Angel Arias

by Marianne de Pierres

  He nodded and she resumed her serving pose, slapping extra food on his plate.

  Charlonge collected hers next.

  When it was Naif’s turn, Mesree gave her a sharp look. ‘You know that boy?’

  ‘Rajka?’ Naif shook her head. ‘Never spoken to him before.’

  ‘Keep it to that then. He’s one to stir trouble. Stick with your friends.’

  Naif didn’t need the warning but she nodded her appreciation for the cook’s concern.

  This time the three took their food to the back corner of the dining hall.

  ‘Charlonge,’ called a pretty girl with long curly hair at the last table next to the wall. ‘Come and sit here.’

  The girl nudged her friends so that they’d shift along the bench seats and make room.

  Charlonge glanced at Naif and gave a tiny nod. Naif went to sit down but the girl stalled her.

  ‘Boys first,’ she said. ‘And what’s your name, other than divine?’

  Markes realised she was speaking to him and blushed. He stood there awkwardly but she grabbed his arm and pulled him down.

  ‘Be nice, Riss.’ Charlonge’s tone was disapproving as she sat on the other side of Markes.

  That only left a space next to the boy on the other side of the table. Naif had noticed him before. He was attractive, with messy brown hair and dark skin, but something about his smile was empty. She’d seen that in a few of them; the pods and beads they’d consumed on Ixion had stolen something from their personality.

  ‘Sit,’ said the boy, patting the space next to him. ‘I don’t bite.’

  ‘Only after parties,’ said Riss.

  The other girls groaned but he looked pleased.

  Naif bent her head to her plate, hoping to get through her food quickly and go back to her room.

  ‘That Rajka’s an idiot,’ said Riss. ‘We would have died on Ixion. At least here we have a little longer. Shotz and I got away in the airship only a little while back. Someone was taken by the Night Creatures while we were being lifted.’

  ‘Yeah, we saw it as we went up on the gantry thing. He was ripped in half. His guts came out,’ said the boy next to her.

  ‘Don’t be gross, Shotz,’ said Riss. ‘There were no guts.’

  ‘Were!’ insisted Shotz.

  ‘Some people will only believe things if they see them,’ said Charlonge, turning the conversation back to Rajka.

  Riss pulled a face at Shotz. ‘And some people make things up even when they do.’

  He grinned at her and slipped an arm around Naif.

  ‘She believes me, don’tcha, darling?’

  Naif sat stiffly. ‘I think I was there when that happened too. I saw a boy being pulled into the dark. He’d been standing next to me in the crowd. He wanted to help Dark Eve and Clash fight them. Clash tried to save him.’

  ‘Dark Eve . . . what a legend.’

  ‘And Clash. Though he’s not as pretty as you,’ said Riss, turning back to Markes.

  He blushed again and forked hot cake into his mouth.

  Riss’s bold words reminded Naif of Cal. But there was no malice in her tone; she was teasing. Cal would have added spite.

  ‘You coming to the rec room tonight? We’ve got some new music. Mesree gave it to Riss. She said it floated in on the tide,’ said Shotz.

  The group of friends all laughed at that.

  ‘More like Ruzalia robbed a merchant ship,’ Riss added.

  ‘You should come,’ said Shotz, squeezing Naif tighter. ‘I’ll show you how good I can dance.’

  Naif peeled his fingers from her shoulder, dropped his hand back on his lap and kept on eating. The others rolled their eyes but it was Markes’s scowl that got her senses truly humming. He didn’t like Shotz’s manner either.

  ‘Great idea,’ said Riss. She clapped her hands together. ‘You’ve been keeping to yourselves. Time you came and danced. There’s sod all else to do here. If we’re gonna die soon we might as well enjoy what time we have.’

  Again she reminded Naif of Cal. ‘Are you from Grave North?’ she asked.

  Riss nodded. ‘But we can’t go back to Grave. Not ever.’

  Naif repressed a shiver. The girl was right.

  Yet it was exactly what Naif planned to do.

  Riss pleaded and cajoled them until Charlonge said she would go to the rec room. Taking her lead, Naif and Markes reluctantly agreed too.

