Deeplight Read online

  ‘Hark!’

  The call came from the base of the tower and made Hark jump. It was the voice he knew best in the world, and it filled him with relief. Jelt was alive and well. Of course he was.

  A moment later, the wave of relief receded, and a weight settled on his heart. He felt an odd temptation to pretend not to hear, just for a few moments more.

  ‘Oi, Hark!’ The tower shook as somebody below slammed his fist into it twice.

  Hark turned and looked.

  There was Jelt, standing below on the wharf. It was strange looking down on him like that. He was two years older than Hark, and had always been taller, but over the last three years life had grabbed him by the ankles and head and stretched him. It had left him lean, raw, and angry about it. Even when he was motionless or calm, you could sense that anger snaking off him. As usual, his expression was distracted but intense, as if listening to the world whispering something that riled him. You always had the feeling that there was a problem, and maybe you weren’t it, but you might become it if you didn’t tread carefully.

  Jelt raised his hand and gave a quick, fierce beckon.

  Hark hesitated a moment, conflicted, then gave the merchant an uneasy smile, and waved back at Jelt.

  ‘Good to see you!’ he called down to his friend. ‘I’ll talk to you later, all right?’ He gave a brief, meaningful glance in the direction of the merchant. Not now, Jelt. I’ve got a prospect here.

  Jelt shook his head.

  ‘You need to come right now.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ hissed Hark.

  ‘Come on!’ Jelt slammed his hand into the wood of the tower again. ‘We need to hurry!’

  There were protests from the other people perched on the tower. Hark gritted his teeth and apologized to the merchant, promising to find him later, then scrambled down the ladder. A moment later, he was shoving his way through the crowd in his friend’s wake. Somehow Hark always found himself neck deep in Jelt’s latest plan. It was as though he’d signed up for it in his sleep.

  ‘I had that continenter hooked!’ protested Hark as the two of them hurried up the stone steps of a priest-track to one of the beacon cliffs. ‘Why couldn’t this wait until I’d reeled him in?’

  Jelt gave a snort of mirth.

  ‘You’re just angry because I dragged you away from your girlfriend!’ he said. It was an old joke of his that Hark had a crush on the idea of the Hidden Lady. ‘Such a romantic. Oh, don’t sulk. I told you we were doing another job today!’

  ‘Where were you this morning, then?’ demanded Hark. ‘I waited for hours!’

  ‘Staying out of someone’s way,’ Jelt answered curtly.

  Jelt was much in demand these days. Cold-eyed people came looking for him – and not to shake his hand. Sometimes it was the governor’s men, sometimes other people who didn’t give their names. It had been happening ever since that night on the mudflats – the night Hark and Jelt never talked about. Hark sensed that Jelt was almost daring him to ask about it now. He did not take the bait.

  ‘You lost them?’ he asked instead.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jelt, no longer in a humorous mood. ‘Hurry it up, will you?’

  Events had a current, and Hark didn’t believe in fighting currents. Using them, playing with them, letting them push you slantwise to somewhere that might serve your turn, yes. Fighting them flat out, no. The current that was Jelt pulled him along more than any other. Somehow Hark couldn’t slip or slide or shoot off sideways and still pretend he was doing what Jelt wanted, the way he could with anybody else.

  I don’t want to anyway, he told himself firmly. Jelt is family. He knew better than to trust anything he told himself, though.

  There were four figures waiting near the top of the hill, in the shelter of one of the lookout towers. Hark’s heart lurched as he recognized their leader, a woman in her late thirties, with a bitter, thoughtful mouth, and a thick mottling of freckles that covered her face and arms, and even the scalp beneath her close-cropped hair. Dotta Rigg’s reckless, cut-throat smuggling runs filled Lady’s Cravers with both alarm and an odd pride. Her five children could get free drinks anywhere on the island, even the younger ones, and only partly due to fear.

  Hark had heard older hands talking of Rigg with trepidation and contempt, combined with bafflement at her success. She’s heading for a fall. Too chancy, doesn’t listen to anyone. Who the abyss wants to be a famous smuggler?

