As he lay musing, his servant, Rankly, entered with a plate of cakes and a pot of tea. His father had given him Rankly for his eighth birthday. He’d been disappointed at the time because he’d asked for a hamster, but four years had passed since then and he was resigned to his loss, for Rankly took care of his needs with admirable diligence.
“I want you to keep an eye on Silo Zyco for me,” Elgarth said. “See if you can catch him up to something dodgy.”
“Gladly, master.” Rankly busied himself with the teapot. “Has he annoyed you in some way?”
“Yes,” said Elgarth with admirable candor. “He’s a genuine seer, for one thing.”
“And one seer is quite enough for the Government, especially if that one is as talented as yourself.”
“Exactly. But I think I can deal with him. I can’t prove it, but I’m almost sure he stole my money at the Red Hand. So he’s a thief. And he comes from a long line of homicidal maniacs—rather an unusual background for a government-approved seer, so I’m sure they’ll be keeping an eye on him. But he’ll slip up sooner or later. I may even give him a helping hand.”
“Any plans for the others?” said Rankly hopefully, for he entered wholeheartedly into the dastardly schemes of his master.
“No need to bother with the girls,” said Elgarth. “I’m almost certain Bella and Stella are fakes, and I don’t think Daisy has a genuine gift either.”
“And if she has, it’s not a useful one—snowdrops and so on.”
“Exactly. So that just leaves Maximillian Crow.” Elgarth considered. “I’ve been thinking about him. Given his reputation, he’s going to be my main problem. There is one thing I’m curious about, though. They say he had a seeing about the lookout tower in Herringhaven falling down. It did, and it killed his parents—strange, that. Why didn’t he warn them? There must be a story behind it, and ten to one it doesn’t do him much credit. Maybe he didn’t like them, or he stood to inherit a fortune or something. I want you to make some inquiries for me.”
“Gladly,” said Rankly, “but I’ll need some expenses.”
“Here!” Elgarth tossed him a silver crown and Rankly snatched it eagerly. His wages left much to be desired, and it was only when engaged in research for Elgarth that he was able to afford a pleasant day out.
“Thank you kindly, master! I’ll be on the case first thing tomorrow.”
—
Meanwhile Silo was standing gloomily at the window of his room, while Orlando lay slumped on his bed complaining about the noise, for the quad below was a scene of seething activity. That evening it was brilliantly lit with flaming torches, for hundreds of military cadets had gathered to listen to a speech. Silo was dismayed to see dozens of collectors mingled in with the crowd. They were wearing their black uniforms but had left their helmets at home, and surprisingly, they had closely shaven skulls, which were glowing a hectic orange in the firelight. A tall man was striding up and down a platform at the far end of the quad, in the middle of a stirring and impassioned speech. He waved his arms and shouted, but from his vantage point Silo could only hear odd snatches of his words:
“…wonders of the Ancients…learn from their…glories of goatball…overhead power lines…example to our youth…our great nation…crush…destroy…tax evaders…Raiders…painful lingering death…mighty work we have undertaken…end to the dark ages…new dawn…noble cause…fourfold aims…”
He raised his voice in a final mighty bellow: “…of service! And obedience! And unity! And progress!”
The cadets and the collectors took up his words, punching the air with their fists and chanting, “Service! Obedience! Unity! Progress!”
Orlando groaned and buried his head beneath his pillow.
Louder they chanted, and louder: “Service! Obedience! Unity! Progress! SERVICE! OBEDIENCE! UNITY! PROGRESS!”
And Silo saw a scene pass rapidly before his eyes—not a seeing but a memory. He was back on the Island. It was a wet evening and he was entering the Chronicle Keeper’s hut carrying an armful of fishing nets. Ryker was crouched before a bucket washing his shirt, and Silo saw the ugly red brand seared onto his shoulder: SOUP. Service. Obedience. Unity. Progress. Silo felt a sudden icy chill that reached to the very marrow of his bones. These were the people who had hurt and hunted Ryker. They were the reason he had sought refuge on a lonely marsh at the far fringes of the civilized world. Ryker had been an enemy to Service, Obedience, Unity, and Progress.
