by Maurice Gee
The sea, Xantee said.
‘The sea,’ she said to Tarl.
He showed no interest, but called a halt. They rested with their backs against a wall of warm rock. Yellow plains stretched away almost to the edge of the distant rain. At the margin Xantee saw a grey uneven line running inland from the sea.
Duro, that’s the city.
No.
Yes. ‘Tarl, is that the city?’
‘City,’ he grunted, and sucked at the gnawed bone he had carried all morning. He broke it at the joint and threw half to each of the dogs.
Belong, Duro whispered. I was born there.
They watched almost without breathing, although nothing moved except the thunderheads. The city was only a thin grey line. In a moment the rain slid down and hid it. Yet, Xantee thought, it’s more – more than just a line. She had sensed – or had she seen? – a film of something lying over it, like the film of lost life on the eye of a netted fish lying in the bottom of a dinghy. She shivered. There was a gool in there, perhaps the mother gool, the largest one. What better place could it have for its home?
She tried to eat but found she could not swallow.
Pearl and Hari must have come this way, Duro said.
Yes, Xantee said, although she thought it had probably been further west. Pearl and Tealeaf, escaping from the city, and Hari searching for his father. They had crossed the plain into these hills. The river down there, pink in the sun, must be the river where Hari had killed Pearl’s brother, Hubert. He had named one of the twins after Hubert – making up for the life he had taken – while Pearl had named the girl twin Blossom after her sister thrown from the cliff.
Xantee shivered. So much killing. And it seemed there might be more to come.
‘Where are the burrows, Tarl?’
‘On the other side of the city.’
‘And that’s where Keech is? And the Clerk is in the city?’
‘Let the boy ask.’
‘What happened to the workers, Tarl?’ Duro said. ‘They had an army. My father was in it till he died.’
‘Some joined the clerks. Others ran away into the plains and made towns. Maybe they’re still there, I don’t know.’
He said something to the dogs and Him stood up and stretched and trotted away.
‘Where’s he going?’
‘To find a cave. The storm is coming.’
It lasted the rest of that day and all the night. They stayed in the cave the dog had found. At dawn the rain and thunder rolled away. The plain was washed clean and the distant city had turned black.
‘Can we get there today?’ Xantee said.
‘Look at the river,’ Duro said.
It foamed and twisted and from high on the cliff they heard stones rumbling in its bed.
Tarl did not seem worried. He led them down a goat track to the plain. They waited beside the river and by nightfall it was low enough to cross. Tarl carried a dog under each arm. The water was still strong enough to sweep them away.
They pushed on through the night, making up time, and hid in scrub below the city wall as the sun came up.
‘Give me a piece of your blanket, girl,’ Tarl said.
He tore a strip from the side and tied it about his waist and between his legs.
So I get cold at night, Xantee thought. Why can’t Duro get cold?
I’m bigger than you, he replied, hearing. My blanket hardly covers me.
‘Tarl,’ he said, ‘are we going into the city first or the burrows?’
‘Burrows,’ Tarl said.
‘I can’t go there. I’m white.’
‘White, brown, black, doesn’t matter. Men go where they go. They fight for whoever feeds them best.’
They had reached the city close to the end of the northern wall. It turned sharply south and there it had been broken to half its height by cannon bolts in one of the forgotten wars. Duro clambered among the fallen stones, climbed the wall like stairs and looked over the city.
Xantee went up beside him. The neighbourhood below them had seen heavy fighting and scarcely any building was whole. They had been mean buildings to start with, hovels for the class of workers little better than slaves. Now they were broken, bent, tipped over, rusty, rotten. They were weed-infested, and puddled in their yards and streets from the night’s rain. She saw rats running here and there. The wars had been a victory for rats. She saw no people, or signs of them.
Tarl climbed up beside them.
‘The burrows are worse,’ he said.
The fighting had been less fierce further into the city. Houses stood undamaged, sturdier than the ones by the eastern wall, worker dwellings in wood and stone. Even there no people moved.
