A boy, then, not a monster. And yet his presence here was so bizarre that Aren couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Spirits took the skins of children; Sarla herself was said to appear as a hairless girl with bright red irises, wearing a black cowled robe. So he stayed where he was and made no sound.
The boy crouched next to the crow, picked it up with both hands, and as his song came to an end, he sank his teeth into its breast.
Aren gasped, too loud. The boy looked up, directly at him, blood and feathers stuck to his chin. Aren’s heart almost stopped as he was fixed with a pair of shockingly green eyes.
He bolted, running as fast and as hard as he could. He flew through the graveyard, driven by horror, expecting to be seized by some unknown force at any moment and snatched away. Vaulting the fence around the graveyard, he sprinted for his longhouse. It was only once he lay panting in his bunk that he began to believe the wild creature hadn’t pursued him, and that he was, for the moment, safe.
16
Cade wasn’t in his bunk to see Aren return from the graveyard. He was standing outside the door of a different longhouse, hovering uneasily in the fog, half ready to enter and half ready to walk away. Three times his courage had swelled; three times it had failed him before his hand touched the wood. He shuffled his feet and cursed, but didn’t go in.
A figure emerged from the murk, a pinch-faced prisoner called Jeb. Cade was caught standing before the door, dithering like a fool. Jeb walked past him and pushed the door open with a scowl as Cade, flustered and embarrassed, turned to leave.
‘You coming, then?’ Jeb asked. He was holding the door open. ‘Get a move on, I’m letting the fog in.’
There was nothing Cade could do but go inside.
It was a longhouse much like his own, inadequately lit and crammed with rows of bunks. But here there were strangers lying in the bunks, playing cards and idling in the aisles, and he was an intruder. Their gazes felt unfriendly as he made his way between the beds. He waited to be challenged, for some brawny arm to bar his way and prisoners to close in around him.
No challenge came. A few watched him with bored curiosity, then went back to what they were doing. None of them cared who he was, or what he was doing there. For once, Cade was glad nobody paid him any attention.
At the end of the longhouse, the bunks had been rearranged to form a den, some pushed to the walls and others turned sideways as a barrier. Several men lounged at the entrance, blocking the aisle. They were better fed than the other prisoners, bigger and stronger, and they had the surly alertness of hired muscle. One of them was the man he’d performed for yesterday, when he’d made fun of Hassan and Krent. A grin split his pockmarked face, and he leaned back and called into the den.
‘Rapha! It’s the funny lad!’ He turned eager-eyed to Cade. ‘Do Hassan again! To the dogs with everyone!’ he screeched in a poor attempt to copy Cade’s impression. Then he cackled. ‘Deggan would’ve loved that.’
‘Let him by, brother,’ came the pirate’s growling voice from the gloom of the den. ‘He’s here for business, not to dance for you.’
The man stood aside, still grinning, and Cade slid past.
Inside, the den was only a few paces wide. Three men sat on the bunks that formed the walls. One was up on the top bunk, leaning forward with his legs dangling and his face in shadow, a dark watchman overseeing those below. Rapha sat in a battered armchair, leafing through letters. Here, where Cade had thought no such luxuries existed, it might as well have been a throne.
‘You read, brother?’ Rapha asked, without looking up.
‘Slowly,’ Cade said.
Rapha sighed and squinted at the letter in his hand. ‘Me, too. Between my slow readin’ and their bad writin’, seems I spend half my day at this.’
They? Who were they?
‘Don’t speak Carthanian, either, I take it? Any Shangi? Caraguan?’
Cade shook his head. They were far-off countries he’d only heard of in stories; the very sound of them impressed him. Rapha put the letters down and waved at a bunk, and Cade settled himself uneasily next to one of the thugs.
‘So what can this humble pirate do for you?’
Cade swallowed, and asked what he’d come to ask. ‘I have to get out of the mine.’
Rapha considered Cade, eyes shrewd in his weathered face, one hand absently tugging his knotty black beard. ‘That’s quite an ask, brother. Lot of people want to get out of the mine.’
