Once inside, they sat unspeaking in the gloom on some rudimentary beds they'd found in there — the only items of furniture in the room. Just long enough to accommodate the bys, there was little width to them, and their surfaces were barely padded at all — like a couple of narrow tables with blankets thrown over them.
As they waited, clueless as to what was going to happen next, the room reverberated with sounds from the corridor outside. There were the muffled tones of a conversation between Drake and Elliott, and then they listened as their rucksacks were upended and the contents tipped out onto the floor. Finally they heard retreating footfalls, then nothing.
Will took a luminescent orb from his pocket and began to absentmindedly roll it back and forth across the top of his sleeve. Now that his jacket had dried, the action dislodged glittering grains of iron pyrite, which scattered to the ground in a small sparkling shower. "Looks like I've been to a disco," he muttered, and then, without missing a beat, he addressed his friend. "What's the deal, Chester?"
"What do you mean?"
"You seem to have thrown your lot in with these people, for some reason. Why do you trust them?" Will demanded. "You do realize they're just going to steal all our food and then ditch us somewhere? In fact, they'll probably kill us. That's the sort of thieving scum they are."
"I don't think so," Chester replied indignantly, frowning.
"Well, what was all that about out there, then?" Will indicated the corridor with a jab of his thumb.
"I reckon they're rebels of some sort, at war with the Styx," Chester said defensively. "You know, freedom fighters."
"Yeah, right."
"They could be," Chester maintained, then looked less certain. "Why don't you ask them, Will?"
"Why don't you ask them yourself?" Will snapped.
He was getting more and more furious. Coming on top of Cal's accident, the traumatic way in which they had been grabbed was really the last straw. He fell into a brooding silence and began to formulate a plan of action in which they would fight their way out and make a run for it. He was just about to inform Chester what he thought their next move should be when Drake appeared at the threshold. He leaned against the doorjamb, eating something. It was Will's favorite — a Milky Way. He and Cal had bought several candy bars in the Topsoil supermarket, and he'd been carefully saving them for a special occasion.
"What are these?" Drake asked, indicating a pair of dun-colored rocks the size of large marbles, which he was cradling in the palm of his hand. He shook them as though they were dice, and then closed his hand and began to grind them, one against the other.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Will told Drake.
"Why not?"
"It's bad for your eyesight," Will said, the corners of his lips curling with the hint of a vindictive smirk as the man continued to rattle the stone together. They were the remaining node stones that Tam had given Will, and Drake had evidently found them in Will's backpack. If broken, they became incandescent, releasing a blinding white light. "They'll go off in your face," Will warned.
Drake glanced at Will, unsure whether the boy was being serious. However, taking a large bite of the Milky Way bar, he now held the stones still as he continued to examine them.
Will was incensed. "Enjoying that, are you?" he fumed.
"Yes," Drake answered unequivocally, tucking the last of the chocolate into his mouth. "Look at it as a small price to pay for rescuing you."
"And that gives you the right to help yourself to my things, does it?" Will rose to his feet, his arms bunched at his sides, his face rigid with anger. 'Besides, we didn't need to be rescued."
"Oh, really?" Drake responded casually, his mouth still full. "Look at the two of you. You're a mess."
"We were doing just fine before you came along," Will retorted.
"Oh, really. So, tell me, what happened to this Cal you mentioned? I don't see him anywhere." Drake shot his eyes around the room, then raised his eyebrows quizzically. "Where's he hiding, I wonder."
"My brother… he… he…" Will started belligerently, but suddenly all the bluster deserted him and he slumped back down onto the bed.
"He's dead," Chester spoke up.
"How?" Drake asked, swallowing the last of the candy bar.
"There was this cave… and…" Will's voice faltered.
"What sort of cave?" Drake asked immediately, his voice deadly serious.
Chester took over. "It smelled sort of sweet and there were strange plant things… They bit him or something, and then all this stuff—"
"A sugar trap," Drake interrupted, moving in from the doorway and looking quickly from one boy to the other. "And what did you do? You didn't just leave him there?"
"He wasn't breathing," Chester said.
"He died," Will added disconsolately.
"Where and when was this?" Drake pressed them.
Will and Chester shot glances at each other.
"Come on," Drake urged.
"Two or so days ago… I suppose," Will said.
"Yes, it was by the first canal we came to," Chester confirmed.
"Then there may still be a chance," Drake said, moving toward the doorway. "A slim one."
"What do you mean?" Will asked.
"We have to go," Drake snapped.
"Huh?" Will gasped, not able to comprehend what he was hearing.
But Drake was already striding purposefully down the corridor. "Follow me! We'll need to take some rations," he yelled back to them. Elliott! Saddle up! Break out the weapons!"
He halted by their backpacks, where all their belongings had been stacked into ordered piles.
"Take that, that, and that," Drake pointed at the various piles of food. "Should be enough. We'll carry some extra water. Elliott! Water!" he shouted as he turned to them. They were standing rather dumbly as they watched him, confused as to what exactly they were meant to be doing, and why. "Hurry up and stow that stuff… that's if you want to save your brother."
