She crept back to camp, snuck behind Foam, dripped on him and snickered. “Ah—oo!” he squealed. “Quit that!”
“So—whose turn is it to tell a story now?”
“Talk turned serious while you were away.”
“Despite Foam’s best attempts to stop it,” Seven added. “But we can’t put it off any longer. Something must be done about Hazel Twist, and about Thumbtip. Come now, Foam. Teach me to think like a woodlander. How should I begin?”
“Couldn’t we go to Thistle, or Mona, or one of the peopled islands? That way you wouldn’t have to build a barracks, or if you did, there would be more people to help with the work.”
“True, but that would make them military targets. I don’t want to drag anyone unwillingly into the war. Not yet, anyway.”
“Soon.”
“I know.”
Foam poked the fire into a steady blaze. “All right. Here’s what I would do. First rule: fight to win. We have few men, few weapons, no experience. Twist can lose ten of his men for one of ours. We should never, ever, cross him unless we know we will win, and win decisively.”
“But you said yourself the woodlanders are superior in numbers, weapons, and training,” Seven reminded Foam. “So where does that leave us?”
“Not fighting.”
“You think we should quit?” Catch said hopefully.
“Not at all. We should quit fighting pitched battles, certainly. But pitched battles are not the only way to wage a war.”
Glint stirred. “I’m in favor. I’m too busy here as it is.”
Foam nodded. “My next question is, What are our strengths? What do we do better than the woodlanders?”
“Sail,” Pond said.
Seven nodded. “We have better boats, and we know these waters.”
“Good. What else?”
Silence gathered in the clearing.
“Well,” Foam said, “there’s navigation too. You can count that as part of sailing, I guess. We know where we are, where we are going, and how to get there. If Hazel Twist tries to spread his forces through the islands, that should give us some advantages.”
“Except for the fire-slings,” Catch said. “I don’t want burning pitch up my ass, thank you.”
“There you go, thinking of battles again! Wherever Twist goes, we can get there first, warn the villagers and take them away. If the worst happens and his men fan out through the Inner Islands, we can at least stop them from picking off villages one by one. The farther he goes, the more healthy, angry islanders will be banding together to resist him.”
Seven nodded. “The farther Twist sails from Delta, the thinner he must spread his forces, and the more troops we will have on our side. But I don’t want to lose the Inner Islands before we stop him.”
“Neither do I. Still, I am more certain this war can be won than I was when I built this fire.” Foam gestured with his poker so that the red tip danced in the darkness.
“You are right,” Seven said. “By the Warrior, you’re right. We can win this thing after all. Hazel Twist has failed to appreciate what lies before him.”
Glint grunted. “I doubt that.”
Foam shook his head. “That doesn’t mean he can stop us. He will want to keep us small and keep us divided. He will want to strike soon.”
“The key is that garrison on Thumbtip.” Seven spoke quickly now, staring into the fire. “That is his jumping-off point. From there he can strike for Mona, and Thistle. He can find out which direction we headed and try to encircle us.”
“Too late for that,” Shale pointed out. “Even if we got caught unprepared here on Hookfeather, Reed is already spreading the word and rousing the people. They will be more watchful than Delta was. What happened to your Witness, anyway?”
“The Witnesses of Delta judge disputes and sign contracts; they cannot speak the future,” Pond said wistfully.
“Don’t they watch the Mist? Foam, we are surrounded by barbarians!”
Seven laughed. “Be gentle! Pond wants to fool one of our Witnesses into letting her apprentice. Remember that you are much closer to the Mist than we. Our omens come from the run of salmon or the tale of the wind, not the living mystery of the Mist-time.”
“Food,” Shale said.
Glint cocked her head. “What?”
“Food. Food. Even you Deltans can’t catch a fish outside a marketplace. The woodlanders will trap what rabbits they can find and eat the berries they recognize. But the real food here comes from the sea. Fish, clams, crabs, scallops, oysters, mussels. If nothing else, we should be better fed.”
“Won’t they learn?” Catch asked. “After all, digging clams isn’t so hard.”