He sprang back from the window as if struck, and spun around to face Orlando. “We have to get out of here!”
“Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines myself,” said Orlando. “The whole place is crawling with Bucket Heads, and the headmistress is in with a bunch of murderers. We’re keeping seriously bad company here.”
“We should leave tomorrow.”
“Be nice, wouldn’t it? Have to work out how, though. They’ve got sentries on the door. I think our best bet is to bide our time, act normal, and then slip away the first chance we get. And when we do I plan on throwing in my lot with the Raiders.”
Swiftly Silo considered his options. Ryker had been the cleverest man he had ever known, and it was stunning to learn that Silo had traveled countless miles to work for the very people that Ryker had fled from. He might be dead, but Silo knew he could still trust Ryker’s judgment and good sense.
He made a momentous decision. “I’ll come with you.”
It seemed that he was fated to fulfill his destiny, and to follow in his father’s footsteps.
“My father’s a Raider. His name is Aquinus the Accursed.”
“Really?” Orlando sat up and grinned at him. “You kept that pretty quiet! But I’m really glad we’ll be sticking together. I was hoping you’d change your mind about being a government-approved seer. I don’t like to go on about you coming from a swamp and stuff…”
“It’s not a swamp, it’s a marsh,” said Silo.
“…but I’ve been around a bit, seen the way things work on Mainland, and it strikes me the Government isn’t ever going to approve of you. You’re just not their type.”
Sleep would not come to Silo that night. His mind was made up, but his future seemed perilous and uncertain. He thought of the vast range of the Kingdom Isles and then beyond, to the wild and boundless oceans—oceans on which he would sail if he was to become a Raider. It may have been his mother’s dying wish, but even so his heart quailed at the prospect. His life had been lived on the margin of the sea and he had observed it in all its moods, summer and winter, year in, year out. He thought of its sucking tides, its shifting sands, and the wild fury of its storms and didn’t think he cared to get more closely acquainted. But then he thought of his father. He must be out there somewhere on that vast expanse of ocean, standing at the helm of his ship under a star-spangled sky, bound for strange and uncharted lands beyond a dark horizon. Perhaps he would find him—if he was still alive, that was. But the thought gave Silo hope, and he fell asleep with a lighter heart. However, it was not to be sleep that came to him that night, but a seeing.
The darkness melted about him and suddenly he was standing on the Causeway under a wet gray sky, between the open sea and the flat expanse of the marsh. Even though he knew it was a seeing, and in reality he was far, far from home, his heart stirred at the sight of it. A sudden and unexpected homesickness swept through him like a flame, and eagerly he sought out the familiar mound of the Island, that tumbledown heap of huts and hovels that rose proud above the mud-brown waters of Goose Creek. But it was gone. He gazed in disbelief at the spot where it had stood and saw only open sky and the swirling tidal waters, and in the whole great expanse of the marsh there were no people, no rafts, no huts, not one single solitary sign of human life; the only sounds were those of the wind and the waves and the crying of the marsh birds. The Island and all who had lived on it had vanished. And the Causeway itself had changed. He saw that it was lined with driftwood markers, jutting from the damp earth like a row of rotten te
eth, and on each one was a name. They were graves, he realized, his blood prickling with dread: Mudfords, Beans, and Pattles lay beside the sea and under the sweeping skies for all eternity in a long, low line. He saw Ben’s name, and Lily’s and Lula’s, and all the old familiar names of his childhood. Some great horror had visited this place, and death had closed the long Chronicles of the Island. And then his seeing ended and he was back in the heart of the Capital, sitting bolt upright in bed with his fists clenched and his heart racing.
“What’s wrong?” Orlando murmured sleepily in the darkness.
“I’ve just had a seeing.”
“Anything nice?”
“No. Something dreadful.”
Orlando sighed. “That’s always the way with you, isn’t it?”
