Clouds End

  “You called me traitor first.” Brook rubbed her throat. “This isn’t like seeing who will walk into the leech pond first, Shale. What we do next has to be for the good of everyone. And maybe the cost of saving the islands is to be hated by our people.”

  “That won’t be hard,” Jo remarked. “The people of the sea find it easy to hate what they don’t understand.”

  “I think Brook could do without you on her side,” Foam observed.

  “What’s to stop Twist from taking what he wants?” Brook said. “Do you see something hidden from me, or are you speaking only with your heart?”

  “Brook may be right,” Rope said unhappily.

  Brook looked at him. “If I told you to help Twist, you would do it, wouldn’t you? And feel like a traitor for it.”

  “Is that what we should do?”

  The hot night lay on Brook like an animal.

  It would be simpler to resist. Let someone else make the sacrifice of treason. She shook her head, marvelling. Here she was, willing to risk thousands of lives to avoid angering her friends. Cowardice. Cowardice masked as loyalty. She wondered what Shandy would do.

  A breeze slid across the windowsill, listening to their quarrel. Shadows jerked across the ceiling as a torchbearer passed along the street below.

  Two soldiers muttered beneath their window. “. . . night.” “Heard . . . news?” “. . . peror.” “Orders . . . arm . . . every man . . . islands!” “. . . lost it!”

  Brook lifted her head off the bed and shook Shale’s shoulder until her friend grunted and stared back at her, eyes narrow with anger.

  “I find your comments on the Emperor . . . intriguing.”

  Brook cupped a hand around her ear and gestured to the window.

  “Chopping’s a fair topic for the woodsman.”

  “Like it or not, those are the orders.”

  “Rope. Foam. Listen,” Brook said.

  “They’re only islanders, after all.”

  “And a babe that miscarries is not yet a child. But pruning is for trees, not for people. I cannot call it civilized.”

  “The Emperor’s wishes are civilized by axiom.”

  “Lopping off their arms?”

  “No man likes it, but Palm is already cinders and I hear that Vine is burning. Which pigeon here will complain to the hawk? There are Thorns in the city, don’t forget.”

  “I heard the emperor had taken the Spark and now I believe it. I don’t envy these sea-born bastards, I tell you.”

  “And I cannot love them. I am on watch here in a moment. Nothing to do but sit at the bottom of the stairs all night, lose a little more money to Cherry Gall.”

  “You aren’t playing with his dice, surely?”

  Laughter. Farewells. A lone torch went bobbing down the street, jerking its catch of shadows behind.

  Brook said, “Now you see what we have to do.” She looked at the others, their faces half-visible in the faint light of stars and torches: Rope frowning, Shale scowling.

  Foam blinked. “What was that about the Spark?”

  “The Emperor is mad. We have to go along with Twist. The risks are too horrible if we don’t.”

  “No,” Jo said. Her voice was cool as the dawn wind. No longer in the guise of an island woman, her steel eyes glinted in the starlight. “We must go to the Arbor.”

  “What? Oh, certainly,” Foam said. “Dance there, I should imagine. Disguised as a group of village idiots banded together for protection. You can be chief lunatic.”

  “Foam is right, for once. You must be . . . Mind you, it would be a journey to make songs about,” Shale added thoughtfully.

  Jo’s voice was low and assured as a distant river. “The Emperor is mad. His own army knows it. We must pull the weed out by its roots. As long as he holds power, any deal you make with the people of the forest will be caulking a bad join at best. Did you not hear? He has taken the Spark. The hungry fire is in him.” She stared at Brook. “It is better to have peace than war. But this Emperor is Sere’s shadow now. It is folly to believe war can be avoided.”

  “I am no traitor,” Brook said.

  She touched the Witness Knot around her wrist as if the right choice lay buried in its windings. “There was a Spark in the story the Singer told about the forest people.” Her meeting with the Hero seemed as distant as a dream. “But that Spark had more to do with freedom, with giving up.”

  “The Emperor desires the islands,” Jo said. “That is clear, whatever the Singer’s story may mean. You know as well as I not to trust what you hear in the Mist.”

  “We know not to trust haunts either,” Shale said.