You don’t, though, Cade thought. Rapha took whatever duty he felt like, but even with all the easy jobs on offer, he sometimes chose the mine. Rumour had it he just did it for the exercise. There were lots of rumours about Rapha, and if even half were true then he was mad enough for Cade to believe it.
‘I’m thinking you could put me in the workshop,’ Cade said, his voice small. ‘I’m a carpenter’s son; I’ve got some skill with wood.’ Not much, but some. ‘I’d do a good job,’ he added lamely.
The man next to him chuckled. ‘Brother,’ said Rapha, ‘it’s not about how good you are. You could be Athras the Carver himself and it wouldn’t be a corn husk in a wheatpile to me. Question is, what can you do for me in return?’
Cade’s palms were sweating and his throat was dry. ‘I could make you things. Stuff you could use. Reckon I could be your eyes on the inside, tell you what’s going on in there.’ He saw from the look on Rapha’s face that he was cutting no ice, and he began to feel desperate. He’d hoped merit alone might win him a place, but he hadn’t thought what to say if it didn’t. Plans were never his strong suit. It was always Aren who led the way. ‘What do you want?’ he blurted at last. ‘I’ll do whatever you need.’
‘I’m hard pressed thinkin’ what you can do,’ said Rapha, with an apologetic tilt of the shoulder. ‘I’m not wantin’ for much within these walls. So if you can’t do me no good in here, what can you do on the outside?’
Cade floundered. ‘I … I ain’t sure what you mean.’
‘Any rich relatives who’ll pay on your behalf? Failin’ that, I’ll take a favour. Someone in a position of influence, someone who knows somethin’ juicy, someone who can get my people on the outside somewhere they couldn’t get otherwise.’ He clasped his calloused hands together. ‘Someone I can use.’
Cade struggled to think of anyone who had money, influence or any kind of special access to anywhere. But that wasn’t his world.
‘I’m a carpenter’s son,’ he said again, helplessly.
‘What about your friend?’ asked Rapha. ‘He’s no carpenter’s son, that’s plain. Maybe he knows someone who’ll pay.’
Cade felt the last of his hope sink away. It always came back to Aren. Aren, who made the decisions. Aren, who had the money and the privilege and who’d ruined it all for some Krodan girl Cade had secretly thought little of. Cade had never even been given the chance to make that mistake. He was born poor and would stay poor. His destiny was directed by others; only by clinging to Aren could he hope to change it. Cade had no value without him.
He couldn’t stand alone, and that knowledge emptied him.
But he wouldn’t ask Aren for help. It would be the final act of wretchedness to slink back to him that way. All that was left was the mine, the tiredness and the pain, the black horror that faced him every morning. That was all, for ever.
Rapha sat back and spread his hands. ‘You’re not makin’ it easy for me to help you.’
Cade felt tears stealing into his eyes, his throat clamping up, and was too miserable to be ashamed of it. ‘I have to get out of the mine,’ he pleaded, as if the raw need in his voice might sway matters. The man next to him snickered and Rapha shot him a sharp look.
The pirate dug in his pocket, leaned forward and held up a small cylinder of waxed paper. ‘Take this,’ he said. ‘Chew on it when you work. It’ll make you feel good, feel strong, make the day pass like a dream. That’ll last you the week. Come back after, and we’ll talk.’
Cade knew what it was. Ragweed. He opened
his mouth to say he didn’t want it, because the very thought of it scared him; but he didn’t know how to reject a gift from a man like Rapha.
‘I know why you’re here, brother,’ the pirate said. ‘Threw yourself in the path of the Iron Hand for your friend. Wouldn’t be the first time a commoner paid the price for the doin’s of the highborn.’ He took Cade’s hand and put the packet of ragweed into his open palm. ‘There’s no nobles in Rapha’s kingdom, but even the lowliest man gets to feel like a lord. You don’t have to suffer any more.’
The unexpected sympathy made Cade’s eyes well up again, and he lowered his head to hide it. Rapha folded his fingers closed over the ragweed plug, then sat back in his chair.
‘Thank you,’ Cade whispered.
