Finder's Shore

by Mackenzie, Anna

  Ty laughs, and the sound takes me back to our childhood so that I want to swing him up in my arms and hug him. I study my little brother, taller than me by a head. “I’ve missed you,” I say.

  Ty’s face loses its humour. He doesn’t meet my eyes as he nods. Beyond our refuge I can hear the hum of an insect and, more distant, the rhythmic clang of a hammer. Perhaps we’re near a forge.

  “What will your friend do when he can’t find you?”

  “Ban? Report back to Wilum, I expect.” And Malik. I wince at the thought of his reaction. “We need to get to Beaton Lane as soon as we can.”

  Ty scrapes the heel of his boot against the stone, ploughing a line through the leaf mould. “It’s on the far side of Dunn. It’d be safer to get out of town.”

  “I have to find Malik — he came ashore with me. If we wait until dark we’ll surely be able to get to the harbour without being seen.”

  “The longer we wait, the bigger the risk. As soon as Welp finds you’re gone, he’ll have people out looking.” He pauses to consider, one leg jigging. “If he links me with your disappearance, there’s a chance he’ll go straight to Colm.”

  “He knew I’d seen you,” I admit. “He said I’d no right to speak to you, that you were Abelton’s property. Ty, I’m sorry.”

  He sloughs my apology aside. “Leave it, Ness. Do you think there’s any chance that he knew who you were?”

  “No. I told him my name was Becky.”

  He gives a satisfied grunt. “Likely he’ll report to Abelton, then, rather than Colm, and Abelton’s as dense as three-day-old porridge. It should be easy enough to convince him you’re just some girl with a fancy for me.”

  It takes me a minute to understand what he’s saying. “Ty, you’re not thinking of going back?”

  He looks at me square. “If we both disappear, even Abelton will work it out. But if I go back, confess to meeting a girl and let him think what he likes about where I’ve been for the intervening hours, it’ll give you time to get away.”

  “What about you? You’ll be trapped.”

  “No more than I am already. It’ll earn me a whipping, but I’m owed that already, for being late.”

  “No! Ty, there’s no need. We’ve a boat at the harbour, and a ship waiting off shore. Dev is on board and he’ll welcome you — they all will. Vidya’s nothing like Dunnett.” Even as the words spill from my mouth, images from the fighting at Ebony Hill unspool in my mind. But Ty will be safe in the city: safe, and with me. “Abelton must be as much a bully as Colm, to whip you for no more than being late,” I add.

  My brother makes a raw noise in his throat. “He treats his tithed workers like animals — worse: I wouldn’t misuse an animal such a way. I’d be glad to see him dead.”

  My eyes fly to his face. It’s surely bad luck, in a graveyard, to talk so blithely of dying. “Come with us.”

  “I can’t just run away, Ness.” As I did. The words hang between us, unspoken. He shifts a little, easing his shoulders against the stone. “I have to talk to Sophie. She has to know what Colm is really like.”

  The light that filters through our ivy wall dulls as clouds cross the sun. “Besides,” Ty adds, “if I disappear, Colm will take it out on Marn.”

  “We could come back for them.” Even as I say it, I wonder whether it’s true; whether the governors would indulge such a request; whether even Farra would support it. I straighten my spine. “I’m not leaving without you, Ty. Either we both leave or we both stay.” I look at him straight. “It’s your choice.”

  The day has begun to shred into evening when we creep out of the graveyard. The sea fog I remember from Leewood has drifted in off the ocean, its tendrils creeping like searching fingers along the streets.

  Ty leads me inland, the smell of the tanneries fading as we make our way cautiously around the fringe of the town. Sound is oddly flattened, and innocent objects loom disconcertingly in the fog. My head has begun to pound by the time Ty pulls me into the lee of a building. “We’re above the old harbour,” he whispers.

  I breathe deep, searching the dank air for a hint of the sea, but it’s something else that tugs at my memory: a smell of leather and old rope and rosin — my father’s smell. A hand closes on my shoulder.

  “You’re a deal of trouble,” Wilum says.

  Ty spins around, his length of pipe in his hand. Wilum’s teeth flash. “And you’ll be the brother.”

  “It’s Merryn’s friend,” I say quickly. Ty lowers his weapon.

