Someone sobs. I sit up a little and the weight against my back shifts, transforming into a body. “What? What did we hit?” someone asks. A child calls for its mother.
“I’m here. It’s all right. I’m coming,” the woman who lies against me calls.
“Are you hurt?” I ask.
She ignores me. Glass crunches as she moves. “Mind your hands,” I warn.
Voices tumble over one another. As far as I can tell from their grumbles, no one is badly hurt, though the children’s thin cries make me wish for enough light to be sure.
“Is anyone injured beyond bruises?” I ask.
A chorus of voices starts up. Jofeia overrides them. “Stay in your seats. I’m going to call each of your names. I want you to respond, reporting any injuries. Anything that’s not critical can wait till we’re out of the tunnel.” Jofeia’s instructions settle them, shaky voices complying. I haul myself upright on the back of a seat.
Jofeia reaches the end of her litany without discovering any ailments that require my immediate attention. “Does that leave anyone unaccounted for?”
“Farra,” I say. “He jumped out as we reached the tunnel.”
She hesitates. “Right. Now I want you all to keep calm and quiet while I check on whatever is blocking the line. It’s probably a rock fall or cave-in. Once I’ve assessed it, we’ll put a team together to shift it.”
Whatever it is, I doubt it’s naturally occurring. Jofeia crunches her way past me through the glass. I hear the quiet thump as her feet hit the ground.
Feeling my way to the open door, I follow her out. The darkness is like a muffling fog, tight and choking in my lungs. I stretch out my arms and step away from the jigger, counting my steps — four — till I find the tunnel wall. With one hand against it, I walk back the way we’ve come. It’s not long before light starts to filter into the blackness, then I round a curve and the arch of the tunnel’s entrance is a few dozen paces ahead. “Farra?” I call quietly.
There’s a scraping sound up ahead, but no answer. I hesitate. If it’s not Farra … quietly as I can, I creep back the way I’ve come. Sounds seep towards me as the darkness grows deeper: the rasp of timber, low voices, a sudden rattle of stones.
As I stand undecided, a weight slams into my belly, knocking me sideways. My head connects with something solid and I crumple like a scarecrow knocked from its pole, spiralling away in a storm.
CHAPTER 5
“Ness?” The voice calling my name tows me up from the darkness. “Ness!”
Someone groans. It’s a moment before I realise it’s me. As I move, memory hurtles towards me, then ripples apart like still water disturbed by a stone. When it re-forms, it brings pain tumbling with it.
The jigger, and some kind of blockage on the line. Something heavy lies across my legs. I open my eyes but it makes no difference to the weight of darkness. Arrows of pain ricochet back and forth within the bony confines of my head.
“Ness?” The voice is farther away.
“Here.” My voice isn’t my own. “I’m here,” I try again.
Silence greets me, then a thin scrabbling sound, like rats in a wall. A sharp flare of light starts up and as quickly dies. A hand touches my side and I flinch.
“Steady, girl, steady.” It’s Farra’s voice. “Are you all right?”
“No.” My words follow slowly on my thoughts. “My legs are trapped.”
The light flares again, showing me the tunnel wall curving dark above my head. The weight shifts, pain slicing into my shin. I cry out. There’s a thud nearby and the pain is gone, though I can feel it crouched and waiting. Hands find my arms. “I’m going to lift you.” Farra’s voice is a whisper.
He scoops me up in his arms. My head sways then steadies. “We hit something.” The memory comes scattering back into my head.
“Sand and rubble on the line,” Farra confirms.
“Everyone else — the children and —”
“They’re all safe.”
Footsteps hurry towards us. “You’ve got her? Is she all right?” The relief in the voice washes over me. I should know it, but my thoughts are too sluggish to give up any answers.
“Aye. Can you guide us? One hand on my shoulder and the other on the wall.”
As we begin moving, the identity of the voice comes to me. “Ronan?”
“Here.”
“Where did —”
“Later, Ness. Hush now.” Farra hitches me higher.
