Underneath it sat a balding little man with beautiful long, auburn moustache hairs wound around a curling metal wire. He wore a waistcoat that seemed to have been designed for a much bigger man. As Hathin and the guards entered he looked up with an expression of weary misery.
But when one of the guards moved forward and whispered in his ear, Hathin saw a look of almost pained hope venture cautiously across his features. ‘Oh! I see. Ah, yes! Yes, well done. Could you wait outside?’ He spoke a crisply accented Doorsy, scrubbing-brush brisk.
As the guards left the room Hathin felt nervously at the bruised places on her upper arm. She could think of several reasons why the little man might be pleased to see her, and none of them were good.
‘Let’s see your teeth then, young man.’
It took Hathin a moment to remember her boyish disguise and realize that he was talking to her. She obediently bared her teeth, and the man stared at them over his wire-rimmed spectacles before sitting back with a ‘huff’ of relief.
‘You really are Lace, aren’t you?’
She nodded.
‘Now.’ The little man moved a jade paperweight, in a decisive fashion that caused the scroll it was holding down to coil and flip him on the nose. Both of them pretended it hadn’t happened. ‘You know who I am, I assume?’
‘You’re the Superior?’ She was rewarded by a small, fragile smile.
‘Quite right, young man. Superior Pedron Sun-Sedrollo. You have probably heard of the Dukes of Sedrollo.’ He waved a hand at the wall, and Hathin noticed for the first time that there were hundreds of tiny framed cameos of men in frilled ruffs and forked beards, and occasional women whose hair swelled up above their foreheads like marrows, reined in by spangled nets. ‘You may also have heard of the Counts of Sun.’ The opposite wall held a host of similar images.
Hathin started to understand why the little man was so small. Sitting under a hundred needley gazes like those would shrivel anyone.
‘You’re probably wondering why you’ve been shown into my presence.’ He glanced at Hathin and seemed to be reassured by something he saw in her face. ‘You might be too young to understand this, but I have to look after two great towns. There is the living township of Jealousy, which you might already have seen – containing about four hundred souls. But out on the foothills of Crackgem, beyond the orchid lakes, is an entire city, with full four thousand souls – an invisible city that is ever increasing its population.’
Hathin remembered the Ashlands near her village, with its forest of spirit houses.
‘Sir Superior . . . would those souls be all the Dukes of Sedrollo and the Counts of Sun?’
‘Yes,’ intoned the Superior, with a note of hollow desolation in his voice. ‘All of them. And their cousins, and their wives, and their wives’ cousins, and their wives’ cousins’ wives’ cousins, and many, many more besides. Their ashes were all brought here during the very first landings.’ He gave a cramped smile. ‘Of course the Ashlands weren’t the wrong side of the orchid lakes back then. My predecessors picked out what looked like the best and greenest land, in easy reach of the town . . . but you know what Crackgem is like. Every fifty years or so, bang! Pop! Shudder! And next thing we know there are roasted farmers all over the foothills, and old lakes have suddenly become vales of pitted mud, and new scalding lakes are bubbling up somewhere totally different.’ He sighed.
‘Anyway, I owe my post here to the presence of my ancestors. Who could govern here but the sole heir of all these noble scions? And where could I work but here, so that I might attend to my ancestors’ tombs?’
‘But . . .’ Hathin hesitated. ‘Surely your family must help with your reverences, sir – your children, your brothers and sisters . . .’
‘I have none!’ Poor Superior Sun-Sedrollo waved his hands at the faces on the walls. ‘How would I find time for a wife or children? How would I find time to have brothers and sisters? I am even surprised that I had time to be born myself!’ Hathin’s tired mind grappled with this concept and gave it up. ‘Of course, there are many others in Jealousy who have ancestors up there and give them tribute, but nobody seems to think things through.
‘When I succeeded my father as Superior here, I found that for years uncounted offerings of food had been burned to the ancestors – but nobody had once thought of cutlery.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘Can you imagine that? For over a century the Dukes of Sedrollo and the Counts of Sun had been forced to eat with their fingers.’
