The Ishim Underground

by Carrie Bailey

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Uri stood on one of the cracked gray hearths of a cold furnace under an awning outside. The old Auckian founder would not be leaving his workshop with the thieves though most of the forest dwellers had chosen to go. Eron understood without asking. Unlike her father, the oracle, ancient and fragile as she was, perched herself gloriously on a horse to help to drive the wandering caravan west to Rotorua.

  Eron waved.

  The first step away from Uri’s workshop was the lightest, but as he walked the dusty trail with four hundred strangers, surrounded by their strange ways and strange beliefs, and one red bearded wild boy, Eron’s feet seemed heavier and heavier until finally they felt almost glued to the ground. Eron stood and tried to smell the amnesia flowers, but they were no longer blooming.

  Alchemy. As a career, it had a lot to offer a young man in the late Liamic Era. Specifically gold. For the Auckians, nothing made more gold than studying alchemy, but there were still a few things on the islands that meant more to him than gold.

  Since the Burning of Waimate, he had woke every morning with a single thought on his mind. It was Thadine. Eron planned to march westward with the burgeoning and disorganized forces. But, he would return to Auck City whether or not that proved to be their final destination.

  Still, Eron grimaced painfully as he lost sight of the unfathomable wonders inside Uri’s workshop. And with a sigh of regret, he followed the streaming masses as they headed to the village of Rotorua. Maybe someday he would return? Maybe he'd get caught the guard and they'd have his head on a pike?

  The possibilities were endless, but the probabilities were somewhat limited.

  Although the road was not long, but it was hard to pass, especially for the vardos. The caravan moved slowly like a broad and shallow stream toward the western villages. Some of the people fell behind. Others pulled ahead. By nightfall, they reached the edge of the village and milled about restlessly setting up camp under the cover of the now sparsely growing pines.

  The grassland surrounding Rotorua was an open expanse unusual for the terrain in the west. It had more dips and crevasses than the crusts of the pies his mother's hired hands used to bake.

  Amit was there when Able gave the orders for the boys to act as lookouts. He and ten other young men strategically positioned themselves around the perimeter of the city while the thieves prepared to siege the village wall. Eron had been busy repacking his bundle, but when he discovered the boy man gone, he quickly circled the outskirts of the village looking for him. Strolling along the three-horned sheep trails, he felt a sharp tug on his left pant leg that stopped him in his tracks.

  “Down,” Amit hissed.

  Eron obliged immediately. The wild boy was lying flat against the ground with his blond hair blending into the drying grasses, which prickled and itched.

  As the caravan’s newest resident risk taker, Amit had not been known to exercise caution in any matter. None of the thieves from the den had recognized him after his transformation and he had a reputation. Only Ester, Eron and Tunkukush knew the truth. While Eron had busied himself studying in the bath house, Amit flung himself from trees and tread under horse’s feet. He showed no fear. When they came to minor canyon where a meandering creek had worn the earth away, Amit jumped it. Everyone else took the bridge. And that all happened before the first howl of the loogaroo, when the wild boy man announced he would personally protect everyone on the road by finding and killing the whole pack.

  “I can’t see anyone, which means, nobody can see us,” said Eron standing back up.

  It was too dark to imagine that any guard standing watch on the village wall might see him clearly from such a distance.

  Amit pulled him down.

  “It’s flat land,” he whispered. “They can see us moveify. Or hear us.”

  Although the grasses immediately surrounding Rotorua had ridges, dips and a littering of obvious structures, Eron had to admit the boy had a point. And that was nearly as rare as him being cautious.

  "What are you watching for anyway?" asked Eron.

  Earlier in the day, Eron asked Able about the layout of the village. Fourteen lengths of brick and mortar connected end to end formed the outer walls, which enclosed the bulk of the settlement. Able sent scouts ahead who reported twenty guardsmen quartered in its wall.

  "Noise," said the boy.

  Amit rolled on his back and put his arms behind his head. Taking his cue from the boy, Eron turned over and gazed into gleaming celestial sea above them and listened for movement in the field.

  “Wake me when it’s time, alright?” said Amit yawning widely.

