by D. K. Fields
Though it was now well into the early hours, Marcus was still awake, sitting on the small patch of the storeroom floor that was clear of Casker gear.
‘Your sister gone on watch has she?’ Marcus said when Cora appeared in the doorway.
‘She wanted to, but with her wound healing… Harker will take over from Nullan.’
At the mention of her new friend’s name, Marcus was on her feet and ready to wake him, dropping whatever it was she’d been so engrossed in the moment before. Probably a slingshot.
Cora caught her by the collar of her new jacket. ‘Not so fast. I have a job for you.’
Marcus sighed. ‘When don’t you, Detective?’
‘Shh – keep your voice down. While it’s empty, I want you to go into the captain’s cabin and get the chart that shows in detail K’stera Point and the path of the two rivers once the Stave splits. But get it quietly. I know you can be silent as the Mute when you want to be, as well as light-fingered. The owners of the laundry know that all too well.’
‘What?’
‘Your new clothes.’
‘Oh. Yeah, well, if they will leave bags of the stuff in the street…’
Marcus shook herself free of Cora, kicked aside the slingshot and trotted off to the captain’s cabin. As Cora turned back to the saloon she noticed that what Marcus had kicked away, half-hidden under sacking, wasn’t a slingshot at all. It was a scrap of paper and a lump of charcoal. Could Marcus draw? Perhaps she wanted to make her own maps, inspired by those Harker had shown her. Wonders would never cease.
*
Once Marcus had done as she was asked and retreated to the storeroom, Cora closed the door to the saloon and looked at the map. K’stera Point was a sizeable landmark by the look of it: some kind of building perched on a rocky outcrop. The River Stave divided itself in two either side of the rock, becoming the Cask on the left and the Tun on the right, just as Ruth had said. Ruth had also said that the current would become faster once they were past K’stera Point, so she and Cora would need to take a route that ensured they didn’t get left behind. And the longer they spent on land, the greater the chance Tannir would cross the two rivers and find them without the support of the crew.
But it looked like they were in luck.
‘Another good tale for you here, Partner,’ Cora murmured as she looked at the path of the Tun. From K’stera Point, the river snaked round to the east, a long bend that Cora and Ruth could cut off on foot. According to the map, the land looked as if it was criss-crossed by lanes, so they should have some cover then. It might work after all. She was about to roll up the map and hide it in one of the many drawers built into the saloon walls, when her eye caught something marked on the map.
A bridge.
That could be a problem, but according to the map it was the only one for miles and was a little way before K’stera Point. In fact, they might be sailing under it right at this moment. If Tannir stayed on the south bank of the River Stave until K’stera Point then to reach the Tun he’d have no choice but to retrace his steps back to the bridge, and that would take him a while, even if he did have a horse. By the time he was on the north bank of the Tun, where Ruth and Cora would be on foot, they might well be deep into the lanes, and almost at the place the Hook was waiting for them.
Of course, Tannir should have no way of knowing that Cora and Ruth were even planning to leave the barge. Unless Cora was right and someone on the barge was feeding him information. She and Ruth going overland for a spell might reveal the truth, as long as they didn’t both end up with a poison dart in their neck. The way Heartsbane acted on a body, it would be a swift end to such worries. For both of them.
*
Cora was on deck with Serus when K’stera Point came in sight early the next morning. They were at the back of the barge, sharing the watch behind a length of stained canvas strung between two old fishing poles – Nullan’s invention to protect those on deck from any more darts that might be fired from the bank. Of Tannir himself, there had been no sign. The dart that had pierced Serus’s coat had been the last to reach the barge.
The sun was high enough to reveal a tower, incredibly tall but thin, no wider than the rocky outcrop dividing the river on which it was perched. As the barge drew closer, the walls revealed themselves to be made of white stone, which glittered in the day’s first light, and what had first seemed just soaring, uninterrupted stone shooting up into the clouds became countless windows.
‘How in the name of the Audience did the Perlish manage to build that… thing on that bit of rock?’ Cora said.
