She looked at the men again. They weren’t really collecting cats, of course. They were collecting any kind of rubbish they found on the streets, including dead animals. That was how they’d got their name. She was about to go back to her desk, when one of the men turned to her. For a second she couldn’t place him, but then she realised who he was.
‘Finn,’ she whispered.
He nodded. He had shaved his face, and was wearing a hat with a broad brim, pulled down over his eyes. His partner beside him had a similar hat and an old pair of dungarees. As Letta watched, he picked up a dead pigeon and threw it in the cart.
‘Back door?’ Finn asked quietly.
Letta nodded. ‘Lane alongside,’ she said, just as she saw the healer crossing the street to the cart.
He frowned in Letta’s direction then addressed Finn. ‘Dead dog near water station,’ he said gruffly.
Finn nodded but said nothing. The healer seemed satisfied, and crossed back to his own shop.
Letta went inside, pulling the heavy door behind her. Once out of public view, she flung the bolts across and stood leaning against the wall, waiting. She knew the back door was open and, sure enough, she soon heard their steps in the hall.
Finn seemed even bigger indoors than he had in the wheat field. Behind him, his companion was small and lean, with a sharp face that reminded her of a stoat.
Finn smiled. ‘We don’t even know your name,’ he said, speaking the old tongue fluently but with a slight accent.
‘Letta,’ she said, noticing how brown his eyes were.
‘Letta,’ he repeated. ‘And where is Marlo?’
She nodded towards the stairs.
‘The room at the end,’ she managed to say. ‘But he won’t be able to walk far.’
‘We’ll put him in the cart,’ Finn said and nodded at the other man. Together, they thundered up the stairs, while Letta waited in the shop, tension making her bones ache. She strained to hear something from upstairs, and in a few minutes was rewarded with the sound of their feet on the steps.
They came through the door supporting Marlo between them. His face looked white and thin beside the ruddy complexion of his friends and Letta’s heart ached for him.
‘So,’ Marlo said with a smile. ‘This is goodbye.’
She nodded.
‘Thank you, more than I can say.’
She nodded again. She didn’t seem to have words for any of this.
‘We have to go,’ Finn’s companion said, his voice deep and gruff.
‘Don’t forget Daniel,’ Letta said to Marlo.
‘I won’t, but don’t get your hopes up,’ he said, his hand warm on her arm. ‘I don’t want you to be disappointed.’
Finn caught Letta’s eye and smiled. ‘Thank you again,’ he said. ‘You’re a brave girl.’
The banging on the front door caught them all unawares. No-one moved. Letta felt as though they were all in a picture, caught forever, exactly as they were.
‘Gavvers! Open!’ The voice outside was firm, full of authority.
Letta felt weak. What was she to do? They would break the door down. She had to say something but what?
‘Gavvers! Open!’
Finn nodded to her, willing her on with his gaze. This time, she found her voice.
‘Minute!’ she called. ‘Find key!’
Her eyes sought Finn again. He took his arm away from Marlo, and signalled to the other man to take the boy through to the back door.
As they moved away to obey him, he pulled a knife from his pocket, and with the elegance of a deer, vaulted the counter and hid beneath it.
Letta stared at the place where his head had been but there was now no sign of him. The banging started on the door again. She took a deep breath, turned, and pulled back the great bolts.
Please don’t let them notice that there is no key, she thought as she did so.
Slowly, the door opened.
Two gavvers. She recognised one of them as Carver.
‘Come,’ he said.
‘Where?’ Letta answered, trying to imbue her voice with confidence.
‘John Noa,’ the gavver replied.
John Noa? Why would John Noa want her? Could he know about Marlo? The gavver was trying to look past her into the shop. She had to stop him coming in, somehow.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why John Noa want me?’
‘Not for you to ask,’ Carver snarled. ‘Come.’
Letta moved forward but the second gavver put up his hand, stopping her.
‘Coat!’ he said.
Letta looked at him blankly. What had he said? Why couldn’t she understand him?
