They had just locked the door behind them when it happened. Two men who had been dawdling by a resin-worker’s stall abruptly plunged into the crowd. There was a scream, and they emerged dragging a twisting, kicking, scratching, reed-like woman. Her beaded bowler fell off her head to show the shaven place above her forehead, and the crowd pulled back murmuring dangerously as they realized that she was Lace.
For a moment Hathin’s eye clouded with the memory of a darkened beach, the murderous pinpricks of torches . . . but the crowd held back out of respect for the two men pinning the woman to the ground. Hathin recognized them as two of the bounty hunters from Mistleman’s Blunder. Of course, now that the Superior had his pet Lace, he had probably paid off and discharged his own bounty hunters, allowing the visitors to hunt Lace freely in his city.
One of the men placed a knee on the woman’s back and tied her hands behind her with a piece of cord. Then, to his own very great surprise, he flew backwards and lay on the dust clutching his nose. The other man’s hasty leap to his feet proved to be a wasted effort. A well-swung mutton joint caught him on the side of the head and dropped him to the dust again. One could almost feel the air of the marketplace thickening and crackling with stares, and every stare was fixed on Therrot, who now stood over the bound woman, the mutton joint still in his hand.
There was a strange expression on Therrot’s face, almost a look of relief. I’m falling, said the expression. No more decisions. All I can do now is fall.
‘Stop!’
As Hathin ran forward she could feel the stares crystallize on her skin like salt. Flushed and desperate, she held the Superior’s ring at arm’s length towards the bounty hunters. Their hands paused on the hilts of their knives. Hathin revolved slowly, holding out the ring so that everyone around her had a chance to see the seal.
‘We’re claiming this woman.’ Hathin cleared her throat to rid it of its nervous croak. ‘She . . . She’s a necessary supply. We’re – we’re stockpiling all the Lace we can find.’
The woman, who was doing her best to spit out a mouthful of dust and her own hair, twisted her head to look up. Her eyes lost a little of their wildness as her gaze locked with that of Hathin. Behind both pairs of brown eyes a thousand Lace ancestors raised shields in salute and shouted a silent greeting across the void between.
And if any of the crowd had stopped to look closely at the girl who stood before them in the plainest of sight, they too might have detected in her every feature the whiff of the sea, the glitter of centuries of smiles. But they were hypnotized by the ring, and Hathin was invisible again.
A second barrow was fetched, and as the crowd receded Hathin and Therrot retraced their steps towards the Superior’s palace. Behind them walked a middle-aged man and his adult daughter, who had without comment taken on the task of pushing the barrowful of Lace captive along. Therrot cast a glance back at the pair of them, then gave Hathin a meaningful look. Hathin nodded slightly. She too had noticed the coral cut on the father’s chin, the pebbley snubness of their features.
At the governor’s gate the little convoy paused, and mumbled thanks were exchanged in Lace.
‘You’d probably better go back before anyone wonders why you’re helping us,’ whispered Hathin.
‘Wonder is already abroad. We moved here fifteen years ago in search of work and have lived here ever since, but I don’t think anyone quite believed us when we said we were from an east-coast cockling village. And since the Lost died, our neighbours’ friendship has been curdling. We’re living on borrowed time.
‘If you’ll have us – we’d like to join your Stockpile.’
23
A Little Light
The next morning Hathin had to break it to the Superior that he was stockpiling Lace. At first anxiety rippled his forehead.
‘But, sir – there’s always a chance that we’ll die from the blissing beetles, and I wouldn’t want you to be left without some . . . spares. And more people heading to the Ashlands means we can take more barrows.’
These words had the desired effect. Five minutes later the Superior was very pleased that he had come up with the idea of the Stockpile and was willing to put aside a small building to house it. Two hours after that Hathin had to return and ask for a larger one since his Stockpile had increased by three: two children who had been living in the irrigation ditches and eating wild birds’ eggs crept into the city and turned themselves in; a ragged young man singed by geysers staggered through the gates with a wounded bounty hunter hanging off his back, and claimed his right to join the Stockpile. Word had apparently spread fast.
Hathin could only pray that the Stockpile would actually be the refuge its members seemed to imagine.
