeshift barricade to Chief Eildan, but when he spoke he made sure everyone else could hear. “She comes from the island, which she calls Komadia. She says her land is cursed. The only way her people have found to combat the curse is to repair the damage they do, and try to make amends. She says …” He trailed off, as though suddenly nervous at the many people watching.

“Yes, Vek?”

“She says they have many great technologies they can share with us.”

“Let ’em have this!” Mygrette said, touching the machine by her side. It rose up on metal legs and several long, thin tubes suddenly sprouted from its back like spines, twisting and waving at the air.

Kel shrank back, thinking of the proboscises on a Stranger’s back.

Mygrette gestured at the machine and the tubes vented fire.

“Mygrette!” Eildan said. He came forward, still hefting his harpoon, but Kel could already see that his mind was made up. “Not for now,” he whispered to the old witch. “We need caution, but not this. Not yet. Let’s see what they have to say first.”

“Pah!” The witch squatted again, the machine resting down beside her.

Eildan turned back to Vek. “Bring her and those with her.
If we can find a room undamaged by the disaster they brought with them, we can talk. Tell her that the other boats stay out where they are. They can drop anchor, but I don’t want another vessel docking in my village without permission.”

“If they’re here to invade, they’ll do it anyway!” someone said.

Eildan smiled without humor. “Then we’ll know the truth soon enough.”

Vek nodded to the Chief and ran back along the mole. Kel saw him converse with the tall woman for a moment, then she nodded and spoke to her companions.

“They speak Noreelan,” Kel said.

The man standing beside him, a tall farmer from the heights above Drakeman’s Hill, laughed. He had his two little girls with him, but Kel knew his wife had passed away three years earlier. Pavmouth Breaks had closed down for a day for the funeral, and her ashes had gone into the sea. “Of course!” the farmer said. “They’re
from
Noreela, somewhere. Out along The Spine, perhaps. One of the farthest islands.”

“The Spine never ends,” the younger of his girls said.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” her father replied. “But it
is
very long.” He frowned then, looking out past the massed boats at the island they had sailed from. “Some magic, perhaps,” he said, quieter. “Some cursed magic.”

“I hope they
are
from The Spine,” Kel said, but when the farmer questioned him with a raised eyebrow, Kel took a few steps closer to the edge of the harbor. The water was still several steps higher than usual, and filled with debris. A body floated facedown some way out, bobbing gently with the waves. Its hair was long, and silver scuttling things darted through it, climbing out of the water and sinking back in when they had what they had come for. The body’s back was raw and red.

Kel knew what he must do. There was no use pretending, no point in waiting to see how this resolved itself. If these were
Strangers and this was the invasion, bringing the fight forward would change little. If anything, it might damage whatever plans they had. Perhaps they wanted to take Pavmouth Breaks subtly, forming a quiet beachhead from which they could expand out into Noreela. Make it difficult for them here, turn their trick against them, and maybe he would even create a chance at fighting them off.

If they were not Strangers, and this really was something else, then some small ignominy would be an acceptable price to pay.

Kel edged close to Chief Eildan, watched the visitors begin their walk along the mole, and when they stepped foot on Noreela soil, he prepared to expose whatever the truth might be.

HE TRIES TO
chant O’Peeria’s wraith down into the Black, but he has never been adept at such a task. His grief puts him at a disadvantage. Pelly has dragged Rok’s corpse away and hidden it in some undergrowth, and she is kneeling a dozen steps away, crying, and holding both hands to her shattered cheek because the tears hurt so much.

Each chant Kel begins ends in pain. He tries to focus on O’Peeria’s wraith, but his concentration is ragged, his perception poor.

He tries, and tries, but eventually Pelly nudges him with her knee. “Voices,” she says, the blame in her tone obvious. “We have to go.”

“I can’t until—”

“Please yourself.” She stumbles away into the night.

Kel looks down upon the dreadful ruin of O’Peeria’s body, whispers an apology, and follows.

VEK CAME FIRST,
two more of his militia walking on either side of him. These two still had their bows at the ready with arrows strung, but Kel had the unsettling impression they were to protect the visitors as much as the villagers. Behind them came the tall woman, Keera Kashoomie, and the four other visitors who had disembarked with her. There were two men and two women, and apart from their clothing, Kel could see nothing to set them apart from Noreelans. One of them even carried a swirling pattern of tattoos up the side of her neck and into her hairline, reminiscent of the body art he had seen Cantrass Angels excel at on one of his visits to the north. The clothes would have looked more at home in Noreela City than in a small fishing village such as this—leather jackets rather than hessian, canvas trousers, heavy leather boots. The quality was uniformly good.

They carried weapons, but nothing excessive. He saw knives, and the two women carried long, thin swords in elaborate sheaths slung from their belts and tied down their legs. They looked more ceremonial than functional.

The Core had found, tracked and killed as many women Strangers as men. Their distinguishing features had always been the same.

All five visitors wore jackets with high collars, covering their necks.

“Maybe you have gills,” he whispered.
We’ll all see soon
.

The visitors looked around at the village and its inhabitants, and the expressions on their faces were of stunned disbelief, mixed in with a tinge of guilt. If they were feigning their emotions, Kel decided, they were doing so very well. But Strangers always had been masters of deception, adept at blending in and being a part of the land they had come to spy upon.

He slipped his hand into his trouser pocket, through the tear in the pocket’s side and around the hilt of the small knife he kept strapped to his bare thigh. This blade had once opened a Stranger’s throat while O’Peeria and another Core member held her down. They had run, then, letting the wild wraith
thrash itself down to nothing. The blood had been cool by the time he’d wiped it off, and when they returned, the Stranger’s body had melted beneath the ash of its final exhalation.