  “After all, Bug, I’m sure it’s all true,” Foam said. “But I suspect it isn’t what it appears to be.”

  Brook could not follow the windings of the Witness Knot. And she felt, more deeply than she ever had, how lost every person was in life. The past foundered like a ship seen through long fathoms, sunk beyond all hope of salvage; the future was only clouds. Between them, life—one long breath, one breaking wave made from equal parts of luck and guesswork, of tea and lamplight and laughter and heartbreak and peppermint and tears, and hope and hope and hope—that nameless faith raised like a candle against the storm of things.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “But if my friends believe that going to the Arbor is better than helping Hazel Twist, I will do that, and be glad.”

  Foam whistled. “B-but . . . The Arbor! People of the sea aren’t meant to stray so far from the waves.”

  “People of the forest shouldn’t be landing troops in Delta either,” Rope said. “Perhaps this is a time for strange journeys.”

  “Think of it as an adventure,” Shale said.

  “So was the storm. I swore off adventures last week.” Foam spun out questions with nervous fingers. “How are we to find the Arbor? And what are we to do when we get there?”

  Jo said, “I will guide you.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Which way is the mainland?” Brook asked.

  Rope picked his way through the dark room to the window. “See the Ship? The transom star should be to the west, over the mainland.”

  “But I can see lights over there, and buildings.”

  “That’s the Sock. Delta is a triangle of three islands, remember. We are on the Foot. The country of the forest people lies to the south and west.” There was a tug on Rope’s fingers; Net had crept down from his sleeve. “We have passed through the Mist, through Sere’s fire and Fathom’s wrath. I think we were meant to go.” Net gripped him fiercely, twisting this way and that, his strands glowing luminous silver.

  A faint gust of wind swirled by Brook into the night and she shivered. “Magic,” she said. Net whirled in the breeze and then fell still.

  Shale said, “Where’s Jo?”

  “Spit! She’s changed again,” Foam said.

  “She will be back,” Brook said. “She has uses for us yet.”

  “She did say she would guide us,” Shale said.

  “Scouting,” Rope said. “Marking the number of guards and their posts. That sort of thing.”

  “I hope so. I didn’t much like the sound of what those soldiers were saying.” Foam made a sarcastic flourish. “Come! See the dancing toes of Rope and Foam, armless wonders who sail using only their feet! Salamanders regrow lost limbs, you know. Tragically—”

  “Shut up, Foam. Do you think this is helping?”

  Tramping footsteps climbed the stairs. “Prisoners fall out,” a rough voice called. “Commander’s orders.”

  “Helping? I’m too busy being terrified to worry about helping.”

  The door flew open. “You don’t let people get a lot of sleep,” Rope said.

  Halfway down the stairs, unseen, Commander Twist said, “Bring them.”

  * * *

  A clump of guards stood to attention in front of the house. “Two will be enough. These people are not warriors.” Twist pointed at two men, who stepped forward.


  The other sentries clustered around the doorway. “Duties, Commander?”

  Twist hesitated. “No further duties. Take the night off. We have earned a little rest, I think.”

  “Thank you, sir!”

  The soldiers watched Twist leave with the prisoners. “The old man’s been tipping back a bit too much brandy,” one murmured. The others laughed quietly.

  Twist led, followed by a slender guard, tall for one of the forest people. Then came the islanders. Then the second guard.

  The night air was stifling, a hank of hot damp cloth pressed against their faces. Soldiers laughed in the streets. Deltans crept from doorway to doorway, vanishing before the guards’ torches like roaches running from the light. Jo, Jo, Brook thought bitterly. You couldn’t have picked a worse time to leave. She wished desperately for a breath of wind. The stars ran at their edges in the humid night.

  “The docks,” Twist said.

  “Sir?”

  “The docks, take us to the docks! Can’t you hear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There’s someone on the next island I think our guests should meet.”

  Shale glared. “What does that mean, you eel-sucking old man?”

  The front guard said, “Careful, poppet. Them Thorns now are real pricks.”

  The other guard laughed unpleasantly.

  “What’s a Thorn?” Rope asked.