  As they got up to leave the hall, Mesree shouted more clean-up instructions to those on her duty roster.

  Naif put her plates on the stacking shelf and glanced to the door. At least Rajka and his friends were gone.

  ‘You like my hot cakes?’ asked Mesree. She’d come over to stand behind the bain-marie and was scooping the last of the dinner stews into tureens.

  Naif nodded.

  ‘Could do with a few more of them, young ’un. You’re as skinny as a starved fish.’

  Naif smiled at the cook.

  ‘Come on,’ urged Shotz over her shoulder.

  Mesree winked and Naif’s smile widened. Something about the woman was solid and likeable.

  Naif took care to walk between Markes and Charlonge, so that Shotz couldn’t get close to her. The whole group followed Riss along the main corridor to the west wing of La Galatea.

  Naif and her friends had explored this part of the resort in the first few days after their arrival but had never ventured over there in the evenings, preferring to keep their own company and to stay clear of any arguments.

  ‘Why do you want us to go with them, Char?’ Naif whispered.

  Charlonge wore a resolute expression. ‘If I’m to stay and help, I have to know what’s going on,’ she replied softly.

  They passed out of the corridor into an anteroom and then into what those living there called the dance room. In truth it was a huge ballroom. The walls were edged with tarnished gilt wood and a luscious frieze covered the high ceiling.

  Naif stopped just inside the entrance and stared up. Naked angels danced wildly around a central holy figure. In some places the mural had been eroded by damp, leaving the angels without fingers and toes.

  The ballroom was lit by oil lamps and music leaked from a phonogram set into one of the window arches. It reminded her of Agios on Ixion, though the lights weren’t as low and the music was softer. Ruzalia allowed them to listen to music but set curfews on how late they played it.

  The sun had only just set and the sounds from the radio caught Naif’s attention. She’d never heard music like it.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Radio Rangol,’ said Riss. ‘We found it accidentally. The music is cool, huh? All plinking sounds, but pretty as well.’

  Riss was right; somehow it was discordant and melodious at once.

  Naif glanced at Markes and saw the rapt expression on his face. Without seeming to realise it, he was drawn to the radio. She and Charlonge kept close to him, skirting the clusters of people.

  In the far corner of the ballroom, Naif noticed rows of desks set up with games featuring little wooden pirates and dolmen. Only one table was occupied.

  Naif felt drawn to the games in the way Markes was to the music, as if the puzzles might hold some explanations for her; some wisdom. On Grave she’d played simple memory games but nothing with such beautifully carved figurines and smooth lacquered boards.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Markes.

  The circle around the phonogram opened to let Markes enter. Too late, Naif saw that Rajka and his friends were part of it.

  ‘What do you want?’ said Rajka, his face flushed.

  Markes stopped, but held his ground. Naif applauded him silently.

  ‘The music is beautiful,’ he said simply.

  ‘What would you know?’

  Rajka’s friends sniggered.

  ‘You are the one who knows nothing,’ said Charlonge angrily.

  ‘Don’t waste your time on them, Char,’ said Riss, who’d strolled up behind them. Shotz and some of the other boys were wit
h her. She pushed Charlonge aside and slid an arm around Markes’s waist, then spoke directly to Rajka. ‘He’s one of ours, idiot. They all are. So back off from now on.’

  Rajka’s eyes sparked at the challenge and his friends all looked at him for a signal.

  ‘Not yours, Riss,’ he said. ‘He’s with Ruzalia. The three of them are spying on us. It’s obvious.’

  ‘That’s just stupid,’ said Charlonge.

  ‘You’ve taken too many pods, Rajka. I’ve seen that kind of paranoia on Ixion. You’ve lost it.’ Riss’s taunt was clear and loud.

  Tension ran through the circle and beyond into the ballroom, the same way it had in the dining hall earlier.

  Naif saw hands move to pockets and inside shirts, where home-made knives were hidden. Now, though, there was no Ruzalia or Long-Li, or the threat of Plank’s enormous size.

  Desperate to stop the situation escalating, she touched Markes’s elbow and spoke in a voice that cut across the waiting quiet. ‘I want to play one of the dolmen games.’

