It seems an insufficient counterweight, but I can’t change the course I’ve taken.
“So,” Merryn says. “We’ve a little time on our hands. Why don’t you tell me more about this Vidya?”
Dusk is half-fallen into dark when Merryn sees us on our way. “The moon will rise in an hour. By then, you should be at the rookery. Be careful you don’t stray near the cliff edge before that.”
I squeeze her hands. “I’ll see you again, Merryn. It might not be for a while, but if our plan is successful, I’ll be back, I promise.”
She rests a palm against my cheek. “Don’t take any risks for my sake, Ness. I can rest easy, knowing you’re safe. If you can, though, you might try to help Ty.”
I swallow. The news she’s given me of my brother sits like a canker in my chest.
“The tanner’s name is Abelton,” she’d told me as she packed food for our journey. “I know him only by reputation. He sits on the Council.”
“But what was the point of sending him away? Farming runs in Ty’s blood.”
Her tone had told me as much as her words. “With Ty gone, Colm was better able to force his claim to Leewood. He made it clear that he’d lay a charge of treason against Ty and Sophie, as well as you, if Marn didn’t co-operate.”
“But that’s not fair.”
“No,” she agreed. “But what matters now is whether we can do anything to rectify it. You’ve memorised the name and address I gave you?” Her eyes had sought both mine and Ronan’s. “Wilum might be able to tell you more about Ty, but be careful, Ness. If Colm suspects there’s any truth to Ton’s report of strangers at Leewood, his spies will be watching. Given his paranoia, they might be watching anyway. It’s grown worse since you’ve been away.”
My final question had been waiting on my tongue since we’d arrived at Merryn’s. “Sophie told me she was to be married. She didn’t say who to.”
Merryn had chewed her answer over before she spat it out. “Sophie was shown a way to secure her future, and her father’s. It’s to her credit that she bargained for your uncle’s right to stay at Leewood. Don’t think too hard of her, Ness. Marn wouldn’t have survived being thrown off his land.”
“I don’t understand,” I’d told her, but I wonder now whether that’s true, or whether I’d guessed even when I spoke to Sophie at Leewood.
“Next summer, when she’s reached a marriageable age, Sophie is to marry Colm Brewster.”
“Colm! But he’s three times her age — more. And she hates him. How can she even think of it?”
“It’s no easy thing on Dunnett to be a young woman and disgraced. Colm made it clear that her life, and Ty’s, stood in the balance beside your own. Marn was broken. I did what I could, but Colm … Well. Sophie learned what she had to offer, and she offered it. It was a brave thing to do.”
“But she’s so young.”
“And her age bought her a few years’ grace. Next summer was the soonest the Council would give dispensation for a marriage.”
“She doesn’t have to go along with it. She can —”
“That decision is her own,” Merryn told me quietly. “And Colm has made certain meanwhile to show her all the benefits of becoming his wife.”
Walking silently beside Ronan with only the wind-whisper of grass breaking the stillness of the night and every sense alert for Ton’s spies, I remember the look on Sophie’s face when she told me she was to be married in the summer. I can’t believe that marriage to Colm is truly what she desires — but how, having lived nowhere other than Leewood, can she really know what she wants? She has no way at all of understanding what she’s giving up.
“She wouldn’t have made your choices, Ness, as you wouldn’t have made hers,” Merryn had said. It’s not enough to give me comfort.
Maybe Dev was right and it was foolish to come back: not for the risk of being caught, but for the cost of discovering the consequences of my defection. That Sophie sees it as a betrayal is clear. Will Ty feel the same? Three years in a tannery under the thumb of Colm’s lackey: I shudder to think of it.
Ronan turns, his eyes catching the faint light that lingers beneath the clouds. The countryside looks foreign in the thickening dark, familiar hills and trees stripped of their resemblance to anything I know. The few stars that show themselves battle against the gathering clouds. Moonrise might not help us if the storm Lara predicted arrives first.
Hunching into my jacket against the wind’s chill, I hurry us on across the headland. My course was set when I made my decision to leave — or earlier, maybe, with the decision to save a stranger’s life. Either way, it feels as if Dunnett is lost to me, and my family with it. If we knew at the time the price of our choices, would we make them just the same?