‘Coat!’ he said again.
He wanted her to get her coat.
‘Yes,’ she stammered. ‘Coat.’
She turned, her mind gripped with panic. Where was her coat? By the back door. What if they followed her? She went to close the front door but Carver got his hand to it, preventing her. Were they going to come in? She walked across the floor, her knees weak. She looked over her shoulder. The gavvers hadn’t moved.
‘Hurry!’ Carver said, his eyes boring into her. She continued on. Don’t look at the counter, she warned herself. Don’t look. Through the door into the hall. She could see her coat on the peg beside Benjamin’s old winter scarf. She reached up her hand to take it down and almost screamed. The Desecrator and Marlo were standing under the garments, completely hidden from view. Marlo’s blue-grey eyes stared out at her.
‘Go,’ Marlo whispered.
Letta took her coat and moved quickly back to the shop.
Carver was standing inside the door looking out at the rain. She glanced at the counter. Nothing. Not a sign that a man was there holding a knife.
‘Ready,’ she said.
Carver moved onto the street. Without a backward glance, Letta pulled the door behind her and followed him.
The room was large and airy. Shelves lined the walls on three sides, shelves that stretched way above his head, bending under the weight of the hundreds of books stored there. The fourth wall was covered in old newspaper, yellowed and faded, but still readable. The room had become a shrine of sorts, he supposed. The books he had saved before the last days. He ran his finger along the spines: Shakespeare, Dickens, Keats, the ancients, all there alongside books from the last century. Nothing wasted, nothing lost. His private collection. He would find it difficult to let them go when the time came, but he would let them go. He couldn’t risk them being found at a later date.
There were few incidents where people managed to decode words after Nicene, very few. None the less, he wouldn’t take that chance. They would be destroyed along with everything the wordsmith had managed to salvage.
For a second, images of the wordsmith filled his head, but he pushed them away. He turned his back on the books and walked across to the wall of newsprint.
Here was a potted history of the past hundred years.
The warnings.
The signs.
Global warming.
Water levels rising.
It was incomprehensible even now that man had just ignored it all. Young people talked about the Melting as if it were a single event, but it hadn’t been like that. The Earth had been heating up for years. His finger touched one of the news sheets. Scientists were warning of an alarming acceleration in the melting of the Polar ice caps. They predicted a dramatic rise in sea levels. That was back in the twenty-first century! He shook his head.
He chose another article, from around the same time. The writer was warning about the disappearing ice caps.
‘Until recently, the Arctic ice cap covered two per cent of the Earth’s surface. Enormous amounts of solar energy are bounced back into space from those luminous white ice fields. Replacing that mass of ice with dark open ocean will induce a catastrophic tipping point in the balance of planetary energy.’
Torrents of words had followed. Words from politicians assuring people that there was no such thing as global war
ming. Words from industrialists who justified their emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere. Words to hide behind. Words to deceive. Useless, dangerous, destructive words…
He drew back his hand and punched the wall, hurting his knuckles and leaving a trail of blood on the yellowing paper.
CHAPTER 7
#82
Breath
Air in and out of lungs
THE CLIMB was not an easy one. They had just passed The Round House, the gavvers’ base, when the path started to rise steeply. John Noa’s building was right at the summit of the mountain, a half-circle cut into the rock. Its back was made of stone, but the curved front piece was almost all synthetic glass. At night, when it was lit, it looked like an old fashioned spaceship. Letta looked up at it, to where it broke out of the mountain, towering above her. Her feet struggled to find purchase on the stony path, the pebbles and shale shifting as she walked. The higher they climbed, the stronger the wind became until Letta was struggling to push against it. The gavvers walked behind her, giving her a none too gentle push each time she slowed. Her mind was racing. What could Noa want? If he knew about Marlo, he would have had the gavvers arrest her. It couldn’t be that.