  Markes kept staring at Rajka but nodded. ‘Sure. The music doesn’t sound so good over here anymore.’

  Naif gave Charlonge a steady look and they began to back away, pulling Markes from Riss’s grasp.

  The muscles in his arm were rigid, his legs stiff as he walked, but he let them shepherd him to the other side of the room.

  ‘Yours is coming, Riss,’ called out Rajka. ‘And you can’t be with them all the time.’

  Markes faltered but Naif urged him on. ‘He’s baiting her. And us. Don’t let him.’

  But as the three of them walked past the clusters of young people, she caught snatches of their conversations.

  ‘They’re spies!’

  ‘Rajka’s sayin’ . . .’

  ‘. . . got beads . . .’

  ‘Riss and Rajka . . . tonight.’

  ‘. . . gonna stay in my room . . .’

  ‘You think they’ll fight at the . . .’

  They stopped at the tabletop with the game and stared at the figurines.

  ‘It’s not over, is it?’ said Charlonge.

  ‘I saw their knives.’ Markes began to tremble now he was away from Rajka.

  Naif opened her mouth to try to reassure them but Long-Li appeared silently at her side.

  ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Ruzalia wants you.’

  The huge pirate Plank was standing behind him and reached out to slide his thick fingers around her upper arm.

  ‘But I want to stay with my friends,’ she said to Long-Li. ‘We’ve been . . . threatened.’

  Long-Li glanced across the ballroom to where Rajka and Riss stared at each other. ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Yes.’ Naif looked back at her friends.

  ‘Markes and I will go to our room,’ said Charlonge.

  ‘Please, will you take them?’ Naif asked Long-Li.

  He scowled and nodded, flipping his long plait over his shoulder. ‘Follow me,’ he said to Charlonge and Markes.

  They followed quickly, after casting Naif warning glances.

  ‘Now we go!’ said Plank, and with a grip that brooked no resistance, he hustled her out.

  Plank took her up the still-grand marble staircase at the heart of La Galatea and along the broad corridors to the south wing. From there they took a creaking cage-lift to the turret where Ruzalia lived.

  Plank pressed Naif down into a chair in a circular anteroom.

  ‘Sit,’ he said, pointing a blunt finger.

  He went over to a set of scarred wooden doors and knocked.

  La Lobos opened one side and peered around. He stepped back to let Plank through and shut the door after him.

  Naif heard raised voices, muffled by the walls. She looked around, taking in the untidy grandeur of the suite: stuffed armchairs with silk covers, wall-hangings of velvet and tapestry and a shiny material she’d never seen before.

  Behind her, two beautifully carved wooden tables were jammed next to each other and littered with small chests and instruments of all kinds. Naif recognised some as compasses, and others as gauges for measuring rain and wind. On the largest table, the instruments were slightly rusty or broken. But on the smaller table, they glowed with polish and appeared to be in working order.

  Beside the tables was a half-finished object rather like a large, open wardrobe and more than twice Naif’s height. One side held an open box full of cogs, strange silver balls and strips of copper metal.

  Naif recognised its likeness to the Register on Ixion. This is what Ruzalia had been working on. She found herself drawn to the inside of it and ran her fingers along the wooden casing, remembering her experience when her badge was fitted.

  ‘I thought you were told not to move,’ said a familiarly gruff voice.

  Ruzalia stood in the doorway, her face tight still with anger.

  ‘In here.’ She inclined her head and disappeared.

  Naif left the booth and followed her quickly. Ruzalia might have saved them from Ixion, but she was neither kind nor warm. She was a woman plagued by determination and deep agitations.

  The chamber Naif entered was filled with instruments of a different kind. Heavy wooden frames studded with iron and chains, spikes and wheels.

  She had never been taken to the wardens’ Holding House in Grave but Joel had told her stories of the tortures that went on there – stories he’d heard from his whispered conversations with the loaders who brought food packs to the Grave warehouses. When Father realised that Joel had been talking with them, he sent Joel to the barley fields where he spent days bent over, cutting the barley heads with a scythe and stuffing them into sacks. It was not long after Joel began to work the barley that he ran away.