CHAPTER 11
The scouring sigh of the sea announces itself and I reach my cold fingers to Ronan’s wrist. There’s no smell of the rookery, but the cliff must be near. As I hesitate, undecided, the clouds that mask the moon shred. The smudge of moonlight shows the slope ending abruptly three paces ahead, but beyond and to our left stands another pallid wash of hillside. It takes me a moment to make sense of it. We’re above the inlet: I’ve brought us too far east. The last bulge of the headland stands at our right, separating us from the rookery and the cove nestled below.
As the clouds close I open my mouth to tell Ronan we’ll have to head farther west, when a voice, startlingly near, makes my heart thud like a fist against my ribs.
“This is a waste of a good night’s sleep. No one could find the inlet on a night like this.”
“Unless they hear your yabbering and guide themselves towards that.”
“They’d never get a boat in there anyway, not unless they could see in the dark. I vote we go home.”
“After the tide turns.”
“We’re fools to be led by the Barritt boy’s tales. He’s not right in the head.”
My tongue feels like sawdust in my mouth. The voices came from our left, above the entrance to the inlet. Ronan touches my shoulder and we back cautiously away. The ground slopes gently north. I cast about for all I can remember of the geography of the place, but the only image I can find is of the villagers of Wester hurling rocks and abuse as Dev and I willed our little boat along the inlet, towards the open sea.
A splash of moonlight illuminates the night and we chance a few hasty steps. I twitch on Ronan’s sleeve, directing us inland. With each break in the clouds we cover what ground we can, but not until we have a curve of hill between us and the inlet does the fear that churns in my belly begin to ease.
Ronan bites back a curse and I hear him tumble. Stones rattle into silence. The cliff. I lunge sideways to find him, skidding to my knees as the ground tilts away beneath me. Scrabbling on all fours, I clutch at clumps of grass, digging my fingers into the dry soil.
I’m all right. I’m safe. My breath comes in sharp gasps. I turn cautiously and sit up, one hand clamped around a leggy bush. There’s no sound. My heartbeat steadies and I peer into the dark. The clouds break and I see him, spread-eagled below, and see as well how close we came to disaster. His face is a pale oval in the moonlight, near as a breath to the cliff’s dark edge.
With furtive care he wriggles away from the drop, moving crab-like towards me. Bracing my feet I reach out to help him. His hand is cold but reassuring in mine. As the cloud abruptly sheaths the moon, the wind brings a reassuring taint of seabirds to my nose. Once he’s beside me on the slope I bend my head to his. “We’re nearly at the rookery,” I breathe. He nods.
When we locate the ledge — a pale gleam that cuts across the cliff ahead and below — a new fear finds me. Till now I’ve avoided thinking about how much harder the climb will prove in the dark, but if we wait for dawn, the chance of being discovered will increase, and we’ll have missed our rendezvous with Explorer. As well, if we’re found we’ll put Merryn in jeopardy.
“Wait here,” Ronan whispers, his mouth so close I feel his breath.
I sink
onto my haunches. The night is blacker with Ronan gone. Wrapping my arms about my knees, I concentrate on unravelling the strands that are woven through the air: guano and kelp and the ocean’s sharp tang. With my eyes tightly shuttered, at least the darkness is my own.
A hand closes on my ankle and I jerk. “Come on,” Ronan murmurs.
Stones roll beneath me as I slither after him onto the ledge. “I’ll lower you,” he says, tugging the rope from his pack. “Go over backwards but try to stay on your feet and walk down as I let the rope out.”
Taking my silence for agreement he ties the rope around me. I wonder if he can read the fear in my face. “It’s easy, Ness,” he says. “Getting started is the hardest part. Even if you lose your footing, you won’t fall. Just try and get your feet back under you.”
“How will you get down?” I ask, my voice a hoarse whisper.
“I’ll climb.”
We wait for a spill of light, then, every nerve raw with resistance, I shuffle to the edge. Ronan sits against the cliff with the rope around his hips, his feet wedged against a protruding rock. I don’t see how he can hold me, but he mouths at me to go.