The rain had stopped, and Letta could hear the men breathing heavily behind her and the sound of a bird somewhere far above them, screeching as he flew, as though warning of some great misfortune. Letta realised that they had arrived at the bottom of a long flight of stone steps. Carver shoved her, his hand rough on the small of her back. She stumbled, then righted herself and started up the steps. She looked up. They were approaching the house from the western side. She could smell the sharp tang of salt air. The ground levelled out. In front of her was a door set into the gable. To her left, a low hedge. And below her, far below her, the sea. She averted her eyes. Breathe, she told herself. Breathe. A gavver leaned in past her and knocked on the door. They waited. Behind her, the gavvers mumbled something she didn’t catch.
The door opened abruptly. A woman stood there. She was tall and thin, vampire-pale, with a sharp angled face. Her hair was a grey bleached colour and Letta suspected that released from its tight bun it would reach her waist. Amelia Deer. Everyone knew her. She worked for Noa and people said she was the second most powerful person in Ark. She was also known as the woman with the breathing problem, and now that Letta was up close to her, she could see why. Amelia’s breathing was like the sound of a punctured bellows. Her lungs had been damaged in a chemical explosion before the Melting, or so Letta had heard the women at the water station say. Up close, Letta could see that each breath was an effort for her, a slow sucking noise that made Letta shiver. Letta went through the door and Amelia closed it, leaving the gavvers outside. A long corridor stretched out in front of her.
‘Come,’ the older woman said, and Letta followed her. Halfway down the corridor, Amelia stopped and opened a door. The room they entered was large and comfortable. A seat hung from a chain in the middle of the ceiling and all around were soft chairs and tall, elegant candles that would supplement the modest electric light. The far wall was entirely made of glass, or what looked like glass. Up close, Letta could see that there was a door embedded in the glass. Amelia opened it and gestured to Letta to step outside.
Letta moved forward tentatively. She was standing on an enormous platform, a half-circle bordered by a low wall of glass. As she stepped onto it, it felt as though it were swaying in the wind. She clenched her fists and looked up. A man stood against the wall looking out beyond the house. John Noa. Letta registered that it must be he, but she couldn’t concentrate on that. The wind was howling around her ears and she felt dizzy.
The man turned. ‘Come,’ he said in a high, sharp voice that she could just hear above the din of the wind.
She wanted to turn and flee to the safety of the house, but she had to do as he said. She felt as though she were on a tightrope, sure the gusts of wind would pick her up and throw her over the edge. The floor was transparent, and through it she could see the teeth of the cliff. She wanted to lie on the ground, to close her eyes. She took two more steps forward. As she neared John Noa she almost stopped breathing. The platform stretched out over the edge of the cliff and looked down on an angry sea. She could hear the waves below, feel the salt spit on her face. She felt the dizziness return.
‘Are you all right?’
She could hear Noa, as though he were miles away, his voice echoing through a tunnel. Her legs grew weak and then his arms were around her.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said, and she could feel his breath on her cheek.
‘I don’t like heights,’ she managed to say. The truth was she was terrified of heights. She always had been.
Noa took her arm. ‘You poor child.’
He led her back to the safety of the room. She almost collapsed as he closed the door, shutting out the wind and the terrible vista outside. He lowered her on to a chair.
‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought you would enjoy the view. I even asked them to be sure you brought your coat.’
He filled a glass of water from a jug that stood on the table. ‘Here,’ he murmured. ‘Drink.’
She swallowed the cold liquid gratefully and felt better.
‘Th… thank you,’ she stuttered.
John Noa looked down at her. A tall, gangly man, he had deep-set dark eyes and curly hair, brown streaked with grey.
He smiled at her. ‘Better?’
She nodded. Was he talking List now? As though he could read her mind, he spoke.
‘So,’ he said sitting on the chair opposite her. ‘You are a wordsmith. No need for us to speak List then, is there?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘I don’t often get the opportunity to speak in the old tongue. I find it quite enjoyable.’ He picked up the jug and poured himself a glass of water.