  There was little Eron could see between the camp and the city wall besides darkness and a deep divide of land that felt like it stretched on forever under the magnificent depth of an open night sky. Having been so long in the forest and underground, he found the cosmos mesmerizing though it was little comfort against the autumn night chill. A biting wind whistled and blew the stiff dry bunches of grass that stuck up here and there like little porcupines planted into the ground. Eron kept a vigilance for awhile until his attention was drawn again, far above, deep into the heavens.

  “They made it up there once,” he whispered. "The moderns."

  A dark rim extended around the iridescent crescent of the moon. Living in the city, Eron had never really noticed it before. It was a circle. No matter how the moon changed, it was really only one large circle suspended in the air.

  “I read one of Uri’s books that a man built a metal box and sent it up toward the stars with, I think, Auckian fire. He had a white dressing gown with a glass helmet. And he put a flag on it.”

  “He put a flag on a dressing gown?” said Amit. “What would be the point of that?”

  “No, he wore the dressing gown and put the flag on the moon.”

  “Is he still there?” asked Amit.

  “Where?"

  “On the moon,” said Amit.

  "No," said Eron. "He's dead now."

  "Who owns it now then?" asked Amit.

  “I guess no one,” said Eron thoughtfully.

  "Then it's mine," said Amit grinning.

  Eron squinted and looked upward. The humidity in the air blurred the moon’s surface. Sometimes he could see the outline of a rabbit in the moon’s dark spots, but that night, it was just one curved white sliver.

  “I don’t see any cities or roads," said Eron. "Maybe they put the rabbit glyph up there to tell us they were still alive?”

  “What glyph?” yawned Amit.

  “The rabbit on the moon?”

  Tap. Tap.

  Tunkukush rapped on the inside of his tube for their attention.

  “It always looked like a rabbit,” said the Ishim gruffly.

  “I thought it was man,” said Amit.

  “That’s absurd,” said Eron.

  After only a few moments debate, Amit dozed off and lay beside Eron snoring like a man. The Ishim had gone back to doing whatever it was that spiders liked to do to keep themselves busy when they lived in metal tubes. Probably knitting, Eron thought. Yarn. Rope. It’s all very similar.

  And they waited.

  Eron fought sleep and strained to hear the sounds from the village, but all that came was the occasional stumble or grunt from the other lookouts. And sometimes a snort from Amit.

  While they waited, he knew the thieves were fashioning ladders from the trees at camp and using pieces of the local farmer’s fences. Eron caught the first glimpse of them dragging the ladders across the field carrying them low and quietly on their shoulders, at varying heights, toward the wall. But, everything was visible in the moonlight.

  "Twenty men who can see clearly are more deadly than fifty who can't," groaned Eron.

  Neither Eron nor Amit returned to the camp as they were instructed. All the lookouts remained behind to watch the siege. Torchlight dotted the edge of the village wall.

  When all the thieves were assembled at the gate, Able roared, “Gu
ardsmen! Rotorua is free.”

  Nearly two hundred men and women stood in an uneasy formation behind Able. Although they had few bows and fewer arrows, there was an ample supply of kitchen knives among them. Six thieves shuffled forward and huddled beside the wall preparing to receive the ladders.

  “We are five hundred strong,” Able bluffed loudly. “You are outnumbered. Surrender and we will spare you.”

  “Five hundred?” Eron whispered nervously. “If they see that he’s lying, they might assume he’s hiding something else and they might think they stand a chance. He’s gambling their almost certain surrender for no reason.”

  “How many is a hundred?” Amit whispered back.

  Able took a few steps backward as the torchlights along the edge of the wall slowly disappeared one by one.

  Silence.

  They could hear the thieves shifting around.

  “And he didn’t tell them how long they had to decide,” Eron said quietly turning on the ground. “He didn’t tell them.”

  A white hot flash of panic coursed through Eron. He wasn’t prepared. He had not actually expected the thieves to fight. He had no weapon. No defense. But, if he knew anything about the Auckian Guard, they would fire arrows before the thieves brought the ladders to the wall. Surrender was not an option, but taking out as many thieves as possible would be.

  Eron grabbed Tunkukush’s tube from Amit's neck and tapped it. Nothing. He opened the lid and looked inside. Empty. Eron looked around for the nearest cover, which was a few trees on the edge of the field. As he was preparing to run, an older man signaled to the lookouts to join the line.

  Death is brief, Eron thought. But, it didn't reassure him.

