‘Let him be.’ Dance sighed, and then continued for all the world as if nobody had just thrown themselves out of the hut. ‘Hathin, do you truly believe your sister is a Lost? That will affect all our plans.’
Hathin thought of Arilou’s horrified frenzy on the plains of Sorrow. She nodded.
‘Then we gamble,’ said Dance. ‘If we do have the only Lost left on the island, then we have to try to get some sense out of her. She might be our best weapon and our only hope of finding out who killed the Lost and the Hollow Beasts – and why. Hathin and Arilou must reach the Beacon School. The teachers there might know something, or be able to help Arilou. And perhaps while they are passing through the city of Jealousy, they can find this Bridle mentioned in Skein’s notes, and find out about this “Lord S”.’
Dance’s rocking chair creaked as she rose and stared around the room.
‘We’re moving out of the Wasp’s Nest. All of us. From this point everyone with an unfinished quest will put it aside while we help Hathin with hers.’
One or two revengers flinched and reached towards their covered forearms, as though their unsatisfied tattoos had stung them, scorpion-like.
‘Yes.’ Dance answered the unasked questions. ‘We must all act in this. Whatever it was the Lost discovered, it involves the Lace – and so it concerns us. Raglan virtually admitted as much when he refused to tell me what he knew.
‘Besides, the slaughter of the Hollow Beasts was not a freak mob riot – it was planned. Yes, we could go to Sweet-weather, rip the hearts out of a few frightened shopkeepers and hope we got the right ones, but justice would still be unsatisfied. We strike at the heart and mind that planned this, or the butterfly will never be complete.
‘Jaze, you and Therrot will stay here with Hathin and Arilou until they’ve recovered enough to travel, then you’ll see them safe to the Beacon School. You’ll all need disguises – right now anyone who looks Lace will be in for a rough ride. Also, our conspiracy of killers will be looking for Hathin and Arilou everywhere. So will that Ashwalker if he lives, and the law too if anyone guesses that they’re still alive.
‘Meanwhile, I will take a group and travel ahead making safe houses ready, then push on to Smattermast in case we can find out there what happened to the Lost Council. Marmar, muskets don’t grow on bushes. Find out where Jimboly got hers. Louloss, you’ll head to the coast and see if any of the other Hollow Beasts survived, then you’ll visit all the villages listed in Skein’s journal to find out if you can discover what his notes mean.’
And there was no more argument. Dance seemed to hold all the sway of Mother Govrie, Whish and the rest rolled into one, and yet nobody called her Mother Dance or Doctor Dance. Only Dance, a curious name – not a Lace name.
Louloss came and placed a poultice on Hathin’s arm. Hathin looked around the room and thought of hands deft with daggers, fingertips dented by tense bowstrings, hands slipping deadly cordials into tankards.
I’m not afraid of them. Why?
Because I am one of them now.
Suddenly a whistle sounded from the jungle outside. The conversation hushed instantly, knives leaped into hands, and Jaze sprang out through the vine curtain. For a long minute there was absolute hush in the tree hut, every ear straining to listen.
At last Jaze re-entered, his face set and tense.
‘Hathin, one of the men I sent to collect your sister from the priest’s house has just returned. No – it’s fine.’ He held up one hand to halt Hathin’s worried enquiry. ‘Arilou’s fine, and two of our boys are carrying her through the jungle even now. But apparently they had a hell of a time getting her out of town unseen. Some power-and-the-glory Doorsy pen-pusher newly arrived in Mistleman’s Blunder is tearing the town apart – looking for you and your sister.’
‘What?’ Marmar jumped to his feet. ‘That’s impossible! Hathin and Arilou left the coast barely a day ago – and they only got here so quickly because they took a shortcut across Lady Sorrow’s lap! There’s no way anyone here could know about the massacre yet, let alone the fact that the girls are here!’
‘I know.’ Jaze gave a curt nod. ‘This pen-pusher can’t possibly know they’re here, but somehow he does. He even has warrants.’
‘But . . . getting a warrant takes a day at the very least . . .’