Ahead of us the darkness reveals a pocket filled with pinpricks of light like stars — except that it’s hours yet till nightfall.
Farra lowers me to the ground, my back against the knobbly wall of the tunnel. “Wait here. I won’t be long.” His receding footsteps are quickly swallowed by the dark.
“Ronan?”
“Right here.” He squats beside me, the warmth of his shoulder reassuring against mine.
“How did you get here?” I feel as if I’m wringing dirty dishwater from my mind. “I thought the patrol was only going as far as the dead lake.” Ronan had been one of the first to volunteer. I remember the twinge of alarm I’d felt, that he might have been thinking of joining the Scouts.
“The Decon team checking the tunnels had a run-in with a bunch of paras last night. A couple of them fought free and headed back to warn Truso, but they met our patrol on the way. We came as quickly as we could.”
It’s too much information for my jangled brain to unravel.
“Why weren’t you with the others on the jigger?”
“I don’t know.” I can feel dampness spreading down my shin. “Someone — I suppose it was the Paras — rolled rocks at us from up on the ridge.” I search my memory. “I don’t remember what happened after.” I shake my head, and regret it.
“Jofeia said you were in the jigger when she got out to clear the line, but no one knew what happened to you after that.”
I don’t either. Behind me the tunnel wall is warty and cold. Gingerly I explore my shin, sucking a breath between clenched teeth as I find a jagged gash.
“What’s wrong?”
“My leg’s bleeding.”
The comforting warmth of his shoulder disappears. Moments later he pushes something soft into my hand. “Here.”
Clumsy in the dark, I wrap the strip of cloth around my shin, wincing as I knot it tight. Ronan’s shoulder nudges back up against mine. “Do you want a drink?”
My head aches. As I fumble for the flask, I realise my hands are trembling. “Thanks.”
There’s a pulsing hum beyond the immediate silence of the tunnel, resonant as a heart beat, familiar somehow. I open my mouth to ask Ronan if he knows what it is when a closer sound freezes the words on my lips.
Ronan’s fingers squeeze my arm. There’s a second whisper of sound and a muttered curse. “You there?”
I start to breathe again as I recognise Farra’s voice. “Over here,” I whisper.
“Time to move,” he says.
Ronan helps me up. My leg feels bloated, as if the gash is a weight hanging from my shin.
“Leg okay?” Ronan asks.
I grunt and limp forward, left hand on his shoulder as Farra’s is on mine. The tunnel’s blanket of darkness presses down on us, our footfalls my only points of reference.
Ronan’s voice, pitched no louder than a breath, barely reaches me. “Stay with the line?”
Farra grunts assent. The question puzzles me, but my brain is busy trying to hold its own muzziness at bay. A thought flutters into my consciousness and alights. “Where’s the jigger?”
“In Vidya if we’re lucky,” Farra says. “Hush now. We’re nearly out of the tunnel.”
It seems to get more rather than less confusing. “But it’s still dark.”
“It’s night.”
The smell of brine reaches me and the sound of the sea is suddenly loud in my ears, its salt breath waking riffling tides in my memory. Wind flicks a strand of hair across my face. I’ve somewhere lost half a day.
/> I’m still puzzling over it when Farra stops. The sound comes again: a voice. Another answers. Then nothing.
Farra’s hand disappears from my shoulder. I hear a tiny rasp, steel against leather. My heart beats loud in my ears.
As the minutes creep by, I begin to feel marooned in the night, an ocean of emptiness around me. What if there really was nothing? If we were the last people left, like Ronan and his family on Ister? How would it feel to discover that everyone you knew had abandoned you, left you for dead? How would it — my body jerks at the sudden sharp rattle of stones.
Nothing moves. No one speaks. I’m not sure whether the darkness is enemy or ally. Either way, night will sooner or later tip over into day.
When a hand closes on my shoulder, I flinch.
“Easy, now,” Farra whispers. Figures loom towards us. Above the hill, the sky is beginning to sift into grey. My hands are shaking. I tuck them into my armpits. “It’s Brenon’s reinforcements,” Farra says.
