Gullstruck Island (36 page)

Hathin dropped to a crouch next to the Sour girl, who was now stooping to move stones on to the path. ‘Many man,’ she explained, pointing to them, then started drawing lines between them in the dirt. ‘Pigeon . . . pigeon . . . pigeon . . .’ she murmured as she did so. ‘Pigeon . . . pigeon . . . pigeon . . . pigeon . . .’ At last she looked up at Hathin with a flushed but triumphant smile. ‘Manymany pigeon man,’ she summarized, and shrugged.

Hathin covered her mouth with her hands and stared at the network that had been drawn in the mud. It was true, then. Her hazy, newly formed suspicion had been correct.
Have you noticed that your enemies appear to know things sooner than they should?
The question had lurked in the shadowy corners of Hathin’s mind for the last week, leaving her imagination to shape theories of demonic familiars, uncanny powers.

No. There had been a simple daylight answer all along. Messages sent using pigeons. She had heard stories that they had once been used so in the old Cavalcaste lands.

A large, secret network scattered across the island, in touch with each other through pigeons. Ordinary messengers would travel too slowly along the mountain paths, and any message sent by the tidings huts would be read by the Lost. A message system that would not be affected by the deaths of the Lost. The little caged pigeons Jimboly always carried were probably meant to be dropped off with her contacts so that they could use them for messages later.

All this while, the murderers of the Lost had feared what Arilou might know or have seen – the killing of the Lost Council, perhaps, or the slaughter of the Beacon School. But while all that was happening, Arilou had been busy chasing pigeons.

She had seen ‘her’ village bullied by some strangers with weapons. She had sent her mind to follow the nasty men. And then she had seen a funny man take a pigeon out of his coat and throw it in the air, so she had followed it to see where it went. Perhaps she had forgotten her initial worry and even made a game of it, chasing messenger pigeons from contact to contact in the secret network.

This wasn’t what Hathin had originally expected or hoped to hear. It was quite different, and it was
better
. Arilou could spy on the secret network – had spied on it, without realizing it. She could tell the Reckoning where its members lived, what they looked like, where they hid their secret papers.

Breathless with excitement, Hathin ran to Therrot and recounted her discovery. ‘Therrot, we can track these murderers back using their own messengers! We’re going to find out who killed the Lost, who sent Jimboly to our village and why! We’re going to chase after
them
for a change!’ Just for a moment she felt an excited tickle in her right forearm, as though the hidden butterfly tattoo sensed that she had taken a step on the path to revenge.

And Therrot squeezed her hand in the same excitement, but when he looked in her eye his smile was uneasy, as if he saw something there that troubled him.

The next day, a handful of Sours appeared in Jealousy’s marketplace. Apparently by chance, Therrot and Hathin encountered them, and bargained in mime for the soap, trinkets, wooden goats and coconut rum in the Sours’ barrow. Both sides were stony-faced as if they had never met each other before.

Among the items handed over by the Sours was a map of Gullstruck, finely painted but marred by five small holes. Most were in the provinces, but the largest hole was in Mistleman’s Blunder.

‘Pigeon man.’ Jeljech murmured softly. There was nobody but Hathin close enough to overhear, so Jeljech tapped each of the little holes in turn, and for each gave a short description of the ‘pigeon man’ they represented. One was ‘no-hair, beak-nose, black smock’, another was ‘sing always, slow leg’. Last of all, Jeljech prodded Mistleman’s Blunder. ‘
Thisere
one many many pigeon.’

Hathin stared at the last hole. If the ‘pigeon man’ in Mistleman’s Blunder was sending so many messages, did that mean he was the hub of the conspiracy, the mastermind?

‘Pigeon man here how face?’ she asked, touching Mistle-man’s Blunder as Jeljech had done. If she could only get a description of their greatest enemy!

‘No face.’ Jeljech shrugged. ‘Laderilou say he none face.’

Jaze set off with the marked map within the hour, in search of the Reckoning.

‘I’m more likely to find them than either of you are,’ he explained as he provisioned himself with goods bought for the Superior’s ancestors. ‘You can leave the job of tracking down these underling “pigeon men” to the Reckoning. We may not be able to strike at Mistleman’s Blunder with it fortified the way it is, but let’s see how well the octopus throttles once it’s had some tentacles cut off.’ He hefted his pack on to his back, and prepared to brave the afternoon’s onslaught of rain. ‘Therrot, look after Hathin. And, both of you, try to keep a low profile from now on.’

Hathin had to agree that, in terms of keeping a low profile, setting up a haven for fugitives from the law probably hadn’t been a great start.

But at least we’re unlikely to get any more Lace joining the Stockpile
, she reassured herself.
You just don’t get many this far east
.

She was wrong. Over the next three days a further two Lace families arrived. Before the week was done, the Stockpile had doubled in size once more. And, as it did so, the new arrivals brought word of the lands they had fled.

Pearlpit, Knotted Tail, Seagrin, Eel’s Play, Wild Man’s Cradle and dozens of other Lace villages on the Coast of the Lace were gone, the houses torn down, most of the inhabitants chained by the neck and dragged off to camps like the one at Mistleman’s Blunder. Many bandits had turned bounty hunter, now that selling Lace brought in more money than brandy-runs and storehouse raids. So those few Lace that had escaped the bounty hunters had fled east. Once far inland, the lucky ones had heard rumours of a sanctuary in Jealousy . . . and had trekked for days to the Stockpile, the one place in Gullstruck where Lace might still be safe.

And when they spoke of the persecution of the Lace one name was spoken again and again, always with a bitter venom.

The Nuisance Control Officer, Minchard Prox. A man without a face.

24

Strategems and Surprises

Prox had never known happiness like this.