  “This way,” Wilum says. “No noise now.”

  We follow him through a tangle of lanes. With the sea fog thick about us, I soon lose all sense of direction. “Are we going to the harbour?” I ask, my voice a hoarse whisper.

  He turns his head. “They’ve posted guards. You’re lucky I found you before they did, if that’s where you were heading.”

  “We were going back to Beaton Lane. Where’s Malik?”

  “Gone.” He raises a hand to still my questions. “Enough now.”

  The fog thins as we leave the paved roadway and begin to climb. When we reach the hilltop, I turn. Below us the town is hidden within a dense sheath of cloud. Wilum leads us across the hill and down into a gully thick with bracken that snarls our steps. The slope beyond is steep, my breath coming in sharp gasps by the time we reach the crest. I take a grip on Wilum’s arm. “Where are we going?”

  “Cove over the next hill,” he says, and marches on.

  Ty touches my arm. “All right?”

  I nod, and limp in Wilum’s wake.

  When we top the next rise, fog lies soupy below. Wilum curses. “It’d be madness to bring a boat in.”

  “Malik, do you mean?”

  “And Ban with him. Your friend was like a bull with his nose freshly ringed when Ban came back without you.”

  I bite down on the ‘I’m sorry’ that lines up on my tongue. I seem to have done nothing but apologise ever since I arrived back on Dunnett.

  “I persuaded him to shift your boat away from the town, and lucky I did. Colm’s men missed them by a whisker.” Wilum sighs, sucking at his teeth. “I promised I’d find you and bring you here. For all the good that’ll do.”

  I lick my lip, tasting salt. “How long till it clears?”

  “The haar? Could be gone by morning or last for days,” he says. “Long enough for Colm to realise he might want to widen his search.”

  I can’t think for tiredness. The mournful cry of a seabird pierces the fug in my brain — but it seems out of place somehow. Wilum grunts. The sound comes again, short then long, like a bird drawing predators away from its chicks.

  “Ban,” Wilum mutters, and sets off down the slope, my brother and I trailing after.

  Sand crunches under my feet. Wilum’s haar is less thick than it was in the town, our circle of visibility extended by a pace, but its dank fingers still slither unwelcome over my skin. I cough, muffling my face in my hands. The whistle comes again, and the scrape of a keel on sand.

  The moon casts a weird radiance through the fog. Ban looms towards us, the outline of the dinghy sketched behind him. I stumble forward and Malik’s voice reaches to embrace me. “Girl, you took years off my life.”

  Shin-deep in water, my fingers find the solid reassurance of the surfboat’s gunwales. I turn to Wilum. “Thank you.”

  His face splits in a self-deprecatory smile. “It’s us should be thanking you. On you go now.”

  Ban holds the boat steady as I scramble on board, Malik’s grip firm on my arm as he settles me in the prow. When I turn, Ty meets my eyes. “Ness —”

  “Go, lad,” Wilum urges, his broad hand on my brother’s back. “Abelton will flay you alive if he finds you. There’s no sense in staying.”

  Still Ty hesitates. A snatch of sound from the hill above reaches us: voices, carrying an unmistakable note of excitement. “All of you,” Malik hisses, “on board now.”

  Wilum pushes my brother forward whether he wills it or no, boosting him
over the side so that he tumbles in a heap at my feet. Between them, Wilum and Ban shove the dinghy off the sand and turn it in the tide. We rock perilously as Ban clambers on board. Ty, balanced on one knee, falls back against my legs. I reach to steady him as Wilum swings himself nimbly over the stern.

  It’s lucky the sea is calm: the dinghy sits low in the water with five of us onboard. I lean against my brother’s shoulder, though whether it’s him I seek to reassure or myself, I’m not clear. The sound of voices comes again, closer this time. I barely let myself breathe. Malik’s strokes are smooth, scarcely a ripple spreading as he dips the oars. Our small sphere of visibility moves with us as we draw away from the cove. Within minutes the shoreline of Dunnett is gone and we’re lost in the chilling blindness of the haar.

  CHAPTER 15

  I shift uncomfortably, the rib of the dinghy digging into my side. My brother is curled beside me. Sleep has temporarily erased the agonies of the last three years from his face, but he’s changed even so: his jaw more angular, his brow high and wide. For all his thinness, his body is edging into manhood.