  The longest moment of his life passed as the younger boys crawled on their elbows toward the bulk of the men. But, before they reached the en, they heard the cranking and lifting of the village gate. And with tearful gratitude, a group of villagers ran out to greet them. It seemed, the gruesome algebra had not been lost on the Auckian Guardsmen. There had been no resistance.

  Eron collapsed on a hard lump of earth. When he regained consciousness, he followed the cheering masses, led by Able, into the village, flooding streets surrounding their temple where the Auckian Guardsmen were tied up along with a handful of their supporters. Slumped against the tall wooden pillars in ropes from torn from the red temple banners, they numbered sixteen. Only eight wore uniforms.

  The scouts had been wrong. There were eight guardsmen at Rotorua.

  “And how long until the guard send more men?” Eron overheard a shopkeeper, dripping in ingratitude.

  “That supradepends how quickly Malak responds,” grumbled the thief.

  Not everyone was happy to be liberated. Rotorua was not a large village and it was easy for Eron to spot Ester. Dragging Amit away from the crowds hovering around the Auckians and their supporters, the three of them retreated through the night air to a shallow tiled pool in the farthest end of the village. A few of the villagers had set up a midnight kitchen at the local coffee house and were distributing a hot vegetable stew in any empty containers they could find.

  “It’s much appreciated,” said Ester accepting a steaming wooden clog from a young Rotoruan girl with long braids. She was still wearing her night tunic and a white dressing gown that reminded Eron of the stories he read about the moderns on the moon.

  From what Eron could see, there were few discernible differences between Rotorua and Dunedin. Pigeons bobbed about under the lampposts searching for scraps of fallen stew on the cobbled square, which was constructed in the same scalloped pattern as the alleyways in Auck City. But unlike Dunedin or his home in the west, the buildings were mostly wood. Rather than being covered in plaster, wooden shingles protected their sides and surfaces from top to bottom. Even the outer wall had been made from logs buried deep in the earth not unlike the Waimate stockade.

  A few scattered bushes and an empty stage were situated against the city wall beside the pool. They passed main village square when they entered, which was broader, emptier and teeming with people. Only a couple thieves had retreated to this spot. Two men sat on the bare stage and another lay down to sleep against the side of massive red wood. It was thicker in diameter than a wheelbarrow. Eron had read about the giant trees, but never seen one.

  Ester and Eron watched the moonlight dance over the rippling waves in the pool until approached by a slender villager. His features were obscured by a strip of fine linen, which covered his face looking like he may have taken up the habit in Uri's forest, but the bridge of his aquiline nose and narrow eyes betrayed his identity, at least to Eron.

  “I never thought I’d see such an ugly face again,” the man said.

  Gil. He had on Eron's gray guardsmen's tunic, but the stripes had been removed and red trimming added. His leather pants showed no wear as if newly acquired.

  “What are you doing here?” said Eron, wrestling a sudden surge of anxiety into submission.

  Gil shrugged.

  Eron's mind raced like a stampeding herd of beefalo. “Why are you here?” he said, as if the question had not been clear enough.

  “I suppose I’ll have to take your questions one at a time,” Gil said, unravelling the cloth around his mouth. “At this very moment, I am saying hello to my old friend. Second question. A bit more complex, but it seems to me like I’m doing the same thing you’re doing. Bit famished. Having some stew.”

  Gil put the bowl of vegetable stew he was carrying to his lips and made a loud slurping sound without breaking eye contact with Eron.

  “I left Dunedin for a reason,” said Eron.

  “You did,” said the entertainer who lowered himself majestically on to the rim of the pool a few inches from Ester and leaned casually away from her, now ignoring Eron all together.

  Amit had drawn away and was studying their faces, looking confused.

  “I’m Gil,” said Gil.

  Even under the weak lamplight, Eron could see Ester blush like blood on snow while his face flushed with anger.

  “You abandoned my post,”said Eron, drenched in a shock of bitterness. "After the risk I took."

  “Don’t get your loincloth in a bunch,” said Gil waving his hands at Eron dismissively. “It makes me feel like you don’t trust me.”

  “I don’t," said Eron.

  “Listen," said Gil, sounding almost serious. "I couldn't stay. The guard have been disappearing in the villages. And there’s a lot more heads decorating pikes along the roads, too. No latrine digger would have lasted in that climate. Someone would have come for me. Someone who didn't know us. Like your brother.”

