Clouds End

  Rope shuffled back into the crowd, miserably aware that he was far too huge to escape attention. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Jo cackled.

  Biting her lip to keep a straight face, Brook nodded, and they hurried for the nearest pathway out. Ivy trailed behind them, casting a last mournful glance at a table swathed in garish scarves.

  Just when they thought they had left the whole incident behind, a trim young fellow caught up with them, breathing hard, and tapped Rope on the back. “Sir!” he cried.

  “Spit,” Rope groaned. The messenger was dressed in a livery of gold silk, with a scarlet slash across his chest.

  The young man bowed deeply and then held out a leather pouch that bulged and clinked as if stuffed with seashells. “If it please you, my master sends this as a token of his gratitude, and bids me say that should you ever want for employment, you have only to present yourself to him at his home.”

  “Uh, oh, I don’t think that—oof!”

  Rope glared at Jo, who had thrown a wicked elbow into his side. “I mean, thanks,” he said, taking the bag as if grasping a snake. “Oh, by the way, who is your master?”

  Instead of answering, the young man blinked, barked with laughter, cast Rope an admiring glance, and trotted back the way he had come, shaking his head and chuckling all the way.

  “You know, Rope, about trying not to be too obvious—” Brook began.

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Now, listen carefully,” Jo said, hefting the leather pouch. She drew out a small disc of ironwood, elaborately etched with a metallic bronze dye. “This is money. You can trade it for food, clothing, or whatever else you want.”

  “Why?” Rope asked.

  Jo shrugged. “It is the custom here. It is difficult to carry a deer from the forest to the market. So the hunter takes a token which represents the deer, and trades that instead.”

  “Who would be so stupid as to take the token?” Rope persisted. “You can’t eat wood.”

  “Clearly. But you can trade it to the fruit vendor, in exchange for apples.”

  Rope snorted and shook his head. “This will only work as long as you can find people foolish enough to accept these tokens. What good are they, if you are out in the forest?”

  “No good at all,” Jo conceded, “but near the cities they are very useful indeed, for everyone has agreed, under the edict of the Emperor, to be fools together.”

  Brook said, “You mean you have no choice but to trade your real things for tokens?”

  “Precisely.”

  They had entered another clearing. All around them shopkeepers extolled their goods: roasted nuts, dyed fabric, musical instruments, pipes and things to smoke in them. On their left an engraver displayed a selection of prints; to their right, two customers sat patiently in a beauty salon.

  “I suppose it could work,” Rope said, still pondering the woodlanders’ odd trading system, “if everyone agreed to it at once. But it must change people, to deal with tokens instead of things.”

  Ivy studied the coins intently, rubbing them between her palms as if trying to warm her hands.

  “Of course,” Jo said. “There are men, and rich men too, who spend all their days collecting tokens—and won’t buy things because it would mean giving the tokens up.”

  Rope laughed in amazement. “Money must be one of the Singer’s inventions.”

  “Oh?”

  “ ‘Things are truest, but nothing is what it appears to be,’ ” Rope said. “So a token becomes the essence of a deer, although it looks like a disc of hard, heavy wood. The Singer’s power is to make her stories come true. I can think of no better example of her style than convincing everyone first to be fools together, and then creating men who gain power and wealth because they are greater fools than their fellows. Foam would love it here!”

  “And Shale would hate it!” Brook added.

  Shaking his head, Rope wandered over to inspect the engraver’s table. A tall man with the distinctively overbred Cedar air about him, the engraver explained that he etched woodblock portraits of passers-by with strong acids, then sold them along with ink and printing instructions. To the side of his table were other etchings: trees, animals, children, and a framed poem:

  “Good work,” Rope said.

  The printmaker spread hands stained purple, black, and crimson. “Rarely are people satisfied, for I must use unfashionably strong lines,” he complained, “and these are querulous times. Furthermore, the acid stinks, and the inks I require are from southern provinces now threatened by the Fire. I am seeking a new profession. Tell me, what do you do?”

  “Sail, mostly. Fish some.”

