The mild evenings continued, week after week. The weather was hotter than usual for the time of year and the dry spell intensified as they rounded the southernmost marches of the Central Canopy, within sight of the Lantrian leaf-table. The appearance of the hazy depression on the horizon cost Tymon a twinge of bereavement. He thought of his own naïve optimism in planning a trip to the South Fringes with nothing but a bag of Festival cakes. That former self, the optimistically scheming student, seemed insuperably far from him now. The world around him was changing, too. As they turned northwards again and abandoned the glimpse of Lantria, the Treescape below them grew wilder. The terraced barley vine and frogapple farms disappeared and the leaf-forests became dense and dishevelled. By the third week of the voyage they had left all traces of human habitation behind. On the morning of the twenty-second day, Misho whistled an urgent signal from his lookout in the rigging. The sailors crowded together at the prow to scan the eastern horizon. A blue line had appeared there, cutting the leaf-forests short.
‘That’s it,’ murmured Aran, standing beside Tymon. ‘That’s the Gap, and the end of everything we know, young man.’
The boy glanced in surprise at the usually dauntless first mate. He was making a sailor’s sign against bad luck, touching his hand to his forehead.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘You’ve been to the Domains before, haven’t you, Aran?’
His companion grinned toothlessly. ‘Oh, I’ve been to Marak many times,’ he said. ‘I’ve been all over the colonies, at least where there’s any point in going. But it doesn’t change the basic fact. We don’t belong there. You’ll be expecting to stand out like a sore thumb, choirboy.’
Tymon only grunted in answer, mesmerised by the blue line on the horizon. The infamous Gap, the gulf of air between the Central and Eastern Canopies, was both a natural barrier and a great cultural divide. The atlases he remembered from the seminary showed the vast tangled canopy beyond it split into a multitude of vassal states, coloured green on the map to indicate that they were Argosian colonies. But the empire that had stretched across the length and breadth of the Eastern Canopy in days gone by was millennia old before the first priest set foot in Argos city. The Kingdom of Nur, light of the ancient world! Half the parables in the novices’ readers had been associated with it. Until today, Tymon had not directly associated these narratives with everyday people and places in the Tree. The humdrum eastern colonies with their tithes and pilgrims had borne no relation in his mind to the Nur of the old stories. Now the tales hovered against a backdrop of sudden reality. The East was just beyond the horizon. The blue line grew into a long jagged smudge under his dreaming gaze; he stood in silence by the prow until the Captain emerged onto the forecastle, roaring in fury at the crew’s idleness.
The men slunk back to their allotted work. Tymon was relegated to the galley pantry but could not bring himself to concentrate on peeling frogapples. His imagination wandered the streets of the fabled capital of Nur, built—or so accounts claimed—entirely of the rare and mysterious orah. The secrets to obtaining this petrified hardwood were lost, predating even the Nurian Empire. The gleaming substance had been the hallmark of the Old Ones, of whom nothing more was remembered than that they were the first to settle and build in the Tree. Legend told that the walls of Nur city had shone like sunlight on water. Tymon would have dearly loved to see the ruins for himself, but that was hardly probable. They lay in the East Fringes of the canopy, beyond the limits of the Domains, in an area overrun by bandits and other, more shadowy horrors. No Argosian greatship would venture near it.
‘More slice, less dream,’ snapped Cook, startling him from his reverie. The stocky northerner loomed over Tymon in the narrow pantry, brandishing a soup ladle. He jabbed at the boy’s chopping board. ‘Never I see work so bad. You eat half you chop!’
‘What?’ Tymon recoiled in surprise. ‘I may be slow but I’m not eating the food, if that’s what you mean.’
‘So say you.’ Cook scooped up the pitiful quantity of slices he had managed to deposit in the pail at his feet, and gave a snort of disgust. ‘You chop, you slice, not enough to feed rats.’
