Finder's Shore (9 page)

The barmaid returns, breaking the silence as she thumps another mug of ale and an even greasier-looking pie onto the table. I watch her back as she flounces away.

“Why did you come?”

I pitch my voice low. “Vidya, Dev’s community, wants to establish contact with Dunnett: maybe trade with the island.” Even as I say it, I know it’s not the truth, not for me. “I came to find you.”

Ty says nothing.

“I can help you.”

He reaches for the pie and stuffs it down, then drinks half the ale in a single gulp. When he’s done he wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “I have to get back. I’m already late.” He finishes the ale and pushes to his feet.

“You don’t have to go back.”

Ty stares for a moment then shakes his head. “Hope’s the last thing I need, Ness. Abelton taught me that three years ago.” He turns away.

I trail him out of the tavern. “Ty.”

He doesn’t look back. Tears well in my eyes as he rounds the corner of the lane. Behind me the door opens and a man jostles against me. “Sorry, young miss.” He reaches out to steady me, his hand locking around my arm.

“What —”

He pulls me sideways, away from the door. A second man stuffs a stinking kerchief over my mouth and together they tow me into an alley at the side of the 
building. I kick and struggle, and get my mouth free long enough to scream for my brother, then there’s an explosion in my head. As I gasp at the pain, something is shoved between my teeth and I gag. Rough hands on my arms drag me through a twisting maze of lanes, my feet stumbling to keep pace. It all happens so quickly I can’t find a way to resist. Abruptly I’m pressed against a wall, a moment later, bundled through a doorway. A hand in my back shoves me forward and I realise, too late, there are steps. Hard edges batter me as I fall, while behind me the door slams, closing me into darkness.

There’s no part of me that doesn’t feel bruised. My arm, my hip, my knees. Slowly I gather myself together. Moving hurts only fractionally more than staying still. My injuries mostly came from the stairs — mercifully there were only a few, and a mattress at their base. The dank air and darkness press heavily against me. Nothing is broken. One side of my face feels aching and numb at the same time: a distant part of my brain notes it as a curiosity.

I have no idea who’s taken me, or why. Fear reaches icy fingers through the dark, Colm’s face rearing up before me. With a little hiccough of dread, I curl myself small, wrapping my arms around me to try to still my trembling.

Time is impossible to measure. It could be minutes or hours later that I hear steps beyond my prison. The door rattles and light floods into the room. I shutter my eyes against its glare, pushing myself along the mattress till my back comes up against a wall.

“Well now.” I don’t know the voice, high and thin. 
“Duggan said he had a prize, and for once he weren’t lying. What’s yer name?”

I squint, trying to see around the flare of the man’s lantern.

“Answer me, girlie. I ain’t known for patience.”

“Becky,” I tell him.

“Becky.” He rolls the word round his mouth. “You shouldn’t be messing with what don’t belong to you, Becky.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yeah, ya do.” As he leans forward I see his face, sharp as a rat’s with a nose that beaks forward below narrow-set eyes. “That boy you was talking to belongs to Abelton, limb and hide. And Abelton don’t take kindly to people messing with his property.”

“You’ve no right to keep me here. My father will report you to the Council.” My voice can’t quite hold the edge of outrage I’m wanting.

He laughs in a wheezing hiss. “The Council is it? Abelton’ll be interested to hear your plaint. And I don’t think he’ll much care if you’re not in mint condition.” His hand closes on my ankle. I lash out, my heel catching him in the ribs. He stumbles back and drops the lantern. Its glass smashes on the floor, the light gone. I scuttle sideways, my hands searching for something, anything, I can use as a weapon.

The man’s cursing tells me where he is. My fingers find a length of wood. I jerk it up before me.

“She-cat,” he mutters. “Puss-puss. Here now.” He laughs again. 

I swing my makeshift club in an arc, aiming for the voice. The wood connects, and his cursing takes on a more urgent tone. “You’ll regret that, ya little —”

I swing again, feeling the solid weight of the blow as it meets flesh. There’s a crash. My breathing is ragged. I weave the club before me. Boots thud on the stairs then a broad shaft of light shows me a filthy cellar and my attacker, one hand held against his face, blood spewing between his fingers. I dart towards the opening, tripping on the first step, my momentum carrying me onward so that I reach the landing on my knees just as my captor slams the door in my face. My hands grope for a handle but the door is bolted from the outside. I pound my fists against it, earning myself a splinter from the rough wood.

Fear replaces my fury. I’m trapped, and I don’t doubt that my gaoler, whoever he is, will be back. I slump against the door, the floor cold beneath me. How long will it be before he returns? I think of Hetti and dread crawls through me. Perhaps he won’t be alone. Perhaps —

“Ness.” The whisper, fine as a cobweb, comes from close by my cheek. I turn my ear to the crack at the edge of the door. “Ness, are you there?”

“I’m here.” I know the voice.