17
The next day dawned bright and clear, and though the air was cold, the sun warmed the prisoners’ faces as they made their way up the mountain to the mine. Aren had passed a restless night, haunted by dreams in which a tattered boy with bright green eyes watched him malevolently from the rafters. But in the safety of the light, his fears faded, and he confided what had happened to Jan, who was on mining detail that day.
‘You saw Rags?’ Jan exclaimed, loud enough for others to overhear.
Hendry, Aren’s dishevelled workmate, leaned in. ‘You saw the dead boy?’
‘Other people have seen him, then?’ asked Aren, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He’d caught a cold from his escapades last night and it had given him a foggy head.
‘They’ll tell you they did,’ Hendry said, with a pointed look at Jan.
Jan gave Hendry a hurt look, or possibly Aren; his lazy eye made it hard to tell. ‘I saw him, right enough. Coming from behind the cookhouse. It was after curfew, but we’d had a fever through the camp and had to boil all the sheets. Hassan gave us passes so we could get them done that night. I was pushing a load to the laundry and he came darting out like a rat!’
‘That, or the lye fumes went to your head,’ Hendry scoffed.
Jan gave a sullen glare to Hendry, probably. ‘Scared me rigid, he did. And I ain’t the only one who’s seen him, either!’
‘So who is he?’ Aren asked.
‘He’s the shade of a Sard boy,’ Jan said. ‘It’s the eyes, see? All Sards got that colour eyes. Unsettling folk, they are, at the best of times; twice as much when they’re dead.’
The eyes. Aren should have made the connection himself. A family of Sards used to pass through Shoal Point with pedlars’ stalls now and then, and sometimes a group of caravans would appear on the common for a few months, much to the annoyance of the locals. They were called thieves and tricksters, dirty folk without morals, but the more daring and rebellious townsfolk would associate with them, drawn by their mysterious nature. There was talk of wild nights of music and dancing in their camp, and those who visited came back with strange and unlikely tales of sorceries and bewitchments. Then one day the Sards would be gone without warning, leaving nothing but rumours behind. Aren remembered their visits from his childhood, but they’d stopped coming in recent years and Aren hadn’t thought of them for a long time.
‘Why would the ghost of a Sard be here?’ Aren asked. ‘No Sards in this camp.’
‘Ah, but there used to be!’ Jan said. ‘It’s not just Ossians buried in that dirt!’ He tugged the arm of a prisoner walking ahead of them, a weary-looking grey-bearded man who might have been in his forties or his sixties. ‘Farrel, tell him!’
‘Don’t drag me into this,’ Farrel said over his shoulder. Aren knew him by reputation. He was a political prisoner, a scholar who’d spoken out against the Krodan regime. ‘Ghosts and shades and such. There are enough terrible things in this world without making up imaginary ones.’
‘Tell him about the Sards!’ Jan urged, undeterred.
Farrel sighed heavily. It was best to give in to Jan’s pestering early. Whether you resisted or not, the result was the same. ‘It’s true. There were Sards in this camp once. The Krodans kept them in a separate compound, over by the latrines. They weren’t ever let out, not to work in the mine, nor to mix with the other prisoners. At first there were fifty or sixty, women and children, too. Then more started coming, a lot more, brought in on wagons, until they were crammed in that compound like chickens in a coop.’
‘Why were they arrested?’ Aren asked. ‘What did they do?’
‘What did any of us do?’ said Farrel, gazing at the thick, dark forest, streaked with hazy sunlight as the morning mist lifted. ‘What did you do? Does it matter?’
Aren thought it did, since he was innocent and had little sympathy for the criminals and traitors incarcerated here; but he kept his silence.
‘You’d see them at the fence begging for food,’ said Farrel, his tone turning darker. ‘The new arrivals, anyway. The rest had given up trying. There wasn’t any spare food to be had, and if there was, you could bet it wouldn’t go to a Sard. Most of them just sat there, like they were waiting for something. The children cried but there was nothing to be done for them. No one knew why they were there, since they weren’t being put to work.’