  Around us the fog bank thins to drifting cloud then to faint wisps. Suddenly we’re free of it. I look back to where it stands, dense and silver in the moonlight. “It looks almost solid,” I say. The breeze that touches my skin feels like a gift. “What causes it?”

  Wilum twists to look behind us. “The haar? The mixing of warm and cold air coming off land and sea. When it’s overcast it can linger for days.”

  “I’m glad to be out of it,” Malik says. “Here.” He hands me the compass. “Lara won’t be far away. You can hold me to our bearing.”

  I wipe a drop of moisture from the glass. “What about Wilum and Ban: how will they get back?”

  “I’ve been wondering whether your captain might agree to drop Ban ashore south of Dunn,” Wilum answers. “He has a family to worry about. For myself, I’m thinking I might pay a visit to Tarbet. There are people who will be interested in your proposal, and it might prove safer to start somewhere other than under Colm’s nose.”

  We sight Explorer soon after. This time I manage the ladder on my own, and my heart’s pounding has nothing to do with the sea’s oily swell. Dev stretches a hand to pull me on board, but it’s Kush that I look for. He’s not there.

  Ty scrambles off the ladder behind me. I introduce him to Lara. He looks half-asleep still, and wary. “You’ll remember Dev,” I add. Ty’s eyes slide around the gathered faces and away.

  “And we’ve two of Merryn’s friends with us,” Malik says, as he follows my brother onto Explorer’s deck. “We had a spot of bother onshore. It seemed best to bring them along.”

  If Wilum is surprised to find a woman captaining the ship he doesn’t show it. “It’s a pleasure to be aboard,” he says. “And to feel the sea beneath me — now, that’s a delight I thought I’d lost.”

  Leaving them to complete the introductions, I hurry below.

  Ronan’s eyes are closed when I enter the cabin, his cheeks bright with fever. Kush looks up from his desk. “He’s holding his own,” he says quietly. “His temperature was down a little this morning, but the infection is still an issue.” He looks at me square. “I tried the honey last night. It’s too soon to say whether it’s done any good.”

  “I couldn’t get Merryn’s salve.” I choke out the words. “Wilum says Colm has done his best to turn folk against her, so that no one dares use her tonics.”

  “Ness?”

  I spin round to find Ronan’s eyes open, though they have an unfocussed haziness about them. I hurry to his side. “Hello, Ronan. How are you feeling?” I lift a cup to his lips and he swallows awkwardly, water dribbling down his chin.

  Kush rests the back of his hand against Ronan’s forehead, lifting it away without comment. “I’m going to check your hand,” he says, and receives a faint nod in reply.

  I can tell by smell alone that the infection has grown worse. The flesh around the wound is shiny and taut, a thin yellow fluid leaking between the stitches that cross his palm. Near the thumb the sides of the gash have begun to knit, but close to Ronan’s fingers, where it’s deepest, a reservoir of pus is forcing the wound open.

  “We’ll have to lance it,” Kush says. Our eyes meet.

  With water hot as I can stand, I swab the wound clean. Ronan’s jaw locks as Kush snips through his neat stitches and tugs the threads free. The last three bring an ooze of pus with them. Hating that we have to do this, I take a grip on Ronan’s wrist and fingers, pinning his hand flat against the bed. “Ready?” Kush asks. Ronan grunts.

  Quick and accurate, Kush sinks the tip of his scalpel into the wound. Ronan sucks air between his teeth, forcing it out in a feral hiss as Kush cuts again. The tendons of his wrist jump beneath my hand.

  “Done,” Kush says, reaching for swabs. It’s not true. Forcing the pus from the wound is as bad. Ronan holds stoic as we finish.

  Without reference to either of them, I reach for Merryn’s gift of honey. The amber liquid falls, transparent and golden, onto Ronan’s palm. I smear it into the freshly opened wound and cover it with gauze. Ronan’s face is pale, but when I meet his eyes, his lip quirks just a fraction.

  “Get some rest,” Kush advises. “And Ness, I’d like to take a look at that bruise.”

  Tilting my face to the light, he gently probes the swelling that Welp’s cronies gave me. “You’ll live,” he says, his pronouncement tempered by a sigh. “Though you’ve a lot to learn about taking care of yourself.”