‘That’s where I was born,’ Duro said. ‘My father worked for Ottmar in his salt warehouse.’
Tarl gave a growl at the words ‘Ottmar’ and ‘salt’. At the foot of the wall the dogs heard him and whimpered.
The sun came out from behind clouds and lit the hill where the Family mansions had stood. It picked out buildings in the city centre, some four or five storeys high. Their marble walls and columns turned pink – but they too were pocked with holes as black as bat caves. It was, Xantee supposed, the part of the city called Ceebeedee, where Company’s business had been done. Smoke rose here and there from morning fires, and she supposed people lived in the empty offices. She had thought the Clerk would live on the hill, in the great Ottmar mansion, but straining her eyes, she saw no sign of life. She made out only shapes that might be trees and broken walls.
‘Down,’ Tarl said suddenly. He pulled them on to a lower part of the wall as something whined over their heads.
‘Robber. Slingshot,’ he said.
‘Will he follow us?’
‘The dogs will have him if he does.’
They kept on southwards through the scrub, staying clear of the city wall. It turned west, dropping down a long slope to the sea, and there before them, stretching mile on mile, lay the burrows. Xantee would not have believed so much desolation possible. Near at hand shattered stone and brick and twisted iron and rusty pipe were locked in a sinewy growth of creeping scrub. Once it was the outer edge of a great city. This rubble had been houses, shops, schools, taverns before the great Company ship, Open Hand, sailed into the harbour. She looked across the ruins, trying to identify Port, where the ship had berthed, but saw only broken walls, spiked and stepped and slanting, against the white sheen of the sea.
‘Where’s Blood Burrow?’ she whispered.
‘No Blood Burrow any more,’ Tarl said.
‘Where was it?’
‘By the wall. You went west to Keg and south to Keech. Everything is Keech now. Keech is king of the burrows.’
‘Where is he?’
‘See where the smoke comes up. That will be his fires.’ He pointed at a brown smudge south, towards the sea. ‘But he moves. Keech doesn’t leave his people alone. He knows the danger. He rewards. He punishes. No one knows if Keech will be behind him when he turns around.’
‘Can we keep away from him?’ Duro said.
‘We can try. But I only know Blood Burrow and he’s got men everywhere.’
‘Xantee and I can find them. We can make them forget.’
‘You’ll need to.’
‘Are we going in now?’ Xantee said. She felt it would be like walking into a swamp, like the jungle, but without the Peeps to keep them safe.
‘That’s what you wanted, girl,’ Tarl said.
‘What will we do for food and water?’
‘The rain’s coming again. No shortage of water. No shortage of food either –’ he smiled his snarling smile – ‘if you can eat what I kill.’
He meant rats. She saw he was hungry for rats. She remembered that Hari had eaten them, had grown up on rats, and Pearl had eaten rat too, when she was ill and he was nursing her. If her mother could, her mother raised on spiced lamb and sugar and confections . . .
‘We’ll eat what we have to,’ Duro said.
‘Yes,’ Xantee said.
Tarl nodded. He led them into the burrows, with the dog, Him, scouting and the bitch at his side.
Duro took Xantee’s hand to give her courage. She felt him take courage from her.
NINE
The first day they travelled safely, with the dogs alert and Xantee and Duro probing with their minds. Several times they led Tarl away from the course he wanted to take – runways, mazes in the rubble – away from bands of Keech men, patrolling randomly. Surprise was a tactic Keech had perfected. Twice they came across bodies of scavengers or defectors, punished in the places they were caught.
Too much killing, Xantee thought. Rain fell on the burrows, then the sun beat down from a hard sky, making flat surfaces steam and the ruins hiss like an oven, but she felt cold everywhere – the coldness of humans without pity and the unnatural coldness of the gool.
Tarl had made them cut branches of scrub. When night fell they found a den where no light escaped and made a fire. They scorched the meat he brought and ate it half raw.