“Did they find anything?” Ronan asks.
“Their campsite,” a new voice answers. “Is she all right? She looks ill.”
With the words, my guts rebel. I bend double and heave.
“Concussion,” Farra mutters. When my retching is done he swings me onto his back, my injured leg braced by his forearm, locked beneath my knee. “Let’s get you home, lass.”
CHAPTER 6
I recoil in the face of Marta’s announcement. “With Dunnett? But why?”
Around the table, the governors’ faces are turned towards me expectantly. “There’s an old saying about not putting your eggs in one basket lest they’re all broken at once,” Marta says. “We need to broaden our options. As I said, Ness, you’re the obvious person to assist in deciding our approach.”
“For developing trade with Dunnett,” I say flatly. Marta tips her head to one side as she watches me. “What about Ebony Hill?” I demand.
She dismisses my concern with a flap of her hand. “The proposal doesn’t change our position in relation to our farm community. Considering new options is no judgement on the old.”
“What does Truso think?”
The flat line of her mouth answers that. Either he isn’t in favour or she hasn’t yet told him.
“They’ll feel like they’re being sidelined,” I tell her. “Like you no longer trust them. Truso is finding things hard enough already. He —”
“We didn’t invite you here to question our decisions.” Her voice is sharp. I swallow, taking on board the rebuke. “It’s your input in terms of approach that interests us.” She studies me. “Ness, you must realise that as Vidya’s governors, we’re obliged to consider the well-being of our community as a whole. We can’t ignore the fact that the farms are less secure than we’d like.”
Marta is right. Given what Hetti has told us about the Paras, the governors would be remiss if they didn’t consider alternative sources of food. Still, I doubt I’ll be alone in my surprise that this should be their response.
“Is Brenon in favour?” I ask.
“He’ll be consulted in due course. We’ll require personnel from Scouts to support the initiative.”
I stand up. That they’re laying their plans without talking to either Truso or Brenon feels wrong to me. It feels cavalier; it feels like Colm, back on Dunnett.
“We’re relying on your assistance to develop an appropriate strategy,” Marta says. Her expression has hardened a little.
I study the faces of her fellow governors, but find no variation from Marta’s cool conviction. “I need some time to think it through.”
Marta folds her hands on the table in front of her. “I’m sure I needn’t remind you how much Vidya has done for you.”
My spine stiffens. “You’re right. You needn’t.”
As I close the door behind me — carefully: I’m no longer the child I once was, prone to hasty reactions — my tongue presses against my teeth, against the urge to rage at Marta. At all of them: they can’t fully understand what they’re proposing. My crutch snags on a conduit pipe as I clump into the covered walkway. I reposition it impatiently. I’m perfectly able to walk without it, but Amar was adamant that I should use my injured leg as little as possible. I’d be resting it now if Marta hadn’t summoned me.
The noise of the courtyard swells as the outer door opens and Dev hurries through. His face lightens when he sees me. “Hello there, Ness.” The babble quiets as he closes the door. “How’s the leg?”
“It’ll heal.” I push the ill-humour from my voice. “I’ll be glad when it does.”
His head tilts, accentuating the lift of his brow. The first time I saw Dev, battered and half-drowned, washed up like sea-wreck on the shore of Dunnett Island, I thought him beautiful. I still do, though sun and salt winds have etched a tracery of lines around his eyes, and his hair, held back at the nape of his neck, newly holds hints of grey.
“Listen, I have a meeting with Marta just now, but why don’t we get together later?” With his smile his face loses some of its age. “We’ve barely spoken since you got back from Ebony Hill. Amar tells me you’re thinking of a placement in research.”
My fingers curl tight around the grip of my crutch. “It’s Amar who’s thinking of it, rather than me.” I consider him speculatively, Marta’s proposal fresh in my thoughts. “I suppose you’re part of the governers’ plan?”
“Plan?” His brows lift in a query. “Is something wrong, Ness?”
“Marta is hoping to establish contact with Dunnett.” Dev’s surprise appears genuine. I shrug. “She’ll doubtless explain it herself in her usual persuasive way.” I angle around him.