The barge lurched, and Serus overbalanced, falling into her shoulder. Cora caught him but didn’t let go of his waist once he was steady again. The solid weight of him against her hip felt good, and he didn’t move away.
‘Ruth says the current will get faster now K’stera Point’s in sight,’ Cora said.
‘She’s not wrong.’ Serus was looking at the water. ‘That’s the first time I’ve noticed any change in the river’s surface. Those little ridges.’
But Cora wasn’t looking at the water. She was staring at the approaching tower, at its windows. There was something troubling in them. ‘I can’t have had enough sleep,’ she muttered.
‘I keep telling you, Cora, the hammock is much more comfortable than that bunk in the cabin.’
She blinked a few times, but the sight before her didn’t clear. ‘I’d swear there are people in that tower.’
‘That’s hardly surprising, is it?’
‘What’s surprising is there are people in every one of the windows. Must be hundreds of them!’
Serus took a sharp breath. ‘And they’re all watching the river,’ he said.
The back of her neck prickled. They were sailing ever closer to the rock on which the tower perched. Cora had to strain her neck to see the windows. Just as she said: in every one, there was a face turned to the water below. Cora could feel their gazes like a hot brand.
‘Might want to get hold of this as we pass the point,’ Harker said, joining them. He handed them the end of some rope coiled on the deck. ‘Gets a little rough.’
The Casker wasn’t wrong. The barge was rocking more than ever now, as the river swept them closer to the huge stone mass ahead. Harker made his way to the front of the barge, himself as steady as if he were walking on land.
‘What will be the story of today, I wonder?’ Serus said, having to raise his voice over the loud churning of the river.
Cora passed him a rope and kept hold of it for her own balance. ‘Hopefully not a story of drowning.’
‘Or poison darts,’ Serus said.
There was no sign of Tannir on the riverbank. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Her hope had been that when the River Stave split in two and their barge sailed down the northern fork, the Tun, Tannir would be stranded on the wrong side of the parallel river, the Cask, his only choice to retrace his steps to the bridge now behind them. The current here was surely too dangerous for other barge captains to offer transport from one side to the other. Cora wished she’d thought to check that with Harker before he’d gone to join Captain Luine, but that would have revealed more to the bargehand than she thought wise.
It was all action at the front, with Luine at the wheel shouting orders to Nullan who had charge of the levers and was hauling them back and forth. Harker leapt from the deck to the roof and back again in an endless dance with the sails and ropes, then he grabbed a rod and stabbed at the water. Cora guessed there must be a sandbank, impossible to see from the barge, but Harker seemed to know exactly where it lay. Other barges were in front of them and behind, making the same trip, but the captains kept a good distance between them.
Ahead, not far from the stony face of K’stera Point, a huge pole rose from the water, painted in red and white stripes that twisted sleekly down the wooden surface. As each barge neared this pole, they made their choice: River Cask to the south, River Tun to the north. Cora took another look at the bank whe
re Tannir had appeared so often on this trip. Still no sign of him.
Their barge was now the closest to the striped pole, and at a shout from Harker back on the roof, the barge lurched, dipping so low in the water, Cora was sure they’d all slide right in. As she held her breath, she had time to wonder if Marcus and Ruth were stowed inside, and whether they’d have a better chance if they came out on deck – at least then they could swim, not be trapped in the shuttered saloon—
And then the barge righted itself, and they were sailing hard for the northern channel: the River Tun.
‘I think we can let go of this now,’ she said to Serus, holding up the rope.
‘No harm holding on a bit longer…’ His usually golden face had a definite green tinge.
‘I didn’t know you got water-sickness,’ Cora said.
‘I don’t.’ And then he brought up his breakfast all over Cora’s boots.
*
The current stayed fast-moving as the barge rounded the white bulk of the tower. Behind it was a steep slope that led down from the tower walls to the level of the river. A large town, or even a small city, was packed into the V of land formed by the two rivers diverting. This was K’stera, Harker told Cora and Serus. The Casker was back on the roof of the barge, managing the sails. The man had no fear, exposed as he was up there.