  The rear guard shoved him in the back and sent him sprawling. “Shut up.”

  Twist turned to the guard. Hesitated. Looked at Rope. “Your questions will be answered soon enough.”

  “Hey, Gall!” a rough voice called from the darkness. “This sea gull shit giving you trouble?”

  The rear guard grinned and kicked Rope to his feet. “Ah damn! I stepped in it.” A round of chuckles swept the street. Rope struggled to catch up with the others, limping and grasping the back of his thigh.

  Off-duty soldiers began to follow them. Rope felt their contemptuous eyes. Too many, too many. Maybe later they could escape, maybe in the boat. They’d have to use a boat to get to the Sock. These people didn’t know the sea. They could be tricked, unbalanced, capsized. Outswum.

  “Hey, Gall! Don’t use them all up! Save some for us.”

  “Ah, hunt your own. These are mine, on commander’s orders.”

  “And mine!”

  “Tell me, can you shit in midstride?” Shale asked the taller guard. “There must be some use for walking assholes.”

  “Sing, little bird. Sing while you can.”

  Twist was grimly silent.

  Images bobbed in the jerking torchlight: a leer or a scowl or a smooth, pale face; a disembodied hand, fingers curled around a knife.

  A soldier fell in next to them. “How about it, Gall?” he whispered. “Give us a taste?” Before Gall could reply, the newcomer snaked his foot around to trip Shale. She stumbled, whirled, and kicked him hard in the shin. He swore and lunged at her, breaking into the knot of islanders. The mob swirled closer.

  “You! Gall! Stop this!” Twist demanded, voice quavering. Gall grabbed the soldier from behind, pinning his arms. Shale seized her chance and kicked him in the balls.

  Then several screams burst out at once. Bodies bent like grass flattened by the wind.

  Cherry Gall’s eyes widened in wonder. “Sh-sh-sh-shit!”

  Where seconds before there had been a cluster of forest soldiers, four corpses lay in the street. A fifth man crawled slowly backwards on his hands and knees. His elbow stuck out the wrong way from his arm.

  Hazel Twist knelt in a ring of dead men, shrieking thinly into the pavement. A red-cloaked figure knelt over him, holding a sword under his throat. With his other hand he held Twist’s arm high up behind his back. The stranger’s wrists were cabled with muscle. Blood dripped from his fingers. “If anyone moves, he dies.” The hand locked around Twist’s wrist moved, almost imperceptibly. Twist twitched and screamed.

  Torches choked and flickered in the sudden silence.

  “Seven.” Cherry Gall could not look away from the dead bodies that lay like jetsam scattered on the cobbled street. “You must be Seven.”

  Other islanders had come up behind the cloaked man, armed with clubs and axes.

  “Now we can talk.” He shifted his grip on Twist’s arm, who shrieked again.

  “I am not Twist!”

  The commander’s head began to jerk and flow, sliding away from the sword-blade like quicksilver. For an endless moment everyone watched Twist dissolve, melting under his astonished captor, shrinking, curling into a ball of white feathers. Then there was only a gull, beating its way into the sky.

  “Jo!” Rope breathed.

  The mob sprayed into violence.

  “Islanders, to me!” the swordsman yelled. Shale darted forward, dragging Foam along.

  The forest soldiers pulled out clumsy tubes and squirted jets of evil-smelling blue spray into the humid air. The islanders clutched their eyes or staggered backwards, shrieking. Their leader blocked a deadly stream with his cloak and lunged for the nearest woodlander.

  Shale and Foam followed the fleeing islanders, dodging and twisting. A point burned in the middle of Shale’s back, waiting for a spear to find her. Shouted orders and the shrieks of the dying warred in the darkness.

  Then they were at the shore. They jumped into the first boat they could find and shipped oars, thrashing the water white. No one lit the running lamps. They hit other boats twice. Swearing and creaking, a fleet of shadows pulled out into the bay. Then Delta was behind them.

  Their wake was a trail of silver. Shadowy boats on every side slid over the gently rolling sea, long oars out like water skater’s legs.

  Foam grunted, pulling hard. “Shale?”

  “Ung! Yeah?”