  He’s right, I think, my eyes trailing to Ronan, though maybe not only in the way that he means.

  The introductions are long past when I slip into the cabin. “There’s no shortage of people who want to see change,” Wilum is saying, “but they’re afraid, and rightly.”

  “Of change?”

  “Of the Council. Of Colm.”

  I take a seat beside my brother. He glances at me sideways, his arms tight across his chest.

  “What if we simply sail into Dunn and confront them?” Lara asks. “It would disprove a few of the Council’s claims, which would at least get people thinking.”

  Wilum shakes his head. “People think as well as you or I, but they won’t stand up against Colm unless they’re sure they won’t stand alone. That’s the challenge, and achieving it will take time.” His eyes move from face to face, assessing our reactions. “Colm has too much to lose to give it up without a fight. The farther off that fight is, the readier we’ll be to meet it.”

  “It’s not our intention to generate violence,” Lara says. “Our governors are hoping to build long-term links with the island.”

  “Can’t make a cake without cracking a few eggs. Colm’s not likely to sit quiet whilst his little fiefdom erodes around him. But that’s my problem rather than yours.”

  There’s an uncomfortable silence. I’m not sure that any of us know exactly what to make of Wilum. Farra breaks the impasse. “Assuming his suspicions are already aroused, we should expect him to be on the defensive.”

  “You should, but maybe no more than usual.” Wilum gestures towards my brother and me. “If he puts the rumours of a stranger at Leewood together with young Ty’s disappearance, the logical conclusion would be that Ness came back for her brother, and that’s the end of it.”

  There are flaws in his argument but I’m too tired to find them. A yawn catches me suddenly and Dev pushes away from the wall where he’s leaning. “Ness, you look exhausted. Ty too.”

  Lara stands. “Both of you should get some sleep. And you, Malik. Dev, we’ll set a course southwest; Wilum can guide us to the bay where he wants us to drop Ban, assuming the coast is clear of this haar. After that,” she pauses, her eyes seeking Farra’s. “I vote we set a course for Tarbet.”

  That Wilum has earned Lara’s approval makes me think that he stands as good a chance as any of convincing the islanders that Colm’s is not the only way.

  “We need to think on it yet,” Farra says mildly. “But you migh
t set the course while we do.”

  I lead my brother below and he sinks into sleep like a stone in the bunk above mine. I lie exhausted and awake, my mind a whirl of images. Ronan’s swollen hand and fevered face; Colm’s sneer; the dank walls of the cellar where, but for Ty, I’d be imprisoned still. Welp’s ratty face and Merryn’s calm smile. Sophie. I toss and turn, but it does nothing to chase my sleeplessness away. Wilum’s arguments batter their way round my skull till I can dredge no sense from them at all.

  As the motion of the boat shifts, I lay hold of one of the flaws in Wilum’s words. Bringing about change will take time, he told us. But time is something my cousin Sophie will run out of, exactly one year from now. Is a year time enough? And there’s the other truth I missed. With all the talk that there’s been of strangers sighted on Dunnett, it hadn’t occurred to me before now that — just as much as Malik or Dev or Lara — I’ve become a stranger to Dunnett Island.

  I must fall at last into a threadbare sleep, for it’s late morning when I surface. Ty is still sleeping, wound tight in a cocoon of blankets. Shrugging into my clothes, I hurry to the med room.

  When I woke there was a plan laid out clear in my head, and Ronan’s flushed face and restless sleep confirms it. Touching my finger gently to his brow, like a promise, I climb on deck to find the others.

  Dev is at the wheel. “Feel better?”

  The wind sifts its hands through my hair and I reach up to catch the loose strands. “Did you get Ban back onshore?” In my exhaustion last night, I didn’t remember to thank him.

  “Without a hitch,” Dev confirms. “We had to go farther south than we’d planned, but better that than risk the haar.” He shakes his head. “I’ve never seen it so bad, though Wilum says it’s not uncommon in Dunn.”

  “I remember it at Leewood.” I don’t want to be distracted by memories. “Where’s Wilum?”

  “Sleeping still. He didn’t get to his bunk till late. He came with us, to see Ban safe.”

  “We’re going to Tarbet then?”