“That’s just an act! ’E’ll be glad of the distraction, Mr. Farriner, mark my words!” Robin said with a wink.
They stomped back upstairs as quickly as they could manage. Edwin was first to arrive and he rapped on the door.
“Duncan? You there?” he called.
There was a rustling of bedsheets and a shuffling of feet across creaking floorboards.
“Just a second!” Duncan called as Robin arrived.
“Come on, we’ve seen it all before! Well, I ’ave, anyway,” Robin laughed as he banged on the door with his mighty fist.
A visibly irate Duncan opened the door with just a blanket wrapped round his wide waist. Edwin hadn’t realised before just how furry Duncan was. Black hair covered his arms and shoulders, sprouted from his flat, sturdy chest and ran rampant across his ample belly. Edwin thought his own almost-entirely smooth skin must have made quite a change for Robin if he’d previously been used to that level of hirsuteness in his lovers.
“Something I can do for you?” Duncan asked. “Or did you just come to admire the view?”
“Thought I ’eard the bed rattlin’. Not interupptin’ anythin’, I ’ope? Not entertain’ any guests, are you?” Robin asked, cheekily glancing about the little room.
“No, I was just…no. What do you want?” Duncan huffed.
“We’re going to Gull’s Reach,” Edwin said.
“How nice. Have fun,” Duncan said as he began to close the door.
Robin plonked his big, black boot in the way, blocking the door from closing any further.
“Duncan, please. It’s Mrs. Farriner, she lives there and we don’t know the way. We need your ’elp,” Robin pleaded in his softest voice.
“I told you, I’m not going out there. Look, I’ll draw you a map,” Duncan said.
Still clutching his bedsheet with one hand and trying not to trip over it, he went in search of paper. His notable hairiness continued across his entire back and dipped below the line of the bedsheet, but Edwin noticed something else as well—under the hair were long, raised scars. The tracks of old wounds.
“But this why you came with us, to show us around!” Robin protested.
“Not happening,” Duncan called over his crinite shoulder, still searching.
“Fine, but if we go and somethin’ bad ’appens because our friend Duncan weren’t there to guide us properly…” Robin said in a mocking tone.
Duncan glowered at him in reply.
“You can’t just stay ’ere feelin’ sorry for yourself. You need to get out there. Face your fears. I promise you it won’t be as bad as you think,” Robin said, holding his hands open in front of him.
“Please, Duncan,” Edwin said gently. “It’s my mum.”
Duncan rolled his eyes. “Urgh, fine. Give me five minutes,” he said, kicking Robin’s foot out of the way and closing the bedroom door.
“Told you ’e’d ’elp,” Robin said, beaming.
Chapter Seven
THEY CANTERED THROUGH the town in a cramped horse-drawn carriage. They travelled over bridges, through tunnels and wound around streets in a manner quite perplexing. Duncan and Edwin had squeezed into one seat while Robin had needed to take one to himself due to his bulk. In order to fit in, Edwin had been forced to sit at an angle with one arm draped around Duncan’s shoulders. Duncan, never one for close contact, gritted his teeth. He and Edwin had become friends only a handful of months earlier and, though he knew he was overreacting, part of him worried Robin might see their touching as something untoward.
“How did you two sleep?” Duncan asked in an attempt to ease his mind.
“Not so bad, once the music downstairs stopped,” Edwin said.
“I woke up in the middle of the night, absolutely freezing,” Duncan said, rubbing his hands together for warmth and emphasis. “I checked the window was closed before I got into bed, but it must have been opened by the wind. Found a pigeon feather on my pillow this morning, suppose it must have blown in during the night. I’m lucky I didn’t wake up to an entire frozen bird beside me. It’s alright for you two—you have each other to keep warm. I’ll be wearing all my shirts to bed tonight. Otherwise, something might snap off in the cold.”
“No great loss, not as if you use it much, anyway,” Robin laughed, earning him one of Duncan’s dagger-stares.
“Couldn’t you ask your new friend to keep you warm?” Edwin asked.
“Who? Oh, Mr. Boon. He’s not the sort I like,” Duncan lied.