  Plank and La Lobos stood by a high bench with long leather straps along its side and a brace of spikes running in a frame over the top. Both men had buckets and cloths and were sponging the surface down. As Naif stepped further into the room she saw the colour of the water. Then she could smell it. Blood. Metallic and thick in its scent.

  Jud? She glanced nervously around, but there was no sign of the wiry pirate and neither Plank’s nor La Lobos’s face revealed anything.

  ‘In two nights you’ll go to Grave,’ pronounced Ruzalia. ‘I have a task for you.’

  ‘I-I . . . a task?’ Naif felt winded, off-balance because of the blood and the torture instruments and Ruzalia’s change of heart.

  ‘The beads did not come from Ixion, they came from Grave.’

  ‘J-Jud told you this?’ Naif had to force herself to say his name aloud.

  ‘Jud told us some.’ Her grim gaze shifted to the object that La and Plank laboured over. ‘But not enough. Pirates are only good at two things. Drinking, and keeping their mouths shut about where they get their money from. You will find out who sold them to him and how they got them here.’

  But how? Naif left her question unspoken. This was her chance.

  La Lobos squeezed his cloth one last time and handed it and the bucket to Plank.

  ‘La, take her back. We’ll leave on the tide tomorrow and return for you two days later at the end of the new moon. Be at the Old Harbour then. If you miss the rendezvous it will be another month before I can return without risk.’

  Ruzalia strode to the other side of the room and lifted a heavy curtain to stare outside. It was night now and the only light from the window was the twinkling reef markers in the bay. She let the curtain drop. ‘Tomorrow.’

  Naif nodded with relief. She was going home.

  But underneath her determination to find answers, a pit of dread stirred.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Charlonge as Naif entered their shared room.

  She was standing by the window, hands clasped tightly. Markes sat on the bed, fingering a dressing on his neck.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Naif asked him.

  ‘Long-Li brought us here and then he went back down to the ballroom,’ said Markes.

  ‘But someone bandaged you?’

  ‘He took us to Mesree in the
infirmary first. I never noticed how much she smells of onions.’ He gave a weak smile. ‘You?’

  ‘I’ve just been to Ruzalia’s apartments. I saw the Register she’s trying to build. It’s only half-finished. The discovery of the beads has rattled her, though. She’s changed her mind; she’s taking me to Grave tomorrow.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Someone in Grave has been supplying Jud with the beads and pods. She wants me to find out who and how.’

  ‘Jud told her that?’ asked Markes.

  Naif took a quiet breath. ‘I think she tortured him.’

  She told them about the room and how Plank and La Lobos had been cleaning.

  ‘Maybe she was just trying to scare you,’ said Charlonge.

  Naif shook her head. ‘I saw the blood. And Rajka and his friends had taken something. That’s why he attacked Markes.’

  ‘Naif’s right,’ said Markes. ‘He had glazed eyes. I saw them up close.’

  Charlonge’s expression became anxious. ‘Ruzalia will come back for you, won’t she?’

  ‘Yes. Two days later, before the moon rises.’

  ‘But what if she doesn’t come? Or you aren’t able to meet her at the right time?’ Markes’s tone became grim.

  ‘There’s the barge. I could hide and wait for it.’

  ‘But that could be months,’ said Markes.

  ‘I’ll find a way back.’

  ‘Back where? To Ixion? Here?’

  ‘Yes. I have to help Joel and Suki and Rollo.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘Ruzalia mentioned a place called Port of Patience. She takes the over-agers from the barge there.’

  ‘I’ve read about it in the books on Ixion,’ said Charlonge nodding. ‘It’s a trading port.’

  Markes looked around suddenly. ‘What was that noise?’

  Naif heard it then; raised voices and thumping echoing down the corridor.

  Charlonge turned the handle but Naif ran across and seized her hand. ‘No. Lock it.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Char, lock it.’ She pushed the girl’s hand away and turned the heavy iron ring to lock the door.

  Before either of them could speak or move away from the door, someone outside began wrestling the handle. When they couldn’t get the door open they began to thump on it.