The Harvest Tide Project

by Oisin McGann

  ‘He has earth under his fingernails – not the mark of a man who works out at esh,’ Emos remarked.

  ‘That’s not all,’ Murris added. ‘He had a satchel around his neck when we pulled him in. Have a look at this.’

  One of the men brought out the bag, handed it to Emos and stepped quickly back. Like others among the crew, he seemed uneasy around Myunans. Emos was not bothered; it was still better than the treatment he received from his own people. He unbuckled the satchel and opened the flap, emptying its contents onto the deck. He frowned. There was a trowel, an auger, a gardening fork, a small pair of shears and some more soil samples. There was also a sheaf of notes on parchment.

  ‘None of us can read them,’ Murris told him. ‘They’re in a language we’ve never seen before.’

  ‘Actually, I think you have,’ Emos replied. ‘It’s Sestinian, but he’s used shorthand, a type their scientists use for making quick notes. These are measurements for things like fertiliser, moisture levels, temperature … but what was this man doing walking around at the bottom of the esh?’

  ‘That’s what we’d like to know,’ Murris said. ‘And why did someone feel the need to kill him?’

  ‘Well,’ Emos shrugged. ‘Judging by this, he was involved in nothing more mysterious than gardening, if in a slightly unusual location …’

  He stopped. One page in particular appeared to have been written in haste, as if the man was excited or upset. There was one last line scrawled across the bottom of the page. Murris looked over his shoulder.

  ‘What does it say?’ he asked.

  ‘It says, “How many people will die?”’

  Emos looked up at Murris.

  ‘This might be something we need to know about.’

  Emos Harprag lived on his small farm in Braskhia, a day’s walk from Rutledge-on-Coast, having given up the nomad life of a Myunan and settled down to make a living raising crops and livestock. The land was fertile and was also close enough to the esh to see the Harvest Tide every year. He had been exiled from his tribe years before, and his only contact now with the Myunans was the occasional, discreet visit from the Archisans: his sister, her husband and their two children. Sometimes they left his niece and nephew with him to stay for a few weeks. It was good for the children to experience a different way of life, and Emos was not the type to back down from a challenge.

  It was late in the day when Murris left him back to his gate and waved him goodbye. They were both troubled by what they had seen and the ominous warning in the dead man’s notes. With his mind mulling over the mystery, it took him some time to notice that there was no sign of his niece and nephew. From somewhere, he could hear the faint sound of a cat wailing.

  The tapestry on the wall of his travel room was crooked. Breath hissing through gritted teeth, he opened the hidden door and hurried down the steps. Lorkrin and Taya had entered his studio. He should never have left them alone in the house for so long. A valuable sheet of ancient Parsinor curses shrieked from the floor at the bottom of the stairs. He silenced the hex by licking his finger and thumb and pinching the torn ends together. He soon discovered that the little maggots hadn’t stopped at damaging the scroll. They’d made off with one of his transmorphing quills. He stormed back up the stairs and slammed the door shut behind him, his normally impassive face tensed in fury.

  Emos packed his tools and some other essentials in a backpack, locked up his farmhouse and set out to track them down. He knew they would run, but he had tracked and killed more cunning prey than them and he would see them punished before the week was out.

  They had left in such a hurry that they had not even bothered to try to hide their trail, so he followed at a fast pace, his eyes, ears and nose seeking out any sign of Taya and Lorkrin, but his mind occupied with what he had seen in Rutledge that day.

  The mix of the dead man’s military and peasant equipment, the notes made by someone with a scientific education, the way he had been murdered in cold blood – it was all very strange and, as Murris had said, Emos was fascinated by strange things. Whoever this man had been, he had carried some terrible knowledge, and it was probable that someone had killed him to ensure his silence.

  He reached a fork in the road, one way leading east towards Rutledge-on-Coast, the right turn leading west to Hortenz. Emos followed the faint tracks in the dust up the left-hand fork, but they soon disappeared. He sighed, studying the hedges on either side, then backtracked and headed up the road to Hortenz where he soon came upon their trail again despite the fading evening light. They were going to have to do better than that.

