Finder's Shore

by Mackenzie, Anna

  FINDER’S SHORE

  ANNA MACKENZIE

  For Thomas, Harriet, Alex, George, Ali and Willem who, in finding places to belong, find themselves at new beginnings. And for Eleni, our very newest beginning.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  About the Author

  Also by Anna Mackenzie:

  Copyright

  Advertisement

  With thanks to my publishers Barbara Larson and Random House, Emma Neale for her meticulous editing, Kirsty van Rijk and Jo Morris for encouragement at just the right moment and, last but never least, to Hamish.

  CHAPTER 1

  Blood binds me to this place. Blood and memory. As we climb the steep rise that carries the road over the pass, my morning’s meal curdles in my stomach. Truso’s hand rests on my shoulder as he passes. His beard has greyed since I last came to Ebony Hill, the lines of his face burrowed deeper.

  The stone that marks Esha’s grave comes high as my waist, and sits at ease against the sun-warmed tussock of the hillside. Looking at the place where she died, grief breaks over me like a wave. Esha was the first friend I made when I came to Vidya. I’m still slow to make friends.

  With one finger I trace the letters scored into the stone, the date a year ago — more. A year filled to bursting, that leaves my head brimming with new knowledge.

  Marta, my mentor and one of the city’s governors, disapproved my request to visit the community’s farms at Ebony Hill, just as she’d disapproved my decision to study med-sci. She has little tolerance for what she calls ‘my wilful independence’. Stubbornness is what she means. It was exactly that stubbornness which first brought me to Vidya. Perhaps I should be grateful to my childhood on Dunnett Island, to my uncle Marn’s strop and my aunt Tilda’s temper — but though they taught it, I doubt they thought my stubbornness an asset any more than does Marta.

  Stubborn still, I set my hand on Esha’s stone and remember her smile, her hair short as a boy’s, her careful listening. The last time I stood here had been at her side, our breath sharp from the steepness of the climb, the valley’s cool welcome ahead. Then came the crack of the rifle.

  Tears squeeze up from the well within me. When I close my eyes against them, Esha’s face is painted on my lids, her words dead on her tongue as a hole no bigger than a thumbprint darkens at her temple. In a jumbled glut, images of the war that followed pour through me, the horror of the bomb on the jigger line, the terror of the attack on Home Farm. Faces locked deep in my memory creep upward to taunt me: Stefan burned in the fire; Rys dying in my arms; the paramilitary fighter I tried to save; the one I stabbed; the one I killed. A quiver runs down my arm like ants. ‘Self-defence’ my brain cries — but no amount of rationalising can take the memory of blood from my hands. Perhaps that’s the reason I chose healing.

  No. Turning my back on my memories, I stare back the way we’ve come, across the weathered green folds that spread like creased skirts from the flank of the hill. My choices were shaped long ago on Dunnett Island, in stolen hours spent in Merryn’s kitchen, helping mix her tonics and eating her honeycakes. Merryn’s talent for healing was well known and welcomed — at least until she stood up to the island’s leader, Colm Brewster.

  A footfall sounds behind me and I spin about, body tensing in a reaction I’m still not able to master.

  Ronan stands two paces away, his eyes reaching for mine. I wrap an arm across my chest. He’s filled out since I last saw him, his shoulders broadened into manhood, the lankiness lost from his frame. His skin is tanned dark, his hair shorter, no longer hiding his face.

  “Hello, Ness,” he says. His voice is the same, burred by his own island past.

  “Hello.”

  He gestures towards the memorial. “Is it what you wanted?”

  I nod, emotions warring within me. I let my gaze roam past his shoulder, to Summertops. The hills beyond are topped by pinnacles of rock like the fingers of a hand, the farm cupped in its palm. I can see at a glance why the first settlers came here, and why the Paras coveted it. The farm sits snug in its landscape, its buildings lapped by cereal crops, goats and sheep grazing like a drift of pale leaves across the slopes above.