“It is perhaps harder to feed a large camp than men typically appreciate,” Pond said. “They will learn, yes, but slowly.”
“And make some mistakes too,” Shale added. “If we’re lucky, the first clam they eat will be a red ribbon.”
“Brilliant!” Foam cried.
“What?”
“Brilliant! That’s what we need to do. Poison their food! Change good clams for bad, crumble deadly mushrooms into their stew! Do you see it? We dare not fight them. But if half their troops were dead, and the other half sick as babies, we could take Thumbtip back with ease.”
“Poison!” Glint spat.
Seven frowned. “Do you really want us to stoop to that?”
“I’m trying to save islander lives,” Foam snapped. “If I fight, I will fight to win.”
A log cracked open, freeing a cloud of red sparks to fly into the night. Seven sighed. “Ugly as the tales of war are, the real thing is uglier still.”
“It’s a beautiful plan,” Foam continued. “It turns so nicely on our strengths. After all, we even know where the kitchen is in their barracks on Thumbtip, because we built it.”
“How are we supposed to sneak through an armed camp with a bagful of spoiled clams?” Shale asked.
“Um. Well. . .”
“I don’t mean to squash the idea. But before we make any decisions we’ll have to go back to Thumbtip and have a look around.”
“They will have guards,” Seven reminded her.
“Mm. I just wanted to have a quiet look around, that’s all. Are you up to another night sail? Foam and I would go alone, I’m sure, but we need someone who can find Thumbtip in the dark.”
Foam cocked his head and stared up at the sky. “Not tonight! One more glorious night of sleep, I beg you. I fear we may not get much in the days to come.”
Shale lay on her back, restless, unready for sleep, looking up at the trembling poplar leaves and listening to their whispered stories of sun and soil.
Beside her, Foam’s breathing was already long and regular, and his face had gone smooth with sleep. Shale grinned to herself in the darkness, flattered. She felt sorry for him. She did like him, actually. Which was a bit of a surprise. Since her Naming she had thought him more silly than attractive. But over the last weeks, she had come to value his silliness more highly, and the clever, abstract mind behind it.
But lovers!
When he had clutched at her during the storm, she had wanted only to get away. She was not proud of that. She was beginning to like Foam, like him very much, but she could not shake the feeling he would drag her down. He thrust this thing at her—she couldn’t call it love. Where did it come from? She couldn’t be his only friend, now that Rope was gone, and be his lover too. He could not ask her to make his life worthwhile.
Was she callous to feel this way? She felt guilty, guilty as she so often was that she could not give herself as people wanted. Could not be decorous for her sister Nanny, could not be a lover for Foam. The Witness’s daughter and she could not even pledge herself to Clouds End.
No! She had to go. She had to journey and be happy and bring back wonders. That is what was given to her to do. If she lost her nerve, if she gave in to Foam now, or to anyone, then all the times she had refused to give herself were no longer part of a great plan
to make good; it would all have been only selfishness after all.
Seven was lucky, so lucky. The woodlanders had saved him with their invasion. Suddenly all his years of folly and selfishness, all the times he refused to be what his father or his people wanted—all that had been made good.
Lucky, lucky bastard.
She stretched out again, very aware of her body as it slid beneath her tunic. How pleasant it was, to be well-fed and rested again, to be lying out under the stars on a warm night. She pulled a blanket over herself, just over the waist, up beneath her breasts. There.
They would be on some island, she imagined, seeing it in her mind’s eye. No, Delta. Spearpoint. Seven’s cave on Spearpoint, eluding pursuit. Shouting soldiers all around, rattling the bushes with their swords, calling to one another: dangerous fugitives, desperate rebels. The ones who . . . Hm. (Shale massaged her legs, just above the knee, relaxing, moving slowly upwards, letting her toes relax, her feet, her knees, her thighs, muscles softening under her fingertips.)
The worst moment: caught in Twist’s room, poring over his secret charts, his special commands. Letters to the Emperor, detailing strategy, tucked inside a legging as they hear voices approaching, coming up the stairs of one of those great Deltan houses. He would have a big one for himself, of course. Foam freezes. Now, at the moment of crisis, she must lead.
