‘Little Lai has the sleeping sickness,’ said the uncanny creature before him, as if she had read his thoughts. ‘For her I am only one dream among many. I keep her strong. Without me she would already be gone.’
On hearing her speak, Lai’s mother immediately put the child down and made her a deep bow. The Oracle’s figure was tiny in the long grass but there was no mistaking her absolute authority over the Saffid. She addressed her helpers in a sibilant, husky brand of Nurian, informing them — as far as Tymon could tell — that their services were no longer required. He thought at first that she was simply sending them home for a day or two, but the Nurians’ shocked expressions as they listened to the announcement convinced him that the break was more permanent.
‘You must leave tonight, at all costs,’ the Oracle finished, in Argosian. ‘Don’t worry about us: we have sufficient provisions at the cache. Later on when it’s safe we’ll return to the city.’
She might as well have slapped her listeners in the face. The Saffid gaped at her in dismay. ‘But how we leave without you, Ama?’ protested Nightside.
‘Ask the widow for help,’ she replied. ‘If she refuses then walk. Head north on the branch- paths. Seek shelter with the Freeholds. If you find one that cannot take you, move on to another.’
‘But you …’ stammered Dawn. ‘If soldiers find Syon—’
‘The Governor has no idea this place exists,’ interrupted the Oracle. ‘The mine was closed long before he came to power. Now go. Get everyone out, quickly.’
Nightside and Dawn bowed in submission and Nightside began to back away toward the mouth of the cleft. Dawn’s pale face was suffused with red as she knelt on the damp grass in front of Tymon, taking his hand and pressing it to her forehead.
‘You will return to us, Lord,’ she whispered, her eyes shining with dangerous conviction. ‘I know it.’
He made no reply. He had absolutely no idea what to say, and would rather have met the Governor’s guards a hundred times over than play any part in her veneration. He could only watch helplessly as she shuffled after Nightside into the cleft. His attention was caught by the Oracle’s young guardian, Lai’s mother. The woman made no move to follow her companions but gazed at the child in stricken silence.
‘Go, Jan,’ said the Oracle. ‘Lai will be safer here than anywhere else, I promise.’
The woman took a faltering step toward the tunnel. All at once she rushed back and threw herself at the Oracle’s feet. The hairs on Tymon’s neck prickled as he heard her dry sobs. She buried her face in the little girl’s shift.
‘Sav vay,’ breathed Jedda, in disbelief. ‘Separating a mother and child. That’s too harsh.’
‘Go, Jan,’ repeated the Oracle, gently and firmly, although she allowed the woman to hold her. ‘She won’t even know you’re gone.’
She bent down and murmured a few words in the other’s ear, in Nurian. Although Tymon did not catch what was said, the effect seemed to be calming on the young mother. Her sobs died away and she stood up, her pallid face blotched with tears. She gazed a longing moment at the child. Then, with a choked sound, she turned and fled into the tunnel. Tymon and Jedda stood rooted to the spot. There was a tense pause as the wind sighed through the grasses in the well.
‘How could you do that?’
Jedda spun around toward the Oracle. She no longer appeared cowed by her, or perhaps her fury had given her strength. ‘How can you just send those people away like pack-beasts you no longer have a use for? Are they worth nothing to you? What about that little girl, when she wakes up? Won’t she miss her own Ama?’
The Oracle’s gaze was lucid, terrifying, as she looked the girl from Marak up and down.
‘I have Seen them in their millions,’ she said dispassionately. ‘The women pushing out their second selves. Each one thinks her love is unique. And so it is.’
‘What are you, some kind of monster?’ cried Jedda.
She recoiled from the Oracle, bumping into one of the large, box-like objects that littered the well. Tymon tried to steady her but she pushed him away furiously.
‘I’ve Seen the babies grow, Seen every iteration of their possible lives, watched them make their choices and then die.’ The Oracle turned her back on them and began wading through the grass, toward the entrance to the mine. ‘I’ve Seen the sun shine on good and bad alike.’
Again Tymon attempted to catch hold of Jedda’s arm. She ducked away, glaring at him.