‘There’s something sour in this,’ muttered Dance. ‘Hathin, have you noticed that your enemies appear to know things sooner than they should? Arilou alone survives the deaths of the Lost, and within mere days this dentist Jimboly walks into your village. The aide Minchard Prox survives the storm, and a letter about it arrives just in time to put spark to powder. And turns up in Jimboly’s hands, no less.’
There was a superstitious murmur, but Dance gave it no time to build momentum.
‘You heard the news, boys. The hunt’s reached Mistleman’s Blunder already. So pack light, and pack tonight. We all move out tomorrow before dawn.’
‘But Arilou can’t!’ Hathin could almost see Arilou’s bloody feet, her wan face. ‘She’s exhausted. If we just had a day so that she could rest, and maybe find her way back to her own body . . .’
Dance shook her head, solemnly unmovable.
‘It is too great a risk. I will find a way for her to be carried, but we must move out tomorrow.’
‘I . . .’ Hathin stared at her feet, crestfallen. ‘I’m so sorry . . . We brought trouble here with us . . .’
‘Did you? Did you kill the Lost and frame our people? Did you stir up the towners of Sweetweather and murder your own village? No. You have brought us nothing but news and information that we needed. Besides, Hathin, we revengers live in “trouble” the way sharks live in water.
‘For years we have been careful sharks, harming none but our quarries, out of respect for our pact with the Lost Council. But now the Lost are dead . . . and so is that pact. Do anything you must, Hathin. Kill anyone you must. Revenge is your only fetter.
‘Our enemies think that Lace make good victims and scapegoats. They are wrong. They think that they can strike at us, and we will do nothing but scatter and hide. They are wrong.
‘You have been wronged beyond endurance by powerful foes, Hathin. Pity them for not knowing what that means . . .’
That thought lingered in Hathin’s mind even after the lanterns were doused and she had lain down next to the other revengers on the plank-and-vine floor. And when at last she slept, her dreams took her to a white, windswept plain. There she ran and ran, and so did the Ashwalker. He left blue prints on the white earth, and her footmarks were red. It seemed sometimes that he chased her and sometimes that she was pursuing him, a dagger in her hand.
16
A Glimpse of a Ghost
In spite of her tiredness, Hathin woke some time before dawn and followed Dance around with timid stubbornness until the tall woman listened to Hathin’s plan to help Arilou find her own body.
‘Try it then, but quickly,’ Dance agreed at last. ‘You must be ready to leave in an hour.’
With Therrot’s help, Hathin found a space of soft soil near one of the jungle streams. The pair of them heaped earth into little volcanoes, using stones to stand for towns and villages. It was a clumsy model, of course. Neither of them had ever been to the eastern coast, or cruised cloud-level with the eagles, so a lot of it was guesswork.
Hathin spent the next half an hour crawling around the miniature Gullstruck with Arilou, trying to run her sister’s hand over its contours.
‘Therrot, if we can’t help her find herself before we move on, then it’ll be too late – she’ll never catch up.’ For the fifth time Hathin curled Arilou’s stubborn fingers around two tiny stick-dolls and walked them up one side of a double mound and down the other. This is the route we took, Arilou . . . and this is where we are now. At least this’ll help you know where to start looking . . .
‘It’s already too late.’ With a satin swish the monsoon rain swept in, and soon the mud of the miniature Gullstruck was loosening and
melting. As Hathin watched, the crater she had fashioned for Spearhead filled with cloudy brown water, which spilled out through the nick in the rim to surge into the model of the Wailing Way.
‘All right, all right,’ Hathin said gently. ‘No more.’ She spoke to Arilou out of habit, even though she was increasingly convinced that her sister had sent off her hearing with her sight. Hathin wrapped the older girl’s grubby, stream-chilled hand in a fold of her skirt to warm it. Arilou’s sense of physical touch was still with her body, of that much Hathin was certain, hence her desperate, blind finger-search.
Where were Arilou’s absent senses now? Was her vision wheeling wildly with the gulls above the coast? Was she hearing the crash of waves, smelling the breath of the volcanoes? Hathin put an arm around her, as if she could bind Arilou back into herself, and guided Arilou’s head to rest on her shoulder.