  “I’ll show you around,” Ronan says. “We’ve made big changes this year. We had to: we couldn’t face another winter like the last. Truso helped as much as he could, but we were all spread too thin.”

  His talk of crop failures and herd renewal scatters like seedheads around me as we trail in Truso’s wake down the far side of the pass. Ronan is more talkative than I remember. Maybe Summertops has been good for him.

  A flicker of movement above makes me flinch. On the hillside a man raises his hand. Ronan acknowledges his greeting. “There’s been no trouble for months,” he says, glancing swiftly towards me, “but we keep sentries posted.”

  I swallow, wondering whether living with the reminders every day can somehow dull the pain of remembering.

  Shaking my head to clear its shadows, I try to listen as Ronan describes the changes they’ve made on the farm. I once told Devdan that wealth was in productive land, in a harvest safely brought in before winter.

  The harvests last year were poor on all the community’s farms. The crops went into the ground too late and there were too few workers to tend them. If it hadn’t been for Lara’s sea-sci research team and the fish they’d brought back to Vidya, our hunger over winter would have become more than a thin, nagging ache. At Ebony Hill, they’ve not had the benefit of the sea’s bounty. I glance surreptitiously at Ronan. He’s lean beneath the muscle.

  Ahead of us, Truso and our escort of scouts have reached the compound. The fortifications are new: fences topped with spiky wire, lookout posts mounted at their corners. The gate itself is salvaged iron.

  “You said you’d come back for the harvest last summer,” Ronan says.

  “I couldn’t get leave,” I tell him, though it’s only part of the reason.

  He scuffs at a clump of chickweed with his boot. “How has it been?”

  Briefly, I wonder how I might distil the intensity and exhaustion of the last year, with all its tears and confusions. “Amar hasn’t much patience for teaching,” I say at last.

  “He’s the new head of med-sci?”

  Appointed in Esha’s place. The memories I share with Ronan seem to hover about our heads. “He’s a perfectionist,” I tell him. “I’m not sure he likes people much.” The opposite of Esha, I don’t say. “He says I could go into research if I’d care to correct my lack of discipline.”

  Ronan smiles, that same half lift of his mouth. “Is that what you want?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Ronan is both friend and stranger, and I suddenly feel shy of sharing my resistance to Amar’s bullying.

  When Lara’s sea-sci team first brought Ronan to Vidya, I resented his intrusion. That we’re both islanders now seems more bond than threat.

  “You should do what you want, Ness,” he says.

  “Is Summertops what you want?” I’m sure already of his answer. Even a few days at Home Farm h
ave unlocked the knots of tension that snag my spine and eased the tightness of my city-tarnished lungs.

  When Ronan doesn’t answer I study him in surprise. His gaze slides away from mine as he tilts his chin towards the gate where my travelling companions wait. “Truso’s aged,” is all he says.

  It takes me a moment to place the man waiting at the gate to greet us, then I have it: Tino, who carried the news of Esha’s death to Vidya. “Tino chose to stay at Summertops, then.”

  “He’s the only one. All the others are new settlers.”

  “Except for you.”

  Ronan shrugs.

  “Do you feel safe?” I ask, eyeing the fortifications.

  “I don’t think about it. It’s better just to get on with things.”

  I’m still formulating a reply when someone calls my name. The woman loping across the hill is a few years my senior, slender and sloe-eyed. I remember treating her last summer when she sprained her wrist and tore the ligaments in her shoulder. “Hello, Jofeia.” I glance quickly at Ronan, but he’s gone, striding towards Tino at the perimeter fence.

  “It’s good to see you, Ness,” Jofeia says, smiling wide. “Arm’s good as new.” She circles her shoulder.

  “I didn’t realise you were based at Summertops.”

  She shakes her head. “I transferred to Scouts. Just got in with Brenon.”

  “Brenon’s here?” Dread curls through my belly. In the past, Brenon and I seemed to be always at odds, and I’ve no reason to suppose that anything will have changed.