“You don’t like creative, thickset and handsome?” Edwin said with a laugh.
“No. Yes. I mean…leave me be,” Duncan said, sulking. He didn’t appreciate being paired off so eagerly and wondered if perhaps Edwin had a specific reason for wanting his affections directed towards Mr. Boon. Was he worried they may otherwise drift back towards Robin? Is that why Edwin had befriended him in the first place, to better keep an eye on him? Duncan didn’t truly believe Edwin capable of such underhandedness, but it was a thought he found himself returning to time and again.
As their carriage passed westwards from Pudding Quarter, the men began to notice a shift in the quality of the buildings. More frayed edges and shattered glass appeared. More splintered beams and cracked plasterwork. The roads were messier, more uneven, and the people more careworn and dishevelled. The fancy breeches of the Barley Hill set gave way to the workman’s pantaloons and trousers. The further west they went, the greater the contrast. Robin eventually realised why.
“The ’urricane,” he said, quietly.
Everywhere, the signs were unmistakable. The roads were cracked and pitted, splintered tree stumps lined the roads and whole buildings had been reduced to rubble—all signs of the hurricane that had unexpectedly swept through these islands during the summer. The docks, the commercial sectors, the more affluent areas—all of them had been cleaned up and repaired with haste, but that part of town clearly hadn’t been a priority. The solstice celebrations hadn’t touched there. No wreaths were to be found, no evergreen boughs strung merrily with dried fruit and pretty glass. Just the everyday struggle to adapt, to rebuild, and the will to survive ruination.
As they turned a corner, the road dipped sharply and they were afforded a view of the poorest part of Port Knot—the quarter known as Gull’s Reach. It was an area separated from the rest of the town by a slender river and accessed by a great stone bridge. It was naught but a tightly-packed collection of flat-roofed tenement buildings and arcades running from the riverbank to cliff’s edge, lacking the copper water pipes found everywhere else and home to the most remarkable consequence of the hurricane the men had seen.
Stretched across the flat and low-sloping rooftops was an entirely new village. A whole settlement formed from sheds and cabins, timber and blankets, tarpaulin and leather, all connected by ropes and decked in lanterns. There, atop the buildings of the poorest part of town, an entire displaced community had gathered. The carriage stopped on the bridge.
“Out you get,” shouted the driver. “I ain’t goin’ no further.”
“What is that?” Edwin said, pointing.
“They call it the Roost. It’s where the Stormlost live.”
“On the rooftops?” Edwin asked, incredulously.
“You don’t know how bad it got here after the hurricane. The townsfolk who lost their homes had no place else to go. The people in Barley Hill certainly weren’t goin’ to take them in, so they came here. The people of the Gull’s Reach tenements opened their doors to them. Once the buildings were filled, the only place left to go was up. The rest of Port Knot thought this place was bad enough before, but now…” The driver waved his hands dismissively. “I’ve heard stories of people being attacked from above by pirates on ropes, swingin’ down from the rooftops, snatchin’ purses, hats, shawls, whatever they can get their hands on. I don’t know if it’s true, but I ain’t takin’ no chances. The hurricane split this town in two. This ain’t a safe place to be.”
“That’s where Mum must
be,” Edwin said. “If everywhere else is filled up, she must be up there.”
“Great,” Duncan sighed.
Robin paid the driver and together the three men from Merryapple entered Gull’s Reach. They stuck close together, caps pulled low and eyes sharp. Duncan realised his much taller friends had flanked him, and he appreciated the gesture, though he wondered if they were even aware they were doing it. They attracted a good deal of attention from the locals and abusive taunts were shouted in their direction.
The first of the tenement buildings was, like most others, a great red brick monstrosity with myriad tiny windows. The road was strewn with brown and black lumps of gravel-pitted snow, apparently dropped from the roof. There were also a great many ropes and ladders hanging from the rooftops, clearly well-used by experienced residents. The trio didn’t fancy climbing up that way, so instead, they opted to enter through one of the open doorways of the buildings holding the village aloft.