‘Hathin –’ Therrot met her gaze – ‘has it occurred to you that somebody might be a Lost and be an imbecile as well?’
Hathin had no answer, nor did she have time to give one. As she stared at Therrot, one of the younger revengers burst from the trees and slithered down to join them.
‘Dance says to come back to the Wasps’ Nest. A dozen townsfolk with axes have just been seen heading towards our jungle. There’s no more time. We’re all leaving. Now.’
A very short while later the Wasps’ Nest was empty, its erstwhile residents scattered concealed throughout the jungle.
Hathin’s group must make it to the road, Dance had said, and if a distraction is needed to help them get there, we’ll give them a distraction.
Hathin hurried along at a crouch, her new backpack catching on vines. Close behind her came Therrot. Both were disguised as members of the Dancing Steam, complete with indigo-dyed leggings and coats with long cross-laced sleeves that would hide their tattoos. Hathin’s hair had been cropped and she was dressed as a boy, for she was to pose as Therrot’s younger brother on the trip. However, it had been drummed into her that her disguise would be for naught if she let her distinctive Lace smile creep on to her face and expose her tooth plaques.
If anyone sees through your disguise, strike before they can act, Jaze had instructed her, as he strapped a little dagger in a red sheath to her arm. You have a duty to avoid being captured or killed. While you’re alive and at liberty we can help you, but once you’re gone no one can pursue your quest on your behalf.
Jaze was bringing up the rear of their little group, supporting a half-asleep Arilou. Despite the urgency of the situation, he remained calm, almost too calm. Hathin found his presence soothing, but at the same time wondered whether he had worn the same cool soapstone smile when he had killed the five smugglers who had murdered his mother.
Arilou was dressed as a member of the Bitter Fruit, and the belly of her dress was padded out with rags. The hope was that if she seemed heavily pregnant it would give Jaze an excuse to half carry her.
They reached the edge of the forest just in time to see the last of the townspeople disappear into the jungle, a hundred yards away. There was a distant chock! sound, and birds peppered the sky.
‘They’re chopping down trees,’ whispered Therrot. He sounded surprised. Clearly, despite its proximity, Mistleman’s Chandlery was not the townspeople’s first-choice source of timber. ‘They never cut down trees here. These jungles – they’re part of the Sovereignty Swathe.’ The Swathe was one of many areas that had remained jungle purely because some of the first Cavalcaste generals had claimed it for their families, to be used as Ashlands for their dead in the future. It was lifeless space on the map, and the only way to claim a piece of it was to die.
‘Not good,’ murmured Jaze. ‘We’ll have trouble getting to the road without them seeing us.’
Hathin peered apprehensively through the undergrowth at the root-tangled slope and expanse of flat ground they would need to cross to reach the main road. Mistleman’s Blunder was a major stopping point along the so-called Obsidian Trail, a foot-route down which dozens of men, women and children daily trudged, carrying packs of obsidian, mountain jade and other goods from the mountain mining villages to the richer cities and ports of the northeast.
The plan was for Hathin’s party to creep down to the road and quietly join the stream of pack-carriers so as to escape attention. Hearts in mouths, they skulked their way down the treeless slope, hunching in abandoned irrigation trenches, until they reached a bush-shielded ditch a stone’s throw from the road.
It soon became clear that finding a quiet moment to slip out of the bushes was going to be no easy matter, as the route suddenly became a thoroughfare for lines of men carrying long, slender tree trunks over their shoulders. The timber was laid down by the roadside and, as the hidden revengers watched, workmen began lashing the newly felled trunks together into tall angular structures.
‘What are they doing?’ hissed Therrot.
Jaze raised his head to scan the scene. ‘Looks like they’re making a set of raised platforms . . . Who’s that? The man in the blue waistcoat? And what’s wrong with his face?’
There was indeed a slightly shorter figure among the workmen, giving orders, stopping from time to time to check a parchment in his hand. Even at this distance it was clear that behind the turned-up wings of his collar, his face was blotched with yellow and plum discolouration.