It was becoming obvious to Hathin that she had never thought about these things enough, and yet she also had the strong feeling the Superior had thought about them rather too much.
‘Of course, everything has become a good deal worse in the last twenty years,’ continued the Superior, ‘now that everybody burns “dead man’s bonds” on the stones instead of even trying to work out what their ancestors need.’
‘But . . . doesn’t that mean they can buy everything they want in the afterlife?’ Hathin had seen only a few of these ‘bonds’, each promising to be worth 100,000 doubloons of gold in the afterlife and brightly painted with images of famous ancestor spirits.
‘How can they? Think about it. The city’s inhabitants must have pockets bulging with these notes and nothing else. Who can they trade with? What can they buy, if nobody has anything but money?
‘Well, at least now we have comprehensive records of every tribute offered, so we can assess the size of the city and decide what they need. But not a year goes by when I don’t find some critical thing I’ve forgotten. Which brings me to the matter in hand, and the torment of my life.’ The Superior adjusted his spectacles and stared at Hathin for a long time. ‘Soap,’ he said at last.
‘Soap?’
‘Soap. I did not even think of it myself for four years after becoming Superior – four years! Imagine, a community of four thousand, living in such close proximity for over a hundred years, with no soap at all! I mean, the ticks! The grime! The sweat in their collars!’
The little man slammed his paperweights about his desk in distraction. ‘And the worst thing is – I cannot possibly give it to them. To give even a beloved brother a gift of soap is to say that you feel his toilette is lacking. How can I give a sackful of soap to the first Duke Antod Sedrollo, who commanded the Imperial Navy?’
Hathin saw the problem and said so.
‘This is where you and your friend come in. Long ago a Lace bodyguard gave his life to save his Superior and was uniquely privileged with a grave in my ancestors’ Ashlands. The obvious solution is to sacrifice the soap to him, so he can sell it to everyone else. Now, we seldom find Lace passing through the city, but last year I found two brothers who were willing to carry soap up to this grave. Only, ah, that is, ah, one evening while they were making their offering, there was a White Tide.’
Hathin felt herself pale at the mention of one of the deadly waves of white ash and burning smoke that could sweep through and destroy whole villages in seconds.
‘And, ah, that left me with the same problem as before, so I have been on the lookout for more Lace ever since.’
Hathin was still reeling from the mention of the White Tide, and so it was a moment or two before she realized that the Superior was looking her over with a gentle twinkle.
‘I’m glad to see you’ve got the right kind of spirit,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry we can’t just load you up with pictures of soap . . . but who can draw soap? We’ve tried, and you can’t tell if it’s suet or potatoes. But you’re four foot of courage, and that’s the main thing.’
Hathin felt that she was four foot of exhaustion, blisters, bruises and ditch-mud. She had intended to venture into Crackgem’s domain, but she had not expected this to involve dragging a century’s supply of soap up the foothills of a hyperactive volcano.
‘Now, I would send someone up with you, but I’ve had heaven’s own trouble getting anyone to nip over to Crackgem since he started throwing hot rocks at people. Two weeks ago a group of fellows tu
rned up and toyed with my hopes, promising to take anything I wanted to the mountainside if I would just give them a guide to the Beacon School, where they had business of some sort. Of course I couldn’t help them, so I suppose they must have wandered up the mountain on their own . . . and they never actually came back. It was most disappointing.’
The Superior stopped to scrutinize Hathin again, and gave a small approving nod as if he saw something that satisfied him.
‘But I can see it would take more than that to daunt you. So – you and your friend will do me this little favour . . . and I’ll see what can be done about making sure that you are kept safe from those other Lace-hunters.’ The Superior settled himself back in the chair and smilingly dismissed Hathin with a flick of his quill.
As she staggered to the door she could hear him muttering to himself.
‘Charming child,’ he was saying, ‘so bright and cooperative. Not at all what one expects from them . . .’