The building was damp and dark and eerily silent, apart from the odd creak of floorboards and infrequent dripping. The smell of mould mixed with unwashed clothes assaulted their noses. There were no doors. Duncan surmised they had been taken down and burned as firewood. In their place hung soiled and torn sheets, affording a modicum of privacy. They picked their way through the rubbish on the staircases, eventually emerging onto the snow-covered roof, squinting in the light.
All around them lay a hodgepodge of tents, carts, sheds and even woodcutter’s huts, all hoisted up to the roof and repaired with bits of driftwood and canvas. A good number of the dwellings were tall—taller even than Robin—and so numerous one could easily believe they were still on the ground. The wooden structures had a black chimney poking up through the roof, venting plumes of thick, grimy smoke. There were little roads, of sorts—pathways, cleared of snow and woven between rows of those tents, those shacks, those homes.
Every dozen yards or so were set tall poles tied with ropes stretching out across the encampment like a spider’s web and fixed to heavy sheets of tarpaulin angled to deflect rainwater. Duncan, wrinkling his nose at the musty scent of the settlement, deduced the sheets could be turned by the series of winches found on each pole, and the rainwater collected in the great barrels below, presumably for the people to use. From up there, it was easy to believe all of Port Knot was nothing but a maze of canvas, lumber, and burlap leaning into the vast grey sea.
The rhythmic thud of a drum came from somewhere in the distance. The men found a signpost pointing in multiple directions. Various crudely-painted names like Stormlew, Allernbatch, and Rainbarton were to be found upon it, but since the men had no idea which area Sylvia lived in, they started towards the noise of the drum. The buildings on which the Roost had been built were uneven and so the lanes jutted up and down, twisted around and carried over, all connected by ropes and planks and ramps.
As they turned a corner, Robin bumped into a figure and knocked them to the ground, kicking a pot of soil over as he did so.
“Oh! I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you!” he said, reaching down to help them back up.
His hand grabbed a wooden pole.
“What is it?” Duncan asked as he straightened the pot.
Robin planted the pole back into its container.
“A scarecrow,” he said. “Or scaregull, I suppose. I imagine they need plenty of ’em up ’ere.”
The simple assembly of two long, wooden poles was covered with ragged clothing and topped with a cap. From its makeshift arms hung little pieces of glass to catch the light and further confuse birds.
“Gulls aren’t easily fooled, mind. If they leave these in the same spot for too long, the birds’ll just roost on ’em.”
“Must be why they’re in those pots,” Edwin said. “So they can be moved around. Why would a place like this even be needed? Why haven’t the people unaffected by the hurricane taken the Stormlost in?”
“That’s what would have happened on Merryapple,” Duncan replied as he carefully stepped around a full chamber pot left sitting out. “This isn’t Merryapple.”
Every dwelling they passed was different in size, shape, material, and decoration. Most were simple affairs, with barely more than a bundle of blankets on the floor, while others were surprisingly decorated in bright colours and composed of multiple parts, multiple rooms, as it were. But no matter if it was a few sheets, a tent, or a shack, each had one thing in common—each one was empty.
“Where is everyone?” Robin asked.
The drumbeat was getting louder, and following the noise, they soon found themselves overlooking a space approximating a town square. The trio held back, waiting to see what was going on.
The large clearing had a makeshift stage at the far end and nearly every resident of the Roost gathered before it. Singing and dancing, hooting and howling, their music played and they danced boisterously. Fiddles underscored numerous ad hoc drums as they pounded out a furious beat, and braziers threw sparks in defiance of the cold winter air. How many had gathered there, in the heart of the Roost? Dozens, at least. Hundreds, perhaps. It was hard to tell, but everywhere one could find a person, one did. They were dancing in the open space in front of the simple stage, they were sitting around the edges, in the tents, perched on top of shacks, on top of sheds, and hanging from a tangle of ropes like sailors on rigging. None of them paid the Merryapple men any attention at all.
There was a murmur of anticipation as the music abruptly stopped and a small figure took to the stage. Edwin suddenly grasped Robin’s hand and held it tightly.