  He took two more strokes, getting his breath. “Where ung! are the others?”

  “You ung! didn’t see them?”

  “No.”

  Shale’s aching arms flexed, pulling her oars into a smooth, dipping slash. Oarlocks creaked and strained. She pulled her oars clear. Salt water trailed dripping from her blades into the sea. “I don’t know.” She pulled another stroke. “We’ll just have to find them later.”

  Foam rowed. “How much later?”

  But there was no way to answer that question. Foam knew it and Shale knew it too. They were rowing away from all answers, pulling with every stroke into a deepening night where the dark sea and the distant stars reflected in it were the only certain things.

  CHAPTER 8

  ROPE, BISCUITS, PEPPER

  ROPE GASPED as pain shot through his thigh. Someone tripped him and he hit the pavement hard. Blue vapor sprayed overhead.

  Cherry Gall shrieked and fell on him. Blood spurted from his severed throat and hit Rope in the face, tasting of salt and meat. Rope’s head and legs burned where the blue mist touched them. Gagging, he hid under the corpse.

  Metal bit bone, and steel clattered against steel. Rope’s cheek ground against paving stones slimed with blood. Net writhed beneath his ribs. Someone tripped over Gall’s body and Rope bit his lip to keep from crying out.

  Running footsteps echoed from every cobble. The shouts fell back toward the water. Orders were given. Farther up the hill someone beat a gong.

  Rope spat out Gall’s blood and rubbed his face on his tunic. The blue vapor had faded with the shouting. He pitched Cherry Gall off his back and took the dead man’s sword. Soldiers ran by without looking at him.

  “Brook?”

  She sat only a few paces away, hugging herself and rocking back and forth. He crawled over to her.

  A huge gull landed on the cobbles beside them, hissing and clacking. It hopped away, heading for the nearest alley. They followed, crawling around corpses, then staggering down to one of the smaller docks.

  Clumsy with fear, they untied a small launch and set sail for the mainland. Behind them, Delta’s night was stitched with fires as torchbearing soldiers raced through the streets.

  Ar
ound the angry city the black sea curled, deaf to gongs and orders, deep as the night. It bore them far out into the gulf, until only the rustling sail remained, the creaking boom, the hiss of cut water from beneath their bow. The moon’s sail bellied out, running low along the far horizon. A narrow path of shaking silver light ran across the dark water to it, glimmering, glimmering. Wholly inconstant.

  Like babes in a cradle, they lay in their boat, hidden from all eyes save those of moon and stars, and rocked into darkness by the tireless sea.

  Rope woke when they ran aground.

  The smell of salt water and dim forest mingled in the morning air. Net had crawled up his arm as he slept and now reared up on his right shoulder, swaying, grey and tremulous as a spider web. The boat tilted, pushed by the swell. Brook lay slumped across the forward thwart, still sleeping.

  There was no sign of Jo.

  The sun was not yet up. Grey light the color of driftwood lay over the world. The Sock, Delta’s southernmost island, was a dark smudge behind them. Small rollers pushed their stolen boat along the beach of a wide, shallow bay. Coarse grey sand ground beneath her hull. She had scarlet gunwales, Rope saw, and leaning over the side he read her name: Eel.

  It was low tide. The sea had drawn back from the cold beach as if wanting no part of it. Farther up, beyond the high-water mark, a jumble of grey boulders littered with bits of shattered shell lay at the base of a short cliff. Sword ferns and twisted black roots sprouted from the bluff. At its top stood a line of forbidding trees: drooping red cedars like woodlander sentinels, guarding the mainland against invasion.

  Brook opened one eye. Her right cheek was swollen by an ugly purple bruise, and clumps of her hair had fallen out where the blue spray had touched her. “I feel like a wrecked ship,” she said.

  Slowly Rope tried standing up. His legs trembled. Even his fingers ached as he took down the sail.

  Brook gasped. “What happened to you?”

  “I got kicked around. I’ve felt worse. I think.”

  “But the blood!”

  Rope touched his face. Something cracked like dried mud on his cheeks and mouth. He stroked his scabbed beard and his fingers came away red. “I don’t think it’s mine. Not much of it, anyway.”