  The printer eyed him askance. “Strange occupations! You must be one of the bargemen of Willow. It is said they prefer sleeping on the water to sleeping in trees! I am curious to know if this is true.”

  Rope gulped at his own stupidity. “Oh, the two are not really so different,” he said quickly. “In one you are rocked by the water, and in the other you are swayed by the wind.”

  The printer nodded; acid had left white spatters on his sunken cheeks. “Aptly put! . . . How unfortunate that the tedious demands of sustenance force me to break off our conversation and attend to these uninteresting yet wealthy persons approaching my stall,” he lamented, turning to face a gaggle of prospective customers with a smile.

  Ivy stood dazzled before a clothier’s rack. So many materials, so many colors! Crimson, topaz, lavender, marigold, sable: a drunkard’s rainbow. Smiling, Brook joined her, exclaiming over the selection. Before she left, she pressed an ironwood coin into Ivy’s hand. “You did well to get us here,” she said warmly. “You deserve this.”

  Ivy’s eyes lit up. She snatched up a pair of pink gloves and twisted a red-gold scarf around her neck. “Anything but greens and browns!” Soon she was decked in bright cloths, and her neck and wrists clattered with chunky woodland jewelry.

  “The Arbor is nothing like Delta,” Rope complained. “Too dark, too twisty, too cramped!” He halted at the door of a smoke shop and peered inside; pipes hung like strange fruit from the leafy walls within. “These people have many odd customs, but none stranger than these—pipes, you called them? You crush a plant, set it on fire, and then suck in the smoke! Toolishness! How dare they light fires in this drought?”

  “Why did we land on Shale’s island?” Brook replied. “Sometimes you want what isn’t good for you.”

  “And where do we piss?” Rope asked. Several people turned and stared. “I mean, the whole city is so—tended.”

  Brook found Ivy lingering at the door of a coiffurie. “Shall we go in?”

  “Could we?”

  Brook took her arm and laughed. “That’s what the Arbor is about!”

  There were two other customers already inside, a young woman getting her hair lacquered and an older man having a tattoo removed by a careful technician with a syringe of acid. The sour, burning smell reminded Brook of the clouds of blue vapor in Delta. Her heart raced. She imagined Foam’s dapper beard eaten away. Shale’s sharp face pitted and burned.

  An attendant approached them. Gleaming implements dangled from her belt: a slender wooden spatula, a set of coarse combs and fine brushes, two bulbous syringes, a pair of scissors, and a thin metal hook. “How may we serve you?”

  Ivy looked questioningly at Brook.

  “I think this lady would like her hair cut,” Brook said.

  Ivy’s hand flew to hold her long hair, tucked into the back of her shirt. “Oh. I really don’t think so.”

  The attendant nodded, considering. “You are right. Why bother cutting? These pretty provincial faces have their own sort of unpolished charm. Who would notice the enhancement?”

  Ivy hesitated. “You think it would make a difference?”

  The attendant shook her head. “Nothing that would be noticed in the provinces. You could tell, of course, but how many others would notice? Unless you intend to stay in the Arbor, of course.”

&
nbsp; Ivy studied the next customer’s hair, which had been sculpted to a smooth bulb. Topiary, Brook thought.

  “In the Arbor we have a way of taming living things,” the attendant said, gesturing to one of the chairs. “Shall I show you how it is done?”

  Only as the steel bit into Ivy’s long hair did her eyes cloud and close. Long brown tresses slithered to the floor. All trace of the magic woodland spirit had gone, all mystery. In her place was a gawking country girl, weighed down under gaudy clothes and cheap jewelry. Above her head were paths made from branches, bound and twisted out of any shape of nature to serve the will of men.

  Brook passed Ivy an extra store of money and left her wreathed in schemes and compliments. They promised to meet later, but when Brook caught up with Rope and Jo, she began walking briskly away from the clearing.

  “I still need to piss,” Rope said. “Where is Ivy?”

  “I left her setting her hair,” Brook said. “I do not think we will be seeing her again.”

  “Good riddance.”

  “Lost,” Jo said. “She has strayed too far from her roots now. She will never get back.” The haunt eyed Brook suspiciously. “Why did you encourage her? Did you know the Arbor would destroy her?”