‘Therrot,’ she asked as she walked through the palace with her ‘big brother’, ‘have I done something terrible? What if I’ve drawn people into a trap, making them think they’re safe there?’
‘Nobody’s safe,’ said Therrot, ‘and everyone knows it. If the Superior changes his mind, we’re all dead. These people know they’re taking a risk, but it’s a risk that means they get to eat.’
Later, however, when they secretly met with Jaze by the city gates and told him about the Stockpile, he did not seem completely convinced.
‘Well, I won’t be joining it. I think I would be better placed at the Sour village, keeping an eye on our Lady Lost.’ He peered at Hathin speculatively for a few moments. ‘I just want to be sure you know why you’re doing this, Doctor Hathin,’ he said quietly. ‘What is it that you want? Are you making yourself a new village and hoping that you can protect it this time? Or that maybe if you wait long enough some of your own village will turn up here to be “Stockpiled”?’
‘What harm if they did?’ Therrot’s stare was defiant.
Jaze sighed. ‘Blissing beetles were used to kill the Lost,’ he said softly. ‘You do know what that means?’
‘Yes.’ Therrot stamped an angry little hollow in the dust with his heel. ‘It means we’re going to have to kill some very clever people.’
‘Worse,’ said Jaze in the same cool tone. ‘At least one of the people we’ll have to kill is probably a Lace. I suspected it when Hathin told us that Jimboly knew about the Path of the Gongs. Doctor Hathin’s right – the Lost were killed just like farsight fish, and farsight fishing has always been a Lace secret.
‘Don’t start fingering your knife hilt, Therrot. I’m not insulting the memory of your nearest and dearest. But if someone from your village suddenly turns up alive and well . . . don’t go happily throwing your arms around them.’
A shocked silence followed. Perhaps one of the Hollow Beasts had played a part in the Lost killings after all. Hathin remembered her dream of the string of Hollow Beasts walking into the cave that was their death. This time she imagined one figure turning a furtive, venomous look upon her and scurrying from the line, but its face was featureless, an expression and nothing more.
The next two days were tense and frustrating for Hathin and Therrot, despite the luxury of regular meals and a roof above their heads. Their mornings were spent in the palace, their afternoons in the marketplace, all too aware of the curious eyes of the townspeople. In vain they waited for word from Dance, some hint that she had received Tomki’s warning in time. Besides this, Hathin was desperate to visit the Sour village and check on Arilou. However, the Superior wanted to see all preparations made for the ‘dead trading expedition’ first and his will was law.
On the third day, Hathin and Therrot finally had leave to take their barrows of offerings up the path to Crackgem. At the point where the path petered out they found Jeljech sitting on a boulder, waiting to escort them to the Sour village.
On the way, Hathin could not help deluging Jeljech with questions. How was Arilou? Was she eating? What was she eating? Was somebody keeping her clean? Had she said anything?
‘Laderilou well,’ Jeljech told her, over and over. ‘Laderilou’, a distortion of ‘Lady Arilou’, was apparently the name tha
t the Sours now used. ‘Laderilou want bee-wine.’ ‘Bee-wine’ was the Nundestruth term for honey. That request, at least, did sound a good deal like Arilou.
This time the welcome at the village was more affable.
Arilou was found in one of the huts on the edge of sleep, her eyelids drooping, a sheepskin swaddling her. Hathin sat beside her and made a quiet inventory of her sister’s limbs, then curled one of her hands inside Arilou’s larger one. It felt at home there, like a mouse in a burrow.
‘Jeljech . . .’ Hathin spoke at last. ‘Men come here gun-slung, want go school. Friends belong-you remember men, remember colour hair? Eye?’ She tugged at her own collar. ‘Wear-withel?’
Jeljech puffed out her cheeks doubtfully, turned to one of the other Sour girls and loosed an interrogative stream of words in her own language. Halfway through it, Hathin’s attention was abruptly snagged by a familiar phrase.
‘Stop! Er – wait!’ Hathin blushed as Jeljech turned back to her. ‘Jeljech, say that word! Say . . . kaiethemin?’ Hathin could almost swear that she had overheard the peculiar phrase Arilou had been repeating on the beach just before the death of Skein. ‘Mean . . . many bird fly, yes?’