‘Who was that back there, in the tower?’ Cora said. She couldn’t get the faces at the windows out of her mind.
‘You don’t need to be minding them,’ Harker called down. ‘They got no eyes in their heads.’
‘I’m not sure that’s particularly comforting to know,’ Serus said.
The Casker laughed. ‘It’s figures of the Washerwoman you saw, and too many to count. The ones at the windows, they’re the only ones we can see, but they say every room of that tower is filled with them. Each one’s made different, got to be unique. Made of every material you can think of – wood, stone, metal, sand, cloth, even ice in the winter. I heard a story once of a cake baked in her shape.’
‘Who makes them?’ Cora asked.
Harker waved to the city they were sailing past. ‘The people of K’stera. Every household, every year, they make a new one, and in it goes. It’s different with the storyteller of course. Only one of them. There’s always a ’teller in the tower. They go in when they’re a child. Their life’s work to tell the Washerwoman tales of the river they can see from the windows.’
‘Their life’s work?’ Cora said. ‘And don’t tell me – they get no choice in the matter.’
‘You’re right there, Detective. Well, far as I know anyway. Someone from K’stera told me, years back this was, that their council draw a name from a cask. Twelve you have to be, to have your name in the cask. If you’re picked, you go inside the tower, and you don’t come out.’
‘What keeps the storyteller in there?’ Cora asked.
A call came from the front of the barge. It was Nullan, signalling that Harker should join her and the captain at the wheel. He stood and stretched. Cora could hear the clicks in his back from the deck below.
‘Being the Washerwoman’s storyteller is said to bring honour to their family, who get all kinds of gifts from the council – fancy house, good horses, council membership. All the things Perlish people care about. And if the storyteller won’t do it, won’t go into the castle and spend the rest of their days telling the Washerwoman stories of the river below, their family have problems, for generations, they say. Goods seized. No marriages. Exile from Perlanse.’
‘From the whole realm?’ Serus asked. ‘Even the western duchy?’
‘So I hear,’ Harker said. ‘The duchies got some kind of special treaty about that, they say. And if the storyteller should take their own life, if there’s even a suspicion of it – if they stop eating, that kind of thing – then the family have the same fate as if their child had refused to go into the tower in the first place.’
‘A storyteller is in there until they die?’ Cora said.
Harker swung himself down to the deck. ‘When you’ve got no more stories to tell the Washerwoman and you join the Audience yourself, a new name is drawn.’
‘That’s a particular kind of Perlish cruelty,’ Serus said.
‘Always thought that was a talent of theirs. That’s how they grow so rich.’ And with that, Harker sloped off to join Nullan and Luine.
Neither Cora nor Serus spoke for a while after that. The barge was still rocking in the stronger currents that washed past K’stera. The buildings of the town were made of the same white stone of the tower, but here and there were glimpses of yellowish rock, as well as red and sometimes a grey-blue. Cora would have called K’stera pretty, but after learning of the indentured storyteller kept in the castle, the place held a deep ugliness. Beyond the settlement, a plain of land stretched away, widening as the two rivers drew further apart, and with roads and lanes criss-crossing its expanse. But Cora’s eye was drawn to the other side of the river, to the north bank.
The River Tun began to snake round, just as the map had shown, and Cora soon spotted the clump of trees she’d been looking out for. It was there she’d told Ruth they should leave the barge, as quietly as possible, and make their way overland to a meeting point further upstream, just before reaching the Hook, where they would re-join the barge. And if the Partner had any favour for this story at all, Tannir would be miles and miles behind them.
‘To spend your days watching other people’s journeys and yet never go on any of your own,’ Serus said at last. He placed his hand over hers. It was warm, she noticed, and heavy. ‘I hope, for the storyteller’s sake, their stories take them away from their captivity. And what of ours, Cora?’