She noticed his long, tapered nails. He was Benjamin’s age but looked twenty years younger, she thought.
‘You must be wondering why I sent for you?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
He frowned. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news.’
Letta’s thoughts raced. Bad news? Was he going to shorten the List again? Or something worse? Why was he telling her and not Benjamin?
‘It concerns your master, Benjamin Lazlo.’
Letta felt as though the world had stopped spinning. Her body went cold all over. Time had slowed down.
‘Has … something happened to him?’
She could hear her own words but didn’t recognise her voice. He looked up and she knew she didn’t want him to speak. She didn’t want to hear the next thing he said. She pulled back in the chair trying to put more distance between them, but there was no stopping him now. In slow motion she watched his lips part.
‘I’m afraid he is dead, Letta.’
Dead. Deprived of life. No longer living.
The word fell from his lips like a grenade, and then exploded in the air between them. Dead. Had he really said it? John Noa was on his feet. His lips were still moving.
‘A terrible shock … a great man … we go back a long way.’
Not Benjamin. Please not Benjamin.
Noa took her hand, helping her out of the chair.
‘Listen now, Letta,’ he said. ‘Listen child.’
She forced herself to look at him, to concentrate on the words that were still pouring from his mouth.
‘You are the wordsmith now. The only wordsmith we have. Do you understand?’
She nodded and looked away, but he took her chin between his thumb and finger and turned her face back to him.
‘You have a grave responsibility. Are you ready for this challenge?’
She nodded again. He seemed satisfied.
‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he said, and left the room.
She stood there for a few minutes feeling the heaviness that had descended on her. Never had she felt so alone. Benjamin was gone. The pain in her heart forced her to sit again. Benjamin.
/> She barely noticed Amelia walking into the room.
‘I’m sorry about your master.’ Her soft voice broke the terrible silence, speaking the old tongue, like Noa. ‘He was a great man and a great friend, and he played an important part in building Ark. You can be proud.’
‘Where? How?’ Letta tried to say the words, but it felt like they were lodged too tightly in her throat.
‘Smith Fearfall, the scavenger, found him. Found his body. He had been savaged by wild animals, but Fearfall recognised him.’
Savaged by wild animals.
‘Where?’ Letta said, not looking at Amelia.
‘South of the river, in the forest. He was working there. We have some of his things, if you’d like to have them?’
Letta nodded and heard the woman slip quietly out of the room.
Savaged by wild animals.
Her head was beginning to throb. Could it be true? Was Benjamin really gone for ever? She didn’t think she could bear it. She tried to picture his face, his eyes, but there was nothing there. She almost panicked then. Why could she not picture him? She walked towards the window. Outside, it had started to rain again, the repetitive tapping of the rain on the glass, the whistle of the wind outside. She couldn’t bear any of it.
She turned and found Amelia standing watching her. In her hand was Benjamin’s familiar old satchel. She almost ran across the room, banging her shin on the low table as she passed it. She grabbed the satchel, holding it close to her face. His smell filled her head, the smell of paper and wool and warmth.
‘I’ll see you out.’ The woman’s voice cut through her thoughts.
Letta nodded and followed her to the door.
‘John Noa will want to see you soon, to talk about your new work,’ Amelia said, and then the door was closed and Letta found herself once more in the rain and wind. She turned slowly and walked back down the stone stairs.
By the time she reached the shop, it had grown dark. The night-light had just come on, its quiet glow bathing the room in shadow. She sat down on the soft chair in the living area, Benjamin’s bag on her lap. The leather felt warm despite the glaze of rain. She opened it, the clasp cold beneath her fingers. Inside was a half-empty water bottle, his tools and a collection of odds and ends. She pulled out a label. It was made of some sort of plastic and on it was written Sunshine Replacement Therapy. She knew it was old, though she had no idea how old. She thought they had all those words already, but maybe not. She would ask him later. Or, no, she couldn’t. Even as the thought flitted by she was overcome by loneliness.
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