He trudged out of the pantry, cursing in his own guttural language. Tymon stifled a furious retort and resumed his chopping. After a short interval he re-entered the main galley, swinging the pail of sliced frogapples in his hand, full of righteous indignation. The accomplishment was lost on his nemesis, however. Cook was nowhere to be seen, and Tymon remembered that at that time of day he would be above deck in the ship’s tiny greenhouse, tending to his beloved vines. He moved with a sigh of resignation towards the stove. But as he was about to add the contents of his bucket to the vat of perpetually boiling fruit, he noticed that the pot was half-empty.
He frowned. Three desultory pink slivers swam about the ladle at the bottom of the vessel. The quantity Cook had taken to the galley had been small, but there should have been more in the pot, all the same. The mention of rats suddenly took on more literal implications. Tymon’s skin crawled. No greatship was free of the hardy grey rodents that lived in the hold, comfortably insulated from all efforts to dislodge them. Although the Stargazer was a tightly run ship, it still had its share of these unwelcome guests. In spite of his disgust Tymon felt a reluctant admiration for the rats. Were the dirty beasts so brazen that they ventured into the galley during daylight hours, and stole food from under his very nose? He resolved to catch the thief in the act. He filled the pot with fresh fruit and returned to the pantry, moving his bucket and chopping board nearer to the entrance, where he might spy on the stove.
He did not have long to wait. Soon his straining ears picked up a slight sound at the far end of the galley, a soft creaking noise from an open hatch in the floor leading to a storeroom under the kitchen. Tymon kept his eyes fixed the trapdoor, determined not to miss a whisker of the interloper. But instead of the twitching nose and pink paws of a rat, a familiar face framed with red hair peeped over the hatch before his astonished gaze. The pilgrim girl climbed cautiously up the ladder into the galley.
‘You!’ Tymon exclaimed, scrambling to his feet in the doorway.
She saw him almost as soon as he saw her. If she was startled, she did not show it. She stood up and smoothed the creases from her grey tunic. She was even thinner than before and as pale as a sheet of bark-paper. But her eyes flashed with the old, fierce spirit. She had discarded the pilgrim’s cap. Her fiery hair hung loose about her face.
‘Well,’ she whispered, ‘we meet again, novice.’
11
Tymon hastened to her side in the galley.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he hissed, his resentment mixed with a thrill of unexpected pleasure at finding her again, alive and whole. ‘If you had trusted me I could have helped get you food. As it is, Cook’s already noticed things going missing.’
‘I didn’t know you were on board.’ She raised her hands, placatory. ‘I only came out of the hold when I really needed to. There’s just so long a body can survive on biscuits and water.’
Tymon glanced up the stairs leading out of the galley. A group of sailors stamped by on the deck above, their backs to the open hatchway. He nudged the pilgrim girl out of their line of sight and lowered his voice.
‘And you’ve been here since the night of the escape?’
‘Hidden in an empty crate for a month and a half, yes. I must say, it’s good to see a friendly face.’
She smiled at him then, for the first time in their brief acquaintance. Tymon could not help noticing how the smile lit up her features and how she looked almost pretty, despite the grime and the sun-starved, sickly pallor of her skin. She was less haughty towards him than she had been on the two previous occasions they had spoken. Perhaps six weeks in a ship’s hold with no one but rats to talk to had softened her towards Argosians, he thought wryly.
‘Well, don’t stay here and wait for unfriendly ones.’ He strode to the stove, scooped up a ladleful of tepid fruit from the pot and emptied it in
to her hands. Then he steered her by the elbow towards the trapdoor. ‘Let’s talk below. Less chance of being overheard.’
She allowed herself to be led meekly down the ladder to the dim, windowless storeroom. They made a brief search of the shelves for provisions she could use, squinting at labels and sniffing the contents of boxes in the half-light. Most of the ship’s fresh food was stocked in the pantry, but Tymon found some packets of smoked shillee meat wrapped in leaf-strips and opened one for her; he could explain that away to Cook as a ploy for catching the thieving rats. The rest of the provisions in the storeroom, the supplies of barleyflour, vine-sugar, lentils and dried beans, were useless without a means for cooking. The dry, unpalatable ‘bark-biscuits’, a sailor’s staple fare, she had enough of in the hold. Water she had there too, in luxurious abundance, carefully transported in barrels sealed with Tree-pitch. It was the main currency for trade in the Eastern Domains, each drop of life-giving liquid more valuable than any carved tenders of money.