‘Your choices define you.’ The Oracle’s voice drifted back to them, her little head lost among the grasses. ‘Don’t imagine that you have none.’
Tymon caught hold of Jedda at last, forestalling her stifled protests with a finger to his lips.
‘I need you to stay here,’ he hissed, in her ear. ‘We’re going to do what we should have done to start with: a Grafting trance. We’ll find Laska with or without the Oracle. But I need your help.’
Jedda peered at him from beneath swollen eyelids. Slowly, she nodded. They walked together toward the mine door, coming up short on the threshold. The Oracle had popped up out of the grass in front of them like a sprung toy.
‘It was a mercy to send Jan away, you know,’ their teacher said gravely. ‘One day perhaps you’ll understand. Also,’ she added as if in afterthought, ‘if you wish to perform a Reading and find your friend tonight, then we should prepare. I suggest you collect up whatever you can find in the way of sticks or bark outside. It gets cold in the evenings here, and we’ll need a fire.’
She slipped through a gap in the door into the gloom of the mine, leaving them staring after her in consternation.
‘Call yourselves Company men?’
The Reaper’s balled fist came crashing down on the end of a long dining table, causing the company aboard the resettlement vessel Aurora to jump. The pirate chief had risen to his feet and stood looming over the five people at the table; they gazed up at him like children summoned before a dreaded schoolteacher.
To some of those in the ship’s cabin that evening the experience of such intimidation must have been rare. The man on the left of the Reaper as he made his pronouncement was a strapping Lantrian, his muscles rippling beneath scanty clothes. His hair had been cropped close and his eyes lined with dark ash, ferocious and intent. The cloaked man next to him might have been of Nurian descent, light-haired and aloof. At the far end of the table quivered the Governor of Cherk Harbour, wrapped in a fur robe with a high, downy collar. He gazed at the Reaper in unalloyed dread.
Beside Omni Salassi sat another square-jawed Lantrian who proved on closer inspection to be a woman, as cropped and clipped as her male counterpart. She kept a long tail of braided hair on the very top of her head which coiled down the nape of her neck like a snake. The thin shoulders and air of nervous tension of the man next to her identified him as the merchant, Yago. He had already pulled his seat as far away from the square-jawed woman as possible. This unfortunately put him quite close to the Reaper’s right side as the fist came down. He jumped the highest of the five.
‘This should have been a simple operation,’ growled their chief. ‘Instead, we’re left with complications. Unfinished business. Damned-to-root loose ends.’
Although the sun was shining brightly outside, the light did not seem to penetrate the portholes of the cabin. The Reaper’s eyes were two black wells under his stringy locks. He left the end of the table and stalked from one side of the room to the other with the aid of a bone-topped cane, pausing every few instants to rap the floor in wrath.
‘Movers and shakers of the world, eh? You, my Lord Governor,’ he breathed in Omni Salassi’s ear, causing the Governor to draw back into his fur hood like a snail into its shell, ‘can’t even catch me two upstart children. I hear your soldiers returned empty-handed from the slums. You let them get away — again.’
‘My dawn operation was a success,’ spluttered the Governor. ‘We have the Freehold judge. We have his machine. The Grafters will try and rescue him; it’s only a mat
ter of time. If they don’t, my men will tear that stinking slum apart.’
‘I hope so, for your own peace of mind,’ replied the Reaper. ‘Slums have a way of breeding revolution. Get rid of ‘em before they’re rid of you, I say.’ He smiled with abrupt and deadly civility at the Governor. ‘May we look forward to seeing the Freeholders in your gracious custody when we return from our next venture?’
Omni Salassi nodded vigorously from the depths of his robe. ‘Nothing is more certain,’ he declared. ‘I have every confidence in my officers.’
This assurance seemed to tickle the Reaper. He straightened up, gave a barking guffaw and leered an instant at the Governor, as if he knew a salacious secret about him no one else could guess. Omni Salassi fidgeted nervously in his seat. The Reaper turned his colossal irony onto Yago, sitting across the table. The merchant wilted before him.