—
The next morning Silo and Orlando huddled together at the far corner of the dining table conversing in low, anxious voices. Silo was in a fever of anxiety, and his sausages lay forgotten and untasted before him. He must warn the Islanders, but of what? For the umpteenth time he unwound the familiar sequence of the Chronicles in his head. Many disasters had befallen the Island in its long history—floods, famines, epidemics, the great tidal wave—but he could think of no catastrophe so terrible as to wipe out the entire population. And how could the Island itself disappear?
“These seeings of yours—how far into the future are they?” said Orlando.
“Not very long.”
“Hell! Then we need to be on our way tonight.”
“Are you fit to travel?” asked Silo.
“I’ll do,” said Orlando. “And the Academy’s not a healthy place to be at the moment. You’re not the only one who had a seeing last night. The Arson Sisters say there’s going to be a fire in Cowcross Street—a bit of a worry, that. I can cope with a sore head, but not being burned to death.”
Tonight it would be, then. The bell rang and they went, with mutinous hearts, to their classroom.
Here Mrs. Morgan lectured them on the wonders of the Ancient world. Ryker had taught Silo about the Ancient world too, but he had stressed that what little people knew about it was mostly guesswork, for the Ancient world had ended abruptly and violently. First came the Great Catastrophe, when legend held that the Earth itself had moved. A chain of volcanic islands had risen off the northern coast and a time of chaos had followed. Tidal waves had swept the coastlines, plague had spread throughout the land, and the great cities burned. Countless numbers of people had died, and those who survived fled into the countryside and struggled to scratch a living from the land. Ryker thought they must have been very poor farmers, or maybe the weather had been exceptionally bad, for it was over a hundred years before things began to improve and they entered into their own era, the age of the Newcount. But by then the thread that had bound the old world to the new was broken. Records had been burned or destroyed, wise men and women were long dead, and the knowledge of the Ancient world was lost forever. Silo thought that maybe the Ancients hadn’t been so wonderful after all, as they seemed to have made a fearful mess of things, but Mrs. Morgan obviously disagreed. Silo had not expected great things of her, at least not after Orlando had told him about the doings of the State Archaeological Division, but she had exceeded all his worst fears. The incident with the zoo animals had been warning enough, but now, as he listened to her talk obsessively about a world that was lost beyond hope of redemption, she struck him as deranged and dangerous. He longed to be free of the Academy, and to be headed home again to warn the Islanders of the unfathomable disaster that was about to sweep them from the face of the Earth.
—
Elgarth was peevish too. Rankly was not around to serve his lunch and he resented it.
So when he did arrive, and looking remarkably cheerful, Elgarth was sharp with him.
“Where have you been?”
“At the Burning Buzzard, master, by the west gate. Those as travels in from the west often stop off there to refresh themselves when they arrive, and I spent the morning there. Mingling and chatting, I was.”
“And drinking,” said Elgarth, for Rankly’s face was flushed, and he rocked slightly on his feet.
“I did take a drop, but only to make my presence there seem natural,” said Rankly with dignity. “But good news, master! I met a man from Herringhaven who was a neighbor of the Crow family and we talked some. It seems that Maximillian had nothing to gain from his parents’ deaths—an affectionate family, he said, and poor. But he does know what Maximillian looks like.”
“So what?” said Elgarth. “So do we.”
“Maybe not, master. He described him as a pale little chap with fair hair.”
Elgarth sat very upright in his chair, an incredulous smile spreading across his face. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes, master. The man was adamant.”
“So our Maximillian’s an impostor! Brilliant, absolutely brilliant! I should have guessed! The greatest seer in all Mainland, and he’s only had one seeing in a month! He must have paid someone to burn down the goatball stadium, and chances are he stole my money to do it. And to think I thought it was Silo! But can we prove he’s the wrong boy? Have you got the address of this neighbor?”
“I have better than that, master. I have the neighbor himself.”
Rankly opened the door with a flourish to reveal a cheerful drunken man.