  ‘Captain Rigg,’ said Hark, hoping to sound confident but respectful. Whatever madness Jelt had got them into, he had better act as if he could handle it.

  He noticed the steel and scrimshaw ear-studs worn proudly by a couple of Rigg’s companions, to indicate that they were ‘sea-kissed’. A degree of hearing loss was common among those who spent a lot of time diving or trusting their lives to submarines. Sea-kissed deafness was the mark of a seasoned aquanaut, and therefore generally respected. Sign? he asked them quickly in Myriad sign language and received a nod. Many sea-kissed could lip-read or retained some of their hearing, so it was always polite to ask whether they preferred speech or sign language.

  You wanted to see us? Hark signed to Rigg. Since there were so many sea-kissed across the Myriad, virtually all islanders knew some sign language, though the signs varied slightly from one island to the next. Hark could manage the basics of the Lady’s Crave variant, but always felt a bit clumsy with it compared with the grace of those who used it more often.

  Yes, though I’m going off the idea, Rigg signed sharply with a scowl. We’ve been waiting nearly an hour! You better not be late tonight. She beckoned Hark and Jelt closer, and the six of them reflexively formed a huddle, so that their signs could not easily be read from a distance.

  Tonight? Things were moving even faster than Hark had feared.

  We won’t, signed Jelt. No excuses, no apology, just a sky-blue stare.

  Rigg jerked a thumb towards the beacon tower on the next headland.

  It’s that beacon and the one beyond it, she signed, fixing Hark and Jelt with an assessing glare. You’ll need to put both lights out an hour after the cannon. There’s a route under the lip of the cliff to the one further away . . . You see that ledge under the red streak? One of you will have to climb along that. You can’t use the clifftop path, or you’ll be seen.

  Hark was catching up fast and wished he wasn’t. He gave a silent, dry-mouthed nod. Hark was a good actor, but he knew that sea-kissed often had a sharp eye for body language. He could only hope that they hadn’t noticed his rising panic. He wondered if Jelt had deliberately brought him in late, so he wouldn’t be able to protest and back out. Four dangerous people had been kept waiting in the cold – he didn’t have the nerve to tell them that they’d been wasting their time.

  It has to be done tonight? Hark asked, thinking wistfully of his gullible, abandoned merchant.

  Of course, Rigg signed irritably. The governor’s men will be busy, won’t they?

  She was right, Hark realized. Most of the governor’s guards would probably be on the docks guarding the Abysmal Child, watching the warehouse with the new cargo, and stopping people diving in the harbour for fallen scraps of the Hidden Lady. There would be fewer men patrolling the cliffs and the coves.

  They’ll hold an Appraisal tomorrow to sell off the Abysmal Child’s godware, I guarantee it, continued Rigg. After that, patrols will be back at full strength. It has to be tonight.

  No problem, answered Jelt.

  ‘You didn’t ask,’ Hark said bitterly, as twilight settled on the island like a sour mood. ‘You never ask, Jelt.’

  ‘Wasn’t time, was there? You got to grab these chances when they come. And we were only late because I spent hours finding you in that crowd!’

  ‘You did have time to tell me!’ Hark began, but already he knew it was pointless to argue. If Hark stuck to his guns, really stuck to them, that would lead nowhere good.

  ‘Look,’ continued Jelt, ‘here’s how we do this. We hide on the hillside till it
’s time, then I climb up near to the first lantern, and you take the ledge path to the second. You knock out your lantern as soon as you can, and I’ll kill mine when yours goes dark.’

  ‘I still don’t see why I have to do the climb along that ledge,’ muttered Hark.

  ‘Are you joking?’ Jelt halted in his tracks and stared at Hark with wide, angry eyes. ‘I’m trying to show Rigg what you can do, Hark! You think I couldn’t have got somebody else for this? I brought you in because we’re friends! You’re a decent climber, and after tonight, Rigg’s whole gang will know it.’

  In spite of his annoyance, Hark couldn’t help feeling a little mollified by the compliment.

  ‘Anyway,’ added Jelt, ‘that path’s got an overhang. You’re shorter than me, it won’t slow you down as much. Also, the one hiding near that first beacon has to stay there, ready to break it, no matter what happens. What would you do if the governor’s men showed up there? Give them a smile? Tell them a nice story?’