‘And you, my dear, little, sociable fellow,’ he sneered. ‘You run into our three fugitives in the market. You exchange pleasantries and gossip. You talk about the weather. You know perfectly well who they are — you’ve been warned days in advance — but you don’t do a thing about it.’
‘I put sleeping poison in the Nurry’s cup, but he didn’t touch it,’ whined Yago. ‘I did report them immediately, sir.’
‘A yapping monkey would be more use to me than you are,’ snapped the Reaper.
His smile returned, however, as he surveyed his remaining associates. ‘Ah, Tahu, Sulaman, Naryssa, my cubs,’ he roared. He clapped an arm about the Nurian and the male Lantrian’s shoulders, grinning across the table at the muscular woman in a great show of cordiality. ‘Let’s show these weaklings how it’s done, eh? We leave this afternoon to join the rest of the fleet, bound for new pickings. A whole village. They’ve been softened up for us by the Argosians. This is easy meat, my cubs. We cut loose on the fifth hour.’
He almost propelled the two men from their seats. The pirates leapt to their feet and hastened toward the door, more than willing to avail themselves of the opportunity to leave. The Governor rose stiffly to follow and bobbed his head to the Reaper. The cabin emptied of its occupants. But before Yago could slink off with the others, however, the Reaper reached out with the hooked top of his cane and caught hold of the fellow’s collar. He drew the merchant slowly toward him, gloating over his victim.
‘Just a minute, Yago.’ He bared a set of ominously yellow teeth. ‘I have a job for you. Something to compensate for your past mistakes.
You’re going on a trip. Don’t worry, I won’t send you on the raid,’ he grinned, as Yago’s face blanched. ‘You’re no pirate. Make your excuses, tell whomever you need to that you’ll set sail this evening. I want you to take my friend here wherever he wishes to go.’
He shook his cane toward the open door that led through a passage to the deck. A shape detached itself from the shadows outside and loped into the cabin. Yago gave an involuntary whimper as Gowron’s heavy gaze fixed on him.
‘Of course!’ he babbled. ‘At your service! I’ll cancel all my appointments and await your pleasure on board my ship … Sirs …’
The merchant dodged away from his captor, made a hasty bow and scampered past Gowron into the corridor. There was an instant of silence in the room as the Reaper lowered himself into a chair at the head of the table.
‘Idiots, all of them,’ he sighed. ‘We’ll end up doing all the hard work ourselves, as usual.’
‘Salassi does seem rather unreliable,’ murmured the lapsed priest. He paced forward to stand at his master’s elbow. ‘I told him to kill the Nurian judge. Instead, he holds him prisoner. A foolish mistake, considering the man’s connection to the Sign. He also keeps that heretic’s machine close to his chest, as if it belonged to him.’
‘See to that before you leave. I have no energy left to deal with these details,’ rumbled the Reaper, his voice dropping to a thick whisper. ‘She haunts me, Gowron. She plagues me. I never get a moment’s rest.’
A peculiar transformation had come over the pirate chief in the past few moments. Again, he no longer appeared to be the same person; his features sagged in exhaustion and his accent had clearly lost its Lantrian edge. He sat slumped at the table as if he were too weary to rise. Gowron scrutinised his master’s ashen face with sudden attention.
‘Find her, kill her,’ muttered the black-haired man. ‘I know it’s only the physical body. I know it only gives us a short respite, but anything … Anything.’
‘You need to rest, sir,’ answered Gowron. ‘You’ve been here several hours now. It’s time you were separated from your own host. I’ll make you your medicine.’
He went to a cabinet on the far wall of the cabin, where he retrieved a hardwood decanter as well as a carved box, spoon and drinking bowl. He opened the box and ladled a serving of greyish powder into the bowl. Then he poured a dark red liquid from the decanter, stirring the mixture. The sweet smell of cooked spice-liquor filled the room.
‘She sends her filthy roots into my dreams,’ mumbled the Being that had taken over the Reaper’s body. ‘She sucks my strength away. By the ancient strength that sustains me! I hate her.’