The hunger in his eyes matching hers, clinched tight in their burrow while the enemy’s soldiers surround them. The smell of rock, of water. She pulls him down on top of her, their bodies press together; she can feel that he wants her despite the danger. (The skin, higher up, strangely soft, even on her. All that walking, all her boyish ways, hasn’t changed that. Still the soft swelling of flesh just below the hollow where the legs meet.)
Two sets of footsteps, maybe three. Twist and two bodyguards. No time to think and no weapons, of course. Not their style. In a room. What kind of room? Papers—lots of papers: charts, notes, reports, ship designs, notes on rafts, letters from the Emperor. A table where he works; pens, ink, so on. Lamps, a bed.
Paper! The door is closed but paper is piled high near the doorway. Foam looks to her for guidance. Swiftly, decisively, she glides to the door, drops the latch, grabs the lamp. She turns it upside down, pouring a wash of burning oil onto the papers. The footsteps have almost reached the foot of the stairs. Back now, to the window.
And after, steal a boat? a raft? and sail back to Hookfeather in triumph. A secret, glowing warm inside her belly.
Her tunic is already pushed up as he lies on top of her, her legs are spread, he cannot ignore the situation, though danger is everywhere. She locks his eyes with hers, pulls slowly up on his tunic; it brushes across her coiled hairs; he lifts himself, just enough to let the tunic slide free, incredulous. His blood rises too strongly to let caution stand in their way. He is free. His tip touches her (just lightly: so. Gentle as a finger, caressing her.) She reaches for him, holds him. Their eyes are still locked. His tip pushes lightly against her; he can’t resist doing that much. Still she has not let him kiss her. Above, a soldier cries, “Be careful! Remember what happened to those sentries!”
Flames rise, crackling, dancing destruction over commands, reports, sightings, designs. A concerned murmur from behind the door; footsteps bounding up the last few stairs, rushing along the corridor. Crawling out the window of Twist’s study, she swings a leg over the roof; hikes herself up. Splintering noises come from within. Foam’s hands appear on the roof’s edge; he swings, dangling in space for a dreadful moment, kicks himself once, twice, until she catches him and pulls him up. Below, the fire races through stacks of paper. Shouts of rage and garbled orders are gobbled up by the roaring flames. Someone runs off to sound the gong, but they are running now, leaping from rooftop to rooftop.
Smiling hungrily she pulls him in, letting him thrust, and kissing him, for the first time, hard. Footsteps: a soldier of the forest is standing on the rock directly above them as they couple in desperate silence.
And before: creeping up Twist’s stairs. They came in a boat, of course; they have hidden it in Craft’s house; they can return for it later, when the search has died down, after their rocking bodies are no longer joined, pushed down hard against the granite, the weight of him, the smell of rock, the sound of footsteps. The sea.
CHAPTER 14
LITTLE BOATS
AFTER A blessed night of sleep, Shale took her students out the next morning to dig for clams. Most of what they found they left out in the sun to spoil.
* * *
Rain hissed into the darkness around Seven and Foam that night. After what seemed like an eternity waiting off Thumbtip, a hand reached up to the boat and gently rocked the rail. Shale gasped and pulled herself over the transom. “Give me my clothes! Warm night or not, I’m freezing.”
Foam handed over tunic and leggings. Shale’s nude body was almost invisible, but he felt a sudden surge of resentment that Seven should see it.
Shale pulled her tunic on and shivered. “That’s better.” Foam eased the sail out and Seven turned the bow leeward, to let the boat pick up speed.
“No,” Shale murmured. “Only go out far enough to talk.”
Seven nodded and eased them out to the Tack. “Well?”
“Brr. Well, things are not as we left them.”
Foam groaned. “Don’t tell me they’re being clever again.”
“I’m afraid so. Remember how they hid the rafts on Delta?”
“I hate him,” Seven said grimly. “I hate Hazel Twist.”
Shale went on, unperturbed. “Our barracks now has a beautiful wall all around it. As tall as a tall man, with only two gates. I heard sentries.”