‘We can work out a system for the food,’ he told her as they sat crouched behind some flour sacks in the spice-scented stores, and the girl devoured her handful of fruit. ‘I’ll always hide a bit of fresh stuff, whatever I’m helping Cook with in the mornings, just inside that doorway.’ He indicated the entrance to the ship’s main hold nearby. ‘That’s where you came through, right?’
She nodded. ‘My box is one of the spare ones at the back of the hold,’ she explained between mouthfuls. ‘They always keep a few big empty crates on board, for ballast.’
The fruit was already gone. She licked her fingers quickly and daintily, the habit of someone used to eating without a fork, and moved briskly on to the dried meat.
‘Perfect. I’ll put a trap by the door as well,’ continued Tymon, taken up with his strategising. He finally had an outlet for all his frustrated plans of escape. ‘If someone finds the victuals they’ll think I’m after rats in the hold.’
‘Very appropriate,’ she grinned, and gave her attention to the food.
As he watched her bowed hungrily over her meal, single-mindedly demolishing the contents of the leaf-packet, he realised that the mystery surrounding her was still complete. He did not know where she came from or why she had travelled to Argos, apart from a vague reference she had made to finding out what really happened to the pilgrims. He did not even know if the name he had called out during the Festival on a desperate whim was hers, or how she had finally escaped from her prison. She had erupted into his life like a whirlwind—shaking it apart, practically causing his expulsion from the Rites—and he still had no idea who she was.
‘Samiha?’ he trialled softly.
‘Yes.’ She finished off the last crumbs of her stolen meal, carefully folding the leaf-packet and stowing it away in a pocket of her tunic. ‘Yes, I am Samiha. And now, novice of Argos—’ she settled back against a sack with a sigh of contentment ‘—you must satisfy my curiosity. I wish to know your name and how you guessed mine.’
‘I’m Tymon.’ He felt a rush of embarrassment at the remembrance of his dream. It was impossible to describe such a bizarre coincidence without coming across as either a liar or a fool. ‘To be honest, I had no idea it was your name,’ he hedged. ‘I wanted to get your attention that day on the quays. The word was on my mind—I must have heard it, somewhere. It just popped out.’
She frowned, her mouth twisted with disbelief. ‘So let me understand this: you called out a name you did not know, on impulse, without any guarantee that it would mean something to me, just in order to get my attention?’
‘I was angry,’ he mumbled. Even now, when he had her at a disadvantage, she made him squirm like a first-year student under interrogation. ‘I wanted you to listen. I wanted to help.’
‘In the middle of your Green Rites?’ she pursued, with stubborn insistence. ‘You called out a completely random name—no, a rare name, a Nurian name, goodness knows where you heard it—and you can’t even tell me why?’
He shook his head, awkward and silent.
‘Very well, Tymon,’ she said after a pause, scrutinising him intently through the shadows of the storeroom. ‘Have it your own way. In any case, I am now listening. You may notice I need all the help I can get on this ship.’
‘And you’ll have it, once I know a few more things about you,’ he responded, stubborn in his turn. ‘I’d like some questions answered.’
‘Fair enough,’ she said.
He peered up at the lighted square of the trapdoor. All was quiet in the galley.
‘How did you break out of prison?’ he whispered to the girl. ‘No one would talk about it, as if it were a national embarrassment or something. And you still haven’t told me what you were doing in Argos. Why take the risk of dressing up as a man? I think you’ll agree, the experiment was doomed to failure sooner or later.’
She laughed softly. ‘One question at a time, novice! It was surprisingly easy to escape from the prison. I stole the guards’ keys from the bathhouse. The captain was drunk. No wonder they were embarrassed.’ Her mirth died away, and she sighed in the gloom. ‘Did any of the others make it?’
He understood that she meant the runaways. ‘No, they were all caught.’
‘Naturally,’ she groaned under her breath. ‘I should never have involved them. They knew nothing.’
She faltered and sat in silence a while, lost in private rumination. ‘Knew nothing about what?’ he prompted.