‘Hmm?’ She was doing her best to lean into the barge’s wild movements.
‘Will we soon step off this barge? Is our destination close?’
‘So I’m told. Should reach it tomorrow afternoon.’ It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she and Ruth would be stepping ashore sooner than he would, but she didn’t, and she didn’t like the reason why.
Twenty-Two
Cora found Ruth in the storeroom. She, too, was now dressed as a Casker and was filling a knapsack with rope and a roll of canvas. Cloth-covered packages at her feet told a story of food supplies.
‘Do we really need all that?’ Cora asked, glancing behind her. The corridor was empty, but the voices of the others hummed through the thin wooden walls. Nowhere felt entirely safe from being overheard. She turned back to Ruth. ‘We’ll only be away from the barge for a night.’
Her sister placed the cloth parcels in the bag and drew it shut. ‘You don’t know that, Cora. If something should happen to us out there, and we miss the meeting point—’
‘We won’t.’
‘—we could be on our own in Perlanse for Audience knows how long.’
‘Shouldn’t you be fine with that, what with you being Wayward these days?’
Ruth pushed past her. ‘That’s the problem. We won’t be on horseback.’
‘Keep your voice down!’
Ruth rolled her eyes, and all at once they were back in the house, the old house, where they’d grown up, the years fallen away and the squabbling quick to their tongues. How was it that Ruth was able to do that to her?
‘Why all the secrets, Cora?’
‘Because I don’t know who we can trust.’
‘I know I don’t trust this plan.’
Cora grabbed her arm then regretted it, seeing how Ruth winced and clutched her injured side. But Cora had to make her point. ‘You have to trust me now, Ruth. This might keep you safe just a little bit longer and tell me if there’s someone aboard this barge selling you out.’
‘You think it’s Luine, don’t you?’
Cora glanced down the corridor, all too aware of the captain beyond the partly open door, still at the wheel. But before she could answer, Ruth was off again, having seemed to have lost all sense of caution.
‘And the reason you think it’s L
uine is because it was Nullan who hired her,’ Ruth said. ‘And you’re jealous of Nullan. Jealous of our closeness.’
‘Ruth, I—’
‘Devotee hear me,’ Ruth said, and leaned heavily against the wall. ‘She was my son’s partner. Nicholas and Nullan had been together for years. She’s like a daughter to me, Cora, and family don’t betray—’
‘I hope you’re not about to tell me that family don’t betray one another, Ruth.’ Cora took the knapsack from Ruth’s shaking hands. ‘You of all people should know that’s not true. And here’s something I know. Tannir is tracking us.’
Ruth sighed. ‘I don’t believe someone on this barge is helping him. I just don’t, Cora. I think you’ve lost your way here.’
‘Then why did you agree to get off the barge, agree to going overland?’
‘Because you asked me to,’ Ruth said simply, and that took all the words from Cora’s mouth.
She felt the barge slowing.
‘Time to go. You’ve got your knife?’
Ruth nodded. ‘And you?’
Cora slipped on her ’dusters.
‘Then let’s go,’ Ruth said. ‘I will admit, it will be good to be on solid ground again.’
*
Cora had arranged things as tightly as she could. Ruth had asked Captain Luine to draw close to a copse of trees that would come in sight not long after passing K’stera, claiming there’d be a messenger waiting there. Ruth told Luine she’d be off the barge and back within ten minutes. This lie had been delivered at daybreak that morning so there was little time for Luine, or anyone who overheard, to communicate as much to Tannir.
With the plan in place and the trees now drawing close, Ruth did as she and Cora had agreed: going to the wheel and standing ready to step down onto the bank. As the barge came alongside the trees, there was no sign of unease or expectation from Luine. The captain was talking to Harker about the best way to set fishing poles, one hand on the wheel, the other holding her cup of lannat, half an eye on the river and the ever-nearing bank.
It was only when Cora jumped off after Ruth that anyone said anything, and it wasn’t Luine.