Farrel’s eyes had become unfocused, and Aren knew he was seeing those scenes again. ‘Two years ago – maybe three – we woke up to find the villagers taking the fence down around the Sard compound. They’d all been moved on in the night. No word of where they went, and not many missed them. Ossian prisoners were moved into the Sard longhouses, and that was the end of it.’ He shrugged and turned away.
‘And that’s when Rags appeared!’ Jan jumped in. ‘He’s the shade of some Sard boy buried in the graveyard, and his ma got taken away. So now he wanders the camp at night, searching for her. And he kills crows, ’cause everyone knows the crows work for Sarla. He don’t want them telling the Lady of Worms where he is, in case she calls him away before he’s found what he’s looking for.’
Hendry gave a snort that showed what he thought of that.
‘He’s no shade,’ said Farrel. ‘Plenty say they’ve seen him. Must be blessed with the Mummer’s own luck to have made it this long in the camp, though.’
Jan blew out his lips derisively. ‘One Sard boy surviving this whole time on his own? I’d believe anything over that.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Cade? He’d know what manner of shade Rags is.’
Aren felt a knot grow in his stomach. ‘He’s about somewhere,’ he said, and said no more.
Aren’s detail were told on arrival that they’d been reassigned to a new location. The route there was different, but little else was. It was another dank, tight, gloomy tunnel held up by splintered beams, from which hung lanterns low enough for a man to hit his head on. A pair of cavepipers fluttered in a rusty cage. Yesterday they’d won a victory over their unyielding enemy, the mountain. Today brought a new wall, and it was as if they’d gained no ground at all.
They set to work again, and Aren swung his pickaxe steadily, not too fast and not too slow. He had no desire to repeat his feat of yesterday. His anger had burned off overnight and he no longer sought to punish himself. The cheroots were a lost cause and his business with Grub was unfinished, but that could wait. There was a more important matter. Cade.
He looked down the line and saw Cade hard at it, swinging with rare enthusiasm. Usually he was dull-eyed with misery as he laboured, but today his gaze was bright and fierce. Aren wondered if it was a change for the better, or for the worse. Either way, he intended to find out.
The sting of Cade’s words had faded with time; the beating he’d taken from Grub and the encounter in the graveyard had put things into perspective. He and Cade had to stick together if they hoped to survive in this place. A friendship of half a lifetime shouldn’t be broken by a few harsh words. He was determined to reconcile them, and if Cade wouldn’t ask forgiveness, then Aren would be the bigger man and forgive.
Yet what was so simple and clear in his mind was muddy and frightening in real life, and he felt sick at the thought of it. To speak from the heart required more bravery t
han any physical risk. To heal a wound was so much harder than to cause one. But he’d do it, because it had to be done. He wanted his friend back.
His opportunity came when they took their break. A prisoner was picked for slop duty, and the others rested against the tunnel walls while they waited for their meagre lunch. Their guard was talking with another guard, barely paying attention to his charges.
Cade sat on his own, forearms resting on his knees, head hanging, nodding as though to some rhythm in his mind. Perhaps one of the Ossian folk songs he’d been fond of blaring drunkenly in the Cross Keys during better times. Aren slipped up the tunnel and dropped down next to him. ‘We ought to talk,’ he said.
Cade tilted his head to the side, enough to show one hostile eye. Then he looked back at the ground between his feet, toes tapping restlessly, hands twitching in time.
So Cade would give no ground. Well, Aren would say his piece anyway. ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I know it’s my fault that you’re here, and—’
‘It ain’t,’ Cade muttered.
Aren frowned. ‘Sorry?’
‘Ain’t your fault. I did it. It was my choice.’
‘Uh …’ Aren’s planned apology had already fallen apart. ‘You’re right, of course it was your choice. I just meant … because of me and Sora …’
‘You really think the moons and the stars revolve around you,’ Cade hissed, raising his head. His face was shadowed and scornful in the weak light. ‘Like your life is a bard’s tale with you at the centre. What if it ain’t, though? What if all this had nothing to do with you?’
Aren couldn’t understand where this was coming from, or indeed what he was talking about. It was so far from sense that he didn’t know where to begin.
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