  Hortenz was big and loud on the morning of market day. The market was in full swing and the voices of traders competed with the sound of engined wagons and various animal noises. Taya and Lorkrin walked down a street past a woman selling bottled smells, and a tanner’s stall, and through a rendacrid auction. The huge, hairless, slug-like creatures sat bloated and sleepy and ready for slaughter, and buyers wandered among them trying to decide which would give the best meat. Taya was leaning in to pet one when her brother grabbed her, pulled her down off the fence and in behind some crates. He put a finger to his lips and pointed. There, in the throng of people milling around the market, was their uncle.

  ‘How did he find us so fast?’ she gasped. They had walked late into the night to reach the town before they had slept; their uncle would have had to walk all night, tracking them in darkness to catch them up so quickly.

  ‘He hasn’t found us yet,’ Lorkrin whispered. ‘But what are we going to do?’

  Taya spotted a grate in the ground not far from them and nodded towards it. They crept up to it, and between the pair of them they were able to lift it up. There were some iron rungs in the wall below it and they climbed down these, closing the grate above them. They found themselves in a sewer. Taya pinched her nose and grimaced.

  ‘I thought the smell was from the rendacrids farting. If I’d known …’

  ‘Let’s wait here for a bit, until we decide what to do. At least it’s safe,’ Lorkrin muttered, peering up through the grate. ‘He can’t stay up there forever. We’ll hang around until it’s dark, and then go.’

  ‘All right then.’ His sister searched around for a clean place to sit down. There wasn’t any, so they walked down the tunnel a bit until they found a more open area with large pipes running across the floor and two support columns in the middle, Taya sat down on one of the pipes and rocked back and forth, thinking to herself. They were in awful trouble, and as usual it was Lorkrin’s fault. Feelings of guilt about Uncle Emos’s scroll gnawed at her conscience. She didn’t say anything, because her brother would only laugh. He always said she only felt guilty when she knew she was going to get punished.

  Lorkrin wandered down the length of tunnel to a junction where the path ended. A stream gurgled along a brick-walled gully in the middle of the tunnel, filled with things that Lorkrin did not want to think about. It emptied into a river that flowed through the junction. The only light in the sewer was from the grates spaced out in the arched roof, so he was careful where he put his feet. After a while, he got bored and went back to his sister. She was scraping her name on one of the support pillars with a stone.

  Lorkrin was struck with a thought. Unrolling his tools, he pulled out the quill he had taken from their uncle’s studio.

  ‘Hey!’ He held it up to his sister. ‘I wonder if we can get this to work.’

  Taya’s eyes went wide:

  ‘What are you doing with that? Weren’t things bad enough without you going and stealing something as well?’

  ‘I didn’t steal it. I just took it by accident.’

  ‘Oh, well that doesn’t count then,’ she sneered. ‘I can’t wait to see you explain that one. “I took it by accident, Uncle Emos.” Maybe he’ll only half kill you.’

  ‘You can’t half kill someone. Either you’re dead or you’re not. Anyway, do you want to see if this thing works, or not?’ Lorkrin brandished the quill at her.
r />   Taya’s curiosity got the better of her.

  ‘Okay,’ she sniffed, trying to look bored by the idea.

  Like all Myunan children, the pair had tried transmorphing on several occasions and had even got hold of a few chants. The fact that it was strictly banned by grown-ups was reason enough to attempt it, but the thought of changing the shape of anything the same way they could change themselves, to extend their powers beyond their own bodies, was irresistible. They had never had any success, but then they had never had a genuine transmorphing tool before either. They were hoping that it would not need a special trigger or chant, that it would just work, but they were disappointed. When Lorkrin drew the quill across one of the bricks in the pillar, no line appeared. He sighed and tried again. Still nothing.

  ‘Try imagining that you’re sculpting yourself,’ Taya urged. ‘As if you’re using the pen like a normal amorphing tool; think of the pillar as an arm or a leg or something.’