“Where will you be later?” he asks.
“Med centre probably.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be resting?” Even as he says it, he waves the words away. “Sorry, sorry. You’re old enough to make your own decisions.” His smile, half apology, half charm, is infectious: I can’t resist returning it. It’s good, I suppose, that Dev and I have finally found a way to be friends.
“I am.” My smile fades. “Though I’m not sure Marta shares that view.”
Several times I have to rest my leg. The gash on my shin has begun to heal, the flesh tight and pink around the dark hatching of stitches. I’m still troubled by headaches and an unsettling flicker at the periphery of my vision. As best we can work out, I was hit by a log when Jofeia was clearing the Paras’ trap from the line. She had no way of knowing I was standing nearby, and I have no memory of it at all. No memory, either, of Brenon’s patrol arriving to reinforce Farra’s defence. Without them, the Paras would have taken the jigger.
It was the mother of the little boy who first noticed I was missing, but not till the jigger was again on its way. If Farra and Ronan hadn’t come back to find me, I’d likely be in the tunnel still. I remember little of our journey back to Vidya.
Vidya. Behind me the city sprawls in an untidy jumble, shadowed by the fire-stained hills beyond. I don’t look back. I have no desire to mark the slow progress the Decon teams are making as they labour to regenerate sections of the old city ruins.
Instead I watch my feet and the flickering light through the trees. The hilltop lookout, with its fallen railings facing the sea, has long been my refuge. Today, when I reach it, I find it’s been breached. Ronan sits at the cliff edge.
Limping across the cracked tarmac I lower myself beside him.
“How’s your leg?”
“Healing.”
“Amar said you were lucky.” I quell my surprise that they’ve discussed it.
Beyond us, wind ruffles the sea’s surface into shifting ridges of silver. “At Summertops you asked whether I missed the ocean,” Ronan says. “I did. I hadn’t realised how much.”
It’s a feeling I share. “Marta wants to send an envoy to Dunnett Island.” The words lie starkly between us. “She hopes the Council will be interested in trade.”
He turns to look at me. “Will they?”
“Dunnett
’s Council disapproves of just about everything: books, learning, modern technology; anything from the past that hasn’t been made in a way they can understand. They’re not likely to approve of Vidya.” I stare out across the ocean. “Refugees from the mainland once brought an epidemic that wiped out half the population. Since then, there’s been no welcome for strangers.” Understanding their response doesn’t mean I approve of it. “The Council’s policies are based on fear,” I add. Fear and hate.
“Fear’s not always a bad thing. Vidya’s governors are right to be afraid of the Paras.”
I turn to face him. “But looking for other sources of farm produce: when Truso finds out, he’ll feel betrayed.” Saying it aloud helps to clarify my objections. “Rightly,” I add.
“He doesn’t know?”
“Nor Brenon.” I shake my head. “If there are more attacks — on the farms or the line — people will start to think that Marta’s right; that the farms are too far away and patrols and surveillance too costly.” The idea troubles me more than I care to admit.
Ronan is quiet, his finger worrying at a furrow in the tarmac beside him. “It’s not such a bad idea, Ness,” he says at last. “You told me there were food shortages in Vidya last winter.”
“Yes, but if they abandon Ebony Hill, where would it end? Why would the Paras stop there? Walking away is no solution.”
“The governors have invested too much to abandon the farms, but there’s nothing wrong with looking for ways to diversify the city’s food supply. It’s not only about Ebony Hill and the Paras, it’s about Vidya too. The city’s population is growing. And with sea-sci already expanding, it makes sense to at least think about the islands.”
In the distance a gull glides the wind, wing tilting to follow some whim of its own.
“You could get news of your family.” I feel Ronan’s words like a gripe in my belly. I’ve not let myself look at the heart of my ambivalence to Marta’s proposal. Ronan sets his boot on a protruding nub of concrete piling. “You told me you have a brother still living on Dunnett. And your cousin and your friend, Merryn.”
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