“Bastards!” Foam pulled the sheet in more tightly, arms tense with frustration.
“So much for getting into the kitchen,” Seven said. “Unless we want to storm the gates. Your news is not good.”
“Outside the barracks there are two places with torches: one up above the sandy beach, toward the eastern end, and one near the harbor.”
“Those will be the fire-slings,” Foam said. “Positioned to get our boats should we try to land.”
Foam nodded. “We need to take them first.”
“Agreed. Did you find anything else, Shale?”
“Well, yes, actually. It was down on the sandy beach. I spent a lot of time pretending to be a log.” She shivered. “I’m glad we waited until summer to have this war, I’ll tell you. If the water had been cold on top of the rain, I don’t think I would have made it back.
“Anyway, I floated in the surf until I was sure there was nobody around, and then I started up the beach. The tide was coming in, and I noticed that just above the water line the sand was terribly churned up. I felt it with my toes. Higher up the beach still, on the shore edge, the end of the churned area was marked by a ridge of wet sand.”
“Someone was digging,” Foam said.
“Exactly! Someone—or rather a lot of people—had been systematically digging along the beach. They had started on the western edge and worked their way east; it had only just started raining then, and you could tell that the piles of sand on the west were much dryer than the stuff over toward the middle. So my question was, What were they digging for? And I thought to myself, if I were from the forest, and had forty troops to use, maybe I would—”
“Clams!” Foam cried.
“—mine the beach for my food. I would pick an area and dig through it, brushing the sand off anything I found.”
“They are a clever people,” Seven said.
“But it gave me an idea. If Foam could take us in, I think there is a way we can use that store of clams I set out to rot this afternoon.”
Foam whistled. “Of course! You’re going to plant them there, to be mined tomorrow!”
Seven laughed. “Ingenious. But won’t it be obvious? No, no, of course not.”
“The tide’s coming up,” Shale finished. “Our footprints and our holes will be covered by morning. Bu
t when the tide ebbs tomorrow afternoon, and they go digging through the next section of beach, they should find a beautiful selection of red ribbons and bad bluebacks. The bluebacks shouldn’t be gamy enough to be obvious, not after only one day, but they’ll be spoiled, no doubt about it.” She shivered. “Brr! Back in the water again! But this time I want Seven to come with me.”
“Why him? I can plant clams as well as anyone, I think.”
Shale patted Foam on the arm. “No offense. I’m not taking Seven along to dig holes. But the shells may rattle, or I might make a noise digging. If a sentry comes down to investigate, it seems wise to have Seven there to . . . be there.”
“Fine,” Foam growled. “Makes sense. Hey ho, Foam to the rescue.”
Foam sailed as close in as he dared. Then Seven and Shale undressed, took the bag of clams, and slipped overboard, leaving him behind.
The boat rocked and the rain fell. Alone in the darkness Foam discovered a small bitter anger like a splinter in his heart. He had let himself be left behind again.
He was angry at himself, not Seven or Shale. He only got what he deserved. He worried his hurt, poking and prodding it like a scab, taking satisfaction from the pain. He had earned it—feckless Foam, Sharp’s worthless son.
A gust of wind made the sails cough and he hauled the sheet tight. By the time the sails fell silent he had learned one other thing: the pain was not new. He had been living with it every idle day and every long night for many, many years. He had just, somehow, never noticed it before.
Stone always said, “Use your waist to pull nets, not your arms!” And Foam, like every other young man, had repeated it back to him a hundred times. And then one day he suddenly realized he only had to use his waist to pull.
So it was with this anger. He had been down before, and complained before, and felt bitter before. How many times had his own uselessness clouded his heart? How many times had he seen the slight in a young woman’s eyes, or noticed that older men never came to him for help? How many times had he pointed out that the village built a ship for Rope, but not for him. ‘ “Just to make me mate!” he had cried, joking. “You were an afterthought, skipper.” But the joke was on him and he knew it. You can only play the fool so long, Foam thought, before the fool is all that’s left.