  “We’ve just completed a month on patrol. We have two weeks here before we go out again.” She pauses. “What about you? Are you in med-sci?”

  “I finished my apprenticeship last week. I’ve a fortnight’s leave while I decide on a specialty.”

  “Front-line med,” Jofeia suggests. “We need medics in Scouts. You’ve got the background for it,” she adds.

  But not the stomach. I’m grateful that Truso chooses that moment to call me, saving me from answering.

  “Protocols are more rigorous here than at Home Farm,” he says, as he takes me on a tour of the compound. “We won’t be taken by surprise again.”

  I’d like to tell him that he isn’t to blame for the past, but Truso has a right to his grief: for the freedoms we’ve lost, as well as the people. Something of Truso has been lost as well. In the three days I’ve just spent at Home Farm I’ve not once heard him laugh, though his laugh is one of the things I remember most clearly from last summer, before the Paras’ attack.

  “Jofeia told me Brenon’s here.”

  “They got in last night. He’s inspecting the sentry posts.”

  “Did they meet any trouble?” The cost of patrolling the land around Vidya’s extended farm community has begun to cause small rumbles of discontent in the city. It slows reclamation work to have resources tied up in what some people see as an unproductive task. I decide against mentioning their arguments to Truso.

  “Nothing they couldn’t handle.”

  I don’t ask more. It’s better I don’t know. Maybe without Brenon’s intervention last summer we’d all of us be dead — that’s at least the way he’d see it — but I doubt it’s so simple. Before we set out for Summertops this morning, I paid my respects at Home Farm’s small cemetery, and at the lonely, unkempt mounds that lie farther up the hill, mounds that mark the graves of the prisoners Brenon took.

  CHAPTER 2

  When I wake to a cockerel’s cry, I wonder for a moment where I am. A fresh-milled smell lingers in the rough timbers by my head, and the bird announces itself again. Summertops. I stretch my arms then push up on my elbows. Half the bunks are empty. Taking care not to disturb the women sleeping around me, I tug on my clothes.

  A sentry marks my passage as I cross the yard. The kitchen is quiet but not empty.

  “You’re up early, Ness.” Brenon’s smile sits like a slice of lemon on his face.

  I study him surreptitiously. Unlike Truso, he seems scarcely changed, his hair close-cropped to his skull, his face a collection of sharp planes. His eyes are his dominant feature, piercing and pale. “The rooster woke me.” I lean past him for the teapot and he slides a mug towards me.

  “You’ll notice a few changes since you were last here,” he says.

  “This is the first time I’ve visited Summertops.” As Brenon well knows. I wonder whether he means to remind me of Esha’s death.

  “In general. Security has been improved on all the farms.”

  “It doesn’t make farming any easier.”

  “Granted. But it’s preferable to a repeat of last year.”

  The tea is little more than lukewarm. “You think the Paramilitaries still pose a threat?” My thoughts hurry on, tumbling from my mouth. “Didn’t the prisoners claim they were from a break-away group? And by the end they were all dead.” It sounds stark, spoken aloud, but saying it makes it no more or less real.

  Brenon’s eyes barely flicker. “Whether or not their claim of being ousted was true, the parent group remains a problem. There’s been ongoing aggression against smaller communities. We can’t afford to drop our guard.” He eyes me thoughtfully. “What would you have us do, Ness? Wait for another attack before we improve our defences?”

  “No.” I top up my tea with water from the kettle simmering on the hob. “It’s just … if we don’t make peace with them, how can it end?”

  “Perhaps it can’t.”

  The notion I had, slender as a thread of light beneath a door, that there might yet be a place for me at Ebony Hill, shuts off into darkness, my options dimming with it.

  Brenon slides a platter of rolls and a quarter round of cheese towards me. “Truso tells me you’ve completed your med-sci apprenticeship. What are your plans now?”