  ‘What would you do, then?’ Hark retorted. ‘Chuck ’em all off the cliff?’

  Jelt gave a bit of a shrug and a dangerous little smirk. I might, said the smirk, if I feel like it. He was always like that in the face of a potential fight. Bravado toothed with a hint of real threat. Joking but not joking. You couldn’t prove anything either way.

  ‘Why do they want the lights out, anyway?’ muttered Hark.

  The beacon lights had once been a signal to the gods – a plea. Please let our ships sail through. Do not rise in your terrible majesty. We will appease you. We will feed you . . . Many of the Myriad’s islands had long since removed their beacon towers as symbols of a dead and regrettable era. The governor of Lady’s Crave, however, was eternally practical. He had kept the towers, modifying them and adding lenses, so that they cast a broad, dim beam on the coves the smugglers favoured for their night runs.

  ‘They’re doing something they don’t want anybody to see,’ Jelt said slowly and clearly, his tone impatiently patient. ‘Maybe we’ll find out what if we show what we’re worth.’

  Hark hesitated for too many seconds, and Jelt’s short fuse burned out.

  ‘Oh, grow a spine, Hark! Before I start wishing I’d left you out of this. This is a promotion. You got some other career plans, have you? You want to spend your whole life snatching scraps and wheedling pennies on the docks like a little kid, till you’re too old and slow, and you starve?’

  Hark chewed his cheek, hearing the truth in Jelt’s words. Hark had a stubborn seed of hope in his soul that kept pushing up and up, however deeply it was buried, and building bright, strange futures for him. Although he felt a profound, blood-level love for Lady’s Crave, many of his dreams involved leaving for Siren, or Malpease – some island that was bigger and brighter, with more hope. Every day he saw people who had probably once had dreams like his, but who had never left, and never come to anything. Old men and women in damp rags, gathering clams or squabbling over tiny bribes, their eyes weary pools of disappointment. Seeing them, he could feel his dreams shudder.

  Hark had moved up in the world, hadn’t he? He wasn’t hanging around the kids’ Shelter any more, begging for food or somewhere to sleep. He was sharing a shack behind the glue factory, above the flood line, and with warmth soaking through the wall from the glue furnaces beyond. His gaggle of housemates would probably kick him out sooner or later as their alliances shifted, but that was just what happened. Folks turned on you, so you looked for the next bunch of people to get you through. Nobody was permanent.

  Nobody except Jelt.

  Hark and Jelt had been orphaned by the same bitter winter, and this had somehow grafted them together. Sometimes Hark felt they were more than friends – or less than friends – their destinies conjoined against their wills. Unwanted children were not unusual, and Lady’s Crave had shown them a certain rough charity in their earliest years. They had been given a home at the Shelter and one meal a day. Sailors had thrown them occasional scraps, or turned a blind eye when they slept in their rowing boats. Even the territorial shore-scavengers let the youngest children delve into their rock pools now and then for sea-urchins and shellfish. But when you turned seven or eight, your time was up. You were old enough to fend for yourself without help, and were chased off if you tried foraging in a territory claimed by a scavenger gang. In Hark’s case, this did not happen until he was nine: an early lesson in the advantages of looking young and harmless.

  Appearing that way was dangerous too. It marked you out as a victim, a soft target. Hark had survived because word got round about his crazy friend, the one who stood his ground against full-grown men and tried to smash their teeth in with rocks.

  Jelt had kept Hark alive. Jelt could drop his fear and self-control in a second. Jelt thought big, could even think himself bigger.

  ‘We got to move up,’ said Jelt, ‘or we’re going nowhere. You take the world by the throat, or you die.’

  A few hours later, the pair of them were hiding on the hillside watching the dusk draw in. Jelt didn’t get nerves when he was about night-business. Hark did, though he knew better than to admit it.

  He dealt with it by telling himself a story. He watched himself as if he’d already done it, already survived, and was telling the tale of his adventure to an agog and adoring audience in a tavern afterwards. It calmed him down and slowed his pulse a little. He was the hero, and everything was going to be all right. It already was all right. The things happening right now weren’t real peril, they were just drama.