  “So now I am dead?” Eron asked. "You met Aden?"

  “We're dead,” said Gil, turning his attention back to Ester, taking her slender fingers in his. “At least that was the village council decided. I never spoke to your brother.”

  She giggled. “Is this your brother?” Ester asked, obviously focused on something other than the conversation.

  “I cothink they’re executing the guardsmen,” said Amit perching on the edge of the pool and looking down the main road.

  “You mean you haven’t you heard?” said Gil abruptly repositioning himself on his boney elbow.

  He leaned toward Ester seemingly fascinated by the new development in their conversation. An almost bashful looking Ester shook her head.

  “You mean you honestly haven’t heard?” said Gil, playing with her hand.

  “Heard what?” said Ester, gaining a little composure.

  “Oh, the whole village is in an uproar,” said Gil. “And the thieves!”

  “They’re hanging them,” said Amit.

  “What is going on?” Eron demanded.

  “Your leader stole a jar of coffee from the herbalist, got on his horse and suprafled,” Gil said looking nervous, but hardly distressed. “They're panicking. The oracle postponified the executions until the morning.”

  “They’ve started the executions,” Amit said, sound
ing almost giddy.

  It occurred to Eron that the boy had never balked at the horror they'd seen in Waimate. He was too young. Violence had seeped into him like a field watered with manure and he was somehow thriving. And that startled Eron more than Gil, the executions or the coffee.

  “One jar of coffee,” said Ester.

  Absently, Eron set his stew with a clank of hard wood on glistening tile. The pigeons were quick to respond and bobbed over to it.

  “Are you going to eat that?” said Gil, shooing them away.

  The scribe doing fieldwork, the thief with an honest trade and the significantly less freckled Amit all watched as Gil ate Eron’s stew while the chaos broke like a hailstorm somewhere deeper in the village. At first, it seemed the men in tricorn hats had subdued the confusion, but they were soon divided over the prospect of executing the guard. Not all agreed. Some wanted to hang the guards immediately. A handful of the thieves along with the oracle, aggressively opposed the executions. They wanted to delay. And the shouting set the village ablaze with dissension.

  “They’re going to use the rafters,” said Gil, pointing at the wooden stage. For a while, Gil read the crowd as they filtered into the open theatre the very same way Eron read a scroll, predicting their moves and narrating for them.

  A large brown man in a brown tunic, a villager, directed a group of thieves onto the stage where they disappeared momentarily before drawing back the red banner. A slender man with graying unkempt bed hair ran up the stairs that led to the platform and shoved the villager back against rear wall. The villager in brown took a rope off the back wall of the stage and swung the knotted end at the gray haired man missing by only inches. But, the onlookers, a few of the thieves, were able to arrest both the man’s arms and hold him to stage floor.

  “Take him home,” spat the larger brown villager who began orchestrating the assembly of a makeshift gallows. A strong beam above the stage, rope and an over turned cart would suffice.

  “We have to leave,” said Eron, tugging Amit's sleeve. "We can go to the camp."

  A fog of miscommunications appeared to be obscuring the men's ghastly work on the stage. One of the thieves pulled knife out and although Eron didn't see what happened, as too many bodies rushed in, the solid form of the villager collapsed. The stage echoed his fall.

  More people gathered around anticipating the approach of the Oracle who followed the crowd on her stocky brown mare. Surrounded by a few openly armed thieves, her beaded head bobbed heavily as if she lacking control over the creature. And spectators crowed the edge of the pool, pushing against Eron, Gil, Ester and Amit, many of whom were still wearing their night tunics. The four stood on the edge of the pool to make space and keep a line of sight toward the wooden stage.

  A woman screamed, but the crowd had grown too dense to pick out the owner of the shrill call. A person turning while struggling for something they couldn't see, knocked Ester into the water. The boys pulled her soaked and wilted looking onto her feet. Another scream. Gil steadied Ester, holding her forearm, but it seemed a better idea for them all to move ankle deep in the cool water until the commotion boiled over and they could move away without being trampled.

  Something happened. Eron couldn't see what, but all the villagers seemed gasp and piercing screams cut loosely through the night. And then, the oracle’s horse reared and she vanished in a puff of mist. More shouting. Eron covered his ears and leaned down. The moon reflected in the water and rippled.