  “Perhaps we cared more for the islands than she did for the forest.” With a voice as clean and pitiless as the sea, Brook said, “I am not too proud to fight for sunshine.”

  “Clever. Tell me, does it work on haunts too? Have you used me as you did her? Binding me to Clouds End as tightly as Ash would have tied me to his trees?”

  “You were the one who called the wood spirits. If anyone had been lost to them, it would have been me.”

  “You were never in danger! I was waiting to capture them, to find out why they followed us.”

  “Or to make us take better care of you.”

  Jo’s long nails bit into her palms. “So now, even when I save you it is for my own schemes.”

  “You are not like Ivy. We really are friends,” Rope protested, blushing furiously.

  People were staring at them. Brook grabbed Jo’s arm and kept walking. “I will not beg forgiveness for trying to save my people.” Turning down a narrow sideway, she met Jo’s eyes. “Yes, we want you to help us. But that was what you wanted too. We did not mean you ill. If we befriended not the witch but the woman, can you blame us?”

  They stood there a long moment, three foreigners in the forest’s heart, while crowds of woodlanders hurried by, taking them for country simpletons. “I said once before that you were not simple,” Jo said. “You know, Shandy told me I would give you back everything I had taken. She never knew how right she was.”

  Gently, implacably, Brook said, “I think she did.”

  “Excuse me?” Rope finally asked a passer-by. “How do you take a piss in this city?”

  The stranger stopped with his head tilted to one side and one eyebrow quizzically raised. “Why, the same way you do it in the country, I believe.”

  They discovered where to relieve their bladders; they dared one another to get tattooed; they ate a succulent meal of wild pig and roasted nuts; they got lost wandering the mazy paths high above ground level and had to ask a smirking local how to get down again.

  Then sunset came, and it was time to attempt the Palace.

  A panicky kind of dread filled Brook’s heart. When she spoke she tried to keep her voice light but inside she felt brittle as twigs burning. It was terribly hot. Her heart was racing and she couldn’t get her breath. She did not want Jo to go.

  But then, Brook told herself, she doesn’t want to go either. But she has to. And you must not make it harder for her.

  They walked down many twisting ramps until at last they had fallen to the lowest, darkest level. “Dry earth beneath my feet!” Rope said. “That is a comfort.”

  “Here is the rest of the money,” Jo said abruptly. She closed Brook’s hands around the leather pouch of coins.

  Words jammed in Brook’s throat. The iron resolve she had felt watching Ivy lose herself had utterly deserted her. She blushed; love made her awkward. “I want to say, say that—”

  “Not now!” Jo snapped. “Not yet! I promise long goodbyes when the time comes.” She strode toward the middle of the city, leaving Brook between tears and murder.

  “Well,” Rope said, clapping Brook on the back. “It could have been worse. It could have been me making a fool of myself.”

  “Your turn next time,” Brook growled. “Don’t let her get too far ahead.”

  There were no guards before the tunnel that led into the Palace grounds.

  “I do not like the look of this at all,” Jo said.

  “Why would the guards all leave at sunset?”

  “Because nobody would dare the grounds after dark,” Rope guessed unhappily. “I don’t like to think why.”

  The tunnel through the Inner Wall was dim and ominous, clogged with honeysuckle and lilac. “It’s so hot,” Brook muttered. She was ashamed to find how glad she was that it was Jo who had to go into that sinister perfumed darkness.

  “Come on!” the haunt hissed. Brook’s heart stopped. Jo strolled toward the archway. “I smell magic so thick I can hardly breathe. I may have to get to the Palace without shifting.” She tapped a long fingernail on the sword at Rope’s hip. “In which case, I will need your help.”

  “I can’t use this, you know.”

  Jo shrugged. “You can keep someone busy for a moment while I run. What is the matter? Losing your nerve?”

  Rope grunted. “Never had any.”

  “I thought the islands mattered to you.”

  “I didn’t say we weren’t coming. I just said I wasn’t happy about it.” He squinted up at the wall. “Trees!” He swore venomously. “All right. Let’s go.”