  Lorkrin pressed the nib lightly against the brickwork again, and concentrated. When he moved the quill this time, he felt a slight give in the brick’s surface, as if he had cut it with a knife.

  ‘I felt something! I think it’s working!’ He kept going, writing his name into the column, the pictograms appearing as if carved with a fine chisel. There was an unmistakable cutting sound, and yet it was as easy as writing with ink on vellum. Taya frowned and walked around the column to look at the other side.

  ‘Lorkrin, stop! Stop writing!’ she gasped.

  He was about to scribble something else when the tone of her voice pulled him up short. Looking at her, he saw a frightened expression on her face. He came around to the other side and gazed at the opposite face of the pillar. His name was cut out of it in reverse. The writing had gone all the way through the brickwork, from one side to the other. The column groaned and there came a grating sound, the kind made by two hard surfaces grinding against each other.

  ‘It’s holding up the roof,’ Taya breathed. ‘And we’ve just cut through it.’

  In the garden directly above the newly decorated pillar, Shessil Groach stood soaking in the morning light before the high wall that separated himself and his colleagues from the outside world. There were times when he wondered what life would be like outside the project, where normal people did normal things … whatever normal things were. It had been a long time since he had been able to walk down the streets of a town, to visit shops and stalls. He had been too young to visit storyhouses and taverns then, but he could do so now, if he were allowed outside, near normal people … which he wasn’t. He idly calculated the time it would take a tasherloc tree, one of the fastest-growing trees in the world, to grow high enough and strong enough for him to use it to climb over that wall. About two weeks, with regular watering, fertilisation and some violin music.

  Other, more normal people might have considered using a ladder, but then as Groach would have been the first to admit, he was a little out of the ordinary. It was just as well then, that he was not really looking for a means of escape. He believed that he would one day be released from the project. He was not sure when, but surely not long now, now that he had solved a problem which the staff of the project had worked on for years.

  It was only a pity that his friend, Haller Joculeb, would never see the successful completion of the project. Haller’s death had been a shock to them all; a horrible accident had taken him only days before Groach had made his inspired discovery. Groach absent-mindedly patted the satchel that hung by his hip. He had not told anyone yet. Haller would have been so proud … and excited. He had always been the most curious about the outside world and what went on beyond the walls. But now they were sure to be released; Groach would get to visit lots of different places and meet some normal people, folks who didn’t talk about plants and earth and fertiliser all day.

  In the meantime, there was work to do. He was about to turn away from the wall, when the ground shuddered beneath his feet. Groach looked down and was alarmed to discover cracks appearing in the ground at the base of the wall. There was a deep, hollow crack and then a rumble, and a section of the massive wall suddenly sank slightly, tearing more cracks in the stone and mortar structure. There were shouts and gasps from the garden behind him as some of his friends turned to see what was happening. Then the section collapsed altogether, crashing down through the ground in a cloud of mortar and dust and a bellowing cough. Groach just had time to realise he was in danger of following it when the ground beneath him gave way and the earth swallowed him whole.

  2 A MEETING IN THE SEWER

  Emos wandered through the marketplace, his senses alert for any sign of his niece and nephew. He came upon a tanner’s stall, where leather wares were laid out neatly on display. Taking two small wooden sculptures from his bag, he caught the tanner’s attention.

  ‘I’m seeking two children, a boy and a girl. They look like this. They’re brother and sister. Their names are Lorkrin and Taya Archisan. Have you seen them?’

  Stopping work on the belt that he was cutting into shape, the tanner cast his eye over the two pieces of wood. Each was carved into a bust, the head and shoulders of a child. He did not know their faces.

  ‘Sorry, sir. I haven’t. Lost, are they?’

  ‘I doubt it. Just missing … and with a talent for mischief. Thanks, anyway.’