How had she made such a favourable impression? And how had she volunteered for such a dangerous mission without noticing? There could only be one answer. Hathin realized that she must have been smiling throughout the interview.
She was just leaving the room when another guard came in with soft-footed urgency. A letter was placed into the Superior’s hands, a letter marked by blue fingerprints. A parade of expressions took turns on the little man’s face as he read, ranging from shock to toothache.
‘Guards . . . out! I wish to speak with this child alone again.’
The door closed behind the guards, and Hathin reddened under the little man’s stare.
‘There’s an Ashwalker at the gate,’ he said, carefully studying her face. ‘Tell me, young man . . . are you a young woman?’
Hathin hesitated, and then nodded.
‘That is what the Ashwalker gave my men to understand. This is his commission: a warrant to hunt the fugitive known as Lady Arilou and her companions, suspected of complicity in murder of the Lost. And I really do not see why you find that so very funny, young woman.’
Hathin bit her lips together and stared at his hands in a desperate attempt to stifle her terrified smile. It must have worked since when he spoke again his voice was gentler.
‘So . . . are you this . . . this Arilou?’
‘No . . . she . . . I was travelling with her. But I . . . lost her.’ In spite of herself, Hathin found tears of exhaustion and despair welling up in her eyes. ‘I lost her. I don’t know where she is. Sir, I know what everyone is saying, but we never killed anyone, I swear . . .’
The Superior watched her silent sobs with every sign of annoyance, embarrassment and conflict. ‘Typical. First Lace I find in months – in months – and they are thoughtless enough to be fugitives from justice. Can’t they see the position this puts me in?’
For a few moments he sat tweaking indecisively at the blue-stained letter, then he gave a long, vexed sigh. ‘Well . . . you don’t exactly fit my picture of a marauding assassin. And I don’t much like blue people in smelly clothes turning up at my gate and demanding my prisoners. Are you willing to swear on . . . on whatever it is you people care about, that you and the man captured with you had no part in any of this killing?’
A little shakily, Hathin nodded.
‘All right then. Now obviously I can’t get involved in this business, but let us say for now that my men have been fooled by that little disguise of yours. The Ashwalker is asking after a young girl – we can tell him that nobody of that description has been captured. In fact, we might even tell him that a promising-looking suspect was seen heading . . . shall we say north? Up towards Thorn Rise?’
Hathin was shown to a little room with a bed too soft for her to sleep on, and samplers on the walls that she couldn’t read.
For a time she crouched by the one small barred window, hands cupped to her mouth, making the owl calls that were Arilou’s name. Arilou, Arilou, find me here. She only ceased to call when she looked out through the window and saw, beyond the city gate, a single figure sitting on a rock . It was a blot of midnight blue.
When she mustered the courage to look out again an hour later, however, it was gone.
20
The Blue Cloth
Next day two bruised and haggard Lace could be found heaving a barrow of soap up the stony path that led towards the Ashlands of Crackgem.
They had left Jealousy in the late morning, once Therrot had recovered his senses enough to walk. Already their path had climbed and dipped enough that they had lost sight of the city. On either side of the trail the orchid lakes seethed with pearl-clusters of bubbles, fed to the brim by the recent rains. The only landmark that allowed them to keep their bearings was the crinkled outline of Crackgem, which reared up above the crags from time to time.
Hathin and Therrot were not the only people using the path, but they could not help noticing that everybody else seemed to be going in the other direction. Farmers were abandoning their homesteads on the foothills of Crackgem and fleeing to hide in Jealousy until he calmed down.
‘So tell me again why we’re not making a run for it?’ asked Therrot groggily.
‘Where would we run?’ Hathin asked in a small voice. ‘The road past Crackgem to the ports is blocked, the road back is full of bounty hunters looking for us. If we’re going back to Jealousy, we need the Superior’s protection . . . and we have to go back to Jealousy . . . it’s where they were heading, the others . . . we were all running to the city . . . they’ll be somewhere in the city . . .’