Jeljech seemed perplexed. She engaged in a muffled conference with the other Sour girl, and then the brows of both cleared.
‘Kaithem ano.’ Jeljech pronounced the words carefully and slowly for Hathin’s benefit. ‘Mean bird . . . no.’ She closed her eyes tight in a wince of concentration, then opened them again. ‘Mean pigeon . . . pigeon man. Many pigeon man.’
They stared at one another as once again the conversation fell screaming into the language chasm.
‘Pigeon?’
‘Pigeon.’ The Sour girl mimed herself a rounded front, waggled elbow wings and managed a serviceable coo. ‘Pigeon man destroy school, yes?’ There was no doubt about it. Jeljech was talking about the mysterious beetle-carriers. But pigeon? Was this some weird slang?
The Sour girl smothered a giggle at Hathin’s expression, and shrugged. ‘Nocansay. Laderilou name gang pigeon man. Now allwe name gang pigeon man.’
So it was Arilou who had given the beetle-carriers that strange name, and the Sours had simply followed her lead.
Arilou, watching the men. Arilou, watching the birds. There was a connection after all. What was it? A glimmer of a possibility formed in Hathin’s mind, and overwhelmed her for a second so that she could barely force her thoughts into Nundestruth.
‘Jeljech, please you ask Laderilou why name pigeon man.’ She fidgeted in impatience as Jeljech stroked Arilou’s forehead and translated the question. Arilou gave a sleepy moan, then offered a string of molten sentences. Jeljech listened with a scowl of increasing bewilderment, and at last turned back to Hathin to translate.
‘Laderilou tell us she here. Up . . .’ She pointed at the sky and fluttered her hands to mime a hummingbird hover. ‘She look, see all strange man come down mountain. Man got pigeon in coat. Look.’ She slapped her own chest. ‘Man.’ She mimed writing on something invisible, which she then carefully folded. With her spare hand she reached around behind herself and brought it back clutching a second invisible something the size of a cup. She held it up for the inspection of Hathin’s mind’s eye. ‘Pigeon.’ The folded writing was apparently placed into or on to the pigeon, and then she flung her imaginary bird into the air.
‘Laderilou follow pigeon!’ Hathin could barely contain her excitement. ‘Laderilou follow pigeon where?’
More Sour questions from Jeljech. More sleepy answers from Arilou.
‘Pigeon go, Laderilou follow, follow over mountain . . .’ Jeljech fluttered her hands in an upwards, outwards arc, like a bird leaving the ground and flying away. ‘Pigeon find other man. Man put writing in desk, lots other writing. Other man make writing, throw other pigeon. Laderilou follow pigeon, find man three.’
Hathin dropped to a crouch next to the Sour girl, who was now stooping to move stones on to the path. ‘Many man,’ she explained, pointing to them, then started drawing lines between them in the dirt. ‘Pigeon . . . pigeon . . . pigeon . . .’ she murmured as she did so. ‘Pigeon . . . pigeon . . . pigeon . . . pigeon . . .’ At last she looked up at Hathin with a flushed but triumphant smile. ‘Manymany pigeon man,’ she summarized, and shrugged.
Hathin covered her mouth with her hands and stared at the network that had been drawn in the mud. It was true, then. Her hazy, newly formed suspicion had been correct. Have you noticed that your enemies appear to know things sooner than they should? The question had lurked in the shadowy corners of Hathin’s mind for the last week, leaving her imagination to shape theories of demonic familiars, uncanny powers.
No. There had been a simple daylight answer all along. Messages sent using pigeons. She had heard stories that they had once been used so in the old Cavalcaste lands.
A large, secret network scattered across the island, in touch with each other through pigeons. Ordinary messengers would travel too slowly along the mountain paths, and any message sent by the tidings huts would be read by the Lost. A message system that would not be affected by the deaths of the Lost. The little caged pigeons Jimboly always carried were probably meant to be dropped off with her contacts so that they could use them for messages later.
All this while, the murderers of the Lost had feared what Arilou might know or have seen – the killing of the Lost Council, perhaps, or the slaughter of the Beacon School. But while all that was happening, Arilou had been busy chasing pigeons.