Fear sends shivers wriggling like graveyard worms across my skin as I lean backwards over the precipice, the rope taut between us. I try not to think of the drop behind me, the rocks waiting, of pulling us both to our deaths. One step. Two. My breath comes in sharp gasps as I battle the urge to crumple inward and cling on with my fingers. By the fourth step, Ronan is hidden by the lip of the ledge. Ten paces down I’ve begun to relax into a shuffling waddle. Another ten and my boot snags a rock, turning my ankle sideways. I lose my balance and swing in, my knee cracking against the cliff. Pain arcs up my leg. The rope jerks down a few inches and a little moan of panic flies from my mouth. My hands claw across the rock, searching for a hold. My foot wedges in a crack and I push up. There’s a moment before the rope pulls taut. I snatch at a breath then take another, slower, relieved to take some of my weight off the rope.
I have to go on. Ignoring the throb that radiates from my knee, I relinquish my meagre handholds and straighten my legs. My limbs shake, but they obey my instructions. The rope gives a small downward jerk and I respond with a step, then another.
When my heel finds the ledge, I slither hastily to sitting, back pressed hard against the cliff. My fingers shake as I fumble with the knot. Once I have it undone I give two sharp tugs on the rope and it twitches away from my hands.
The waiting unnerves me. The moonlight gutters and wanes like a flickering candle as the storm front Lara warned of chases rags of cloud across the sky. Above, twice, I catch glimpses of Ronan clinging tight to the rock. When the rope suddenly pours into a pile by my legs, I jerk in alarm. One end still runs upwards. “Ronan,” I hiss. There’s no answer.
The wind that licks across me is cold. Dense minutes pass before I hear his feet find the ledge. The darkness is disorienting. “Is everything all right?”
He doesn’t answer. His breathing is hoarse as he sinks down beside me. “I’m out of practice,” he mutters at last.
“We can rest for a bit.”
“No.” I catch a glimpse of his face and something else: a dark stain across his shirt. “The wind’s rising. The sooner we reach Explorer the better.”
The rope is still tied around his waist. I lean to help undo the knot, frowning as my fingers meet a damp stickiness. Reaching for his hand I turn it within mine. “I cut my palm,” he mumbles.
A thread of moonlight shows me that it’s still pulsing blood. My med kit is with my pack in the dinghy. I curse myself for leaving it. Pulling my knife from my belt, I slash a strip from the hem of my shirt. The gash runs from between his first two fingers to the base of his thumb. I bandage it tightly. “Close your fist,” I tell him. “How’d it happen?”
“Jagged bit of rock.”
“You can’t climb like that.” He doesn’t answer. Darkness closes around us. I listen to his breathing, trying to assess whether it’s more strained than the climb warrants.
“Is there somewhere we can tie off the rope?” His voice sounds thin and disembodied. “Means we’d have to leave it behind.”
I scramble up, ready for the next break in the clouds. When it comes I search the ledge. There’s a bulge of rock like a broken button at one end. Ronan doesn’t look convinced.
“There’s nothing else.”
One-handed, he loops a couple of knots in the rope then slings it around the jut, pulling it each way to test it.
“You go first,” I say. His colour looks odd.
He doesn’t argue. With the rope locked in his good hand he disappears over the edge. I keep my fingers on the rope where it runs over the lip so that I’ll know when he reaches the sand. Partway down I hear a curse. Nothing more.
When the rope goes slack, I check the knot then lower myself over the edge. My knees and elbows snag as I shimmy down, but concern for Ronan keeps me moving, and it’s easier, at least, than climbing.
I reach the little bay sooner than I expect. My legs feel wobbly with relief. “Ronan?”
“Here.” He sits with his back against the dinghy, his hand cradled against him. “I lost the bandage.”
Stretching into the dinghy I rummage in my pack for the med kit. Spray drifts into my face on a gust of wind. The sea sounds wilder than before, though it could be my imagination. I hunker down beside him.