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to break the lock. Be ready to run.”

Heart racing, I clamber to my feet and step aside from the door. There’s a scraping sound then the wrench of tearing metal. Another, and a thud. The door swings open. “Come on.” 

I scramble through, my eyes fixed on my brother.

He pulls the door closed behind me and, fingers curled around my wrist, tows me into the shadows that hug the side of the building. My skin jitters with nerves as we dart across one alley and down another. At the sound of voices, Ty bundles me into a doorway. The door gives behind us. It’s an old warehouse, long disused. The smell of mould clogs my nose as Ty leads me deeper into the building.

The light that filters through its boarded up windows slants in bars across the littered floor. At the rear of the space, a door sags from its hinges. Ty edges it wide with his boot. The room beyond is empty save for furniture shunted into a broken heap and a rat that scurries swiftly out of sight as we enter. A narrow window overlooks an alleyway, crammed with rubbish. Ty leans against the wall beside it.

I meet his gaze. “How did you find me?”

“I heard you call, but by the time I got back you were gone.” He shrugs. “I knew you couldn’t be far away. When I saw Welp come barging out of that cellar with his face streaming blood I had a hunch you might have had a hand in it.”

“You know him?”

“I do.” His fingers tighten on the length of metal pipe in his hand. “We need to get farther away.” He glances out the window. Setting his pipe aside he begins to drag broken timbers from the mounded rubble.

I’ve begun to wonder about Ban and what he’ll do when he can’t find me, when my brother hands me a 
half-filled sack. “We’ll attract less attention if we look as if we have a purpose.” He eyes me critically. “Have you something you can wrap around your hair?”

I pull out my knife and slash a strip from the bottom of my skirt, binding my hair within it. Ty smears dirt across my face. I flinch as he touches the bruise. “Did they do that?”

I nod. Ty is still a moment, then he turns to pick up his metal pipe. “I’m sorry I didn’t get there sooner,” he says, and rams the pipe through the window clasp. The noise it makes as it tears from the wood makes me flinch. I shrug his apology aside.

Pushing the window wide, Ty lowers his stack of boards into the alley then swings a leg over the frame. “Bring the sack,” he says, and disappears.

I feel sluggish and stupid. Perhaps it’s the shock of seeing my brother, perhaps the blow to my head. Ty is waiting outside the window. I hand the sack through and climb after. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere safer than this.”

Ty adds his bar to my sack then stoops to gather the wood, balancing it over his shoulder. I duck clear as he turns. “Stay behind me and keep your eyes down. If anyone stops me, keep on as if you don’t know me.”

The street beyond the alley feels crowded with people, though it’s probably no more than a handful. I watch the roadway and my brother’s feet, a few paces ahead. The sack is heavier than it looks and my bruised hip and knees complain with each step. Ty leads me through half a dozen streets, stopping at last in a narrow lane bounded 
by high walls. He dumps the boards with a clatter. I drop the sack beside them. “Are we near the harbour?” I ask.

Shaking his head he cups his hands and boosts me over the wall. It’s an old churchyard, the markers tilted at sad angles, their commemorations obscured by time. The pipe lands beside me, then my brother. Inexplicably, he grins. “This way.”

We wend between the gravestones until we reach a derelict mausoleum. Its fence has fallen, its little gate lying flat. Ty pushes through the ivy that clings to the walls. Where a section of iron fence has fallen inward against the squat building there’s a triangular gap, large enough for us both. “We can rest here.”

I sink down beside him, my back against the cold stone of the tomb.

“At the cellar,” Ty says, without looking at me. “Did Welp hurt you? Beyond that bruise on your face.”

“He would have, but I got in first.”

Ty laughs, and the sound takes me back to our childhood so that I want to swing him up in my arms and hug him. I study my little brother, taller than me by a head. “I’ve missed you,” I say.

Ty’s face loses its humour. He doesn’t meet my eyes as he nods. Beyond our refuge I can hear the hum of an insect and, more distant, the rhythmic clang of a hammer. Perhaps we’re near a forge.

“What will your friend do when he can’t find you?”

“Ban? Report back to Wilum, I expect.” And Malik. I wince at the thought of his reaction. “We need to get to Beaton Lane as soon as we can.” 

Ty scrapes the heel of his boot against the stone, ploughing a line through the leaf mould. “It’s on the far side of Dunn. It’d be safer to get out of town.”

“I have to find Malik — he came ashore with me. If we wait until dark we’ll surely be able to get to the harbour without being seen.”

“The longer we wait, the bigger the risk. As soon as Welp finds you’re gone, he’ll have people out looking.” He pauses to consider, one leg jigging. “If he links me with your disappearance, there’s a chance he’ll go straight to Colm.”

“He knew I’d seen you,” I admit. “He said I’d no right to speak to you, that you were Abelton’s property. Ty, I’m sorry.”