For Hari, Xantee thought, swallowing.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘We’re nearly through Blood Burrow. Tomorrow it’s Keg.’ Tarl grimaced. Those names were lost. ‘If these books you want are anywhere they’re south of Port. There was a park by the sea. Hari went there. He went everywhere. Buildings called Music Hall and Art Hall.’ Tarl shook his head. He had no idea what art and music were. ‘If there were books . . .’
‘Book Hall?’ Xantee said.
‘Hari never said that name. He said the park had stone arms and legs, and heads of horses, and a fangcat killing a sheep.’
‘Statues,’ Xantee said. ‘Like Cowl the Liberator in People’s Square.’ Hari had told her about Cowl.
‘Cowl Bigmouth,’ Tarl said. ‘The bolt cannons broke the ones in the park to pieces.’
And the rats have eaten the books, Xantee thought. But they had to find out. She could not think of anything else to do.
They set out again in the morning. In the part of the burrows that had been Keg, women and children had built shelters in the ruins. As Tarl had said, they were every colour, some even had the reddish-brown of the south, like Sal and Mond. There was no way round them. Children approached, begging, but the sight of the dogs sent them scuttling away.
There were no dogs in the burrows any more. Keech had wiped out all that had not fled with Tarl.
‘These people will tell the patrols we’re here,’ Tarl said.
‘We can make them forget,’ Duro said.
‘There are too many. Capture one of the scouts. Make him tell us where Keech is.’
They found a hiding place behind a wall half fallen into a hallway. Tarl and the dogs slept – they could sleep at will – while Xantee and Duro kept watch. Women passed, carrying buckets of water from a well at the end of the street, but it was midday before a man appeared. He had the quick movements of a scout, and a way of shrinking into doorways and emerging like a shadow. He stopped suddenly outside the place where the travellers were hidden.
Duro, he’s seen the dogs’ footprints.
Grab him, Duro said.
They acted together – the simple command Pearl and Hari had taught them: Be still.
The man – a ragged man, white-skinned but blotched with some disease – straightened, grew rigid, turned as though a magnet drew him.
Stand still. Lean on the wall. You’re having a rest.
Tarl and the dogs had woken. The dogs were growling.
‘Keep them quiet, Tarl,’ Duro whispered. ‘What do you want us to ask this man?’
‘If Keech knows I’m here.’
Xantee spoke: What’s your name?
‘Hans,’ whispered the man.
Tarl shifted angrily. ‘Speak out loud so I can hear.’
‘Does Keech know Tarl has come?’
‘He knows there’s a man with dogs. A man with dogs is Tarl.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘He’s sent out scouts. He’s sent patrols.’
‘Where do you report to him?’
‘In People’s Square. He’ll be there with his fighting men tonight.’
‘Ask him why People’s Square,’ Tarl said.
Xantee asked, although Tarl could have put the question himself.
‘Keech says Tarl will go to Blood Burrow,’ Hans said.
Tarl smiled and nodded. ‘Now ask him where the Clerk is.’
‘Hans, where’s the Clerk?’
The man gave a start, as though of pain, and Xantee, who was holding him only lightly, and without Duro’s help, nearly lost him. She took a firmer hold.
‘Where’s the Clerk, Hans?’
‘His name must not be spoken,’ Hans whispered. He writhed against the wall.
‘Why?’
‘Keech has forbidden it. Any man who speaks his name dies.’
‘Why?’
‘Hatred,’ Hans whispered.
‘Hatred for the Clerk?’
‘Yes. Hatred for . . .’ He could not say the name.
‘Where is he, Hans? The man whose name you can’t say?’
‘In the city. In Ceebeedee.’
Tarl grunted. ‘Enough. Bring this Hans in here so I can kill him.’
‘No. No killing. Duro and I will make him forget.’
‘If you can.’
‘We can.’ Duro?
They spoke together, silently: Hans, you’ve talked to no one. You’ve seen no sign of dogs. Go, and keep forgetting.