  “You need to climb that tree and stay out of the way,” Gil said to Eron, pointing to the red wood near the wall. He looked at Amit, "He and I can do something. I've got a plan."

  “There are no branches within reach,” Eron protested, looking at the large rough trunk. "And not him. Just not him."

  “That’s alright,” said Gil who not paying attention. His hazel gaze fixed on the nooses dangling empty from the rafters. “That is a stage. I may be the only one here who knows how to use it," he said, exhaling slowly.

  In that brief instant, he looked like Eron, but that heavy breath was Eron. And maybe it was Liam? The pale entertainer didn't hesitate. He threw himself into the crowd. Eron had visited the stage in the square at Auck City, but he didn't understand what Gil meant. And he lost him in the crowd, but the thin man made his way through and climbed the stage.

  “Enough!” he shouted at rabble.

  Though unimposing in stature and almost feminine in the way he moved, Gil’s voice carried, because it had been trained to carry no matter how large the audience. He moved forward with his arms out as if he were someone everyone there should know. In their confusion, the thieves setting the nooses beside him parted, allowing Gil to pass.

  "Wait here," Eron told Amit and Ester.

  Splashing out of the pool, he dropped his soggy feet on the ground and shifted between torso after torso in what he hoped was the way to the stage.

  “Rotorua,” said Gil, addressing the crowd, cutting through the pandemonium swirling senselessly around them.

  “We are victorious,” said he looking across the tops of the men and women’s heads. Tricorn hats. Akubras. Night caps. Scarves. Everyone in the village had found their way to the theatre.

  “We are whole,” Gil said loudly and then he paused to meet their baffled stares. “We are not slaves."

  Gil immediately found the center of the platform with two swift steps, but seemed to fill the space entirely. Eron climbed the steps, around the curious thieves and slid behind the retracted banner on left side of the stage where he could see Gil holding his arms out over his audience.

  “Isn't that Eron?” said one of the highway men, a woman with thin braids and a stocky body. Eron had never seen her before.

  “I am Gil,” he announced calmly. “I escaped the rope chain in Auck City at Sky Tower.”

  “So did I,” shouted one of the villagers. It was an anonymous challenge from a man safely hidden within the masses, but others began to mutter their approval.

  Gil stepped forward again arms still outstretched. “Able is supragone. He is on his way to Malak,” Gil announced. "He has betrayed us."

  If it had been turmoil before, it was now an impacted riot.

  Gil pointed to his temple. “We must now act from this truth and no other. It is the seed of our liberty. I will not live a lie.”

  “Malak will send more guards,” a village woman in a red tunic wailed.

  As the mutterings from the frightened and angry crowd grew in intensity, it was clear that Gil had little control. He was mistaken. Empty ideals, no matter how theatrically they were presented, would not inspire the people of Rotorua.

  Eron shuttered.

  Too much was at stake. Both the villagers and the thieves needed a leader, not to calm them, but to channel their fears, wrestle them into action and bring them together like a lens turned sunlight into fire when used properly.

  “There are hundreds of us,” said a thief with pale yellow braids. “And there are thousands of them.” The youth directed all his anger at Gil.

  One of the older highwaymen left holding the reins of the oracle’s mare stepped forward, “Even the oracle has left us!”

  “Hang the guard!” shouted a dark and round village woman whose night tunic could have easily fit three adult thieves, but barely covered her.

  “Hang the guard!” cried the man with yellow braids.

  “No!” Gil screamed. But, the chant had already gripped the mob.

  “Hang the guard!” cried many voices coming together as one.

  Two of the highwaymen dragged a battered man in a torn gray tunic onto the platform. Gil had lost composure when Eron spied a bindle marked with nomadic symbol for Auck fire. He took a deep slow breath and grabbed a torch from a woman’s hand too quickly for her to prevent him. Tossing the bag behind Gil, he set light to its contents.

  KABOOM!

  A ferocious cloud of fire thrust into the air singing the loose fibers of the nooses where they hung. The people
near the stage stopped and covered their heads. Gil had ducked, engulfed in the dark cloud, but rose to his feet just as Eron dropped back behind the banner again.

  “Tell them you’re a clone of Liam,” he hissed at Gil, who looked nonplussed. Eron pointed firmly at the actor and then the crowd. "Tell them now."

  “I am a clone of Liam,” he said confidently. Eron didn't know if he knew what it meant, but Gil said it as if it meant everything.