He stood ten steps closer to the water than Chief Eildan, knowing that the militia’s attention would be on the Chief when they got that close, not the people milling around him.

Vek passed and threw Kel a half smile. They had drunk with each other a few times in the Dog’s Eyes. As Kel drew the knife and stepped forward, he hoped that they would drink together again.

The woman who called herself Keera Kashoomie offered no resistance, and neither did the other four visitors. The woman’s swords remained in their sheaths. To the tune of mixed gasps and cries, Kel pushed Kashoomie aside, stepped behind her and clasped his arm around her throat. He held his knife ready to push between her ribs and into her heart. Then he backed toward the water, trying to make sure no one could circle around behind him.

“Don’t do anything foolish,” Eildan said calmly, and for a beat he was the only one to speak. Then voices rose in the crowd, a few apparently in support of what he was doing, and the militia emerged from behind their barricade and closed in, confused about which way to turn. Vek barked an order and several of them formed a barrier, cutting off Kel and the woman from everyone else. Vek himself came forward.

“Kel… now, we need caution, I agree. But they’ve done nothing yet that leads me to think—”

“Five beats, Vek,” Kel said. “Then we’ll see just how much our lives have changed.”

Keera Kashoomie shifted slightly beneath his grasp, and he felt her swallowing in fear.

“This knife,” he whispered, so only she could hear. “It has parted flesh like yours before. Let’s see if it smells another enemy.”

“Please, we’ve no choice in what we do. We’re here because—”

“Hush,” Kel said. He lifted the knife quickly to the woman’s neck, using its thin blade to pierce her collar and open it with a sharp upward slice. Her skin beneath was dark and bare, showing no sign of gills or any other marks.

“What are you doing?”

“Jacket off,” Kel said. “Make one move I don’t like and I’ll open your throat. Whatever you are, I’m quicker than you.”

The two women visitors each had a hand on her sword handle, but Kel saw the slight shake of Keera’s head that dissuaded them from drawing. If that happened, the militia might panic and attack. Confusion charged the air, and he could taste the tension.

Keera slipped the jacket from her shoulders and let it fall to the muddy ground. Beneath, she wore a wrinkled silk shirt, and Kel caught a waft of her body odor, earthy and somehow sensual …

“Don’t try to hex me,” he said.

“Hex?”

He pulled her back against him with his arm around her neck, slipped the knife behind her shirt collar and pulled down. It took several slices to open the shirt all the way to her belt. She was bare beneath, her skin covered with a fine sheen of sweat.

There were no protuberances beneath her shoulder blades. No scars, no marks, no openings in the skin. Nothing.

Kel sighed and stepped back, dropping the knife. He started to shake, realizing only then how coiled he’d been, how ready to blow. If he had found a Stranger’s proboscises, he’d have cut the woman’s throat, and the harbor would have become a bloodbath. His plan had been to step back and fall into the filthy water, but he’d have been lucky to escape with his life, and the boats keeping a respectful distance would have sailed in and disgorged their invading army.

At the same time as relief washed over him, confusion and suspicion settled within him, and would not let go.

“Welcome to Noreela,” he said. Keera Kashoomie glanced over her shoulder, and as Vek pushed past her and came for Kel, he was sure he saw the beginnings of a smile.

WHAT SORT OF
fuckery was that?” Vek shouted.

“Just wanted to make sure they were like us.”

“Well, they are, but now I have to wonder if they
like
us.”

“Do you really care?” Kel asked. Vek stared at him, went to say something and shook his head.

Vek had shut Kel into a building at the foot of Drakeman’s Hill, an old shop whose front had been ripped off by the tidal waves. There at the back, cut into the cliff, was the storeroom, already cleared of anything salvageable by the owners. A good cell. Difficult to escape. Feeling wretched and confused and filled with doubt, it suited Kel just fine.

“So how long do I stay here?” Kel asked.

Vek sighed and sat down. He’d come in without a weapon drawn, and for a second Kel had considered overpowering him and escaping. He knew he could. Break Vek’s neck, steal his weapons, climb Drakeman’s Hill to retrieve what he needed from his rooms, then past the farms and the hanging fruit vines and out into Noreela …

But something kept him there. Perhaps it was a result of exposing the visitor’s neck and back and seeing nothing, but he thought not. He thought it was really all to do with O’Peeria. He’d failed her, and by escaping he would be failing Namior as well, fleeing when Pavmouth Breaks needed him most. Because even though Keera Kashoomie had no proboscises or gills, Kel still could not trust her. He knew far more of the world than most people in the little fishing village, and he owed them all so much.

“They’re in with Chief Eildan now,” Vek said. “When she came ashore, the woman was crying. She could hardly believe
what had happened. Saw my weapons, started talking nonstop about how they’d help us rebuild, how they owed us, how they would suffer until our suffering was over.”

“You think the suffering will ever be over?” Kel said. “I’ve seen at least twenty bodies myself. Do you really think Pavmouth Breaks will ever recover from this?”

Vek started to cry. It shocked Kel so much that, for a beat, he could not move or speak. He thought of going to comfort the big soldier, but he knew that would not be welcome. So he sat back and waited for Vek to speak.

“It hasn’t hit me,” Vek said at last. “All that’s happened, it feels like a dream. I’ll wake up in a minute. Too much rotwine last night, maybe. Too much stale fledge.” Kel knew that many militia took fledge, procured through their contacts beyond the villages they patrolled. The drug was dangerous; mined from beneath the Widow’s Peaks and transported across Noreela, its farseeing properties changed to nightmare the farther it traveled and the staler it became.