"I don't understand," Will said, kneeling and hurriedly shoving food into his rucksack as Drake had instructed. "Cal wasn't breathing. He's dead."
"No time to explain now," Drake barked as Elliott appeared from another doorway. Her shemagh was still around her head and her rifle slung across her back. She handed Drake two bladderlike containers that slopped with the sound of water.
"Take these," Drake said, shoving them at the boys.
"What's up?" Elliott asked calmly as she began to pass further items to Drake.
"There were three of them. The third wandered into a sugar trap," he answered, casting his eyes in the boys' direction as he took a bundle of cylinders from Elliott, some six inches or so in length. He opened his jacket and slotted them inside it one by one. Then he clipped a pad with shorter versions of the cylinders — each like a thick pencil housed in its own loop — onto his belt and secured it by means of a short cord tied around his thigh.
"What are those?" Will inquired.
"Precautions," Drake answered abstractedly. "We'll be taking a direct route across the plain. We don't have time for subtlety."
He buttoned up his jacket and flicked the weird contraption over his eye again. "Ready?" he said to Elliott.
"Ready," she confirmed.
23
Later that evening, Sarah was in her room, poring over the map the Styx had given her. She was sitting cross-legged with it spread open on the floor before her, familiarizing herself with the various place names.
"Crevice Town," she repeated several times, then switched her attention to the northern reaches of the Great Plain, where reports were coming in of recent renegade activity. She wondered if Will was somehow tied up in it — given his past record, she wouldn't have been surprised if he was already causing trouble in the Deeps.
She was distracted by heavy, even steps in the corridor outside. Going to the door, she opened it as softly as she could and saw the massive, unmistakable form lumbering down the corridor.
"Joseph,"
she called quietly.
He turned and came back to her, tucking some neatly folded towels under his arm.
"I didn't want to intrude," he said, glancing through the partially open door and past Sarah to the floor, where the map was laid out.
"You should have come in. I'm so glad you're back." She smiled at him. "I was… um…" she began, then fell silent.
"If there's anything I can do for you, you only have to ask," Joseph offered.
"I don't think I'll be here much longer," she told him, then hesitated. "There is something I wanted to do before I go."
"Anything," he reiterated. "You know I'm here for you." He beamed at her, delighted that she felt she could trust him.
"I want you to get me out of here," Sarah said in a low voice.
* * * * *
Moving like a shadow, Sarah kept close to the wall. She'd already avoided several Colonist policemen making the rounds of the surrounding streets and didn't want to get caught now. Ducking into a recess behind an ancient drinking fountain with a tarnished brass spout, she crouched down and checked the darkened entrance on the other side of the street.
She lifted her head and gazed at the tall, windowless walls of he outer ring of buildings. It had been from this very spot that, so many years ago, she had seen those buildings through her child's eyes. Then, as now, they gave the impression that they hadn't put up much of a fight against the ravages of time. The walls were shot through with ominous-looking cracks, and there were numerous huge and yawning hollows where the facing stones had simply crumbled away. The masonry appeared to be in such an appalling state of repair that at any moment the whole development might come tumbling down on some hapless passerby.
But appearances can be deceptive. The area she was about to enter had been among the first to be built when the Colony was established, and the walls of the houses were strong enough to withstand anything man, or time, could throw at them.
She took a breath and whisked across the street, slipping into the pitch-black passageway. It was barely wide enough to allow two people to pass abreast at the same time. At once the smell hit her: The stale odor of the inhabitants, a reek of unwashed occupation so intense it was like a physical thing, intermixed with all that went with it, with human effluent and the pungent stench of rotting food.
She came out into a gloomily lit alley. Like all the thoroughfares and runnels that cut through this district, it was barely wider than the passageway from which she'd just emerged.
"The Rookeries," she said to herself, glancing around and realizing that it had changed not one jot, this place where the people who had nowhere else to go ended up. She began to walk, spotting a familiar building here or a door there, still flecked with faint traces of paint in the same color she recalled, and reveling in her memories of the times she and Tam had ventured into this forbidden and dangerous playground.
Basking in the warmth of her memories, she strolled down the middle of the alley, avoiding the open gutter where sewage trickled like heated lard. On either side of her were the ramshackle old slums, their uppermost stories overhanging to such an extent that in places they appeared to be almost touching.
She paused to adjust the shawl over her head while a raggedy bunch of street urchins tore past her. They were so dirty as to be nearly indistinguishable from the backdrop of filth coating every surface.
Two of them, small boys, were shouting, "Styx and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me!" at the top of their lungs as they chased after the others. She smiled at their irreverence; if they had done that outside the confines of the Rookeries, the punishment would have been swift and brutal. One of the boys skipped over the open gutter in the middle of the road, past a gaggle of old crones dressed in head shawls similar to Sarah's. They were gossiping intently among themselves and nodding their heads. Almost without looking, one of the women twisted away from the group just as the boy was in reach. Cuffing him with unnecessary roughness, she issued a sharp reprimand. The woman's face was lined and blistered and as pale as a ghost's.
The boy reeled slightly, then, rubbing his head and grumbling under his breath, he hurtled off, undeterred. Sarah couldn't suppress a laugh. She saw in the boy a youthful Tam, recognizing the toughness and resilience she had so admired in her brother. The children were still taunting one another in their high voices, and whooping and screaming with excitement as they hared down a side alley and disappeared from view.