‘Nothing about why I came to Argos,’ she replied, rousing herself from her thoughts. ‘They knew less about me than you do, really. They were just pilgrims, just trying to survive. They sold their freedom for a bit of water to help their families.’ Her voice became a low, indignant growl. ‘I have friends in Marak who would dearly love to put a stop to the Council’s game. I came on their behalf, to gather information. I wish I could have done more. We have stood by long enough while our people are led to slaughter.’
Sudden realisation dawned on Tymon. ‘You’re a spy for the Nurian rebellion,’ he blurted.
Now that the idea had occurred to him, it was the only explanation of her behaviour that made any sense. Who else but a rebel would risk all to come to Argos? Who else but a spy would have friends in Marak who opposed the seminary? Insurgents in the Eastern Domains were accused by the Council of everything from political agitation to grand heresy; in Tymon’s current frame of mind, this only enhanced the pilgrim girl’s appeal. It was highly gratifying to be aiding and abetting a sworn enemy of the priests.
Her gaze searched out his. She seemed to be sizing him up, measuring him against some internal gauge. ‘You might say I was a spy, of sorts,’ she conceded. ‘Though not for rebels. Not in the sense you mean, anyway.’
He gave a shrug. ‘Rebels to some, freedom fighters to others,’ he noted. ‘But there’s one thing I don’t understand. Why didn’t your friends just send a man?’
His question seemed to throw her. She answered with a flash of her old scorn. ‘Why, don’t you think a mere slip of a girl is up for such a dangerous job?’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ he clarified hastily. ‘You said the other pilgrims didn’t know who you were. Surely the disguise made things more difficult? Or did you have help?’
‘Juno knew who I was. He was a—’ She stopped abruptly, as if she had been about to say something else and thought better of it. ‘We came together,’ she continued. ‘He was going to help me against the priests, until—until we arrived in the city, and he became ill…’
‘What happened to your friend was a tragedy,’ put in Tymon as her voice trailed off. ‘I must have come across as a fool during the Rites. I didn’t want to think about what was happening right there, in front of me. I’m sorry.’
She gave a quick, sad half-smile. ‘That’s alright. I wasn’t much use either that day. I almost missed it.’
‘Missed what?’
‘Missed why I really came to Argos.’
He sat up eagerly. ‘You mean you found out how th
e seminary does it? How they trick the pilgrims into volunteering for the Sacrifice?’
‘Yes and no,’ she replied, evasive. ‘My suspicions about that were confirmed, yes. But I was referring to something else.’
‘Which was?’ he pressed. He was not about to let her wriggle out of a response.
‘I will tell you that,’ she said with deliberate emphasis, ‘when you remember where you heard my name.’
They stared at each other a moment, neither willing to make the first move. Cook’s heavy tread shook the galley above, dispelling the tension. Tymon jumped up.
‘I have to go. I’ll see you in the hold tomorrow morning,’ he whispered. ‘And I promise I’ll try and explain about the name, though it sounds crazy—’
The northerner’s brusque tones reverberated through the trapdoor, interrupting him. ‘Boy! You down there?’
Tymon signalled a hasty farewell to Samiha. ‘I’m here,’ he shouted as he skipped up the ladder to the galley. ‘The rats are back. Saw one stealing from the pot, bold as bark. Where are the traps?’
He disappeared, slamming the hatch behind him with a dull thump. The girl remained in her place after he had gone, a slim, straight shadow in the darkened room. After a while she rose and slipped through the door to the main hold, closing it noiselessly behind her.
By noon the dirigible had approached the last towers of swaying leaves on the fringes of the Central Canopy. The Gap stretched beyond, an abyss of blue-grey cloud. Tymon went about his tasks on deck in a state of suppressed excitement. His conversation with Samiha had left him elated. He had the dim sense of exhilarating possibilities, a grand adventure just over the horizon. He was no longer simply an indentured student on his way to complete his service. He was friend to a wanted fugitive, an ally to a rebel. It was the perfect way to thumb his nose at the seminary. He had taken centre stage in his own dreams once again.
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