Page 80

CHAPTER

Eighty

T HERE WERE SIGNS , in the garrison, that Tala had been there before them. Notably the three dead Hounds. And a purple-black, viscous smear on the desk. Sol. They had got this far, at least.

“This says we’re traitors.” Neema waved a piece of paper.

Cain was winching the platform back up the side of the rock. “Traitors. How ironic. You can write your own Order of Exile, Neema.”

“Fuck you,” she said, and then, “Vabras.”

The High Commander was striding along the Mirror Bridge towards them, sword in hand. In the morning light, the bridge was almost too bright to look at directly. When she had run across it, Neema had glimpsed shards of herself reflected back, her fractured geometry. Some with Cain and some without.

She slammed the garrison door shut and dragged the desk over to block it. Grabbing her pack, she swung herself through the window on to the waiting platform. Cain joined her and grasped the winch with both hands. “Stiff,” he said as he turned it, lowering them down the outer wall. The mechanism creaked, the twin pulley ropes hardened by the salt water.

Above their heads, they could hear Vabras forcing the door.

“Faster!” Neema said, gripping the rope sides of the platform.

Cain winched harder. The platform juddered beneath their feet, smacking and bouncing against the rock face, threatening to crack apart. They were not yet halfway down.

“Is now a good time to tell you that I love you?” Cain said, winching furiously.

“It’s a terrible time.”

Vabras glared down at them from the garrison window, then began hacking at one of the pulley ropes with his sword.

Cain was almost spent. Neema took over at the winch.

“Keep going, keep going,” he said. “We’re almost—”

A rope snapped.

The platform dropped violently to one side. Neema clung to the remaining pulley rope as the floor gave way. Cain swung down beneath her, gripping the rope sides of the platform with both hands. “We’ll have to jump,” he yelled up at her. “Throw your pack.”

She flung it out, then watched in horror as it slammed against the base rock, before rolling feebly into the churning sea below.

“Swing the rope out more,” Cain said. “Hurry.”

They kicked out together, pushing off from the rock face.

“I’ll have to go first,” he said, and jumped.

A pause, and then a splash. He’d made it.

Neema was alone. She couldn’t do this. She had to do this. Before Vabras cut through the second rope.

Three deep breaths, as she pushed off from the rocks. One… two…

Jump.

She wheeled through the air. Saw rocks, jagged rocks below. Nothing she could do but fall. Pray to the Eight, who could not even save themselves…

She slammed into the sea, plunging deep under the waves. Roaring confusion, the heavy press of water. Then spat out on the surface, coughing and spluttering, grabbing the nearest rock, cutting her fingers, but she didn’t care, she was alive.

Behind her, the platform tumbled down the rock face and shattered at the base.

No way for Vabras to reach them now. In his attempt to kill them he had set them free. She tried to imagine his face as he realised. Blank, of course. The Fox watching somewhere deep within. One eye open, one eye closed. Laughing.

She rubbed the stinging saltwater from her eyes, her vision smeared. Cain was clinging to a larger rock, fifteen feet away. He’d salvaged her pack. He waved at her.

She stared around at the various savage rocks she could have landed on, seeing a dozen Neemas broken upon them. “We are so lucky,” she called to him.

“We’re amazing.”

She lifted the silver pendant out. You and me.

He grinned at her.

“Now what?” she asked, as a wave rinsed over her.

“I thought I’d enjoy not being dead for a moment.”

They bobbed against their respective rocks, not daring to swim across to each other. The swell was too strong. Neema was starting to tire, the waves pushing her back and forth on to the rock, scraping her skin, bruising her body.

“The fleet’s moving off,” Cain said. And then, after a pause, “Shit. Boat’s coming.”

They sank lower in the water. “Hounds?”

“Cargo.”

“Might be heading for Armas,” she said, but she could see it now. A merchant boat with a canvas cabin, heading straight for them. An elderly man at the tiller, in overalls and a straw hat. The deck was stacked with chickens in cages.

“Maybe we can bribe them,” she said. “The crew, I mean. Not the chickens.”

But Cain was laughing, lifting himself higher in the water. “It’s Fort.”

“Are you sure?”

“That’s what he looks like when he washes. He’s alive!”

The abbot was indeed alive, thanks to the Fox. “Fill my chapel with chickens,” it had told him. “Then hide under the floor, I have made a den there.” Fort had spent the night squeezed in the coffin-sized space, while the chickens roamed free in the chapel. And when the Hounds swept the temple, it never occurred to them that someone might be hiding there, under all that squawking, flapping nonsense.

Just as the Fox had promised. “There is nothing more distracting in this world, Ishmahir, than a chicken.”

When the night had passed, Fort had bathed and combed his hair, and shaved—and the transformation was so marked, he might as well have murmured a Chameleon Spell. He’d put the chickens (protesting) back into their cages and carted them across the island without being questioned once.

And now Tala was ducking out of the cabin, gold tooth glinting as she grinned at them. She hauled Cain on to the deck along with the Bear pack. Then it was Neema’s turn, snatched from the waves and dropped on a pile of blankets. Tala hugged her.

“Get under the canvas,” Fort said.

Neema crawled across the deck into the cabin, dragging a blanket with her. Saved. Every part of her ached, the cut on her neck stung from the saltwater and she didn’t care. She collapsed down next to Cain.

Neema.

Sol was nestled inside a basket, still healing from his fight with the Hounds. Tala had tucked him up in a gingham cloth, he looked jaunty. Neema smiled at him, exhausted.

Cain wrapped his arm around her under the blankets. For a while they said nothing, thought of nothing. The night had taken almost everything from them. Ish steered the boat and Tala made tea. Neema slept on Cain’s shoulder.

When she woke he was fast asleep, still holding her. “I love you,” she murmured, in his ear.

He is asleep, Neema. He can’t hear you.

“Yes, thank you, Sol.”

You are welcome. A short pause, and then, nervous, Are we still a flock?

She looked at him, snug in his gingham cloth.

You said we were a flock before, but perhaps it was temporary? A temporary flock?

“We’re a flock,” she said. “Permanent.”

Sol gave a satisfied shuffle and pecked at his basket. Did you see me fight the Hounds, Neema?

She knew what he was waiting for. “I did. You were magnificent.”

Sol puffed up his chest. Magnificent. Yes.

Neema was feeling rested enough to wonder where they were headed. Armas? Scartown? Or further yet, into the Scarred Lands themselves? She thought of her vision, the mountain path to the Bear monastery, red flags to mark the route. A winter morning, months away—but then, it would take months to get there.

She had not seen Cain in her visions.

The thought of being separated now they had found each other again, ripped a tear in her heart. She rubbed the pendant between her fingers, Fox on one side, Raven on the other.

Cain woke up, and stretched. His hair had dried at strange angles. She smoothed it down for him. The boat crested a wave and dropped. The sun beat down on the canvas.

There would be a time for questions and plans, and arguments. Soon, before they reached land. But not now. This moment was wide as an empire and deep as the sea. This moment was golden.