It was like a sort of fever, in the sense that he could not think
outside
it. Clocks spun their gleaming hands until they blurred into golden discs. Prox ate and drank what he found beside him but tasted nothing.

Only after working at his desk for fourteen hours at a stretch did he sometimes notice the cramps in his back, the iron clamp behind his eyes. He would stand and pace, pausing automatically before the mirror. He ran his fingers down the senseless leather of his face, but now he no longer saw himself, nor remembered what he was supposed to see. Looking away from the mirror, he would see that somebody had scattered stars carelessly like corn outside the window, and would long to rake them into lines.

It had waited for him all his life, this challenge. There was not a second to waste on doubt. The scrolls on his desk were wands he could wave to drag towns across valleys, fell forests, erect bridges. It was not the power that dizzied him. It was the stature of the problems and disorder facing him that filled him with a battlefield glow.

You took hold of one problem, and found that another was knotted to it. Now that the Lost were dead, organizing things was so
slow
. News took so long to reach everyone. Camber was the magical exception, of course. In his calm, orderly way – somehow information always seemed to find him first.

The death of the Lost had left the merchants in chaos. Nobody knew how to buy and sell from other towns. Whole granaries of food rotted in some places, while elsewhere people starved. But, looking into this, Prox started to realize how little food there really was on Gullstruck.

‘We’re looking at a harsh winter.’ He was speaking to himself, but was not surprised when he received an answer.

‘It was looking bad even before the Lost died.’

It no longer seemed strange to Prox to find that Camber was standing right behind him. Camber seemed to have moved into Prox’s mind, his voice now ringing like one of Prox’s own thoughts.

‘The new camp for the Lace will be the very devil to feed,’ Prox continued. It was his latest brainchild, a large and permanent camp to replace the scattered temporary stockades where the Lace prisoners were currently being held.

‘Not necessarily.’ The map of the camp slid away from beneath Prox’s fingers, to be replaced by another, a map of Spearhead. ‘It rather depends where you build it.’

And the stubborn problem that Prox had been wrestling in his mind slid into place with a click and all was well. The blank, lush upper slopes of Spearhead stared back invitingly. Clear the jungle there, and you’d have farmland ready for use, a plantation in the making. Spearhead did not have the King of Fans’ eagles, Sorrow’s landslides and barrenness, nor Crackgem’s earthquakes and geysers. And yet this land lay completely unused . . . why? Oh, of course, the old superstitions about Spearhead returning to wreak vengeance. It was criminal to waste that land, and if the workers had no
choice
but to tend the land there . . .

‘It’s the only way to feed the Lace camp,’ he said under his breath. ‘We can’t have them starving.’

‘It’s the only way to feed everyone,’ said the other voice, weaving in among his thoughts. ‘There are too many of us, living and dead. Between them, the dead and the volcanoes have all the best land. We cannot rob the dead – so that leaves the volcanoes. Some farmers have already started tilling the lower slopes – with the help of the Lace we can make use of the upper.’

‘But . . . they can’t
all
work the plantation. What about the old, the crippled, the very young?’

‘They can be found other, gentler, duties.’ A long, delicate finger tapped a point much further down the mountain, a large shaded patch marked ‘Ashlands’. ‘The spirit houses must be cleaned, offerings made, candles lit. And if families are divided, then the strong adults will be less likely to rebel for fear of what will happen to their parents and children. There will be less bloodshed. This is kinder.’

‘Yes . . . yes,’ murmured Prox, but he hardly knew what he was saying. Already his imagination was designing stockades, rotas, roll calls.

He worked until the stars tired of waiting for him to order them, and went out one by one. He worked while the sun rose, peaked and started to descend. When it distracted him by peering into his room he walked to the window and stared nonplussed at the parade of tiny figures struggling along the brow of the hill towards the distant Spearhead.

He blinked hard until he could make out their arms and legs, the heavy baskets of candles and incense on their backs, the brushes, hoes and brooms in their small hands.

‘Mr Camber, why are there children on that hill? Did I order any children?’

He needed sleep, he realized. He could tell by the way colours changed after he blinked, and the way that Camber’s face seemed to rise like steam without actually moving. The constant throb of pigeon coos from the neighbouring loft distorted in his ear, and he almost thought he heard voices in them.

‘They’re just part of the Lace project, Mr Prox. You remember? In a time of emergency it is all important to have the support of the ancestors, so due tribute must be paid to the dead. The advantages of a workforce that can attend to the tombs full time . . .’

‘Oh yes, that was it. Mr Camber, do my eyes seem bloodshot? There are blots in front of everything, and somehow those children look very . . . small.’

‘Lace children often do,’ Camber remarked calmly, watching as Prox peered into the mirror. Camber drew the shutters closed, and the vista of the struggling children was crushed to a sliver and then extinguished.

‘You should rest, Mr Prox. Go and sleep the sleep of the just.’

And yet, while Minchard Prox slept, things were happening across the island which he had not guessed at as he reshaped the world with his pencil.

What did he dream? He did not dream of a Lace man with a cool smile and black velvet brows trekking through hidden jungle paths with a marked map in his pocket. He did not see this man showing his tattoo at a sliver of lighted doorway and being shown into a back room where a gigantic woman with dreadlocks and widow’s arm bindings was waiting for him, larger than life and very much alive. He did not see them planning until dawn, voices low and eyes bright as knives.

He saw nothing of the bird-back messengers that ran through forest and swamp, moonlight dappling their stilt-legged shapes, carrying word to the scattered Reckoning.

In the nights to follow, there would be consequences. But compared to the great project that obsessed Minchard Prox, these events were small, and he would not notice them.

Camber, however, noticed everything.

There had been a sudden fire at a courthouse in Port Hangman, in which it was supposed that the chief clerk had perished.