  And we sat waiting under that overhang for two hours, he told his spellbound imaginary audience. We heard the evening cannon sound, then watched the sky get darker, and the storm streaks deepen above Rue and Hullbrake . . .

  The yellow had spread across the sky like a bruise, and across the sea the pale streamers of distant downpours descended to the humped backs of other islands. Already he could hear the patter of rain outside the overhang, and see the rock speckling and darkening.

  Their hiding place was halfway up the headland. Jelt was looking out to sea, with that bland, ecstatic look of calm he always had before they did something stupid and dangerous. Only his blunt fingers were restless. He was tranquil but alive, utterly awake, open to every passing moment, weighing it for ripeness.

  ‘Come on,’ he said suddenly. It was time. Jelt had an animal sense for these things.

  Outside, Hark felt the icy sting of little raindrops on his face and hands – needle rain with a winter sting in it.

  We had to climb up to the headland from further down the cliff, you see, Hark explained to his invisible future admirers, so they wouldn’t spot us. And it was tricky, with the rain coming down, right into our eyes, and the rocks getting slippery . . .

  The dark slope above was rugged with mottled grey-white rocks, which bulged, jutted and occasionally fell. Tiny trees twisted out between them like knuckly question marks, their needle-clusters quivering like fists in the wet wind. Grey sea-thistles starred the darkness. Soft puffballs looked like rocks but broke under your hand. Spindleweed held when you grabbed a fistful of it to pull yourself up, but scored your palms and fingers.

  Hark climbed, his fingers numb already. His teeth chattered.

  And I was thinking, why was I doing this? But I couldn’t leave Jelt in the lurch, could I? He’d be dead without me.

  You didn’t grow up on Lady’s Crave without knowing how to climb. You needed it to reach the nests of seabirds on the eastern cliffs. The headlands and slick rocks of the coves were where you proved yourself and carved out your place in the pecking order. You jumped from Wailer’s Rock and fell for a full second before the sea slapped the breath out of you. And you could stay ahead of danger, and trouble, and people who wanted their possessions back, as long as you could climb.

  Glancing to one side, Hark could see Jelt was pulling ahead, scowling with concentration. Hark was the nimbler and lighter of the two, but Jelt was stronger and more reckless. So somehow Hark had spent his whole life trying
to keep pace with Jelt.

  . . . and of course it’s getting dark, and we can hardly see where we’re putting our hands . . .

  They had chosen a route up a zigzag crevice, since it had more footholds and was deep enough for them to avoid being caught in the light of the beacon. Other nearby crags were illuminated, though. The oil of the beacons burned with a muddy violet light, so that shadows seemed to be a very dark, soupy orange.

  As the crevice grew too narrow for them to climb side by side, Jelt pulled ahead. They hadn’t counted on the rain when they’d picked their route. The crevice was a water channel, and already Hark could feel an insistent trickle of water running over his cold knuckles, and could hear the click and schlack of small pebbles loosening their hold in dampening soil.

  Then Jelt shifted a little to one side, to brace himself in the crack, and purple light flooded down into Hark’s eyes. They were near the top, he realized with a shock. He shielded his eyes to protect his night sight. The flash of light left swirls on his retinas, swimming like orange fish through a dark sea.

  This was where Jelt would hide. Jelt nudged Hark and pointed along the side of the hill. Peering through the rain, Hark could see his route – the great overhang, and below it the little ledge. Jelt gave Hark a quick clap on the shoulder, a silent gesture of camaraderie.

  Now Hark was continuing alone along the rain-slicked path, with spoilt night sight, to reach the other tower. From a distance he hadn’t realized quite how low the overhang was, or how narrow the ledge, but there was no turning back now.

  . . . So imagine me, flat against this wet rock, edging along this ledge the breadth of three fingers. And sometimes I’m bent over double because the overhang dips down in places. And there’s a sheer drop on my left . . .

  ‘Stupid scabbing plan,’ he whispered, his eyes full of muddy rainwater, feeling the moist ledge shift and squish under his feet.