He sloughs my apology aside. “Leave it, Ness. Do you think there’s any chance that he knew who you were?”

“No. I told him my name was Becky.”

He gives a satisfied grunt. “Likely he’ll report to Abelton, then, rather than Colm, and Abelton’s as dense as three-day-old porridge. It should be easy enough to convince him you’re just some girl with a fancy for me.”

It takes me a minute to understand what he’s saying. “Ty, you’re not thinking of going back?”

He looks at me square. “If we both disappear, even Abelton will work it out. But if I go back, confess to meeting a girl and let him think what he likes about where I’ve been for the intervening hours, it’ll give you time to get away.”

“What about you? You’ll be trapped.”

“No more than I am already. It’ll earn me a whipping, 
but I’m owed that already, for being late.”

“No! Ty, there’s no need. We’ve a boat at the harbour, and a ship waiting off shore. Dev is on board and he’ll welcome you — they all will. Vidya’s nothing like Dunnett.” Even as the words spill from my mouth, images from the fighting at Ebony Hill unspool in my mind. But Ty will be safe in the city: safe, and with me. “Abelton must be as much a bully as Colm, to whip you for no more than being late,” I add.

My brother makes a raw noise in his throat. “He treats his tithed workers like animals — worse: I wouldn’t misuse an animal such a way. I’d be glad to see him dead.”

My eyes fly to his face. It’s surely bad luck, in a graveyard, to talk so blithely of dying. “Come with us.”

“I can’t just run away, Ness.” As I did. The words hang between us, unspoken. He shifts a little, easing his shoulders against the stone. “I have to talk to Sophie. She has to know what Colm is really like.”

The light that filters through our ivy wall dulls as clouds cross the sun. “Besides,” Ty adds, “if I disappear, Colm will take it out on Marn.”

“We could come back for them.” Even as I say it, I wonder whether it’s true; whether the governors would indulge such a request; whether even Farra would support it. I straighten my spine. “I’m not leaving without you, Ty. Either we both leave or we both stay.” I look at him straight. “It’s your choice.”

The day has begun to shred into evening when we creep out of the graveyard. The sea fog I remember from 
Leewood has drifted in off the ocean, its tendrils creeping like searching fingers along the streets.

Ty leads me inland, the smell of the tanneries fading as we make our way cautiously around the fringe of the town. Sound is oddly flattened, and innocent objects loom disconcertingly in the fog. My head has begun to pound by the time Ty pulls me into the lee of a building. “We’re above the old harbour,” he whispers.

I breathe deep, searching the dank air for a hint of the sea, but it’s something else that tugs at my memory: a smell of leather and old rope and rosin — my father’s smell. A hand closes on my shoulder.

“You’re a deal of trouble,” Wilum says.

Ty spins around, his length of pipe in his hand. Wilum’s teeth flash. “And you’ll be the brother.”

“It’s Merryn’s friend,” I say quickly. Ty lowers his weapon.

“This way,” Wilum says. “No noise now.”

We follow him through a tangle of lanes. With the sea fog thick about us, I soon lose all sense of direction. “Are we going to the harbour?” I ask, my voice a hoarse whisper.

He turns his head. “They’ve posted guards. You’re lucky I found you before they did, if that’s where you were heading.”

“We were going back to Beaton Lane. Where’s Malik?”

“Gone.” He raises a hand to still my questions. “Enough now.”

The fog thins as we leave the paved roadway and begin to climb. When we reach the hilltop, I turn. Below us the 
town is hidden within a dense sheath of cloud. Wilum leads us across the hill and down into a gully thick with bracken that snarls our steps. The slope beyond is steep, my breath coming in sharp gasps by the time we reach the crest. I take a grip on Wilum’s arm. “Where are we going?”

“Cove over the next hill,” he says, and marches on.

Ty touches my arm. “All right?”

I nod, and limp in Wilum’s wake.

When we top the next rise, fog lies soupy below. Wilum curses. “It’d be madness to bring a boat in.”

“Malik, do you mean?”

“And Ban with him. Your friend was like a bull with his nose freshly ringed when Ban came back without you.”

I bite down on the ‘I’m sorry’ that lines up on my tongue. I seem to have done nothing but apologise ever since I arrived back on Dunnett.

“I persuaded him to shift your boat away from the town, and lucky I did. Colm’s men missed them by a whisker.” Wilum sighs, sucking at his teeth. “I promised I’d find you and bring you here. For all the good that’ll do.”

I lick my lip, tasting salt. “How long till it clears?”

“The haar? Could be gone by morning or last for days,” he says. “Long enough for Colm to realise he might want to widen his search.”

I can’t think for tiredness. The mournful cry of a seabird pierces the fug in my brain — but it seems out of place somehow. Wilum grunts. The sound comes again, short then long, like a bird drawing predators away from its chicks.

“Ban,” Wilum mutters, and sets off down the slope, 
my brother and I trailing after.