There was a silence, but it was a Lace silence that everybody understood.
‘All right.’ Therrot said at last. ‘Stop a moment; stop striding as if you’re trying to grind the mountain to dust.’
Hathin halted and turned reluctantly.
‘Your plan last night was pretty good,’ Therrot continued, his voice gentle. ‘Even if it turns out that the others . . .’
‘They’ll find us,’ Hathin said, too firmly for conviction. ‘Arilou will find us. She’s Lost, remember?’
Therrot bit his lip and reached out to ruffle the short hair above Hathin’s forehead into a fuzz with his palm. The gesture was familiar, and Hathin realized that she had seen him teasing Lohan’s hair in just the same way. Does he really see me at all, or is he speaking to his little brother, his little sister?
With difficulty the pair of them forced their barrow up a low ridge and then stared in disbelief out across a steam-ridden phantasmagoria. There was no more path. Instead the ground sloped down to a plain of porridge-coloured rock glazed with a thin skin of fast-flowing water. Puckers and spouts broke the dun surface, spewing bubbles and staining the rock with vivid blots of gold, green, red, pink. Occasional great crags jutted up like beach boulders.
To the left and right the plain gave way to steaming lakes. The only way forward appeared to be across the plain’s pitted surface.
‘Look there.’ Therrot pointed, his face grim. There was a hole in the porridge-like plain, and through it murky blue-grey water could be seen bubbling. ‘That’s not solid rock, that’s barely a span thick. Someone trusted their weight to that, and I bet they didn’t come home with a story about it.’ The hole was indeed just large enough that a person might have fallen through it. ‘Enough.’ Therrot set the barrow down. ‘The Superior’s relatives can go unwashed a bit longer – nobody will know any better.’
Carefully, Therrot reached under the cloth that had been laid over the barrow to protect it from the sudden monsoon rains, and lifted out a slithering lump of the soap. He stooped near a convenient little water-filled crater in the shadow of a bush.
‘Present for you, Lord Crackgem,’ he muttered. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
The water in the crater seethed as he dropped in the soap. As he stepped back to the barrow and stooped for some more, Hathin saw the foaming increase and the water start to fountain.
‘Therrot!’
He turned in time to see the fountain become a wild, white plume,
and to cover his face with his arms as the wind changed, lashing him with boiling spray and scalding steam. The two revengers grabbed at the barrow, and they slithered and tumbled their way down the slope to escape the geyser’s fury, stopping just short of the treacherous plain.
‘He minds,’ whispered Hathin.
They had agreed to deliver the soap, and clearly they would make good on their promise. Lord Crackgem in his madness would have it so.
‘But how?’ asked Therrot, coughing as the acrid steam stung his throat. ‘How?’
As they were staring aghast across the plain the answer to their question rose up on a crag as suddenly as a geyser, and flailed white arms. A lone figure, wind-blown hair a scribble against the sky, the padding of her false pregnancy slipped over to one hip . . .
‘I don’t believe it!’ A second figure had joined Arilou on the top of the crag, and was waving frantically at Hathin and Therrot. There was no mistaking Tomki’s high-pitched, unguarded tones. ‘Jaze! Come up here and look! It’s them! She’s done it! Arilou’s found them!’
Five minutes later, after a frenzy of impromptu hugs and back-slapping, the reunited Lace were starting to recover their breath. Almost sick with relief, Hathin was pulling the thorns out of Arilou’s clothing and wiping the dust from the corners of her eyes.
As it turned out, both Jaze and Tomki had spent a sleepless night trying to find the rest of the group. Jaze had made it to the edge of the city with Arilou before finding that none of his other allies had kept pace. Tomki had been cornered by the local bounty hunters, who plied him with drinks in thanks for delivering two Lace into their hands.
‘I only found Tomki because he decided to spill candlewax on the toes of the biggest thug of the lot,’ explained Jaze. ‘I just followed the sound of bellowed swearing, and sure enough – there was Tomki.’