The gash on Ronan’s palm leaks blood in a slow tide. I press a pad against it, assessing the speed with which it darkens. “It needs stitching.” The wound is gritted with sand and gravel. “I can’t do it in this light.” I dab at the cut. The blood that stains my fingers appears black in the moonlight.
I press a second pad against it and bandage it in place, then knot a sling and slip it over Ronan’s head. “Keep it elevated,” I tell him, “and try not to get it wet.”
There seems little hope of that.
Side by side we shove the dinghy down the sand. At my insistence Ronan clambers in while I push us out into the waves. The water that sloshes around my thighs is cold, slapping up against the boat’s flank and rebounding against me so that I’m soaked to my waist by the time I struggle onboard.
I reach for the oars. I learned a little about boats when Dev and I made our escape from Dunnett, but even so it’s a battle getting us out of the cove. The wind beyond the sheltering buttresses of the cliff is sharp, angling in from the south, bringing with it the breath of rain. The boat bucks with the swell, my stomach lurching with it.
“Can you find the compass?” I ask Ronan.
He reaches for his pack. As I settle myself to rowing, I wonder how much blood he’s lost.
Slowly, slowly, the headland rises behind us, the cove a pale glimmer. “Veer to your right,” Ronan tells me. I do as I’m bid.
“Here.” He hands me a bag of dried apple, brine-tainted and soggy, and a flask of water. I pause to drink, the oars lying in my lap like broken wings.
Behind us the island broods, waves wrinkling away towards it. I flex my arms and tug at my sodden clothing where it’s begun to chafe my skin. “How long will it take us to reach them, do you think?”
Ronan’s face is smudged by shadows. “A while yet. They won’t risk coming close with this wind. But as long as we hold the bearing, they’ll find us.”
My shoulders ache, but only a little more than the rest of me. Blisters are rising on my palms. The boat pitches beneath me. “Move over.”
Shuffling across to give him room, I reach for his hand. The bandage is stained dark but it’s not freshly moist. I shake my head. “You’ll start it bleeding again.”
“Not if we take an oar each.”
A wave sweeps us sideways and we scrabble for the oars, floundering as we try to find a joint rhythm. Once our strokes settle we make faster progress than I was managing alone.
There’s no sense of time other than the slow shrinking of the island behind us, captured in glimpses as the clouds tatter before the wind. Each time I c
heck our bearing, we’ve been swept north, our battle to hold our course growing more difficult with every hour. I send a silent plea to Dev and Lara to find us, and soon.
With the rising wind, spray begins to spin off the tops of the swell, battering against us cold as hail. There’s nothing we can do but hunch against it.
The night has begun to thin when Ronan slumps forward, folded around his injured hand. “Sorry, Ness.” His voice is hoarse. “I need to rest.” I can feel him shivering.
“Me too.”
It’s only as a skiff of rain soaks us that I remember the sailcloth. Fumbling beneath the seat I drag it out. It’s crusty and damp but I drape it around Ronan’s shoulders.
Water has begun to pool in the bottom of the dinghy, sloshing over my feet as we rise and fall with the swell. As I hunt in my pack for something to use as a bailer, my fingers close on the torch. I charge the dynamo with a few cranks and flick it on. I don’t care if we’re still too close to the island, its frail beam bolsters my hope that Explorer will find us.
A swell bellies us sideways and I clutch for my oar. “I’ll row for a while,” I tell Ronan, prodding him towards the stern. He moves lethargically, almost falling against the transom. I hang the strap of the torch around his neck and set it in his hand. “Point the light over the bow.”
It’s more than exhaustion that troubles him, but there’s nothing I can do until we find Explorer — or they find us. Straightening my spine, I wrap my cold fingers around the oars. I can no longer see Dunnett Island. There’s nothing but the sea, chill and endless around us. As I lean into my stroke, fear wraps me like a shroud.
CHAPTER 12
The low whistle carries across the waves, nudging me alert. The muscles of my back are stiff as old leather as I turn to scan the grey waves. Nothing.
Ronan is motionless, slumped in the stern. I check the compass. We’ve drifted again, the southerly swell shunting us off our westerly bearing. It’s a battle I can no longer win, but I can’t give up trying. Wearily, fingers white with cold, I pull on the oars.
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