  Jo waited until the lane was deserted, and then stepped into a blackness that smelled of lilacs. Rope followed, then Brook. Soon Jo and Rope were almost at a standstill: dark blots ahead of Brook, framed in weakly glowing blossoms. Trailing creepers twisted around Brook’s neck and limbs. The air was hot and sweet, thick as honey. She tried to run forward but vines clutched at her. Rope’s voice seemed faint and far away. She called out for him but his name died in her throat. Creepers crawled through her hair and clung as tight as Ivy’s fingers around her wrist, leeching out her core. She was soil shaken from a plucked root.

  Then Rope had drawn his sword and slashed away the fronds. Like snowflakes, white blossoms fell to the ground and were extinguished. A hot breeze broke open the cloying scent of honeysuckle. Brook gasped and stumbled from the tunnel. Rope sheathed his sword and held her close.

  “I was drowning in flowers. I couldn’t breathe.” She hugged him convulsively, as if she could take from him what the vines had stolen. “I thought I was going to die.”

  Rope kissed the top of her head, giving her his strength. Looking over Brook’s shoulder, he saw Jo standing in the moonlight, no longer a woman of the forest. Her flesh and hair were white as blossoms. Envy stood naked in her eyes.

  “Charming,” she said, brushing back her pale hair. It floated like cobwebs in the moonlight. A drowsing bee rose from amongst the strands; another followed, crawling over her shoulder and buzzing back into the honeysuckle. A shell bracelet clicked around her wrist, as it had when they met on Shale’s island. Rope had never told Brook that Jo had offered herself to him. He had barely told himself how much he wanted her.

  They stood at the edge of the Palace grounds. Behind them the glowing bronzewoods bled emberlight into the purple dusk. The Arbor’s inner walls formed a six-sided court. At its heart stood the Palace, a drop of honey gleaming at the center of a comb. Light welled from its shuttered windows like tears through black lashes.

  In the darkness between the Palace and the walls, strange shapes loomed, cut from the flesh of living trees. Above them hung a vast tipping egg. To their left, a swan with a serpent’s head; to their right, yew had been formed into broken walls and toppled columns. “Living ruins,?
?? Jo said. “A strange mind crawls like a spider through this grass. Do you remember what the herbalist said? A certificate from Garden himself. I do not think I wish to meet the Gardener of the Palace grounds.” She closed her eyes, and began to shift, flesh contracting, turning, arms folding into wings.

  Magic made Brook dizzy, like a drug in her blood, as it had when Jo first landed on Clouds End and stole her form. How wild it was, she thought. How close to madness.

  Jo’s eyes snapped open and she staggered to the ground. Where her fingers touched, they burrowed into the earth. Her feathers wavered into leaves and her scream became only the hiss of wind in her branches.

  Rope leapt forward and wrestled the haunt back into the archway. Her hands tore out of the earth trailing long white rootlets. Dirt dropped from between her toes and fingers. She clung to him in panic, listening for his humanity. Slowly, very slowly, her body lengthened, became softer and more solid, fleshed and covered with skin. She blinked. “Then again, perhaps I will walk,” she gasped.

  “What happened?”

  The haunt shook her head. “There are strong enchantments here.” She reached down, gently probing the soles of her feet with her fingers. “Someone, or something, has been working the Palace grounds for a very long time.”

  Perched on Rope’s shoulder, Net swayed back and forth uneasily; ripples washed along his strands. He tingled as he brushed Rope’s cheek.

  Brook fingered her shell bracelet, needing to touch something shaped by the honest sea. “Then I guess we walk to the Palace together,” she said. It was better to suggest it herself than to face her own cowardice when Rope volunteered.

  Jo nodded. “I hoped you would not have to come this far, but I think you are right.”

  Holding his sword before him, Rope stepped into the gloom. The dry grass cracked and whispered beneath his boots. “Straight for the center?”

  Jo was walking on his left. “We can try.” She looked up at the giant egg, then to the ruined wall on their right.

  “It’s a maze,” Brook said.

  Beneath their feet the dry grass hissed and sparked. The waning moon rose over the edge of the Arbor. You will come back to me, Jo, it said.