The man woke from his trance. He turned in a circle, as though finding out where he was. He scrubbed out the dog marks with his foot then slunk away.
‘Now,’ Tarl said, ‘we go to People’s Square.’
‘No, you said Port.’
‘I want to have a look at Keech. I know places to hide.’
‘But Hari’s dying.’
‘One more day. Then Port.’
There was no shifting him. But every step they took back the way they had come seemed like a weakened heartbeat – seemed like Hari fading away. They hid from scouts and patrols. In the afternoon Tarl veered from their previous course, turning into alleyways crushed by walls that had collapsed. They crawled through openings barely wide enough for a man, grazing their skins, sinking their hands in slush and water. They climbed into rooms with fallen ceilings, where fires had been lit in corners and soot had painted flame shapes on the walls. The bones of ancient feasts littered the floors.
‘Where?’ Xantee panted.
‘Soon,’ Tarl said.
The rooms grew bigger. Richer houses, she supposed, from the days before Company had destroyed Belong. Giant beams, hacked and knife-shaved for kindling wood, climbed like branches into floors above. They went up, Tarl and Duro carrying the dogs, and came into a hall with the ceiling unbroken and star-shaped holes in the walls.
‘Hari came here,’ Tarl said.
It had been a place for feasting and dancing, and Xantee remembered Hari speaking of a room with pictures on the floor made from pieces of coloured stone. This was the room: horsemen in green cloaks hunting deer, women stepping out of baths filled with blue water, a yellow sun, a red fire in a kitchen with a pig roasting on a spit . . . Some of the pieces had been dug out with knives but enough were left for Xantee to see how skilled the makers had been. If they could do this they could make books and explain the story of Barni and the stars.
‘Come,’ Tarl said impatiently.
‘Hari told us about these pictures. Duro, see, women dancing. And here are men playing instruments. Here’s one with a flute like Pearl’s.’
Duro cleared stones and dust with his foot. ‘And here’s a man unrolling a book,’ he said.
‘Where? Yes. And see behind him, lots of books stacked on the walls. Tarl, do you know where this place was?’
‘No place,’ Tarl said. ‘Company burned and broke everything. Now follow me, and quiet. People’s Square is on the other side of the wall.’
Come on, Xantee, Duro said.
Hari, we’ll save you, she thought, and although it was too far she sent the message anyway, from this room, across Blood Burrow, over the forests and jungles and mountains, over the Inland Sea, to the room where he lay. Perhaps he would hear a whisper that would help him draw another breath.
Tarl had started off. The bitch, Her, nudged Xantee with its nose. She followed. Tarl led them through another big room, then smaller ones, some filled with rubble almost to the place where the ceiling had been.
‘Quiet,’ he whispered.
As they passed a jagged hole in the floor they saw a cobbled street below and Xantee knew this was one of the gates leading into the square. It allowed her to get her direction fixed. They had reached the western edge. She smelled swamp air rising through the hole.
Soon Tarl turned again, into ruins on the southern side of the square. He stilled Xantee and Duro with his hand and sent one of the dogs ahead, trusting its nose ahead of Xantee’s probing. She could have told him no one was there, and that there were people in the square.
Duro, how many?
Hard to tell. Fifty. Sixty.
Tarl beckoned them. They went ahead, crawling in narrow spaces, then found more height and walked upright. Xantee sensed that Tarl had not been here before but knew it all the same, from outside in the square. It must be where Hari had lain and watched men tie his father to a cart and lead him away to Deep Salt.
The dog stopped in a small room with a boarded-up window. People had lived here since Hari’s day then abandoned it. Again there were bones on the floor. The burrows were a bone yard, Xantee thought. One of the boards had fallen at an angle, giving a view of the square. Tarl held Duro back. He looked out, while the dogs put their noses to a crack lower down, sniffing the unwashed human smell rising from the square.
‘Keech men,’ Tarl whispered; then, with a quiver almost of grief: ‘Blood men too. I see Richard One-eye. I see Ratty.’