‘Oh, I think I know who he is,’ murmured Jaze. ‘That’s him. The Doorsy who’s been turning everything upside down looking for you. Whatever it is he’s doing, it’s for your benefit, Hathin. Take a look – have you ever met him?’
‘No.’ Hathin raised her head as high as she dared and peered through the foliage. ‘I’d remember someone with a face like that.’
‘Good,’ said Jaze. ‘If you don’t recognize him, he won’t recognize you if you have to walk past him.’
Deep in the forest came the sound of a bang, followed by a chalky trail of echo and a great eruption of birds.
‘Damn!’ said Therrot, and at the same time Jaze said ‘Now!’ and scooped up Arilou. His momentum carried the other revengers along, and they lurched after him out of the ditch.
‘That came from the direction of the Reckoning! That was a gunshot!’ hissed Therrot as he fell into stride with Jaze along the rubbled path.
‘I know one when I hear one,’ Jaze said through his teeth, shifting the weight of Arilou in his arms, ‘and so does everyone else. A gun fires, and everybody looks towards it – nobody looks for people climbing out of bushes. Now fall back – we’re not supposed to know each other.’
Therrot slowed his pace, and Hathin slid her hand into his. The nearest wooden platform seemed to be completed and was as high as a house. On its summit stood a man using a telescope to pan across the road, the treeline, the surrounding countryside. Spy-towers then. Is all of this really to look for us? Surely there is some mistake?
‘Hathin,’ muttered Therrot without moving his lips, ‘you’re smiling again.’ She compressed her lips and tried to force down the corners of her mouth.
Her heart beat as ahead of them Jaze and Arilou approached a couple of men who stood on the path, both holding rough cudgels. They exchanged a few words with Jaze, who gave them yawning answers, joked, nodded towards the sleeping Arilou. His mild look remained unruffled as the roadblock guards searched through his luggage with an idle air.
Hathin herself was anything but calm. To keep her gaze from Arilou, Hathin observed the man in the blue waistcoat, who was shouting instructions to the men at the top of the spy-towers. As she watched he raised his head irritably, batting away a persistent fly, and her throat tightened as she saw his face properly.
‘Therrot,’ she whispered, a squeak of panic in her voice. ‘Therrot – I do know him.’
‘What?’ Therrot looked down at her, his face drawn, but there was no time for conference. Their steps had brought them up to the road guards.
‘What’s your reason for passing through our city?’ asked the first using Doorsy with an air of bo
red self-importance.
‘We’re a troupe of travelling parrot jugglers,’ Therrot declared wearily. His Doorsy was a little clumsy and had a strong Mistleman’s accent. ‘Come on – what do you think we are? In case you didn’t notice, the bean harvest’s over so we’re walking the trail and taking packs of black glass to Port Suddenwind to sell. Trope, show the nice men what you’ve got in your bucket.’ Hathin managed to remember that she was going by the name of Trope. She stood by while the guards stirred her tiny scraps of obsidian around with the tip of a knife, and tried not to look towards Prox.
Therrot clicked his tongue in his cheek as if all these formalities were too boring for words, but as the guards started searching their other buckets Hathin could see his eyes glittering with nervous impatience.
Hathin’s eyes crept to the face of Minchard Prox, who was studying a map. Horribly blistered, but alive. Can he really be hunting us? Maybe we should speak to him? He was working with Raglan Skein – doesn’t that mean he should be on our side?
‘What’s all this about, anyway?’ Therrot nodded towards the new scaffolding.
‘We’ve had word that there might be a Lace force massing over on the coast, and looking to sneak through their secret mountain passes. And if they do – well, they’re going to attack here, aren’t they? We’re the people who stood up to them in the first place, and they’ve never forgiven us. So we’re setting up these towers so we can spot ’em if they come skulking through the undergrowth. And we’ve piled the brush up in those heaps so we can light them as braziers come nightfall, throwing light over the plain.’
The two listening Lace nodded thoughtfully and tried not to meet one another’s eye. A Lace force? The only ‘Lace force’ to have ‘sneaked through the secret mountain passes’ had been Arilou and Hathin themselves, and they knew of no other waiting to follow the same route.