  “You were made to unite Liam’s people,” Eron continued.

  “I was made to unite Liam’s people,” said Gil bravely facing the masses again.

  “It’s true!” cried Ester from the pool. The villagers, the nomads, the thieves and highway men spun on their heels.

  Amit let out a proud howl.

  Gil put out his arms again. And with rapt with attention, the people listened. “We will attack Auck City before the guard can prepare."

  “Won’t they be expecting us?” said the villager in brown who had managed the construction of the gallows on the stage.

  “We will free our family and friends,” Gil roared.

  And that was all they needed. There was no more mention of hanging the guard or Able. They cheered Gil.

  But, Eron started to hyperventilate.

  There was no plan.

  Reassembling herself in mid-air, floating onto the stage beside the now popular actor, the oracle reappeared. Again the villagers were drawn back by the sight of the her while those who came from the den and many of those from the road seemed less alarmed. She stopped only a few inches from Gil’s long nose.

  The theatre bursted with the tension while the huddled figures of men and women anticipated.

  “My work here is done,” she said placing a transparent hand on Gil’s shoulder.

  The oracle found Eron with her eyes and then disappeared as a hovering white cloud, which billowed over the dark unkempt heads and moved away toward the city gate as if blown by a breeze. The air was still. She was gone.

  His heart felt the weight of gravity rearrange his innards as his stomach jumped into his throat. Eron knew, of course, it was completely unnecessary for her to remain visible while leaving the village. But, had she dissipated completely in Gil’s presence, some of the villagers might have claimed she possessed him.

  No, the oracle had done what was needed. She backed Able long enough to get to Rotorua, delayed the executions and then bestowed her loyalty on Gil.

  “Tell them to take the guards back to the temple and call one representative from the highwaymen, the thieves, the nomads and the villagers to meet you in the lodge,” said Eron.

  With an dash of prudence, Gil gave the instructions and descended the stage. He walked to the village lodge alone demonstrating no preference for anyone who dogged him on his path. Calmly, he waited as a few of the village men hoisted the plank that barred the door. Two scraggly men scrambled in with their oil lamps. Then, slowly and with great purpose, Gil entered the vast musty room and took a seat at the head of the long u-shaped table. Eron lagged behind, keeping his features obscured with the long hair he had not cut in months. Managing somehow to skirt his way around the solid doors, behind the gathering crowd and around past the carved beams that held the ceiling aloft and finally to the corner of grand meeting table, he got within hearing range.

  “And how will we breach the city?” asked a young highway man who was thinner and shorter than most of his companions, but his heavy brow and intense glare made him the obvious spokesperson for the group.

  “Strong words,” said an older villager, strategically claiming a seat near him. His braided gray beard swayed around his large belly. “You say you're a clone and some of the others even believe you but, that doesn’t make you Liam. I think you were cooked up in that Ishim workshop.”

  Gil sat silently.

  Eron came forward and told the crowd to leave, “Only the senior men will enter."

  Their resemblance passed no one's notice.

  “The governor is dead,” said a village woman with thick dry curly hair. “Stabbed in the back on the stage before—” She looked nervously at Gil. “Before he arrived.”

  “Elect a new governor," said the youthful highway man with his arms folded.

  "We don't have time!" she spat at him.

  Eron motioned them toward the open door.

  No one moved.

  “And who are you?” asked the curly haired village woman from the village.

  “My right hand,” said Gil.

  “And I’m his!” shouted the unsettlingly deep voice of Amit from outside the lodge door. At his side like two reunited magnets, Amit joined him while Ester, who had also made her way through, pulled reluctant stragglers from the doors until they were able to lock the heavy oak slab from within. All had been excused until dawn.

  In the empty room, Gil was now trembling.

  Ester rushed to his side and set a single tender hand on his. Eron felt a bitter sting in his throat. And with eyes wider than a stunned owl, Amit reveled in the immensity of the empty lodge. It wasn't that the space was so grand; the craftsmanship was. Amit seated himself next to Gil and rubbed his hairy arms along the table. A single board from a red wood tree had been cut to form the surface. Its rings and knots had been sanded and polished making it smooth.