Silo and Orlando were the first back in the classroom that afternoon; they leaned casually out the window, surreptitiously inspecting the alleyway below. Compared to most streets in the Capital it was a tranquil backwater, for the only sign of life was a pile of pigs that lay slumbering against the wall of the Academy in a happy communal heap. Silo eyed them with resentment, for they exuded an enviable air of peace and serenity, and their grunts of contentment, together with a powerful piggy aroma, drifted up to where he and Orlando stood, gloomily weighing up their options.
“It’s a fair old drop,” said Orlando, “but this looks like our best bet. All the other windows face onto Cowcross Street, so no way can we slip out without the sentries spotting us. I reckon it’s this or nothing—we’ll need a rope, though.”
“We can make one out of knotted sheets,” said Silo. “We’ll leave tonight and find that inn your uncle told you about. You said it’s a meeting place for Raiders—do you think they’d help us?”
But Silo would never discover Orlando’s thoughts on the matter, for at that very moment Mrs. Morgan swept into the room and a series of startling events, each more unpleasant than the last, crowded in upon her heels.
“Maximillian!” cried Mrs. Morgan. “You have a visitor. One of your old neighbors from Herringhaven is here, and is anxious to pay his respects.”
Horror-stricken, Silo and Orlando turned to see a small red-faced man. Elgarth stood beside him with a bright smile on his face, which brightened even further when the man stared indignantly at Orlando and cried, “But that’s not Maximillian Crow—don’t look a bit like him!”
For a boy of such indolent habits Orlando reacted with blinding speed. He sprang onto the windowsill and balanced there for a few frozen seconds, his face blanched with terror as he gazed down at the drop beneath his feet. And then he jumped. For a brief moment he seemed to hang suspended against the bright square of sky; then he plummeted down two stories to land squarely on the pile of sleeping pigs. They exploded beneath him like a pig-bomb. In the blink of an eye the quiet alley was transformed into a seething mass of outraged swine, torn rudely from their slumbers and shattering the peace of the afternoon with earsplitting squeals. They scattered in all directions—and astonishingly Orlando was among them. He had suffered no ill effects from his audacious leap for he had landed soft, bouncing on the back of a mighty sow. No doubt he would have preferred to make his own way from there, but she shot to her trotters as though electrified, and with the hapless Orlando still astride her. Thus it was that Silo’s last glimpse of his friend was of him being borne away on the back of a stampeding pig, clinging on fo
r dear life as he hurtled down the alley amid a cloud of dust and the thunder of indignant trotters. Within an instant he was whisked around a corner and out of sight, leaving Silo gazing after him openmouthed in astonishment.
Not so Mrs. Morgan.
“Alert the guards!” she barked to the helpful neighbor.
He stared at her in drunken befuddlement until she raised her stick.
“Immediately!”
He lurched for the door, and in a moment his roars of alarm reverberated through the Academy. Deprived of a living target, Mrs. Morgan struck the wall a vicious blow and stood in a drifting cloud of plaster dust, quivering with fury.
“An impostor! He shall pay dearly for this!”
Desperately Silo glanced out the window, scanning the alley for another handy pile of pigs, but only a puzzled piglet remained, gazing reproachfully up at the sky. When Silo’s gaze fell upon it, it squealed in terror and scampered away, almost upending a guard who had appeared at the end of the alley. Confused cries from below told him the hunt was underway. For him there could be no escape and, sick at heart, he turned to face the wrath of Mrs. Morgan.
Hectic red spots glowed on her cheeks and her eyes sparked with fury. “This is an outrage! How could such a thing happen? In my school!”
The ever-helpful Elgarth had a suggestion. “Perhaps Silo can help us,” he said. “I don’t suggest for a moment that he had any knowledge of this shameful impersonation, but he and Maximillian—I mean, the boy who claimed to be Maximillian—were such very good friends. It is just possible that he let something slip, something that would help us to understand his motives.”
Silo and the Rebel Raiders Page 9