  I break open a roll. It’s begun to stale and crumbles in my hands. “I have the week to decide.”

  “There’s a place in my unit if you want to join Scouts,” he says.

  I gape, dumbfounded.

  Brenon stands. “You’re no novice; you’ve shown yourself competent under fire, and I’d be happy to have you with us. Think about it, Ness.”

  He taps his fingers on the tabletop, turns and is gone. I’m still flapping like a beached fish when Truso stomps into the kitchen. He grunts his thanks as I pour more tea. Battered is what Truso looks, as if he’s gone hollow at the core. He drags a hand through his tangled hair.

  “Did you sleep all right?” I ask.

  “Same as usual.”

  It’s no answer. “You should take some time off,” I suggest.

  He raises an eyebrow. “Is that the medic speaking?”

  “A friend, if you count me such.”

  “I count you,” he answers, a smile ghosting across his lips. “Saice says the same, but there’s nowhere I want to be, save here. I built these farms,” he adds quietly.

  The kitchen door opens to admit a group of sentries. Truso pushes back his chair. “Everything quiet?”

  The leader of the group nods and reaches for the teapot. “I’ll make fresh,” I say, getting up.

  “What are your plans for today Ness?” Truso asks. “I’ll be touring the farm if you want to join me.”

  “You’re Ness?” one of the scouts interrupts. Four sets of eyes turn towards me. “Ronan said you’d arrived.” His expression is both eager and diffident. “It’s just that my knee’s been giving me trouble. I damaged it, a few years back. I’m not sure it’s ever properly healed.”

  Truso begins to speak, but I wave his objections aside. “I’ll take a look if you like. Where’s the med room?” Strained joints I can deal with. It’s bombs and gun-shot wounds I’ve no stomach for.

  “Are you sure about this, Ness?” Truso says, as he ushers me down the hall. “You might be surprised by how much you’re taking on. Saice hasn’t been able to get up here for a while.”

  Saice is medic at Home Farm and nominally responsible for the health of residents on all the farms that surround Ebony
Hill. “I’m happy to ease her workload,” I tell him, as I scan the room he leads me to. The ill-assorted array of equipment, bottles and roughly folded blankets suggest that the space is used as much as a general storeroom as a med room. “I’ve spent too much time in the lab over the past year. It’ll be good for me,” I add. And maybe, as well, it’ll help me focus on the decision I’m supposed to be making.

  Three muscle injuries, an infected toe and two cases of boils later, Truso reappears in the doorway. “How’s it going?” he asks.

  “Amar wouldn’t approve,” I tell him with a grin. “It’s what he calls med without sci — or, worse yet, witch doctoring.”

  “You should have said no. You’re supposed to be on leave.”

  “I prefer dealing with people to being shut away in the lab.” Which alone provides my answer to Amar’s insistence that I opt for a placement in research. Despite his speeches about the greater good and making a difference on a large scale, my morning’s work pleases me.

  “Saice would support you in that, though I doubt she’d share Amar’s terminology. She’s proud of you, you know.”

  Without Saice’s endorsement my mentor, Marta, would never have approved my entry into med-sci. “I only wish that Esha —” I stop. Silence pools around us, clotted with memories. I thrust them aside. “Brenon says there’s a place with his unit if I want it.”

  Truso’s eyebrows hitch upwards. “And do you?”

  I reseal a slightly musty smelling jar of anti-fungal preparation. “Some of these medicines need replacing.” I can feel him waiting for an answer. I glance up. “I don’t think so. But not for the reasons Amar would want to hear.” The argument I made to Marta over my choice of profession flashes into my mind. “My interest is in life, not death.”

  When Ronan slides his plate onto the table next to mine, I move along to give him room. With the influx of scouts, mealtimes are crowded. “I hear you’ve been running clinics,” he says.

  “Thanks to you, apparently.” I smile to banish the guilt that flits across his face. “I didn’t think there’d be much demand, but it’s been steady.”