She had seen ‘her’ village bullied by some strangers with weapons. She had sent her mind to follow the nasty men. And then she had seen a funny man take a pigeon out of his coat and throw it in the air, so she had followed it to see where it went. Perhaps she had forgotten her initial worry and even made a game of it, chasing messenger pigeons from contact to contact in the secret network.
This wasn’t what Hathin had originally expected or hoped to hear. It was quite different, and it was better. Arilou could spy on the secret network – had spied on it, without realizing it. She could tell the Reckoning where its members lived, what they looked like, where they hid their secret papers.
Breathless with excitement, Hathin ran to Therrot and recounted her discovery. ‘Therrot, we can track these murderers back using their own messengers! We’re going to find out who killed the Lost, who sent Jimboly to our village and why! We’re going to chase after them for a change!’ Just for a moment she felt an excited tickle in her right forearm, as though the hidden butterfly tattoo sensed that she had taken a step on the path to revenge.
And Therrot squeezed her hand in the same excitement, but when he looked in her eye his smile was uneasy, as if he saw something there that troubled him.
The next day, a handful of Sours appeared in Jealousy’s marketplace. Apparently by chance, Therrot and Hathin encountered them, and bargained in mime for the soap, trinkets, wooden goats and coconut rum in the Sours’ barrow. Both sides were stony-faced as if they had never met each other before.
Among the items handed over by the Sours was a map of Gullstruck, finely painted but marred by five small holes. Most were in the provinces, but the largest hole was in Mistleman’s Blunder.
‘Pigeon man.’ Jeljech murmured softly. There was nobody but Hathin close enough to overhear, so Jeljech tapped each of the little holes in turn, and for each gave a short description of the ‘pigeon man’ they represented. One was ‘no-hair, beak-nose, black smock’, another was ‘sing always, slow leg’. Last of all, Jeljech prodded Mistleman’s Blunder. ‘Thisere one many many pigeon.’
Hathin stared at the last hole. If the ‘pigeon man’ in Mistleman’s Blunder was sending so many messages, did that mean he was the hub of the conspiracy, the mastermind?
‘Pigeon man here how face?’ she asked, touching Mistle-man’s Blunder as Jeljech had done. If she could only get a description of their greatest enemy!
‘No face.’ Jeljech shrugged. ‘Laderilou say he none face.’
Jaze se
t off with the marked map within the hour, in search of the Reckoning.
‘I’m more likely to find them than either of you are,’ he explained as he provisioned himself with goods bought for the Superior’s ancestors. ‘You can leave the job of tracking down these underling “pigeon men” to the Reckoning. We may not be able to strike at Mistleman’s Blunder with it fortified the way it is, but let’s see how well the octopus throttles once it’s had some tentacles cut off.’ He hefted his pack on to his back, and prepared to brave the afternoon’s onslaught of rain. ‘Therrot, look after Hathin. And, both of you, try to keep a low profile from now on.’
Hathin had to agree that, in terms of keeping a low profile, setting up a haven for fugitives from the law probably hadn’t been a great start.
But at least we’re unlikely to get any more Lace joining the Stockpile, she reassured herself. You just don’t get many this far east.
She was wrong. Over the next three days a further two Lace families arrived. Before the week was done, the Stockpile had doubled in size once more. And, as it did so, the new arrivals brought word of the lands they had fled.
Pearlpit, Knotted Tail, Seagrin, Eel’s Play, Wild Man’s Cradle and dozens of other Lace villages on the Coast of the Lace were gone, the houses torn down, most of the inhabitants chained by the neck and dragged off to camps like the one at Mistleman’s Blunder. Many bandits had turned bounty hunter, now that selling Lace brought in more money than brandy-runs and storehouse raids. So those few Lace that had escaped the bounty hunters had fled east. Once far inland, the lucky ones had heard rumours of a sanctuary in Jealousy . . . and had trekked for days to the Stockpile, the one place in Gullstruck where Lace might still be safe.
And when they spoke of the persecution of the Lace one name was spoken again and again, always with a bitter venom.
The Nuisance Control Officer, Minchard Prox. A man without a face.
24
Strategems and Surprises