Gowron handed him the bowl and gently aided him to drink. ‘Leave it to me, sir,’ he said, reassuringly. ‘The Special Envoy of the Council has better things to do than shepherd these pawns to their goal. You’ll find the outstanding business in Cherk Harbour dealt with on your return.’
‘Key’s in the door,’ slurred Lace through the Reaper’s mouth nodding toward the entrance of the cabin. ‘Two days, Gowron. I’ll be back for the raid. I want to see that Freehold annihilated.’
Gowron bowed once more, leaving obediently by the cabin door as his master bade him. He locked it from the outside and slipped the key into his pocket. He had walked only a few paces down the corridor before a terrible cry echoed in the room behind him. Again the voice bellowed out, the wordless howl of a caged beast and the door shook with blows. Gowron flinched slightly and walked on, mounting a few stairs to the deck.
He crossed the path of a squint-eyed swab who stopped in his tracks with a hurried salute. The boy’s expression as he attempted to ignore the shouts from within the cabin spoke of prior experience: he sweated, and stood to attention.
‘Get Tahu here,’ snapped his superior. ‘The captain’s had one of his turns. No one’s to disturb him or open that door under any circumstances.’
The squint-eyed boy saluted again and hurried toward the gangplank leading to the dock. Gowron followed at a more leisurely pace, the cries of the madman tearing through the ship behind him.
7
The afternoon shadows were growing long by the time Jedda and Tymon had gathered enough loose bark and brushwood to build a fire. They piled their kindling in a cart lying on its side just within the entrance to the mine, and coaxed the slow flames to life, their hands made stiff with cold. The entrance hall was domed and rough-hewn, hardly more than a way station to the lower levels. The exterior door would not shut properly and a steady draught flowed through the gaps to the tunnels at the back of the hall. There were four of these, boarded up with planks and probably unsafe. Tymon wondered how well that boded for the hall itself. He did not like to sit too far inside the space; he crouched, shivering, near the deficient outer door. He was miserably cold and full of conflicting emotions.
He had done his best to help Jedda prepare the evening meal with the meagre provisions available. They had found the Saffid emergency cache hidden behind the cart, a single sack equipped with only the most basic necessities, some dry foodstuffs and firesticks in limited quantity. Their supper that night consisted of cooked ‘bark-flour’ — so named because of its gritty texture and abominable taste rather than actual content. The name turned out to be well deserved. They had neither salt nor leaven to bake with and could only warm the grey powder in a bowl of rainwater to form a species of porridge. How the Oracle imagined that a few packets of the stuff would be enough to last them a hypothetical three months of study was a myst
ery to Tymon. In fact, he found everything the Oracle did and said mystifying. He could not deny that she was a severe disappointment to him. He had imagined that the last Grafter in the canopy would be something like a female version of Ash: patient, helpful and self-sacrificing to the end. Instead, she was a little tyrant, coldly disposing of the people around her like chattel. She was simply unlikable.
He was all the more troubled by her behaviour when he remembered that the Freeholders had pinned all their hopes on her to train the next generation of Grafters. Samiha had said the Grafting was the only weapon that could save them, and for once Tymon was inclined to agree. No matter how many treaties they signed how many air-chariots they built, Argos would always have the military advantage. Only a strong network of Grafters could keep the fragile peace secure. The stakes were high enough to justify Laska’s gamble in bringing them here to complete their studies, a gamble that had paid off particularly badly for the captain. Tymon felt he had a moral duty to Samiha and the Freeholders to learn from the Oracle. Unfortunately, that was precisely what the Oracle’s behavior made him increasingly reluctant to do.
After grappling with the question all through dinner and finding no resolution, he decided to unburden himself to Jedda. He sidled up to her as they sat by the fire, picking dispiritedly at the grey paste in their bowls while the light faded outside the mine. The Oracle sat some distance away on the hall floor, apparently lost in rumination.
‘I don’t know about you, but I’m having serious doubts about all of this,’ he whispered to his fellow student. ‘I don’t think the Freehold judges realise what’s going on here. I’m not sure they would have sent us if they did.’
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