  Dunedin had a lodge similar to the one at Rotorua, a gathering place for the elders, but it was a brick house like any other on the island. Whole trunks of red wood trees framed the building inside like the ribs of an animal. Banners of red, yellow, black and white covered the panels of the room, which inevitably as was the case in every village lodge, but certain complex symbols underneath revealed the directions to the afterlife from where they stood. Apparently. Auckians, like Eron, knew very little about the village gawds.

  “What are you going to do now?” Ester breathed. “We don’t have to match their weapons or their numbers. Most of the guard were sent to Waimate and Grey Camp. It’s safe to assume Malak’s guard is still deployed across the island, but even so, even if we gathered everyone, we don’t stand a chance in the city.”

  “I can’t lead them,” said Gil, not making eye contact.

  “You were incredible,” said Ester.

  Gil's eyes watered.

  “I can’t lead them either,” said Eron.

  “I’ll lead them,” said Amit.

  “No, you won't. You go outside and stand watch,” Ester instructed, pointing him to the door. Tunkukush's tube was still empty. He let the boy take it.

  For a second, Eron felt sublime. Liam in the sky tower. The first one. The real one as it were. He never needed an answer to unite them.

  “Ester, stay with him no matter what happens," said Eron. Gil you don't have to have any answers. "They’ll work together as long as all sides feel they are represented fairly.”

  “I'm a fraud,” said Gil. "I only thought the hangings would make things worse for them. I just thought I could stop that. But, you heard them cheering me?"

  “Yes,” said Eron. "And yes, you're a fraud. But, yes, we can stop the slaving. We only need one thing."

  Eron hoped their ignorance of Liam's great ruse would bring them the confidence they needed if only for a few hours. But, dawn broke with vengeance and Gil hadn't accepted his role. Eron’s fears battered the inside of his weary skull as the representatives of the four factions wound around the chairs to join them. When the last entered, a dark skinned highwayman Eron had met before, the grumbling started.

  “We must divide and conquer,” said a small, but stern woman Eron recognized from the den. Her name was Miriam and she frequented the pub, but never introduced herself. She had been chosen to represent a loosely associated group among the thieves, who called themselves the order of the moving finger. She studied Ester smugly, having immediately spied the opportunity to get closer to Gil, through her.

  “Forty highway men," said a villager. "And four hundred or more men and woman will descend on Auck City like a plague of
falcon.“

  "Rotting falcons tossed over the wall or dropped in the water would be more effective," said the younger highway man with the heavy brow.

  Fifteen people had joined the discussion. Eron knew none of them, but it seemed they had each learned everything about Gil and him in just a few hours.

  “We won't get past the guard,” said a man, a villager referred to regularly as 'Prosper,' a bizarre and uncomfortable sounding name nearly as grating as Ethel and Eloise.

  All Auckian names came from an approved list formulated in the Archive during the Religious Wars. Only approved names could be registered in the census. Prosper might have been a nickname or his parents might have been nomads. And though Eron had grown comfortable moving in and around the nomads, he still cringed slightly when they crossed what he used to feel were nearly sacred boundaries, an echo of prejudice.

  “I'm trying to tellite you," said the highway man with the heavy brow. "We aren’t prepared for the consequences of getting caught. We need poison.”

  “I agree with Prosper,” said the man representing the nomads, a healthy looking person whose subtle nervous tics made Eron uncomfortable. Easily the largest of the four assembled, his belly spilled over the sides of his chair and onto the table in front of him.

  “There are always the sewers,” said Gil.

  He leaned back into the leather padding that covered the Governor’s seat. He was acting. Subdued motions. Slow and intentional. He exuded confidence and mystery.

  “Is that how you escaped from Auck City?” Prosper asked.

  Ester shifted nervously, but only Eron seemed to share her concern.

  “I left on ship carrying rice. In the bags. It took me to Nelson. I never saw the sewers,” said Gil.

  Eron wondered if that was even true.

  “We don’t know where the sewers lead or where they empty,” said Miriam. “It can’t be done.”

  For the first time that morning, Prosper nodded his agreement with the representative of the thieves. And so did the heavy browed highway men.

  “But, I have a copy of the sanitation plans for the city and the villages. Updated earlier this year. It have the maps of the sewers and words on it have something to do with the maps.”

  “Words we can’t read,” said Prosper.

  “I also have a scribe," said Gil opening his palm toward Eron whose jaw dropped to the floor as if weighted by lead.