“Quiet!” a chestnut-haired man in the front row called out to the crowd. “Quiet for the Voice of the Roost! Quiet!”
All fell silent as the woman on the stage began to speak.
“Rabbit. Magpie. Badger. Swan. The animals of the Blackrabbit council. Don’t be fooled by their names. They are savage, wild beasts, feasting on the flesh of this town, this island.”
The roar of approval from the crowd was deafening.
“I spoke to them! I made them listen! I told them of our plight! I told them of the brave men and women of this town who huddle together for warmth, night after night. I told them of the children who cry themselves to sleep, shivering in their frost-ridden beds. But do you think they cared?”
“No!” came the reply from the gathered throng. “No!”
“No!” the figure on the stage shouted back. “They spoke of voting, of processes, of careful deliberation. They spoke of bureaucracy while we suffer!”
An ear-splitting cacophony of boos and hissing followed. The chestnut-haired man in the front row was the most vociferous, the most animated.
“But their time is ending! They’ve had their chance! The Roost, Gull’s Reach, soon the whole town will stand together against them! There is only one among them who can help us fight the beasts! Only one who stands with us!”
A frenzied roar erupted once again. Several dozen of the crowd rummaged in bags and in the folds of their clothing, each removing a mask they tied on, covering the top half of their faces. The chestnut-haired man was the first to raise his short, red-and-white snout to the sky in a screeching howl. The rest quickly followed.
“Foxes,” Duncan whispered. “It’s an army of foxes.”
“Who will stand by me when the time comes?” the woman on the stage asked. “Who will help me? Who will make things right?”
All hands raised with a thunderous tide of approving cheers and jostling to be close to the woman, the wonderful saviour who would fix everything. Edwin watched slack-jawed and confused as the tiny red-headed figure on the stage was ushered away by a skinny man and a muscle-bound associate.
“That…that was my mum…” he said.
“I think we should leave,” Duncan said.
“No, we can’t go until I’ve spoken to Mum,” Edwin replied.
“I think ’e’s right, Edwin,” Robin said, eyeing the crowd nervously.
The people in the fox masks were dancing in a circle around a
blazing barrel, its smoke and embers mixing with the flutter of falling snowflakes. Their howls had become chants—a heart-pounding, rhythmic, hypnotic chorus reeking of menace. There had been a definite shift in atmosphere. When they arrived, no one was paying them much attention, but the mood was changing. It was clear they were outsiders, and they were distinctly unwelcome.
“I’m not going until I’ve seen her. What’s she doing on the stage? Why is she talking to them like that?”
Edwin began to head in the direction of the stage, but Duncan put himself squarely in his path and stared up at him.
“Edwin. You asked me to come with you so you wouldn’t get into any trouble here and I’m telling you we have to go. Now.”
Duncan fixed his friend with his most determined stare.
“Fine,” Edwin said. “But we’re coming back first thing tomorrow.”
ARTHUR DAMERELL DANCED and howled with the other masked members of the crowd, running his hands through his chestnut hair and experiencing a feeling close to drunkenness though he hadn’t touched a drop. He was shaken from his ecstatic state by a young woman carrying a baby in her arms.
“Arthur?” she said. “Arthur, please, I don’t like this, it’s getting out of hand.”
He stopped moving and kissed his child’s head while he laid a hand on his wife’s shoulder.
“All is well. Everyone here shares a common cause,” he said. “I’m not watching you both go hungry any longer. The council isn’t doing anything to help us. This is the only way they’ll listen.”
He kissed her cheek, then returned to his dancing.
Chapter Eight
ROBIN, EDWIN, AND Duncan sat on a couple of heavily worn leather sofas in the bar at the Lion Lies Waiting. A handful of other patrons, mostly scarred and surly men, sat with heavy heads over tankards of beer. A small table of angry-looking people were playing cards for money and they punctuated their successes and losses with the occasional colourful profanity.
“I know you’re upset but try put it out of your mind for now. There’s nothin’ we can do until tomorrow,” Robin said, squeezing Edwin’s knee.
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