  The sound of a crack made Emos spin around to look at the high, spiked wall that stood at the edge of the square, just across from the stall. A crack was creeping upwards, splitting the plaster. The tanner raised his head over the Myunan’s shoulder to see. There was a rumble, and then part of the wall settled suddenly. Plaster burst off it, and the broken section of wall collapsed down through a hole in the ground. Shards of mortar and stone flew through the air – the tanner ducked down behind his counter, and Emos raised an arm to shield his face from the debris.

  People were rushing about shouting, and many were coming over to have a look at what was going on. There was a large hole in the wall, and a cloud of dust was still floating like a thick fog, coating everything and everyone in a fine white powder. Through the gap, figures could be seen stepping over the debris and making their way into the marketplace.

  They were men and women, all dressed in knee-length tunics and sandals. They were all of different ages and appearance, but most had soil or grass stains on their knees, and some held a trowel or shears in their hands. The men wore beards and they all had long hair. Wiping dust from their eyes, they peered around as if in some kind of new land. Several greeted the gathering crowd and one even shook hands with a bemused man standing near him. Emos watched as an old woman approached the tanner’s stall and began examining the leatherwork with obvious delight. The simplest pieces of leatherwork fascinated her. The tanner, eager to seize the chance of a sale, offered some more of his wares for her perusal.

  ‘Hello!’ she chirped to Emos, as she examined a pair of sandals. ‘Isn’t this a splendid place? A veritable plethora of curiosities. Would … pardon me, very forward of me, but … would you happen to know where I might find some absinthe? It’s been years since I’ve had a bit of tipple.’

  ‘No,’ Emos replied, politely gesturing towards the tanner. ‘Sorry. Perhaps this man might know?’

  ‘How do you like those sandals?’ the trader enquired.

  Emos turned to watch as the other newcomers wandered further into the market, scattering and finding objects of interest wherever they looked. They were all gentle-natured, polite and, the market traders noted, easy to please. The traders also noted that none of them seemed to have any money.

  The Myunan was still trying to make sense of the strange group, when from the towers of the town walls, the horns sounded an alarm. The bass roar of engines and wheels was heard, and then catchwagons thundered into the square, manned by armed soldiers. Each wagon had an arm that swung from the top of its body, suspended from which was a man equipped with a net, a whip and a crossbow with restraining rope. They swung out above the crowd
as the wagons circled the market and picked off the newcomers, snatching them where possible, shooting them down and dragging them back when they tried to run. The woman Emos had just spoken to went to hide behind the tanner’s stall, but the trader wasn’t about to tangle with soldiers. He pushed her away, causing her to stumble into Emos’s arms.

  ‘Sorry, missus, but I’ve my business to think about,’ the trader grunted apologetically.

  A pair of foot soldiers pushed through the crowd and grabbed hold of the woman, hauling her away out of Emos’ grasp.

  ‘Make yourself scarce, Myunan, if you know what’s good for you,’ one of them snarled. ‘This is Noranian business.’

  Resisting the temptation to get involved, Emos watched in contempt as they pulled the distressed woman away. He could do nothing for her, and he had his niece and nephew to think about. He watched as the captives were dropped into cages on the backs of the trucks. The drivers of the vehicles gunned their engines, forcing their way through the crowd, barging past people who were too slow getting out of their way. Many were hurt by the steel-reinforced wooden chassis or the iron rims of wheels. Screams mingled with the rumble of vehicles and the crack of the whips.

  Then they were gone, the wagons disappeared back up the streets from which they came, and foot soldiers closed in around the square, checking for any that the catchwagons might have missed and questioning the traders and customers. With their carapace armour, and vicious-looking weapons, they were a threatening presence, offering trouble to anyone they thought was looking for it.

  While the foot soldiers bullied the people of the market, two more wagons drew up at the hole in the wall carrying enormous stones. These were lifted off the flat-bed carts with a hoist and used to build a makeshift, but solid barrier between the square and whatever lay behind the wall. The tanner, having failed to sell anything to the mysterious people from behind the wall, turned to see if the tattooed man would be interested in a purchase, but the Myunan was gone.