Some thirty feet farther down from Sarah, a pair of brutish-looking men stood talking in a doorway, both with long hair and pendulous, matted beards, and dressed in scruffy frock coats. She caught them eyeing her with vicious sneers on their faces. The larger of the two lowered his head like a bulldog about to attack, and made as if to move toward her. He slipped a gnarled, rootlike cudgel from his thick belt, and she saw the easy way he held it in his hand. This wasn't some vain threat — she could tell he knew how to use the club.
These people didn't take kindly to outsiders straying off the beaten track and onto their patch.
Sarah returned his cold glare but slowed to a crawl. If she were to continue on her original course, it would take her straight by him — there was nowhere else to go. The alternative was for her to do an about-face, which would be perceived as a sign of weakness. If they suspected for even a fraction of a second that she was afraid and shouldn't be there, they'd have a pop at her — that was how things worked in this place. Either way, she new that she and this total stranger were now locked into a showdown and that the situation would need to be resolved, somehow or other.
Although she hadn't the slightest doubt she could handle herself if it came to it, Sarah still felt a frisson of the old fear, the familiar electric tingle running down her spine. Thirty years ago, this was her and her brother's obsession, the start of the contest. Oddly enough, she found it rather comforting.
"Ay! You!" someone suddenly cried behind her, jolting her from her thoughts. "Jerome!"
"What?" Sarah gasped.
She wheeled around to meet the red-rimmed eyes of the ancient hag. Her face was dappled with the most enormous liver spots, and she was pointing accusingly at Sarah with an arthritic finger.
"Jerome," the old woman rasped again, even louder and more confidently this time, her mouth gaping open so Sarah could see her toothless, livid-pink gums. Sarah realized she had let her guard drop, and her face had been in full view of the group of women. But how in the world did they know who she was?
"Jerome. Yes! Jerome!" another of the women cawed, with mounting conviction. "It's Sarah Jerome, ain't it?"
Although she was in a maelstrom of confusion, Sarah did her best to rapidly assess her options. She scanned the nearby doorways, reckoning that if worse came to worst she might be able to barge her way into one of the half-ruined buildings and lose herself in the rabbit warren of passageways that lay behind them. But it didn't look good. All the doors were firmly shut or boarded up.
She was walled in, with only two ways to go — backward or forward. She was looking at the alleyway beyond the old hags, calculating whether to make a break and get herself back out of the Rookeries, when one of them screamed the most piercing of wails:
"SARAH!"
Sarah flinched with the sheer volume of the squall, and a lull descended on the whole place, an eerie, watchful silence.
Sarah spun around, walking away from the women, knowing it would take her straight past the bearded man. So be it! She would just have to deal with him.
As she neared him, he raised the cudgel to the height of his shoulder and Sarah prepared to fight, slipping her shawl from her head and winding it around her arm. She could have kicked herself for not bringing her knife.
She was almost level with him when, to her astonishment and relief, he began to strike the cudgel against the lintel of the doorway and to shout her name in his gruff voice. His confederate joined with him, as did every one of the group of women behind her.
"SARAH! SARAH! SARAH!"
The entire place was stirring now, as if the timbers of the buildings themselves were coming to life.
"SARAH! SARAH! SARAH!"
The cudgel continued to beat time as people turned out from the houses and into the alleyway, more people than she believed possible. Shutters slammed back from glassless windows and faces peeked out. All Sarah could do was bow her head and keep walking.
"SARAH! SARAH! SARAH!" came shouts thick and fast from all over, and people joined in with the beat of the cudgel, the clattering growing as metal cups or whatever else came to hand were struck against walls, windowsills, and doorjambs. It was like a jailhouse chorus, so loud that the tiles on the roofs began to resonate with the singular rhythm.
Still gripped by panic, Sarah didn't slow her pace, but began to notice the grinning faces, infused with wonderment. Elderly men, bent double from disease, and gaunt women, the used-up people that the Colony had consigned to the scrap heap, were hailing her, shouting her name jubilantly.
"SARAH! SARAH! SARAH!"
Many mouths, with broken and blackened teeth, all yelling in unison. Smiling, wild, sometimes grotesque faces, but all with expressions of admiration and even affection.
They were gathering along the way now — Sarah couldn't believe the sheer number of people lining the route. Someone — she didn't see who — thrust a discolored sheet of rough paper into her hands. She glanced down at it. It was a crude etching, the sort of thing the underground press distributed to the people of the Rookeries — she'd seen the like before.
But this one caused Sarah's heart to skip a beat. The largest image, in the center of the sheet, was a picture of her, a few years younger than she was now, although dressed in almost identical clothes. Her face in the picture bore an anxious expression and was looking melodramatically off to one side, as if she was being pursued. It was a reasonable likeness of her. So that explained how she'd been recognized. That and the rumors, which would have most likely spread like wildfire through the Colony, that she'd been brought back by the Styx. There were four other, smaller pictures in similarly stylized roundels in each corner, but now wasn't the time to examine them.